When is playing games too much?

When is the time to draw the line?

My fiance lives for World of Warcraft. And I understand this. It is an entertaining, engrossing game. You get to interact not only with game-created characters but with millions of people worldwide. There are time-consuming, overly-involved quest lines that require thought, repetition, and, of course, slaughter of virtual creatures.

There is nothing quite like the euphoria of working together with friends to kill a particularly difficult boss creature.  I enjoy it just as much as he does.  I freely admit it.

Yet when should one acknowledge when playing this time-consuming game is taking over too much of one's life?  My fiance works only three days a week, but these days are 10 hour days.  His work is an hour commute from our house.  His shift is such that he must be up by 2:30 am in order to make it to his job by 4 am.

Thus on nights that he must be up ungodly early, one would think he would go to bed accordingly to get plenty of sleep so he is not overtired or sleepy during the long commute to work nor while he is working with large, dangerous machinery.

Such is never the case.  He will stay up until midnight or later- sometimes, never making it to bed at all- playing World of Warcraft.

After playing it from the moment he gets home from work or has awakened in the morning if he did not have to work.

He is on the computer. All. Day. Long.  And most of the night as well.  We have stayed up until nearly 4 am together on one particular night he didn't have to work, but he became angry with me when I told him I needed sleep.  After all, we do have an 8 year old daughter that will wake up around 8 am and need attention.

This does not faze him at all.  It is still all about me trying to "control" him.

He is a good man.  He is an outstanding father.  He is caring, loving, and the best thing that has ever happened to us.  I am just tired of so many things, us included, being put off by this game.

I have been begging him to find work closer to home, work that will give him 40 hours a week, work that doesn't require him to be up so damned early.  He refuses.  I am glad he likes his job, but with the way he refuses to take responsibility for this job and get much-needed rest instead of playing computer games, I merely thought a change of venue would be more accommodating to his addiction.

Because that is what it is. An addiction.  Even if we leave the house to do something else, inevitably the subject of the game will arise and plans will be made for the next raid or dungeon run or trash kill group.

Is it really so much to ask that we take a break from virtual reality?

Therefore I must question my actions: I have canceled his subscription. Mine and our daughter's as well.  I have told our friends that we need a break from gaming and I hope that they will understand.  

Yet I am bothered by my decision.  Have I gone too far?  I have not deleted his characters nor have I removed any personal information.  His account will merely be in stasis for a while until I can help him understand that it is just a game and not vital to live his life.  It is entertainment, but the enthrallment seems to have consumed his care for almost everything else.

Hence why I am sitting here at nearly 4:30 in the morning, needing to vent and get this feeling of guilt and betrayal off my heart.  Because I know when he finds out what I have done, the proverbial fur will fly.  I am honestly worried about his reaction from the standpoint that he may be angry with me for weeks.  Worse, I fear he will merely go out and buy a subscription card on his own to reactivate his account and my intervention will have been for naught.

Time will tell.  His account deactivates on July 10th.  For now, I must just sit here... and watch him live his life in a fictional world.