My fiancé and I have been together for 11 months and we really love each other, but in recent months we’ve had to deal with the death of a friend, me switching from one bad job to an even worse job, and a lot of financial struggles. He’s taken to hiding away upstairs and playing online games with friends. He has tried getting me to play with him, however I’m not a huge gamer, so every time has ended with me feeling terrible because I’m not good at it and I don’t enjoy it, and he gets frustrated with me for not playing the game well enough (basically me dying very early into every round). I’ve stopped playing with him and am denying invites when he does ask because it was just causing both of us a lot of stress.
So for the past three weeks he’s come home from work, we’ve had dinner, and then he goes straight upstairs to play and I usually go to bed. Both of us struggle with depression, and the past couple of months have been really hard on both of us. I know he’s putting so much time into games as a distraction, but it’s making me feel extremely neglected and lonely. I sucked it up for a couple of weeks because I didn’t want to take something away from him that was making him happy. However, after two weeks, I completely broke down for the first time in months. He finally caught on that I wasn’t doing well and when he asked why, I was honest with him and told him I was feeling neglected. He apologized profusely and said it wasn’t his intention, and I told him I knew that but that it still really hurt me. We talked about making compromises and finding things we could start doing together, including finding a game we both like.
We spent the night together watching TV and went to bed fairly early, and I was feeling better about everything. However tonight rolls around and it’s like we never even had the discussion. He came home from work, took a shower, and went right upstairs to play games. He came down an hour or so later and reheated leftovers for dinner for us and put on an episode of a show we’ve been watching, and I thought he was going to stay downstairs with me, but as soon as we finished eating, not even halfway through the episode, he put his dishes in the sink, turned off the TV, and went right back upstairs. I really want to make things work but don’t know what to do at this point. I was honest with him and told him what he was doing that hurt me and what he could do to fix it, and he said he wanted to change and be better for me, but went right back to what he was doing.
– Not playing
I got a little hung up on your first sentence, where you say you’ve been with your fiancé for 11 months. That’s not even a year. Sometimes it’s easier to work on problems if marriage isn’t looming in the distance. Just something to consider.
As for the video games – and the talk that resulted in only one night of change – it sounds like you might need The Talk: Part 2. This game thing has become such a part of his routine that it might take a little while for him reset his brain. Also, did you talk about when it is OK for him to leave you to play? I have to assume that on some nights, he’ll be fully engaged with you, but on others he’ll want to do his own thing, whether that be game time or hanging out with friends – or both.
I mean, that’s a part of it, right? When he plays, he’s interacting with his community. I have a friend who stayed with me for a few weeks years ago, and he played some fancy video game for hours every night. It took me a while to understand that he was playing with friends from his hometown, and that he was talking to them on the phone while he did it. For him, it was a way to stay close with an important group of people. If your fiancé is having that kind of experience, he might not want to give that up altogether.
Part 2 of the conversation should be about balance. Some evenings, it will feel natural for one or both of you to do your own thing. So … how should that be communicated? Can you set aside time for all of these activities? Please know that you’re allowed to get help together. If your problems have become overwhelming, consider seeing a professional about it. It might be a game-changer.
– Meredith
Readers? Is it all or nothing with the games?
