A Word of Advice... on friendships

By Joshua O'Connell
Posted Monday, December 1, 2003

I've been with my BF for four years and he hangs out with his friends all the time. We used to spend everyday with each other for at least a few hours. He smokes pot now. He gets out of work at 8 p.m., goes to his one friends house and stays until 1 a.m. and he's been doing this for weeks. When I say something he gets mad or blames me but by the time he's done I have to go to bed and get up for work. He never comes over when he says he's going to.

I've been to his one friends house a couple times. EVERYONE goes over there. It's one of those type of houses and he never invites me anymore. I just sit home and wait for him. It's really bothering me. I'm considering breaking it off after all we've been through. What should I do? I'm sick of having no life just because he likes to get high 24/7 without me around. Is he cheating or just really addicted to pot?

--Relationship going up in smoke

Well, I could go on a rant about how problematic pot is. Thousands of people do that all across the country do that already though, so it would seem trite. I could also make an argument for the legalization of marijuana, but thousands do that as well.

Instead, I'm going to just sit back, watch the Google hits roll in once this page has been crawled, and just jump straight to your answer.

I know of many people who smoke pot, and they tend to do it with the same group of people all the time. They rarely bring new people in, and because of the nature of pot, their meetings will go for hours at a time. That's just the nature of the social aspect of weed, mary jane, and reefer. (There's some more words for Google to grab.)

When it starts to interfere with other social relationships, or even bf/gf relationships, it can get messy. The question: are you getting much out of this relationship anymore? It doesn't sound like it. He works, smokes up, and goes to bed.

Why stay with him? It's unlikely this pattern will change in the near future, and you don't need to give up your life for that. If you want to wait it out a bit longer, instead of waiting for him, start hanging out with YOUR friends instead. When he realizes you're not waiting around for him, he may react in your favor or he might just shrug his shoulders (he'll most likely shrug while high, but you never know - even shrugging your shoulders seems amusing when high).

But you're absolutely right - there's no reason to wait for him. Considering how little he makes time for you, it'll affect him more than it'll affect you, unless he's replacing you with smoking up, in which you both can make a clean break quickly. There isn't a big negative on your side here as far as breaking up's concerned. And now you can also add another item to the list of things to avoid.

One final reader note: why is this listed in friendships? Because this is more a friendship problem - his friends are affecting his life, as well as our writer's. So, in that respect, understanding why it's happening is as important as why this relationship's falling apart. Call it a judgement call on my part, or rather, another way to have three questions that link under a topic.

--Something old, something new

Let's weigh this out here: Her current relationship is going OK, she gets along with the guy well, but she doesn't have a lot of common interests. I don't think the common interests hold as much sway at this point, because their relationship becomes, in essence, a major common interest, and they have all that history as part of their connection.

The new guy is great, someone who she has a lot in common with, but she's walked with him twice. And, oh, she knows what an infatuation is, but within two hours worth of time with him, she loves this guy more than she loves her current boyfriend?

I dunno...

After three years, it's natural that those initial feelings ebb. Some of it's the newness of being with a new person, the fact that you might be falling in love (could it be? *gasp!*), and part of it is that infatuation layer also being part of it. But over time, those initial "oh-my-gosh" feelings subside, and you have what you have. If your SO is a good friend, someone you want to be with, etc. it's not a bad thing. If you hate the person with all your might, it might be time to look elsewhere.

If someone gave up on something just because it wasn't quite as good as it was before, most people would've sworn off sex a long time ago. But I don't know of many people who've done that. In fact, I can't think of any.

She probably is making the right move, except for one thing - she's sort of dragging this extra guy along in the process. She should come clean - while she finds him attractive, and so on, she's trying to make this current relationship work at the moment... and a friendship would be best at the moment. She'll know when to break if this other guy, after spending more time with him, really is a better choice.

One final reader note: why is this in a friendship column? The friend asked, and so, for her: as a friend of many people, I know it may be easy and tempting to tell someone to eject an existing person for an unknown. But that isn't always the answer. Sometimes, it backfires - the new guy isn't worth it nearly as much as the old one was, and then there's a period of single-ness that the person you advised will surely use as ammo against listening to you later.

This relationship she's in right now doesn't sound horrible on the surface, unless you're leaving something out. I'd support her decision to try to work on the current relationship until things progress a bit further. If the current boyfriend is being a moron and she's not seeing it, that's one thing, and you can help her see what it's like without the love blinders on. Otherwise, it's not really fair to her to push her to move on to someone else when she doesn't seem like it's going THAT badly if she wants to work on the current relationship.

--Vague as hell

I hit upon this problem that the occasional letter causes me, and grinds my workaholic self to a complete halt as I ask myself questions based on the question posed. But, instead, this time I'll try to answer it, since it seems pretty basic, and in a cool way too!

If...

• you did something to the friend, apologize.
• the friend's mad at you for a reason unrelated to anything you've done, ask her what's wrong.
• it's an irrational anger, let her cool down until she comes back and apologizes to you.
• you could provide more details, please write back in so I can understand the problem more fully.

I think that works. Good luck, and thanks for asking.

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