Hey everyone quick background. I am a p addict, I am married and have been for 6 years. I lied to my wife about my addiction before even knowing about it and hurt her deeply. I have (since about January 2nd ,2023) been PMO free in order to prove to myself and my wife that I can live without P. I haven’t lied to my wife since that time frame either Here is my current dilemma: I play video games pretty frequently usually alone or with my wife. Most days when I am working I don’t play during work (because I work from home) but I will usually jump on immediately after work so long as there is not pressing to do list things that need taken care of. On average a day I play for about 1-4 hours of games. I’ve never had a hard time putting video games away to take care of things in my life though like a shower or feeding my pets or even feeding myself. So am I addicted to video games? If you ask me I say no because I don’t suffer from playing them and I don’t feel bad about playing them ever if anything it is the tiny amount of joy I can experience most days with having depression/anxiety. My wife seems to think I have a second problem with them for some reason and not trying to be naïve I want to listen and consider her perspective because I value it. Also I should mention I am stubborn and did not believe I was a PMO addict when someone first told me I might be, in fact I scoffed at the idea of being addicted to PMO. My thing with that addiction compared to me playing video games is during my PMO addiction I didn’t take care of things or myself and always felt terrible about it once I was done. I wouldn’t finish school work and I would constantly make poor choices like spending too much money or too much time on PMO. I have rarely felt that way with video games. While I definitely have spent my fair share of money and time of games I never neglected my relationships or my self care during them. idk I’d really love to hear an outsiders thoughts on this.
Ask your wife why she think you have a problem. What behaviors make her think that you have a problem. Probe and find out if this is some way of her saying to you “I need/want more time/help/love/attention/patience from you.” Based on what you said, I don’t see it as a problem as long as it’s not affecting your marriage, work, household duties and aspects of your life that are meaningful to you. Many people have coping methods and hobbies that help them escape.
I think she likely sees this as you replacing one addiction with another (which is common). It's great that you've been avoiding P, but unless you're actually doing recovery work to deal with the P addiction, gaming is just helping you stay sober for now, and sobriety does not equal recovery. Your wife sees this as a problem because you're not actually working recovery. Typically, if a PA is just simply avoiding acting out, it's only a matter of time before they're right back where they were in active addiction. What other things are you doing for recovery besides abstinence and posting here on NoFap? Do you see a therapist or have a support group? Have you spent any time reading books or articles to learn what it takes to get into long-term recovery? Have you done any deep introspection to discover the root of your addiction? Do you have an accountability partner? Are you doing any workbooks or trying to learn how to be empathetic to your wife for her betrayal trauma? There are so many more things required for recovery than just avoiding P, and healing your marriage will take even more work. The fact that your wife sees your gaming as a "second problem" suggests that, to her, there are still significant changes that need to be made. Obviously it's much better that you're no longer consumed with P, but replacing one unhealthy coping mechanism with another doesn't really solve anything. That doesn't mean that you can never spend time playing games, but using it as a means to escape dealing with uncomfortable realities and/or emotions will only prove more damaging in the long run.
My perspective as a woman is that 1-4 hours is a hell of a lot of time to sit and play video games. Depending on what else is going on in life (do you have kids, do you work long hours, does she work long hours, do either of you go to school, etc) that might be a significant portion of your "free" time that, in the sense of being an equal partner, should probably in part be going to life maintenance (cleaning, grocery shopping, home maintenance, car maintenance, etc.). I'm the working spouse who gets off work early (2:40) with a stay at home father husband and honestly neither of us have time for that. I struggle to fit in an hour at the gym 5 days a week and that is a health investment, eg. My immediate instinct is that a lot of the invisible labor is falling on her because of the amount of time you spend gaming. Which may not be true,.but is a conversation you should have and you should spend some time just watching her to see how much free time like that she is actually getting each day. I literally can't imagine coming home after work and blowing off doing my share around the home to play video games, but I know lots of others feel differently.
A big problem with the addiction recovery world is it's commonly compartmentalized into the symptoms or what you're addicted to, which is about as meaningful as having medical specialists that specializes in coughs or something. It doesn't matter if it's porn, gaming or something else, until people start getting there's addiction switching and cross addiction there won't even be a recognition there's something deeper going on let alone how to address that.
For my recovery so far I have read two books on the subject of P/betrayal. I am going to individual therapy and have undergone EMDR for childhood trauma. I’m seeing at CSAT weekly, tomorrow is our 4th meeting. And I want to say this last because I am most proud of this but I’m currently in a 90 day challenge on here and going on 50 days without PMO. I’ve just recently learned of edging and started to cut that out as well. Not trying to say anything in response just wanted to answer your question as to what I’ve done so far.
Thank you for responding and sharing your perspective. We don’t have kids and I sat down and talked with her for a while yesterday about it and we agreed that video games is allowed in my life but on a restricted basis. We were able to agree on a reasonable time for the video games. I also want to clarify my situation a little as well so it doesn’t seem like I am just ignoring her and everything else and playing video games. I have a lot of free time at work and work from home. I don’t play games during work because I like to be as productive as possible at that time. I usually tend to items throughout the workday and I always make time to hangout with her and sometimes we play video games together. Not undermining what you said I think it is definitely valuable to consider all those things and hear different outside perspectives on the subject.
While I agree that video game addiction is very real and very possible for me to have a cross addiction I don’t think its the case for me. I don’t use video games to escape my feelings and I don’t get engrossed in them to the point where I can’t say I need to put it away. I’ve never had feelings of shame or regret attached with a video game in fact in most cases its made me a more social person because I’ve found friends to play with and be involved with. I think I play a large amount of time on video games because I have a large amount of free time to handle my business thankfully.
I hope I’m not previously misquoting myself here. But I don’t do it every day of the week. Some days I do different stuff like work on the house or yard or invest time in my ambitions. I think they are good for helping save money because they make time go by fast and they keep you engaged creatively. If I have too much free time me and the wife tend to go a spending frenzy because we are DINKS (For the unknowing: Double Income No Kids).
You said on average a day. But we all spend time on things that are important to us… I’m sure you can’t imagine spending 2 hours a day cleaning stalls! Lol. I see nothing wrong with it if, it isn’t causing problems in your marriage, or work or with your health. Since your wife brought it up though, perhaps it does cause a bit of a problem? My husband had to give it up because like you, he could literally play for hours. Like your wife I expressed a concern for how long he did okay and he decided he wasn’t good at regulating so he just stopped. Same with alcohol, my husband never had a problem with it but I expressed concern because addicts tend to switch addictions when giving up the primary addiction. He hasn’t had alcohol in 3 years, and hasn’t played computer games in 2.5 years?
You might try this: only play video games with your wife. If this is easy to do, great. If it's difficult to do, you may not be addicted, but you certainly have a compulsion to play video games. As many others have already said, if you discover that it /is/ a compulsion, that's telling you to consider what you might be avoiding. Like you, after work I would play video games for hours. Some of that was with my children, but much of it was solo. Now, I can't imagine playing video games alone. There are so many other things to do! Sadly, the things I have to do is figure out my investments, plan for my retirement, find out whether we spend more than we make, clean the junk out of my rooms. You know, all the stuff I didn't want to look at so I played video games (and watched porn) instead. Not saying you're the same. But if you can't stop, really stop playing solo, I urge you think think about why that is. Good luck -EK EDIT: TBH, I spend a lot of time, arguably too much time, here on NF. Talk about replacing one addiction with another...
1 to 4 hours a day seems like a lot of gaming to me if your married and especially if you have kids. Try and test out your potential addiction to gaming by abstaining for a week or so. Could you do that? If not then there's definitely an element of addiction to it. I know there's a lot out there on dopamine release etc. And I'm sure you've read much of it. But even social media and cell phones are addicting in similar ways PMO can be just at different levels of intensity. I used to game a lot too when I was younger. And I think it most definitely can affect people the same way PMO can. Edit:. I see you clarified that you don't play every day. It still might be good to just test if you are able to abstain without any issues.
I play video games frequently but when I get bored I just turn it off. Online games can be addictive but when i get eyestrain i just turn if off no problem . With porn the novelty doesn't wear off even if I cause myself pain the rabbit hole just keeps going deeper; there's always something new.
