gemmamadison

Hello I am new and just posted a thread.

So I need as much advise as I can get here.

I started dating this wonderful guy about 4 years ago. We fell in love right away and lived together after about 3 months. Unfortunately he was young and we had no money and about 1 year into the relationship I found out he was a mj addict.

Now at first this was really shocking to me because I went to a private school and I never even saw the drug so I was clueless. When we first met through his church he was going to men's group and we spent most of our time with his family and he did a great job hiding it from me.

Looking back I guess there was major warning signs I ignored because I fell hard in love with him. He was and is the sweetest happiest man you will ever meet.

Well when I found out he was smoking he told me he was not good enough for me because I would break up with him all the time for not having a job or lying. (I was very controlling)

He had a major break down about 5 times in the course of the first 3 years and promised he was going to change and go to rehab. But I struggled with the pain of loosing him and did everything I could to control him

Now about a year ago he got so tired of me controlling and he never really stopped smoking that he broke up with me. He used to call me his angel for saving him and then he started calling me a bitch for being so controlling.

The first time he broke up with me I had a major breakdown and felt like everything was my fault (and unfortunately I still do deep down). I wish I could have been a sweet soft woman who did not stock and force him to not hang around his pot head friends.

But I kept holding on to the idea of the man he kept saying he wanted to be.

He smokes about 5 times a day and I know he has tried other real world drugs.

He would get fired from his jobs and never tell me why.

Well I did everything I possible could to fix him and became such an ugly person that now I am so deeply filled with regret.

I wish I was just able to let him go in love instead of grasp on to him.

This last summer I thought I broke up with him for good but he showed up on my door step crying again for days like he used to do in the beginning.

I just feel like he was never living in reality with me and I had such a hard time always trying to talk him in to reality. I guess I always ruined his hi. I payed for everything for him, probably spent more than half my income on him trying to take care of him and when he got a management position he told me he worked so hard to do this for me so he could provide. He would go months with out seeing any of his pot head friends and spend time only with me and his family. And then slowly he would go back to only wanted to getting with with his friends in his car again.

He has been smoking from high school and is now 23 and I always feel like he has been running from something.

He has told me so many times he wanted to be with me forever and we planned our wedding next summer. And then whenever I did something crazy stocking him and his friends or freaking out on his friends, he would breakup with me. For the first 3 years I broke up with him but never for more than a few days, but the last year he broke up with me many times and would go almost a month.

I no matter how hard I cried on the floor during our breakups, I could not seem to go back into the relationship with grace and patience. I was in such a hurry to move on with our lives and all he wanted to do was get hi in his car.

I have never smoked weed so I guess I am just looking for insight from those who have. I am really struggling with understanding why I could not have just be sweet and soft and let him do what he wanted to do instead of trying to save him, because now I lost him and he is after 1 month dating some other girl. It does not make sense how I never gave up on him no matter how bad he treated me and somehow I became the ugly one and he broke up with me and moved on already.

Thankfully I can see I never want to be with him again, but I think understanding the drug can help me in future relationships.

thank you,

much love!

Saskia

Drugs affect the brain cells and can have significant effects on our personalities - the way we react and see the world. My ex-husband was a pot-head and that's why he is my ex. After some years of smoking pot, he lost all ambition and treated me very poorly. Once I had lived on my own for perhaps a year or two, I realized I was so much happier without him. It is now over 30 years later and although I never got married again, I am so very glad I didn't stay in that poisonous relationship.

Others cannot fix our addictions - we have to want to do that ourselves. You might want to consider al-anon even though that is more for family and friends of alcoholics. The problems are similar.

PuzzledHeart

gemmamadison, your post really struck me to the quick.

I had a relationship very much like yours once. We almost got married, and he broke up with me the day after the wedding invitations came out. After that disaster, I was a wreck, and I tore myself apart just like you are doing to yourself right now. I was too controlling, too dissatisfied with him, why couldn't I just lay off and relax?

The answer didn't strike me until several years later: there was NO WAY I could lay off and relax in that relationship because I KNEW there was something wrong: he was unfaithful to me. And so I was acting in all these crazy ways trying to repair something that was unrepairable to begin with.

You want to be your best self when you're in a relationship, but here's the catch - in order for the relationship to actually work your partner has to want to be his/her best self too. And it can't be for just a week or a month. That effort has to be constant and sustained. And if your partner has a drug problem, the odds are that his/her judgment is going to be way too impaired for that to happen. And in your case, your ex-boyfriend IS having an affair - with drugs.

When I finally got into a healthy relationship with my now husband, it was one of the more discombobulating experiences I ever had. There was no drama, no strife. To be in a relationship where I wasn't on DEFCON alert? Amazing! And when something tragic did happen that was beyond our control, it brought us closer. Most importantly, I was no longer a control freak because I was no longer in constant repair mode.

I look back at my previous relationships, I sometimes think to myself, oh my gosh, why in the world did I put up with that $#@$? At the same time, I'm actually grateful for the heartache, because with it I can truly appreciate what I have with my husband.

Don't settle because you're afraid of being alone. And when somebody says he needs you, it doesn't mean that he necessarily loves you in the way that you should be loved. Need does not equal love. It took me a long time to learn that.

Hugs.

Soberwolf

Welcome Gemma youl find tons of support

PurpleKnight

Welcome to the Forum Gemma!!