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DivorceOnline claims that 15% of all divorces are related to online gaming - namely WoW and CoD.

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Comments

  • LordRelicLordRelic Member Posts: 281

    I bet that 9/10 of these women just wanted the man to sit there with her " spend time "  watching here stupid ass tv shows  instead of doing something he actually liked doing ( had a few girls like that ) .  Gaming is a hobby   and i admit it i game alot on my FREE time, It is how i like to unwind and have fun.  If they can not accept that stfu and get out.   I am sure there are extreme cases were the gamer ignores a special date or something but i bet  most cases is the woman just not geting her way.

  • VengeSunsoarVengeSunsoar Member EpicPosts: 6,601

    Originally posted by Thane

    Originally posted by Adamantine

    As far as I know, nobody has ever proved the existence of online addiction or MMO addiction as an actual medical condition.

    If someone is "addicted" like that, its the result of unhappiness with their own lives.

    If said unhappiness is fixed, the "addiction" is gone, too.

    This is NOT how real addictions work.

     

    actually the koreans did.

     

    you can get addicted to EVERYTHING; you dont actually need addicting substances in the "drug" to get addicted. your body is quite cappable of producing them "him-/herself" :)

     No actually they didn't.  They have been several major meta-analysis showing that  there is actually no credible and reliable research showing that people are/have been/can get addicted to their own endorphins/dopamine... stimulatory or excitable chemicals.  It just doesn't happen.

    The current research has moved away from calling these things addictions (gambling, sex...) and are now calling them abuse to reflect a different locus of control.  Namely the contol is within the person and not due to a receptor disregulations. 

    Abuse can still be and is very damaging but reflects a fundamental difference in cause and treatment.

    Venge

    Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
  • KalferKalfer Member Posts: 779

    Originally posted by Ceridith

    Originally posted by depain

    ...

    According to a press release issued by Divorce Online, an examination of 200 unreasonable behavior petitions filed by women using its service between January - April of this year found that 15 percent complained that their husbands were happier playing video games than they were paying attention to them. They called their "gaming addiction" an unreasonable behavior that lead to the divorce they were seeking.

    ...

    Gaming addiction is a symptom, not a cause. Whether it was gaming or some other hobby or passtime that their spouse chose over them is immaterial. The point is that there was already a problem with their marriage in the first place, and gaming was simply an escape the husband chose to distance themselves from their displeasure of the state of the relationship.

    Not to defend gaming completely, but too many people blame gaming, and other 'addictions', as a cause when it's really just a symptom of a greater issue.

    Bingo.

     

    I cringe when people declare themselves "addicted" to a certain game. It's not in the same ballpark as people with real ludomania. people who have that bad, would cut off their own legs if it meant some more coins to play. That's a mental illness.

     

    There are a few individuals who are genuinely addicted to video games. But these are few and far in between, and most of them, like most alcoholics or hardcore drug users or people who suffer from Ludomania have no way of snapping out of it by sheer willpower.

     

    This is not the same thing as losing your job because you play to much WoW. That's just you being dumb and lazy, and now taking the fall for it. the game ain't anymore addicting than civlization, the sims or pokemon.

     

    Here is the second thing - just because it's not a real addiction it does not mean that it might have been something you should have been without. Its like everything in moderation. we like it, or we do it because it's bored. Much like eating. Most of us have experienced eating way to much(much more than we need), only to find suffer from it later, when going to the bathroom, in a brown sea of pain.

  • JohnnyMotrinJohnnyMotrin Member UncommonPosts: 439

    Originally posted by Swollen_Beef

    I want to see a news piece done on husbands who spend all their time building and flying model airplanes and the spouses who suffer. 

    +1

     

    It's funny you mentioned that because I actually know of a couple who had serious marriage problems because of the husband's addiction to building/flying model airplanes.  However this gets no press, go figure.

    image

  • JohnnyMotrinJohnnyMotrin Member UncommonPosts: 439

    Originally posted by Averros

    I would just like to add some personal experience to this thread....

    I have been married for 15 years, and I am 33 years old. When my wife and I first got married I was into gaming, and she accepted that. I was able to spread my time between her and the games. However I didn't play that much... as time moved on and we started to have some marital problems, I found I was spending more and more time on MUDs (Text Based MMO's) programming, playing, or building... which made the problems worse. It became a focus of our fights, even though it was not the problem. Once we realised what we were doing we actually took the time to talk, and discovered the problems and actively worked to fix them! Now, 13 or 14 years later, I game when I want... I work... I spend time with my wife and kids. Hell, my wife even became a gamer, both my teenaged sons are gamers. We play games a family.

    I guess what I am trying to say is that while gaming CAN be an addiction, sometimes it is really a sympton of a much larger problem and sitting down and actually communicating is the solution. If my wife and I had simply stayed quiet and not decided to talk at that moment, we could have gone down a very different path. So to be honest I would say most divorces are a result of a lack of communication on one, or both, sides of the marriage. If one member of the relationship is not willing to communicate, then the marriage is already in trouble, communication is the key!

     

    Rules of Marriage I have learned:

    1. Never Go to Bed Angry.

    2. I'm sorry is not a bandaid, if your going to say it prove it & mean it.

    3. Talk - If something bothers you, say something. Quite often you may find you are misunderstanding the situation, or that it is something that can be worked out easily.

    4 Listen - If your "other" has a problem, listen. Do not interupt, paraphrase what they said so that you are sure you are hearing not only what they said, but what they meant. This is important as it builds the road to communication.

    5. Lastly, remember that sometimes an arguement isn't worth it.... If it isn't important sometime a "Yes dear, you are right dear" can save ALOT of headache :)

     

    Wow, this got a lot longer than I expected and I am sure you are tired of reading this by now.

     

    Averros

    Excellent post!

     

    Just to comment on # 5, it's correctly listed as number 5 however IMO it's a case of last but not least.  I think it's very important to "pick your battles".  My wife and I just hit 9 years less than 2 weeks ago and this is a rule that is key.  Arguing all the time makes your marriage miserable and most arguments are because neither person wants to show humility.  Throughout a marriage, there will be plenty of valid or serious reasons to have heated discussions so pick and choose your battles carefully or the both of you will always be miserable.

     

    I mention this because nobody actually gets divorced because a spouse has a gaming addiction.  That's just silly.  There's a reason why a spouse developed the addiction in the first place and that reason was what caused the divorce.  Instead of addressing the issue and communicating as Averros pointed out, someone decided to hide in front of a computer monitor.  Instead of the other person trying to figure out why their spouse would rather sit in front of a monitor than spend time with them, they chose to concentrate on the addiction.

     

    Often people don't want to see themselves as part of the problem and that's a major reason why people divorce.  When you have both people in a relationship willing to take blame, usually both people work on their faults together and that builds a bond they have never shared which strengthens their marriage in a way they didn't even expect.  Showing humility and understanding it's not all the other person's fault will allow a relationship to last a lifetime.  No matter what religion you are or even if there's no religion at all, I think all humans can understand the concept of removing the plank out of your own eye before trying to remove a splinter out of someone elses.

     

    The notation that people divorced because of a gaming habit is just silly, pure nonsense.  If someone can't see the obvious distinctions between being hooked on sex/drugs/alcohol and being hooked on a game, they must be living in a cave or have some hidden agenda.

    image

  • depaindepain Member Posts: 263

    Originally posted by just1opinion

    Originally posted by depain

    I can totally understand the issue. I was a borderline addict during the launch of Star Wars Galaxies and Unreal Tournament. I'm shocked that my wife (girlfriend at the time) didn't dump me during the plunge. I remember getting to the point where I would log into the game without intent on doing anything. I would just log in... bored out of my mind. This, however, was nearly 7-8 years ago.

    I haven't gamed much at all since then. When I do, it's usually for about an hour or so... if at all.

     

    If you don't mind my asking....what changed in your life to curb the constant gaming?  Some other guy in the thread had the theory that gaming addiction is not addiction but rather substituting gaming in to either fill a void or soothe unhappiness and that when that unhappiness is gone, the "overgaming" would be gone too.  I don't know that I necessarily buy that and I DO believe that gaming can be an addiction. In some other countries they're already treating it as such in certain cases, and yes....medically treating it (and also psychologically).

    So what changed for you?  (You don't have to answer this, I know it's personal. I'm just looking for insight.)

     This is a perfectly fine question.

    I honestly don't know what to call it, e.g., addiction, compulsion, depression, etc. There was no real void or unhappiness in my life during the first few years of my massive gaming experience. I had a lot of good things going for me, yet I would play for HOURS and HOURS. It was crazy. I was having a lot of fun. I was happy and eager to play.

    However, after about 4 years of straight gaming, I started to create my own realm of problems. I've always been a fit guy - free of all subsctances. This was becoming less and less a reality as time went on. I started to feel frail. My eyes were rapidly aging from the monitor's constant refresh rate. I was getting older (24ish) with very little progression in the career realm. My girlfriend (wife now) was becoming increasingly upset with my redundant patterns, and my confidence shrunk to the point where it was nearly nonexistent. I never wanted to go anywhere...

    Gaming just wasn't fun anymore. In fact, it lost most of its luster years before I quit. It was the same thing every night. So typical. So boring.

    It's hard to pinpoint the main reason for quitting. It was a combination of things, really - most of it involving my new pitiful self being. However, I will say that the separation gradually become more potent as I was slowly started to reclaim my losses. I began to surround myself with other things, e.g., Christianity, college, playing music, fitness, goals, rebuilding relationship etc. I did all this while gaming - just not as much.

    As I started to get more fit, better with my instruments, completing my degree, marrying my gal, and being a dad to our fantastic newborn, gaming had completely fallen beyond the realm of importance. It's something I look into while it's raining or while I'm home alone with nothing to do.

    I'm not going to lie; I am looking forward to a few titles: Diablo 3, SWTOR, EverQuest "Next". However, I will playing much more responsibly - when I'm home alone or a little on the weekend. I will not fall into that hell again. There is too much at stake now.

    During my 2004 downer, I wasn't feeling any type of physical withdrawal from gaming. It wasn't like being addicted to any type of nicotine, drug, or alcohol. I don't know how to categorize it. Perhaps something along the lines of a sex addict type thing. Regardless, overindulging in pure entertainment is not good.

    I've been free of massive gaming for around 7 years now. I'm really enjoying life now. I love going out, spending time with my daughter, getting more active with the chirch, playing music, and delving into the more healthy things in life.

    I made this about a year ago if anyone is interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lwbhmsfEjM (playing drums to The Hobbit) HAHA!

  • maskedweaselmaskedweasel Member LegendaryPosts: 12,173

    I've been gaming my entire life.  Every girlfriend I've ever had dated me knowing I was a gamer and sure, each of them had their own problems with it,  but it wasn't because of the time I spent doing it,  it was because of the stigma that encompasses gamers.  

     

    When I met my (now) wife, she didn't like my gaming habits,  but it was much less about the habit and more so that, while I was gaming, she didn't have anything to do.  I tried getting her to take on some hobbies so that I could continue my habit, but for the first couple years it didn't take.  We tried a few things,  learning languages together,  photography,  all that jazz, but it didn't really take as she was always more complacent with being in a group of people and having all of her friends around which went down substantially when we got together.

     

    That would be where we had most of our issues,  but as time has gone on my gaming habits have decreased some and she has been able to get away from the tedium and find other ways to occupy her time when I decide I want to game.  

     

    She's taken to gaming on her phone quite a bit too which kind of opens her up to gaming a bit,  though she is a big fan of Mario Kart, and her old SNES that I hooked up for her.  

     

    As for gaming being an addiction... I don't find it being an addiction any more than say, exercising is an addiction,  or shopping is an addiction.  I do each every week.  When I was younger I could game for 16 hours straight,  but I just don't have the time or the drive to do that anymore.



  • uohaloranuohaloran Member Posts: 811

    I think there is an underlying problem that was present before the video games were pinned as the cause.

    Addictive personalities become addicted to things...

  • RobsolfRobsolf Member RarePosts: 4,607

    I am poignantly filled with "not surprise"

    Edited for sanity.

  • uohaloranuohaloran Member Posts: 811

    Originally posted by Trikke

    {mod edit}

    You're more right than people will give you credit for.  :P

  • waynejr2waynejr2 Member EpicPosts: 7,769

    Originally posted by Jammaslam

    I still dont understand why so many feel obligated to get married when they deep down do not enjoy the experience (monkey see, monkey I do).  Never been married,  and am happily ever-after not married.   

     The whole situation is horrible to begin with.  When my parents got divorced, my mother got 78 2/3% of his business and all she did was drink, pop pills and sleep all day then start a fight before he had to go to sleep.  I do commit to a single women but I will never make it legal.

    http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2010/QBlog190810A.html  

    Epic Music:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1

    https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1

    Kyleran:  "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."

    John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."

    FreddyNoNose:  "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."

    LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"




  • CalerxesCalerxes Member UncommonPosts: 1,641

    Originally posted by Adamantine

    As far as I know, nobody has ever proved the existence of online addiction or MMO addiction as an actual medical condition.

    If someone is "addicted" like that, its the result of unhappiness with their own lives.

    If said unhappiness is fixed, the "addiction" is gone, too.

    This is NOT how real addictions work.

     

    /thread

     

    I wish the world would stop blaming the effect of a imbalanced mind that fixates on things too much and does things to excess, its just an easy out and avoids the real underlining problems the person has in the first place. As the quote above says find out the cause of the unhappiness and bingo most of these "addictions" disappear over night.

     

     

    Cal.

    This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up™ the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.

  • uohaloranuohaloran Member Posts: 811

    Originally posted by waynejr2

     The whole situation is horrible to begin with.  When my parents got divorced, my mother got 78 2/3% of his business and all she did was drink, pop pills and sleep all day then start a fight before he had to go to sleep.  I do commit to a single women but I will never make it legal.

    Sounds like Arrested Development.  :D

  • CalerxesCalerxes Member UncommonPosts: 1,641

    Originally posted by Terranah

    I think gaming is the only addiction I ever really had.  I used to play precu SWG way too much, and fortunately or unfortunately I only worked 3 days a week so there was a lot of time to game.  I had tendencies toward gaming addiction before SWG though.  I used to play an fps called Star Trek Voyager.  The adrenaline rush of playing a challenging game or being on a winning streak was like crack.  I used to play all day till my hands started to hurt and that's when I switched to mmos and SWG.

     

    Being able to immerse myself in a virtual world and step into the persona of my avatar was the greatest thing ever.  It's something I used to dream about in the 1980s as I sat in class, bored out of my mind.

     

    My wife never gave me any grief about it, which surprises me to this day.  I think she thought I would just outgrow it, and I did.  These days I think she probably games more than I do.

     

    You might be confusing near addiction with passion, I'm passionate about music, gaming among a few other things and because I have plenty of time on my hands I indulge more than someone who is married or has a busy work schedule, you were just in this position when SWG was first out, nothing wrong with that without passion we would not have the world we live in and the wonderful things it gives us.

     

     

    Cal.

    This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up™ the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.

  • VrikaVrika Member LegendaryPosts: 7,882

    I think the problem is just an illusion created by outdated juridical system. In today's world people divorce when they stop loving each other, they don't need any further reason. But when outdated juridical system asks for additional reasons, one spouse picks one bad habit of another, sometimes with aid of a lawyer who's telling what is most likely to get accepted by the court, and uses that as justification for not loving any more.

    Excessive gaming is sometimes a real problem, but the system that always asks for justification makes it seem much larger problem than it really is.

     
  • SuprGamerXSuprGamerX Member Posts: 531

    Heh , 

    ...

    Why so serious ... ?

    If there's one thing we need to get straight , is that marriage is way over rated.

    So your girlfriend is bitching that you play too much video games , did I ever bitch on her Twilight adiction?

    *sigh*     DivorceOnline is another propaganda garbage that just wants to stir some crap around , your GF / BF left you? Don't worry, there are plenty more to go around that might actually enjoy the games you play.  Heh , get over it.

  • centkincentkin Member RarePosts: 1,527

    You could probably do the same kind of study and get a number like 15% of people who drop out of college drop out because of playing too many MMOs.  They do tend to be a major timesink for some personality types, and can take on a magnitude of committment that severely inteferes with things like marriage, school, work, or other things with a fixed schedule and high time demands. 

    Thing is this doesnt do the gamers any good because it just leads to things like the 2 hours per day max thing mandated by the government that China did.

    The best thing that games can do is make the always-on playstyle a little less dominating.

    I mean lets take golfstar.  It is an online golf game -- but what is annoying me about it is the sheer amount of time to level in it.  I am 32nd (took 3 months) and the max level is 40th -- BUT I estimate it will be January before I hit 40th and they just caved in to the small number of level 40 people who want an even greater game advantage over the level 30 people to raise the level limit soon.  I did some calculations and 2 hours per day playing gets you a level per month around level 38.  Of course it is very hard to allow any advancement at all for the people playing a healthy amount of the game vs people playing 16 hours per day and complaining about the level limit. 

    Personally I would rather they have waited till September to raise the level limit -- at least then I would be around level 36.

  • waynejr2waynejr2 Member EpicPosts: 7,769

    Originally posted by uohaloran

    Originally posted by waynejr2

     The whole situation is horrible to begin with.  When my parents got divorced, my mother got 78 2/3% of his business and all she did was drink, pop pills and sleep all day then start a fight before he had to go to sleep.  I do commit to a single women but I will never make it legal.

    Sounds like Arrested Development.  :D

     Never watched it.  I heard they might be doing a movie.

    http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2010/QBlog190810A.html  

    Epic Music:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1

    https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1

    Kyleran:  "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."

    John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."

    FreddyNoNose:  "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."

    LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"




  • Kaelaan21Kaelaan21 Member UncommonPosts: 349

    Which came first - the chicken or the egg? (Rhetorical, no need to answer the obvious)

     

    At some point people to need to realize that maybe the spouse uses gaming to get away from the douche bag in the other room. Just sayin....

  • just2duhjust2duh Member Posts: 1,290

     You could probably say the same about anything else too, anyone in a bad or failing marriage is going to do something else to occupy and distract themselves.

  • just2duhjust2duh Member Posts: 1,290

    Originally posted by Kaelaan21 

    At some point people to need to realize that maybe the spouse uses gaming to get away from the douche bag in the other room. Just sayin....

      My thoughts exactly.

  • C0MAC0MA Member Posts: 522

    90% of marriages fail in general... People do what they got to do to forget this _____ is going to money grub him in court for most of his earned possessions so she never has to get a ____ing job. Even when she finds a new ____ to hold onto the courts don't care, he's still paying whatever they determined if she moved on 2 hours after leaving the court house.

     

    The entire Divorce system is filled with people who exploit mariatal problems for profit and out of greed could care less who's life they ruin in the process. That's why i've had 3 long term relations that all failed because I refused to get married after I tested the waters of a pre-nup and the women weren't fond of the idea.

    "Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
    image

  • centkincentkin Member RarePosts: 1,527

    It should be MANDITORY to sign a pre-nuptual agreement for any marriage.  And yes there could be a few very simple ones that you could choose from but the whole point is to have all of this done while both parties love each other as opposed to doing it when both despise each other and take it out on the children and over cherished posessions.

    In essence it should say whether or not children will be handled with sole custody with visitation, or dual custody, and who gets the children in the case of a divorce.  It should say how the jointly owned items would be distributed and if anything is considered solely owned despite the union (IE does the house go specifically to the woman.  Do the golf clubs and sportscar go to the man.  Heirlooms from the grandparents etc going to the people who want them etc)(When this is not done, a lot of times people will gleefully take the heirlooms of the other party just to deny them etc).  Are there any special clauses (infidelity etc) which change aspects of the agreement, etc. 

    This document would be similar to a will -- and could be updated at any point by the consent of both parties. 

  • seabeastseabeast Member Posts: 748

    I had a spouse once who played online games....but her husban came and took her back.

  • BoltonsquadBoltonsquad Member UncommonPosts: 403

    Originally posted by Adamantine

    As far as I know, nobody has ever proved the existence of online addiction or MMO addiction as an actual medical condition.

    If someone is "addicted" like that, its the result of unhappiness with their own lives.

    If said unhappiness is fixed, the "addiction" is gone, too.

    This is NOT how real addictions work.

    It has been proved many times, and players who are addicted to online gaming can go to the doctors and sign on the sick, just like depression.

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