Okay, they've been dating 18 months, and for the first 15 months she refused to have sex or be intimate? (And she's at least 22 years old.) How did they even start dating, given that he does like sex?

That was my question too - so you've had sex 3-6 times in your entire relationship, she was emotionally distant for most of it. Why are you together?

The dog obviously gets really insecure without a two-parent family.

Dude, you've got low self esteem (it's ok, most humans do). You assume this is the only girl who's ever going to like you, support you though hard times, raise a dog with you. Take it from me, a complete stranger on the internet: THAT IS NOT THE CASE. This girl is not for you. There are plenty of guys out there who don't smoke pot, who will make her happy. And there are plenty of women who do smoke weed (or don't mind that you do), who will love you just as much as (and very likely more than) this one. I promise.

Really, the dog just isn't worth it.

Time to move on.

I don't know whose issues are deeper, the girlfriend's or OP's.

BULLSHIT ALERT:
'...her 21-year-old younger brother is battling heroin addiction and he has smoked weed since he was a teenager and now he smokes it to fight withdrawal symptoms.'

Heroin withdrawal (the Oakland Flu) typically lasts less than a week. So how long has he been smoking to 'fight withdrawal?' Either he is using weed AND heroin and lying to his sister, or he has continued smoking weed the same way he always did and is using his past heroin use as an excuse.

Some people smoke weed, use heroin, drink alcohol, or any combination thereof, with reasonable safety. They don't steal from Mom's purse or drive off cliffs or act like extras in a Cheech and Chong movie. Others, like me, have a demonstrable problem with one or more of these. They should stay the fuck away from that one.

It is a grey zone about staying away from others. Some of 'us' find that the other substance will try to fill the gap. Others will find the other substances are great, but as soon as they get loaded they go back to their personal 'bad' one.

Whether THC wants to smoke, or doesn't, or should, or shouldn't, he needs to find a partner who isn't a crazy, controlling, undersexed tyrant.

And here I was hoping that 420Singles would be like Kraft Singles (only way better, obvs).

Dear THC - DTMFA. This woman is not the one you want to spend your life with. Seriously. She was "abstaining" from sex for over a year and you put up with it? And now you're having sex maybe twice a month? You need to find yourself someone who loves you, who sound like a really decent and way patient guy, the way you are and is willing to show it. Sex isn't just about mechanics -- it's about sharing yourself with your partner and them sharing with you. That's why we talk about intimacy in relationships. And you're not getting intimacy. You've got a controller on your hands and you're allowing it. After you DTMFA, I'd suggest you schedule some appointments with a marriage and family counselor who can help you come to a sense of your own worth as regards dating (and perhaps someday marrying).

Well, considering that I expected Mr Savage to advise LW to bake her some "special" brownies, his response is almost temperate.

I'll grant that GF appears to be wrongly trying to win this on points, but I'd accept almost any sort of pot position either for or anti to be a reasonable Price of Entry item.

The weird thing is that I entirely agree with Mr Savage's directing LW as he does.

good grief, I can't even finish this letter. These two are completely incompatible. There is absolutely no way this will work. Cut your losses and find a chick into weed and sex. I hear there are a lot of them.

I don’t like pot. I don’t like that it makes people stupid and I don’t like that people choose to make themselves stupid.

I’ve smoked it and enjoyed it — occasionally, when I was a lot younger. The older I get and the more I see of people my age who’ve been smoking for thirty-five years, the less tolerant I’ve become. (I don’t drink much either, have never smoked and have never tried any other recreational drug besides caffeine.)

I would never consider dating a pot-smoker and a pot-smoker who would consider dating someone as prejudiced as I am is just being stupid.

he's back in school so.. she's paying the bills? I don't see any other reason for this relationship. well OK, there's the dog.

Oh, wow, THC — please do as Dan says and end this now. I was in a deeply similar situation: girlfriend who was disproportionately uptight about weed; no sex life to speak of because she'd had a bad experience before; and me sticking with her because she'd helped me get out of a terrible job and onto a career path I really liked. I felt like I owed it to her to stick with her.

Well, we got married, despite never resolving any of our issues. I remember saying to my therapist (who fairly explicitly encouraged me not to go through with the wedding), essentially: "I believe that some things, especially epic endeavors in life such as love, take a lot of work and patience." I was *so* focused on the work and the patience. It never occurred to me that maybe love wasn't *just* an "endeavor" and that there should be parts of it — lots of parts of it! — that I really enjoyed, too.

Six years and one child later, we're divorced. Fortunately, things have worked out pretty well. We separated before our kid was old enough to really notice, we have a great co-parenting arrangement and he's clearly happy and healthy, and our marriage was short enough that our lives weren't too hard to disentangle. Also, we're both young enough to meet someone else.

But it could have been so much worse. And worst of all — what I feel most awful about — is what a disservice I did to her by sticking around in an unhappy relationship. As I said, I told myself I owed her. But if I'd just been more honest with myself and braver, I would have realized that by breaking up with her, I was giving her the chance to find someone more suited to her. There are guys out there who don't smoke weed, and there are guys out there whose libido more closely aligns with hers. If I'd considered that, I would have understood that instead of *helping her* — repaying what I "owed" her — I was actually stealing years of her life that she could have been out finding someone better for her. And all for what? Just so I could be unhappy and not smoke weed and have sex. Human beings — we are weird, man.

Sometimes people take important lessons too much to heart. This guy has been told that love isn't all fun and games, that it requires hard work and sacrifice and compromise, and he's listened to that too well. Love should be fun, too! Being with your partner should make you feel good! Way more often that not.

I don't know your life, LW, but it seems to me that even if you did give up pot, she still wouldn't be the one for you.

She doesn't want sex, is down on recreational drugs, and likes to demonize anyone who makes different choices?

She ought to hook up with a garden-variety, closet-case evangelical preacher. Minimal sex (with the wife), decrying drug use in others, pro-abstainance (with the wife), reproductive-health issues - it could be one of long-term stable, one-man/one-woman marriages that are so important for raising a dog. And profoundly unhappy for the humans involved.

In case anyone else wondered the gender imbalance among 420Singles, I checked a tight range around my age and found 38 women seeking men and 149 men seeking women. So if he's in the top quartile of desirability among male potheads, he's golden.

The last thing you need in a relationship is a partner who stigmatizes you and devalues you for doing something that is reasonable and relatively harmless. You sound like a very intelligent, well-sorted guy who has good values and is very thoughtful and considerate. I can't say the same about the GF. One question I wonder about: Did she know about your weed use before you became a couple? If so, she's the one who knew what she was getting into -- she's the one who has to change her attitude.

Our society finds it charming and acceptable for friends and lovers to have a few drinks at the end of the day, or get embarrassingly drunk at parties. People like your GF have fallen victim to the cultural stigmatization of pot. It's unfortunate, but she should wise up to that fact.

I have to agree with #15. LW your girlfriend helping out during a bad situation doesn't mean you've signed some sort contract promising you'll be with her forever. By you own account your girlfriend is distant with you emotionally and is using you as an emotional punching bag for the issues she has with her brother. Get out and let her find a nice, sober, dude who doesn't want to have sex either.

She's controlling. And that has a troll in it. Things will only get worse from here.

holy phuck! you think POT is the problem here???

Everyone else here said it so well in so many varying ways: Accept her ultimatum and leave.

Everyone here is jumping on the girlfriend for being controlling, but the OP never said she was. He says she hates it and that she doesn’t want pot-smokers in her life. He *doesn’t* say that she’s told him to quit. (Maybe she has, but he doesn’t say so.) That actually gives the decison about what to do to the OP. He can quit or he can leave her. She does not consider his being perpetually stoned to be an acceptable price of admission; it’s up to him to decide whether quitting is.

Since it’s not, they have broken up. They are both disappointed — he wishes she would love him enough to be ok with his being stoned all the time, she wishes he loved her enough not to need to be stoned all the time — but breakups are notoriously disappointing.

@4 Pope Buck I and @17 DAVIDinKENAI win the thread!

Yes, think of the dog!

I'd recommend therapy for him -- major issues with him, of some type. He likes sex but isn't having it. He has learned in life that to love someone means not changing them? Hello, you've been reading Dan too selectively.

Yes, there's the price of admission and you can't / shouldn't change everything about a partner, but in my experience (20-yr LTR) you both change each other a bit -- and the mutual changes are a very good thing!

When I was 19-23 I thought that since an occasional heated "disagreement" can be an acceptable norm in some relationships, that I should tolerate what it took me four years to figure out was simply emotional abuse. I required two and a half years of celibacy and then one very kind hippie twice my age to begin to recover.

That last part was extremely pleasant, but GET OUT before you become a walking wounded misogynist fixer-upper; it can happen to the best of us; let me just quote the Amityville house again: GET OUT!

tl/dr: good company or no company.

@ 24 - Where does it say that he's "perpetually stoned"? There's a difference between "frequent" and "perpetual".

You are absolutely right in one respect, though: you are prejudiced.

Seems to me that there are other factors that can make people dumb.

Yep, I’m prejudiced. Not everyone is completely rational about everything all the time. I don’t have a lot of occasion or need to work through this one, so for the time being it’s staying put. Still, if I can acknowledge to both of us that some part of my thinking is not rational it makes rational conversation more possible. Being self-aware enough to recognize one’s own prejudices is not usually considered a sign of stupidity.

“My girlfriend absolutely hates it and strongly dislikes me if she assumes I'm stoned. ... [T]he fact that I use weed on a frequent basis is troubling to my girlfriend.”

RE ‘perpetually stoned,’ that’s speculation but not without basis.

1) People don’t usually overreport drug use. If he says he smokes “frequently” he’s unlikely to be smoking once a month. My guess is that he’s smoking at least daily.

2) His girlfriend thinks she has evidence that he’s stoned often enough to not be fun to be around. They might have different ideas about what stoned means: he might think a couple of hits is relaxing but doesn’t get him stoned; she might get impatient with his thought processes when he’s “relaxed,”

3) She’s not into him sexually. There are a bunch of chickens and eggs chasing eachother around here. If he’s perpetually stoned he might not require sex as urgently as he would otherwise, and be tolerant of a woman who doesn’t want to have sex — or at least have too much inertia to leave. He’s miserable so he smokes more often. She hates him when he’s been smoking and isn’t into him sexually.

4) He lost his job. Lots of people lose their jobs for lots of different reasons, but potheads are less-reliable employees.

I’d go with her being controlling she were getting frantic about him smoking once a month with his friends. But *frequent* pot-smoking can be a legitimate dealbreaker for sane people, as can frequent drinking. Other sane people would be fine with it, that’s very individual, but you don’t have to be an overbearing harpy to want something different in a partner.

I smoke weed every day (or rather, vape). It's helped reduce my chronic anxiety more than just SSRIs did, and it's improved my sex life immensely. It's even helped to alleviate my body dysphoria (I am trans, genderqueer; the first time I used cannabis at 22, it was like a connection between what my brain thinks my body should be and my actual body was formed for the first time, and has had permanent positive effects. Don't ask me why or how).

I still don't see any particularly controlling behavior on the LW's behalf. These two people are just not compatible on several levels and should seek other partners.

Dammit, I meant "LW's girlfriend's behalf". (Shh, I'm not a stereotype...)

I smoke pot occasionally, and I'm with Alison. This guy might want to talk to some of his friends who don't smoke much and see what they think of his habit. Getting stoned frequently is likely to make him less attractive as a dating partner to many if not most women out there.

If he realizes that it's not just this one woman but many women who won't date someone who gets stoned frequently, that might motivate him to evaluate this current relationship on its own merits. (And then leave her because of the low level of intimacy, rather than because of her anti-pot attitude.)

I'm with Alison, too. I don't smoke pot, but I have plenty of friends who do. In the absence of a medical problem that made daily pot use desirable, a sweetie could smoke two or three times a month without raising my hackles. Every day or something close to it would be a deal-breaker.

I'm not in middle management, I don't have a smack-addicted brother, and I think I'm pretty curious. But it doesn't really matter whether I'm an intolerant bore or not. A frequent weed-smoker and I wouldn't be a good match.

To the hopefully soon-to-be-ex: Al-anon or nar-anon

To the OP: codependents anonymous or if there are no meetings in your area find a therapist that specializes in codependency. If you don't get a handle on your relationship tendencies it could become a pattern you find yourself repeating over and over.

Additionally those who have family members with substance abuse problems are more likely to chose partners with substance abuse problems. No small part for my recommendation for the ex-girlfriend to seek support.
But LW might want to have a serious come-to-Jesus with himself and evaluate his pot needs. His frequent usage of a mood-altering substance might not make him emotionally available to the kind of healthy relationship he (and his future partner) deserves.

I don't think pot is the issue here at all.

The issue is that the guy stayed with someone who denied him sexual intimacy for FIFTEEN MONTHS of their relationship. And he stuck around because she was nice to him? WTF dude.

I'm a fag and very few gay guys would put up with that sort of treatment. That's emotional abuse right there and you stood there and took it. Because you "owed" her something?

It sounds like she wasn't in "good working order," as Savage would say, when you met her. If that was because of some sexual trauma then she needs to get her shit together before she traps some other guy in a sexless relationship.

Thank her for helping you get your life on track, tell her the two of you are not sexually compatible and break up with her. Let her have the dog if she wants it.

End of story.

Both the LW and his GF are in need of major therapy. 15/18 months together were sexless? Intimacy is not there and they rarely have sex. He smokes weed all the time, she hates drugs. Pot is not the issue, sex is not the issue, two hot messes trying to have a relationship IS. Maybe they supported each other through hard times but that isn't going to form a bedrock for a healthy relationship for these two.

If you don't make your life choices a commentary on her brother, then it's a slap in the face to her.

Right, got it. Can you say enmeshment? Just as well that you two have only had sex something like six times in eighteen months, because, as the saying goes, don't fuck crazy. DTMFA.

While I'm sorry that your girlfriend and her family are so messed up...you don't have a real relationship with this woman, you never did, and you never will. Just leave. Get out. ASAP. And that's an order.

Signed,

Everyone In The Fucking World

Everyone has moved on from this, but seriously guy, DTMFA.

Also @5 has this nailed...no way you would have put up with this much controlling BS for this long unless you had some self-esteem issues.

After you dump her, get some counseling, get your own sense of self-worth up to snuff and then go find amazing amounts of fantastic pussy who will smoke with you.

Gracias Dan, and thanks for your insights folks. To clarify from a comment, since we met I was up front about my daily marijuana use. There was even a few times when she ventured to chief with me. I would get stoned at gatherings with people in her family and it was NBD. Things changed over time due to her brothers battle with drug addiction.

This relationship has negatively impacted my self esteem however at his juncture I feel that to throw in the towel would be making the statement that I put weed above people. I don't want to carry a potential reputation around like that among friends and family.

Hey Jonathan, thanks for checking back in with us.

Now: "to throw in the towel would be making the statement that I put weed above people."

Dude, you seem like a good person and you are clearly aiming for what you believe to be maturity. But you're confusing maturity with self-abuse. This girl is not matched for you. She's shaming you about something that millions of grown-ups do without it becoming an addiction or a problem, and now some of that shame is infecting you. And your sex drives don't match. Dumping her will not be saying that you "put weed above people" (whose words are those ???) It'll be saying that YOU DESERVE BETTER. Which you'll realize within about a month of dumping her.

Also, you seem to think that if you dump her your friends/family will all conclude that a)it's because you have a weed problem and b) that you couldn't deal with said problem and dumped her because she nicely asked you to quit.

Excuse me, my bullshit sensor is ringing. Do you, in fact, have a weed problem? If you suspect you do, make a visit to a reputable doctor and be completely candid about your usage. They'll be a better indicator than YOUR GIRLFRIEND as to whether you should quit, reduce, or just leave well enough alone.

Now, the reason why you need to end this relationship, now, is right in your own comment:

"This relationship has negatively impacted my self esteem."

Any time you can say this about a relationship, then it's time to move on. That's why you need to leave. You've put in more than enough time in a bad relationship because you got the idea that maturity means sticking with something unsatisfying. Nope. Maturity is also recognizing when something is profoundly unhealthy for you and finding the courage to move away from it.

So to repeat, THAT'S why you need to end this relationship. You don't owe your family and friends any explanation. If you choose to give them one (choose!) there are many that make it clear that your private relationship is your business: "We wanted different things." "It was time to move on." "We had issues we couldn't get past." Or you could tell the truth and say that the relationship messed with your self-esteem, that you were no longer happy, that you were staying with her out of obligation rather than love, that she was way out of line and gave you guilt-trips due to her own issues, that she wouldn't fuck you, and that she needs therapy herself. Nah, better just tell yourself that. Get it on a beer mat and read it constantly.

Seriously, your friends and family, and their opinions, do not bear AT ALL here. They are not the ones in the relationship; you are. And if you have people in your life who would honestly give you shit about ending an unhappy relationship when you've decided it's time to move on, it's time to reevaluate your relationship with those people too.

When you visit that doctor to see if there is anything you need to change about your weed use, do yourself a favor and also get a referral to a counselor or therapist. You put up with something you did not need to put up with, for way too long, and are feeling guilty about taking care of yourself by moving on. A good therapist could help you sort out how to treat yourself with the respect you deserve.