The Daily Grind: Have you gotten spouse aggro?

I'm pretty lucky with my girlfriend. I give her my full attention when we are together, but thankfully she has her own hobbies sewing and beading so it works out well.

On the weekends I stay with her until she falls asleep by around 10pm. Then the rest of the night (and the early morning) is mine. She gets the whole next morning to herself while I sleep.

One weekend I woke up early and noticed she was cranky all morning. After talking about it we realised it was because I was screwing up her morning routine by being "in her space".

I don't feel guilty about playing all night anymore. hehe

Me and my wife get it so much we made a podcast about it for the last 3 years ( www.spouseaggro.com and still going!) hehe But the title is ironic, being that we both play together, weite, host a show, run a small social network and still have a blast doing it!

I really don't get those couples that seem to have nothing to do with each other -- I couldn't survive that. Luckily for me, my wife is amazing, fun and loves games as much as I do. It didn't happen by accident, we both had to be open to new things.

Beau

It is CRITICAL to help your spouse understand the difference between ONLINE games and OFFLINE games. IE: Games which I can pause at any time and say "Sure honey - let's chat!/Watch TV/etc" versus ones where I'm listening to 20 different people on vent and really won't be paying much attn to what you are saying.

Every week. I hate it.

I met my wife playing WoW, we played the game very casually together off and on for a few years (dipping in and out due to real life and other games). As friends neither of us realised just how much we actually liked each other and it wasn't until we both started playing more seriously and raiding together that we really hit it off.

Gaming together was easy to begin with as we were living on different continents and it's a great thing to be able to do something together online when distance keeps you apart.

We most definitely did run into problems when we actually started living together though, mostly because I fell into the very common trap described by a few people above. All our trouble revolved around me taking the game too seriously or getting too absorbed to notice often enough or quickly enough that she wanted, needed and absolutely deserved some attention.

So "spouse aggro" in our house is never really about the game, it's about me falling into the trap of making the mrs feel second best.

Communication is definitely the key and making sure you both know what's going on, why you're distracted, for how long and to what degree is important. If you're with someone then you're with someone, that's got to mean they're the most important thing in your life, so when they call you should answer and not ignore them or put them off for ages.

Having said that some compromise has to be reached to accommodate the gaming spouse as well, if it's an important hobby to them i.e. your spouse and you have to agree when it's ok for you to game undisturbed e.g. raid time.

There's pretty simple degree's of communication and behaviour that are generally acceptable in our house.

1) You're playing casually, leveling, doing some quests or disposable pvp - if she wants attention, asks your opinion, needs a cuddle whatever... she gets it there and then.

2) You're doing something not important but more involved or with other people - it's ok to say "I'll just be two mins, let us kill this boss then I'll tell the guys I need a few mins afk" or some such (unless she's fighting off a fire, a mad axe murderer is at the door or your kid's arm has just fallen off or something!)

3) You want to raid relatively undisturbed for a few hours - get yourselves a schedule and agree some ground rules ahead of time, don't suddenly surprise her with "I'm raiding leave me alone for 3 hours" or "we're shooting POS tonight in Eve babe, I'll talk to you tomorrow morning" when she's expecting to sit down and watch TV with you.

4) Go out of your way when you've a few mins natural break, no matter how involving your gaming is, to get her a drink, give her a cuddle, talk to her about what you're going to do together in an hour or whatever... make some effort!

5) Make sure we spend as much time doing other fun non-gaming stuff together as we do gaming stuff. You've got to have more things you do together so neither of you starts thinking that it's all about the game to the exclusion of the rest of your lives.

I'm still pretty damn awful at this stuff sometimes, I get totally absorbed and will totally blank her or make her wait for 10-15mins without even realising it sometimes. The worst aspect about not being able to manage my own behaviour regarding gaming is that she's actually my best gaming buddy and a complete laugh to play with. It's properly annoying for both of us if I piss her off about something game related and spoil something that's so much fun for both of us.

I really have to keep trying harder!

No problems at all, my wife's just awesome that way.... took 30+ years to find a good one but well worth the wait.

We don't always play the same game, I played more GW than she did until very recently (like last week) and we're both really looking forward to FFXIV. We've played WoW in the distant past til we both grew tired of it, we played FFXI and several games in between.. She doesn't really play many console games but tends to enjoy seeing the story when I play games like FF13 and such.

She games more on her iPhone than I do on mine, which is saying a lot, Luxor and Angry Birds are her thing, and if she's not in a mood to game she has her books and such and I'll just game, no biggie.

like I said, took 30+ years to find a good one but well.. well.. WELL worth the wait.

I circumvented this problem even before my girlfriend was my girlfriend. It was just before we graduated high school, and Eye of the North was on the horizon for Guild Wars. I had just started playing, and was telling her about it over tea. We had been going to tea to discuss my current girlfriend, who we found out was a pathological liar. I dumped her, and poured my soul into GW while I graduated. Anyway, I was having tea, lamenting about my how I was now single, and telling my current-but-not-yet girlfriend how I was spending time with GW now instead of my now-ex. The only previous gaming experience she had had was with Harvest Moon, but she likes fantasy and sci-fi, and she had driven us, so she told me to finish my tea, we were going to Target. She bought Guild Wars, and over three years later, she has more time logged in to the game than I do. I think it's one of the reasons I was totally ok with moving from friends to boyfriend-girlfriend. It's worked out quite well.

...although I just broke my laptop, so while we are waiting around between classes, I am kind of jealous that she can play and I can't >_>

I've had Husband aggro before. Especially when I was playing GuildWars pre-baby aggro. But now that we're playing LOTRO together, spouse-aggro is less of an issue lol

I've always made a point of only dating people who, even if they don't share my hobbies, at least understand them or have equivalent hobbies of their own. Now I am fortunate enough to have a lifelong better half who not only plays with me, but also plays alongside me if we are not playing the same game at the same time.

There's no aggro because gaming time is gaming time for both of us!

Considering my boyfriends learn quickly that when I want to play GW, they better not pester me, it's not a problem. Besides, I perfer gaming nerds for boyfriends so they understand. ^^

My experience is similar to Anskiere's.

I have been gaming in MMOs since SWG launch. And I have always been on the receiving end of spouse aggro. Or as we used to refer to it, needing to earn GFP (girlfriend faction points). It nearly destroyed one of my long term relationships, and for sure contributed to the eventual break up.

Now, I introduced my current GF to Global Agenda. We had a lot of fun doing small group pve and pvp. But she wanted more. She quit our little family guild to join an AvA guild. Now she is playing constantly with a bunch of guys on ventrillo. When I log in to play, I hear a lot of "hitting on" her. Calling her sweetie, dear, etc... And the rest of the guild essentially ignores me. They do Ava at odd hours, so Sometimes she is coming to bed at 8AM.

Also like anskiere, she is living with me and does not work.

Now, I don't want to be the cause of spouse aggro. I totally support her playing. I want to have fun with her in game, and IRL... But when is it too much? Am I even having fun with this guild as they are hitting on my RL GF? Sadly the answer is no.

Any advice to deal with this side of the spouse aggro issue?

I used to play WoW and the raids I used to do took up a lot of time. My Fiance, at the time, hated me not giving her attention.. Eventually she got mad and just left.. Ya, I did try to balance, but it wasn't enough. So I quit afterwards seeing how it can takeover a life, etc. Couple years later, I run into her... She now plays WoW all the time... Sometimes you just can't win in the spouse aggro.

Back when I played DAOC, we could always tell when one of our guildmates had been fighting with his wife. The next time he'd login, he'd find that his wife had dyed all of his armor the most hideous color schemes you could imagine...

I've only dated women who have hobbies of their own. It's the first thing I look for when I meet a girl for the first time. If she doesn't have a regular activity she enjoys by herself then she has major issues of being emotionally needy. At least that's my experience.

I mean I've dated women who was totally into me, but had no real hobbies other than hanging out with friends. She always made me feel obligated to come with her to hang out with her friends, as if I was her trophy. There was nothing wrong with her friends, I liked them all, I just didn't feel the need to go to bars just to say hello and hang.

So one night I was play games with a bunch of friends (some of hers too) and she came home from work and I stopped gaming for 20 minutes just to give her some quality time. Then she expected me to do whatever she wanted, which was to go out and hang with her friends at some new bar. I told her no, and she should go have fun without me. She complained how I never do anything with her, I replyed "You never do anything without me, you have no hobbies that make you happy, I'm not a thing, I'm not here just make you happy. You need to find something you enjoy" She cried and didn't understand it. I left her in bedroom and went to my game room and my friends were packing up their laptops because they heard us arguing.

An hour later she comes out the bedroom and peers her head through door and notices my gaming friends left, she had the nerve to say "Well I guess we can go out now that you're finish gaming with your friends." I wanted to scream, instead I explain some to her. I told her I play games not because of my friends, I enjoy gaming all by myself. I'm very content right now. I have yet to see a single activity make you feel content other than dragging me around to your friends like a man-trophy. I told her I loved her, and I wanted this to work. She need to find a hobby otherwise I was going to break the engagement off.

She says "You're going break up over a video game!?" I told her I have other hobbies, like radio/control cars, I play chess once a month with old friend. She didn't even know about that because Chess was never brought up. She's not really into games except board games like Monopoly or LIFE. I never saw her organize a "gaming night". I always did it, with my family. I play once a month, and she went with me.

Anyways, it's vitally important for a couple to have their own hobbies as well as activities they enjoy doing together. If it's lopsided in anyway then aggro is going hit the fan.