Bummed out

[not stoned]

have never joined a support group before but need to figure out what to do about my wife's pot habit.

We have been married 15+ years and I have grown to realize that what I thought was relatively harmless recreational pot smoking is actually a significant problem in my marriage that is making me miserable and causing increasing tension and estrangement between us.

I should add that I have been somewhat agnostic about recreational drug use, at least in the case of Marijuana, having indulged in it as well as various other drugs myself in my early twenties. I had fun going to concerts and hanging out with my friends smoking pot, but found taking drugs to be a waste of time that left me with lingering effects I didn't think were worth the trouble. That said there are still rare occasions, maybe once every couple of years, when I might smoke part of a joint with close friends at the beach or another vacation spot.

I think because of my take it or leave it attitude I didn't think too much about the fact that when I was courting my wife, who lived in another city at the time we were dating, she would offer up pot every time we got together. She was and is a lovely. intelligent and talented person with great qualities and I quickly fell in love with her once we started seeing one another. At the time I was giddy and was able to ignore the implications of the continual presence of marijuana.

Once we were married we ran into some of the problems that most married couples do. We worked our way through some of these issues but some things that my lovely and talented wife would do and say would confuse and annoy me because they were ill-considered, pointless and self-defeating. I just couldn't figure out why she had no motivation to change the things in her life that she didn't like or focus on making the things she did want to happen, happen. I also didn't realize that she was smoking during the day while I was working. Slowly I have come to realize that the insidious effects of regular pot smoking has made her isolated, depressed and lacking in motivation.

Now that I have identified the problem I am hyper vigilant and I can tell when she has been smoking just by her expression or her tone of voice and despite my desire to be supportive I find myself enraged when she makes herself stupid with pot. I feel cheated when I have to interact with her stoned personality, because she rambles on in a disjointed and illogical way and gets offended if I don't agree with her half-baked stoner theories. What was funny in college is pathetic in middle age.

I got her to go to a marriage counselor with me a few years back and after finding someone who met all my wife's requirements we went for awhile until the counselor zeroed in on the pot smoking and my wife found all kinds of reasons not to continue with the counseling.

In my wife's mind she can rationalize anything to keep smoking pot and has argued that it's a big part of who she is. The whole thing is frustrating in the extreme and I feel like my life is going down the tubes.

Does anyone out there have any suggestions? The whole thing has me very depressed.............

[AKN]

Hey there, it's great you care enough to search for solutions. I used to be married once upon a time. While my smoking wasn't a critical part of our break up, I know it had negative effects. It's so much easier to be stoned and ignore the bad things in a relationship, and feel like you're really doing something meaningful coming up with those half-baked (or fully baked) stoner theories.

Now this is only my personal experience, and it's probably important to note that i've been wanting to quit for a long time. I wouldn't always admit that I did want to quit though. But I always wanted someone to ask me to quit... to miss who i really am behind the cloud of smoke. I smoke to numb my emotions more than any other reason.

My main suggestion would be to take a positive angle when talking about it with your wife. Instead of telling her the negative qualities she has when she's high, tell her about the positive qualities you miss. Maybe take her out to do something fun during a time of day where she usually smokes a lot. If there are activities you used to do together before she started smoking heavily, start doing them again. Don't let her smoking hold you back, like if she wants to flake on something (mainly because of weed), go anyway and let her stay home alone and smoke. I think it's very helpful to be reminded just how much smoking is getting in the way of experiencing life.

[dtitlebaum]

key words here: 'has argued that it's a big part of who she is'

personally, i would zero in on that and creating a distinction between 'that' and 'her' instead of allowing her to blend them together and make them one

as long as somebody believes that its a 'part of them' (rather than something 'outside' of them that they simply 'do'), you're going to have a tough
time removing what they believe to be a crucial part of their personality
after all - who wants change - especially from something that they believe to be benefitting them?

one of the biggest things that has inspired me to step away for periods of time is a conversation i had with my best friend last year when i was lamenting all of things that i thought i could have done w/o weed in my life and (possibly) different decisions i would have made.
of course, being content with who and what i am now, my thoughts automatically go to 'well, i like the decisions i have made because i like who i am now and i would miss that aspect of my life and being and wouldn't want it to be different'

my friend said to me something along the lines of 'even if you stopped now, weed's in your blood man, its a part of who you are and its embedded in your history'

while some may take that as a reason not to quit and keep doing it, hearing that actually assuaged my ideas that i would be completely leaving it behind (which i don't want to do) by acknowledging its place in my past and where i am today - which has absolutely nothing to do with future administrations or current decisions

by understanding that its had its place in my life already, leaving it behind actually poses much less of a threat of leaving 'me' behind

hopefully that makes some sense

[CRH]

It is quite ironic that me and my wife are actually in the exact opposite situation that you guys are in. I may be able to offer some help with my perspective and maybe you can help me? For the past couple years my wife has been asking me to quit and i have told her i would but have had little success. I started smoking when i was about 18 and smoking regularly throughout college. I am 30 now and although i have cut back drastically i cannot not seem to totally kick the habit. My wifes concern is that if i was to get caght i would lose my job. Which would be a big problem considering we a wanting to start a family. I am not sure about your situation but i love my wife very much and i never want to hurt her. When i smoke pot she too is like you said hypersensitive to the fact and knows immediately. She usually becomes very distant from until we are alone and then she either gets mad or tells me how much it hurts her that i am chosing pot over her which in return makes me feel about as low as one could feel. I dont know if i dont take seriuosly or if i am just stupid but when i am around pot it is very hard to turn it down. Especially if there is alcohol envolved. I do think that if i can stay preoccupied eith other activities in my life i will be far less like to smoke again. I also have come to the relization that pot is not worth throwing my marriage away over. My advice to you would be to let her know exactly how her smoking makes you feel. There is no need to be mean about or sarcastic but i do think it is important for her to hear exactly how you feel from your mouth. Please dont assume that she "should know" anything. Good luck and hopefully this will help some.

[MaverickChef]

I just started looking at this site today for the first time, and this posting (and its responses) caught my attention. I can certainly speak to the complications that smoking pot and getting high can bring to a relationship, particularly when in a relationship with someone who is not into getting stoned too. I am in a relationship with a man who has three teen-aged boys. I was a dedicated pot-smoker when we met ( I had been smoking for about ten years ) , which he was aware of at the time ( not the point, but I'd thought I would throw in the fact that he was dating me even though I had just lost a job because of pot ). He actually smoked with me a few times at the beginning, and he was o.k. with it, although hardly a pot head himself. What he did not like though, was the way I could be detached when I was high ( he could tell ) and the idea of having it ( or me when high ) be around his kids. Very understandable. So of course there was a problem when a friend of ours who smoked offered to bring some weed over to our place when the kids were going to be there. I was a weakling and let my desire to get stoned overrule my better judgement; I got high and he got pissed, justifiably. :mad: There were other reasons that weed came to complicate our lives ( we were running a business together ), and I eventually came to the conclusion that being with him was more important than being high, and besides, I felt that after ten years of smoking, there were things in my life that needed doing that pot was getting in the way of. So I quit. That actually worked out very well for over two years, and I did not smoke until one evening a mutual friend offered some good herb. The kids were not in town, and my partner even agreed that there was no harm done, so long as it didn't become a regular thing. I I smoked, and that was that. The next day, I was not overwhelmed by the need to pick up where I left off and become a pot smoker again. The problem arose recently, about a year after that incident. We were hanging out with that same friend, in a large group. A lot of drinking had been going on. My partner had gone home earlier, and at some point the good herb came out again. I decided I would give it a shot. Bad idea. I was already pretty drunk, so before I knew it, I was violently ill and ended up passing out near a pool of my own vomit ( VERY sexy ). Even worse, this time the kids WERE in town, so my partner was royally pissed off at me, felt betrayed, outraged, etcetera. I can't say he was wrong to feel that way. That was two weeks ago, and I still haven't felt like I want to smoke again. Not just because it made me sick, but because doing so hurt someone I love, embarrassed me significantly, and presented a terrible impression, I am sure, to the boys. The two oldest have had run ins with pot themselves, so I feel a large measure of responsibility for maybe in some way allowing an air of acceptability to associate with the pot smoking. I didn't tell them to smoke, I didn't tell them it was ok, but still, i can't deny that the idea of me doing it might have had an influence on their decisions to do it. For them, for my partner, and for myself, it just has no place in my life. I had to piss off my partner, concern my friends and family, and diminish myself in the eyes of some good young men to see that, but it is clear. I guess my point is that a relationship can survive marijuana, but marijuana has to lose out in the end to love, or the love means nothing. I feel for the partners who are experiencing the pot abuse of their loved ones, and I can understand the rationalizations coming from the potheads, but I don't accept the rationalizations. If weed is more important to you than someone you love, that's a problem. I was a pretty heavy smoker for years, but I have lived without it before (hey I was 21 before I ever even started) and I know I can live without it now. Like one of the respondents said, it is a part of who you were, it is a part of your past, you are who you are in some way because of it, but it need not be a part of your future, or even your present. I did something incredibly selfish and stupid, and I regret it, but I don't want the regret to be all I feel. I like myself, without the weed in my life, and thats is who I want to be now.

[jenny]

The problem has got itself deep rooted in your life and it requires efficient planning to uproot it. I think counselling will help you.