I want to make it abundantly clear that while I am not a smoker, I am also not against the recreational use of marijuana, and I absolutely do not blame marijuana for anything described in this piece. This is meant to explain why I have a bad taste in my mouth regarding the substance that was prioritized over me for the entirety of my first legitimate relationship. Again, I'm not against the stuff. What I’m against is the sacrilization of any object that allows that object to take precedence over human beings and human relationships. This is my story of dating someone who was not addicted, but rather made a very conscious choice to put a drug over me and my needs as a partner. I would never compare this invariable, conscious choosing to the pit of hell that is actual addiction.

My first real relationship was with a guy we’ll call John. We started dating at the end of my senior year in high school, and I didn’t expect it to last. Maybe that’s why I didn’t care that he smoked pot multiple times a day. John was 18, and if something didn’t involve smoking with his friends, he wasn’t very interested. If I wanted to go to the park to get a little exercise, that was a no. If I wanted to go to the gym and better ourselves together, that wasn’t an option. If I was hungry and wanted to get dinner, I had to wait for him to smoke because he wasn’t hungry otherwise. I was working part-time and taking him out while he was spending most of the money his parents gave him on marijuana. He didn’t have a job and he wasn’t looking for one. John was lazy by nature, and pot seemed only to exacerbate that trait.

When we first started dating, we went to see a movie. He insisted on smoking in the car before going in. I felt like he couldn’t enjoy something with me without being high, and I was hurt. I was more hurt that he didn’t seem to care whether I got caught around the stuff. This would become a theme. Whenever my parents went on a weekend trip, John would stay with me and bring his one true love, marijuana. I wasn’t comfortable with this substance at my home, but he didn’t care. He also didn’t care when he insisted on smoking in my car on the way to the mountains. If a cop had pulled us over, no way would I have gotten out scot-free, despite my aversion to the substance. John genuinely did not care about the very real chance that I could get into trouble with the law over his habit. Either I could say no to things and deal with major attitude and the silent treatment, or I could go against my gut and act like everything was fine when it was not.

I remember so many times, I would get all dolled up at my house, excited to go spend time with my boyfriend. I’d drive 30 minutes to his house to find several cars in his driveway. I knew this meant that the night would follow a strict schedule: buy cigarillos, slice open and empty contents of cigarillos, roll blunts, pass blunts around, sit for an excruciating amount of time, play video games, roll more blunts, pass more blunts around, and play more video games until about one or two in the morning. Somewhere during this time, I’d go out and get food because I was bored out of my skull, and I always offered to pick up food for his friends as well. I even recall making fudge and bringing it over to share with the group. I was never the girlfriend who made sure everyone knew I was annoyed. I’m maybe too good at pretending to be content. It would be very late by the time all the pot and the people were gone, and when physical intimacy was initiated, I was nowhere near being in a loving mood.

At a certain point, I thought, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” I thought if this drug was so sacred, I should try to be the pot-loving girl he might pay a little more attention to. I even bought my own bowl. I tried the stuff a few times, and I just didn’t like the feeling. I didn’t understand the big deal, so I just went back to being a wallflower in the cloud of smoke instead of partaking in the action that produced it.

Knowing much worse things can -- and do -- happen in relationships, I certainly don’t view myself as the long-suffering girlfriend. I made my fair share of mistakes during the course of this relationship. Hell, maybe John will write an article about them someday. What a read that would be. Lack of victimhood aside, I never allowed an object to become more important to me than a human being. I never claimed to love someone while simultaneously refusing to make an effort to figure out what they enjoyed doing and doing it with them. John’s not entirely to blame. It’s just difficult to fall in love with someone when they’re in love with someone or something else. I was a girlfriend, but I felt more like a side chick. My life revolved around John, and John’s life revolved around a cheap drug. I went along with everything because I thought that was my job. This was my first relationship, and I thought that maybe to make someone happy, that meant you being really unhappy a lot of the time.

If anyone’s wondering, John has since apologized for his missteps in prioritization. While I appreciated that he shared such an epiphany, there’s no coming back from that. You can’t gradually pollute someone’s self-esteem that way and expect them to love you again when your very behaviors are the reason they don’t love themselves. Thing is, our relationship had a lot of other problems outside of his preoccupation with pot. We were -- and are to this day -- fundamentally different people. We weren't built to last. I used to blame him entirely for the dissolution of our relationship, but I eventually acknowledged my shortcomings and subsequently took the ordeal as a lesson.

I’m now more vocal about things that upset me. These days, the danger of allowing a romantic partner to be the centerpiece of your world is clear to me. I learned that love and respect are not tantamount. You cannot choose whether or not you love a person, but you can choose whether or not to perform actions that mirror your respect for that person. My next suitor will be someone with whom I can share mutual love and respect, and I hope yours will be, too.