I just read this article on Salon.com by Rachel Shukert called How Rock Band saved my marriage.
Hilarious! I also used to hate my husband's video game addiction until I started playing Rock Band.
It also contains several insights about married life that hit very close to home for me.
The most depressing thing about getting older isn't really the reminders of inevitable physical decay -- the gray hairs that pop up in unexpected places, the faint lines beginning to etch themselves permanently in the corner of each eye, the mornings when you wake up with a hangover, even though you haven't been drinking -- but the gradual winnowing of options, as your personal limitations become more and more obvious and eventually start beating you about the head and neck with brutal force. The chasm between who you planned to be and who you are grows wider and impossible to traverse.
We try to make ourselves more interesting. We might take up salsa dancing, or become obsessed with cheeses, or begin to wear a fez in public. When this fails, we begin to take out our hostility on the person we feel trapped us in our inescapable little shell of mediocrity. Whether this hostility is expressed by retreat into a fantasy world in which one is a gun-slinging super-fighter saving the world from totalitarian evil (him) or a plunge into unforeseen depths of pathetic, whining neediness (me), the result is the same. You start to fake-hate each other, and if you're not careful, the fake-hate festers into real hate, and suddenly, ladies at synagogue are clucking their tongues at your mother. "It's such a shame! They seemed like such a nice young couple."
That is so true, and so accurately describes what I've been going through during the last few years of my relationship. I've only been married for 3 years, but we've been together for 8 and the honeymoon is definitely over. Sometimes I think my new obsession with video games is a great because it brings us together.
But then again... maybe it's just another case of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" as with my conversion to watching and following sports (which I never did before we met.) Why am I the one who always becomes interested in his hobbies? Maybe it's just me being neurotic, but it's never been the other way around.
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