Smokey

I smoke, and my significant other doesn’t. I never light up in front of him, but he still says it’s a deal-breaker and wants me to quit. He knew I smoked when we started dating, but I guess we weren’t thinking of getting serious, and now we are. Neither of us wants to budge, on principle, on this smoking issue.

Honestly, I’d quit if he hadn’t drawn a line in the sand - it just seems to me that he is just being controlling. Any way around this?

Smoky

Dear Smoky,

I understand your concern about feeling controlled. However, you have a habit that’s both nearly impossible to defend and also a legitimate potential burden for a mate.

The obvious burden is that you are choosing a path that leads to a premature death, often after long, drawn-out, expensive and horrible illnesses. On top of that, you’re also acquiring bad smells, wrecking your skin, yellowing your teeth and nails, chipping away at your ability to be active now and much less so later in life, and lighting a ridiculous amount of money on fire.

Any one of these horrific facts is a reasonable place for a mate to draw a line, even if it’s after knowing you for a while and perhaps initially believing it was something he could accept. If there’s any talk of your having children, that adds a whole new raft of problems that smoking is proven to cause. People around a smoker are affected both by smoke from a burning cigarette and by passive smoke – the smoke the smoker blows back out after inhaling. Passive smoke is much more concentrated. Children around passive smoke have more respiratory problems, including asthma. They have an increased chance of chronic lung disease as an adult. Also, their growth may be slowed.

It seems to me, though, that this smoking issue is window dressing on a fundamental problem. You apparently are not unwilling to quit, you’re just digging in “on principle”. Perhaps you are the one pulling a power play. That strikes me as immature. Defining a battle issue and then digging in is a foolproof recipe for antagonism – which is the perfect opposite or what makes a couple happy.

Either you love your SO and appreciate that there are dozens of reasons to quit smoking that have nothing to do with him – in which case you quit smoking – or you don’t trust yourself or your SO enough to undertake a shared life.

If it’s the latter, then you need to articulate to each other what you think is wrong with the relationship and discuss ways that you each think you can adjust to make it better. Either you look out for each other and your relationship, or you’re better off apart.