Opposites attract

My boyfriend is a complete carnivore that believes french fries fall in the vegetable category. So it was no surprise that he wasn't thrilled when I told him I wanted to go almost vegetarian over a year ago.

When I made that decision, I decided three things:
1. If I'm doing a lot of exercise, am sick, etc. and I need more iron, I'm going to eat meat.
2. I'm not going to push people to adopt my diet beliefs. Mutual respect is a must.
3. I'll save my meat meals for when it would be highly inconvenient to insist on vegetarian meals (like at someone's house or a steakhouse).

Since we both work a lot, dinner time is really important to us. But it hasn't been easy. I still ask him what he wants to eat naively expecting him to answer something other than "meat". And each time I've taken it as an attack on my wishes and unfairly gone off on him.

This last week we've finally found a meeting ground for our differences and it feels like we're making progress. We let each other know when we're hungry and we each make our own meals. When we go out for tapas we get at least one non-meat item (if that's even possible). Amazingly enough my in-laws are starting to back off and are accepting my quirky ways (they had Spinach leaves in their salad for the first time last week!).

Thinking we're going to make this "opposites attract" thing work.