I’m not sure where to begin. The idea was proposed to me some time ago (a little over five months to be exact) and I was intrigued. I had been reading this blog since the beginning. Some of what was written, I already knew. Some of it was new to me. And, like many of you, I followed the plot, characters and dialogue with interest. Most of us cannot resist a peephole into the deeper, darker personal lives of others, even those that we are already close to.
Throughout the process of writing this story, my partner has expressed doubts as to whether he is doing something that is good for him, for me and for our relationship. I viewed it as a positive thing, even when certain elements of his story caused me momentary pain or discomfort.
The proposal was this: to help finish the story by contributing my perspective on the role my partner’s smoking fetish has played in our relationship. One of us would write an entry telling a portion of the story then the other would add their perspective on what had been previously written and add a little bit more. We would continue this way, back and forth, until the “final chapter” of the smoking fetish story was complete.
That was the plan last summer. It didn’t end up working out that way.
There are a number of reasons why the ending never got off the ground. The biggest and most obvious one was that, even as the entry previous to this one was being written, cracks were forming in the relationship. The cracks were not directly related to my partner’s smoking fetish but issues surrounding the fetish certainly added to the distrust, anger and resentment that were causing a massive communication breakdown between us.
A second reason was that, at the time, I was living out of the country and was finishing the last month of a summer job. My intention was to start writing entries while abroad but stresses from the distance and the relationship itself kept interfering with my desire or inclination to do so. Every time I thought about sitting down to write an entry I just sat there feeling tired and depressed. I’m not the type of person who is a prolific writer when dealing with strong emotions. It’s like the old “Stop, Drop and Roll!” slogan for fire-drills – when under intense emotional pressure I have difficulty being productive at anything. I just sit there and wait until the situation has passed so that I can move forward again and process what has happened.
But I digress. None of you came here to read about my emotional issues – you came to read about stories, thoughts and feelings related to the smoking fetish. Some of you may be curious to see what I have to say as the partner of someone with the smoking fetish. I don’t know how much documentation there is out there on that perspective (I’m guessing not much). That’s the story I’m here to tell, so I will tell it.
Starting at the beginning:
My partner and I first met several years ago and then reconnected about a year and a half ago through a mutual friend. At the time I lived in a different state and was back home for a visit. Our mutual friend decided to play matchmaker and suggested that we all meet up for drinks. I had no clue that my partner had a smoking fetish. In truth, I barely knew him at all. My friend suggested that she and I have a cigarette (given that we both smoked socially on occasion) and I asked my now-partner whether it would bother him. He replied that it would not. It’s a bit comical to remember that my primary concern at the time was that my partner not be “inconvenienced” by our smoking or think we were unhealthy or disgusting.
We struck up an online friendship which, after some back and forth, turned into serious flirtation and then a full-on long distance relationship. I learned about his smoking fetish when he first came to visit me in my then-home state. I can’t remember why the subject of smoking came up or how. We might have even discussed the possibility of smoking together “for fun.” But at some point in time he admitted that while he was willing to smoke with me he wasn’t really interested in smoking with me. He wanted to watch me smoke.
Then he told me why. I thought – interesting.
I was intrigued. I didn’t really know anything about the smoking fetish (or any fetishes for that matter). My experience up to that point was limited to cheesy comedy routines where the shoe salesman has a foot fetish and starts drooling on the customer’s high heels. So I did some research on the internet. I didn’t find much other than some fetish websites (pictures of girls smoking in various states of dress, make up, etc.), an entry in Wikipedia and a few other websites/notes about the smoking fetish. But because it was a new romance and – I’m actually blushing writing this – I thought that smoking could add a certain amount of creativity and excitement to our sex life. I do not think of smoking as a healthy habit but in an artistic sense it has always had an appeal for me as something sexy, rebellious, exciting. Even a little bit dangerous.
Some years ago I read an article on Gwyneth Paltrow that had included photos of her with 30s or 40s style hair, dressed in negligee and smoking a cigarette. I’m not bi-sexual but I loved the elegance and the artistry of the photos so I cut one out and kept it on my bulletin board. I’m not sure that I would have found the pictures as appealing if I did not have a certain level of attraction to smoking.
So I thought that perhaps smoking and my partner’s smoking fetish could provide an additional intensity to our relationship as long as a) it was regulated (I didn’t want to become addicted) and b) we continued to communicate clearly about his feelings on the subject. This may sound naïve and thoughtless – maybe it was. I didn’t take his fetish for granted, certainly, but because I’d never been in a relationship with anyone who had a fetish (at least to my knowledge) I did not fully understand the strength of the feelings that surrounded it; how deep-rooted a sense of shame and discomfort my partner has around the topic.
For awhile it wasn’t an issue for me. Smoking was part of our romantic life but we lived so far apart that most of our “together” time (via phone, email, chat) involved getting to know each other and making plans for the future that we wanted to create together. We decided that living so far apart was not a scenario that worked long-term for us and made the decision to move in together. I packed up my various possessions and moved back to our home town. That’s when things became more complicated.
I think that I will stop here and see what he has to say.
