u/bigsmot

I (45M) have been with my partner (40F) for around 20 years and we have a 5-year-old daughter together. Over the last couple of months, my partner became heavily involved in a mobile game alongside Discord communities linked to the game. What started as casual gaming escalated massively. She was spending huge amounts of time on her phone, sometimes staying up through the night because of events, time zones and talking to people online.
At one point she was barely sleeping, constantly exhausted, emotionally distant and permanently on her phone. Family life started falling apart. I was and am doing almost all of the parenting, school runs, housework, meals, bedtime routines etc. Our daughter started becoming emotionally affected by the tension and imbalance at home.
The thing that hurt most personally to me was that she also became emotionally close to other men online. She insists nothing physical happened, but they were talking privately a lot while she was emotionally withdrawing from me. I also later found out there had been fake/catfish-style photos shared online involving filters/edited images and conversations that crossed boundaries for me in a long-term relationship. That completely destroyed my trust.

We’ve had several long conversations where she’s apologised and promised things would improve. She said she would:
\\- reduce game time,
\\- become more present with our daughter,
\\- reconnect as a family,
\\- delete the game/Discord.
Although some small improvements have happened recently (she has cooked a couple of times and you now only have to call her 4 times before she looks up from her phone), but overall I still feel like I’m carrying almost everything emotionally and practically.

The hardest part is that whenever I try to talk about the relationship or family situation she quickly says she feels overwhelmed and shuts the conversation down. But if I ask about the game, she can talk about it enthusiastically for over an hour.
I’m now emotionally exhausted, my mental health has taken a huge hit, and I honestly feel like I’m reaching the point where I want a clean break because I can’t keep living like this.
She says I’m being controlling and doesn’t understand why I can’t just accept gaming as her outlet, but from my perspective this has gone way beyond normal gaming and has seriously damaged our relationship and affected our daughter.
AITA for feeling like this relationship may now be over?

I (45M) have been with my partner (40F) for around 20 years and we have a 5-year-old daughter together. Over the last couple of months, my partner became heavily involved in a mobile game alongside Discord communities linked to the game. What started as casual gaming escalated massively. She was spending huge amounts of time on her phone, sometimes staying up through the night because of events, time zones and talking to people online.
At one point she was barely sleeping, constantly exhausted, emotionally distant and permanently on her phone. Family life started falling apart. I was and am doing almost all of the parenting, school runs, housework, meals, bedtime routines etc. Our daughter started becoming emotionally affected by the tension and imbalance at home.
The thing that hurt most personally to me was that she also became emotionally close to other men online. She insists nothing physical happened, but they were talking privately a lot while she was emotionally withdrawing from me. I also later found out there had been fake/catfish-style photos shared online involving filters/edited images and conversations that crossed boundaries for me in a long-term relationship. That completely destroyed my trust.

We’ve had several long conversations where she’s apologised and promised things would improve. She said she would:
\- reduce game time,
\- become more present with our daughter,
\- reconnect as a family,
\- delete the game/Discord.
Although some small improvements have happened recently (she has cooked a couple of times and you now only have to call her 4 times before she looks up from her phone), but overall I still feel like I’m carrying almost everything emotionally and practically.

The hardest part is that whenever I try to talk about the relationship or family situation she quickly says she feels overwhelmed and shuts the conversation down. But if I ask about the game, she can talk about it enthusiastically for over an hour.
I’m now emotionally exhausted, my mental health has taken a huge hit, and I honestly feel like I’m reaching the point where I want a clean break because I can’t keep living like this.
She says I’m being controlling and doesn’t understand why I can’t just accept gaming as her outlet, but from my perspective this has gone way beyond normal gaming and has seriously damaged our relationship and affected our daughter.
AITA for feeling like this relationship may now be over?

I honestly don’t know whether I’m looking for advice, perspective, or just somewhere to finally put all of this into words because I feel mentally and emotionally exhausted.

Over the last several months my partner has become deeply involved in an online mobile game/community. At first I didn’t think much of it because everyone needs hobbies and downtime, but gradually it became the centre of her life. Not just the game itself, but the Discord servers, the people, the rankings, the events, the politics within the game, and the constant need to be online.
It got to the point where she was spending huge amounts of time on her phone, sleeping irregularly, staying awake through the night, emotionally reacting to in-game events, and becoming increasingly distant from real life at home. She became “King” within the game and since then it feels like the online world completely took over. The problem is that the game doesn’t really end. There’s always another event, another role, another responsibility, another social obligation.

A huge part of this has also been Discord and private messaging. Over time I became aware that she was heavily emotionally invested in online conversations with multiple people from the game community, including sexual conversations and sharing images. There were also fake or alternate profiles involved which completely damaged my sense of trust and reality within the relationship. I reached a point where I no longer knew what was genuine, what was minimised, or how much of her emotional energy was being invested into online relationships versus our actual family life.

Financially it has also become a concern. Money has been spent on the game despite us not really being in a position financially to afford it. I still don’t know the full extent of the spending, but I genuinely fear it could amount to a serious amount due to in-game purchases, events and maintaining status within the game community. The lack of transparency around finances has added even more strain and distrust to an already unstable situation.

Meanwhile, at home, I feel like I’ve slowly become a single parent while still in a relationship.
We have a young daughter and over the last few weeks especially her behaviour has worsened. She’s become more irritable, emotional, resistant to boundaries, and frequently comments things like “mummy is always on her phone” or “mummy gets angry.” Bedtimes have become difficult and I often end up being the one calming situations down while my partner becomes visibly overwhelmed or frustrated. There was one evening recently where I had gone for a walk after we agreed she would settle our daughter. Halfway through I got a panicked call asking me to come home because our daughter was screaming and crying and she “couldn’t handle it.” When I got home our daughter was crying saying mummy had shouted in her face and threatened to call the police on her. I calmed her down within about 10 minutes while my partner sat downstairs frustrated because, in my opinion, she had interrupted her game time.

That moment broke something in me a little bit.
The difficult part is that my partner isn’t completely disconnected or cold. That’s what makes this so confusing. Some days she says she loves me. Some days she makes effort with us. Some days she seems more present and engaged. She has admitted there’s a problem. She has spoken about wanting changes in life, eating healthier, going on walks, coming to the gym, changing routines etc.
But then the promises collapse almost immediately.
She moved back home after saying she intended to delete the game after an event ended. Within days that changed to “I’ll still play but more casually.” She said she would restart medication but stopped almost immediately. She says she wants family life, but still spends large amounts of emotional energy focused online. I genuinely believe she is emotionally dependent on this online world now. It gives her status, identity, validation and escape. The issue is that it feels like our daughter and I are living around it.

I’ve become hypervigilant and anxious. I constantly analyse behaviour trying to work out what is real and what isn’t anymore. Trust has been damaged badly because there are so many contradictions and shifting explanations. I’ve found things around the house that raised more questions, finances seem unclear, and communication between us has become almost impossible without defensiveness or avoidance. The sad thing is I don’t think she is an evil person by any means. I think she is deeply avoidant, emotionally overwhelmed, and psychologically hooked into something she doesn’t fully want to let go of. But that doesn’t change the impact it’s having on the people around her.

At this point I don’t even know if I’m trying to save the relationship anymore or just trying to protect and provide some sort of stability for our daughter. Im not saying our relationship was perfect but 20 years is a hell of a long time to chuck away. I’m exhausted from carrying most of the parenting, household responsibility and emotional regulation while also trying not to escalate conflict. I don’t want to punish her. I don’t want her sectioned or destroyed or publicly shamed. I just want honesty, consistency, stability and some form of meaningful change.

Right now I feel like I’m grieving someone who is physically still here, but emotionally somewhere else entirely and I have no clue of where I am or what I’m doing anymore.