Therapy gone wrong

June, you're going to hate me for confessing that I might, once in a while, on a special occasion, regress to my college days and... I'm going to regret this...

I inhaled. 

I'm a dirty addict in a lot of different ways. Alcohol never thrilled me and the growing legitimacy of marijuana is an interesting cultural development. I appreciate the plant and I'm grieved that we cannot use this useful plant in a more open way. Many people have attested that the most dangerous part of smoking some grass is the fact that you might get arrested. The grass isn't the problem, it's the heavy hand of Big Brother that busts your life up over a little plant.

I'm so guilty, I can't begin to apologize to you adequately. I've been on G's side of your current concern over his "habit" and I identify with the guy. I have no idea about the true complexity of the relationship beyond this one article. The thing that came to mind was Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. One tenet of ACT is of course... Acceptance
I can tell you are conflicted over this. I know that by resisting G's desire to smoke, you are setting up a pattern of resistance. You do this by taking a side of a decisional balance in his mind of Smoke vs. No Smoke. You leap on the No Smoke side and jump up and down to weight his decision and any person might naturally hop on the opposing side just to hold the equilibrium in a decision they are not ready to make. Making him chose between you and his vice is sort of a "Love Test". I might be reading into this too much, you tell me. 

I wonder, if we do a thought experiment and ask "how would your relationship be different if he just changed in this small but important way"? The answer may be useful to consider. It's a mini Miracle question. 

That does clarify, I was reading it as if it described current events in your life. I like to think about the complex set of variables that led to the destabilization of my relationship with POA. I continue to add up the simple math which leads to something like, "no person in this equation was capable of producing any different product than the one observed". At that moment you felt a need for him to show his love, he thought he needed something different. Both intentions missed a mark to produce a more positive outcome. 
I will attempt to clarify. I would like to believe that I hold personal values in high regard. In many ways, I have not been served by the letter of the law that guides my life. There are moments, specific moments, in which my own rigid thinking and value judgements have cost me the future of a relationship with POA.

When POA tried to come out to me as a lesbian, we were young and both ignorant. Neither of us had experienced that conversation before. We did not know how to act towards each other in response to her growing unmet need for safe sexual contact (humans need love and she was highly inhibited from experiencing anxiety free relationships with men, due to the rape, by a man, she had suffered as a child). My faith traditions say to Flee from Sexual Immorality. I beat POA with bible verses until she hated me for it. I told her she was going to hell if she didn't change. She responded to the subject defensively (duh, who wouldn't?) and interpreted her sexual feelings for women as something which meant we could not be together. "I'm a lesbian now, I can't be in relationship with men."

If, either of us could have been capable of sitting with the ambiguity of the situation, instead of feeling strongly black or white on the subject, our relationship would not be so broken now. If I could have been more accepting of her sincere feelings and desires, and less homophobic and judgmental, it would have been on her to decide if lesbianism meant that she had to push all men out of her life completely. If we both could have tolerated anxiety in the face of ambiguity, the end result may have been more connected and less toxic. I feel that interaction with POA was the true moment in which we both took sledgehammers to the bridge between us and irrevocably disconnected from one another.

I would not have had to abandon my belief that her behavior was sinful according to Judeo-Christian systems of morality and ethics. At the same time, I might have felt more compassion for her woundedness and given her the opportunity to experience me as less of a threat to her growing identity as a lesbian. She might have chosen to maintain a relationship that would not have been marked by such a toxic cut off. 

We were both trapped in dichotomous thinking. "Dichotomy, in this case, is a self-defeating behavior using "all-or-nothing" or "black-and-white" thinking. The therapy teaches the patient how to change the dichotomy to a more "dialectical" (or "seeing the middle ground") way of thinking." (from the Wiki on Dichotomy) 

I interned at a homeless shelter for men for about a year. I met many people who had experiences with drugs of all kinds. My supervisor and the team would, from time to time, discuss how the legalization of Marijuana would affect the program... We came to the conclusion that, while it may diminish people's experience of being broken by the system (Legal trouble regarding substance use is one of the diagnostic criterion for diagnosing pathology), people will still find themselves broken and drugs happen to be near. Self medicating is a thing. Is it the pathology that causes self medication? or the self medication that causes pathology?

I never wanted to work with addicts. In my limited experience, drugs and various addictions are so universally experienced that you could not be seriously interested in helping people without being prepared to address drug use/abuse.

I too wonder if I had compromised in the moment with POA and did not outright reject her for her gratuitous same-sex sexual behavior, would that mean that I was somehow complicit? I don't know the right answer, but I do know the way I handled it contributed equally to the destruction of our relationship. There was an opportunity for me to be more psychologically flexible and I completely wasted it. 

It sounds extremely narcissistic, almost god-like. And unhealthy.

But, I do find that there is ironic justice in your situation: a homophobic person falls in love with lesbian.

Anyway, my advice to you if you want to be less mad is this: stop complicating this situation with your words and thoughts. Learning to let her go only comes when you realize that she is an adult and can make adult decisions on her own. Learn to respect that decision. Learn to respect her. Second, you have values and you typically can’t change those and so does she. You don’t believe homosexuality is normal or healthy, but she does. I’m of the opinion that neither of you are right or wrong. You’re just so very different. You stuck to your values, she to hers and that meant the end of your relationship. There’s nothing wrong with that. But, it is painful.

I will say, the more you conjure up impossible scenarios the more pain you are causing yourself. Be well.

By ironic justice I do not mean "my" justice or social justice. I mean your own. I do not wish you ill will. I wish you healing. And that's wonderful to know you've helped so many people. Now, can you help yourself, for that's where you will see a real payoff. That's where the real investment lies.

And not that I need to answer your question about our competing kindnesses in the world, but I have been helping people like you for nearly 10 years. My volunteer work in real life consists in helping two groups of people: immigrants who come to the USA who have trouble speaking English. And women who suffer from domestic abuse. I don't raise awareness or support the LGBTQ community in any special way. I simply have a lot of gay friends and love them all the same. Period.