I'm taking the gamer: The wedding couldn't start because he had to finish the level. Then he arrived
There are loves that arise while dancing. There are loves that are born over a cup of coffee. And then there are those that are born in the digital world. There, where the average person sees no emotions, only pixels. That's exactly how the story of Soni and Michal was born. Their relationship began like a fairy tale about two souls united by a passion for games. But the deeper they got into marriage, the more she found out that he doesn't just play one game - he also plays with her patience, her attention and ultimately with her heart.
This article is not only about a romantic beginning, but also about the shadow that video game addiction can cast on a couple's life. We bring a view of marriage with a gamer, preparations, traditions, reality after the wedding, but also the true story of a woman whose marriage to a gamer turned her life into isolation and ultimately ended in treatment.
Love through levels
Soňa was never a player, but when she met Michal in the online environment during the pandemic, it seemed that fate was making a joke of them or offering them an exceptional chance. He was her online protector, together they defeated bosses and shared strategy and laughter. Something special connected them, a combination of fantasy and reality.
They started writing to each other outside the game, sent photos, listened to the same music. For their first meeting, Michal came with headphones hanging around his neck and eyes glistening from tiredness. He had spent the whole previous night playing a tournament. Soňa laughed. She found it cute at the time. However, she didn't know that she would see this image again a thousand times - and that one day the same look would hurt her.
Planning a wedding versus the World of Warcraft
The wedding was planned according to a classic scenario - rings, white dress, feast, cakes. But there was one small problem: Michal's mind was elsewhere. Instead of tasting pastries, he preferred to test a new game patch. Instead of choosing napkins for the decoration, he discussed with his guild friends whether they could reschedule a raid. When the conversation turned to the wedding, Soňa hoped that Michal would actively participate in the preparations. But she soon found out that her idea was dramatically different from reality. He was more focused on planning a weekend raid with his friends than choosing a wedding hall.
"We don't need to have a big wedding, I'd rather save for a new monitor,"
he suggested. However, he eventually succumbed to family pressure and agreed to a traditional wedding.
The wedding preparations were filled with compromises. Sonia handled the cakes, decorations, invitations - he only took care of the choice of game music, which played upon arrival in the hall. The bride shook her head, but still believed that everything would change after the wedding.
When the groom is late because he was finishing a level
D-day has come. Everything was ready, the guests were getting settled, Soňa was radiant in her dress ... and Michal was late.
"I had to finish the dungeon so I wouldn't betray the team,"
he explained later.
Later, he claimed that he was sorry. But at that moment, Soňa thought for the first time that maybe she was marrying someone who would never fully leave his digital world.
The wedding went ahead, but on that day some noticed that the groom did not pay as much attention to the bride as he did to his guild friends, who came to support him physically, of course, in t-shirts with the game logo. The main wedding gift from his party was a new gaming mouse, a headset, and a promise that after the wedding they would "not leave him", even though he is married. It was a joke - but with a bitter foundation.
Life in the shadow of the blue light
The first weeks after the wedding were still bearable. Soňa hoped that Michael would change, that they would start going out more together, planning a shared future. However, he spent more and more time in the online world. He worked from home, and in his free time, he played. They ate together less and less, trips did not exist, and Soňa felt lonely - like an NPC character in his life.
One day she sat down and asked him the question: "Is that game more important to you or am I?" Michael fell silent for a moment and replied: "You are real, it just keeps me afloat. But I cannot live without it."
However, what started to bother her the most was something else. They were supposed to finally be together in the evening, but he only appeared in the bedroom after he finished playing. She was almost asleep, but then he came with expectations that were increasingly distant for her.
"Of course, I have a desire for intimacy. But when I wait all evening and he lets me fall asleep alone because he needs to finish a gaming tournament, and only then suddenly appears with a desire for sex ... well, I simply get over it. I feel like something he saves for last, after he has done everything else. Shouldn't it be the other way around?"
Sonia admitted bitterly.
Gradually, she stopped hoping that the evenings would belong to them both. Games were always the first priority. And although Michal claimed that he loved her, his actions did not correspond to it.
True story of Zuzana: "He wasn't there for me, just for them online"
Zuzana, now a divorced woman in her thirties, told us her own story. Her ex-husband was also a gamer - at first he was nice, attentive, creative. But after the wedding, everything seemed to fall away.
"He played up to 12 hours a day. In the morning I would go to work, in the evening I would return and he would be sitting in the exact same place as in the morning. He ignored my birthdays, he forgot our anniversaries. When I told him that it hurts me, he responded that games are his escape."
Their marriage ended after two years. The last straw was an event when he tried to cancel their planned vacation because he had an important tournament. After the breakup, he went for treatment. And what was the diagnosis? Addiction to video games.
"The consequences of excessive gaming can take a long time to manifest and are even worse to fix. In this regard, we can compare them to cigarettes. The consequences of daily heroin use are visible within half a year, but for example, you can smoke for twenty years without feeling significant problems. But then you might have cancer, and it's too late. Gaming also does not cause problems immediately. When I mention the physical consequences that every game or technology manufacturer warns about in the package leaflet - vision, posture or epilepsy - these are mainly consequences in the area of psychology. In the social area, the consequences may only manifest later,"
Therapist Jiří Koreš speaks for the portal iDnes.cz.
On the internet, you can find a multitude of stories that show how a once caring and present husband became a gamer, completely absorbed by the virtual world, and the whole marriage began to collapse.
One of such examples is the following story of a woman who, after ten years of relationship, discovered that her husband succumbed to an online game on his mobile to such an extent that he lost contact with reality and his own family.
"My husband and I have been together for 10 years, it's just that in recent months he fell into some online game on his mobile, he became completely out of it, I'm telling him something and he asks me about it 2 minutes later, stopped paying attention to the kids, when I start blaming him, he goes to play with them, but I normally see him not enjoying it and can't wait for the kids to fall asleep so he can have peace. The last time his lunch got burnt as he had to play while cooking, the kids had nothing to eat, we had to order pizza. I am genuinely scared for him, how to help him?"
According to material from Stowe Family Law, the mechanism behind gaming addiction is dopamine - the reward hormone, which plays a role in motivation and addictive nature of gaming. Symptoms include irritability, neglecting relationships, lying about playing time, and inability to stop despite negative consequences.
Recouple recommends identifying symptoms such as excessive gaming, escape into the game, physical consequences (fatigue, skipping meals), and one way out is to set clear boundaries, have open communication, and seek professional help.
A study from Finland indicates that users who play more than 20 hours a week report lower partner satisfaction. Intensive gaming disrupts the emotional availability of the partner and causes dangerous emotional distancing.
Brevik was addicted to computer games, spent a year of his life on them
Psychologists often emphasize that long-term addiction to games leads to weakened relationships, neglect of a partner, and total isolation. The most extreme example is the case of Anders Behring Breivik, who admitted during his preparations for the attacks in Norway that he spent a year of his life playing games. Anders Behring Breivik, who caused the death of 77 people in Oslo last July, was diagnosed with a dependency on computer games according to a psychiatric evaluation. Between 2006 and 2010, he spent a total of 8700 hours at the computer, which represents almost a full year of pure time. Breivik denied this fact. Aftenposten newspaper reports that during the online game World of Warcraft, Breivik spent approximately 500 hours from November 2010 to February 2011. In his own interviews, he claimed that he did not use the computer for games, but to plan terrorist attacks. According to Aftenposten, Norwegian police tried to find out who Breivik was playing with, or if he paid someone to play under his name.
What is life like alongside a gamer?
Living with a passionate gamer is not easy. Games are not the problem in themselves. The problem is when they become a priority. It can change a partner, from an equal member of the relationship she becomes someone who begs for attention, someone who is jealous not of another woman, but of the keyboard.
Soňa still lives with Michal today, but their relationship is different than she imagined. They spend little time together, and although Michal appreciates her, he cannot tear himself away from his virtual world. She adapted, found her own hobbies, but sometimes she feels like a cohabitant, not a wife. And the second woman from the story, Zuzana...well, she has now found a loving husband, for whom she is in the first place.
Not every marriage to a gamer has to end tragically. The key is balance. Gaming passion can be part of life if there is also room for a real relationship. But if the woman becomes just a backdrop to the screen, if her words carry no weight and her feelings are just interruptions to the gaming session, then it's not about love, but escape. If you're marrying a gamer, prepare for a world where the fight is not only for love but also for attention. And sometimes it's a fight in which the woman stands alone.
Source:author's work, Hyvakysymys.fi, Recouple.com, Stowefamilylaw.co.uk, iDnes.cz
