Tuesday, February 17, 2009

WoW and marriage

I've mentioned before that my husband, the uber-mage, plays WoW also, and we've been in three (well, technically four) guilds together. In real life, my husband is a wonderful, caring man who deals with a disabled wife and special needs son with grace and humor. In-game, however, he has quite the ego and, at times, little patience with those less skilled than he. This has caused some friction in our household, to the point that I often think of him as his real-life persona, whom I refer to by name, and his game persona, whom I refer to by his screenname.

It got to a point one night when, frustrated by my dps and his condescending attempts to help, I informed him that I was going to get through this with the help of my guildies and he was not allowed to offer any suggestions, tyvm. When I get frustrated with him in game, I go out of my way to differentiate the way I treat him IRL. Of course, there's always the factor of WoW life sometimes imitating real life, where the nondisabled partner sometimes seems to have all the advantages, and the disabled partner struggles constantly just trying to live a so-called normal life.

Something happened last week that changed the way he treats me with respect to the game. I was able to do over 3k dps on some bosses in both 10 and 25 man Naxx. It's almost like he realized after over a year, "Hey, Carol can really do this!" In return, I'm being a little more open to his suggestions, after all, he's known me for 17 years and has a better understanding than just about anyone of how my brain and muscles work.

So, we muddle on in this dance that is the life we made together almost 15 years ago, always remembering that when we turn our computers off, we belong to each other, no matter what our guild tags may say.

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