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:
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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?
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Are my friends using girlfriend wrath as an excuse or is it legit? Hard for anyone else to know, sure. Make a good guess.
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What are my odds to find another person who’ll let me play my brains out while not sulking about it?