WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS

In both of the pipe-smoking groups on Facebook in which I take part, it is taken for granted that the habit is held in severe disfavour by the female companions of the honourable members. Because, so often, it is.

One person posted a picture of a mail order that arrived recently, with the remark that fortunately for him the wife never saw it.
The gates of Hell might have opened otherwise.

Wifely disdain for pipes and tobacco is a very common theme. "Please don't let her know too much, or I'll be in serious trouble".

Likewise, I note that many if not most women nowadays wrinkle their cute little button noses at certain smells (while saying not a word about overly perfumed unguents and lotions), and at best merely tolerate their menfolk's peculiarities.

Grudgingly, and sometimes while snapping and yowling.


I've been told authoritatively that in a relationship, one must accept the other person's foibles.

But I'm guessing that that only goes one way.


Remarkably, the people who strongly advised me that I should be less blatant about my fondness for pipes and tobaccos, because it would vastly improve my chances of finding another person to share my life, and if I knew what was good for my I would desist entirely so that the ladies might appreciate me, were all non-smoking women, mostly of peculiarly blinkered intellect, quite a few of them middle-aged, and some in relationships that qualified as dubious or dysfunctional.
Or formerly in such a relationship.


It strikes me that if a man has to hide his hobby, or pursue it beyond his wife's ken, there's something almighty f*cked up about their marriage.
Especially if it isn't a perversion or membership in the Klan or the Elks.
But merely an aesthetic and mood-related fondness for briar.
As well as a liking for old-fashioned tobacco.


Yes, I know that hiding my pipe-smoking, or quitting entirely, would significantly improve my chances of finding a girlfriend.

I am absolutely not interested in a person who would demand that.
A woman who cannot accept something I thoroughly enjoy.
Which has been a part of my life for most of it.
Nooky be damned, I'm having a pipe.


One of my friends told me recently that with his wife out of town for a week, he can finally smoke a cigar out on the patio. Personally I think he should divorce the baggage; they have nothing in common.
Even less than nothing; she clearly hates him.

I bet he's incredibly jealous of the two men we both know whose wives also enjoy cigars, and deservedly so.

They are lovely couples.



NOW HEAR THIS: If your wife or husband (or boyfriend or girlfriend) harasses you about your pipes and cigars (or something equally innocuous), and acts like a total dick, get rid of them.
Life is too short to put up with that.
You're going to die anyway.

The way I see it, my pipe filters out the dingbats.


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