On Dating a Gamer: Nerd Community Rebuttal

It's important to address on this blog some of the Nerd Community issues that come up, and it's come to my attention recently via the article that Anne Forsythe wrote about dating a Professional Magic Player -- the interaction of relationships and gaming.

Anne makes some good points in her article, about finding compromises and about the difficulty of immersing oneself in a community of diehard gamers when you're really not into their passion.  What's interesting, and I imagine more common, is that Anne is not only not into Magic, but she's not really into gaming at all.  This simple fact means that while she sits at a table full of serious nerds, she can't even divert their conversations with another topic. Unsurprising that her group of gamers won't stop a conversation for discussion about Biggie Smalls, but I bet they would if she initiated a discussion about "Game of Thrones!"  So of course I am utterly unsurprised that she finds difficulty in the MTG world, right?

I'm a gamer.  A hardcore gamer.  I have more board games and card games and video games than a lot of "gamer" men that I know. I play Dungeons & Dragons. I played WoW. Yet I myself was a Magic Widow for years, engaged to a "professional player" who, like so many others, strived to get on the gravy train and promised me that everything would be great once he did.

It was a big sacrifice that included MANY lonesome nights for me while he built decks with Mike Flores. I'd wake up sometimes in the night to find my bed alarmingly empty because he had snuck off and left after I'd fallen asleep to go to Neutral Ground.   The Spring Pro Tour for MTG fell during the first week of May every year, which happened to also be the week of my birthday.  When I wasn't left alone in the United States for that whole week, I got to go WITH him (to Pro Tour Nice in 2002) and watch boys play Magic the Gathering as a birthday present. I won't lie and instead admit that I was really excited when he got eliminated early so that we could actually go and SEE Nice and the surrounding areas instead of lingering in the stagnant convention hall.

His big victory came at a South African Grand Prix that was minimally attended.  The money he won barely covered the airfare and hotel room, but it was a huge coup for him, and for our relationship at the time.  I remember meeting him and Alex Shvartsman at the airport at 4 in the morning, excited and proud, and extremely, extremely tired in the deserted waiting area of the terminal.

But the gravy train never came. He never became the next Kai Budde or Jon Finkel. So were the compromises we made to our relationship worth it?


Even when you're a gamer, dating a Magic player is hard.

I could talk here about nerd hierarchies, and the perceptions even amongst gamers regarding collectible card game players, but it's not relevant and I don't like to generalize or pigeonhole. Besides, it wouldn't account for the amount of stress that MTG puts on a lot of relationships. There are a lot of extremely brilliant tactical minds that play Magic, and the number of factors and variables that account for a good deck or a good win involve tons of BRAIN time in addition to play time.  It is intentionally an all-consuming hobby, and the competition is duly fierce. It is not enough to *just* be clever.  It takes a dedication that leaves room for little else.

But I think Anne's suggestions about Magic Widows "learning how to play Magic" is a little oversimplified. I actually played MTG for 2 years between the ages of 13 and 15, casually. I know how it works, I can rattle off card names and make jokes about tapping and trample and mulligans, but it didn't make it any easier for me to be engaged to a professional player.  Hanging out with a group of Magic players was similarly baffling, because there comes a point where it is not about the funny flavor text on a card, and it's just deck percentages and strategies and to me, that is just dry.

But what I would recommend for Magic Widows is finding an intermediate nerdy/gaming hobby that you can share with your man.  Co-op video games, especially RPGs, are a lot of fun (though some couples fight through all of them) .  Board games are TONS of fun to play together and there are a lot of 2-player card games that will not only be fun for you as a couple, but will spark your partner's love of holding CARDS!  My husband and I absolutely LOVE Lost Cities and FLUXX.

At the end of the day, dating a MTG player is still totally doable if you know what you're getting yourself into. In retrospect, it actually wasn't Magic that fractured my relationship with my ex-fiance at all.  He may not have gotten on a gravy train like Jon Finkel, but he did transition into professional poker playing like Jon did.  If you think being a Magic Widow is bad, being a Poker Widow is WORSE. If you thought "Money: The Gouging" was egregious because your partner keeps having to buy new packs, just remember your family's savings aren't in jeopardy. At least when my ex was sneaking out in the middle of the night to play Magic he wasn't ALSO stealing the cash we'd set aside to pay rent!

Nerd hobbies take advantage of our intellect by sparking it and taking hold of our interests.  But if Adam can wait for me to finish my level on Arkham Asylum, I can certainly let him be for an afternoon to play Warhammer!  Every relationship, between nerds and non-nerds alike, needs to find compromise. Like mixed-color decks, you just have to find the blend's balance by emphasizing some cards and removing others to the sideboard. Some color combinations are always disparate, and maybe you can't handle dating a MTG player.  (So don't respond when Jon Finkel IMs you on OKCupid)

Regardless, dating gamers of any variety is always fun and challenging, and filled with accessories!