Games Are Killing My Marriage

by Anonymous
(Rock Island, Il)

Ok. I don't like talking about things with anyone, but here it goes.

I'm 29 years old, happily married and have a son. He is 1 now. When I was 20 I was drinking and sleeping around a lot. I had lost my job, girl friend of 3 years and my dad was dying. I was a self-centered asshole. Like I said, I was 20.

I have grown into a man since then. My wife, then girl friend really helped. She saved me. She never put up with my bullshit and told me off. She saved my life. I'm not sure if the sex and drinking back then was an addiction. All I can say is it was very bad.

Well my problem started with the online game World of Warcraft. At first we played together. It was so much fun. We would run around and just have fun. Well then I started to play my own char when she was not home, no big deal. I was still having lots of fun and meeting great people. There was no problem until I stopped getting stuff done around the house and I never wanted to stop playing. I would just say "hey babe let's just try to get a lvl in before we go out tonight".

Well it was not long till she had enough. And being the person she is she just let me know she was hating how much time we spent on the game, and that she wanted to do real stuff not just fake stuff all the time.

I said yeah I get it, and we dropped it. Well, she dropped it and I would sneak on anytime I could. She found out and was very mad. I had lied about what I was doing. I was ashamed. I told her it would not happen again. I lied. It happened a lot more times before she said it had to go. I stopped playing.

I have not started playing it. It's gone! I miss it almost every day. I hate myself for that. If it was around. I would play. Now the new problem is Magic the Gathering. It's a super fun card game that we used to play in high school.

She has started a new job and I'm staying at home with our son. I'm very lucky. He is amazing. Well at her work I have made friends with her coworkers, 4 of them play magic. I started playing magic at her work all the time.

After lunch one of them is always free so why not. It's so much fun. I have no other friends. We moved here from far away. In the past month everyone has been too busy to play. I started to just sit at home and build decks and never get to play them. I started to make up decks out of cards we don't own. I got on eBay and started stalking the cards I wanted. I never told her I was doing it and I'm in charge of the bills.

Tonight, she was using my phone -- hers was dead --and I got an email and she checked it. All trust is broken. I hurt her again. I'm breaking my marriage with lies about games Wtf is my problem. I was relieved that she caught me, but also very sad that I had let her down again and now with something new.

Why am I so weak? God help me if I start doing something bigger. I have no clue how to even make this better. I just wish I could have fun without it becoming all I can think about.