[Feanoir]

The posters saying find a new job or dump the lady are just plain absurd. The reality is that once you have a career, a relationship, and a life it's pretty much impossible to play as a hard core raider. If you love or even just plain like your job, you are ahead of most people, and really shouldn't bail to play a video game.

Relationships take effort and if you work 80 hours per week you have to spend most of that precious free time with the lady so that she doesn't feel neglected. I work an average of 80 hours a week. I'm a doctor, and I love it, but an unfortunate consequence of having a great job I love is that I know I will simply not have the time to join a raid guild. After 6 or so years I don't even have a level 50 character yet, but I still enjoy the hell out of this game.

Explain to the girl that you need a few hours a week to yourself and enjoy EQ when time permits. I make time by getting up early on the one or two days off a week, and play until the rest of the house wakes up. The benefit of a super populated server is that great groups are still to be found at 6 AM EST. Explain that it's akin to going out once a week to play poker with the guys, except instead of poker it's a 15 year old video game. She will be cool with it if you don't let it become all you do when you aren't at work- everyone needs some time for their hobbies no matter how hectic life gets. The above advice is pretty solid though, If you can find some awesome couple stuff to do on a day off you can probably score a few extra hours to play eq after you guys get back from a farmers market and yoga class.

If that wall of text is all TL;DR there is time, just not a lot. Enjoy eq at a snail's pace. Expect your grouping pals to out level you. You probably wont get the first AoW kill once velious drops, but you can enjoy this game as a past time while actually enjoying real life.