Marriage is said to be the union of two people who are entering blissfully into a loving relationship with each other, tied legally, and sometimes spiritually, for the rest of their natural lives. Communication is key, love is always the answer to every question, and patience is a virtue. Now, they don’t tell you about how many times you narrowly escape being charged for murder. They also don’t tell you how much you’ll regret not going through with that same murder. I know you’re reading this paragraph and thinking “Gee, I wasn’t expecting this column to start off like this.” If it seems like I took a month off from the video game spectrum, I’ll have you know I was really busy having my marriage end.

So, yeah, isn’t this all so much fun? I’m not going to get into the hows and whys of what ended us (it is pretty vile), but there is a reason why I’m sharing this tidbit of life experience with you. I came to a sudden realization during this crazy time period of my life:

I really fucking missed video games.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I still was able to play games here and there through my short tenure as a husband, but most of those bursts of 30 minutes to 1 hour of gaming bliss were met with matrimonial gunfire and threats of a painful death. As rare as I actually was able to play video games, those few minutes of attention on the screen were apparently taking away from those quality moments of being yelled at by her for other things. Was it fair? No. Was it the way things were? Yes. Am I thankful that it is all over now? Oh, mother of all things combustible and pointy, yes! However, the worst part of it was that she, herself, was a gamer.

That would lead you to think that things would be a bit easier to swallow when I wanted finally beat the “Metroid Prime Triology” or when I had to write a review for “Resistance: Retribution” for the PSP. It was my damn job! The fact that she loved playing “Puzzle Quest” and “Super Mario World” did absolutely nothing for me. If she was gaming, that was perfectly fine and dandy. If I’m doing it I’m obviously loser. Oh, the double standard.

You know how you get to that one point in the game you never got to before, and it is really damn hard, so you’re trying your damnedest to get past it, even if it just means you’ll save and turn off the game right when you do? It pretty much felt like that every single mission or level while under such scrutiny. Being told to hurry up when you can’t find a save spot, only being rushed so that you can become part of the argument she has already started without you being present, doesn’t really make you capable of finding that checkpoint any faster. It does, however, drive you towards large amounts of binge drinking.

The simple fact of the matter is that I used video games as replacement for my first love: making music. I didn’t get to do a whole lot of that to relax, and being that I had to deal with just about everything short of fire ants eating away at my foreskin, my relaxation suffered. Being soothed by the sounds of “Pixeljunk Monsters” or whisked away by the gallons of blood in “Prototype” helped to keep me away from thinking of how much the real world was chopping up my ass.

Recently I finally was able to pick up the first “Uncharted” and start playing the crap out of it. Holy fuck on a horse’s tit, how did I miss out on this game two years ago? I saw just about every bad movie that came out in the theatre, spent many nights out with friends wasting money on alcohol that I pissed away the next day, and had way too many McDonald’s fries. Hell, I even played some terrible “Hardy Boys” game for the DS as a joke, and I never got to touch this amazing REAL game till last week. I also spent every of last week night hanging out with friends, going out for dinner, drinks, and socializing like a maniac full of nothing but personality. I am living proof that, apparently, you can have your cake and fuck it too.

Do I need to imagine that every zombie I kill or Nazi I blow up is someone that is pissing me off in real life? No. I don’t have to project the real world into what I’m doing. That would be completely missing the point. I don’t want to cross the goddamn streams, I want them to exist completely on their own. That is precisely the reason why I don’t Hadouken the shit out of people who annoy me in real life. Some mediums need to be separated from life to be fully enjoyed: video gaming is one of them.

Yes, life is a short thing, and you shouldn’t spend your whole waking life playing with pixels, voxels and Otsels but sometimes the best way to blow away steam is to blow someone away in “Street Fighter IV” or “Killzone 2.” You may be accused of ignoring the problems of the real world and not having a life, but let me assure you, you’ll thank yourself later when you get four more trophies or raise your achievement score by 200 points. I mean, someone in the real world may be calling you a talentless loser, but you know you’re winning. Your console is telling you so. You paid a few hundred bucks for it to test your wits, twitch skills, and patience and now it can even reward you. I can’t say the same for any relationship argument you might get into. In fact, those moments play out like scenes from a foreign torture porn film.

That invaluable “me time” is yours to spend as you see fit. I wrote and recorded a new song last week and then spent the next four hours playing “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.” When I was done with that I went out and had a blast with people that actually give a crap about me. That, my friends, is the best of both possible worlds. The only way that day would have been better would be if I was getting a blow job during both of those things. If you can’t be productive, destructive, and distracted within minutes of each other then life just isn’t worth living. You can spend hours jerking off, if you like, and no one can tell you that you’re not spending your time wisely as long as you’re enjoying it. You would be the only one enjoying that, right? That’s why video games rock; no one will ever be able to take away the enjoyment they give you, despite what else may be going on in your life. Now excuse me, as I think I have to go sell a certain ring to upgrade my “God of War III” pre-order to the collector’s edition.

I also need to start my search for my next future ex-wife.