Poker and Your Significant Other
Hobbies are great for killing two things: time and relationships. No matter how innocuous a hobby might seem at first, you can be sure that somewhere within those instructions for constructing a ship-in-a-bottle lurks a potential pitfall for you and your significant other. Some hobbies present more of a threat than others: golf, for example, has certainly unanchored more than a few relationships that otherwise might have worked out just fine, but if you find yourself screaming yourself hoarse over your girlfriend’s crocheting obsession, it’s likely that you all were just waiting for any reason to call it quits. Unfortunately for those of you reading this article, our shared hobby - poker - has a lot more in common with the former than the latter.
What is it about poker that makes it such a real threat to the stability of an otherwise healthy relationship? Answering that question is a task that might be better completed by a small book than a single paragraph, but here’s a summary of the major issues in play. First, poker for many people occupies a strange middle ground between job and hobby. Since you can make (and lose) money playing poker, it can’t quite be treated as a regular hobby, but it also doesn’t have the schedule and guaranteed income typical of most forms of employment. This fact makes conversations about poker potentially difficult, as you and your significant other can have wildly different estimates of the importance of playing poker. The volatile nature of poker further complicates the role it plays in your relationship. All hobbies have the potential to impact you emotionally, but the variance inherent to poker makes it generally more stressful for you (and your partner) than, say, woodworking. Last, but certainly not least, there’s the lingering social stigma attached to poker that can create a completely new pressure on your relationship, both from internal and external sources.
Even an abbreviated discussion like the one above leads to two simple conclusions. One, poker is basically a relationship minefield and two, successfully navigating that minefield without losing a limb (or a spot in your comfortable bed) requires a bit of planning and effort. As someone who’s played poker for a number of years (and through a number of relationships), I’ve picked up a trick or two along the way for mitigating the impact poker has on your relationship. The best plan for your specific relationship has a lot to do with the way you already interact with your significant other, but I’ll suggest three fundamental strategies that should help you find a solid starting point for balancing the needs of the two loves of your life.
The first, and probably most idealistic, strategy is to involve your significant other in your poker life. The underlying concept here is that (to paraphrase GI Joe) getting them to know is half the battle. People have a lot of preconceptions about poker and those who play it, and a little bit of first-hand exposure might help to correct some of the prejudices your significant other has about poker. Plus, there’s the basic truth about human nature that involves us fearing the unfamiliar, so increasing familiarity might also increase acceptance (or at least tolerance).
Before I go any further with this idea, I think it’s important to issue a pretty vital caveat. I know at this point that several readers are entertaining idealized fantasies of loving, joy-filled nights shared with their significant other at a poker table (real or online). Do yourself a favor and ditch those fantasies post-haste. While having your significant other learn how to play poker is a good way to get them on board with the game, trying to teach them yourself is one of the surest ways to ensure that they will hate poker forever and ever, amen. Why? Well, for starters, good teachers allow students to learn (more or less) at their own pace. However, your agenda, conscious or not, will be for your significant other to be as advanced as you are right away - clearly not the most constructive learning environment for a new player. Beyond that, it’s likely that you are still a developing player, meaning that your ideas about good play and bad play are still fairly amorphous. To understand how this might frustrate your significant other, imagine for a second having a math teacher who tells you one week that 2 + 2 is 4, and the next week that 2 + 2 is Virginia. Finally, the relationship between a student and a teacher is often an adversarial one, and the last thing you probably want is for any more frustration or conflict to be attached to your significant other’s perception of poker.
So if you can’t teach your significant other yourself, how can you involve them in poker? Simple. You can point them in the direction of resources that were helpful to you as a developing player. Suggest books and training aids that will help them learn the ropes, and then move them on to more advanced tutorials when they’ve mastered the basics. While this might not seem like a big deal, having someone to guide you through the maze of available poker advice is an invaluable asset for a new player. Also, don’t mistake the caveat above as a complete prohibition of providing your significant other with a tip or two - it’s important that you’re available to answer their questions or to put advice they get from other sources in a proper context. The trick is to make sure that they’re getting assistance from you on their terms and not yours. In short form: be accessible, but not intrusive.
While involvement is an appealing approach, the reality is that poker just isn’t for everyone. It’s entirely possible that you might do everything right and still end up in a spot where your significant other just isn’t all that naturally interested in sharing the experience with you. At that point, you need to shift your focus to limiting the damage poker can potentially do to your relationship.
That’s the heart of my second strategy for balancing poker and your significant other: Put a meaningful distance between poker and your significant other. When I say meaningful distance, I’m referring to distance in both the physical and emotional sense. Try finding some kind of buffer activity like exercise or writing that you can do post-poker session. Giving yourself a bit of a forced time-out after poker can help you to settle whatever emotions you might be carrying with you from the day’s play. When you move right from a session to spending time with your significant other, you run the risk of using them as something of an emotional landfill for your poker feelings - and that’s a quick way to get them to really hate poker. It’s also pretty critical to not use poker as a relationship weapon or even as a currency in a relationship. If you retaliate against something your significant other has done by heading off to play poker, not only are you probably going to play sub-optimally, but you’re further ensuring that poker will serve as a wedge between the two of you. Even ‘trading’ for poker playing time (i.e. ‘I’ll see that movie you want if I can play poker all Saturday afternoon) sets a dangerous precedent for viewing poker and your significant other as things in opposition - things to be chosen between instead of things that can exist independent of each other.
The last strategy I’ll suggest is probably both the simplest and the most effective. If you want poker to be a healthy part of your life and your relationship, you need to have an open, honest dialogue with your significant other about how that can and should happen. Like any hobby, it’s easy to get wrapped up in poker and lose sight of the larger impact it’s having on your life. Fight this tendency by having a serious conversation with your significant other about how much time you each have available in a given week, and how much of that time you expect to spend with each other. Don’t just assume that you’ll make time - instead, take active steps to manage the time you have available, and be realistic about how much poker deserves and how much your significant other deserves (hint: B should always be greater than A). Also, don’t forget that any relationship, whether it be with a person or an activity, is a living, dynamic thing that requires constant re-examination. Make a point of having an ongoing dialogue with your significant other about poker and how it’s impacting the relationship. While you’re at it, make a point of having an ongoing dialogue with yourself about what you expect out of your relationship with poker and what you’re willing to sacrifice to achieve those ends.
Some relationships are strong enough to survive whatever is thrown in their way, while others seem little more than a whisper away from collapse. In between those extremes you’ll find the overwhelming majority of relationships, flexible enough to accommodate another passion, but still vulnerable to collapse under the weight of competition. Competing loves can be a tricky thing to manage, but with some planning and effort, you should be able to achieve a balance between the significant others in your life, making for a better time at the table is the poker room and the table in the kitchen.
