It's funny how some stereotypes persist.

A few months my fiancee and I were playing Rock Band together in the living room of her college townhouse when someone knocked on the door. Answering it, I was confronted by a stout college student who had clearly been imbibing a bit too much alcohol. "I know this is weird," He began. "But could I borrow a pen?" Seeing no reason to begrudge him a writing utensil I trotted upstairs to get him a pen. When I returned he was sitting on the couch next to my girlfriend attempting to chat her up. One glance at her face assured me she was in fact as uncomfortable as I thought so I gave the fellow his pen and he left. I asked her if anything happened and she smiled.


"No, he was a bit shocked I was playing video games, though." She replied. I laughed and inquired further. "He asked me if I was playing this, as if it was weird." She divulged. "I told him yes and he asked me if I was getting the new one when it came out. I told him I couldn't because the PS3 version was still a few months off. He looked pretty shocked that I had any clue."

I have no doubt that our pen hungry neighbor was a bit on the moronic/ignorant side, but it still goes to say that a lot of people don't really picture women as being part of the gaming demographic. I know that during my desperate years in high school, such a concept was alien to me. A girl with a taste for gaming seemed to me to be the sort of buried treasure one oft imagined but would never find.

In fact, when Mandi and I first started dating our freshman year of college I had no idea she even partook in my most favorite of past times. It was a gradual reveal, that came about as it became more and more clear just how deeply I enjoyed video games. She too enjoyed them, but as soon as it became clear it could be something for us to do together on a regular basis we started gaming more and more together.

Our tastes, diverged a little bit. She was more of a Sims girl and I was more of a Metal Gear guy, but as things progressed we started to take interest in each others doings even if we weren't playing the games together. She would fill me on the status of her various families, whilst she would listen and watch while I sat through the cut scenes of games like MGS4.

I think for as long as I live I'll remember the day when we got some Best Buy coupons in the mail, which prompted her to say, "Why don't we get you a TV that will make Metal Gear Solid 4 look really good?"

We introduced each other to games that neither of us had ever thought much of before. I suggested Harvest Moon and she now follows the series closely. She introduced me to Eternal Darkness and for years consistently suggested the Castlevania series to me, which, guess what, I now love. Moreover, as games started to come out -a la Rock Band- which we could genuinely enjoy together became a conduit for further bonding.

I'm not saying that gaming is the foundation upon which our relationship has been built over the past three years, but it's certainly given us a way to interact that I think too many couples underestimate and misjudge. In the end though, it's to each his own. At the end of a hard week some of us like to go to the movies, some like to hit the clubs. I like to curl up with my girl and a game controller.