In the stretch, and into the breech?
Have you ever gotten a significant other into gaming? Those of you in "mixed marriages", where one spouse is a gamer and the other isn't, how did you work this out?
The real problem with this one for me, is not even the gaming, it's the extremist gaming I live. For example, the very nice fellow I was dating before I met my husband-to-be was a gamer.
...just not as much as I was. Am. [hehe]
I have... (counts on fingers) including this one, over half a dozen public gaming blogs on my site....so far. That's not including that we're looking forward to starting a new campaign on Sunday, and I expect I'll put together something for it, as well. (I'm not sure a blog would be appropriate, but I expect you'll hear details here.)
I've been into gaming for a very long time. I don't have many women-in-gaming horror stories I think because I grew into it, and because I had options. I could always play with myself. [grin] I have had men use gaming as an attempt to get dates with me, but I was one of their "kind," and I recognized the strutting, and the showing their colours as a mating ritual. I appreciated the display, even if it was rarely successful.
I understood it to be a fundamental law of the universe that I could only be involved with someone who was into gaming. It's what I do (at least, besides all the other things I do.) My loves are very understanding, in that they know that I will spend time on my PBeMs that takes me away from them. That I will look at gaming stuff, that I need my "fix."
Our girlfriend isn't a gamer.
Oh, she can play, and do it well. Heck, the other night she detailed a dream that she said the magic words about:
"I might have to run a game based on this."
It made me smile.
I can't find the essay I read on Someone Else's Blog about women in gaming. Now, frankly, I stopped reading women in gaming essays after I figured I had the last word on the topic. (Published, even.) It kind of snuck up on me, though, and the good point it mentioned was that it wasn't the games so much as the gamers.
Oh, I try. I try hard. Really, really hard. But Our Sweetie just sighs and says, "You're a gamer." She shakes her head and that's that. I've been put into my place... just because I happen to know that's NOT how Umber Hulks act. Or whatever it is this time.
I am a gamer. I have my own language, my own traditions, my own way of seeing the world, and as sharing a vision is part of a relationship (part of basic communication, darnit) it's hard for a non-gamer to understand me.
I can be taken out into polite company. I'll just make notes for later.