Relationships, doing things apart, and being "whipped" (long)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This was brought on by this thread, this post in specific, and a number of conversations I’ve had with my friends over the past weeks.

I play Magic the Gathering. I play it a lot. I play small tournaments weekly. I play bigger tournaments whenever there are any. I go to gaming conventions. I travel, even abroad, to get to tournaments. In short, it’s a big hobby consuming a lot of time and money. I’m single, so no-one is complaining, but a lot of my playing friends are in relationships. We were in a car on our way home from a tournament the other week when I asked them if they were going to go to the tournament the weekend after. Two of them said “I can’t, my girlfriend would get angry”.

I thought about this. When I was in a relationship and played Magic, it was never a problem for us. And I played a lot then too. I played every Friday night, and afterwards, I’d go out for beers with my friends. If I and the then Pricegal had something planned for Friday night, I’d obviously do that, but if nothing was planned, then I was playing. And I never heard a complaint. When I was going somewhere to play, I’d ask “Is it OK if I go to <wherever> that weekend?” and she’d without fail say “OK”, and it would be a real OK, not “I’m going to say OK, but it really isn’t, and you should work that out for yourself before even asking, and I’m going to make you pay for this”. Both the friends from the car seem to have relationships containing a lot of the latter kind of OK.

It’s not that I never chose her over Magic. I did, but I did because I wanted to. When someone asked me if I were going to a tournament and I wasn’t, I’d say “No, I’m going to nurture my relationship”. It become sort of a catchphrase. So I was with her because I wanted to, and I played Magic because I wanted to, and she was with me because she wanted to, and she did other things because she wanted to, which is the only sensible arrangement as far as I’m concerned. But that doesn’t seem to exist for my friends, who’ll instead end up at home even though they’d rather be somewhere else, spending time with a girlfriend who knows they’d rather be somewhere else. Yeah, that’s conducive to a fun time.

I don’t know how much of this is explained by cowgirl’s theory in the linked post. Maybe they really do want to spend time at home but use their girlfriends’ putative anger as an excuse. If so, they’re indescribably lame (let’s hope none of them reads this). If not, I’m in despair of ever being happy in a relationship again.

So, in short:

  1. Is the kind of relationship I had really that rare? This being the Dope, this thread will feature plenty of women proclaiming that they have that kind of relationship and that their men are free to spend time on their hobbies. So think around to people you know, your relatives. How many of them fall in which category?

  2. Are my friends using girlfriend wrath as an excuse or is it legit? Hard for anyone else to know, sure. Make a good guess.

  3. What are my odds to find another person who’ll let me play my brains out while not sulking about it?

2

In all of my best relationships, I wouldn’t have even asked permission. “I’m going <wherever> that weekend. Let’s have dinner when I get back.”

Having to ask permission is being whipped, and not necessarily by her.

3

Note the rest of the sentence. It wasn’t about asking permission. None of us had the authority to forbid the other, so asking permission was pointless. I just phrased the question politely. That phrasing means I care about what she thinks, and if she does want to say something (“X is having a party that weekend and I was hoping we could go” or whatever) she is given opportunity to say so.

I find just saying “I’ll be away that weekend” rather rude.

4

You could find a girl who plays Magic, too.

We do exist, you know.

To answer the real question, though, there are a goodly many happy, functional, adult relationships where each partner has hobbies that they share and hobbies that they don’t share with their beloved. I’d say of the couples I, personally, know at least three in four that I know well enough to have an insight have both shared and not shared hobbies (with the associated time commitments) and their relationship is such that nobody gets bent if one partner is inclined to particpate in their hobby-o-choice without the other.*

My own marriage, for example: My husband is a major football fan, while I barely tolerate it. He’s also a much, much bigger professional wrestling fan than I will ever be and very into constructed Magic play, which I am not. We both share numerous other hobbies though - reading, computer games, movies, limited Magic play (as opposed to constructed), etc. and so forth. We do the things we share together, and the things we don’t share seperately. I don’t have anything nasty to say when he spends hours every Friday night at FNM tournaments (and, frankly, don’t even think anything of it - I like the private time too much). He, for his part, doesn’t give me funny looks when I spend hours doing things I enjoy without him.

My parents are much the same - they have some shared and some not shared hobbies - and even the shared ones they don’t always participate in together. My mom and dad both play golf, but my dad likes it more than my mom does - and will go off to play golf with his buddies without her. She doesn’t mind this at all. She’ll play golf with her buddies - or bridge (which my dad also plays). She doesn’t mind a jot nor a tittle when he goes off pheasant hunting (which she deplores).

Whether your friends are using being whipped as an excuse, I can’t say without knowing your friends. Sometimes, it’s just easier to say “My girlfriend doesn’t want me to” than “Nah, I don’t feel like it right now”. The girlfriend thing is less likely to get you a ration of your buddies forcefully trying to persuade you to change your mind, for starters. Or they don’t want to touch off an “I love my girlfriend more than you” debacle. Or they actually have pre-made plans - in which case almost any SO will be wicked pissed if they break the plans in favor of hanging out with their buddies.

*Note: I am discounting for purposes of this post the possibility that someone is devoting an excessive amount of their time, energy and resources to their hobby *to the detriment * of their relationship. That’s a whole different story.

5

I disagree, tdn. Exactly the same statement can be used as a calendar-checking thing, where one person is asking the other if there is something planned. My husband and I check with each other all the time in that way.

I have some long thoughts on this, and so I’ll post this now and compose something longer for later on.

6

Oh horror. That’s for a whole 'nother thread.

7

Girlfriend Wrath does exist.

I live with a guy who loves RPGs. He games about 3 days a week. I have never gamed once in my life, and don’t intend to start. I have no problem with him being away from home to game, because while he’s gone I do stuff that I want to do, or hang out with my own friends. Most of the time, I’m just glad to have the house to myself so I can read for awhile.

On the other hand, one of the guys he games with is often subjected to Girlfriend Wrath. There are times when he won’t game with them, or can’t do some special extra game or just hang out, because she doesn’t want him to go out yet again.

8

It’s amazingly common with people I know to say that they can’t do something because their spouse or partner said they couldn’t. I have no idea why they bother, as it’s obvious they don’t really mean it, since they frequently go off and do whatever they feel like doing on other occasions. So, in my experience, people only use it as an excuse because for whatever reason, they don’t feel like saying, “No, I don’t want to go do that.” I never hear anyone using it as explanation for why they can’t do something they actually enjoy and want to do. I think it’s amazingly silly, but it seems to work for them.

It sounds like your friends’ excuse is legit to me, though, unless they suddenly discovered a disdain in themselves for an activity they had always previously enjoyed.

As for the third question, who knows? Sounds like what you want is someone who doesn’t think a relationship means that the two of you have to do everything together all the time, or have to get each others’ permission to have fun without each other. That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Everyone needs time alone. Couples that have to do everything together are ever so slightly creepy, anyway.

9

Fair enough. I guess it depends on her nature and the nature of the relationship. Nothing wrong with telling her in a polite and caring way.

This whole subject just reminds me a a former friend that really did have to ask his GF’s permission for everything. And usually she didn’t grant it. It was really pathetic.

I’d like to say that his story had a happy ending, but as far as I know it didn’t. Last I heard, he was in rehab and loathed by every one of his friends.

10

Well, it’s a balance. And some people are going to have a higher tolerance for an absent SO than others. But if you’re going to have an SO, you need to reserve time for them, and if you really prefer to spend more than 3 nights a week playing video games or whatever, then you might not be in a position to want an SO.

Most couples have differing hobbies as well as shared ones, and I can’t say that I know very many people (or any) that object to their spouse spending time on a hobby. But it can get excessive, to the point that the SO feels neglected and unloved, and that should be addressed. Some people value time together very highly indeed, while others are more interested in other methods of expressing love and caring, so it’s going to vary.

For example, I know a guy who goes duck hunting every possible weekend. His wife also has a big hobby, but for some reason if she wants to do something on a weekend, it’s her job to find a babysitter–and if none can be found, she’s the one who winds up staying home and missing out on her thing (hobby-related or not). Is that quite fair? Would it be unreasonable for her to tell her husband to find a babysitter or stay home himself for once?

My husband and I each have hobbies we love, and we support each other in them, but we also make concessions to each others’ needs. I like to sew while I sit with him in the evenings, but that makes it hard to snuggle because he doesn’t care for the the needle showing up in the direction of his eyeball every few seconds. So, sometimes I sew and sometimes I snuggle. Should I “resent his demands on my time,” or should I admit that he has a right to want to snuggle?

Hobbies are great, but they can get out of control. Every couple is going to have to negotiate how much time is spent on relationship vs. hobbies. I don’t see a need to bring in loaded words like “whipped” and so on; that’s a lack of respect for people as human beings.

11

Also, people can bring wildly varying expectations into a relationship. For some couples, “going steady” means going out two or three nights a week. For other couples, it means six or seven nights a week, and weekends are expected - by default - to be spent with the SO. Neither way is inherently wrong, it’s just different people’s ideas of a relationship.

12

My opinion is that that is a key (my bolding). I’ve known plenty of girlfriends/wives who just don’t enjoy being alone. These are the ones who seem to have Girlfriend Wrath[sup]TM[/sup]. They feel emotinally ‘abandoned’ when their SO is not hanging around with them. So, to me it’s quite possible that your friends’ tales are true.

I’ve also known many people who are extremely jealous of one another (both sexes). This type of control freak dictates when, where, what to wear etc. for their SO’s activities.

I’m not sure about the odds of finding an easy-going non-Girlfriend Wrath[sup]TM[/sup]-infested SO. I do belive it to be possible (my relationship is an example but I won’t bother you with that).

13

I think it’s quite likely. In my last relationship, we saw each other on Saturday and Sunday nights, and that was it. We both had plenty of other things to keep us busy.

14

My husband spends Sunday afternoons playing RPGs with his friends. A few weekends a year, he goes out of town to gaming events. I encourage him to do this stuff, because he loves it and it relaxes him. However, I wouldn’t be happy if he spent several nights a week gaming or wanted to game all day on Saturdays. I don’t expect he’d be happy either if I spent every Saturday away from home, engaging in a hobby that he doesn’t share or enjoy.

We both work full-time; we have a household to maintain; and we both value spending time with our extended family. Given those three factors, leisure time that we can spend alone together becomes a valuable commodity. Add kids into the mix, and I can imagine becoming even more protective of that time.

15

Pepper Mill was already an avid RPGer when I met her.

Why is this horrible?

16

'im indoors has a game-playing friend who virtually has to hide from his wife when he wants to be playing WoSW. He and 'im indoors spend a fair amount of time discussing the fact that his wife is totally unreasonable when all Joe wants to do is play a game for a couple of hours.

Neither realised it could be a potential relationship-killer until I asked 'im indoors how long he played WoSW on a particular Sunday. His reply was that it was only an hour or two. Obviously this game takes place in another dimension because he was physically glued to his PC for nearly seven hours.

That’s an entire day, he spent it playing a computer game and I was busy doing other stuff. What was I doing? Vacuuming the floors, dusting, cleaning the kitchen, mopping the tiled floors, doing laundry, ironing, tidying up, gardening, cooking and washing dishes. At that point he still didn’t realise that if his friend’s wife had experienced the same day that I’d had, she might be feeling just a little resentful of her husband’s “couple of hours” on the computer.

Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly pleased with it myself and regard it as yet another nail in the coffin of our relationship.

17

I don’t dispute in any way that Girlfriend Wrath exists - I’ve seen it. Hell, I’ve dealt it forth like fires from the Heavens.

Please note that I’ve seen a goodly many relationships wherein one partner wailed and moaned because their SO got pissed off at them for participating in their hobbies. However, upon close questioning, it became clear that the whiner in question was spending approximately three hours doing the hobby to every hour with the SO. I wouldn’t put up with that either - and I’m notoriously easy-going. When you allow your hobby to take precedence over your partner, it’s my personal opinion that they have every right to get ticked off - particularly if it happens often (and by “often” I mean more than three or four times a year).

For example, once upon a time I was chatting with a male friend of mine who didn’t understand why his girlfriend was so pissed off at him. He felt it was unreasonable that she’d developed a hatred of his online gaming - she hadn’t minded it when they started dating. Turns out he was gaming for a minimum of 30 hours per week while working full-time - he was doing the gaming thing all day Saturday and Sunday until late at night and going raiding with his guild every Friday evening as well. If she wanted to see him, she had to come over and hang out at his place while he was logged on. He’d make plans to go do things with her, and then cancel with no notice to go raid with his guild. He never talked about anything other than gaming with her (even though she didn’t do the gaming thing). He turned every conversation they had into one about gaming. In that situation, it’s my contention that he didn’t really want a girlfriend - he wanted someone to fuck during the downtime while the clerics rebuffed the raid and medded to full.

I’ve also seen relationships where one partner demanded that all of their partner’s attention be focused on them at all times. I find that just as unhealthy.

It’s been my experience that healthy relationships are somewhere in between the two. It’s also been my experience that it’s not uncommon for guys to use the phrase “my girlfriend doesn’t want me to” as code for “I’m not in the mood”. My brother told me once, and I think he’s probably accurate as far as he goes, that if you tell your buddies that your girlfriend doesn’t want you to, you’re a lot less likely to get the hard-sell “Come on, man! Stay out a little longer with us!” routine.

About the asking permission thing - my husband does that to me all the time. He’ll turn to me (or call me up if we’re not together) and ask “Is it okay if I go to CT tomorrow for a tournament?”. He doesn’t want my permission - he knows he doesn’t require it. What he’s doing is shorthand for him saying “The guys want me to go up to this tournament. We’ll be there all day. I want to go with them, but I suck at remembering our schedules and can’t remember if there’s something we’re supposed to be doing tomorrow already, and oh-by-the-way making sure that you don’t have plans of your own (that I didn’t know about or can’t remember) already that would necessitate my staying local for the day.” He’s really, notoriously bad at remembering appointments (social and otherwise) and counts on me to remember that stuff for him - so he’s checking the schedule of events before making plans with the guys to go larking off to an all-day event in another state. Generally, I say “Have a good time!”. Sometimes, I say “Sure - but remember we’re supposed to have dinner with your mom tomorrow so are you gonna be back by 6?”. Sometimes, I say “Tomorrow is Jane’s wedding (or whatever), so you can’t go.”

18

Maybe his perception of the lack of such women is the horror?

19

This is a very good explanation of just why WoW kills quite a few relationships. I have a friend whose husband plays, and at one point they came close to divorce over it. He has no friends in this city, even though there are lots of guys he would get along with, because he spends all his time online. I’m amazed at what she puts up with, frankly.

My husband plays video games quite a bit, and we’ve had to negotiate a bit over that, but on the whole he’s very willing to stop and do something else when I need him, and I try not to pull him off all the time. Balance and compromise!

20

I think we have the same husband. My sweetie, while a brilliant dude and a wonderful husband, has the memory of a sieve. I am the Official Keeper of the Social Calendar. I’m sure to an outsider, his asking, “Is it okay if I go?” might make him look whipped, but it’s no different than someone else checking their datebook.

True dat. dangermom, I always look forward to reading your advice in relationship threads. You’re a wise woman.