What to say to DP?

[dreamylady]

We have a 5 yr old DD. DP has a gaming habit which means he likes to spend 2 nights a week playing computer games, They are usually 7pm to 2 or even 3 am sessions. The weekend session means he sleeps in til midday the following day, the weekday session means he's grumpy the following day from lack of sleep and often needs a nap when he gets in from work (while i'm busy doing domestics!). I do resent this because its essentially two working days a week - not spent contributing to us as a family, and doing something which to me is pointless (protestant work ethic sorry!)

However after many conversations and rows about this I realise how important it is to him - his mental health actually seems to suffer if he doesn't get at least one session a week. So I try to go with it without judgement.

However since last Thursday, he has not once come to bed the same time as me. He's up til 2.30 every night. Then tired the next day. Tonight he came in and had an hour nap as soon as he walked in the door, and woke up and started playing, will be a 2.30er tonight I expect. It also affects me as i wake up when he comes to bed, and often struggle getting back to sleep. He snores too if he's been drinking (he often does when he stays up late) which again disturbs my sleep. I've recently asked him to sleep in the spare room on his gaming nights. think he understands but maybe he sees it as 'punishment?'

I'm sure people will have different opinions about whether its reasonable or not, but what I'd like advice on is how to get him to not do this any more! Even one night a week might be bearable, starting a bit later, and cutting out the post work naps which REALLY wind me up.

He acknowledges that its stupid to stay up so late when he has work the next day, and sometimes is sheepish about sleeping in late (til midday both days this weekend) but nothing changes. If i tackle it with him we usually have a row and he seems to react like I'm his mum telling him what to do and he has to rebel. How do i get him to see what effect its having? I should add that we already struggle with me needing more affection and attention and 'romance' than he's able to give - he likes to spend time alone and also his default setting seems to be that if there's nothing else lined up for him to do, he's up in the office on the computer. We never really just hang out and see what happens...

He's not lazy though, when he's up on a weekend he's a whirling dervish of doing errands, cleaning, mowing the lawn, etc. Just he's either all go, or gaming, or asleep. Whereas I'm much more meandery and we wind each other up because of that. Especially if I've been up with DD for 4 hrs slowly doing our own relaxed thing, then he's up and BOOM we've all got to start rushing around to keep up.

sorry this is turniing into a rambling winge! just to remind - original question - ideas on how to tackle it with him...

Seems you have got yourself TWO DC there... he can't moderate himself to go to bed early enough to be able to function properly the next day?

Ok so I hate computer games, I think they are purile, but FFS... Grow UP man! My H did this has his little naps, never mind I'm puking my guts up, he's tired, not games, just sitting talking crap with his friends on the phone or watching films on YouTube. Gah! Our relationship is dead though, he's walking the Green Mile, but you need to tell him that this has to stop.. or he'll be Dead Man Walking like my 'H'

YANBU..

I think you and he need to decide how much gaming us reasonable - eg one "long" night per week 7am-3am

probably make it a weekend night, that way he can sleep in if he wants, and maybe stay up a bit later if it's too exciting.

Also since he's home, maybe you could go out that night?

Then, that's it. No gaming on week nights, and the other weekend night he either goes out or spends time with you.

These are only suggestions, but the principle is the same however many nights you agree on - he has designated gaming times, but the rest of the time he needs to be fully present with his family.

It sounds like it's quite compulsive behaviour, so setting clear limits within whichbit can be indulged should help.

The affection thing is :( though. Is that something you can live with full time?

the gaming is an addiction as bad as any drug.

he needs help to get off it.

he can not do it alone.

But he will never see it that way.

Does he eat microwave food too or pizzas all the time? I ask from experience.

His addiction will ruin your happiness.

I suggest you ask him to leave and take his addiction and all the equipment connected with his addiction with him or arrange to have it picked up.

You will have a shit life until or unless he has gone.
sorry

7am til 3am?

and she goes out all that time?

I think that's a bit silly tbh

spidookly, I liked you a lot more when you were ski thingy.

:o

I meant 7pm to 3am obviously

I think you really need to pick your moment to discuss it. Then, when you do, tell him that this isn't the 'family life' you thought you were going to have when you were married and had children. That you want someone to be with and not just live with. Tell him that you are sad/loney/unhappy. Tell him that you want to both work on your relationship because otherwise you fear you might not make the distance (don't mention the games)... see what he says.

Explain to him that you are not going to keep being responsible for dinner/house/dd/domestics while he naps after work - he's a grown man with responsibilies and napping after work doesn't fit in with that (don't mention the games).... see what he says.

He obviously needs his 'time out' as we all do and for him that is 'gaming' - it's not really any different to you being on MN. You wouldn't want to be told you aren't allowed to do it anymore would you?

He needs to work out for himself that he can't stay up till 3am, he needs to work out that he needs to be 'in' the relationship if he wants it to continue. Give him all the facts, but don't spoon feed him.

Good luck.

The sudden increase in time spent feeding his addiction (because that's what it's become) suggests that he's under extra stress but that doesn't mean you have to just suck it up.
How much leisure time (ie time spent not doing chores, or your paid job, or looking after your DD) do you get per week? If t's fuck all, as I imagine, then that's the way you put it to your P - that you are a person, that you need time to relax and therefore he has to do his share of the shitwork and the childcare. At the moment he's behaving as though he is the 'person' in the household, and that you are just there to service him and look after DD.

gaming is an addiction.

dh played on american time, he was up until the wee hours or up at the wee hours. it took 5 years - various coping strategies by me - things to divert him, get his attention, making excuses for him (like you are)

he told me that he never slept very much and always had coped on 3 hours sleep

i reminded him that this blatently wasn't true as years before when i gave birth to twins, he really needed a lot of sleep for work the next day

over the course of five long years, rows became more frequent. they were all day every day at the end.

after one drunken weekend, on no sleep this all erupted in a terrible incident.

needless to say, the man gets 7 hours of sleep a night now!

the point of the story being - this isn't some silly shit that he does - its really not on par with other blokes playing golf or cricket on a saturday.

custardo I agree 100%. I live with one of these.

thankfully, since my whore obsessed husband walked out, the gaming bloke is only a lodger.

24yr s old

good looking

... eats pizza every night and plays world of warcraft all day every single second he has off from his good job.

sad.

really he is a saddo.

an addicted sad boy.

norman no mates.

Thanks all...
Chipping in I think you're right, I need to 'get over' my prejudice against what he's doing in that time before I speak to him, and focus on why its a problem..

He's very happy for me to do other stuff, especially if it gets me out of the house!! In fact he gets quite grumpy when I don't do my regular things. The thing is, when I'm home I find it hard not to do domestic stuff - not the basic chores but the added extras on that endless list most people have like finding stuff for DD to do and playing with DD, planning visits and holiday stuff, sorting out photos, planning DIY jobs (which he'll do very willingly though not on a games night!)being a school governor. A fair bit of time I facebook and mumsnet too, but even that is very much about keeping up with our friends and support with family stuff. But as he rightly points out, that's my choice. He'd be happier if I didn't do all that, it would let him off the hook of not doing it either.

Amazonian, GoldBrass, its not that extreme - in a way wish it were because then maybe it would be easier to say 'look at yourself!!' We do at least eat together, nice home cooked meals, and sometimes he cooks but mostly me bcs I work part time. That's probably the only time we spend just facing each other not 'doing' stuff, but I appreciate that's more than a lot of people can manage. We often meet at the telly at 10 for half an hour and we usually watch a film together on a Saturday night. But it's not enough somehow, because the in between is so 'seperate'. Partly cos of my resentfulness, which means I'm not inclined to be affectionate to him when he's just got out of bed at midday or has had yet another late night.

Spidookily we have kind of done that - I couldn't get him to agree to one night a week. Even if I did I would feel pressure to be entertaining that night and somehow show him its worth his while!Stupid huh. I'm not sure whether I can put up with it but for now I keep hoping it'll get better, for DDs sake partly.

He didn't choose fatherhood and wasn't ready for it - so is kind of angry sometimes about it I think. But we don't choose a lot of things in life, and i believe we should face up to what life chucks at us and still do the best we can. Not sure he does. Or rather i think he believes that but can't quite be it. Or maybe this is the best he can do. I do sometimes feel like he thinks I'm his mum, trying to make him do things he doesn't want to...Which i HATE, its a real turn off. I don't want to have sex with a teenager. (though a twentysomething , maybe )

Ah. I take it your PG was an accident (no blame here, happens to the best of us) but this knob should either accept fatherhood joyfully or fuck off out of the family home, rather than squatting there like a resentful parasite, reminding you all the time that you ought to be grateful that he hasn't fucked off, so grateful that you will let him do whatever he wants, otherwise he will leave and you might end up single!
One of the most insidiously nasty things some men do is convince their partners that singlehood is so horrible and shameful and scary that the woman must suck up everything the man does or he might LEAVE - when in fact being single is far better than living with a man who makes life miserable and is a drain on you and who you have to service all the time.

Oh FFS. Not another pathetic pillock. The thing is you are going to sound like his mum, when you shouldn't have to. A woman in a decent equal relationship shouldn't have to nag. All these "men" needing "help" is starting to make my fucking teeth itch

Nothing very constructive from me but just wanted to add how considerate, reasonable and caring you sound OP.

I know where you're coming from with the gaming as I have a similar situation on my hands.

Will be watching with interest and wishing you the strenght to tell him to shape up or ship out.

i agreewith SGB " either accept fatherhood joyfully or f off out of the family home" - where he can do his own thing. and jsut have proper contact times with his DD.

"then he's up and BOOM we've all got to start rushing around to keep up."

sounds very controlling.
that you have to pander to him all the time.

when do you get a lie in?

when does he take DD off to do nice stuff go to park or whatever?

i think some of you are being very harsh on here - again!!!
IT is a lot easier to pass judgement and tell someone else's partner/dh to "fuck off" when you dont know them and none of it applies to you...

I haven't gone into all the background cos I'm not sure if it should still be relevant, but maybe I'm being unfair to him by not giving it - DD was an accident, but with DP's previous partner, who died when DD was just a baby. So he did have to shape up for a year or so and he did a brilliant job of it as well. But it was a real struggle for him, especially while grieving for her too, and I think maybe he subconsciously points his feelings of 'its not fair i never wanted this' at me. could be wrong. he doesn't have a great father role model either, another long story but his mum virtually raised him on her own, having divorced his dad bacause of his affairs ( a brave step in the early 70s).

These are reasons not excuses but I'm trying to show where i think it comes from, and that he's not a completely feckless man.

maybe i do too much being the responsible one and so he lets me though...

I know

I'd take an axe to the gaming console but have never been that easy to live with and my patience for grown up spending time doing shit like this is very very low.

He would come home and ask me where his console was I would hand it to him in pieces in a plastic bad!

Lots of shit has happened in my life but he has a child, one that is not yours but it seems you are raising and doing a damn good job - he needs to step up to the plate as he woukld have a lot less time to indulge his little gaming habit if he were a single father again.

Generally, when men complain that their DW is 'acting like their Mum' it is because they are acting like a child. I'm a man. I'm pretty familiar with this.

I'd suggest that you explain that you don't want to sound like you're being his Mum but that you feel you have little choice when you're dealing with issues like:

• Playing computer games
• not getting enough sleep
• burning the candle at both ends
• not taking responsibility

Bottom line: You'll stop acting like his Mum if he stops acting like a child.

(And yes, I have a MASSIVE prejudice against computer games. What's wrong with having actual friends, who you meet for actual drinks and have actual conversations with? What is missing from people's lives that they feel they need to spend hour upon hour living in an imaginary world? Odd. IMO.)

How often are you on here, deepheat?

this might sound cruel, but the reality of the situation is that he has found a substitute mother then for the child. He's essentially off-loaded his responsibility onto you, He may well have reasons for doing so (grief etc.) but that works in his favour too as you are consistently taking up his slack.
Be careful that your own good nature does not turn you into a doormat.

Dreamylady - it changes everything yet it changes nothing.

Have you legally adopted DD?

I do feel for him - really I do, but if he feels like this (I didn't ask for this) then he needs to go and talk to a counsellor. He is bloody lucky to have you and he needs to sort his shit out.

I still stand by my first post though.

Dreamy

This is not going to get any better unless he himself takes responsibility for his gaming addiction (calling it as you initially did a "habit" downplays what this really is) which he is clearly not able to do or actually want to do. You're carrying/enabling him as well in all this so you are also playing a role here in this overall dysfunctional relationship. He has in you as well another mother figure for his child.

Am very sorry to read that his previous partner died but retreating into his gaming world as he now has will kill any love you have remaining for him. Gaming for him now comes first; you and everything else are not first on his list of priorities.

I would educate yourself further re gaming addiction. It goes without saying that all the gaming stuff will need to be removed from your household.

I'm going to come at this from a slightly different angle, as I used to be a pretty heavy gamer, up until around a year ago. DP was working long hours and then coming home and working until after midnight, and I'd sit on my laptop and shoot orcs/trolls/spotty teens until the wee small hours. It is an addiction, and a pretty gripping one.

Most advice says never to go "cold turkey" when trying to deal with an addiction, but that's exactly what I did. I uninstalled everything relating to the game, deleted "friends" I'd made from MSN/various online profiles I used, had various websites blocked from being accessed from my computer and so far things are fine. Coupled with this, DP and I spent a long time going over our relationship, realising we were both to blame for it going to stagnant and chose to change things for the better.

I won't lie and say the temptation to play again has disappeared forever, because it hasn't at all. I've just realised that I'm an all or nothing kinda girl, and wasting hours of my life clicking pixels just isn't worth it whatsoever.

I really hope your DP "sees the light", as it were, and realises very soon that his gaming habit is getting in the way of you both enjoying your DD and eachother.

you've all given me lots of food for thought. I feel mean and like I may have misrepresented him - though the facts are the facts, he is great in other ways. I'm just finding it hard to appreciate them because this has become so huge.

The problem is i'm afraid to tackle it with him because whenever we do there's just a huge row and he talks me into mental knots. I want to find a way of doing it without that happening. We've discussed counselling LOADS of times, been together to relate, and i've been on my own (and did do some work on letting him take responsibility more - i can be quite controlling myself in some ways) He has made some changes and effort since we've been together, more than I have probably (obviously because I'm closer to perfect already ) and he says he feels like I'll never be satisfied with him whatever he does, there'll always be something else - and he's probably right because thats how my relationship history has been. My dad died when I was very young so I've got a bit of a 'prince charming' complex of idealising what a partner should be like.

He's really resistant to counselling, (we've mainly talked about it in the context of his irritability and anger) because he doesn't want to lose his strong emotions, i think he thinks it'll make him less of a man. But I think he's got deep sadness because of his early years and a twisted view of what being a man is really about (his dad was violent to his mum and older brother as well as having affairs). He's always escaped into other worlds since he was tiny, and he's still doing it now. He's afraid of me adopting DD because of rockyness of our relationship - that if we split up I would be awarded custody. We had a big talk about it a couple of months ago and I think he realised he needed to do it anyway, for me and her. But hasn't mentioned it since.

God when I see it written down it all seems a bit hopeless doesn't it. Also wondering if I should've namechanged cos this is pretty intense stuff. But I'm really finding the advice enlightening and the moral support cheers me up..