Explaining Poker to a Non-Playing Girlfriend/Wife

[MLerra]

I'll be honest, I think it's a really bad idea to play the profitability angle.

1) If you have a bad week or month, and you will, it will be a major pain. Think of how long it takes a poker player to learn to see the "long term". Your fiancee will likely take ten times as long as you, if she ever does, to see this "long-term" and be perfectly OK with you having running bad for a little while. It's bad enough to catch cold cards, but it's really bad when your support is not really supporting you, but giving you a hard time about it instead.

2) If you're effectively paying her off to accept your hobby... you might want to ditch her for a non-prostitute. Call it a pet peeve of mine, but WTF. If your fiancee, of all people, can't be happy that you enjoy your hobby... and won't be happy for you unless you're always winning and buying her stuff... you've got yourself not much more than a prostitute.