Conflicts in the Gaming community are putting a strain on my marriage, advice?

[MoMo_Mia]

It's my first time posting here, so hello! I've been struggling with finding a place to ask for advice on this, because everywhere I look is so polarized, but ppl here seem like a pretty reasonable bunch...so here goes...

So my husband of many years is pro-GG. Although I am a gamer myself I was actually fairly unaware of Gamergate until early October, and that's when the first discussions between us about it started happening.

We have clashed before on issues of feminism and social justice, but it's gotten a lot worse since the GG thing. I consider myself a moderate feminist. I am very independent liberal career minded woman, but I'm actually rather annoyed with a lot of 3rd wave fems for many of the reasons the Gamergate community is, but certainly not to the level of contempt some of them display. Mostly it's the 'holier than thou' attitude, waves of pushy slacktivism, and heavy focus on criticizing others for any perceived 'offense'. So it's not as if I don't sympathize a bit with the #gg crowd. Honestly after all my research and endless Twitter browsing, I'm pretty much neutral on #gg. I can see why people on either side are angry, and I can see a lot of ugliness and hypocrisy on both sides as well.

My husband is staunchly pro, and we have argued at length about #gg and feminism and sjws. He tells me often that he's anti-harassment, and that although he is not a feminist, of course he believes in equal opportunity for women and most of what I would consider feminism to be, but that modern feminism and social justice is only serving to stifle free speech and expression etc...etc.... What upsets me most is that #gg has definitely added to his negative feelings on these issues and made him more stubborn and difficult to talk to about it all. Where I feel like I have come to see his side quite a bit, he will just repeatedly tell me I am 'uninformed' or not looking at things logically. These arguments have admittedly lead to many tears and a lot of stress on my part.

Another difficult issue for me is my social circle. Most of my friends, online and in real life are very liberal feminist sorts. I have been on Twitter for some time, and many of them are too. My husband was never into social media, but now he has a Twitter - that is pretty much just #gg stuff. I won't follow him, which makes me sad, but it's because he does nothing but reblog #gg stuff, and because I don't want my friends to find his Twitter and make all sorts of assumptions about him. My friends are nice ppl but let's face it, to a lot of folks #gg carries some heavy negative associations...

My husband is a very good one outside these tense issues. With possible the exception of him being extremely shy and quiet with friends and family, we have no other major issues in our marriage. He treats me well, supports me in my career, cooks, cleans, and is always there for me. If you include the years we dated, we have been a pair well over a decade now.

But I keep having panic attacks, wondering what my friends will think of him (and me) if they discover this side of him and how I'll deal with it, but mostly I'm scared his views will just become progressively one sided until he reaches a point where we can't find common ground anymore.

Anyone else going through this or a similar problem? If not, how would you deal with it if you were?

 

[DeadpanLunatic]

Can't say I agree with the suggestion above to just cease communication on the subject. Certainly the two of you don't have to agree on every little thing, but this doesn't sound like it's a topic where you've managed to agree to disagree, as you might on the subject of preferred condiments or pizza toppings. Political views are much more formative to how we see our own identity, and apparently this has been causing you stress and hurt, so I don't think ignoring it is necessarily going to help. At least, when not talking about a particular subject is the only way to avoid being at each other's throat about it, I don't think that's particularly healthy. It turns your interactions into a minefield, so instead of feeling safe with your partner, you end up feeling like you need to tiptoe around certain stuff to avoid another fight.

I can't really tell you how to deal with this. The closest equivalent in my life has been cutting ties with high-school "friends" (i.e. people you get to know very well because you were stuffed into the same room for a very long time) after I formed my own feminist views and it became apparent that they weren't growing out of the shitty politics they had around 13. Obviously these people were never as important to me as your husband is to you. I've never had a relationship that lasted even a year, let alone ten years, so take anything I say with mountains of salt.

However, what I mostly wanted to say is that I think the salient point for assessing all this shouldn't be how long you've been together, or whether - on a hypothetical scale of all men that exist - your husband is one of the better ones. It should be whether you are happy with how things are right now. Obviously your shared past should inform your view, but it shouldn't be weighing you down, or make you ignore current issues because of some historic average. If you aren't happy with how things have been in the past weeks, then you should do something to address that. That doesn't have to mean breaking up, but it sounds like your husband is very committed to these views, so it doesn't sound like talking him out of it is an option.

However, I also simply don't know how strongly this affects your marriage right now. If this is an occasional black cloud in an otherwise sunny sky, it might not be worth doing much of anything over. If it's a constant strain on your life, it should probably be addressed sooner rather than later, painful as it might be, for the good of your life in the long run. Ultimately, it's your life and your choice, but I wish you all the best for making it. Hopefully things will look up for you soon!

 

[Jesterscup]

Anyone else going through this or a similar problem? If not, how would you deal with it if you were?

I have both similar problems with my wife ( though not #GG related ), and similar issues with the whole #GG thing going on.

But Firstly I'd like to say I can understand both points of view on this, I'd make the assumption that he identifies as a 'gamer' and the presumption of corruption within games journalism and the industry is something he needs to stand up and be counted about.

The way GG exploded was bad, really, bad and caused huge rifts within our community. The thing is that both 'sides' are mostly having different arguments. the anti-GG side mostly being disgusted by the way certain people have been treated ( and I strongly feel this way myself ), and ,by and large, the other side predominately being concerned with the corruption.

The way my wife and I deal with similar issues, well we ( well me in particular ) are very very careful about the way we talking about it together, we have our own equivalent of a conversation safe-word ( a time out if you will ).

Ok to elaborate, I'm a drag-queen, my wife's own brand of feminism is very 'right-wing' ( for lack of a better expression ), so many other trans people ( and gay men too) in the media strike a nerve. While I understand her point of view, often the things she says end up being deeply hurtful ( " oh but I don't mean you Darling" ). Understanding plays a big part of it, I understand how she feels, and why she feels the way she does. And for the most part I agree with her, but I also understand that when I don't, there are reasons for that.

We'll engage in gender & equality discussions, but we both know there is a point where we have to stop. We're both logical intelligent people, but we are also aware that any subject you care to talk about has an emotional aspect. I'd make the case that if someone says you are being illogical or 'uninformed' then it's time to walk away from that discussion, sometimes someone is so set in a point of view that they refuse to see the other side of an argument, or even how much their own emotions are playing a part.

In addition to this, often people have simply no experience of something and fail to realise how much of an issue it is. I refuse to be pro-GG because I have a great deal of experience of the sort of harassment that some people have received, and despite the 'cause' being noble, I cannot in good conscience stand alongside people who feel that such harassment is ever justified. This wouldn't be a problem for me but many, many pro-GG'ers refuse to denounce such behaviours because "I'm not behaving like that" .

So perhaps talk about other similar subjects to explore what going on, on a deeper level, but without such a high emotional charge. Or perhaps just draw a line under the sand "we don't discuss GG". Perhaps you guys need to have a huge fight and get it all out there. There isn't a clear cut answer, but it seems like you guys have tried to find a common ground and failed. At this point finding a way to amicably move on is possibly more of a priority.

I can't comment in regards to your friends, a true friend should be caring and supportive, though sadly people being people, thats not always the case. Be strong in yourself though, if someone starts attacking you ( emotionally) because they have an issue with your husband, thats their issue. There is no easy answer to it, and yes the pressure friends can create can be quite the issue, either they know to back off when told, to you need to take stronger measures. I'll get back to this in a second.

In regards to your husband becoming more one-sided? Sadly thats something you will have to deal with when or if it happens, you can't always predict what will happen ( there is no point worst-case scenario guessing all the time though ), and people develop in their own way...

When it comes down to it, sometimes relationships have an end or life, I'm not saying this is going to happen either with your husband or your friends, but if it does come to that it's better that it happens sooner rather than later. Yes it's a horrible sentiment, but nowhere near as horrible as having someone toxic to you in a position central to your life.

How did my wife and I deal with our issues? Well lets start by saying while we had a 'core' issue not dissimilar your yours, we also had a number of other ( related ) issues. over the years we've built up quite a stack of differences of opinion. around 6 months ago we both identified that we were both unhappy, and with no clear path to resolve the issues. Rather than watch our relationship deteriorate, as we had seen many times before with friends, We took proactive steps. In our case we separated. We are still married, but we don't live together. We spend a lot of time together, but ( importantly ) we choose what time we spend together. Things are better, we are both happier, both love each other still, but we both have space we both needed. Sure the same issues are still there, but we found a solution that has allowed us to move on. After 16 years together we were both surprised at how much we had 'subsumed' ourselves, at how limited our own self expression was ( mostly self-inflicted), and surprised by how much pressure we had been putting on ourselves to 'make things work'.

I'm not advocating that separating is the solution for you, but "finding a solution that works for both of you" is the best that can be offered, but sometimes you have to look at other options beyond what is obvious.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well I certainly haven't been married, but I have encountered subjects in relationships that had a complete impasse and my partner would dismiss anything I would have to say about it, even got aggressive when trying to inquire further.
Which seems like a situation that has come up with you two, and I can only really imagine a counsellor being able to bridge that gap, a third party that can let your husband understand things on neutral ground instead of him locking up and preparing to fight you.

As for why this has probably happened. People are subconsciously very competitive but live in a very PC society where there isn't much room to get that itch scratched, so we contend with playing the nice role and go along with everything politely. If we know it or not that starts building a general feeling of resentment and sooner or later we will have a major outburst at some pointless shit where we find it's "worth fighting for", or rather we finally found a bar where we feel comfortable throwing down to scratch that competitive itch and then go ape shit.
That also explains 99% of the anger issues around gamergate, social media has become the new fight club and people love to fight.