JRT

Hello to you all. My name is Josh. I'm going through a lot with my addiction to gaming. I had been playing games since I was 3, when I got my first NES console. Over the years, it has been the central part of all of my friend and family relationships. It was the tool I used to bond with people, and it developed into a habbit that negatively impacted my grades in school, in university, and eventually my relationships. I would say, that I was at my worst 10 years ago when I was playing games nearly 72 hours a week, but the reality is that after managing to quit 7 years ago, I had a relapse this year that has destroyed my marriage and I think that's worse even though I was only playing for an hour a day. I had promised my wife 7 years ago to put the games aside. They were eating up my life, taking my attention away from my wife and newborn and I was getting aggressive towards people around me when I couldn't play. Over the years, the thoughts of wanting to play and the memories from childhood kept eating at me. Thoughts of abandoning my identity as a Gamer kept creeping up on me, making me feel dejected towards my wife who I had made the promise to. Eventually I broke down and downloaded Wildrift on my phone, thinking I would only play it on the train ride to work, but I started having to hide this from my wife and she grew suspicious of me until recently when she asked to see my phone and I broke down. She thought I was cheating on her and it devastated me. I gave her my phone to look through and see that I had been playing the game when I was alone. She was devastated that I broke my promise to her, and more so that I hadn't even talked to her about it. She feels like she can't trust me now, that I can easily lie to her. And I am hurting over this. I want to be there for her and I don't want this in my life anymore. It's caused me too much pain and made me miss out on so much that I could have been doing. I need help, but it's difficult to find here in Germany, especially for me, as I'm originally from the U.S. and an English native speaker. I'm hoping that I can find help and support here.