It's good that you have been able to find a place you can talk about this challenge so you can get it off your chest.

Here is a way to think about this so you can see how normal this can be. The reason romance novels can be so popular VG is they present the reader with a way to fantacize and most of the time there are no pictures of the main characters so the reader can imagine them in what the reader considers attractive and ideal or evil and ugly etc. It's not unusual to develop a strong attachment to a certain character or story either. In fact, that is also why people like to tune into a certain series every week on TV too. Part of our design as human beings is how we can become "attached" and develop psychological bonds. Most of us are susceptible to this, so for you to feel personal guilt for enjoying some kind of activity where you grew to get attached is really not being fair to yourself. People can and often do get attached and can feel bad if for example the series they watched for a long period of time suddenly ends. Actually, that is why reruns are so popular as a person CAN at least revisit whatever series they grew attached to. Actually, that is why certain series can form what is called "cult followings" too, for example all the people that loved Star Trek so much that they ended up collecting all kinds of memoribilia and even get together at big gatherings to celebrate how much they enjoyed Star Trek. It's really not surprising that this happens with our new technology where people began developing attachments to what you call "gaming and gamers". I will say however that you do have to be careful as there are individuals out there that do this thing called catfishing where they purposely create a female or male that can play mind games with your psychie to disable you, that's their game and they play around with their target or targets until they know they have their targets completely fooled and once they get to a certain point, they just get bored and look for a new challenge.

Yes, this can have a bad affect on marriages too, it's important to remember that this so called virtual world is not reality but instead just made up stories and characters just like all those "fiction" novels and movies etc.