The ups and downs of gaming in my house!

[Feoh]

Okay, I'm back! -cracks knuckles and gets down to business-
We're a two gamer household, which I do understand is much better on my hubby than it is for those poor guys who have non-gamer wives/significant others. They constantly seem to get relationship aggro which must suck.

First, I've learned a few things in the last few years....being a gamer mom makes you auto-cool to your son's friends and borderline psycho to your non-gaming daughters' friends.
Being a gamer wife makes you the ultimate cool spouse to have in the eyes of men who have women who hate gaming. Your spouse/significant other is likely to hear "you are such a lucky man" on a frequent basis. But the reverse is not always true for women who have gaming hubbies..they hear a lot of "uh ok. Does he have a job? And he really is old enough to drink and vote?"!

But...being a two gamer relationship does have its issues.

For me it's..well hard to explain without sounding like a psycho! But here it is...the hubby and I spend our budgeted money to play WoW, when we made the decision to put part of our monthly entertainment monies towards two WoW accounts it was after we BOTH decided that this was something we could enjoy doing together and with other family. And all was grand for a very long time...and then the hubby got bit by the pvp bug.

I do NOT pvp, I do not pvp because I do not enjoy it. I am TOO competative and too bad at it, that's a poisonous combination and for me equals nerd rage which leads to a crippling migraine. So, he made a few arena teams, spent most of 'our' time on the game doing one bg after another. For awhile it didn't bother me that all my questing was now solo or with guildies who weren't my husband, but then..he got raider fever -grunts-

I do not raid, I have zero desire to be grouped up with 24 other people who stroke their e-peens through their obsession with gear scores (that truly are useless but that's another topic for later), cussing one another out on ventrilo when things don't go perfect and/or they don't get a drop they wanted. Essentially I spent 10 years of my life surrounded by 24 people going thru adolescents and I was paid for it, I certainly will NOT pay someone to surround me with 24 people who are my age or older and still going thru adolescence. The hubby though, he enjoys getting gear...he enjoys being able to say they downed Lich King or some other big deal boss type dude.

I nerd raged over it for awhile. Our guild is a family guild. My son made the guild and runs it and I will not ever leave it if for no other reason than that, though to be honest we have some of the best 'game' family I've ever met, but let me get back on track here...I felt like he was betraying the guild and D-fresh (the man child) and I knew..I promise you, just call me Medium, I KNEW that if he went to a raiding guild I'd never see him in game and I'm 98% right on that call.

Most of the time I'm okay with it. But occasionally I feel butt hurt, like the nights he will literally sit in Dalaran because 'maybe' they will need him on a raid and he will simply sit there for hours and hours on end rather than play another toon WITH me. He thinks I get pissy because he's raiding too much, that is SO not the point. It was 'our' game and now we don't even rub elbows in game even when we are playing at the same time. He's in one of the better raiding guilds on our server and that is a source of pride for me that he was good enough to be brought into their fold, but truth be told it hurts my ego in a way...because I KNOW I'm not raider material, it's my choice but still...see..I sound like a psycho..

suffice to say that having two gamers in a relationship has more ups than downs, but it also has some really weird downs!

[Athena]

It's so nice reading stuff like this. Not because I'm glad you are going through this but because I'm not alone.

I've found, in my own relationship, I'm torn between being really hurt and really embarrassed that I have these feelings I do. My issues don't stem from WoW but the xbox...other than that...almost everything you feel mirrors my own.

The Xbox, specifically the Call of Duty games, use to be OUR thing. OMG, I SUCK compared to him. Guaranteed, every single game, he's at the top or nearing the top of the leader board and I'm always found in the basement. Despite the suckiness that goes with that, it was manageable because it was "ours."

Fast forward then and he started to think it would be fun to post gameplay from Call of Duty on youtube. I was in TOTAL support of this with him and even now, I'm SO proud of him how far he's come and what opportunities have come his way because of this. Yet...it's no longer ours.

He has thousands of subscribers and hundreds now, because of this, on his friends list. He can't even go on to play without being bombarded with these snot nose teenage brats wanting to play with him because ZOMG He's YOUTUBE PHAMOUS! Blah

I think the most hurt I felt was recently when he joined a clan. It's really very silly, in the grand scheme of things, but not only did he join a group of people that...was no longer me...but he changed his gamertag to reflect him being in this clan. I felt...slapped in the face...that absolutely NOTHING of what once use to be ours, is the same anymore.

I did buy Black Ops but haven't played it yet and honestly, doubt I will with him. Between feeling the stupid I do because he's so much better than me, it's just something I not longer equate to being "ours."

Here's where the really hard part comes in...at least for me.

I'm hurt and I don't feel I should be. I'm SO proud of him and don't want him to give this us. I'm competitive and embarrassed I'm nowhere NEAR as good as him so find it hard to play and can't seem to break out of that rut to realize that if I still wanted to play with him we would and could and he'd in no way make me feel stupid that I was a walking retard with a gun in this game. I find it hard not to resent him for breaking free of what once was just ours but would be SO mad if he gave this all up because of me cause he enjoys it so much and I ENCOURAGED him to do so in the first place. I feel replaced by hundreds of strangers when he's never purposely made me feel that way.

It's hard. It's tough. I just toss it up to as much as we have in common with gaming, he'll never compete with the estrogen that flows through my body. I just haven't figured out how to balance the two and maybe I never will.

[Feoh]

I find it hard not to resent him for breaking free of what once was just ours but would be SO mad if he gave this all up because of me cause he enjoys it so much and I ENCOURAGED him to do so in the first place. I feel replaced by hundreds of strangers when he's never purposely made me feel that way.

and THAT is exactly how I feel, especially the replaced by strangers part. Gets harder to swallow it back down when he goes out of his way to make the effort to play with me because eventually he is swooned back to the raiding, and I KNOW..I honestly do know that it's not about him not loving me or loving to play with me..we just love different aspects of this particular game...see..folks who are gamers in relationships with non-gamers they think the two gamer relationship people have it super easy...we honestly don't.

[Athena]

No, we don't, and for me today it just got even worse.

[Twîtch]

I haz no relationship

The closest I got was when I was seeing a coworker over the summer briefly and he still razzes me about "your WoW habit". I finally snapped today and said "look asshole, I have a full time job, family that I take care of, I go to school and right now I have a B average in my class (I'd have an A but I get panicky on tests and it goes to shit for me). At least I don't 'race stock cars and head to the dunes on weekends pursuing my lost teen years' " -.-

Maybe its for the best I'm single. I have a lot of rage and men piss me off easily.



On the upshot, I'm the "fun mom" who gets all the jokes and memes, until a kid pisses me off then I"m the mom who hides the authenticators. ^_^

[greenfairy]

I really was wondering if this is a WoW thing or a pre expansion feeling. Feoh, Bea was telling me the exact same thing yesterday. She really wants to quit at this point because all her husband is doing is preparing for the auction house's first few days after the expansion hits and I haven't had much time to play with her either. (Isabelle is taking up a lot of my time right now) She says she didn't start playing this game to be by herself. I know what she means though, when Hilt quit I kinda was like OMG my partner is gone! And the game isn't as much fun by yourself as it is with reliable people to mess around with. I personally think this is all pre expansion blues. The ICC raids have gone on WAYYYYYY too long and people are bored.

Also as far as your view of raiding. OMG you hit my feeling square in the nose. I was in Nerd Rage for a bit and all I did was run around Dalaran looking for the Higher learning books for hours every day. Raiding was the most boring stressfull experinece in my life. If I wanted to be told I sucked, wasn't good enough, and to learn my class while waiting for the raid to start and then to zone into ICC and be cut from the raid before the first pull because the person they had been waiting for the last hour and a half finally logged on, then be ignored when they form an alt run for gear............ I might as well go back to work because my job is more fun! (And well my job isn't fun.) I will NEVER join another raiding guild. (Now if Aces wanted to form a small causual group I would be in for it as long as it was upbeat and fun!)

And on a final note, I swear my next husband (and no I don't want another) will HAVE to be a gamer. Mine isn't and to top it off is one of those "Games are a waste of time" people. I can't image what is worse having a husband that is sitting in Dalaran waiting to raid without you while you want to game with him or one that is raging at you because you got within 50 feet of your computer and looked like you might log on. UGH no both are equally bad.....

[Athena]

See...I could never be in a relationship with a "games are a waste of time" man.

I've been in one yet he thought nothing of his RC habit or his comic book collection but wasn't tolerant of my gaming stuff.

[greenfairy]

Ehhh I just ignore him. :-p He works nights A LOT so I get plenty of game time. And, even when he's home I just wait for him to get on Youtube and plug his headphones in, then I pounce on my computer. Hey he was on first right? I just wouldn't marry another non gamer.