Spouse’s pot use makes wife smolder

Dear Amy: My husband of 20 years smokes pot every day, and I hate it.

I’ve always hated the idea of smoking anything — cigarettes or pot.

Lately, (because of the pandemic) his pot use has ramped up and now the house smells like weed.

I’ve told him that I don’t like being surrounded by the smell of marijuana inside our house.

He says I’m hung up on the stigma of it. Maybe so, but he’s always known I am not OK with this.

For a long time, he hid his pot use from me and was not doing it at home, but now he works from home because of the pandemic, and so I’m bombarded with it.

We have children, and I don’t want them to be OK with the idea of daily drug use.

Am I overreacting and being judgmental? I don’t think so. What do you think?

Smoked Out

Dear Smoked Out: According to the CDC, second-hand smoke from marijuana carries some of the same risks as cigarette smoke. You have the right to live in a smoke-free environment, and to maintain one for your children.

If your husband has been using pot for decades, the changing legal status of marijuana may have brought him out of the closet and into the living room.

Yes, pot does still convey a stigma for many people.

However, even if you are personally able to categorize marijuana with a legal drug such as alcohol (though the effects of each drug are quite different), having a partner who is using it daily (possibly during work hours) would make you wonder about the level of his impairment. If he smokes every day, vestiges of the drug are always in his system and he may always be more-or-less baked.

Pandemic or not, your husband should not smoke inside the house or around the children, and you have the right to insist on that. That should be your nonnegotiable.

Otherwise, your husband knows you hate his smoking, and he chooses to do it. You don’t need to continue to remind him — he already knows.

Once you can achieve a level of detachment regarding his behavior, you will be liberated from some of your anxiety about it, understanding that the only behavior you can control is your own.