Ever been able to kill an obsession or at least restrict it?

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I am not even sure if this is the best forum for this post, the mods should feel free to move it if another forum would be a better location...

Has anyone been able to control or even manage to completely lose an obsession just for a loved one? I realise that my hardcore following of professional hockey, particularly the NHL, must be an obsession of mine. With the new season on the way, complete with new rules that make it sound more interesting than ever, my wife is attempting to place restrictions on my watching and following of hockey in order to maintain family bliss. Of course, I hate the idea of it being restricted to times when she approves of it and don't want to be effectively having to ask for permission.

Since I know I will not likely be able to handle doing it within the criteria she presented, and knowing that going all hardcore with it risks some definite family fireworks, my solution was to attempt a complete break from it. From this day on, I will pretend that professional hockey does not exist. I will delete all bookmarks from my browsers, get off of any related email lists, delete all relevant newsgroups, and pretty much disolve all connections to it. I know that giving in at all will slowly allow it to creep back into every facet of my life. My wife rejects this because she thinks I will become a bear around the house and take it out in a negative way on her, my son, and my daughter (due in late October).

So...anyone else been able to change things for someone else like this? It sounds rather silly now that I have typed it all out. Shouldn't a grown man be able to turn these 'obsessions' off and on at will? Don't recommend psych treatment for it, because that is definitely out of my financial budget.

Are you using hockey as a metaphor for porn?

No, I'm using hockey as hockey. If it helps you to relate to interchange it with porn, you can, but it doesn't matter. The real question is about the obsession, so the fact it may be more socially acceptable and something you can have in the family room is a minor detail.

EDIT... And I'd like to add that when I watch hockey on TV, it is pretty much all I want to do. I don't have it on as 'background noise'. It's what I intend to be fully dedicated to until the game ends. I love hockey. During the season, it has been said that I eat, sleep, and breathe it. This is why my wife sees it as a competitor for quality time spent with her and then the kids as well. There is no right answer, apparently. I can't choose hockey over my family, but I feel like I won't be able to always meet her terms on it either.

Good for you, Tekneek! It can't be an easy choice, but I think that choosing family harmony is to be commended. When dealing with an obsession that is causing conflict with others, I do think it's a good idea to start by placing some limits, but if you can see that abiding by the limits is not going to be a satisfactory solution, better to deal with the obsession by making a clean break from it.

Absolutely not! When I think about someone I know and like very much, they stay in my mind forever, and ever, and ever.

I don't really "kill" obsessions (usually, at least) but I grow tired of some of them after a while. I used to go through what my friends called "phases" where I'd be obsessed with one subject for a certain amount of time. Anyone else feel like this?

Sport is one of the most 'NT' obsessions. Most male NTs obsess over sport, I'm sure your wife has that in common with most wives.

I can see how an aspie might take it to extremes undreamt of by NTs though. You might enjoy the process of excluding it from your life for a while, and it could be a useful thing to try.

YES.

I am actually quite taken back that someone has brought this up. Mine is probably in a different way though.

When I was 15, I managed to kick a certain type of OCD because I didn't want the guy I liked at school to think I was weird.

I just.. stopped doing it. I guess the reason abvove meant more to me than the OCD itsself.

Yes, and screwed my mind over royally by doing it, and ended up needing psych treatment that I wouldn't have otherwise. All I can say is, bad bad idea. Go too far (which is easy to do) and you'll end up resenting them for asking it of you, hating yourself for not being able to kill your desire for it, and just generally miserable. Or if you don't go too far, you'll just have erased a little piece of yourself and never notice it's missing except that life has a little less color.

i sort of agree with everyone so far. sort of. i can break "habits" or obsessions, depending on what my motivation is. if it's to do with a relationship i really value, then i can do it (i have a will of tungsten, me, and loads of self discipline). if it's a matter of one of my strongly-held principles, then i will not shift, though. i suppose i weigh up what i want most, what the relationship needs, how much i'm attached to the habit or the person, etc. (spot the logician).

there's always the possibility of shifting the obsession/habit to times when they don't get in the way of whatever your motivation is, too.

i think what pyraxis means (and tell me if i'm wrong, pyraxis) is that things you NEED to do, or which have become incredibly ingrained, are difficult to shift, unless YOU really want to. so, if you preceive having to change as "doing it for someone else", then of course you'll resent it. i always say that, whatever i do, i'm CHOOSING to do it, and i'm choosing to do it FOR ME. i never resent doing the things i do for someone else, cos it's always my CHOICE to do it (that's on the relatively infrequent occasions when i do something for someone else - although my friends seem to think i do a lot - i'm not convinced). i rather believe this is a positive side to my selfishness/self-centredness, by the way.

in other words, change yourself FOR yourself. apart from anything else, if you don't really want to, then it won't work anyway.

Terrific points brought by everyone. Thanks for the replies. As far as resenting her for a clean break from it, that was what she said I would do if I stopped doing it completely. She would rather me watch hockey everynight than be surly for 6 months trying to deprive myself of my hockey obsession (worst-case scenario, probably, but I suppose it could have happened).

I do take it too far, I am sure. I used to know a wealth of statistical detail regarding players at 3 or 4 different levels of hockey. I knew a lot of transactions going back a few years. Suffice to say, it wasn't just a "I like hockey" thing that an NT might do. It was a hunger for every little detail. I would read the transaction logs every day. I would read stats just for fun. I have a stack of hockey stat books that I probably look at everyday. I can talk on and on about hockey, at great lengths. She was always a hockey fan and that is how we met about nine and a half years ago, but I can talk about it so much that it drives her crazy. In typical Aspie fashion, I am rather quiet unless I can get the topic onto an obsession of mine.

As the day went on yesterday, I came around to what my wife must have been thinking. I felt assaulted when she suggested limits on it, and my only way of dealing with it was to submit completely thinking that one of us had to 'win' and it might as well be her (since she does hold all the cards). I realised she doesn't want to win. She wants to compromise so that we all 'win' and nobody has to go without. I can't seem to shake the kneejerk reaction that comes when anyone suggests I put limits on an obsession. That reaction is that I am now under assault. That my very being is under attack. I am getting better at becoming reasonable after I have had about a day to think it over, though it doesn't always go so well. In the end, she just completely refused to accept me giving it up completely. I returned the favor by refusing her offer of total 'victory' for me...and now I was finally in a state of mind for compromise.

She presented a new offer, which has proven very compelling. I have always been buying the NHL Center Ice package, which allows you to get up to 40 or so out-of-market NHL games per week. Effectively, you aren't stuck watching your local team and the 'national' games. My favorite team is Edmonton, so being in Atlanta I would never ever get to see them without that. Anyway, I had previously stated I would not get it unless the price was lower than it was for the 2003-04 season (they've been out of action since then do a labor dispute with the players' union). She said she would agree to me getting a new DirecTV TiVo (digital video recorder) for the computer room if we end up buying the package. This is so that on nights when she wants me available for her and/or the kids (which I should stress I really have no opposition to, I just don't always make the most sensible decisions when an obsession comes into play), I can record games and can watch them later.

I think I am really lucky to have a wife who isn't interested in trying to 'break' me. I can see that she sees this as a tough time. She is about to have our second child, and here I am throwing myself back into my Space Shuttle (as they are now returning to flight) and hockey obsessions. She doesn't always understand why I do what I do, but we have enough books now that she has figured some of it out. I think she knows and understands more about me than I do of her. Despite being around her nearly everyday for about 8 years, I still have trouble guessing what she is thinking and why she does things...and sometimes it takes hours and hours for me to really figure it out. To that end, she has been trying to get better about getting to the point immediately, although I then don't always believe it...even if I have no real reason to expect it not to be truth.

I remember in 5th and 6th grades when I was obsessed with hockey. Mom thought the fighting was making me angry all the time (getting beat up in school every day had more to do with that than any interest I used as an outlet), and at one point mentioned that she was considering trying to take everything relating to my interest away. I snickered, knowing that that would be next to impossible. No punishment she could ever impose could get me off of an interest such as that. She never did that in the end, but to this day I really am upset that such a thought would ever cross her mind.

Which brings me to another question...has anyone ever had someone else come in and "order" a clean break from an interest? And how well (or not) did that go?

You're correct. Though I'll add that the trouble comes when you stop being able to trust yourself to know whether you really want to or not.

A small example: a couple years ago I had the chance to go on a student exchange trip. I'd dreamed about it for a long time and got excited whenever I thought about it. When I told it to the S.O., he promptly got upset, came up with a miles-long logical list of all the dangers, and warned me it would cause serious trouble in our relationship. Then he told me he only had my best interests at heart and I should make my own choice so that it didn't lead to resentment. (Maybe I'm just paranoid, but that sounds all too similar to your wife's approach, Tekneek.)

So I killed the excitement and sat down to do a logical analysis, where I concluded that it wouldn't be worth the trouble to go. Then I killed the echoes of resentment, because I thought I no longer had a right to feel it. Not surprising to anyone except me, a pattern of this kind of "logical compromise" caused long-term problems. But the point is that I honestly thought, at the time, that I was being healthy and reasonable.



To me, this screams danger, cause you're casting her as the long-suffering martyr and you as the insensitive clod.

I guess it's an issue of balance. As long as the compromises really are equal and mutual, no harm done. But if one person is calling all the shots and the terms of compromise, be careful.

Maybe, but it also me trying to be aware of the big picture. She is entering the most psychologically and physically demanding phase of the pregnancy now. While I can't always control it, I need to keep that in mind.



Getting the extra TiVo just to record the hockey fixes I will be looking for will pretty much take care of it all, I think. When I have to miss an "important game", it drives me crazy. This way I can just tell the TiVo to record it for me and I can watch it the next morning, the next day, or not at all if it turned out to be boring and not so important after all. I was certainly prepared to accept less when I finally got myself settled down. We talked about it and she knows that sometimes we will probably clash over it anyway, but it looks like we will be establishing rules that will work. I get along best when I know what is going on and what is expected. It's a real compromise this time, as opposed to me trying to surrender a "complete victory" to her by attempting to kill my hockey interest. After all, she is prepared to budget out over $100 plus an extra $4.99/month for the extra equipment required to make it happen. Not to mention the cost of Center Ice that may run up to $135. It's more than I thought we would be able to afford right now, but we went over the numbers and it would work out.

absolutely.

I think your wife sounds very caring and understanding, and you are lucky to have her. I hope you tell her that too.

(Oh and I was only teasing earlier, I didn't mean to be rude)