My Partner Would Rather Play Video Games Than Touch My Vagina

by cucumber martini

Prone to headaches and bad coordination, I have never been a fan of video games. With the exception of Pokémon and The Sims (role-playing games with no quick action required), video games have always seemed dizzying, repetitive, and way too difficult. While living with a man for the first time, I have come to realise that the act of playing video games is nowhere near as painful as listening to someone play video games. 

My partner has become a Call of Duty (CoD) fiend. Before we lived together, he never played video games. But as COVID continues to plague our lives, he has become more and more reliant on this fake reality to have fun. Lockdown has primarily consisted of hearing him shout at the screen or to his fellow comrades. (Presumably the partners of some other untouched women.) The living room perpetually smells of male angst, musk, and wasted potential. Headset on, body hunched, my partner morphs into Gollum, a creature obsessed with the delusion of power who gleefully destroys real-life relationships in order to live out his days with an inanimate object. 

Hours a day are spent on the Xbox. He plays from the moment the work day ends (6 pm?) to the early morning. Headset on. Shouting. While in the zone, and the actual WAR ZONE, communication with me ceases except for feverish hand waving to shoo me from the room, or an irritated “can you not make noise??!” if I try to breathe too close to the Xbox. “Five minutes!” he yells if I try to get his attention. I think I could actually bleed out on the floor while he is in the middle of a game. 

My partner shouts commands and provides a play-by-play of everything going on with more urgency than any real-life situation has ever provoked.  Everything is incredibly vital and needs constant narration. “Ok, ok, that’s right. Ok, advance. Where on the map should we go?? Ok, we’re landing. Ok, ok, there’s money over there. Over there. Yes, yes. Grabbing it, grabbing it. Ok, there are people up ahead. Where are they? Above us? Ok, let’s wait. Go, go, go! Ugh, no. So frustrating. Wait, yes I see it. Get that artillery! Go! Go! Did you get it? Good. Did you kill him?” 

CoD is especially distasteful because of the gross, hyper-masculine violence. It’s not some cute elf game with magic that I could totally get behind. It seems to give men an outlet to finally feel important and capable of running for more than five minutes when in reality, all they can manage is sitting on the couch and pushing buttons. Watching/hearing men avoid real life and shoot things with no real-life consequence is not only wholly unattractive but slightly scary. 

As if spending hours playing this machismo game is not bad enough, as soon as the playing stops, my partner turns his attention to his phone to watch other people play. The fuck? I’ll literally come for a cuddle and see he’s busy watching some middle-aged man play video games. He goes to sleep watching these men play. 

When I voice my frustrations with this “new normal,” my partner insists it’s better that he’s home playing Xbox than at the pub. Really?? Those are my two options?

If you’re at the pub, at least you’re living in reality. I also don’t have to hear your grunting and shouting about how you were just killed for the millionth time. The area the Xbox occupies is basically the lockdown equivalent of a pub anyway. A pub I get to hear about but not enjoy. There are loud men and countless beers consumed. Except now there are big guns and bigger egos. I think I’d prefer the pub. 

I have tried to help my partner curb his ever-increasing addiction to no avail. We tried a modest approach of limiting the playing to five days a week. Meaning for the two days he didn’t play (he could play during the day, but could not play after work), he had to spend quality time with me in the evening. I think he abstained for one night. I then tried to mirror his Xbox behavior and started yelling what he shouts while playing Xbox. “Five minutes” I yelled when he said good morning. It was funny for ten minutes before he got frustrated at my very accurate performance.  

I get why people play video games. It’s an escape, it’s fun, gives you a goal, you can interact with other people. All great. What gnaws me is my partner clearly wanting to be in a fake reality than in the real world with me. I don’t know what the solution is. For now, we have set up a separate play area for him in the kitchen, so I can have full reign over the living room TV, which is nice. But I can still hear the shouting. The kitchen is below our bedroom, so I am now going to bed trying to ignore the battle commands and groans of loss. I guess I will just have to bear with it for now, as it goes with most things during the pandemic. However, I will always remember this time and use it if I ever get any complaints about anything.