time to break up?

[Sara]

For reference: I’m almost 28, hoping to get married within the next couple years, never been a drinker or drug user.

I started dating a 24 year old graduate student man a few months ago. He’s wonderful- loving, supporting, we have a good emotional connection etc- BUT he smokes pot with his friends and for his birthday, all he wanted to do was “get drunk with his friends”. The fact that he smokes pot and wanted to get drunk for his birthday makes me very uncomfortable. He might outgrow smoking pot and drinking excessively in time (he’s young) but I question whether I want to stick around waiting to see if he outgrows this behavior. It seems so childish.

Is it reasonable to break up with someone because they smoke pot and want to get drunk on their birthday?

[MartinKeymaster]

Hey Sara, thanks so much for stopping by.

Yes, he is a young man. Given that women are also typically 3 years more mature than guys, there’s a bit of a maturity age difference as well.

If you were to only ask whether it’s cool to drink and get wasted on just your birthday, I’d suggest it would be more than ok to allow someone to let their hair down and go a bit wild.

I do get a sense from your words that your guy is a habitual pot smoker which lends itself to getting on the booze, more than just on a once off occasion, is that right?

Have you also voiced your concerns to him on this? If yes, what’s been his response?

[Sara]

When we first started dating, I voiced my concerns about the pot smoking. He said he’d quit and he did. What makes matters more complicated is that he broke up with me 2.5 mos into our dating (our break up was about unrelated issues and since then, we have resolved those issues). We just started dating again a few weeks ago so I haven’t had a chance to discuss the pot smoking again with him. After he broke up with me (and broke my heart), he started smoking pot again. All of his friends smoke and he says it’s a social thing. As for the getting drunk for his birthday, he did say that he wanted me to be there and hang out with him and his friends but that he didn’t want me to see him drunk yet. The fact that he wanted to get drunk with his friends for his birthday instead of spend the entire evening sober (so that I’d feel comfortable staying the whole time) not only hurts my feelings but makes me feel like we are in different places in our lives.

[MartinKeymaster]

Sounds like you are in different places actually.

If he went back to smoking joints after your breakup, he didn’t really give up. More so, the smoking was simply deferred hence he’s back on it. 

You really need to have that conversation around just how ‘social’ and repetitive it currently is and is likely to be in the future. Smoking, whether tobacco or dope, is a challenging habit to break. I smoke cigarettes myself and have no intention of giving up as I personally like it too much. I wonder whether he’s in the me mindset because if he is, that’s likely to have an impact on your decision on what to do next, isn’t it?

Next step needs to be in discovering.

[Sara]

thanks. yeah i’m gonna talk to him about it. he quit last time for me, which i think is the problem. he doesn’t want to quit.

[MartinKeymaster]

Oh, I stumbled onto this one by accident.
What was the evential outcome, Sara?
You two guys still together?

[Author]

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