Where do I go from here?

My (24F) boyfriend (27M) have been in a relationship for 3 years, but have known each other for 4 years. We met when I was in college, at that time he was out of college but hadn’t finished his degree (his family’s finances got in the way of him completing it, but he still has plans to finish it in the future). A large part of our relationship in the beginning was spending time together in his car and smoking weed together. We’d spend hours getting to know each other and we’d stay out super late at night just talking. He’s always been, and still is, one of the nicest people I know. He was the first guy to really go out of his way to spend time with me. We started officially dating about a year or so after we first met.

I graduated college in 2019 and moved back home for the summer. I was applying to jobs in the city I went to school in and eventually found one. I interviewed, got accepted, and was on my way to moving back to the city I’d gone to college in. Since at that time I had no money whatsoever, my boyfriend offered that I move in with him and his mom, they have a second bedroom, and I’d only have to pay $300/month rent to his mom. I really felt like I didn’t have any other choice so I bit the bullet and moved in. It ended up working out fine but things would start to get a little rocky with my boyfriend.

I can’t remember when exactly he told me, I think it was when I was still living at home after graduating but he called me to tell me he had something important he needed to tell me, and that he didn’t know how to tell me about it. He eventually opened up and told me he has a condition called “Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome” (CHS for short). Basically, you can develop this syndrome when you smoke too much marijuana over many years and your body can start to reject anything you consume. Google can probably do a better job at explaining it than I can, but people with this condition experience really horrible stomach pain and vomiting, to the point where they really can’t keep down anything. Not much research has been done about CHS but people who suffer from this can find relief in hot baths or showers or topical treatments that you can apply to the stomach to warm the area.

One of the first times I really experienced this in my boyfriend was the summer of 2019 when I went to Cape Cod with his family for the 4th of July. I think it was the day after the 4th that he woke up vomiting and was sick the entire day. He felt okay enough the following day to drive us home but ended up going to the ER to get an IV because he wasn’t able to keep any fluids down or get any rest since he was constantly sick. I felt really bad for him at first, it was hard seeing someone I was falling in love with getting so sick. He eventually would get better, on average it would take him about a week or so to recover, and we’d move on.

So I move in with him that fall of 2019 and we’d still occasionally smoke together, even though I’d tell him repeatedly that he was going to regret it. I can’t even count on two hands the amount of times I told him he should really stop. He’d always say something like “I know…” but never REALLY stop. The problem is he’s constantly around weed because he deals it to his friends and had been for years before I even met him. He’d be keeping all his supplies in my bedroom closet to keep it away from his mom so all he needed to do was come into my bedroom and close the door. His mom knew why he was getting sick as well, she’s a retired nurse and isn’t stupid. She and I even talked about it sometimes. She’s just never been the kind of mother that really had much authority over him (she is bipolar and gets really manic at some points during the year, and really depressed during others so my boyfriend has always kinda viewed her as someone he needed to take care of, kind of like a child honestly). He’s definitely had some childhood trauma with both his parents getting divorced when he was in the 5th grade and his dad being really horrible and verbally abusive to him when he was young. With all that being said, I can understand how smoking weed when he got into college was an escape for him.

There became a pattern of him getting sick every couple months while I was living with him, sometimes lasting 2+ weeks, I think the longest was a full month he was sick. It was really hard because we were all in such close quarters. My only escape was my bedroom, really. This happened mainly during Covid (and a couple times before) so I couldn’t go to my friends’ places to escape for a day. I’m the kind of person that HATES confrontation of any kind. When he’d be sick I’d just feel so repulsed and wouldn’t even want to LOOK at him. There would be days that I wouldn’t speak to him. It was awful. Because I love him, but not when he’s getting sick from something so preventable.

While living together we had a lot of ups and downs, we’d have some stretches where we’d be so happy together and we’d be exercising together and I was finding new hobbies I enjoyed doing. Some of the downs were when he was sick and when his mom was getting really manic and moving things all over the house, also when he was having problems with his car. I hate to be the kind of person that’s like “I’m an empath” but I really am (all three of us living there are Cancer suns) and whenever he was going through it, I was too.

I took him home for Christmas in 2020 and 2021 and both years he got sick at my parents’ house. The first year was the day AFTER Xmas so it wasn’t quite as mortifying, though the drive back was pretty traumatic as he was vomiting into a bucket in the passenger’s seat almost the entire way home. I cried the entire drive. The second year he got sick the night of Xmas eve, and wasn’t well enough Xmas morning to sit around the tree and open presents with my family, I cried that morning when my mom asked me if he was okay. He wasn’t around much at all when my family came over for Xmas dinner. He obviously couldn’t eat anything and I had to tell my family that he wasn’t feeling well and was in bed. It was SO embarrassing. He ended up feeling well enough to drive us home the day after (I think I may have driven the first half of the ride) and when we stopped at a rest area, my mom texted me a picture of a gift he’d given me that I left at home. I completely broke down sobbing and screaming in the car, I told him I had a “horrible weekend”. I was soooooo upset. I cried the rest of the drive home and didn’t talk to him for a day or two.

I ended up moving out and into an apartment with my best friend in 2021. Telling him that was really difficult, as the lease started in September but I had to sign the lease in May saying I was going to live there. We had briefly mentioned a couple times when we were in one of the “ups” of our relationship that we wanted to eventually move out together and find our own place. We never really talked about it super in depth, so when I told him I was going to be moving in with my friend instead he got really upset. That wasn’t “the plan”. It was honestly a hard decision for me to make as well. I really went back and forth so many times, knowing one person was going to get hurt. He eventually accepted it, as I told him it was just going to be for a year, and then we could find a place together, but it wasn’t easy telling him. He’d been working at a very physically and emotionally draining job doing car inspections and started to say to me “I’ve been working at this horrible job for so long so I could make money to move in with YOU”. I told him that wasn’t fair and that I never forced him to work there, it was his decision. I can’t remember everything else we talked about at that time but that’s the one thing that really stood out. He also said that it was going to be embarrassing for him to tell his family that I was moving out, he thought that they’d think we were having problems in our relationship.

His getting sick so often eventually slowed down after he got sick at my parents house in 2021. So far in 2022 he hasn’t gotten sick, to my knowledge at least. He’s always been very affectionate and tells me he loves me all the time. He tells me I’m the best girlfriend in the entire world and that he loves me so much, more than anything. I really love him as well, though I’m not the kind of person who’s great at verbalising my emotions, I tend to keep things bottled up. Hence, the amount of times he has gotten sick time and time again and I say to myself
that I’ll just move on and get over it, rather than have a difficult conversation with him. We’ve acknowledged that we need to better communicate with each other, but it’s
always been hard for me. I never know how
to bring up uncomfortable topics with him,
especially something from years ago now that still kinda bothers me. We never really fight or have arguments with each other, we do get along really well and he’s truly my best friend. I’ve wondered if going to couples therapy would help, or if I just need therapy for myself. He used to go to therapy but no longer has health insurance to cover the visits, so he’s stopped going. I’ve never been, but the times that I’ve started the effort to find a therapist, I haven’t been able to find one my insurance will cover and can’t afford the rates from others that I see in my area.

I’ve just kind of felt stuck lately. I really love him so much and can’t imagine a life without him, we’ve spent so long building our relationship and even though we’ve had some rough times we still eventually end up happy together. There are just some times that I think about what it would be like to be with someone different. I’ve considered breaking up with him before, especially when we’ve been going through it, but don’t know how to do it. I think it would really destroy him if I did. At the same time I can picture a life with him, but then I think that I’m still young (24 almost 25) and wish that I was still single. But at the same time I like
having him as my person to be there for me. I know I can find that in someone else, but starting the process all over again with someone new sounds really scary. I just don’t want to feel like I’m settling. I know it’s a very complex relationship I’m in. Right now we’ve been doing well and are happy
together, but it feels like a waiting game until something happens to bring us back down again.

Any advice from strangers online would
be greatly appreciated!

TL/DR: My boyfriend of 3 almost 4 years has consistently gotten sick from smoking weed and it’s caused a strain on our relationship. Even though he’s been better recently it still bothers me that he’s put me through that time and time again. I have a hard time with confrontation and don’t know how to approach the topic with him after so much time has passed, I want to move on but still hold some resentment towards him that he continues to get sick from something so preventable. What should I do?