My boyfriend has started playing Star Wars: The Old Republic… Gaming addiction help!?
Which is fine – I like to play with him and it’s a lot of fun. However we pretty recently joined a guild with some super hardcore gamers who do raids pretty much 7 days a week… That isn’t really my scene, I’m more of a casual gamer, but my boyfriend is super into that (and so is his best friend who we play with as well).
I can tell he’s going to be doing a lot of those raids with the rest of the guildies, which wouldn’t really be an issue for me if he would do it in moderation, but I know it’s going to be a daily thing and I know raids can take hours to complete. He played WoW back in it’s hay-day too and he was one of those people whose life was pretty much ruined by it (I wasn’t in the picture for that, but this is what I’ve heard from his family and most of his friends).
I think there’s every chance of him repeating this unhealthy cycle, because even the way he’s playing now isn’t that great. On weekends he will stay up all night Friday, sleep in til late afternoon on Saturday and start playing again the second he wakes up until Sunday morning, then do the same thing Sunday night but go to bed around 2am because he needs to get up for work. On weekdays he stays up until around 2-3am playing as well (might be later once he starts raiding).
As selfish as it might sound I know that I’m going to be pretty much neglected while he’s doing this – but there is also the whole issue of late nights, neglecting personal hygiene and health and essentially digressing as a human being thing that’s got me concerned as well.
I’d love for him to be mature about his playing time and not forget to do the basic things (like shower) and spend time with me (a movie or two, watching shows we like to watch together every week… as well as you-know-what), but every time I try to approach him about how I think this might affect him he gets defensive. I understand that gaming is an outlet and a way for him to relax, but it’s certainly not the only one there is, and I don’t want to be ignored for years until he gets this out of his system.
Should I try talking to him, or give it a couple of weeks to see how mature he is about playing; or should I just cut and run? I really don’t want to break up with him, but I also don’t want to waste some of the best years of my life with someone who would rather kill pixelated monsters than spend time with me.
To put it into better perspective: This weekend he clocked at *least* 24 hours gaming – not 24 hours straight, but I still think that’s a ridiculous amount of time to be spent on this. This is without raids, this is just straight PVP and flashpoint time.
