The Unpleasantness

[qt4x11]

I’m 4 weeks into a separation. Together almost 10 years, 2 kids a B and G. We have a great life, we own a fantastic home and the kids are growing up just beautifully. It was a very good marriage until about 2-3 years ago. I started smoking marijuana, mainly to relieve the work stress, as an 'after the kids are asleep' activity. My marijuana use escalated and I started to smoke during the day, come home and smoke at lunch and go back to work - my standing at work started to suffer. I became paranoid, irritable and anxious around her and the kids. She is not a prude - she smoked with me sometimes - but eventually she informed me that it just made her uncomfortable since we have young kids. We agreed I would only do it at night when the kids are asleep a couple times a week - she was actually trying to be understanding by giving me this option, I could tell she just wanted me to stop entirely. Eventually there were warning signs, arguments, bad performance reviews at work, warnings about the weed smell from our building management that were maybe directed at someone else in our building but freaked her out obviously. It got to be too much and I just stopped cold turkey for two years.

We've had some really great times in our marriage, we both agreed the two years sober were some of the best times for us - we bought a new home, I got a great paying new job, she grew her home business and we spent the time watching our kids grow from babies to toddlers. I don't know why I decided to start smoking again - one day about four months ago I just started smoking marijuana again and I hid it from her. Maybe I was bored or feeling stress from my current job. I thought that I could use responsibly since everything was going so well - my job, the family, etc. and I was in a better place. Again - the smoking escalated and I'm hiding it from her, doing it during the day. She finds my weed - we argue, she is very hurt by my deception but she agrees that I can use it under the same boundaries - only at night when the kids are asleep, a couple times a week. Of course I keep doing it during the day - and she eventually catches me smoking during the day and is angry that I had lied to her and couldn’t stay within the boundaries we agreed on. We fight, she calms down, and then I get caught sneaking it again a couple weeks later.

Eventually she decides that I don’t respect her and I will not change. Last weekend she caught me smoking during the day again and that was the last straw. Something snapped in her, she said - it’s not the marijuana, it’s the lying. She starts bringing up other things she’s angry about - I don’t appreciate her, I’m ‘controlling’ because I told her that she should spend less time at her neighborhood meetings, I am secretive and irritable all of the time because of my smoking. She brings up mean things I said to her when we were fighting from like 6 years ago that I had even forgotten saying. Her family lives out of state, she asks me if I can go stay with my brother because she ‘needs space’. So I pack a couple days worth of clothes and my laptop and go stay at my brothers. This was 4 weeks ago and it gets much worse ……