My boyfriend and I have been dating for over 2 years now. We basically live together, I spend the nights at his place and when he's at work during the day I spend my free time at home with my family. We're moving into a house we're going to rent in two weeks, a week after I graduate.
I started packing up my stuff at my parent's house as soon as we found a place. I told him that between moving, graduating and being a bridesmaid all in the same month I was going to be very stressed for a while, and he promised he would help out. I specifically said I would help him clean his apartment for the final inspection, but since I barely have any belongings there besides clothes and toiletries I did not want to pack up both places all by myself. He said he would do the majority of his apartment while I worked on my stuff at home.
Fast forward to 3 weeks later, he's only packed maybe 4 boxes, while I've packed a dozen at both places. I should have just let him do it himself and struggle last minute, but I really cannot sit there and know that all my stuff at home is 90% packed while he hasn't made any headway.
He hasn't packed because he's addicted to video games. This isn't the only thing that he's neglected because of games, but it's the most recent issue and one that's causing me a significant amount of stress. Every night he gets home from work around 10-11. Usually I'll ask him to eat with me. He says he'll spend time with me in a bit, for now he wants to go watch one of his shows by himself and relax alone for a bit. Then an hour later he's on a game with his friends. Headset on. Can't talk to him because he's in the middle of a match and can't pay attention even if he moves his headset to the side. He does this until 2 or 3 in the morning, wakes up so he has just enough time to shower and get dressed for work the next morning. Rinse and repeat. It's starting to disrupt my sleep recently, I was abruptly switched from 2nd to 1st shift temporarily and his computer is in the bedroom, so he's waking me up every night coming to bed or talking into his headset when I have to wake up at 5am. He's neglecting packing, neglecting cleaning, and for even longer been neglecting his pet, a chinchilla who sits in his cage all day and night with barely any interaction from him. He doesn't even remember when the last time he cleaned the cage was most of the time, and that's when he snaps out of it and cleans it out. I'm not trying to make him sound terribly abusive towards the chin, he's not sleeping in his own filth for weeks on end, but you can tell he's becoming less comfortable with humans because he doesn't get enough time out of his cage. He's also becoming a complete shut in because he doesn't want to lose his ranking by taking time off from playing.
I've had so many conversations about his habits with him. So many times I've told him that prioritizing his games over me, his pet and his living space is a deal-breaker. I've cried so many times because he spent the one day a week we both had off playing games. Every time he says he's sorry, that he knows he has a problem, he's not going to stop completely but he'll do better, he promises. If I bring up that he made all these promises last time he gets quiet, looks guilty and says that he knows, he's trying, and that's usually the end of the conversation.
And the thing is I don't want to break up with him. I love him to death, and apart from his video game addiction I could see us having a really great life together. We're supportive of each other, we know each other better than anyone else does, we have so many common interests, we can sit in an empty room for hours and never get bored if the other one is there to talk to. I don't want him to sound lazy, emotionally abusive or anything, because I truly believe we're good for each other. Just not when he's playing games. It's the basis for every issue we fight about.
I just don't know what to do. I'm looking at this from the same standpoint as other people in my life who have dealt with addiction. He doesn't want to be this way but it's hard for him to stop. He really is apologetic and knows he's hurting me and tells me he feels guilty for it, but he thinks he can just cut back on games and fix the problem without completely quitting. And although I know that's not how it works, I'm hesitant to tell him to stop too because a lot of his closest friends have moved away and the only time he really gets to talk with them is when they're playing together.
How do we make this work when he knows he has a problem but neither of us know how to fix it?
tl;dr My boyfriend is neglecting everything while he plays video games for hours on end, and I'm quickly becoming over stressed dealing with everything he's neglecting. He knows he is addicted but thinks he can "just cut back", and now I'm desperate for him to just stop.
Submitted April 30, 2019 at 01:26PM by itsathrowwawayy http://bit.ly/2vvzYLq
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