The question
I have been dating someone for seven months, and I enjoy spending time with his friends and family.
But the whole group smokes, including my boyfriend when he's with them, and I don't. It's gotten to a point where I'm left alone inside while they go outside to smoke in a little group, or if I go outside, I have to stand off to the side.
They also smoke in the car, albeit with the windows open, but we usually take road trips together. I don't have an allergy or asthma, and I grew up with a family that smoked, so I don't feel like saying anything that could prompt a “smug non-smoker” reaction. But if I don't, I fear it's going to have a serious effect on my relationship with my boyfriend because I'm going to want to go out with them less. He has agreed to not smoke when we are all together, but I don't know if I have the right to ask them to change their habits. What should I do?
The answer
I'm probably a perfect person to ask a question about smoking. I've wrestled with that highly tenacious back-monkey my entire life.
For a couple of decades, now, I've been able (mostly) to keep it down to two a day, with a special exception for parties, when all bets are off and you'll find me on the porch.
So on one hand, I feel a certain highly qualified smugness that I’ve managed to keep it under control, more or less.
On the other hand, I've had enough lapses that I understand well the tormented self-loathing of the true smoker. This summer I was on the set of a TV show, and there was sort of a culture of smoking on the set, and blah blah blah (insert numerous tortured self-excoriations and attempts at self-exculpation here). Anyway, of the many ways I let myself go this summer, one was smoking during the day.
My self-loathing burns like a red-hot ember when one of my kids catches me in the act – particularly Adam, our youngest. When we have people over, he'll burst out onto the porch like the Spanish Inquisition. If I'm not able to fob my cigarette off on one of my guests fast enough – or if he astutely questions why that guest is apparently smoking two cigarettes – he goes into his act.
He’s like Sir Laurence Olivier as King Lear, raging on the heath, gesticulating for maximum histrionic effect: “Why, why, why? I've got a dad who's gonna die!”
And what are you supposed to say to that? I've tried to confuse him by throwing a logical smokescreen around my tobacco-tainted actions: “Look at it this way, Adam: You kids know that candy's bad for you, but you want it anyway. Well, that's kind of like how it is with adults and cigarettes.”
He's completely dismissive of this line of reasoning, as well he should be.
In any case, I feel like I can see the issue from all sides. And I think your way is clear with your boyfriend’s smoking fiends – oops, I mean, friends. First of all, you're well within your rights to ask them to refrain from filling the vehicle with their fumes on road trips. Res ipsa loquitur: the thing speaks for itself. Or, to use more contemporary terminology: Duh! Even with the windows open, it's a pretty closed environment, and their right to smoke ends where the tips of your pristine pink lungs begin.
I don't know how they'll wind up servicing their habit on the road – pull over, go down in the ditch, smoke and jump back in, maybe – but that’s their problem.
