This week in Savage Love, sex columnist/activist Dan Savage addresses the truly 2016 quandary of a wife whose husband will not stop playing Pokémon Go at odd hours with another woman despite her insistence that it makes her very uncomfortable.
“My husband is using Pokémon Go as an excuse to stay out until 5 a.m. with another woman. She is beautiful and about a decade younger than him, and he won’t hear me out on why this is bothersome,” the letter writer—identified as Pokémon Go Means No—states, later adding:
I can give him the benefit of the doubt and be totally fine with him wanting to stay out after work for a few drinks with friends, even though I’m too tired to join them, but Pokémon Go until 5 a.m. alone with a twentysomething for four straight weeks?! It’s driving me crazy. I told him how I feel, and he says it’s my fault for “never wanting to do anything.” (I don’t consider walking around staring at a phone “doing something.”) I told him I feel like he doesn’t even like me anymore, and he didn’t even acknowledge my feelings with a response.
Dan points out that this actually might not be such a 2016 problem after all, responding:
Pokémon Go isn’t destroying your marriage now, just as SimCity wasn’t destroying marriages 15 years ago. Your husband is destroying your marriage. He’s being selfish and inconsiderate and cruel. He doesn’t care enough about you to prioritize your feelings—or even acknowledge them, it seems.
Damn, Daniel. That is very true, though I do disagree with his next bit of advice that suggests to let the husband wear out his interest with both the game and the other woman before making any big decisions:
Let him have his ridiculous obsessions—with this game, with this girl—and when he comes to his senses and abandons Pokémon Go, just like people came to their senses and walked away from Second Life a decade ago, you’ll be in a better position to decide whether you want to leave him.
Counterargument (to borrow a Savage Love-ism): DTMFA.
DISCUSSION
Yeah, no, I am sorry. Don’t wait for him to get over his obsession. If he is refusing to even acknowledge her feelings he doesn’t give a fuck about them.
TBH I feel like this could be me writing in. My husband, whom I may or may not be considering burying out in the backyard, doesn’t understand why I am too tired to go out until 5 am (after working 10-11 hours a day) and coming home to 3 kids. (one of whom is 6 months.) He says I am just no fun any more.
Nevermind that he is unemployed and bitches constantly about being too tired to do anything after staying out until 5am doing who knows the fuck what. Or the fact that he is two years older than I am and still can’t figure out what he wants to do with his life - he knows he doesn’t want to have to deal with “someone telling him what to do”
Married for 10 years, our credit is completely intertwined so its not like I can stop paying his bills without doing damage to myself. 3 kids, all boys.
I should probably kick his ass to the curb. I did once, and he came back. Swore it all was going to be different, and here we are again.