So...here is our story. My husband and I have been together about 5 1/2 years. We have only been married for a few months. For the first 2 1/2 years of our life...I never knew about video game addiction or that my husband played in his past. I feel as though this big secret was kept from me. So one day, surprisingly I remember the weekend that he installed which we are coming up on 3 years. He started playing video games, I had no clue that he used to or that it was this huge virtual world. I feel as though a recovering alcoholic would tell their boyfriend that they used to be an alcoholic. I feel slightly tricked into the relationship and I take FULL responsibility in staying. Many times huge regret that I stayed at all. I have dealt with so much and I feel as though I have not had a partner for a long time and shame on me for staying and marrying someone like this. With all of the fighting came all of the promises that were never kept.
So, for the past year it has been unbareable. He has been missing quite a bit of work and his situation is where he can get away with it (do not reveal how). So his family and I had an intervention and it did not end well. You know addicts MEAN NASTY and NOT LISTENING. After thinking through the situation and what had occured he came up with an agreement, which was that he finish out the "season" and play the last tournament which is this Sunday. The internet has to be completely disconnected, which is hard for someone that is looking for a new job to replace my current one. BUT I am willing to do anything that it takes to support and make this finally happen. So things have continued the same as they had been before...the only thing getting me through is knowing it is all coming to an end. During this time period he has now used gambling as a source of going out and having fun. With obviously losing money, because like with all things he does not know when and how to stop. So now having to deal with this as well has turned my life upside down. In the past year has downloaded apps on his phone that relate to online dating or chatting sites with other women. "Nothing" has come of it and he has uninstalled them as soon as I find them. I guess I just dont understand how someone could be so insensitive to their significant other, supposedly the person that they love more than anything. I am scared to death to have a family with him, knowing that this addiction could come back at any time. I want to trust him...I just dont know.
So willing to move past everything and let everything go, with many deep breaths and using my frustration towards positive things such as exercise and spending time with good friends. I have given myself an entire new life just because I have been lonely and refused to sit and wait for him to be "ready".
The internet will be disconnected Monday coming up, but this week he has been hinting about how he has been controlling it this week. The reason he feels that he has been controlling it, is because I have not yelled at him in a couple weeks. The same thihgs occur with the exception of going to work has been better...but weeks does not turn into control. So he has been using all of his free time with the game to make up for going to work. So this hinting last night put me over the edge, him telling me that he is going to play again in a few months. My frustration over took my sanity and we starting really arguing. I can not believe that he will go through all of the withdrawl only to go back to the game.
He will not read any books that I have gotten from the library and I even found a movie on gaming addiction. He refuses to get help, will not talk to ANYONE about it. I am scared that my life is going to finally go back to normal and one day we are going to be right back where we started. One person can only take so much and if that happens I have no problem divorcing him. I just dont want this to happen when I am pregrant one day and my body cant take that stress or not working because I am taking care of our family.
How do you help someone that refuses to help himself?
Welcome to OLGA, norzecho. Thanks for being willing to trust your story to people on an online message board...and I have to say I think you're right to be concerned. As a gaming addict, I have to say that what your husband is doing sounds an awful lot like the actions of a gaming addict, and what I've learned about both my addiction and addiction in general tells me that the honest answer to your question at the end isn't going to be pretty. If you're not in the mood for an unpleasant (but honest) answer to the question, then feel free to stop reading...I offer this answer to you in the hope that it will help, but you are free to make of it whatever you will.
You asked, "How do you help someone that refuses to help himself?" Well...when the problem is addiction, the only answer I've seen work is that you don't help. At all. With anything. Addicts like me are perfectly ok with watching life crumble to pieces around us...as long as we have our game, surely everything will work out somehow. The only unthinkable act would be to give up that game completely and forever (there's a reason I still take life one day at a time...thinking about this as a "never again" thing would be hard for me even after better than a month of happy, game-free life). Making promises (in all honesty) and then breaking them later (using an excuse that even I know is weak) is preferable to giving up the games. Manipulating people to get me what I want is preferable to givin up the games.
Addict thinking often runs along lines like this..."I've been getting away with it for so long, surely everything must be fine...but I don't really want to think about it, so let me play another game..." 30 seconds later the fear is once again gone...and I am free to keep frying my brain with endless hours of games that I don't even enjoy anymore...but I won't think about that fact either...that might rob me of the blissful peace from of all the problems in my life that I'm not ready to face. Those problems haven't actually disappeared, but they've disappeared from my awareness, and that's all I'm looking for when I game.
Anyway...done with trip down the rabbit hole to the Horribleland of addicted thinking. Recovery is hard. Far harder than any non-addict will ever understand. The only reason I'm able to do the hard work of recovery is that I've gotten to a point where I've decided that basically anything under the sun is preferable to going back to my games. It was a painful trip to that point, but the only person who can do the work of recovery in my life is me. Recovery is too hard for me to be willing to do it otherwise...I have to be doing it for me, or it won't work. Please...take care of yourself. Spend time with your friends, and maybe join a f2f support group for spouses of addicts like alanon or nar-anon.
You might also find it helpful to check out the sticky about the subject here (http://olganon.org/?q=node/4233). It's got a lot of good stuff in it. The only thing it doesn't talk about is leaving, but given the extent to which your husband is checked out of the relationship, nobody who cares about YOU is going to look at you funny if you decide you've had enough. Hugs, norzecho. Addiction is a hard thing to deal with when it's in your own life, I can't imagine how much harder it has to be if the addict is somebody else. Let us know how things go...
When you're going through hell...keep going. --Winston Churchill There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still --Corrie ten Boom
The idea that gambling with significant sums of money is the "good" social activity really puts things in perspective. Your spouse has an addictive personality. I know for myself, I pretend to be healthy by sliding quickly from one addictive activity to another. It gives the illusion that I've stopped one addiction while I'm pursuing another. No one is perfect, but we all have to be responsible for ourselves at some point and that clearly isn't happening here.
You cannot control his behavior, but you can take care of yourself. Have you considered separating from him, even for a week? Making it a condition of your return that he's clean from games, women, gambling, and all other addictive behaviors for a whole week before your return?
I do noth think that starting a family with him will make anything better, but it will trap you, and the worst part is that you will have gone into it with your eyes open. I don't know the right way for you to keep that from happening, but presuming you know about the birds and bees, it's in your control. Please do not sacrifice your body on the alter of his addictions. That's just not going to help anything.
Good luck. My prayers are with you.
Hello Norzecho,
And welcome to Olganon.
I am an addict as well, grateful to his Higher Power not to be gaming at this current point.
Unfortunately, from reading your story, I am also about to give you my unpleasant yet honest opinion on the situation you are in, and more specifically two misconceptions that you might be having.
First of all, you interpret his hint that he has "controlled" his gaming in the last weeks as a desire from him to go back to gaming in a few months. If I know anything about how an addict's mind works, let me tell you this : his current idea is not to resume gaming in a few months. His current idea is how he will manage to game this very Monday and how he will persuade you not to get rid of the Internet after all.
Second misconception : you believe that he agreed to stop gaming. You believe this because he told you "I will game until the end of the season, then stop". Unfortunately, no addict can be taken seriously about his desire to stop gaming unless he stops TODAY - and even then, he is in danger of relapse. When an addict indicates his desire to stop gaming at a later date, all he is saying is that he will play every hour of every day until said date, and then he will see. Because if an addict is not willing to stop today, when tomorrow has become today, he will have no more will to stop. So when an addict says "I will game until the end of the season, then stop", don't bother to take note of the second part of the sentence and leave it to "I will game every day until the end of the season".
I know this from personal experience because, over the course of my active addiction to the game WoW, three expansions arrived : each time, I promised myself (and believed myself) that I would stop just before the next expansion would be released. And yet, all three times, I was playing the new expansion the very day it was released (of course with the excuse of "just taking a peek at what it looks like, then I will stop in a few days and of course never play it addictively like I played the previous expansion").
Of course I hope that I am wrong here, and that indeed, next Monday, you will have a recovering addict in your home, ready for that hard journey and leaving behind his past. But, for your own sake, you should not rule out entirely that next Monday will not go the way you are imagining it to go :-(
Hugs to you, and hope your life gets better one way or another.
I sit here and read my story 3.5 years later, I'm a total idiot. I now have two children with this man and I'm still as unhappy as I was in the moment writing that.
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