According to a study by Divorce super site Divorce Online, estranged wives are frequently citing video games as the cause of their failing marriages. Of the wives that cited "unreasonable behavior" for ending their marriage, around 15 percent said that their husbands put gaming before them. According to Divorce Online, this new number represents a five percent increase over 2010. The most common games cited as the cause of the break-ups were World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. So basically Activision could be considered a home-wrecker. Of course, blaming games for a broken marriage is like blaming a Holiday Inn for your spouse having an affair...
Psychologist and a relationship coach Dr. Kamal Khurana says that, while "video game addiction is a serious concern," it is just one of the many problems the struggling couples need to address.
"Often men take to playing video games as a stress buster and as a filler to fill a vacuum in their lives," Khurana tells The Times of India. "It's wrong to play the blame game, and place the onus on the creators of a particular game. The fact is that there are serious issues and there is something missing in the relationship, that is pushing the guy to resort to escapism to deal with them."
He goes on to say that video game addiction can be dealt with by counseling and support from a partner, but couples also need to explore the reasons why the video game has become the man's main focus.
"A non-addict cannot see why it's a compulsion for the addict to play the game everyday no matter what," he adds. "Try and come to an understanding probably ask him to play for an hour or two instead of being at it for more than three hours. If all of this does not work out seek professional help."
Source: Times of India
Comments
Re: Video Games Frequently Cited as Reason for Divorce
The fact that my wife supports me building a new room on the house for both my collection as well as a studio for the audio podcast and future video edition, plus one of our wedding anniversaries she bought me three arcade cabinets. I'm fairly sure I am safe at least from the "videogame" argument lol.
We do have some friends that the wife (not saying it's always this way, just in this situation) that she forced him to stop gaming completely as she wanted the attention to be in regards to her as much as possible. Needless to say he isn't very happy but doesn't believe in divorce. He grew up living over an arcade that his family owned so gaming has always been a part of his life. So if they ever do finally split, he could site a lack of games maybe?
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Re: Video Games Frequently Cited as Reason for Divorce
I'd say he could cite her being controlling.
Re: Video Games Frequently Cited as Reason for Divorce
I've always been inclined to believe that divorces like this are virtually always "I wanted them to change and they didn't change"; the 'problem' spouse always committed a similar amount of time to gaming, and the 'offended' spouse figured that they would stop after getting married. Or, they didn't live with each other for a substantial time before marriage, and so all of the couple's time together was spent together, and the 'problem' spouse gamed most or entirely when they were apart, making it seem like a sudden, growing or monstrous problem, when nothing has changed.
All of this stems from immature people having unrealistic expectations of what a relationship and marriage entail. There are still a surprising number of people who think that, once you 'settle down', you should give up anything 'childish' and become 'responsible', regardless of how serious, stable or responsible you may already be.
Re: Video Games Frequently Cited as Reason for Divorce
Hrm... I have not heard of divorce rates changing by all that much, so I wonder what categories video games have been poaching from and how this compares against the general rise of video games as a common activity.
Re: Video Games Frequently Cited as Reason for Divorce
Meh, just seems like a cop-out excuse to me. I figure they just blame video games because they couldn't catch their spouse cheating on them.
Atlanta Video Games Examiner for examiner.com