HealthyGamerGG - Gaming Ruined my Boyfriend’s Life

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about gaming in relationships, how gaming relates to depression, having a conversation in relationships with love and accountability, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Making this relationship work requires two people. You cannot fix this all on your own. My boyfriend's lost hope in life is either gaming or sleeping and refuses to get therapy. He isn't the man that I met and I'm at a loss. I met my boyfriend a little over a year ago. We instantly clicked. This is a long-distance relationship. We met over mutual friends and would spend hours together,

watching movies and TV shows, playing cooperative and competitive games, doing silly personality tests, essentially sharing our worlds with each other. I loved getting to discover what he loved, and believe he felt the same about me. He was in university studying to be a software engineer. He was really passionate about this career. We'd spend a lot of calls sitting together as he wrapped up assignments and then moved on to spending hours upon hours talking and laughing together. A couple months into the relationship, his depression came back.

It affected the end of his semester. I spent a lot of time with him offering support as best as I could. I obviously was not trying to fix him or whatever, but just to be there and adapt our little routine and time together to accommodate his lower energy and preference for familiar and comfortable things. We got to meet in September, but when I got back home, everything got worse. A couple episodes were taken out on me in outbursts of anger and criticism, but I understand that this isn't him.

It's the depression affecting him. Because of the variant and travel disruptions, we were not able to see each other during his winter break. This caused an episode where he threatened to take his own life calling me a coward for being too afraid to travel with all the uncertainty swirling around. Our first flight got canceled and it seemed like everything was getting worse and worse and I wanted to be safe. In retrospect, we would have been fine and I regret the decision I made. We talked it over. It was forgiven. His mental health tanked and got even worse.

He'd take my need for reassurance out on me, feeling like it was undermining the understanding we had. in our relationship. It's a little hard to not need reassurance every so often when the person you're with is quite cold and jaded. He dropped out of university in February. He'd sit around and playing games all day. We tried making plans for me to come over for his birthday, but getting three weeks off in the middle of midterms in a place staffed by college students is rather difficult. Things got postponed to April. Then I caught COVID. Man, can't catch a break. My workplace counted these as days off anyway. So as you can imagine, getting those three weeks off has been incredibly difficult and mentally taxing. He's taken it out on me every time. Gets up, gets upset, yells, yells, shuts down emotionally. I understand that it feels frustrating and that I'm not doing enough, but it's also affecting me. He doesn't have a passport. We'd been talking about him getting it since November, but he hasn't done it. Lack of motivation and debt. He quit his job as well. three weeks ago we had a big fight regarding his overall mental state affecting me.

I workshoped and wrote a large Google Doc laying out the situation since normal discussions have always turned into big blowout fights and me seeming unreasonable so I thought a concise text would work. I thought it did. I asked him if he could try therapy again. He's been so adamantly against it, but I just want him to give it one last shot. Maybe it's silly of me, but he agreed. He was soft and sweet and something I hadn't seen him in months. I decided to put my faith in him again. Fast forward to the other night where I have to beg him to call, to get on a call with me to have some one-on-one time. We hadn't had that in days when he'd promised we'd work on that since it was so important before. When I expressed that, hey, I'd like

to be able to watch things or play games together like we used to, like you told me we could do again, he got upset. In the escalating discussion, I asked if therapy was getting anywhere, even just a first step. He told me he didn't have the motivation anymore, that he didn't want to, and he only agreed because he felt like I was holding him hostage. Like I'd leave him if I didn't. If he didn't, I assume. I understood then and there that maybe everything we spoke about, he only told me what I wanted to hear, so I wouldn't leave him.

The thought destroys me. The conversation ended with him telling me, it is just very crushing and belittling, that it really feels like you don't love me as is. How can I make him understand that I don't love him any less, but that it's incredibly difficult to be there? to always keep trying but be met with a jaded and emotionless person. I want him to get better. I miss how things used to be so much.

And I still get glimpses of that every now and then, and I really, really love him, but also it's damaging me. It's been a week. He's gotten bad news related to a possible career path and has been gaming nonstop. He's either been very sweet to me or very upset because of his games. I haven't brought up therapy since. I'm at a loss. TLDR, my boyfriend, depression has turned him into another person, and he feels it's inconsiderate to not love him at his worst. When it's destroyed me to watch him fall back down to rock bottom, I'm at a loss as to what to do. I don't want to leave him, but also it's been shown to me, he'll say whatever, just to make me

stay, not because he actually wants to change. So, this is super challenging. Supporting a partner who is depressed and spends all their time playing video games and refuses to go to therapy can be absolutely devastating. Because you're kind of stock between this rock and a hard place, right? So on the one hand, you're their partner. So as their partner, it's your job to support them, be there for them, encourage them. Also, you try to be understanding, right?

So, like, I understand that my partner struggles with depression. So it's hard. They don't feel motivated. They have low energy. Like, they lash out at me sometimes, but it's not them. It's the depression. So you make allowances for the depression because that's what you have to do. That's what a supportive partner does.

But then like it gets tricky, right? Because then they start saying things like, but like this is a situation that is tricky because it's unclear whether the support will actually fix stuff. So if your partner has depression, there are some things that they need to be doing. Right? Like they need to go see a therapist. They need to like figure out what's going on with school or like, take time off or like whatever.

They need to probably spend less time playing video games because that's not helping. The other really tricky thing here is, but if you try to push them to do that, it's like how do you decide, okay, like if they're depressed and they don't believe that therapy works, but they need to get therapy, like how much do you push them as a partner? If you push them a lot, does that just like kind of backfire in your face? And is that, like, does that make sense? It's like, where is being an emotionally supportive and understanding partner end? and like pushing them to take accountability and responsibility, like, where is that fine line?

Because if you push it too hard, then what your partner says is like, you don't accept me as I am. You don't love me unconditionally. And that's a blow. And it's like, okay, so I guess if I want to love you unconditionally, that means that I have to just let you ride this out. And like, I can't do, I can't criticize you. I just have to take, I can't even have demands for my own emotional needs. right? Because like, I'm in this relationship too, and this is hard for me too, and I want to spend time with you. I love you. But you can't tell them that, because if you tell them that, then they feel guiltier. It causes them to spiral more into the depression.

And whenever you push them, like if you really do push them, they'll tell you whatever you want to hear because they're afraid of you leaving. They're afraid of you leaving, but they're not going to actually do anything to make it worth your while to stay. You'll get that? So it's tough. And then if you break up with them, then you, you're not. you're the asshole who like abandoned their partner when they were depressed when everything in this person's life is falling apart when all they needed was your love and your support and your help you can't abandon them when they've dropped out of college gotten fired from their job or playing video games already had a suicidal attempt you're the one thing they've got left and the one source of emotional support and they're sucking you dry so what do you do in this situation

Because if you're paying attention, I don't know if you all have been looking at chat. You can look at the comments, I'm sure on YouTube video if this gets uploaded. But everyone's like, dump him, leave him, dump him, leave him. Man, this guy like doesn't deserve you. The internet loves to tell us to dump people, abandon people. They're not the ones who have to, like, sever the connection. They're not the ones who really, really love the person. So they can say, leave him, easy.

You deserve it. better. You deserve better. Man, like, stop dating this man child. Oh, my God. Dump him. Move on. Man. Right? So there's literally someone who said, dump him, who cares, lull? Obviously, this person cares. They're in love. Right? Like, they're in love. Y'all know, like, if you're, if you're thinking, oh, my God, this person should just dump him. If you've been in love, you understand, like, how hard it is to do things. The other thing is, like, you want to be, it's not just you being in love. You want to be a good human being. Do good human beings abandon people when they're sick. No, we don't do that. We help people who are sick. The problem is that like helping like when, like I don't know how to help because I'm

being emotionally supportive and things are getting worse. So this is really challenging situation to be in. And the most, the most dangerous thing about this is if you're in this situation, you're probably terrified because at the end of the day, making this relationship work, requires two people. You cannot fix this all on your own. And you're trying to figure out, okay, what's the right thing for me to do? But it's got to involve them at some point. So how do you tackle this situation? The first is it's hard. Let's acknowledge that, right? It's hard on you. It's hard on them. It's hard on everyone. That's what illness does. It's not like some, everything balances out in the end. That's not how it is. When someone like, when, you know, two people are married and one of them

gets in cancer. There's no, you know, like that just sucks for everyone. It doesn't really matter who it sucks more for. It sucks for everyone involved. It just negatively impacts the relationship. Just makes everything harder. So it's okay for it to be hard. At the same time, there are a couple things you've got to understand and a couple things that really need to be done. The first thing to understand is that you cannot save this relationship on your own. Your partner needs to put in time and effort. Now, this is where like this is kind of like a, you're kind of stuck there because if you tell them that you need to put in time and effort, they feel bad about themselves.

Maybe they get suicidal. Maybe they start saying things that make you feel guilty. Like, you don't love me as I am. Right? So they respond in unhealthy ways. And if you tell them, hey, like, I need more from this relationship. That makes things worse for them. So you kind of feel like you're stuck.

You can't tell them what your needs are. But you've got to. And we'll share with you how. So the first thing that we're going to kind of, so now that we've acknowledged that, thing that we need to talk about is the relationship of gaming and depression. So we don't know if this person has a clinical depression or not, whatever, they need to get evaluated for that. But in the treatment, in psychiatric treatment of addictions, there's a very important principle called dual diagnosis treatment. So this is the kind of thing where the classic example is alcohol.

When you have someone who has major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder and they have an alcohol problem, you can't just fix one. both of them need to be tackled at the same time. Because here's what happens. If I feel depressed and alcohol is my coping mechanism, I use the alcohol to numb my feelings of depression. As I start to drink more, it interferes with my sleep, reduces REM sleep. As I start to sleep worse, my brain's ability to heal itself and come out of the depression gets negatively impacted.

In addition, alcohol is literally a CNS central nervous system depressant. So alcohol makes our mood worse in addition to doing things like messing with our dietary intake and all that kind of stuff. So then we can't like we're not eating the right kind of food. Maybe we have a little bit of inflammation of the pancreas from alcohol and all this kind of stuff happens. And then our depression gets worse. If you start drinking a lot, there's also something called a substance induced mood disorder. So that's where a lot of alcohol can actually trigger a depressive episode. So if I'm depressed and I don't focus on the sobriety, I'm going to use the alcohol to numb the depression and it'll actually make the depression worse.

The flip side is also true. If I know I'm an alcoholic, but I have an undiagnosed major depressive disorder, I can control the drinking until the depression comes. And like, I can manage the drinking if I'm in a stable mindset, but if the depression is untreated, then I'm going to relapse on alcohol. Right? I'm sober. I'm working so hard, working so hard, working so hard. I start to have suicidal thoughts. I start to have negative thoughts. I start to beat myself up and like the depression takes over and causes me to relapse. Because in order to keep the alcohol under control, in order to stay sober, I need to have a healthy and strong mind.

So what have we learned in psychiatry? You've got to target both at the same time. You can't fix half the problem because they feed on each other. And this is what I personally have seen with video games as well. So I start to feel depressed, don't have any energy, don't feel like doing anything. So like what's the one thing that's very easy for me to do gives me some kind of stimulation and they hit a dopamine is play video games. As I play video games for hours and hours and hours a day, what does it do? It ruins my mood.

Helps me get through the hour, but ruins the day. That's the problem with video games. So your boyfriend plays video games to get through the hour, get through the next hour, get through the next hour, ruins his day, ruins your day, and snaps at you because he's angry. And then you're stuck once again because how much of him snapping at me is him being inconsiderate, how much of it is his depression, and how much of it is in the video games. The basic problem of dating someone who's depressed is how much can I blame them for what's going on? How much responsibility am I allowed if I love someone who's depressed? How much accountability

do I put on their shoulders? And that's the real bind. Because in our attempt to be supportive and be loving, we actually excuse all of their behavior. And the moment we excuse all of their behavior,

the relationship really starts becoming doomed. Because you can't fix everything. Even if they're depressed, that doesn't mean that they're incapable of stuff. So what's the right balance? So this is where what I would say is there are two or three very concrete things that you can do

in order to like try to make this relationship work. The first thing that you've got to do is manage your own emotions. That doesn't mean you have to manage them yourself. But you have to recognize that this relationship is having a toll and cost on you. Those negative emotions are going to be having all kinds of unhelpful effects on your mindset. your cognitive biases, things like that. So I think the reason that everyone's saying leave him is because people who are in this situation are misattributing something.

So I think that he's responsible for more here than like you're holding him accountable for. Right. So like, I mean, that's what I believe. But we'll sort of get to how to have that conversation. But the first thing is that you've got to kind of take care of yourself. And if your partner isn't in a space to help you emotionally process, I don't know how else you do it, but lean on friends, lean on family, lean on other online connections, work with a therapist yourself, work with a coach, as long as there's not something clinical

going on. Right? And a coach can definitely help you with this next part as well. So you have to try to manage your own emotions and like take like self-care, like meditate, whatever, go for a run, whatever you need to do. Start playing games with other people, whatever. Then what happens is you need to have a conversation with him. And this is a conversation where it's going to be painful, but it needs to be kind of like calm and like you need to kind of be patient. This is why it's important for you to be emotionally in a good space so that you can say things in a way that are compassionate, but still accountable. And this is what I have helped patients do.

And this is also to a certain degree what we try to have coaches help people do. So coaches can help you all practice communication and learn. communication. Clarify your own thoughts and feelings so that you can communicate effectively. So I think you have to have like a conversation with your boyfriend about like what's happening in this relationship. So what you want to do is I'm going to give you some sample dialogue. Right. So you want to start by asking like, you know, how are you feeling nowadays? Like can you tell me a little bit about what's hard in your life and like what are you afraid of? So just ask open-ended questions that are non-accusatory.

So try to understand where their mindset is. Don't offer any of your own opinions is the first step. Just try to get a sense of where they are. Then what you want to do, so you've got to be careful because as you ask questions that get to the root of the problem, they're going to hurt. It's going to be like a sore point where like your boyfriend is not going to want to talk about it. Because the more that you ask him a question that he doesn't have a good answer to, it brings the shame to the surface.

That's the shame that they try to drown out with the video games. But if it's left under the surface infestors, like, it's not going to go away. So this is where I'd start by asking, like, you know, a couple of questions about, so actually before you, you can ask them, what can I do to support you? Like, what do I do that's helpful for you? Okay, so like here's how you feel. Okay, I understand like this is hard for you. Your energy level sucks.

This is bad. This is bad. Okay. what can I do to help you? And then comes the next question is like, what can you do to help you? This is what I'm going to do to support your health? What are you going to do to support your health? And this is where like, that's tricky.

This is where there are also other conversations about like, where do you see this going? Like, help me understand what to expect from this relationship. And this is where, you know, like if he's like afraid that you're going to leave him and you can say like, yeah, I mean, honestly, like, I'm trying to figure out how to stay in this relationship. But I need to know what to expect. And I can understand if you don't know what to expect, do you have any idea like what's going to happen going forward? Like, what does this mean?

Does this mean that we're going to stay together for 40 years and this is what our relationship is going to be like or is this going to get better at some point? What can we do to help it get better? What can I do to help it get better? What can you do to help it get better? And this is where he's going to say, okay, I'll go see a therapist. You don't want to take that bait. So you'll notice this if you really

pay attention to people who are frustrated. They'll do whatever, they'll say whatever they can to stop the conversation. Painful conversation. Stop it. Make it stop. I'll say whatever I need to. Just make it stop. Stop asking me about my future. Stop asking me about what do I, what do I need to do. I'll tell you whatever you want to hear. And as soon as that happens, you've got to take a step back a little bit. Because this is where if you're emotional, that's exactly what you want to hear. Oh, thank God. Oh, and you're going to just take that bait and you're going to gobble it up. Conversation is over. Let's go play. And then he's going to be nice. Let's go play video games. Let's do all that stuff. Just like, don't have conversation. I don't know. I'm doing so

much better. Let's go have fun. We haven't had fun in such a long time. By the way, I love you so much. Let's go play a game. This is going to be awesome. Let's go stop some noobs. That's where you're like, hold on a second. I'm glad that you said that you want to go to therapy. Can you help me understand a little bit about how that decision is coming about? And that That's where you want to do something a little bit weird, which is like, don't jump into that plan. Say like, okay, like, what do you think that'll be sufficient? And then they may say something like frustrated, like, what do you want me to say? And that's the problem is because they think that this conversation is about them saying the right thing to make you happy.

That's not what this conversation is about. It's not about appeasement. It's about actually fixing the fucking relationship. What are we going to do about this? and at some point you need to share with your partner there is so much that you can do and you need your

their help yeah F Fobb right I don't drop many of those nowadays felt like a right time though you need their help too there are some things that like you can't save this relationship on your own and when you say things like that it's going to be devastating to them

and that's the kind of thing where it's like you know, like how much do you manage that? Like, I'm not sure. Like, how do you manage that? You've got to sort to go slow. So hopefully you have two or three conversations. And then the last thing to really consider is that at some point, you all need to have a conversation about love and accountability. Does loving you unconditionally mean no responsibility or accountability? When I ask you to do something, does that mean that I don't accept you as who you are? What does that mean? you. What is the relationship between love and responsibility? If you are in a situation where someone is guilt-tripping you by saying you won't accept me as I am, the conversation you need to have with

that person is what is the relationship between loving and responsibility? What is the relationship between accountability and love? And you should genuinely ask that question. Don't go into that with the sort of idea of like, it's like a debate where you're like, yeah, like, I love you, but you've still got to be accountable. You've genuinely got to... The two of y'all have to come to an understanding about what the relationship between these two things are. Is it possible for me to love you

and not want to be in this relationship? Is it possible for you to love me and not want to be in this relationship? Does love excuse certain behavior? Like if he snaps at you because he's playing video games and depressed, is that okay because he loves you? Is that okay because you love him?

And so this is where if he feels on love, that's where you can say, no, I love you. It's just I think that there's a difference between love and accountability. It's because I love you that I'm having this conversation. It's because I love you that I'm telling you, I don't know if I can fix this on my own. I'm doing everything that I know how to do and you seem to be moving in the wrong direction or we seem to be moving in the wrong direction. And if there's something more I can do, please let me know. But I need your head. help saving this relationship. And that's going to make him feel super guilty. And you can say, I can understand if that makes you feel guilty. I'm not trying to make you feel worse. It's like literally like I'm asking for your help. And that's the kind of thing where he's like, okay, fine, I'll go see a therapist. And it's like, okay, like what do you think that's going to do? Right? So like that's all like you all need to have conversations about this kind of stuff. Like be clear. The problem is people don't teach us how to talk like this, especially when it comes to people who struggle with depression.

And so there's like, it's hard, but there's a way to be compassionate and loving and also say to your partner, just because, like, love and compassion is not going to fix this problem. It's going to take more than love and compassion. If love could cure depression, like, the world would be a completely different place. The truth of the matter is that depression happens in here. And someone else's love may be a huge part of the formula, but it's not the whole formula. So what is he going to do?

What is he capable of doing? For what amount of time is he going to be incapable? These are all questions that you can ask. And then at the end of the day, like what he may even try to do is just to walk you all through a couple of things, techniques that he used. He may preemptively break up with you. So he may say things like, okay, fine, like, I can't do it because he may feel like he's not able to do it. right? And he's like, okay, fine, if you want to dump me, like, I'll, I'll do us the favor, like, whatever. If you don't love me, and they'll, like, frame it in a weird, like, gaslighting sort of way.

If you don't love me enough to make this relationship work, I'm just going to break up with you. And then that's when, like, your response to him has to be, like, very stable and has to be, are you getting the sense that I'm trying to break up with you? Like, where do you get that? Because the reason I'm having this conversation is try to save the relationship. So, if you're breaking up with me, because you think I'm trying to break up with you, that's not a good reason. If you want to break up with the other reasons, that's fine.

But I want to be crystal clear that I'm trying to make this relationship work. I need your help to do it. And if that doesn't work for you, that's fine. I can't make you stay in the relationship. I really want you to, but I can't make you stay. And I'd love it if you'd reconsider and, like, think it through, or at least, like, talk to me about why you're doing this. Right?

So it's kind of weird. Everyone's telling him, everyone who's listening to this. It's like dump his ass. Whereas if he tries to break up with you, I would actually push back. Because if you really love him, that's what you should do. And just make sure that it's really what he wants. It's not denying the breakup. It's just not accepting it at face value unless it's an authentic desire to break up.

And then if he continues to persist and like spirals downward and stuff like that, and then it's kind of like, okay, fine. Like, I mean, if that's really what you want, I can't say no. It takes two to make a relationship work. And it's clear to me that you're trying very hard to break up with. me, so I guess that's goodbye. I really hope you see a therapist. Does that make sense?

So hopefully that kind of language will equip you all a little bit. And there are just a lot of like, just to kind of summarize, like this is the kind of thing that's tough because if you're supporting someone with depression, a lot of concepts get tangled up. Like, when does support become enabling behavior, especially when it comes to things like, like video games and alcohol. When does love absolve people of responsibility and accountability? Because you want to be a good partner, right?

You don't want to abandon someone when they're depressed. But in trying to achieve that goal, what you can actually do is like make things worse. And what you've got to understand is that you can be as loving and as supportive as you want to. But in order to fix this relationship, it takes two. and so at some point there needs to be some kind of accountability. And this is the last kind of tip that I'll give you. This is a good case of someone who should probably stay in therapy. I don't really know, actually, but there's some people that I know that.

So there's some people who have this pattern where they fall apart, get depressed, go to therapy, get put back together, and then they feel better so they stop going to therapy, and the cycle repeats itself. So there's some people who need to stay at least somewhat connected to treatment for a longer period of time. And therapy in this kind of situation is not just to get you out of this depression. It's to really help work at the underlying issues that make you vulnerable to the depression in the first place. There's only so much that you can do. And it takes two to save a relationship. And it's really hard when depression makes it hard for the other person to contribute. So that's where like the key thing is to have them take some kind of responsibility.

It doesn't have to be a lot, but it needs to be like very clear. And that could be simple things like cutting back on your gaming. it could be going to see a therapist. It could be, look, what I need from you, like, is, you know, one hour every three days at a minimum. Or two hours. I want to play games with you, like twice a week. And if you're really so sick that you can't do that, that's okay. But I don't, I believe that you're not that sick. Scal, and is this a good situation for couples counseling? Or would you recommend individual therapy instead? I can't really make a recommendation that specific because that, that requires a clinical evaluation, especially on the boyfriend. Right? Because if this really is a bipolar disorder, a major depressive disorder,

or things like that, that's where individual treatment is definitely warranted. Couples counseling on top, I doubt, will hurt in any way, shape, or form. But the real question is, my concern in a situation like this is that until we have a real clinical evaluation, we don't know that this is necessarily a relationship problem. This could be an actual diagnostic illness within. and one partner which needs to be treated.