I love Amy Dickinson. She’s one of the few sane voices in a cesspool of bad advice columnism, and she’s a riot (well, together with Tom Bodett, she’s the riot) on Wait Wait. But sometimes she gets it wrong. As in this case of a 20-year marriage going down the drain on, as the writer aserts, account of her playing World of Warcraft.
Amy’s response (I only use the first name, since that’s how the column is set up. I’d never address someone I don’t know in real life that way, else) is sensible but, alas, flawed in my opinion.
To reiterate the letter, “Walking on Eggshells” is married to his wife of twenty years. Recently, she’s started hanging out with her guild more and more, and even had an affair with another member of the guild. So far so bad. She neglects her family, spends insane amounts of her time in front of the computer, and becomes quite grouchy when approached.
Taking WoW out of the equation, this sounds like a very good example of a defunct marriage. One partner becomes distant, seeks out new interest groups and interests, even has an affair with someone else. 1970s text books called that “flight”, long before WoW was unleashed onto its unsuspecting victims.
Amy suggests:
Ironically, there are many online sources of support for online gaming addiction. One you would find useful is Online Gamers Anonymous, which uses a 12-step recovery model and offers support for addicted games and those worried about them: olganon.org.
To be fair, she also pressures Walking to go see a counselor with his wife, but neglects to mention something I find much more important - the “why”?
For one partner to flee a relationship into another community, to leave the bonds and duties of her family life behind, something has to be about that relationship in the first place. I am not suggesting that WoW isn’t her outlet for this flight, and it’s a convenient one which can be taken from the comfort and privacy of one’s own home, but it’s an outlet.
What World of Warcraft did, quite strongly, is open this outlet to a group of people who would otherwise maybe not have taken flight. Not for lack of want, but for lack of ability or comfort. It’s easy to log in, easy to have a non-committant chat with people, and meet new folks. This doesn’t make MMORPGs the culprit, it makes them yet another indicator of something wrong in a relationship if they are used as a means of flight.
Some argue, that this is akin to saying “the problem isn’t with Cocaine, it’s with those who use it and get addicted”. And to some degree it is. But games, just like sports, clubs, circles, alcohol, and drugs, won’t likely go away. And just like drugs and alcohol, all too often the symptom (drug abuse, alcohol addiction, flight) are blamed for a bad family situation and sought to be eradicated - rather than seeing them as one of the many indicators for a much larger underlying issue which, if not addressed, will manifest itself in another bahvioral pattern should the MMO outlet be removed.
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