Many couples complain that videogames are the bane of their relationship, but there’s at least one marriage that wouldn’t exist without them.
How many times have you heard of a woman complaining that their significant other “plays too many damn videogames”? Probably too many. How about a man who wishes that his wife would stop with the FarmVille spam and maybe spend some more time in the bedroom with him? It’s a sad truth that many couples find videogames to be a hindrance in a happy relationship.
But that’s the opposite of truth for Amanda Yesilbas; games were the language of her marraige. As she details in issue 254 of The Escapist Magazine, beyond meeting her husband through a MUD, it’s very possible that her relationship would have fallen apart if it wasn’t for the joy that she and her husband found through playing videogames together:
Each of us was stewing in a different sort of misery, and the atmosphere in the apartment was getting tense. It was around this time that we got our first two player game. I don’t remember what it was exactly, it might have been a Baldur’s Gate game, but what mattered was that we were playing together. Or maybe what mattered was that we were playing at all. Both of us had played games, mostly on the PC, and somewhere in the shuffle of setting up house, we had forgotten about videogames. It didn’t matter how tired I was when I came home from work. I had to play; it helped me remember who I was, and bond with my husband.
To me, Amanda’s story is sweet and heartfelt. She and her husband found their bliss through games. Perhaps if more people allowed games to work their magic, as Yesilbas describes in The Games That Bind, then the world would be a happier place.
