Letters to the Editor
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The beautiful irony being
that, of course, the LW needs to go on some psychotropic meds
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Solution:
The letter writer needs to try a line.
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Excellent points
Cary has an excellent response to the LW in his statement to separate his emotional response from his views regarding the issue. I don't get the impression that the LW has done this at all.
In my twenties I suffered horrible jealousy. It took me a long time to disengage my emotional response (fear of abandonment) from the reality (that said partner was not acting in any way inappropriate). Only once I became secure with myself in my late twenties did the kneejerk jealously leave.
I think the writer is having a kneejerk reaction and confusing his thoughts with his feelings. The statement: "I feel like I have less judgment for people who smoked marijuana, but I still feel like I look down on them", among other things, leads me to this conclusion. Judgement is not an emotion- its a thought. If you look down on your girlfriend, you'll only overcome that thought pattern by changing it. How do you do that? Talk to yourself in terms of thoughts- not in terms of feelings. What is it that is bad about doing cocaine in your mind? What could happen? Walk down the logical path of the worst thing about it, and confront that. Accept that you have no control over your girlfriend or any portion of that process, and I think you'll achieve some sense of peace.
I think passing judgement is often more a byproduct of insecurity than anything.
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Just answered your own goddamn question
However, I fully realize that I am really uptight about this subject in general and that I judge people too harshly because of it. I don't know how the normal person would see this behavior. I really don't want to judge her or other people and I don't want to lose sleep over this. Is my thinking really far out of line or should I keep worrying?
You're uptight, unrealistic, unreasonably judgmental--did drugs bite you when you were a child? Are you suffering from those messianic tendencies that reformed addicts often display? Most importantly, why are you even bothering to ask the above question?
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Just a beginning
Dear Uptight Judgmental Grad Student,
That comment by your GF is only the start. I think you out to ask yourself and verbally her, why did she tell you this interesting tidbit? Go from there.
The following might be better asked by the voice in your head:
Does she want to groom you for more varied activity? See how you feel about supporting Columbia Narco Warlords? Test how you feel about her friends?
Her drinking habits?
Or did she mention it because she is flippant? Are you a grad student studying addiction?
Then, I think you can decide what your response should or shouldn’t be when you get beyond the open salvo.
Love is quite the ride. Good luck,
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oh my, you're all grown up now
Wait, no you aren't. You're a graduate student. You have no experience of the real world whatsoever.
Kiddo, pot may be on one end of the spectrum, with cigs and alcohol, but the other end of the spectrum isn't coke, it's heroin or maybe meth. Lots of people have done coke. Even the president has done coke. It's okay to be opposed to drugs, but you shouldn't be so ignorant of them that you say things that don't even make sense.
You have really two choices; decide that you want to live in a very small world and start fencing it in immediately, or broaden your horizons. I have Baptist relatives whose worlds are so small that they won't associate with people who drink. I have Mormon relatives who won't hang out with people who drink coke (not the white kind, the carbonated kind). What these means for them, as far as I can detect by listening to their stories, is that they have very boring friends. You can cut yourself off from anyone you know who may have done drugs at a party once if you want to; that's your prerogative. But I suspect you are going to end up lonely and bored. Speaking for myself, the sort of people who only hang around with other people just like them aren't the sort of people I enjoy hanging around with.
Oh, and stop with the "peer pressure" business, you sound like a 12-year-old who just graduated the DARE program. There wasn't any peer pressure here except the peer pressure your girlfriend invented to get you off her case. She wanted to know what it was like to have done coke. SHE wanted. If she hadn't wanted, neither the booze nor the peers would have made much difference.
You and your girlfriend do seem to have different values. You value being in control; she values information and new experiences. I don't think such a fundamental difference in outlook can survive for very long.
Now about the parts of your letter which really bother me. Remorse? Why should she feel remorse? Remorse is what you feel when you've hurt someone. She has hurt... let me count... exactly no one. Not you, not herself, not anyone at the party. It's possible that you're confused about what remorse means and what it's for, but the way you've written about this makes it sound more as if you think a violation of the legal code is a crime against nature which has to be paid for by bad feelings. And why on earth would you lose sleep about something someone ELSE did? You worry about your own shortcomings, let her worry about hers. It's downright rude to lose sleep over someone else not living up to your standards of conduct.
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Humility good, remorse not so good.
I agree completely with CT's point about discussing your feelings with a sense of humility and an awareness that your point of view is not the only valid one. This worked very well with myself and my partner. I also used to be relatively zero-tolerance about drugs (and still don't do them myself). However, I fell in love with a former (and proud of it) "stoner," who comes from pretty much an entire extended family of ex-hippies, pot-heads, and experimenters. What I did was simply tell him that I am unexplainably uptight about drugs and work with him on where both of our comfort levels are. For instance, when I visit his family home I do not walk out when his father lights up. I do not scoff or disapprove or scowl when people talk about their escapades at family gatherings or pass the pipe around. But it's also clear to everyone that I'm not into that and no one will bother me to try it unless I for some reason express interest. We're all off the hook from one another's standards. This has allowed me to relax and enjoy him and his family for the ways in which they are so very different from me, and to realize that a desire to explore those differences is probably one of the reasons I fell in love with this particular person in the first place. When we have kids, it'll be perhaps a thornier subject, but even then compromise (=the stuff relationships are made of) will probably be the name of the game.
Also, I'm a bit confused over the point repeatedly made in the letter that the gf should have "remorse" for trying cocaine. If she didn't hurt anyone, what possible reason would she have for feeling remorse, exactly? Should she feel remorse for having a different worldview and different standards of behavior? Of course not. I get the sense that (probably without realizing it) the LW has a larger issue with control than just fear of losing control of his body, and that this feeling that the gf should be remorseful comes from a sense that he is threatened when she surprises him with stories about her past or behaves in unexpected ways that fall outside of the boundaries he would set for himself. Many of us, especially those of us prone to anxiety, have this tendency. The more often I can replace my desire to control with an attitude of openness to other people the more fun I have and the happier I am.