All the while you're finding more and more arduous games to play, it'll start with sim-lite titles like Arma2 or a casual flight sim. Eventually you'll bleed into 4X games & obnoxiously detailed turn based strategies like Hearts of Iron 3 or Crusader Kings 2. Maybe you'll find your fix for a while with a title like X-3, but none of it matters. All the spark in your life is being fed into the endless cycle of grind=reward. Till one point the tipping point comes and you start looking up videos of ultra realistic sims and they're all very impressive.
Stuff like this:
You watch it and think to yourself "God damn that is giving me a monster hard on, but it's £45 quid, I can't justify that kind of spending!" But obviously you relent in the end. Then you are faced with what is essentially the next cheapest thing to actually owning a Russian attack helicopter, you sit in your cockpit gazing glass eyed at the seemingly endless array of buttons trying in vain to turn on the primary and secondary batteries. So your dreams shattered you slug on and the impressive visages of combat you watched in glorious HD slowly give way to the realisation that this will be more akin to your gaming experience.
Don't follow me down this dark path friends, it's cold and unforgiving, it'll leave you naked, jaded and alone.
