I'm 35 years old. I've been married to my best friend for nearly 14 years, and have 5 beautiful, amazing children. I'm a member of the LDS church, who served a mission and was married in the temple. I've been successful in my career, and most people I know tell me I'm a nice guy.
On January 9th, my wife told I needed to find another place to live. We'd been having problems for a while, mostly due to me being selfish and being nowhere close to as involved in my family as a husband and father should be. I felt like I'd been making some progress, though I knew I could have done more. But that day, she made it clear that I hadn't done enough, that she didn't see any desire in me to change, and that if there is any chance of us continuing to have a relationship, we'd need time a part for her to heal, and for me to figure out what it is I really want in life, and to get control of my addictions.
As a programmer, I need a computer to work. I also have a lot of interests that involve the computer, in particular games, and for the last couple of years, online games. I therefore spend a lot of time on my computer, usually from the time I get up until dinner, and then from 8-9 at night until 2-3 in the morning. I also spend a lot of time on the computer on weekends, even on Sundays. A little over a year ago, I committed to my wife that I'd be off the computer by 5:30 every day, then back on from 9-11, after the kids were in bed, with minimal time on Saturday, and staying off the computer entirely on Sundays. I stuck to this for a while, but gradually slipped until I got back to what I just described.
The result of all this time spent on the computer has caused my wife to largely be a single parent and my kids to view me as just another one of the kids. It's left my wife feeling like I don't care about her at all, and that I'd rather spend time with my computer "mistress" than go to bed with her.
Of course, we'd discussed this many times in the past, and I recognized that I was spending too much time on the computer. I'd resolve to do better, and I'd make changes, and for a while, things would get better. But I'd always slip back into it.
It has been suggested to me before that I had an addiction, but I'd never really accepted that. Over the past few weeks, though, it's become abundantly clear to me that I've been addicted to computers, in the form of games, message boards, general surfing, and whatever else, for a very long time now.
So this Friday, I'm moving out. It's my intention to use this time to do whatever I have to do to overcome this addiction, become the kind of person I want to be, and hopefully, eventually, regain the trust and respect of my kids and my wife - who is an amazing, loving, giving person, that I truly do love, and who should never have had to deal with this.
My intent with this blog is to share my experiences, starting with some of the things I've learned over the past several weeks. I hope this will be useful to others (I know that I deal with people every day that have the same problem, but don't know it yet), but mainly it's for me to track my progress and have an additional layer of accountability.
No comments:
Post a Comment