Thanks for all of the replies.
My gf doesn't have a problem with poker itself. In fact, her family has a
poker game they play every few months that she invited me to. It's a $50, which is funny, because that's way more than I pay for games online. After speaking with her again, her 2 biggest concerns are: the amount of games I'm playing during the week. She feels that me playing 2-4 MTTs a night, mon-fri, is a sign of a person with a gambling addiction. Her other concern is that the money in my poker account isn't actually mine until I have it in hand or in a bank account. So, I plan on cashing out a good chunk of it and leaving enough to keep me BR'd for the games I'm currently playing. Hopefully, this can ease her fears about my poker monies. I'll also let her know that even though I'm still going to play, it's no longer with my own money invested and just with the money I've won off others. I'm not sure she'll quite understand that, but if I can make consistent wins and decent withdraws, she might be ok with it. She, more than likely, just wants the physical proof that I am making money playing online. However, it'll be money I'll keep for myself. Sure, I'll take her to dinner or something nice but majority of it I'll be keeping because this doesn't affect anything as far as money goes. It'll be no different than if I wasn't playing and bring in a little extra cash.
As far as spending time with her, we spend our weekends together. Like I said in an earlier post, when I'm with her, I'm with her. We usually see each other on weekends because of our work schedules and the distance between us. We both work early in the morning till 5-6 pm. And if we tried seeing each other during the weekdays, one of us has to go through heavy traffic to see the other after work, possibly spend a good 4 hours together before we sleep because that person who drove has to leave even earlier to get to work the next day. It's just a lot of work, driving, and gas money to just spend a few hours with someone. So, we agreed that the weekends is the best time to see each other. Not saying we don't ever see each other during the week, it depends if we can actually spend quality time together.
As far as balancing out playing poker and being with her, I dont play when I'm with her. It's as simple as that. I leave my laptop at home when I go see her. Also, we've been together for a little over 16th months now and I just started playing
poker online again in late Oct of this year; and like I said, I play during the week. If you're thinking that I could be spendind time with her during the week instead of playing, it's the same reasoning as above that I gave. In fact, it would've made no difference even if I hadn't started playing because I'd be doing something else like binging on netflix or playing COD.
I'll be seeing her this weekend and I'm sure we'll talk about it more. Hopefully, I can get her to understand my passion for the game and why I enjoy playing it.
