I have a dilemma and need advice from those of you who live with partners that disapprove of your gaming habits.
I love my wife and our marriage is great except she’s recently banned me from playing wow at home. I’ve had to go to extreme lengths to continue pursuing my love for the game by installing it on my work laptop. It’s been extremely stressful playing in windowed mode with colleagues coming out of nowhere, constantly forcing me to minimise the game.
How do I get her to understand that it’s a healthy hobby? I’m worried it’s going to impact our marriage and I don’t want that to happen.
If you’re resorting to hiding it and playing at work then your hobby probably isn’t all that healthy… That’s some pretty compulsive sounding behaviour…
Your wife may have a point… It’s time for a break.
Tell her that you are going for a night out with the boys. Then, you go to a hotel where you can play WoW on your laptop all night without being bothered by your wife. When you come back in the morning, pretend you’re hung over from a night of drinking. She’ll buy it, trust me.
How long were your gaming sessions?
Did it mean you were ignoring your wife and you two didn’t spend enough quality time together?
I’ve been with someone who thought it was a bad addicting game before in the times when that rhetoric was all over press. I mean, it can be, it depends a lot on the individual and if they have an addictive personality.
Your wife banning you from something you love to do is shi**y. No one should tell other people what they can or can’t do… Except if it’s an addiction to something. But then that person with an addiction need help.
I guess it depends on how healthy your hobby actually is.
My ex didn’t like me playing because she wanted me to do things with her, like sit and watch TV in the evenings, which bored me to tears. When I suggested she could play WoW with me instead of watching TV, she looked at me as if I’d grown a second head. Ours was an unhealthy relationship, and it ended naturally after a while because neither of us was willing to put in the work to make it healthy (which takes work from both people).
A relationship where one person bans the other from doing something clearly has health issues. That she feels her position entitles her to ban you from playing WoW is a problem. That you feel the need to hide playing WoW from her is a problem. You need to sit down and talk about it.
Playing WoW is not unhealthy as long as it doesn’t prevent you from meeting whatever other commitments you have both agreed on.
Yeah I have a feeling you’re not telling us the whole story.
Which part of it exactly is “a healthy hobby”? If it drives you to do stuff that might lose you your job sounds like you passed the unhealthy threshold to me.
This. My partner, which is the most wonderful woman in the world, is supporting me all time long. When new seasons or expansions come out, I always tend to play more, but never so much, that my IRL responsibilities are suffering from it.
OP, you have 1 of 2 possible options.
You are taking the game way too serious, and your real life is suffering from it.
You have an unreasonable and controlling wife, which is something you will eventually have to take care of. If that’s the case, it’s just a matter of time when other things in your life are gonna start bothering your wife.
Either way, talk it out. Never hide things from your beloved ones. It always comes out, one way or another.