Lifestyle: Poker and Your Significant Other

Last night, my girl and I were watching Fever Pitch on HBO, starring Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon. If you haven’t seen the movie, let me remind you of the basic premise. It’s a romantic comedy – boy meets girl, they fall in love, they experience all kinds of hilarious and inconvenient situations, yadda yadda yadda. The twist is that the boy – Jimmy Fallon’s character – is a Boston Red Sox fan. An obsessive one … as in, everything in his life revolves around the Boston Red Sox. He schedules around their schedule. His spirits are high when they win and abysmal when they lose. He knows all the lore, the history, the stats. Basically, he puts the “-atic” back in fanatic.

The way he feels about the Red Sox is pretty much how I feel about poker. So watching the movie, the drama the onscreen couple experienced looked pretty darn familiar to me, because I was experiencing more-or-less the same angst in my own relationship.

Let’s face it. It’s just about impossible to be obsessed with two things at once. That’s like being tied to two trains, each trying to carry you away in opposite directions. Either a) one of the trains is going to win out and pull you away completely (at the expense of the other), or b) you’ll be ripped apart. Not a pleasant choice at all.

So … what’s a rounder to do? How can I reconcile my love of my girlfriend with my love of the game? Clearly I cannot give up either, not if I want to be happy. Can I make my girlfriend understand how it’s possible for me to love poker as much as I love her, but in a different way? Not likely. When I play like I want to – full on multi-tabling for a few hours at a time, or regular trips to casinos and home games – my relationship seems to suffer. But not playing, in order to appease her, is costing me a fortune in terms of table-hours missed. So what do I do???

If you’re in a relationship, and you play poker, it’s likely that you’ve had similar thoughts at some point in time. I’ve seen firsthand the effect a person’s obsession can have on a relationship, and I want to avoid that fate. I want ALL poker players, including you, to avoid that fate.

My suggestion is moderation. You have to find that balance between the things you love, and work out a system. Create a schedule for your playing times, and stick to it. Schedule events with your significant other, and stick to that as well. Come to some form of understanding, that you will cut back your playing time, in exchange for being allowed to play at scheduled times without pressure or guilt from your loved one.

See if that works. If you attempt a compromise, and your significant other still isn’t satisfied, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate your relationship as a whole. It’s very possible that there are deeper issues at work than your love of poker. Work them out, if possible. Get your priorities straight. Because the size of your bankroll is meaningless if the rest of your life is in shambles. Trust me on that.

Now go out there and be a winner. In life, that is. :-P