How do I (30f) tell my boyfriend (30m) that I hate doing something that’s important to him?

My boyfriend loves D&D (dungeons and dragons) and has been wanting to play for a really long time. He is almost obsessed with it and watches Critical Role all the time. For Christmas I got him a D&D starter set.

My intention was for him to find some friends to play with, but he hasn’t yet and really wanted to play so I agreed to run a single player campaign with him. This turned out to be a larger labor of love than I thought it would be, ultimately resulting in hours of reading text learning how to be a DM and play the game. I still don’t totally understand everything and frequently have to stop while we’re playing to look something up.

It’s turning out to be really time consuming and challenging for me, and I’m not having a good time. I don’t like playing for more than 1-2 hours but he often wants to go for 4-5 and gets moody when I want to stop early. I’m also having to play multiple characters and flesh out this fantasy world while he is only navigating his one character through it all. It’s mentally exhausting.

Also, it’s hard for me to dedicate so much of my free time to this since I don’t have that much. He works 30-32 hours a week and I average about 60. I’m starting to dread Saturdays knowing I’ll be doing this rather than just relaxing and enjoying myself. I would rather just read or watch a movie. He also has this really annoying habit where now that I’m playing with him and “understand it”, if he sees something funny on Critical Role he’ll come find me and recount the entire thing to me...and I’m not interested. If I was, I would watch Critical Role. I don’t WANT to watch other people play D&D after spending 5 hours playing it myself and I certainly don’t want to hear him narrate it back to me.

I have tried once before to get out of it and he really laid on a heavy guilt trip about it.

I feel terrible that he loves this thing so much and I am starting to feel suffocated by it. I wish I had never agreed to get involved, I just wanted him (and still do) to be happy. I’m afraid if I don’t go about this the right way he will be hesitant to share his hobbies with me in the future.

TL;DR I agreed to play D&D with my boyfriend, I’m starting to hate it and want out due to his annoying obsession with it but I don’t know how to tell him without causing friction or hurting his feelings.

Submitted January 30, 2020 at 07:57PM by iunarihs https://ift.tt/31iBQWL