To be completely honest, I’m sure there were other contributing factors, but most lawyers and therapists seem to agree that had it not been for backgammon, our marriage would have been pretty normal.
That’s not to say we wouldn’t be divorced anyway. If only he had listened to me and scored the 5 point in our doubles match earlier in the night, we would still have been playing and I wouldn’t have even met those amazing, amazing, lovely young ladies at the bar.
I guess I should start from the beginning. When we got married, she had no idea what backgammon was. It didn’t take long for her to find out about the game as we honeymooned in Cleveland at the Ohio Open. Apparently, my victory at the Consolation was not much consolation to her, the way she said that Cleveland was much worse off than Aruba in January. We never left the Holiday Inn anyway, so what if it was cold outside and the $7.95 breakfast buffet was amazing.
I guess that’s when I started noticing his low tolerance for backgammon. I couldn’t understand why she bothered her so much and she seemed so bored being in the room with me while she played. In fact, I started searching the web to see if there is some kind of nervous disorder caused by the sound of rolling dice. I realize that some people have a bad reaction when they are forced to be in a room full of ugly people, but I didn’t think that was the problem since we often went to K-Mart and she was fine.
After the honeymoon it was all downhill from there. The more I took her to tournaments, the more distant and closed off she became, and there were times when I could almost see steam coming out of her head after I got eliminated from the main event and got into the chouette.
For those of you reading the blogs, I want to say, for the record, I honestly think I was sleepwalking the night he tried to beat me to death with my wooden backgammon board, but asleep or away, I didn’t. appreciate the gesture.
So why am I writing this? I guess I want to try to make something good out of all this. If I can warn just one young couple so they don’t have to go through the pain and hardship I’ve been through, I feel like I’ve done the backgammon community a service. My advice, and I hope you always remember it: if you’re a backgammon addict, don’t marry a selfish, unreasonable person who won’t let you play every night and every weekend.