Sunday, 23 October 2011

• I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Quit Smoking Before I Throw Up On Your Lap

  

  If you’re a non-smoker with a girlfriend or a boyfriend who smokes, you know how unbearable it is, and ultimately how it can adversely affect your relationship. Their hair, their clothes, their breath and their hands inevitably absorb the stench. Any amount of extra strength, grease busting dish soap can’t lift the stink off those fingers. Even the kind of mouth wash strong enough to strip the paint job off your jetta, pales in comparison to the potency of cigarette smoke.

  Now, having been a smoker myself, I’d like to make it clear that my intention is not to make my former fellow smokers feel weak or inferior, I’d simply like to shed light on some things I was unaware of when I was sucking on the end of a lit cigarette. Yes, I knew it was bad for me, as I’m sure you do too, I knew cigarettes wouldn’t dress me in some intoxicating feminine scent that would drive a man crazy, but smoking just didn’t seem like such a big deal, certainly not a deal breaker, and then I quit. However, my boyfriend of two years, and a much heavier smoker than I ever was did not.

  The first week without cigarettes was fine, in fact it was almost a delight. By week two I was practically huffing the leftover nicotine fumes from my boyfriends T-shirt. If I caught a whiff of a cigarette on the street I found myself wandering mindlessly in its direction, if I was inconvenienced in any way I was liable to slaughter a casualty with my bare hands. I realized my addiction had gotten completely out of control.

  After weeks of struggling, I hadn’t had once cigarette, and suddenly I was starting to feel, well, great. The smell slowly but surely became almost revolting to me, I was smelling and tasting better than ever before, my skin looked rejuvenated and I didn’t have to struggle through my work outs. I truly felt incredible, and then during one long, stinking hug, I realized that my boyfriend was making me sick.

  The longer I was a non-smoker the less I could tolerate a touch let alone a hug or, god forbid it, a kiss. Hell, I locked the man out of my car to “air out” more times than I could attempt to count. Sharing a small space with him has become almost unbearable. I know what you’re thinking, even some non-smokers, “it’s really not that bad,” well for a stubborn pain in the ass like me, it is that bad.

  I know there are many of you out there, women and men alike, who are attempting to come up with a master plan to get your partner, spouse, or what have you, to quit. I’ll admit my methods started out a little, well questionable. Of course I tried the silly futile, “please do it for me” strategy but that’s like asking a man to pick you up a box of tampons or cry during The Notebook, it just isn’t going to happen.

  The next logical attempt was to shame and berate him into quitting, pick a fight and see where it goes. Essentially doing the first thing A&E’s Intervention advises against. Then I tried, what I like to think of as a more holistic method of intervention, lacing a decoy cigarette in his pack of Marlboro lights with cayenne pepper… I don’t recommend this. Needless to say, my seemingly flawless methods failed.

  These days I simply exaggerate my disgust when he hugs or kisses me in hopes he’ll become fed up with it enough to quit. On some days, I’ll hide his cigarettes in a cabinet or drawer just to watch him squirm with panic until I confess and point out his irrational dependency. Overall, I think we have a pretty healthy relationship, well, excluding the cigarettes.

  Does anyone have any recommendations, or their own personal methods of torture to inflict pain, terrify, force or threaten a boyfriend into quitting? I’m also open to suggestions that are actually effective. 

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