Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ghostwind" data-source="post: 311389" data-attributes="member: 3060">Back on TopicLet me quickly outline my situation so perhaps everyone will understand why I posed this question in the first place.  I've been married 13 years and for the first couple of years she gamed with me (we were gaming about once every other week at that time).  Although she tried to understand and even like gaming, she thought it was a huge waste of time to spend 8-10 hours sitting around doing essentially nothing.  Consequently, she quit gaming and was willing to let me game by myself (although she wasn't pleased about it).  The group's gaming time soon went to once a month due to everyone's differing work schedules.  For most of this time, I worked in a situation where I had every other weekend off and many times she felt that gaming that one day a month took away from time that her and I should spend together.  This is where the resentment and hatred began to form, I believe.  I should also point out that because of her legal career, my gaming hobby had (and still has) to be kept a secret because of the beliefs that D&D and Satanism were directly correlated (which are still believed today in the legal/social work systems).  When we had our first child over four years ago, my gaming time had further reduced to once every 6-8 weeks because of conflicting schedules and so forth.  Again, the issues remained, especially the time one.  Despite the fact that we now have two kids and that my group now meets 4-6 times a year, each time I leave to play for 6-8 hours usually results in a heated exchange (but not necessarily an argument).  I am a stay at home dad who has chosen to sacrifice his professional career in order to take care of our kids and maintain the household. My only real form of recreation outside of family things are gaming-related and computer related.  Now add all of what I have said to the fact that I have also begun to forge a new career in this industry as a writer which does demand a considerable amount of what little free time I do have and you maybe understand why I was asking the questions about how other folks handle this situation.  I have to say that honestly, if all of my gaming stuff was destroyed through some unforeseen circumstance, such as the house burning down, she wouldn't shed a single tear and if I wanted to replace those items, it would come strictly from whatever money I earned on my own from writing...So how would you handle this or have you dealt with this in your own experiences?To head off some of the responses that inevitably will be brought up...*Yes, we have discussed how she feels and no, it is never productive simply because she feels that gaming is wrong now matter how you explain it.*Yes, this is a time spent issue (and largely a control of that time issue).*Yes, I make time for family activities and often sacrifice large blocks of time for those purposes (like entire weekends).*I average about 4-6 hours a day on the computer doing my writing, with most of that being after everyone has gone to bed (but that is a whole other argument).  So I don't feel like I am taking away from her or the kid's personal time on a large scale.*No, divorce is not an option either...</blockquote>

Verification