OckhamsRazor

Join Date 09/2003

+55

Wife Aggro

A Rantus

It's been ages since I've blogged. The reason is, I haven't thought of a topic I felt any passion about, but guess what Ock fans? I found one.

This may not be a topic you can all relate to. It has to do with a phenomenon known as “wife aggro.”

First let me explain where the term “aggro” comes from for those of you who do not know. It comes from video games where people join together in teams to defeat bad guys. Without getting into the complex particulars of it, the bad guy attacks whichever player is causing it the most problems. This is called “getting aggro” from the bad guy.

There are a lot of guys that like to play video games. There are a lot of women out there married to these guys who are getting pissed off by it, and so the term “wife aggro” was born for these men whose sole crime is they enjoy playing video games instead of watching TV.

Listen ladies. You want your husband to accept that you're getting wide around the hips? That you spend lots of time watching TV shows he thinks are silly? That you subscribe to and read magazines that make him out to be a slob? That you hold sex back based on him filling some criteria of yours? You want him to hold you as the only light there is in the world while you take away the only fun he has left to him BECAUSE he has dedicated himself to you? Then leave the poor fucker alone to play his game. God DAMN you're weak.

Most times these aggro taking men that *I* have met are responsible and kind. They often have children and share in the chores. The ones I personally know are CONSTANTLY paring down their playing schedules for fear of pissing off the person that *claims* to love them for who they are. These same women will scream bloody murder if their husband wants *them* to change anything.

This week, an online friend of mine quit playing the game we both love because of such a woman. Now you get this blog.

To women like this, this is my only opportunity to say GET LOST. You're a bunch of codependant selfish bitches. I hope all of your husbands quit playing games and go out to bars instead - then you'd REALLY have a good reason to play the victim, and isn't that all you really want anyway?

To the men. For god's sake get strong and dump your wardens. Your life is too short to spend in a prison made of misplaced guilt and childish bullshit. And if you think you're helping your kids, then do a little research on what it's like to grow up in a house where parents are at odds. You'll find that “forcing it to work” isn't accomplishing what you think.

I dedicate this blog to my wife who joined me in my game playing instead of trying to change me. Thanks, Morishojo, level 60 Druid - World of Warcraft.

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Great terminology

You must be into WOW

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Is this common?

My husband's an avid gamer (console...he's not much into PC games), and I don't have any problem with him playing games. We have two little boys, and games usually make for great quality time. We watch G4 together, and I read Game Informer and some of his other gaming magazines.

Games are interesting and entertaining. It's a hobby just like anything else. And it keeps him busy, haha. We sometimes play together, but I completely suck, so he plays his games and I don't have to feel guilty about being on the computer or playing my DS for hours. Hehe.

I think it comes down to respect, though. It's disrespectful for a man (or woman) to spend ALL his/her free time ignoring his (or her) spouse. I understand needing to decompress after work, and I like that my husband enjoys games. When he's happy it makes me happy. But he respects me enough to put down the controller when he sees me working my ass off around the house and ask what he can do to help. He makes time for us to talk, to go places, to watch movies, to have sex, to play with the kids, etc.

If a guy is completely obsessed and has no time for his wife or his family and his real life is suffering, then I think his wife *should* say something. Not "It's ME or your games!" or anything nutso and aggressive, but I don't think it's wrong for the wife to talk to the husband and ask him to come up with some sort of compromise. Same goes for annoying or frustrating behavior on the part of the wife (like in your example of a woman spending her days plopped down in front of the TV watching crap while things go undone and family members, husband included, uncared for).

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My wife very understanding because she's used to me allowing her to watch shows (and movies) that I absolutely have no interest in watching. As long as I come out of my cave every now and then (and that'll be easier since we moved and the computer is in the living room), she doesn't mind.

Of course, I don't neglect family time, or wife time, and I still manage to take care of everything that's needed around the house, so she's very understanding.

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For clarification, a wife "talking to her husband," as Texas mentioned, isn't at all what I'm referring to. I'm speaking mainly of spouses that invalidate their other half's love of something simply because they don't see the appeal. I would never advocate one person obsessing over a game to the point of losing touch with real life.

As for "Is this common," I've been playing large scale online games for quite a while now, and I find it to be very common. Oddly enough, I don't think it's nearly as big a problem with consoles (XBox and Playstation, etc...) In a console game, there's usually a pause button, and often a save game feature. If your spouse needs you, (or wants you ^^), it's pretty easy to break free without sacrificing anything.

And that sheds a little light on why the Online games generate some aggro. You can't save and you can't just walk away most of the time. In our group (called a guild in this case) we have 140 people. Groups of 40 of us have to coordinate team playing in order to accomplish some of the ingame goals. And in this team play, each player has specific and needed jobs to do. When someone leaves, he/she is backing out on 39 others that need him/her to complete those goals. I think this is something that is often not understood - that these online people are REAL people, and that a commitment to a real person on a computer should be kept with the same integrity as a commitment to any person you could reach out and touch whether one agrees with the validity of why the commitment was made or not.

There's a lot of good psychological material in this subject - and in the effects computers have had on humans in general.

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I dont mind my husband playing wow , I also have a high level character that I play at times. However, lately he has become obsessed with wow and plays from the time he gets off work until very late at night. He will only stop for dinner with me asking him too. We have 4 young children and I have full responsibility for their care now. I cannot even get in a conversation about decisions we need to discuss concerning financial or anything concerning the children. You critizize women for being aggro? Gaming is fun in moderation. When is it it to much? By the way I dont watch tv and our home is very well kept. What do you do when wow becomes an obsession?

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Paulita,

What I'm suggesting is that life is a series of choices. If you choose to stay with a guy that is more married to WoW than he is to you and your children, it's a choice that YOU are making. If you are unhappy because he plays WoW all the time, it's because you continue to make this choice. Own the choice you make, don't blame him.

Everyone has issues...god knows I have mine. If you want to solve your problem, finding out why this is such an obsession to him and trying to relate to it instead of erase it is probably better than entering into a control struggle no one can win. If that's too much work, then realize your choice to NOT cut your losses is your choice.

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My, my, touchy aren't we?

None of this is about me. Did you read the whole thing, LW?

If you DID read the whole thing, you missed this reply of mine to Texas W.

I would never advocate one person obsessing over a game to the point of losing touch with real life.

This article/rant/verbal vomitting was caused by a situation I have seen before and JUST recently saw again. A specific situation where a guy that DOES pay attention to his wife still gets hassled for playing video games. When he relents at last, she then wants him to replace it with stuff she likes but he doesn't because how SHE feels is tightly wrapped up in what HE does. That's the situation that a close friend of mine is in right now.

In YOUR situation, I feel for you, too, but "women who are ignored by their husbands" wasn't THIS blog.

If you feel strongly about "women who are ignored by their husbands," write an article.

You know I love your blog. Sorry mine pinched a nerve.

P.S. Deleted the misposts for clarity. Hope you don't mind.

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God I still agreww with the idea that we are different species that only come together in some wierd fashion to pro-create.

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Yes, but why would you make a point to say that (some) women read magazines that make men look like slobs unless you felt that way yourself? In all honesty, most women's magazines are full of ways to be a better wife, a better lover, a better mother, a better cook, etc...and why? All to please that 'slob.'

I hate those magazines for pretending to know what I want and selling it to women. The implication is that they aren't good enough for us how they are and need to change something. They imply that the something needs to be changed to please 'us' as you state. What kind of slob would ask for all those changes? Not me. I accept my wife with her shortcomings, and she accepts me with mine. Therefore, the magazines make 'us' out to be slobs in a blanket generality fashion by implying that all men want said changes and so all women need to roger up and change or admit they aren't good enough. I, for one, don't appreciate it being pigeonholed that way.

My opinion is the mags play on the insecurities of the women to sell copies - I don't read those magazines, and I haven't looked, but I'm hazarding a guess that most of the writers and editors of said magazines are women. The credibility of the articles would be in question if they were not, so I feel this "guess" of mine is at least logical. My opinion is those women authors and editors are betrayers of their own gender. My article was never a one way street. I was just speaking loudly from the less often heard side of the coin (which you might have noticed I have a tendency to do.)

P.S. to all, I apologize for not clicking the adult content button for the, ahem, colorful metaphors in the original post. I thought I had and just noticed I hadn't.

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I was just going through my articles...someone mentioned a possible virus alarm going off from something on my blog, and I realized that the person mentioned in this article, who I never mentioned by name, is the same Jason LaCroix who has been reported dead in this one. Just for the record. I wonder if she'd be happier to see him sitting there playing his game, now? Go hug your loved ones, folks, and forgive them the little things they do that you aren't real crazy about. You never know when they'll be gone like the wind.

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I'm with LW on this one. Time is the most precious commodity you have, and devoting it to games instead of your family shows something about you, for sure. Now, because I took steps to reduce my gaming time, it shows her that my family is important to me. Once in a while I'll play a game, and once in a while I'll get sucked into a game for an extended period. But gaming no longer has that chokehold on my time and life that it once did, and I'm finding that gaming really wasn't as much fun as I tried to make it.

Of course, if she's going to join you in your gaming, that's another thing altogether, especially if you get to play together. Playing games with others is quite a different thing than sitting down to play by yourself. Playing games with others you actually know from non-gaming experiences is even better.

So I say, glad you found a common interest. That's the main thing to avoiding wife aggro. Not giving up fun times, but finding things to do together that are even more fun than playing that game without her. People are too easily pleased these days. They don't even search for what would truly bring joy to their lives. I'm guilty of this as well.

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To: little-whip

Awwwww.

V^^^^^V bites you.

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A lot of men are married to women that are simply wrong for them, and vise versa. Personally the only problem I have with my wife and gaming is her occasionally hogging the computer/console I'd like to be playing with. We play games together, we play games seperately, it's just another leisure activity. Together time is important, time to yourself is important, how one spends the latter is their own business.

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Its really quite simple. Games like WoW that require 40 committed people to play non-stop for a set amount of time should not be played by men or women with families, even if that's just a spouse. I play LOTRO and am in a kinship that was created with the family in mind. We realize that no member of the kinship can make plans that are set in stone and that any one of us can leave at the drop of a dime (baby needs feeding, wife needs some "quality time", whatever).

This is partially the fault of developers who make hardcore playing a necessity, WoW being a prime example... but individuals need to take responsibility for their actions.

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