| The Wife | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 9 2006, 06:18 PM (318 Views) | |
| kismetrose | Feb 9 2006, 06:18 PM Post #1 |
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A recent thread on the WotC boards has echoed sentiments that I have seen in other threads, so I thought I'd talk about it here. Every now and then, some hapless male gamer will post a thread regarding their wives. Some men report that their wives do not understand roleplaying as a hobby, and that quite a few of the women find the idea of roleplaying to be immature. Of course, the women are denounced for such judgments, but we should consider how it might seem to them. I remember that when I first heard gamers speaking, it was practically Greek to me. I think we forget that roleplaying is not necessarily known as a mainstream hobby. When most non-gamers are asked about D&D, they probably think of the witch-trials of the 1980's and groups of geeks in high school. When folks think of hunting or golf, they think of adults, most likely. But gaming? Probably not. Many of us are taught that make-believe is for children and should be outgrown like childhood. Some men post about how their wives don't want them to game. In some cases, the wives don't want their husbands to game at all. In other cases, it seems, they want their husbands to game less. And a lot of venom starts to flow about women, and about how women always want to change men and take men away from the things they love. I've seen this happen more than once; it becomes a "ditch the wife" thread. Now, I understand that marriage requires compromise and that folks should be able to have their own hobbies and interests. But I wonder how many cases involve women who really, really do not understand what gaming is - or how many cases involve men who don't spend much time with their wives in the first place. Sure, there are women who want to change men, but suddenly all women want to change men. Seems to me that husbands and wives change each other, at least in some respect, of necessity; you don't live the same way with another person that you do when you're alone. |
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| Vacerious | Feb 9 2006, 11:19 PM Post #2 |
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Level 9 Nerd/9 Trashtalker
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Poster's Warning: I'm only a senior in high school, so I don't know much about what constitutes a marriage, and hence, I'll only be speaking from what I've observed from what was said on the post in question. Also, this post might get a little long. My brain juices flow better at night. With that out of the way, let's get this train wreck a rollin'. I know which post you speak of, Kismet, and while the majority of it was true, some very wise things were said before the venomous rumors about women started flying. Whenever I can, I try to look at events from an objective view. While anyone who has read the post knows the husband's side of the story, the wife's side of the story has yet to be heard. In the woman's defense, I can see why she views gaming as immature. Obviously, the statements that Kismet made were pretty accurate. In addition, even the most serious of gamer groups will break into a fit of immaturity, letting out a volley of various geeky quotes and jokes (i.e. Monty Python, South Park, The Gamers, etc). Also, the husband did not provide enough information for a wise judgement to be made (though he is naturally biased to do so, considering the situation he is in. Afterall, he wants other posters to be on his side.) Had he provided a more thorough status report on the condition of his marriage, then a better judgement outside of "Divorce her ass and find yourself a good gamer chick, lol." could have been made. Perhaps he wasn't spending enough time with his wife, and she found her only viable solution. Though I'm not exactly a saint, I try to practice neo-chivalry whenever I can. (Neo-chivalry is a term I created for a social practice involving medieval treatment of women with modern day tolerance. I'm still not completely sure whether such a thing has been created, so I just improvised.) Perhaps our poster in question wasn't exactly all that respectful towards women himself. Or maybe it was a similar situation to that in "Fear of Women" or all the other evangelical articles that harp DnD for its tendency to draw people into the occult, and she was just worried about his spiritual health. Either way, the point is, for any good desicion to be made, both sides of a story have to be told. We can only make one-sided postulates if we've been given only half of the information necessary for a wise decision. Finally, my last point is that most of the posters on that board are men, some of which are not married or in a serious relationship themselves. Hence, it can be deduced that they have not had many strong emotional ties to another person outside of immediate family members, which pretty much deems them unworthy of handling such a situation. Would you hire a bus driver to help you earn a degree in psychiatry? Probably not. Hence, it would probably be rather unwise to seek marital help from a board filled with men who have been rejected by every girl they've ever met since 1983. And that's my two cents. |
Disclaimer Warning: Parental Advisory (this poster contains strong language and many references to adult situations) It's not that I'm racist, sexist, or whatever. I'm just extremely allergic to idiots, and if your race/gender/(homo)sexual preference happens to contain a lot of idiots, then that's YOUR problem. | |
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| Fixxxer | Feb 9 2006, 11:22 PM Post #3 |
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Alcoholic Homosexual Giraffe
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I think that part of the problem sometimes is poor communication on the part of the thread-starter. If he logs on in a pissed off mood and starts a thread that begins with something akin to "My wife is such a bitch sometimes. She hates D&D and wants me to stop playing! Can you believe that shit?!?", it's natural that there's going to be a massive anti-op's wife sentiment throughout the life of the thread, as he's already messed up and painted a bad picture of his wife that he can't undo. Had he instead started with "My wife doesn't understand why I play D&D. She certainly doesn't want to play herself, so what other methods can I use to show her what I like about the game?", he'd probably have gotten better responses. |
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| Aladdar | Feb 10 2006, 07:19 AM Post #4 |
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There Is No Member, Only Zule
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I've been through the wife thing. God we had some knock down dragout fights over it. I'll talk about it a little more when I have some more time. |
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"Love makes the world go round. And has been known to provide a +2 circumstance to certain skill checks." The D&D Archive Forums
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| DaveReaves | Feb 10 2006, 08:28 AM Post #5 |
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Can't believe its not butter
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I think that there is almost always a deeper underlying issue in situations like this and it can fall on either the gamer or the wife. I can understand what a spouse would feel about a past time that attracts as much attention as D&D does. Even if you do nothing in between sessions, your talking about a whole day, or at least a an afternoon, being filled with D&D. You also have to think about scheduling and think how it must make a wife feel when she is told every weekend in the foreseeable future is set aside for D&D. If the games are being held at the home of the D&D hating wife it could be even worse. We have discussed annoying gamer habits here and quite honestly I can understand why someone would not want strangers with habits like that sitting at their kitchen table for upwards of eight hours. But of course it can't always be the gamers fault. All to often people want to marry the person their with expecting them to change their habits after they get hitched. If you marry a gamer you know what your getting into and its not like anything is new once you get married. It happens with drinkers, pot smokers, gamblers, people who cheat on their spouses, habitual liars and porn addicts. They are not going to change and expecting them to is asking for trouble. A gamer's wife should also take the time to understand what’s going on. If they have some misconceived notions about what gaming is they may think their gamer husband is out there acting out (LARPing only they don't know the word) a love affair with a chick with fake elf ears, worshiping the devil or some other repugnant activity. I honestly don't think that this is a gamer specific issue either. Like any other problem its something that should have been dealt with in the several years of dating before getting married (yea I know that may seem like a long time but I'm not exactly quick when it comes to getting to the 'next step' in a relationship). All in all I think it comes down to people in all walk of life getting married when they really shouldn't or should at least be open and honest and work out these problems before the situation arises and disrupts the marriage. |
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| Aladdar | Feb 10 2006, 08:53 AM Post #6 |
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There Is No Member, Only Zule
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Ok, I've got a few minutes. First, my wife was raised catholic. So all she had ever heard about D&D was the satanic worshiping aspect of it. I never played with a group before I moved to FWB. I played a few games online, but she never saw much more than me sitting down with a book open from time to time. That's no different than what she sees quite often as I love to read. After I moved here, I met Matt (aka Fixxxer) and had the opportunity to start playing. So we went to a meeting to discuss gaming. Everyone said that Sunday was best for them, but I raised an objection that weekends are for my wife and I, but she assured me that she wanted me to play and that it was fine. I even asked her several times if it was ok and she said yes. All was fine until I went for the first time. I came home to a very upset wife, which in turn created a very upset husband. She wanted me to quit and never play again. I asked her what was wrong, all she could say was "I just don't like it." I guess I should say that I have very big issues with control. I give my wife everything and 99% of my day is spent trying to make her every move happy. If there was a legitimate problem with me playing, then we could talk about it and I'd be more than willing to make some changes, but when all you can say is "I don't want you to do something that I know you really enjoy just because I don't like it" then I have problems. I asked her to tell me what she found wrong, she couldn't say anything more than it's just different. It's not normal. Normal people don't play this. Then she started on the satanic kick. So I dealt with the "She doesn't know anybody who plays this thing." by pointing out that she knows me and that I'm not some psycho and she knows Fixxxer, and well he's kind of psychotic, but in that sweet teddy bear psychotic way. lol I pointed out that the game has over 1 million players and pointed her to several websites that are full of people who play the game. Anyhow, I'll skip all the arguments we had and discussions we had. I eventually realized that her problem with me playing truly has nothing to do with D&D and has everything to do with her self esteem issues. I realized that anytime I try and do something without her around that she gets really pissy about it. She's almost afraid that if I spend time without her that somehow it means I don't love her. So I've really began working on trying to help her with those issues, because frankly if we don't, it's going to lead to future problems down the way. I have to be able to have some time to do my own thing every now and then, whether it's D&D, golf, poker, or whatever. I love my wife dearly, but everyone needs some time away and with friends every now and then. She knows that I'm going to be running a game within the next few weeks and I've already told her that if she wants to talk about it that we need to talk now, because once the game starts I don't want to come home to her crying and yelling at me again. So far she hasn't said anything, and I'm more than willing to be rationale and work with her. But a, "I just don't like it." doesn't work with me. I don't know if I'm wrong with that or not. I think most marriage counselors would agree with me, but maybe I'm wrong. Anyhow, that's my story in a nutshell. I have a wonderful wife, and a good marriage, but she has a tendency to get emotional and lose all sense of rationality at times. I am a logical, rational, point by point guy. Hell, I was a computer programmer for a while, that's how my mind works. I can't deal with full emotion and no common sense. It just doesn't compute for me and makes no sense whatsoever. I don't mind arguing, but there needs to be a logical point being made and a set of steps that come out of the argument for solving the problem. Otherwise my mind just explodes. |
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"Love makes the world go round. And has been known to provide a +2 circumstance to certain skill checks." The D&D Archive Forums
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| Vacerious | Feb 10 2006, 10:26 AM Post #7 |
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Level 9 Nerd/9 Trashtalker
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To Aladdar: While I know this is a rather common solution, keep in mind that I'm simply working with what information you have given on your situation. I recommend that you bring her to one of your games. She doesn't have to participate, just watch. She'll find that DnD isn't about demon worship and the like, and, if she decides to play, it might help her with her self esteem problems. I know that DnD has most certainly helped me improve my mental image. I realized after I played DnD for a while that I was a nerd, but I was happy with who I was, and dammit, that's all that matters to me. |
Disclaimer Warning: Parental Advisory (this poster contains strong language and many references to adult situations) It's not that I'm racist, sexist, or whatever. I'm just extremely allergic to idiots, and if your race/gender/(homo)sexual preference happens to contain a lot of idiots, then that's YOUR problem. | |
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| Aladdar | Feb 10 2006, 10:34 AM Post #8 |
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There Is No Member, Only Zule
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Well I did something similar. I created a solo campaign for her based loosely around the characters of her favorite television show, Friends. She got to play Phoebe, who was a druid. Phoebe was approached by Monica and Chandler because they were worried about Ross, a fighter. He had disappeared earlier in the day in search of his monkey (whatever it's name was) which Rachel had run off and hadn't been seen since. Along her journey she finds Ross trapped under a tree. He had been attacked by Goblins who had kidnapped his monkey. They tracked the goblins to a cave where they found the monkey which they had caged up for entertainment, discovered the goblins were going to try and start attacking the merchants along the way. Defeated the goblins and returned with the news to the town constable who awarded them town saviors. They then rested at the local ale house called "The Central Perk" for drinks later on. She had a good time and I don't think she looks at the game as demonic anymore. I think her problems just stem from the fact that the game takes a good 4-5 hours of my time every week to play as well as the prep time needed in between, which takes away time from her. I believe that if I'll just make sure that my time I do spend with her is quality time that the time away won't bother her quite so much. |
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"Love makes the world go round. And has been known to provide a +2 circumstance to certain skill checks." The D&D Archive Forums
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5:38 PM Jul 10