Does Smoking Weed Affect Relationships?

Many couples like to use cannabis together. Whether it’s to relax at the end of the day, or to get stuck into something creative, it can be a lot of fun. For other couples, cannabis use can drive a wedge between them, with one person perhaps using it in an unhealthy way.

In this article, we look at how cannabis might affect a relationship, how to use it healthily, and how to approach talking about it with your partner.

Can Smoking Weed Affect Your Relationship?

When it comes to relationships, cannabis—and wider drug use (including alcohol)—can be a force for both good and bad, depending on how it’s used. Either way, cannabis can absolutely affect your relationship.

It doesn’t just come down to weed being “good” or “bad”, but the personal circumstances of each individual, their relationship with cannabis, and their relationship with the other person. For many couples, sharing a joint can be a way to unwind and spend some novel time together, high and carefree.

For others, one person’s cannabis habit may become detrimental to them and their ability to respond properly to their partner's needs, ultimately damaging the relationship.

Although cannabis can be, and often is, fantastic in the context of a relationship, it’s important not to be naïve. It’s a strong drug with powerful effects, which can alter some people if used too regularly. Therefore, if you use cannabis in a relationship, being honest with yourself and your partner about how it’s affecting both of you is crucial to ensuring that it doesn’t get between you!

Benefits of Smoking Weed With Your Partner

Let’s start off with the many benefits of using cannabis together as a couple. It should be noted that these benefits refer to those who use cannabis sometimes rather than constantly getting high together.

• Alignment of Mood and Thoughts

It’s no secret that smoking weed gets the mind moving in unusual ways, and can stimulate some pretty strange and exciting ideas. Well, when you get high with someone else, these ideas tend to align, and you can feel pretty connected to someone. When you experience this with a partner, it can create a deep sense of connection and understanding.

• Intuitive Understanding

On that note, this can lead to an increased ability to communicate about certain things. Understanding how your partner feels in the moment can become more intuitive, as can your ability to deliberately influence one another’s moods. By mentally aligning, a particular type of understanding can be reached. Regarding this point, it differs greatly from person to person, and it’s worth recognising that it may be easier to communicate about some things than others. Dealing with genuine issues tends to be more difficult if you’ve consumed cannabis, depending on the amount.

• Double Your Creative Energies

Being creative when you're high—whether it’s playing music, writing, or drawing—is great fun. Being doubly creative with your partner when high can be a beautiful bonding experience. The end result doesn’t matter so much. Rather, the act of getting stuck into a project with someone you enjoy can be a perfect way to spend an evening.

• Unwind Together

One of the main reasons people love to smoke weed is simply to relax and unwind. With a partner, this joint sense of relaxation can be very special. Even if you just curl up and watch a film together, it can have real benefits. Life can be very busy and stressful, as we all know, and unwinding with someone can be a really helpful way to reconnect, without having to do much.

• Laughter

It’s said that we become more attractive to others when we laugh and smile. So smoking weed with your partner and getting the giggles can only be good, right? Things can become very silly when we smoke weed, and we tend to laugh a lot. Especially if you get high with someone you’re very close to, it can be very easy to get stuck in a pleasurable loop of continuously making one another laugh. And spending an evening in laughter is surely good.

• Delicious Meals

Cooking for a partner is very enjoyable. As is being cooked for. Eating when you're high is also very enjoyable. So why not combine the two? The experience of cooking a fresh meal from scratch when you’re high can be good fun, and when you bring another person pleasure from it, even better!

• Physical Intimacy and Sex

Partner intimacy^[1] can potentially be increased by consuming cannabis together. Getting high increases mental and physical sensitivity, which can make physical intimacy very special—whether sexual or not.

Sex, in all its forms, can be enriched when both partners use cannabis together—for some people. For others, the effects of THC may make that level of physical intimacy uncomfortable. If you intend to use cannabis—or any other drug—during sex, communicate about it before getting high, and make sure that both partners feel genuinely comfortable before pursuing it.

Downsides of Smoking Weed With Your Partner

Using cannabis in the context of a relationship can also have downsides, as many can attest. Usually, these problems occur because at least one partner consumes so much that it has a negative effect on their life.

• Feelings of Tiredness

Using cannabis regularly can make people feel tired, and sometimes apathetic too. Constantly feeling drained obviously has many downsides, one of which is difficulty doing other fulfilling things in a relationship. It’s possible to find that you end up spending too many nights lying on the sofa watching tv, and wonder where the excitement has gone.

• Routines (Try to Break Them!)

Often, tiredness occurs because we get stuck in routines. We end up smoking every evening, or even every morning. As well as being high most of the time, the cumulative effect of regular smoking can result in quite a powerful habit. So try to avoid excessive routine when it comes to smoking weed, whether in a relationship or not. It’s fine to have a vague weed routine that you follow, but try not to get bound to it.

• Smoking Solo Can Make One Partner Inaccessible

In many relationships where cannabis becomes an issue, it’s because one person smokes and another doesn’t. As much as someone has the right to be as high as they’d like, there’s no denying that this can become quite draining for a partner, especially if they don’t join you. Someone who’s always stoned usually becomes more inaccessible, and this can leave the sober partner feeling isolated and rejected. At the very least, being around a stoned person all the time can just get a little boring.

• Can Make It Difficult to Emotionally Provide for Another

On that note, regular cannabis use can make it difficult to emotionally provide for someone else. Large, underlying issues can seem too big to deal with when you’re high. And if you’re high all the time, then they’ll always seem too big to deal with.

• Easier to Develop a Problem With Someone Else

Smoking weed with a partner can be really fun, and herein lies its greatest danger. It’s very easy to find yourself repeatedly smoking and hanging out with a partner, because you enjoy it so much. But after a while of doing this, you may find that the joy has turned into a problem, both for the relationship and each individual.

Developing an unhealthy relationship with cannabis is easier when you’re taking it with someone else.

• You Can Come to Rely on Cannabis to Stimulate Your Relationship

You don’t want to rely on cannabis to make your relationship enjoyable or fun. Use it from time to time to have a novel evening, definitely. But if you find that the only way you can have fun together is by getting high, it might be worth a discussion.

The Importance of Planning a Discussion With Your Partner About Cannabis Use

Whether it’s talking about using cannabis together, or one partner talking to the other about their solo cannabis use, having a conversation about drug consumption is an essential part of a healthy relationship with another person, and with drugs themselves.

It may be as simple as an organic, quick conversation. But for some, drug use can be a sensitive topic, and it’s certainly one that deserves adequate attention. So, given that, it might be worth planning a discussion to help it flow.

Prepare to Talk To Your Partner About Cannabis Use

Before discussing cannabis use with your partner, regardless of whether the conversation will be challenging or not, it’s worth having an idea of what you want to talk about, so that each of you has a chance to express and understand the things you need to.

• Understand Why You Use Cannabis and How It Affects You

First off, if you use cannabis, be honest about why you use it and how it affects you. If you come across as being out of touch with yourself and your own cannabis use, then this isn’t going to be very convincing. This means acknowledging that even if you enjoy cannabis and see it as being a positive force in your life, it doesn't mean it is without any downsides. Being honest about cannabis use is crucial, especially for your own relationship with yourself.

• Research Legality

Cannabis laws vary across the world, and in most places it’s still illegal. So make sure that you’re aware of the law where you live, so that you and your partner are fully aware of the risks you’re taking if you choose to consume cannabis.

• Be Compassionate

Being compassionate is an important aspect of any intimate discussion, including drug use. If you intend to use drugs together, then it must be approached compassionately. Otherwise, one person may feel pressured into it, which is a terrible situation.

Likewise, if you intend to talk to someone about their cannabis use, be compassionate about it. If they do have a problem regarding cannabis consumption, then a kind approach is worth taking.

While Talking to Your Partner About Cannabis Use

Once you’ve prepared, it’s time to have the conversation. These conversations can get emotional sometimes, so bear the following in mind.

• Get Comfortable

Make sure you’re in a space that’s comfortable for you both. Talking to someone about potentially problematic drug use in a busy, public space is not going to go well. So choose somewhere safe, and where you have all the time you need.

• Pick Your Moment

On that note, pick the right moment. To either consider using drugs or stopping drug use, someone has to be in the right frame of mind.

• Listen to Feedback

Really consider what your partner tells you. For instance, if you’ve tried smoking weed together before and they didn’t enjoy it, don’t try to persuade them otherwise, and don’t try to persuade them to try it again unless they suggest it.

After Talking to Your Partner About Cannabis Use

These conversations often don’t end after a single chat. So keep the conversation going afterwards and check in with one another. Like all things in life, people’s desire to use drugs can change, sometimes drastically. Just because someone once enjoyed something doesn’t mean they always will.

Explore Cannabis Use Together!

Given all the above, you can see that using cannabis in the context of a relationship can be a fantastic endeavour, so long as it’s approached carefully.

Exploring cannabis use as a couple is not just about taking the drug, but about exploring how to take it, including when not to take it. Another person can be very helpful in helping you figure out when your cannabis use is healthy, and when it’s not—so take this opportunity.

Done well, using cannabis with a partner can be a sheer joy.