"I find this most difficult to understand the EQ addiction and now that EQ II has come out it is only making matters worse. I always knew that my boyfriend would stay at work late each night 'working', but later find out that he was actually playing the EQ game. I learned to have a life of my own, but missed our time together. His working turned into a seven day event. That was a year ago. It wasn't until after he has surgery and couldn't make it into work that I realized how bad his obsession was. He moved his computer home to be able to 'work from home'. After monitoring what was going on, I noticed that the hours playing the game ranged from 6-12 hours per day and some days even until 4 am until he passed out from exhaustion.

Of course I tried to understand what was going on and talk to him about the game, but it was not something I found an interest in nor did I want to waste my time sitting in front of a computer all the time. Here are some of the excuses I have gotten so far:

--it helps release tension
--I have friends to hang out with
--I have to help some of these people get to the next level
--we have a meeting set up to conquer something
--I will only play it for a couple of minutes (which turn into hours)
--you don't understand, and only want to tell me what to do with my free
time

This is a grown man, who goes days without showering or changing his clothes because he cant wait to get on the game. He is always looking at his watch or checking his computer for messages from other players if he is not playing. Pretty much most of what I see is, he gets on the computer from the time he wakes up to the time he sleeps.

Is there any help from me to him or am I going to have to give up and move on to leave him to himself and his game? I have discussed already with him a number of time of how I feel lonely and ignored and there is no quality time together, but at this stage, he takes it as me complaining and spend more time playing until he sees me disappear."