15% of Divorces Due to Gaming

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I have a hard time blaming games for divorce. It takes two to tango and if gaming is making a spouse feel neglected, it is time for that spouse to step up the plate with something more interesting than a game

 

I don't agree. Games can be very addictive, especially online games in my experience. Many hardcore gamers would rather play than do much of anything else. It's not that the other party, or life outside the game in general, aren't interesting. It's that many gamers have an absolutely one track mind. Remember the couple that let their baby daughter DIE from malnutrition because they were caught up in a game??

Baby dies while parents play

If 15% of divorces are now attributed to games, that's a shocking figure. I wonder if it's true.

 

I agree with Snook. First of all, most people don't become gamers when they get married. Most people who are gamers were gamers from when they were kids, and remained gamers after they became adults. So to the women who are upset that their husbands play video games, I can only ask "Why did you marry a gamer?" If they were that hard core into gaming there's no way they could have hid it from you before you got married.

Secondly, even if that 15% figure is true - and that seems excessively high IMO - it has to be for hardcore gamers. While I don't game daily, there's certainly more days that I do than I don't. But like everything else, moderation is key. On weekdays when I get home from work, between trying to get a workout in, dinner, playing with my son (sometimes on the computer), bath time, reading bedtime stories, and bedtime, well, there isn't a hell of a lot of time to play games.

Most days I play for about half an hour. Sometimes if both my wife and son go to bed early, I'll head downstairs around 9:00 and maybe put in 60 to 90 minutes before I'm ready for bed too. I think the reason I've been into D2 again for a long time now is because it's a game where you can easily partition your time. There's waypoints in each act, so there are natural stopping points. You've feel like you've accomplished something with your character, and you don't have to go back through and re-do what you just did next time you sit back down.

All it takes is some self-discipline. If your gaming is taking away time from your family, you really don't have your priorities straight. OTOH, if you knew you were marrying an avid gamer, then you shouldn't be surprised that he's still a gamer after you get married.

Some women feel like they can "change" their partners once they get married, which is rarely true provided the guy has a spine. If your partner games in moderation, you knew he did before you got married, and you don't like it... well... that's more a "you" problem than a "him" problem. And everyone has hobbies that their partner isn't into. I don't make fun of my wife because she cannot miss an episode of American Idol, or likes to watch HGTV after Jack goes to bed... Again, unless you're really unobservant, you knew that BEFORE you got married.

 

Wives have been peeved by men's hobbies for all eternity. My mother divorced my father cause he spent too much time training dogs (or so she claimed). When a woman feel that something else is more important and interesting than her she is pissed be it gaming or anything else.

 

Well, you game in moderation and aren't getting a divorce over it as far as I'm aware, so I suspect that the examples from your life won't mirror those of the folks who are getting a divorce over gaming.

I met my current wife when I was an out-of-control gamer, and yes, I went way out of my way to hide that little fact from her. If I didn't hang out with her because I wanted to game... that's not what I told her. That would not have flown.

Once we were married and living together, it was obviously a lot harder to hide.

I strongly suspect that most of the people who get divorced because of gaming are those who choose gaming over their families. It happens. I know of someone who was so caught up in his online game that he missed the birth of his child. He was completely out of control. And he lost his marriage as a result. Rightfully so!

And if you didn't notice, I cited an example of a couple that let their 3 month old child DIE! That's how out of control some people can get. It takes a lot less than that to end a marriage.

These are the sort of people who lose their marriages. There are a lot of them out there. Southpark had a great World of Warcraft episode a few years back that had more truth in it than a lot of gamers want to realize.

For the most part, we are not talking the people get their customary 2 hours a night in before they go to sleep, but are otherwise balanced and productive people. To divorce over that would be silly. Such a marriage obviously has a lot more problems than gaming.

So no, it doesn't always take 2 to tango. If ONE person drops out of the marriage, due to gaming, an affair, or just plain laziness it's enough to kill a marriage. Blaming the other party for not being "interesting" enough really sits wrong with me.

 

The destructive power of addictive behavior notwithstanding, what's generally at the heart of a failed marriage is not the results of disaffection or boredom or what have you (i.e. playing video games when you should be spending time with your spouse), but the disaffection or boredom itself. There are certainly extreme cases like Marceror cites where some obsessive behavior is the culprit, but they don't account for 15% of failed marriages. I've been involved in a lot of divorces, and it's (almost) never the video game. It's "he doesn't love me anymore and he's always playing that stupid video game!" or "He won't do his part and he's always playing that stupid video game!" or "I'm just not into her anymore so I just tune out and play this stupid video game," or "She's sleeping around so I just tune out and play this stupid video game."

The 1% or so who are actually nutty and obsessive have bigger issues than their troubled marriages. As for the rest, men and women generally want somewhat different things (both out of life and out of a marriage), so getting the two to align to some degree is tricky no matter what. Those of you with successful marriages know all about that. Playing a video game or watching American Idol instead of working on that won't make matters any better.

I actually think men get the crappier end of the stick on this score nowadays, because women are taking over the cheating market - they go get the 'strange' now while the goofball husband is home playing WoW, instead of the husband getting it while the wife waits at home and raises the children like it used to be. Yay for womens' empowerment.

 

That speaks to my point about those marriages having deeper problems than a game. The game would simply be an excuse, and not the cause of the marriage ending.

That's why I find the figure of 15% of marriages ending because of gaming shocking. I wouldn't expect that many marriages to fall prey to overboard gamers.

The other scenarios that you site don't sound like marriages ending over gaming, but because the marriage has grown stale.

That said, I think that there's a lot more than 1% who go completely overboard and lose themselves in a game. I have known A LOT of people with this issue.

 

Well yeah - and I conceded that in my previous post. I just have a hard time believing that 15% of divorces are from people like that, since I know of so few people who act that way once they are adults. I can think of one person in my life who is an out-of-control gamer, and remarkably, he's still married after 10 years.

Well that was a match made in heaven. They were both really into gaming - I'm sure their weren't marital woes there. And there are obvious mental issues there if you place gaming above the life of your child. And again, these people are a tiny fraction of all gamers.

I agree with the first sentence - having a hard time agreeing with the second sentence.

I saw it and thought it was hysterical! Of course, if I were an avid WoW player, maybe I wouldn't have thought so. I do think WoW is the equivalent of digital crack though - since it's pay to play, I'd feel obligated to play as much as I could to "get my money's worth".

Keep in mind, I didn't mean for my first post to come off as "no one loses their marriage because of gaming". It was "I do not believe 15% of all divorces are because of gaming". Just going through the statistics: 95% of all people in the US get married, 40% of marriages end in divorce, 15% of marriages end because of gaming, would mean approximately 6% of all men in the US are out-of-control gamers. That seems way high to me.

If you are so out of control in your gaming that something major happens like you get divorced, or lose a job, or something like that, it's really time to re-evaluate your priorities in life. It suggests a mental condition to me, or at the very least speaks to a lack of maturity and responsibility - which would probably manifest itself in other aspects of your life outside of gaming.

EDIT: Ninja-ed!

+1 - yeah - that's what I was getting at! I meant it couldn't be 15% just because of the gaming issue.

 

I agree. I'm still having a hard time swallowing that figure.

 

Agreed. If 15% is accurate, Fantasy Football/Baseball has to account for at least double that.

 

The article's a bit pedestrian with the "according to reports" and so on (maybe those are the same reporters who reported that scientists had discovered that Jessica Alba is hot), so if what they're really saying is that video games are simply factors in 15% of divorce cases, I could buy that.

I think the question to ask is if there were no WoW or no Halo, would the marriage have survived? In most cases, I doubt it. There would have been something else.

 

Gaming was a factor in my divorce. The core issue, however, was that my wife was a nagging pain in the tush who could sure dish out the criticism, yet when similar criticism was levied against her she went crying to her friends that it was abuse. I took to gaming because it beat trying to talk to a hypocritical, arrogant brick wall.

 

I checked the link "according to reports" pointed to, and that brought me to an article that claimed the source of this information was 'Divorce Online'.

However, a quick search at Divorce Online on the words game, games and gaming yielded no relevant results. So I would have to say that the source of this information is very much in question.

 

This where some women are smarter than some men [note, I wrote some women]. They undertand that the underlying dynamics of life change once a couple starts a home: Homes require upkeep; children need care and engagement from both parents, professional career becomes more critical for a family and dependents, family commitments are greater and more time consuming. Men who believe that their lives won't change with marriage, or that the woman will engage the kids just by themselves, are, well...how can I say it politely...?

Btw, Aldeth, I know how engaged you are with Jack and how important family matters to you.

 

Yeah - following your link, I see that Divorce Online's own Dr. Mark Keenan says that video games are "used by men in particular as a means of escape from an already unhappy relationship," and said that video games shouldn't be blamed for previously rocky relationships.

Source: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/...iction-blamed-for-15-percent-of-divorces.html

 

To be honest, in regards to the "all women think they can change their husbands" that is nonsense, whilst true that a relationship changes once you cohabit that is not the same as the point you are married. I know in the UK at least most people live together for a proper amount of time before marrying and I know that my mother wishes she had known what it was like to live with her husband before tying the knot.

Whilst SOME women will expect a man to change after getting married, there are just as many men who expect to be able to change without any consequences.

There is also addition to consider. A gamer can play games fairly casually then one day find that one game they can't pull themselves away from - I'm pretty sure some of you will know the feeling with books. Difference being that games can be replayed with alterations, games can be modded and particularly ones online can have content continually added to it. Games also have competition that is easily accesible and solitary teams. Differing from sports which generally have schedules, less flexability in hours and require other people to arrange and record adequately to be worthwhile.

I know Kev can very easily get addicted to a game, then when it's finished he probably won't return to it. Fallout 2 being a previous example where I pretty much lost my boyfriend for a week and I made the mistake of installing Icewind Dale 2 on his laptop (which we'll probably play online together as he's getting a little frustrated with the rules, so that will help from that getting an ongoing issue.) Previous relationship DID have gaming cause serious issues. The problem? Rockband. He became obsessed with rockband to the point he wasn't eating, was ignoring his phone, coursework, girlfriend and would just stay locked in his room.

So while 15% is absurdly high, and most of those cases are a scapegoat excuse, I can certainly see it being an increasing problem in a relationship. Established or not.

 

"Gaming"? Like hide the sausage with the secretary? Or perhaps the ever popular guessing game "What are doing home so early?" I would think the numbers would be higher than 15%....

 

Wrong game. That's like the 80% marriage killer game there.