My girlfriend of three years is a smoker. In the beginning of our relationship her smoking didn’t bother me. I come from a family of smokers and I used to smoke myself. But now her smoking is a huge turnoff. I’ve started a new job where I work with cancer patients, and I see the deadly effects of smoking every day. I’ve tried everything under the sun to get her to stop. She says she’ll try, but never makes much of an effort. I don’t like to kiss or be near her when she smokes. It’s ruined our sex life because she comes to bed smelling like cigarettes. If she doesn’t stop I want to move out. I’ll sacrifice the relationship before I succumb to cancer from secondhand smoke. Is it fair to give her an ultimatum? –Nonsmoking Section
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Meet Cara McDermott, a 28-year-old who works on public health projects in Seattle. A Savage Love reader for more than a decade, Cara was the winning bidder in an auction that benefited a worthy charity: the antihunger agency Northwest Harvest. Cara is a ginger-haired looker with a fiance from Amish country, and her future father-in-law is a big fan of the word santorum, which is apparently on everyone’s lips in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Friends often come to Cara for advice–which is how I got started in this dirty bidness–and she believes, as I do, that cheating is permissible under certain circumstances and that oral sex comes standard. Here’s Cara’s advice for you, NS:
Cara may have purchased the right to give advice in this column but I never–never–auction off the right to the last word. So sorry, Cara, but smoking outside and/or taking showers won’t really mask a smoker’s stench. If it bothers you, NS, you’re going to have to dump the girlfriend.
Hey, everybody: A couple of weeks back I advised WILLIE and FS–two sex-starved married people–to go ahead and cheat on their respective spouses. It seems that advising married people to cheat really pisses some people off. To read responses to that column–most con, some pro–go to www.thestranger.com/savage/willie.
