I didn’t do a lot of gaming until I met Ryan. Well, console gaming that is. I had played plenty of The Sims and dungeon crawler Torchlight-knockoffs. My parents would never buy my sister and me a gaming console, because they thought it was a waste of time and that we should go outside or something equally as horrid (Just kidding! Love you, outside!). We were left to scavenge time on our friends’ N64s playing Mario Kart until the early hours of the morning at sleepovers. It was a harsh life.

Anyway, I digress. I moved to Texas two years ago and started gaming.

When I moved in with Ryan, he already an Xbox, a Playstation, a Wii, and a few old handhelds, as well as his old N64 that we hooked up just for fun. I had little to no experience with any of these things, and thought video games were for super nerds who lived in their parents’ basements and had pretend anime girlfriends. Or angry teenage boys who lived in their parents’ basement and ignored their teenage girlfriends to scream at other teenage boys on Xbox Live while playing Halo. Because I was horribly wrong and naïve. Shut up.

In order to properly get an idea of what I liked, and show me what there was out there, Ryan popped in about ten different games one night and played a little bit of each of them so that I could watch. I remember specifically that it all looked very difficult. Like, “HOW ARE YOU SHOOTING THAT MANY PEOPLE?” levels of difficult. Turns out shooting lots of dudes is not that hard after all.

The first game I ever played was Fable II. I remember being amazed at how pretty it was, and how great it was that I could just run around and go wherever I pleased. It all looked like a charming British fairy tale. Except that it was infested with hobbes (I hate goddamn hobbes, you have no idea). I loved it. I still love Fable II. You always remember your first, right?

Anyway, from there I moved on to Mass Effect and Portal and etc. etc. You get the picture, I PLAY GAMES NOW.

However, it’s not always fun and games and Fable. When two people who happen to be two people who like playing video games are in one relationship and own one television, things can get tricky (hashtag FirstWorldProblems). Anyway, we’ve got the one TV, and the one Xbox. You get the picture. We’re pretty good about not fighting over who gets to play what, except when I have been playing Skyrim or Happy Wars for six hours straight and my eyes have glazed over and Ryan has to forcibly pull the controller out of my clammy hands.

Although we occasionally fight about who has to sit on the ottoman and who gets the Ikea chair when we play co-op.

There was also a lot of shouting for awhile. Ryan was the only one with an Xbox gold account, and so he would be laughing into his headset about what I presumed was something hysterical and I had to know what it was. So there I was, screaming, “What are you laughing at? What’s so funny? TELL THEM I SAY HELLO!” from across the house. I’m sure it wasn’t annoying at all. But Ryan got me a gold account last December, and I can totally say that it was a great investment. Now we can both scream into headsets at our friends.

Additionally, there are times when I want to punch Ryan in the freaking face because I am trying to sleep because I have to get up at seven a.m. and he is playing Syndicate at two in the morning with the subwoofer turned all the way up. Those are the Angry Gaming Relationship times. Or the time where I was trying to play Journey on my own for the first time and he was yelling at me for not doing it right and I almost angry cried at him because it pretty much ruined the end of the game. And Journey is an awesome goddamn game.

It’s not good times all the time.

But this is all I know. I had never dated someone who was into gaming, and I didn’t know that I, TOO could game.  If I hadn’t had this experience, I would be short a lot of good stories and more than a few great friends. In fact, I would be short this writing gig if I hadn’t started gaming.

So, let’s hear your stories. Good or bad (but not mediocre).