Be Excellent To Each Other

My GF has moved in to the flat. Along with throwing away a lot of stuff that I didn't realise needed throwing away, i've moved my xbox into the spare room and run it off a 24" monitor and Turtle Beach headphones, rather than the big TV beasty in the lounge.

Surprisingly, this seems to have made me play on it a hell of a lot more than I have done in a long time. Before, I never felt the need to fire up a console when they were easily accessible and time was unlimited. Now I have limited time (baths, TV shows I don't care about, weekends or evenings out with the girls, etc...) I pretty much use that time to exclusively play games.

All in all, im happy with my lot.

How do you work your playtime with your missus?

Wait 'till she goes to bed?

She's an early-to-bed person, I'm not. Works out well.

Pretty much the same as you Trooper. There’s a plethora of TV programmes that I don’t care about so I play then… Plus, my Command Centre is downstairs next to the living room so it’s not like I’m shutting myself away upstairs.

Pretty much the same for me.

Also, I'd like to add a retroactive regarding the title.

We have one TV, so I do a lot of handheld gaming.

If there's something I really want to play, then I'll play it in the evenings, unless there's something really important on TV.

I get up a lot earlier at weekends than the wife, so I'll play my consoles then if I'm not watching sports.

These threads creep me out. Why are you seemingly only free to do what you want to do when she's got something she wants to do more than make demands on your time?

I spend time with my wife when there's something that we both happen to want to do simultaneously so my playtime is whenever I say it is and that, I suppose, is how I manage it.

Well, it may seem creepy and weird, but I actually want to spend time with my other half So i'm gaming when spending time together isn't really feasible.
My post was actually more of a comment of surprise that I seem to be playing games more now Kate has moved in, rather than less, even though gaming time has ostensibly reduced.

Early days is it?

Woman's realm is front room with rabbit, Man's realm is backstage with 9 gippynigs.

She plays the Sims 3 which gives me control of the TV.

NB: She's more dedicated to the Sims than Dimrill is to farming cheevos.

I'll let you know in a week.

Heh. Heheheheheheheh.

I want to spend time with mine too. When I want to, not when she wants me to. Which is what your posts sounded quite like. It is reminiscent of those chaps wo are expected to sit and watch X-Factor on a Saturday but would get laughed at if they asked their wife to watch them playing R-Type for two hours.

*cough* I like X-factor...

In my case, though, I like The X-Factor and she likes games, so hooray!

And I always want to spend time with my wife - I resent having to go work, because it's less time spent with her.

If we had two TVs in two other rooms, I don't know I'd use it that much.

(As it is, we don't have two TVs or even two rooms.)

wow!! I am surprised you let her out of the kitchen

But yours sounds exactly the same as what you criticise, but backwards, and that she should be happy with spending every minute of your time that you deem her worthy of...

In reality, most people don't always do what they want 100% of the time. Sometimes I want to play video games, but if I've spent the last four hours doing that then perhaps I should have a break and eat food and socialise and spend time with the wife and so on and so forth.

Having a relationship where you both do exactly what you want to do 100% of the time is literally impossible.

I also only game when the wife's in bed. Fnarr.

What I'd really like is to get her into games, but I think she's far too beyond it mentally, and has missed that crucial 10-15 year old stage of your brain hbeing introduced to games early enough and consquently understanding them. Charlie Brooker summed it up pretty well in this

and no fucker has commented on my absolutely perfect use of the word "ostensibly", I didn't even have to look it up or nuffin.

Vocab FTW!

Bollocks is it, Curiosity... my wife can do whatever she likes and so can I, that's all.

Where did this 100% thing come from?

/edit I might not have married her if she wasn't the type to finish Day of the Tentacle, 100% Animal Crossing (on the cube, before it was popular) and get really excited when I was playing "proper old Prince of Persia like on my 286" on Live Arcade. Nevertheless she doesn't game, at all virtually, as that's all she'd end up doing.

I think the thing is, GY, as you probably do know, is that there may be negative feedback if your default choice of leisure time isn't "spending time with me" even if that's watching boring shite on telly.
Whereas the converse probably isn't true.

Cuh, the differences between men and women eh? eh?

It was just how you said that you'd only spend time with her when you wanted to, and not when she wanted you to spend time with her. It came across very much as "I'll do what I want all of the time and if she doesn't like it she can lump it".

You were criticising people who sometimes do things they would rather not do, to please their other halves. I was just saying that everyone does that.

It's funny how these things work. My ex could get quite stroppy if I didn't sit in front of the gogglebox watching Judge Judy and America's Next Top Model with her, so I used to wait till she went to bed and do my gaming then. I might've sneaked five minutes in if she was cooking dinner or something.

With my current girlfriend, it's very different. She doesn't watch much TV at all, is very career-focussed and spends a lot of time studying for the college course her work have put her on and expects us to have a little time doing our own things in the evening, so I pretty much get as much gaming time as I like. She only complains if I'm letting a game make me late for going out somewhere, as she's one of those people who cannot abide lateness. The irony being that I actually value the time I spend with her much more than I did with the ex, and will always now happily turn a game off if she wants us to do something together. Equally I find that quite beyond waiting for her to go to bed so I can stay up for a spot of gaming, I actually go to bed at the same time as her now.

As I've said before in other threads, it can be a proper up/down relationship. 90% of the time, things between us are excellent and I genuinely look forward to getting out of work in the evenings and going home to her.

My other half is also geeky so we rarely spend time on 'different things'. The exception being music - I'm a proggeek and she likesNickleback and Katy Perry. Fortunately, it does mean that she doesn't watch soaps or reality TV or anything, and knows an awful lot about comic books. Which is the best thing ever.

Far too much of this nerd-time is taken up watching TV series of stuff. Currently Buffy, was Supernatural, then Lost, Heroes etc. There always seems to be something and lazies in us want to sit and watch instead of gaming. Which is bad. When we do game it tends to be big adventure games but I play the shooters on my own.

Also, most disappointing thread title ever.

True, if you're in a relationship with a mental. In which case stop it.



As a generalisation about some of the time, you may be right, and let me redefine my statement as "we both do what we want all the time and we can both lump it and that works out quite well and we do spend time together which we enjoy"

I think there's a semantic thing which needs clearing up here, as Zio's description sounds like my marriage. Where he says "happily turn a game off if she wants us to do something together" that doesn't count as the thing that does my head in, which is doing the same grudgingly or because you've been conditioned to doing it 'happily'.

I should probably be more specific but I'm fed up because we got bad news today. Sorry for any confusion.

*shrug*

edit: sorry to hear you have bad news though

My girlfriend's breath smells of cat food. She also likes antiques and fucking costume dramas.

I don't live with Miss Malabar, so it's nice and easy. For now. However, she loves games, and we share a lot of interests, so I don't think it'll be a problem if we ever do move in together. Perhaps.

We have multiple handheld systems and computers, but only one TV, so the consoles tend to be the single occasional point of contention over gaming. My husband has been working eighty hours a week lately (but he starts his new job in two weeks, thank Jeebus) and since I work from home (which sounds more professional than "sobbing daily into the first drafts of several books, both fiction and non-fiction") and therefore have more free time to game, I just let him have the consoles whenever he wants.

I anticipate that changing when he goes back to working more reasonable hours. We'll probably go back to having the occasional squabble over who gets to play on the consoles, then ultimately compromise on a co-op Borderlands session or maybe some Divorce Mode in the new Super Mario Bros.

That's what I do when I play Minecraft in later hours. She can't stand the game, or anything of that ilk so I either play once she's snoozing away, or during her dinner preparation type-time.

Admittedly Minecraft is the only online game I play at the moment, and online games aren't commonly played in his household due to non-PC and non-Xbox ownership. Most of my offline gaming at the moment seems to consist of playing the GameCube back catalogue, which consists of a lot of games that my girlfriend is quite happy to play, or watch me play whilst writing her coursework on her MacBook, etc.

I'm quite compatible with my girlfriend's tastes in games, come to think of it. Neither of us like explicitly bloodthirsty games, or FPSes, or (turn-based) RPGs...

Two tellys in the living room facing opposite directions and two sofas. We just ask each other what we are in the mood for, gaming (mostly individually) or watching something (usually together) but because we have two set ups either of us can game while the other watches something and we are still in the same room together.

I point out who paid for the TV.
She says something along the lines of "Remeber that sex you planned on having ever again?"
We watch EastEnders.

Why does sex belong to women, eh? Bastards.

We watch TV together unless it's pap and I'll fire up my MacBook (to work or sometimes game) so we're still together. The 360 only ever goes on if I'm home alone or Mrs Z has gone to bed. Works for us.

You can take my sexxings, but you will only take my wanking from my cold damp dead fingers!

Bwahahahah yearright

Star Craft 2, Mame Schmup Challenge, The Mame challenge I ran... nothing RIG worthy obv.

It's a MacBook Pro so it's half decent and don't forget I can boot into Whingeduhz.

minecraft.

That's not a game.

MrsP likes Home and Away and Neighbours, so this is the time that I have to distract myself. I have a 22" monitor attached to the xbox for same-room gaming and there's always the laptop for minecraft.

My main PC is in the loft, but if I spend to much time up there, MrsP starts to complain. Fair enough I suppose - PC gaming *is* rubbish.

I just ignore my other half, she ignores me. Seems to work.

Funny thing is he's not even joking!

It's a lifestyle.

Craig and I want to watch the same programs - a few news/political programs, a bit of university challenge and some sports, so there's rarely (never?) something on TV that I want to watch that he'd rather play games through. We play most videogames together, things like MarioKart, though this is more so since the Eggbox borked.

When he used to play That Game Which Has a Name I Done Forgot with Wullie, Dimrill, Mr Dave, etc he'd usually play whilst I put on an Audiobook on my headphones and sat and relaxed with some knitting.

Erm, Gears of War 2? He's quite good at that you know.

I only really play the XBox if MrsA is out. The only game we really play together is Wii bowling or Guitar Hero/Rockband. Video games are not really that greater part of my/our life/lives, I guess.

Other than that, if there's something on telly she wants to watch, I'll sit on the sofa with a book or something, if it is the other way around she goes and watches stuff on computer.

That's the one - Gears of War. 2.

I have no idea if he is any good at it - I'm never quite sure what is gong on (proven by the few times he has handed me the controls whilst he makes a cup of tea or nips to the loo).

I detest the phrase "other half"....