Iceman's 30 for 30: Thirty Games, Characters, and Moments for my 30th Birthday

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THE CHARACTER: May Goodwin
I didnt care about the words. It was the way you handled it without trying to hide how scared you were. It was brave.

May is the person I fear becoming.

Not a bad person, by any means. She displays quite a few qualities that I share and/or find admirable. A logical and analytical mind, general shyness, and most recognizably, as the breadwinner of the couple, a powerful dedication to ensuring her family is cared for and comfortable. Its this last trait that makes things complicated, though. Commendable and well-intentioned as it may be, that dedication has led to many long hours at the office, which is one of the chief causes of the strain in their relationship.

Ive seen this sort of thing in real life. Not the strain, thankfully, but the tilted work-life balance. My father is the president and former vice president of a hugely successful business and loves his job, and for as long as I can remember, hes put in more work weeks that eclipsed sixty hours than those that didnt. Obviously, those are still rookie numbers compared to some of the horror stories you hear, but as a relative newlywed, when I try to put myself in his shoes and imagine sacrificing all of those many days that I could otherwise be spending with my partner Well, I cant imagine it. To be clear, I have a fantastic relationship with and a tremendous amount of respect for my dad. Hes been around for every major event in my life and almost all of the minor ones. Hardly ever missed a basketball game or track meet, and carved out the time to find other fun things for us to share throughout my childhood. Hes a man I seek to emulate in many, many ways. This just isnt one of them.

The fear remains, though, that I may wake up one day and find myself falling into that trap. My wife and I are set up well for our lives moving forward, even when throwing potential children into the mix. Were frugal, low maintenance, have put far more into savings than the average couple our age, and admittedly will have a decent amount being left to us by our respective parents in the (hopefully distant) future. Despite all that, I feel the pressure. Ive never been an ambitious man driven by achievement in the workforce, but I do want to get to a point that will allow us to be a single-income household, and on the nights that Im having trouble sleeping, the thoughts creep in that Im not doing as much as I could be or should be. Im good at my job, but Im not putting in extra hours or constantly looking for my next project at the office; I work my 40 hours and ignore all emails beyond that. Theres no small amount of intentionality behind that. I dont want to become my father and I dont want to become May. Still, I worry. If Im this anxious before theres even a kid on the way, what am I gonna feel like if and when Im physically holding one? I can understand how someone like May, who *is* so logical in the way that she puzzles out every problem with which shes confronted, would feel the need to take a step back from a situation like this one and subsequently determine that a sacrifice is necessary. When one feels wholly responsible for the well-being of the people you hold most dear, one could easily come to the flawed conclusion that devoting anything other than the entirety of your energy to securing that stability is a kind of selfishness. Theres a poisonous kind of reverence that society assigns to the idea of doing it all for the family which overlaps and coincides with the typical celebration of ladder climbers such that even I, as someone actively trying to avoid falling prey to it, cant escape the impulse entirely.

This is getting a bit BlogFAQs-y, I know, but its important to me to acknowledge this games effectiveness as a cautionary tale, given the subject matter, and I mean that on both a micro and macro level. The micro aspects encompass everything Ive talked about in this section, which is to say that Cody and Mays specific troubles are recognizably common with couples in their position. The larger portrayal of the gradual decline of their relationship, though, suggests an obvious but mature outlook on the part of the writers, that so many of the problems that eventually lead to breakups arise not from within but without. The two main characters of this game are two generally good people (stuffed animal murder notwithstanding) who are genuinely doing their best to navigate a life that is entirely too full of outside stressors distracting them from their love for each other, not fundamentally lousy partners who are passively sabotaging themselves and each other through a lack of desire to do their fair share. It would be easy for me to scoff and shake my head and say, Pah! Ill never let myself become so aggravated with my wife. But I have to recognize that Cody and May and plenty of people like them have likely all thought the same at one time or another.

I dont want to oversell this narrative by implying that it *taught* me any of this. These were things I was already aware of in terms of what kind of partner I aspired to be even before I met the woman I married. This writeup is more of a pushback against the criticism I sometimes see for this game, that the protagonists are toxic people who should never have been together in the first place and/or that the story as a whole is uninspired or clumsy. I see far too much of myself - or, at least, a version of myself from some bleak future - in May not to appreciate the realism of her central predicament and the myriad additional predicaments that have spiraled out of it. Yeah, she sucks sometimes, or even a lot of the time. You probably suck a lot of the time, too, when you hit that level of feeling like you dont even have time to sing anymore. I dont like to think of her as a bad person for it, though. If she was, Id have nothing to worry about - Ill never let life turn me into a bad person.

A good person who wakes up one day, realizes theyre unhappy, and turns bitter because of it, though? I could see that happening. And Im glad to have this one additional reminder to protect against it.