Dear Prudence,
My wife decided two months ago to quit smoking pot. We’re both daily smokers, and our use admittedly increased during the pandemic. She’s tried to cut back a few times but wasn’t successful, so she quit for good. She attends online Marijuana Anonymous meetings, where it was recommended that she should stop drinking as well, because they think there is a risk of switching one dependency for another. So she is pursuing sobriety with a vengeance. I feel terrible, but I don’t like my wife very much when she’s sober. She refers to herself as a “recovering addict” and is seeing an actual substance abuse counselor (as opposed to her regular therapist). I think this is ridiculous because pot isn’t addictive and her habit wasn’t that bad to begin with. She’s full of “affirmations” now, and I hear her reciting them multiple times per day, and she sounds so pretentious. She relies on a very specific routine and will not deviate from it, even on weekends. She doesn’t give herself much free time and says she needs to keep busy in order to maintain sobriety. She won’t watch TV with me anymore because that’s when she used to smoke the most, and she doesn’t want to feel the temptation. We can only have sex at certain times of day, when she has a pre-scheduled “break.”
She says that I don’t have to quit smoking but gets mad if she can smell the smoke on me. I’m smoking way less as a result, which she thinks is great and thanks me for being “supportive.” But really I’m just trying to avoid her wrath, which is making me resentful. The thing is that she seems happier since making these changes, but I feel like she’s a totally different person. I wish I didn’t feel this way. I find myself hoping that she’ll hit a bad patch and go back to smoking again. I know that’s wrong, and I won’t deliberately undermine her efforts if this is what she wants, but I don’t know how to talk to her about this without being “unsupportive” of her sobriety.
—Put Off by Sobriety