Pipe Smoking and My Girlfriend

[jonahtke]

My wife was displeased with me when I started smoking pipes because she too was under the impression that pipes equated to big cigarettes. She has since relaxed as she realized that I smoke at most once or twice a week and that I never "crave it". The best thing you can do to ease her into it however is to not be as overly enthusiastic as I was at the outset. When I started I bought several new pipes and a dozen different blends of tobacco and wanted to try them all...and it came off as both expensive and excessive in use.

 

[pruss]

Good luck Adam!
I know what it is to share my life with someone. When my (now) wife and I started dating I was a pack-a-day cigarette smoker. I was feeling the effects of this on my health, and my wife was a lifelong non-smoker who hated cigarette smoke. I had already begun voluntarily smoking outside, and over the course of 2.5 years I quit smoking altogether.
After a 7 year no-tobacco hiatus, late last year I decided that I wanted to return to pipe-smoking, mostly out of a love of briar and a curiousity about restoring estate pipes. But I also wanted to smoke the occasional bowl. I was declarative and up front about this with my wife. She reciprocated by sharing her fears about me becoming addicted to tobacco again. I shared with her that this was something I was afraid of too. She also shared that she liked the smell of pipe-tobacco and pipe smoke. We trusted each other more because we were up-front and honest with each other. As a result, she's supportive of me and my pipe hobby. She even bought me two new tobaccos for Christmas!
It sounds like you're on the right path.
-- Pat