I'm casting a resurrection spell on this thread.
It's been quite a while so, I thought I would comment on some changes and observations. For starters, I've been divorced exactly two years now. I still play video games from time to time but, not like I did when I was married. The few times a month I do logon to play a game, I am bored inside of 20 minutes. I used to play 2-3 hours a night, after work.
I wasn't completely sure of it then but, I am quite certain of it now; I was using video games to cope with the stress of my job and my marriage. I just couldn't take either one of them anymore. My ex-wife and a woman co-worker were causing me 9 kinds of hell. I was getting brow beat daily. It was a hostile environment coming and going. Both of these women are out of my life now and I swear to God, I couldn't be happier.
I am my old self again. I love my work. I love my life. Although, I don't like being without my children. And, there's a new woman in my life who has fallen in love with me for the same reasons the first wife fell in love with me...because I am a sweet, funny, loving, sensitive, romantic guy. Her kids are grown and she has her career - which suits me much better.
To be truthful, I should never have had children. Don't get me wrong, I love my kids dearly but, one of the other peripheral stresses that weighed on me was the part where I had to provide for someone other than myself and my wife. Call me selfish if you like but, that is the way I am wired. If I had known this before I got married, my ex and I could have talked this out and knew ahead that children were not going to be part of the picture.
Even so, I don't feel bad because after speaking with family, there is consensus among us that this a genetic anomaly which happens to be prominent with my mom, my brother, my uncle(mom's brother) and my grandfather(mom's father). My dad raised my brother and I which kind of hints to my mom's lack of maternal instinct. That and she flat out admitted that she was a complete doormat and would have let my brother and I walk all over her because she didn't have it in her to discipline us. Mom is one of my best friends though and that is her strength -friendship.
In short, the video games were just a vice to deal with abnormal stress. I know how to handle the everyday normal stress just fine. It's the part of constantly being bombarded with repetitive stress and demands that starts freaking me out.