Girlfriends and Games – Part Three: Keeping the Peace

The quest to get a girlfriend has not been an easy one. You bathed. You changed clothes. You spent at least an hour cleaning your room and then pretended to cook a roast before sneaking out to get a whole chicken from Red Rooster. One might say your journey could be presented as the modern man’s Odyssey. I would not. Who the hell is this One anyway? What a pretentious douche. More accurately we can say you’re no longer a slobberous (yes, I just made that word up) pig. Congrats. High fives all round.

Along this mediocre journey you may or may not have obtained a girlfriend. A real girl. All fleshy and not in the slightest way only existing on your secret external hard-drive you don’t let your room mates find. If you have, take a few more of those high fives. If not, keep trying mate, there has to be someone out there for you. And if there isn’t, I know a great trick with a grape fruit and a microwave. Drop me an email if you want to know more.

Doesn’t look so delicious anymore huh?

If you manage not to screw it up (the real girlfriend, not the grapefruit experiment, though both can be equally devastating) and she doesn’t leave you for someone better, then after a significant amount of time together it will one day make sense to move in to a joint living space. Be warned! This is not a step that should be taken lightly for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is that it will impact directly on your nerdy delights (and may ruin the relationship, but whatevs).

This latest and last installment of Games and Girlfriends will give you a guide to living with the fairer sex. We will discuss what is and isn’t acceptable while living with a girl and how to make sure you’re still getting your gaming time in, as well as other things in… like TV time and maybe some funky board game time… what were you thinking?

Moving on from sub-par penis jokes, my plan is to give you some strategies to make sure you and your girlfriend survive the torment that can be living together. The other option is to tie her up and keep her in the basement. But this should be our worst case scenario.

Went the basement option huh? Buying a new door every time you have an argument can get expensive

The Key to Any Relationship – Lies or Untruths

A wise (yet amazingly still single) friend of mine once told me that you didn’t need money to get a woman; you needed lies… and money. This is also true of keeping said woman, especially when satisfying your nerd needs. If you’re lacking in the money department, simply substitute with more lies. But the word ‘lie’ has such negative connotations associated with it.  Let’s call them ‘untruths.’ Untruths are useful in all kinds of situations, though I have found them indispensable when dealing with the ‘nag effect’.

The majority of females enjoy a certain level of cleanliness and tidiness. The majority of men are lazy slobs who are quite content with living in a certain level of their own filth. Now I appreciate cleanliness but I also appreciate leaving my boots lying around the house wherever I take them off. My fiancé (let’s give her a name to protect her identity: Mavis) however sees this as a personal attack on her way of life and I am ordered to tidy them up as soon as my rebellious ways are discovered. 

Should have just cleaned the dishes

These kinds of requests can happen at any time and can be highly inconvenient. For example: last night Mavis asked (yelled out from the kitchen) if I had set the table yet. I was in the middle of a tense episode of Battlestar Galactica (that one with the female admiral who gets all up in Adama’s grill – tense) and had no time for placemats and cutlery!

So I used a simple untruth and replied that I had. It was the perfect crime… at least until she walked in a minute later and discovered my deceit.  But by this stage the tensisity (how is that not a word?) has decreased and I was able to sacrifice the thirty seconds for table-setting goodness.

Sometimes however you will be assigned chores through the ‘nag effect’ that are simply too big to hide with untruths. Things like mowing the lawn, cleaning the gutters, taking the dog (cat, horse, dilapidated dugong) for a walk can take multiple minutes if not hours to complete and would almost definitely involve you sweating. The solution? Hire someone else to do it.

Wait until the female is out of the vicinity for a prolonged period (getting her nails done, seeing Twilight reruns at the cinema and who knows what other horrors she embarks upon in her spare time) and get a professional to come in and do what you’re too lazy to.

While Joe Blogs from ‘Hire a Hubby’ is tiling that bathroom floor you promised to take care of, you can be grinding away on that Sith Sorcerer you’d otherwise have to be ignoring. Make sure you pay the guy in cash so your nosy partner can’t discover your brilliant plan and you’re good to go.

When she gets back from whatever estrogen-fueled adventure she’s been on she will be amazed at the surprisingly thorough job you did and will reward you with praise and baked goods. Ensure you take all credit and feel free to embellish the nature of your manly achievements. You paid good money for this after all.

A few cheeky hours of Starcraft AND cookies, it doesn’t get any better than that

Getting Busted

The most vital part of delving into the world of untruths is that you are prepared for when they go pear-shaped (or pineapple-shaped, maybe even watermelon-shaped… what’s so bad about pears and their shape anyway?). I have three techniques for dealing with this which can also be used in conjunction with each other.

-The first is to hide

Women are emotional creatures and like a rampaging grizzly bear will initially look to destroy everything within a 50m radius upon discovery that the vacuuming wasn’t actually done. Their wrath is terrifying but inevitably short lived. The female body doesn’t hold the energy reserves for continued terrorising. Give it a couple of hours and then sheepishly approach.

-Which brings us to technique deuce (that’s French for two… ok maybe not. Spanish?)

The hug. Like a dog with its tail between its legs, approach with caution and showing signs of subservience. You’re in the wrong, admit it, put on the puppy face and go in for the hug. Studies (that I just made up) show that 93% of females find it impossible to maintain the rage while being hugged.

The other 7% will use this proximity related vulnerability to stab you in the ribs with a fork (chopstick if you’re from the Orient, or if you had Chinese food for dinner that night) so be careful.

If a Zebra can work it out I’m sure you can

-Technique numero three

Once you’ve got her ensconced in a big ol’ hug it is time to unleash your secret weapon: the promise. Either promise you’ll do it soon, tomorrow or when you get a chance – vagueness will go far at this point. Then promise you’ll try harder to contribute in the future. Promise whatever gets you back in the good books. You will eventually have to do the chores but in the meantime you’ve bought yourself a couple of days at least. Bravo.

Whatever you do, do not try and deny she told you (nagged you) to do whatever it was that you put off. This is a dangerous route as women have the memories of elephants. They are also never wrong. Not ever. Not even slightly. This may seem unfair. But who cares. She lets you touch her naughty parts. Shut up and take it you fool. If the injustice is too much I recommend at least going out with some dramatic flair. Slamming doors, yelling and a little bit of self-immolation adds credence to your self destruction.

 Making the Hard Choices

Sharing a living space with the love of your life (at this moment in time) can present you with some difficult choices every now and again. A while ago now (I’ve learnt my lesson since) I was playing an epic game of World of Tanks when Mavis (Mavis is terrible, let’s call her… Gertrude) Gertrude came home and went to kiss me. At the time I was in the open, surrounded by German tanks with Russian artillery zoning in on me.

You didn’t see Rommel pausing in the middle of a full scale attack to give his sweetheart (I can only assume he had a personalised pimped-out tank full of beautiful women) a kiss. It would be tactical madness!

Sie sehen mich rollen! Sie zu hassen!!

Needless to say I hesitated and attempted to keep my eyes on the screen while going for a half-arsed sideways kiss. She put on a look of shock and stormed from the room. I later found out that actually it isn’t acceptable to choose a computer game over kissing your girlfriend. Ridiculous.

Didn’t she understand the importance of the game? It might have meant the difference between a couple o’ hundred XP! Women are simple creatures and this argument didn’t go a long way to justifying my actions.

Once you are living with your partner you too will come across these tough decisions. Invariably they will come down to two very simple choices. Nerdy Goodness or Sex… No one is saying you can’t sit at your computer all night; ignoring your girlfriend and swearing loudly while pwning noobs.

But you probably shouldn’t expect to climb into bed reeking of Doritos and sweaty victory at 2am and expect to get any loving. Surely, you cry; surely those hours spent gaining countless online triumphs would excite your woman into a frenzy of lust. Apparently not.

“Really? 30 to 1 kill/death ratio? That’s so sexy…” – Wake up! You’ve fallen asleep at the keyboard again.

At the start of your relationship you’re going to be tempted to give up your gaming pursuits and become your girlfriend’s ever-willing play-thing. Don’t. Be strong. This forming period is all about expectation management. If you initially give up your nerdy pursuits it is going to make the justification of future gaming all the harder once the passion (and amazement that a girl is letting you get naked next to her) has worn off. Make the hard choice and stick to your guns/swords/other assorted digital weaponry. Just understand that it may mean a lonely night.

So I Clearly Think My Rants are Too Important            

So this was going to bring us to my next point: Compromise. But unfortunately my ranting skills have reached new levels of self-important bullshit and we have run out of space. While I could keep going, I believe our female readers can only handle a certain level of chauvinism before they begin to complain and send letter bombs. I am confident that level has been reached for today. So article 3 of Games and Girlfriends will be a two-part saga.

Think Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but more interesting. I hope you’ve enjoyed and/or learnt something from Part 1. Stay tuned for Part 2 to follow in the next couple of weeks and keep gaming.

For more from Chazz take a look at his article, What is it about online games? Chazz thinks you need an iPad, find out why.