Slashdot Mirror
Playing Games While Not Ruining Your Relationship?
Silicon Mike asks: "A nice sized group of us here at work recently picked up City of Heroes, and started playing together. While all of us were gamers to some extent, now we're all pretty addicted and want to play together online all the time. The problem some of us are running into is that our significant others aren't too happy with us gaming all the time. Other then the two obvious solutions (quit playing or dump the significant other) I'm wondering how other people have deal with it? I tried installing Zoo Tycoon on my other computer and saying 'Look honey, cute bears' but she just didn't bite."
Or obvious solution #3... Regular /.'s don't have to worry about this "problem", so why ask me^H^Hthem?
Hmmm.
Sorry if it sounds harsh, but the solution IS obvious: Cut back on the gaming. Perhaps way back. In a healthy relationship, you and your SO will give each other time to pursue your own interests, and you'll both sacrifice some personal time for the other. You can't be a compulsive gamer and have a healthy relationship.
If you have to be gaming all the time, as you say, it's time to grow up. And if you can't just do a little, then maybe you should give it up all together.
I've been married 15 years, and it's largely because my wife and I both make sacrifices. There's no getting around it. I hope you work things out for the best.
'Look honey, cute bears' but she just didn't bite."
You're lucky, I'd have bitten your head off after a comment like that.
tsk tsk... bears? should've used bunnies. Always gets them.
Unless you find a woman who can handle you playing games like that most of the time while ignoring her, you're out of luck. Most women (I've found) like to be paid attention to.
:D
Besides, women are more fun to score with.
Have you asked your wife/husband if they would like to play or join the group you are so involved with? If not that group, how about setting up a parallel group that plays the same game?
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
They both cost money, but I'd have to go with getting rid of the games (I know, blasphemy).
When you're 60 years old and remembering the great times of your life, no ones going to say, "You know, I should have dumped that old broad and played more video games..."
| - | - |
If the two of you can't work out a comprimise (spoken or unspoken), then you really don't belong in a relationship with one another. Gaming isn't the only thing that's going to eat into your life in the next few years -- work, children, clubs, friends, PTAs, softball games, etc. will all potentially require some kind of balance if you're going to continue a workable relationship. So look at this as a test run.
Relationships are about cooperation -- they're about *not* just considering your own needs, but taking the other person into serious consideration. I used to play hours of Quake each day in college, but when we moved in together I realized I was ignoring her and I cut way the heck back. Now, I play where I have a chance; it's not a set schedule, just something we worked out (you can't live together without having time alone, IMO). I'll play some GTA while she reads or watches a chick flick on HBO. She understands it's something I enjoy, but I understand that I can't blow the unhealthy amount of time I used to on it. Welcome to adult life.
Anyhow, my girlfriend (er, fiance... gotta get used to that before the wedding) is more important to me than numbing my mind in front of the Xbox. If yours isn't, well, maybe it's time to cut her loose and pursue your real interests.
Weirdly, I actually found myself on the other side of this one back with Girlfriend 1.0; she started playing MUDs our freshman year of college and got absolutely addicted. Our three-year relationship went right into the crapper because she *obviously* preferred being in character in her little fantasy world to me (or reality in general for that matter -- she flunked out of school because she wasn't bothering with classes). I suppose that gave me a bit more empathy in terms of this situation...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I had the exact same problem, and for me the choice between my relationship and gaming was fairly simple: do both.
:)
I was involved in a competitive gaming league which held matches once a week. Even though our team played in a fairly low bracket in the league, we still took the time to practice before we played our weekly match. It got to the point where I was investing a significant percentage of my free time gaming and it began to wear on my significant other.
Eventually I said to my team "hey guys, I can practice once or twice a week for X hours and play in our match." That worked out fine and I had a lot of fun playing. But more importantly, I kept my relationship and gaming time well-balanced.
If you feel like spending significantly MORE time gaming than being with your significant other, then take a step back and decide whether one or the other is really worth it. I'd choose the gal, myself.
I've been fortunate enough to have a girlfriend who will accompany me to LAN parties and put up some respectable numbers on the fragboard.
Other then the two obvious solutions (quit playing or dump the significant other)
How about limiting your playing time each day to something you both agree on, and then spend your non-playing time together. You definitely need your free time away from your SI, everyone does, so just use it to play the game. It sounds like you may have a problem when you say "want to play all the time". Just do it in moderation.
What are they talking about? I've built plenty of meaningful relationships in the Sims!
Click for offensive t-sh
The secret is to find something they like playing. It won't neccessarily be obvious either.
My wife turned her nose up at the cute fluffy games that I thought she would like. At first blush I thought perhaps computer games were not going to be something she would like. Then she saw me playing Quake3 Arena one day and has become quite adept at it.
Most importantly is to talk about your game playing habits. Find out why it is a problem for them. This will prevent countless hours of arguing and pouting (on both parts!).
If the problem is "just" because your chores are suffering, then the solution may be as easy as finishing your chores quicker; not finding a game for her so you can say "You play too!".
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
Just play the game, man. Jeez, who the hell wears the pants in *your* relationship?
I think I speak for a collective 47.6% of all slashdotters when I say... WHA-PSSSH!!!
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
We did get in a fight one night, though, when I called her Aeris . . . .
</bitterness>
Seriously, you just need to budget your time. A few games, then some time together doing whatever, then another game.
Or you can always just wait until she goes to bed to start playing.
This is slashdot, it is most definitely implied that your "significant other" is virtual/not real, so just close the program or put it back in the closet. Problem solved.
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
In general, you don't want to make your girlfriend feel like she's 2nd place. For example, don't go straight to the computer after getting home. Sit down, chat with her, let the day kinda die down before going to a game. This alone will make a much bigger difference than simply cutting back the number of hours involved. Sadly I found this out the hard way once.
A little over a year ago, my wife and I had a baby. She takes up the majority of my time now, but my wife and I made an agreement that we'd each get one night a week to ourselves. I typically play EQ (yes still addicted after 4 and 1/2 years) on my night, and she plays Quake 3 on hers.
Even with other things: I hate doing laundry, and she hates to cook. So I cook and she does the laundry (mostly because I'm a much better cook though).
It is all about compromise, but as long as you can both come to an agreement that works it would be an issue.
-i
After having over a year of my life sucked into Ultima Online I can tell you from experience that you want to stay away from the MMORPG genre.
These games are specifically designed to maximise addiction and require as much of your time as is possible. They are designed to make it impossible to just sit down for 15 minutes and have a fun little game.
There is a whole world out there with actual real things that games only exist to simulate. Computer games are great while they are augmenting your real life. They are good for a little off time every now and then.
When you reach a point where your wife/girlfriend/whatever feels neglected because of a video game, you need to question your priorities. Perhaps the proper question isn't how to get her off your back, but rather, is this game worth the time I am spending?
First, don't get addicted to too many games. I will only buy the very best games out there then go a couple months in between them once finished.
Second, arrange times that you are going to play a couple days in advance so you can warn significant other. Set a time limit like 2 hours or so. You will always run over the time limit, so you should aim toward the lower end of the spectrum that you really want to play for.
Third, it is ok to play once significant other has fallen asleep, but never...I repeat...NEVER let her go to bed by herself. If you do you are just asking for it. Now if you can pull off the cuddle for awhile bit until she is asleep and then get up and play you may get away with it, but that laying down till fall asleep time seems to be very important to women.
This has worked for me. I must admit that I don't play as much as I used to, but that is probably for the best. Just remember to spend at least as much time as you plan on playing with your significant other. I don't mean sitting in front of the tube time, but realy quality time. Also let them know you are going to play, so it does not come as a suprise.
One of the bonuses of City of Heroes is the lack of EQ or DAoC-style timesinks.
You don't have to level your character before leveling your clothes. You don't have to camp a spawn for seven hours. You don't have to do ML10.
The game is perfectly able to be played an hour or two at a time. In fact, it caters to casual gaming. If you're spending so much time playing City of Heroes that your girlfriend is getting pissed, there's probably a good reason.
A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
We made $2.15 per hour. Operators would wait for someone to call to have a disk changed, and we would mechanically change the disk and run the predecessors of fsck (icheck, ncheck, dcheck, etc.). The systems ran Version 6 Unix, and there were two VAXes which ran 4BSD.
There were several ways to entertain yourself while waiting for a call to do something. You could do your homework. You could try to learn more about Unix and C, which they didn't teach in the college because they had little practical application at the time in the eyes of the CS department. Or you could play rogue, an interactive computer game that ran with really primitive graphics on the VT100 terminal.
Most of my colleauges chose to play rogue. I read the Unix and C documentation, which was only one book and about a foot of papers at the time. I had some computer programming experience, including assembler, but no formal classes in programming, as I was a communication arts student. But once I had read all of the available literature on Unix and C, I was able to get a job as an assistant systems programmer and start moving up in the lab. That eventually got me to Pixar.
The folks who played rogue? They did OK, I guess. But I think they would have done much better if they'd taken the opportunity as seriously as I did.
Look around. There is probably something to do that would be much more important, and eventually more fun, than the game-playing. You only get one life. Start living it.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
but this question is just sad. CHERISH AND APPRECIATE EVERY MOMENT with your significant other. He/She doesn't have to sit there and put up with your quirks and intricacies. They aren't required to deal with you ignoring them in favor of a video game. They aren't there to be there when its convenient for you. You will get much more out of a healthy, loving relationship than you ever will from a bunch of hours sunk uselessly into gaming. Seriously think about this question and you will realize the answer is "Holy shit, I'm actually weighing my life partner against a video game! how incredibly selfish self-centered and utterly shallow of me!"
Its no wonder geeks are lonely. They have no interpersonal skills. Not that I'm so much better, I really screwed up my last relationship via 'harmless' personal time to dawdle and hack together various computer bits, only realzing too late that I could have spent that time on picnics or walks through the park or taking in a good movie or discussing a book or learning something about my ex that I didn't know before.
I'll say it again: CHERISH AND APPRECIATE EVERY MOMENT with your significant other. They are choosing to be with you and if you continue to debase them by ignoring them for video games, you'll get what you deserve: a broken heart and a bunch of uncaring unfeeling pixels staring back at you in your emptiness.
*bedeebedeebedeebedeebeep*
He: (boom, zzzot, blam) HELLO?
She: Hi, hon-hey, what's that in the background?
He: (boom, *boooOoom*) (whispering) dudes, turn it down or put on some pr0n or something, quick! -- NOTHING, HOney!
She: Don't you lie to me...
He: (ooooh, baby, come back to bed nooowww...) Look, I know I'm on a business trip, this sorta thing happens.
She: Don't you LIE to me, you worthless bastard!
He: (slurp, groan) Sometimes these things happen, I'll make it up to you, honest!
She: BULLSHIT! You're not ON a business trip! You're not even in a HOTEL ROOM with some CHEAP FLOOZIE!
He: Bu-but, I can exp-
She: You're at one of those FUCKING LAN PARTIES AGAIN, AREN'T YOU?*click*
Depends on what "cut back" means. If cut back means going from playing many hours a night, every night, to playing a few hours a week, I agree. However if cutting back means going from playing a few hours a week to nothing, then I think it's time to have a talk with the SO and maybe break up.
Why? Well, as you said, relationships are give and take. Pat of that is both of you need time to do things that YOU enjoy, even if the other does not. Those should, of course, be limited, but people need time for their own fun even in a commited relationship. If your SO can't handle that, you probably are in an unhealthy relationship.
I know far too many people, mean and women, where their life is all about what the other person wants. If the SO doesn't like it, it has to go entirely. If the SO want to do it, then they do. Not a healthy way to be.
So if a woman wants you to cut back your gaming to not be the dominant activity in your life, that's a good thing. If she wants you to cut it out entirely, that's not and you need to talk about it.
Really, this comes down to personal space. IMO a relationship isn't really all that healthy if you can't spend a certain amount of time alone without one or the other of you becoming unhappy. Women just need to realize that at certain times in a guy's life she is going to have to share top-priority, or even be runner-up for a short while. In other words:
Attention to all women: Guys fixate on stupid crap once in a while. Let us burn ourselves out on it and we will always come back to you happier and perhaps smarter.
The meek shall inherit the earth, in 3 by 6 plots. - Lazerus Long
Imagine a beowulf cluster of significant others.
Or you can try to bring them over to the dark side...
I must confess... I've tried it with my wife, but thus far have had no luck. Back in the day she was a relentless MUD'er, but now doesn't seem to have any interest in computer games whatsoever (I feel like Luke trying to drag Vader back to the Light side of the force... "there is good in him... I have felt it").
Still, sacrifices are what makes a relationship work. She's intelligent, beautiful, funny, a good cook, a great mom, and makes more money than I do. Her only flaw seems to be that she married far beneath her station... a flaw for which I am eternally thankful.
I'd give up the games for her... but she'd never force me to do that... give-and-take is a beautiful thing.
I agree with the parent poster... you don't end a relationship for a lousy video game... I don't care how 1337 it is.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Chances that you can offer her a substitute when she actually wants attention from you are not good. Chances that there will be times when she's checking email/websurfing on another machince, reading books, on the phone, watching TV, doing things with her friends (not sure what the modern, not-old-people equivalent of the bridge club is) are usually pretty high. I've had moderate luck playing games that can be picked up and put down easily while the girlfriend stops to smell the proverbial flowers (hm... providing actual flowers might work too).
The downside is that this method is better suited for single player games than cooperative play for obvious reasons. Coordinating schedules makes things more difficult. Of course, these things are all relative. Most reasonable girls would understand one games night a week and most would feel neglected if you wanted to play several hours a night, but YMMV. (Unfortunately, CoH's $15 monthly use it or lose it access makes infrequent gaming a terrible value - this is the reason I won't touch the game.)
All that said, your question sort of misses the point. Time is the only limited resource that you can't get more of. If you want to spend your time one way and your girlfriend wants to spend it another, ultimately one of you is going to get what you want and one is going to have to settle for something else. In a good, healthy relationship the two of you are going to do your best to try and accomodate each other's wants equally, but at the end of the day you DO need to choose one or the other. (Unsolicited relationship advice: In the absence of any other information, my opinion is that if you have to think about it too hard, you're not with the right girl.)
it's simple. your woman, and even your life, can be viewed as a game. instead of working hard to score in a game, work hard to score with your woman... instead of exploring levels of some fake world, figure out what places you can take your woman to in the real world that get her in the mood. figure out how to get her to do x and y things that she would never think of doing.
making your woman happy and the resultant behaviors she will perform for you are infinitely more rewarding than any intangible, fictional reward a game might offer
trust me, evolution has made women the most challenging and addictive game ever, there's just a steep learning curve.
So I have two suggestions: either cut back on the gaming a bit - for example, set aside certain nights to not play - or tell me your username and what server are you are on. I'll tell my wife, you guys can hang out together online, and I'll take your SO to a movie.
Everyone knows that damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. -Pope Pius XI
...why not try City of Heroes, or some other multiplayer game that your SO might enjoy. I know my SO used to get bored when I'd pour hours into Final Fantasy X, but after a while, she realized it was fun to watch. Then she realized it was fun to discuss possible strategies. Then she realized it was fun to tell me what strategies to use. Then she took over my game. Anyway, all this was only after she had finished her own game that I had bought for her (Champions of Norath). The lesson I learned? Make gaming and spending time with your SO non-mutually-exclusive. Don't assume that she likes games with cute animals, get her to try Baldur's Gate and the like. Then sit there and watch her play it. Unlike us, a lot of the time women can play video games and carry on a conversation. Then, later, when you're playing some games, she will be much less inclined to demand you shut it off. She'll just sit down with you and assume that you're also able to carry on a conversation (good luck, there).
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
You have a Kid old enough to play them with you! Then she won't even give you a second glance, she'll be so happy to have "a father who wants to spend time with his kid", ie, get some sleep herself!
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Not so long ago, I went to a LAN Party and watched an acquaintance of mine sit through the entire thing playing "There" while the rest of enjoyed "real" games. Honestly, I couldn't believe he even bothered coming to the LAN in the first place.
After a while, he went on about how cool it was and showed us all his "flirting" with his "online wife". Knowing that he was married with a newborn child, I asked him, "What does your REAL wife think about all this?" He replied, "She does it TOO!".
I gulped and listened to him ramble on about the fact that his REAL wife was even planning to go meet her ONLINE HUSBAND. Obviously the guy had serious marital problems burgeoning, but he was alas unaware. I'm sure that by now he's either divorced or practicing online swinging (shudders)
Geeks all have this problem with balancing computer time vs. their relationships. It's hard, but that's why I end up staying awake into the wee hours of the night. Also, another rule: Play games you know you can put down. This is why LAN parties are good ... you go, play all night, and then it's out of your system (hopefully). Elsewise, join "Gamer's Anonymous" and realize that you're no different than a Crack Smoker.
I wrote an article in Issue 168 of ZZZ Online about some of this that may be of interest.
Video games don't whine (well, good ones). Video games don't call you at work and DEMAND you spend more time with them. Video games don't pull stupid dramatic stunts that even high schoolers would laugh at to get you to pay attention to them. Video games demand time and money, sure, but they're not guilting you with WE NEVER GO OUT!!! and WE'RE GOING TO VISIT MY PSYCHOTIC MOTHER!!!. Video games do not withhold sex over something as stupid as showing up five minutes late.
In short, video games are better than a bad relationship by orders of magnitude. I'd rather play Daikatana than spend ten minutes with my ex. Yeah, relationships are a give and take thing, but when you're doing all the giving and SheBitch, Queen of the Universe is doing all of the taking, well.... fuck that noise. GTA calls.
A good relationship, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Bad relationships drive me to video games. Good ones leave me with little inclination to pick up the control pad.
This is actually a current problem of my current SO (and avid slashdotter) with Ragnarok Online. Don't get me wrong, I am such a gaming chick. I've been known to spend long periods of time glued to my laptop til the wee hours of the morning. However, he plays during the day while I'm at work, then wants to play all night as well. It's a &*^%@&^%& battle to tear him away from the computer to do something other than slay anime monsters. It won't do anything to seriously jeopardize our relationship, but damn, it's annoying. I work for sometimes 10 hours days staring at a computer.. do I really want to drive an hour home, then stare at a computer RIGHT away til 5am? Not likely. And a previous poster then said making your girlfriend feel like 2nd place is bad.. they were dead-on. Compromise with her. Watch a girlie chick flick with her in exchange for some game time, or stay with her til she falls asleep, play for a bit, then return and sleep yourself. If she really knows you and your geeky gaming addicition, she can't get TOO mad.
Huh? Has anyone actually tried this? I mean, unlike Leisure Suit Larry, the game you describe may have better graphics, but the gameplay itself is as boring as the Sims, and the speed-up key can only be used once a day, and in an astonishing display of programmer ignorance, the speed-up key only works at night when you're trying to game! At least the Sims design team got that part right -- you want to fast-forward during the day when you're at work and nobody's home!
> instead of exploring levels of some fake world, figure out what places you can take your woman to in the real world that get her in the mood. figure out how to get her to do x and y things that she would never think of doing.
And the list of defects goes on. Like, there's no fucking save/restore feature either! I mean, you spend six weeks of game time setting up a surprise menage-a-trois with you, your girlfriend and just *one* lousy goat, and if the persuade roll fails, all you can do is pull out the old .45 and restart.
No way, man, "RL" is teh suck. I wouldn't even warez it.
You admit you're addicted, that you want to play this game all the time, but the girlfriend is the problem?! Where's Dr. Phil?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Just get Animal Crossing for the Gamecube. It's the game to get if you have a female SO who doesn't play games, most women love it. It worked for me.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Of course, I'm not blowing 20 hours a week on video games, I'm spending it in the myriad stages of graphic novel production. Time for it has to come from somewhere- out went video games, out went movies. I do those when I'm too burned out from writing, pencilling, inking, coloring to do anything else.
Oh yeah, and there's the day job. Combine that with the graphic novel and I have about six hours of free time a week. Broke up with the girl I was dating the week I started the project in earnest. I told her I had finally started work on the thing- which I have been planning since 1994- and her response wasn't "sweet!" or "nice!" or "it's good that you're starting to realize your dreams!", it was "I'M NOT TAKING A BACK SEAT TO SOME STUPID WEBCOMIC!"
And so, quite suddenly, she wasn't.
When I'm 40, my memories of my mid twenties will be a haze of production striving to pull together a story that has been taking shape in my head for ten years. I will have ACCOMPLISHED something, rather than suffering the tyranny of an ice queen who wanted my creative energies for herself.
Fortunately, the woman I'm half-dating now understands exactly where I'm coming from (she's a writer)- and has caught more than a few typos.
If you have to sacrifice something you love, then it's pretty obvious that there's a more compatible girl out there.
I personally spend a lot of time playing Magic: The Gathering Online and at the same time, have a SO as well.
I find that in the long run, the SO is much more important to me than any game will ever be, no matter how powerful/how much money/how much time I spend playing it.
A game should be just that, a game.
I think when you find a game or virtual activity getting in the way of real life friendships (let alone relationships), you probably have an addiction problem.
Finding video games more amusing than your partner is indicative of a problem. This is true of anything though, not just video games. The solution is not to distract her with games (unless the problem is that she's just bored, and not specifically craving more of your time) but to find out what the root problem is, and solve it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Seriously, you need a better girlfriend.
Of course there needs to be a balance between time you spend with your friends doing fun stuff and time spent with your SO doing fun stuff, but it shouldn't take an enormous amount of effort to balance. It should come naturally, and when possible, the two worlds should overlap.
If gaming is important to you, than you need to find a girlfriend who enjoys gaming, too, and will join you. This is important, because later on, when you're married, this will cause problems. She could expect you to "grow up" and stop doing "childish" things.
An IT manager showed some obvious interest in me. I decided to pursue this for at least a friendship, because I can always use another gaming friend and movie buff to hang with. I later find out he thinks I'm perfect and never imagined a girl like me could exist. I'm a geeky hot chick who shares all his interests. He makes it obvious he wants more from me.
I THEN find out the guy is married! Turns out he's so smitten he was actually considering having an affair. Of course I put a stop to that dream.
My whole point is, the guy had no concept that a woman like me existed, so instead he settled for a nice woman who put up with him and lets him get laid every once and awhile. Obviously, he isn't happy with this, and his mind is wondering to other, seemingly better prospects.
If the girl you are with cannot handle your hobbies, and refuses to join you with your hobbies, than you are with the wrong woman for you. There is someone better out there.
(You may need to wait 10+ years before you can find her, but she's out there)
You are making it sound like all gamer girls play is Sims. Some of us play the same games boys do.
~ lilibat gamer geek goth girl
Why not invite her to play along? My wife didn't even want me to buy Halo (gee, honey, why the hell did we buy an Xbox if you don't want Halo?) but we started playing in co-op mode and now it's her guilty pleasure. She's even started playing alone at difficutly level 3 (geeze, I've played enough that you'd think I could remember what the levels are called). The only problem is you can't save in co-op mode; you have to finish each level or you lose all progress. So sometimes we stay up way too late on weekends.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
i find it extremely funny that most of the posts, in fact, all of the ones i've read, come from the gamers, an none -- from the significant others the posts refer to
you will probably say that that's because SO's aren't geeks and don't read slashdot
well, you might be right, however then you're implying that the concepts of "geek" and "gamer" are being equated
can i not be a geek if i am not a gamer?
but, i'm getting slightly off topic...
i am that significant other who had to deal with the boyfriend-gamer...we went through many stages in our relationship (with respect to videogames): when i did not care at first, when it went way over the limits because every possible free-from-classes-and-work moment was dedicated to gaming, when we were on the edge of breaking up, when he stopped playing completely because he was afraid of ruining the relationship (i guess), to me pre-ordering Half Life 2 for his birthday
i don't know if i am ready to deal with the gaming issue completely: i don't care right now, but maybe i will later
i am afraid it will get out-of-hand as it once did
my major issue with gaming is how unreal and impersonal it seems to be...the most i could ever handle playing is tetris, for about 10 minutes, and then i would just get sick of it
and because i value personal interactions so much, i get very upset when my SO does not seem to do that as much as i do
i have high standards, and he knows about it
so, i was very glad that there are still gamers who, through getting to know their SOs better, start to value personal interactions over the "unreal" ones
there are some girls, me among them, that do enjoy a rousing game of command and conquer. i also had a level 40ish necromancer back in the day. i've got two full gaming workstations on my lan at home (which i built, thank you)--me and my SO play against 5 or 6 brutals til the wee hours of the morn. we find this much more entertaining than watching TV....nothing like destruction to get the blood circulating ;)
Frankly, I'm the only one in the house who ever finishes our games. My husband buys them, for the most part, but I'm the one who actually plays them all the way through. Personally, I can't stand The Sims - I'm up for just about anything else though. We met in-game, and we've played together consistently over the years - started in EQ, went to DAoC, now City of Heroes... and all the off-line games in-between. He can beat me on some of the fighting games (I still rule DOA though), and I kick his ass in strategy. I think, counting back, that I've actually been playing games longer than he has. My whole family played together (ok, minus my Mom) and so I think we got an early start on being able to balance games with life.
:)
Admittedly, it's not like you can expect whoever you fall for to have the same interests... so for the standard reality-check - make sure your girl's getting enough time, and that your gaming isn't taking away from your relationship... then Hero away. A couple other things to remember:
1) The game will be there when you go back. If life's calling, hang up on the game... so maybe you lose some exp, or you annoy your group - there are far worse things to lose than that.
2) Try to make sure that you're not losing time - telling someone you'll be home (or will meet them, pick them up, etc.) "in an hour" and coming home three hours later is being an ass no matter what you were doing. I used to be terrible about that.
3) Take care of your responsibilities out-of-game. The game is more likely to be the focus of anger for your partner if you're not doing your share of housework, food prep, dog feeding, all that stuff. (It also means that your gaming time is much less likely to be interrupted with timed demands to do chores.)
Good luck, and it is possible.
~ Leilah
Hey, here is a good solution to gaming in college. During the term, you promise your girlfriend no gaming and your free time, that way your studies and your relationships blossom, then during the summer you get it all out of your system with all your free time. Its worked for 3 summers now at MIT and our relationship is great... plus my gpa doesn't suffer. Goodluck and good gaming
actually i've found that you can read/program/game while your sigfig is on the fone with you, and STILL manage to do both well... just keep going uh-huh.. and keep an ear out for certain key words ("pregnant" is a major one) and just let it buzz past you. practice and you'll actually manage to get to the point where you can game and carry on a "significant" (at least to her it will be) convo with her at the same time.
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
I solved this issue with my wife by being sneaky. I left out my gba sp with a certain game in it that happens to rhyme with hokemon. She is now so hooked, that I had to buy myself a new gba sp and am looking into getting a gc with coliseum on it.
Thing is, she is into horses. I do not ride - something about two bad experiences with horses. Therefore, normally I get to sit and watch her ride; watch the horse eat grass, etc... I just game then. I helped the owners hook up WIFI (with WPA thank you very much) all over their land. You can pick up a signal any were. Therefore, I do my gaming in the middle of a grass pasture watching a horse eat grass.
If you get a woman that wants all of you free time and will not give you any 'useless' gaming time, you need to sit her down and talk with her. It is your hobby. Point out her 'useless' hobbies that she drags you along on. Be honest but fair with her. If she still throws a fit, I would guess it would be time to start shopping for a new one.
In God we trust, all others require data.