Sure, I'll have a go.
After a 10 year marriage and 2 years of post divorce attempt at reconciliation to someone I loved very much, I had to send her away recently.
The problems that ultimately destroyed our relationship and my happiness started early on with her chronic illness due to endometriosis. This led to 10 surgeries over a 8 year period including a full hysterectomy, gall bladder removal, appendectomy etc, laser removal of scar tissue with laprascopy, exploratory pill cams, endoscopy etc, and a few random things tried to correct specfic pain symptoms.
She also had accompanying symptoms which seem to accompany endo patients frequently such as Chrohn's, fibromyalgia, and cluster headaches. This led us to a lifestyle in which she might be collapsed on the floor screaming in pain at the end of each month, constant ER visits sometimes 3-4 times a week and punctuated by 1-2 month hospital stays. Endometriosis seems to affect different women differently, many get it and it is no big deal but it seems to be able to infiltrate major organs in some women and is like cancer but you don't die from it, just stay at a level of suffering for many women it seems. I really feel Endo awareness needs to be raised nationwide as I have been to support boards with her and seen them full of women with similar suffering.
I make an excellent living but a good chunk of my income was nullified by constant medical expense, problems which were exacerbated by Bush's signing in of the MMA in Feb 2005 I believe it was which caused me to get stuck with high deductible/HSA insurance right in the middle of her first major surgery as my company swapped insurance under me. A personal reason I'm very left wing right there, not to mention I'm an atheist and follow most of the Democrat checklist on rights, diversity etc.
Because endo doesn't command the respect that cancer does and is harder to identify, frequently I could be in a hospital and find doctors in the latest ER visit treating her like a drug addict. I've had security sic'd on me for asking for a written statement of whatever a doctor told her that made her break down in tears while I was not even in the room.
When dealing with chronic severe illness people run out of options and start blaming the victim. My family saw the stress I was going through and harangued her as well, usually by a proxy of someone they talked to and then my wife would hear about it second hand. I have blamed her myself often...I identify greatly with the story in Silent Hill 2.
First hand I have seen our medical system deteriorating at several hospitals across the country. After my wife's hysterectomy I've probably paid a few grand into pregnancy tests alone because doctors don't read medical charts or listen as to a simple illustration of the incompetence in the system.
I'd flown her back and forth to an endo specialist in California a few times (we used to live there as well) but eventually she settled into a routine where the pain was cut down somewhat but she still had problems eating and drinking for days frequently leading back to the hospital. Most of the time she was on oral dilaudid and phentinol patch. She would run out early each month and began making up the last of the month before she could get her painkillers refilled with drinking, frequently sneaking out behind my back to load up the cabinet. In general, I'm very straight edge and don't like taking aspirin for myself even, I only drink very occasionally socially and never drink alone so I was always putting the brake on such activities.
One of the major ways we related to each other was gaming. I'm an old school nerd and introvert from way back, my gaming cred starts with ADVENT and games I programmed in BASIC on a TRS-80. She's more of a console gamer or used to be before I started building her systems and got her into the Master Race. We played most of the major MMOs together. She could not work and only got her driver's license later in life but was still terrified to actually drive under painkiller influence. As we were homebound a lot due to her health gaming was a good way to relate in a way she could be on a more equal footing with me. We had the most fun PVPing together as a pair of mages in WoW or followers of Chaos in WAR, Sith in KOTOR. The times were not always bad regarding her health and when she did feel better we were happy and passionate with each other but things devolved into physical intimacy issues later due to her condition and pelvic floor issues.
We had intimacy issues relating to her condition and my being too big (yeah, that). This is a real mindscrew for a guy and I even thought about getting some kind of reduction although I am merely on the high end of normalcy I think for guys my size (I'm 6'3" tall).
She cheated on me once before with a smaller guy (yeah, that) and I divorced her in one state and she went to go live with her mother in another state. During this divorce period I became a successful pick up artist, but I was unable to replace the love I had for this woman nor burn it out of me with sex. I did forgive her and we thought we couldn't be without each other so got back together on the east coast for another two years.
This stuff and the constant stress of medical and hospital visits got me to a state where I stopped leaving the house, had all my meals delivered and thought about death all the time. The only thing that saved me was working out and the gym.
A few months ago she confessed to me (in trade for the next bottle because she was out of painkillers again) that she cheated on me a second time a year ago when I thought she was just spending a week at her mom's so I sent her to that guy..although she wanted to stay she had completely burned out her bridge and all my feelings for her... and I have since left to go live with my cousin and start my life over in a brand new area.
During these last chapters of our relationship Gamergate started, with these social justice twats who are in their mid twenties and who think they know anything about hardship or the life someone else is living calling me who has spent 12 years doing nothing but taking care of a woman a misogynist. Casting a pall over our shared identity of gamer heavy enough to where we didn't want to game anymore.
I'm not going to say GG broke us up, but it was a factor, however small. For me this is a bit about justice for Eron as well as stopping the lies and slander in the media about the gamer identity that we have been defending against for decades since "D&D = Satanism".
Also I think my wife would have been better off if she had less of a victim mentality as she ..often but not always...preferred to lie down and pop a pill or a drink for problems in life instead of doing something about it so I am thoroughly against these kinds of things that are promoting a sense of victimhood out there.
My wife could not herself stand the anti-gamer position on GG and as a for instance she always picked characters with the least armor and most cleavage because she wanted to look as hot as she did IRL. She saw Zoe as a serious abuser.
The real nerds and gamers, the ones that built this industry are not going to lie down for this shit where we're a cash cow and a Big Bang Theory stereotype for posers to pretend that we're cool as long as we keep our mouths shut when feminists and media puppets are talking about what scum we are.
However, even all that is not actually what I want to vent about.
What I want to vent about is this myopic attitude that let's anti-gg or the media or whoever think they have us all figured out, that anyone can figure out a person that easily.
Sorry social justice kids, life is not like what you were taught in your shitty textbooks and people are not as black and white as what your provincial ideology has taught you.
My family thought I had dodged a bullet as they frequently told me she was going to die in my arms before she hit 50. They're probably right as she's had aunts with the same problems die at a similar age...so instead of dying in my arms she'll die in someone else's, or alone. I get to live with that as I made a choice to not let a drowning person pull me down with them.
They thought they had her figured out as bad news, an addict, a victim.
I also had her figured out as my true love, someone I could trust, a beautiful person still possessed of some innocence and care for others in spite of all the hardship she had.
The truth was somewhere in between and reducing everyone and everything to a label helps no one. Reducing games and gamers to a shallow version of what they actually are and have been for 30+ years before this current crop of children and fools came on the scene helps no one.
I'm going to go outside now, and yell at a cloud.