Losing a Husband to WOW

Last week as a finished the last couple chapters in Julian Dibbles ,Play Money, one comment he wrote really stuck with me. As he briefly commented on the collapse of his marriage, he causally said the main reason for this separation was not because of his business in UO but for a variety of other reasons. I find this hard to believe, that after a year of him obsessing over a multi-player computer game that it couldn’t have had some effect on his marriage in the long run. I was also shocked to see how in “Second Skin” the term “World of Warcraft widow” was used to describe someone whose husband had essentially abandoned them for thousands of wizards and fictional creatures online. How could these women be ok with this, was my first question. How could they let their husbands or significant other, spend hundreds of hours online socializing with their virtual friends instead of spending that quality time with them? I know that when your in a relationship with someone there is always compromise involved with letting the other person do what they love but where do you draw the line? Also isn’t this one of the main indicators of someone who has an addiction, when they start to lose everything they care about in their lives. You see this all the time with alcoholics and people with substance abuse issues. One man in “Second Skin” makes the bold statement that he tried to hide his gaming from his current fiancée because he was worried about how she would react. Isn’t that making the situation worse. If she were to turn around today and lash out of him because of his excess time spent with his virtual friends then I feel he really would have no right to retaliate because he wasn’t up front with her to begin with. This term “World of Warcraft widow” is probably used to a certain extent in a humorous degree but in the end I feel it should be used to describe a much sadder reality for these people. It shows how even the gamers who do have meaningful relationships in real life are abandoning them for an online world. They are cutting off the contact with the “real world” and in essence leaving it behind for their new virtual one.