Who's being ridiculous? (Role playing drama)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I know the answer already, but I want to see if it’s the same answer as everyone else.

So my husband runs a D&D game on the weekends. Until recently, we had a couple playing. Well, the husband plays, the wife sits around and bitches about how D&D is stupid and annoying and everyone should stop playing pretend when we graduate 2nd grade. God forbid she doesn’t come to the game, though. No, she insists on coming and bitching and pouting. I love this girl to death, and think she’s a really great person, but her attitude about this game has really put me off. It’s incredibly childish to insist on coming every game night and pouting that you have to be at the game, you could have stayed at home.

They’ve evidently had some “girl drama” in the past. Like, he talks to girls that flirt with him and isn’t entirely forceful about putting the flirting to a stop. I get that it’s a problem, but I also think it’s mostly her insecurity talking. She is so convinced that she’s so fat and repulsive that any unmarried woman within the vicinity will attract him, by virtue of not being fat and repulsive like her. (She is neither especially fat or repulsive, by the way. The objective reality is that most would consider her a very pretty girl.) I don’t see the point in being married to someone you think for a minute would ever cheat on you anyway, but not my marriage, so whatever.

Well, the wife has eyed one particular young lady my husband has befriended as a threat. She’s joining the game, and Wife is very unhappy about it. She essentially has threatened to make Husband quit the game, and talks about how we shouldn’t be hanging out with her, because she’s younger than us by quite a bit. She’s really just this nerdy friendly girl. She has a boyfriend, and I’m just not getting where wife’s animosity is coming from.

Anyway, I don’t play these games with my husband. The mountains will crumble and the seas will dry up before that man would ever hurt me willingly like that. I’m not a jealous person, and I would be pissed if my husband played that “You can be friends with these people but not these.” game with me, so I give him the respect not to play it with him. I’m completely content to treat my husband like an adult. I think she’s being ridiculous, and I’m not sure how to handle it if this turns into a “we were your friends first” thing. Am I being totally insensitive in saying to her, “Look, she’s joining the game, this game does not revolve around your insecurity. Deal with it, because I’m confident that you guys can come up with a compromise.”?

2

I run a D&D campaign for my son’s middle-school friends. They’re more mature than this woman. You have my sympathies.

My attitude would be: “Who I invite is MY business. If you decide you and your husband don’t want to come over any more because you don’t like the company, that’s your decision. We’ll miss you, and if you ever change your mind, you’re welcome to come back.”

I don’t think you need to say anything to her directly. Just cheerfully continue to invite who you want. If she tries to make you choose between her and the new girl, refuse to play along. There’s no reason her problem needs to become your problem.

3

Well, unless there’s details you’re not privy to, the wife’s completely the one being ridiculous.

The fact that she both apparently thinks he’ll cheat with the new girl and that the new girl is too young for you lot to even be friends with (what age difference are we talking about? Mostly out of curiosity - I assume she’s at least old enough that ‘he’d go to jail’ isn’t a valid counterargument to the ‘he’ll cheat!’ stuff…) is pretty bizarre, too. (My main RP group spans from the early 30s to the early 20s, as a sidenote - all of us have been in the group for at least 2 years, the older of us for closer to 10.)

4

I’m 28, my husband’s 27. Until this girl joined, our youngest player was 20. Our oldest is 31. Husband is 25 and Wife is 22. This girl is 18.

5

Nice age spread.

Wow. Seriously, she thinks 18 is too young to be gaming with a group that otherwise averages out to mid-20s?

If the youngest existing member was in their early 30s, I can see 18 being seen as too young to be friends with (I disagree, but, I can understand it), but…cripes.

6

Personally I would just stop at “Look, she’s joining the game”, and the follow up with wording similar to what The Hamster King said. Commenting about how they need to compromise is giving her a stage for her drama, ISTM to real problem isn’t so much her insecurities but the fact that she’s bringing them out in public. And it sounds like they have already reached a compromise – he play D&D with his friends, and she gets to come along and watch and complain. Probably works fine for them, just not for everyone else in the room.

7

Absolutely. And I’m just going to leave the particulars to them and not worry about anything but who I’m comfortable having in my house. I’ve decided I’m not even going to talk about it with her. It’s her comfort zone.

8

My group ranges from 18 to 46, only because our youngest had a birthday… :stuck_out_tongue:

9

I don’t see anything lovable about this woman. She’s a control freak, and when she can’t have her way, she tries to make everyone around her miserable.

And you know that she’s the one being ridiculous.

10

Yeah, I’m not sure why this is in IMHO. You’re likely to get 100% consensus on this.

It sounds like this girl is emotionally behind her age by about ten years.

11

The husband with the annoying wife is being ridiculous. It is clear that his wife doesn’t want to be there and she doesn’t want him to be there. It’s ridiculous that he is forcing you guys to endure that kind of crap. He should stay home with his obsessive wife or tell her she shouldn’t come. He needs to “man up”. But he does play D&D, so the stereptype is working against him.

12

No, she thinks 18 is younger than her, and therefore less fat and repulsive *and *younger to boot. “Too young for the group” is just a smoke screen.

She sounds insecure to the point of toxicity.

13

Hi. My name is Chimera, I’m 47 years old and I’m coming up on 31 years of playing D&D.

Now that my nerd credentials are out ot the way…

This woman’s behavior is like threadshitting on a board. It is monumentally rude, especially in someone elses house, and I for one would have asked her to SHUT THE FUCK UP OR LEAVE the second session she did it in. But I can understand why people patiently tolerate it because the person is someone more likeable’s spouse.

My thoughts;

You need to concentrate on the negativity and the drama. Being the very straight forward kind of guy that I am, I would pull her into another room and tell her that while she’s more than welcome to come, the constant badmouthing of the game is extremely offputting, rude and unwanted. That she needs to stop doing that entirely if she wants to come to the games, because it’s downright insulting and she’s doing it IN MY HOME.

Then this other stuff? Unwanted drama. I’ll invite the people I want to invite, and play with the people I want to play with. There’s NO WAY that I will allow a non-player, especially one who continually indicates that they don’t want to be there in the first place, to dictate who I will invite into my house. That I would love to continue playing with her husband, but that she personally needs to tone it down and remember that she is a guest in my house, or she needs to stop being a guest in my house.

You might permanently lose him as a player. Or he quit for a while, then return on his own, without her. I’ve seen it go both ways. Odds are slim that she actually cleans up her act and turns into a decent person.

14

Yikes. Sounds like passive-aggression, all around. Wife bitches. Husband won’t act. Everyone else sits around and silently suffers instead of saying anything.

Through my long years of D&D playing, I can tell you: it’s not worth the suffering. And it’s going to go on forever until someone does something.

You may as well bite the bullet, and get the drama out and over with, instead of having it linger on and fester for years more.

If I were your husband, I’d mention to Mr. Girl Drama “Hey, with more people joining it’s really too distracting to the game with people who aren’t involved around. We’re only going to have over the people who are actually playing in the game. Of course, your wife is welcome to join in if she wants.”

And when he tries to weasel around that (and he will) stand firm. You’re really better off without someone who dumps his relationship drama on your doorstep, despite what it may seem to you.

15

She’s not a bad or unlovable person. The problem with her, is she goes way out of her way for everyone else and then forgets to take care of herself. Then the resentment builds to the point where she’s ready to explode and she gets very moody and difficult for a couple of days. I try to ride those episodes out, because she’s very funny and generous in every other context. I also may have overstated the extent to which she complains. She’s often content to find something else to do in the same room, but she gets these moody episodes where she acts this way, and I honestly don’t know how to handle them most of the time.

This is a pattern with me and female friends. Many women seem to have this odd insecure emotional core I cannot figure out how to handle, and I’ve had friendships with women become very toxic in the past. Female friendships are always a bit of a challenge for me. Probably because of the type of women I attract. Conflicts with men are, in my experience, much more straightforward. I can handle that. Conflicts with the women in my life always turn into whether or not I’m being insensitive and offering solution where I shouldn’t and not being gentle and Agh. It’s exhausting. That’s why I asked if I was being insensitive by basically telling her that it was their conflict to work out and I was inviting who I pleased.

16

Arguably you are being insensitive by telling her it’s their conflict and you will invite who you please.

So what? You are the host. Part of being a good host is making your home inviting to those who visit–which includes the other people in the group. If the problem person is only whiney and moody some of the time, you can tell her she’s welcome when she’s cheerful (or quiet) but that you refuse to listen to whinyness.

It is NOT your responsibility to put limits on the presence of other potentially more attractive females.

17

Tell her to piss off and if they don’t come it’s a bonus because the bitch is gone.

18

Sounds like you’re thinking like a man. Or rather not treating her like a woman. Wouldn’t it be better to just hear out her complaints, understand where she’s coming from, then move on?

19

Oh yeah, that would make things easier. And I don’t really fight with her about those things. She’s actually pretty ok with me offering solutions. I can communicate like most women expect, but it’s exhausting. I’m much more comfortable with my male friends, most of whom are much more direct. The problem is more that I wish I could sit down with her and tell her that she’s being silly about this, but I don’t think I could without upsetting her. I care about our friendship, so I’m just going to avoid the subject. I don’t think it’s the D&D she’s really upset about, honestly. I think it’s other issues in their marriage that they are projecting on this situation.

20

Sounds like you’ve hit on something there. Actually, it probably goes deeper – like you mentioned in your OP, she just might be really insecure.