Buckle up, gents. You're in for a cringe-fest of denial, deceit and failure on so many levels. This is me laying out my filthy laundry to show you how far a man can fall if he gets comfortable. I tell you this at great risk because if it helps to keep somebody from devolving like I did, it's worth it.

I have been a heavy online gamer for years. It has cost me +100lbs. (45kg) and years of my life. The gaming started when I agreed to be a stay-at-home dad. When our first child arrived we decided we'd save money on childcare if I quit my low-paying job (she has always been the larger income earner). Daytime TV sucks, and being on a limited income there wasn't enough money for me to take the baby out and have fun on a daily basis, so a friend got me into online gaming. It was everything they said it was. I was up late every night on that fucking game. For years. Even when I got to a point that I could work again, I wouldn't. Why ruin a good thing, right? She held down the income and I took care of our child. So we had another kid and I got to stay home for a few more years. Lucky me, right?

A few years and hundreds - if not thousands - of online game hours later, I met Gamer Girl and we hit it off. She was in the next state over and the same age (30s) in a similar stay-home situation in a marriage that had also grown stale. Oh yea. I forgot to mention - when you gain a large amount of weight and prefer to play video games instead of improving yourself and working, your SO kind of never wants to have sex with you. I still managed to get laid once a week, but after I met Gamer Girl, I wanted even less sex from my wife because I'd gotten Gamer Girl to Skype with me daily and show me all her goodies. Life was good. I had my wife at work all day, this new chick to play with (and play with) and I was in hog heaven (fat joke) because I was getting my cake and eating it too! Livin' The Fucking Dream.

After a while of diverting all of my time and attention into Gamer Girl, my wife had suspicions. I was a lot colder to her, I didn't beg for sex anymore and I was online every waking hour. Fights erupted, money became tight because of 'changes to her insurance', so non-essential bills (my video game subscription) had to be sacrificed. No problem. Gamer Girl picked up my subscription. Game on. I was eating my meals at my computer desk, camming with Gamer Girl every time the wife stepped out of the house and getting up only to shower and use the restroom. My computer chair smelled like ass and nut sweat and had a permanent butt groove tailored just for me. Livin' The Fucking Dream.

So this is what I devolved into. I was in decent shape when I got married. This is not where I saw my life heading at all. +100lbs (45kg) heavier, addicted to video games and stuck at home with no prospects for myself. I had been giving all of my attention to Gamer Girl and we had this idea of me leaving my wife to go be with her. Living. The Fucking. Dream. I built her up so big in my head. She was the answer to everything - all of my problems could be solved through her. Once I moved in with her, I'd get in shape again (and so would she) and we'd just be this perfect, awesome happy couple that everybody would be jealous of. It was perfect. In my head. This was what I needed and deserved for myself.

Meanwhile, at home, I had kids that needed a father and a wife that was watching her husband getting fatter by the moment (I swear she could probably hear me getting fatter if she listened hard enough while the house was quiet), who'd grown completely distant from her for several months now and treated her like absolute shit. I was a torn, broken, sad lonely man. My emotions were being outsourced to Gamer Girl while I half-assed my duties at home. My wife tried to appease me, but after a while she just became numb and shell-shocked and stopped trying to reach me. I had emotionally checked out of my marriage.

This lasted for several months, until things finally came to a head and I was tired of living this huge fucking lie. I was at my limit - and I fucking broke. I had zero money, no vehicle of my own and no backup plan - I just needed it out in the open, whatever the cost. I told my wife. Everything. I watched her break, and that fucking broke me even more. The father of her kids, who she'd supported and waited on hand and foot was wanting to leave her for some online chick he'd never met and had only known for a few months. Fucking awful. Living The Fucking Dream. I told Gamer Girl that I had revealed our plans to my wife, and that sent her in panic mode. Gamer Girl had a husband that she was just as dependent on as I was on my wife. She said I was rushing and she needed "time to think". It wasn't the way I had envisioned it. My online fantasy romance was crashing down around me. The bubble burst and reality was bearing down on me fast and hard.

It was the worst week of my miserable fucking life, hands down. Ever. My wife was a ghost of her former self, sulking, moping and crying. My kids were asking when their dad was leaving, why was Daddy going? Who is Daddy's girlfriend? Gamer Girl decided it wasn't going to work out between us, and I was okay with that when I realized I wasn't ready to leave my kids or my wife, after all - but it was mostly my kids that kept me - I couldn't stand the thought of missing them grow up.

My wife and I eventually patched things up over several months and, ironically, since then my marriage has never been better. It wasn't until I found this sub years later that I realized I had unwittingly unleashed a Dread Game nuke from orbit and emptied my whole stockpile onto our dead marriage. My wife realized that as out of shape and pathetic as I was, there are women out there who would still want me that could take me from her - and that scared her straight. She no longer saw me as the irresponsible man-child, but as a marriage partner that she couldn't afford to lose. The difference in her was a 180 and it helped me to better myself. I found work and made efforts at home. The weight is slow to come off, but it's getting there. I also realized that my wife isn't the only woman out there who would want me if divorce ever happens. But it turns out she was not the bad person in all of this - I was. I fucked up. This was all me. I failed so hard.

This whole experience physically and monetarily set me back YEARS, but in a way, it also jump-started my marriage and has made me take a more active role as a father and husband. Gamer Girl was a fantasy that I put all of my hopes and dreams into. I suspended my belief in reality to trick myself into thinking I was "in love". My online fantasy romance was the direct result of me being bored and complacent at home, and refusing to channel my energy into bettering myself or doing something productive with my copious amounts of spare time. I went full retard, shit all over my marriage and somehow Forrest Gumped my way through it with my family still intact - don't ask me how. I'm using this second chance to become the man, husband and father that I want to be. Livin' The Fucking Dream.

TL/DR: Just fucking read it. Or don't.