Find Your Player 2: I Want To Start Over in My Relationship
I’m thrilled to be introducing this column for Gayming Magazine, as someone who managed to hit both the major lesbian relationship tropes with the same partner! They moved in with me a week after we met, and we pined after each other as best friends for years before getting together properly. (We’ve yet to adopt several cats, but it’s only a matter of time.) It’s been a while since I was panic-googling “am I gay quiz” in the school library, but thankfully I can use those growing pains to help others!
As LGBTQ+ people, our relationships and identities often don’t fit in the same mould as the ones we’re surrounded by, and seemingly “easy” questions can be deep and complicated. At the same time, sometimes you just need an impartial ear to ask: If neither of us are doing gender roles, why is nobody doing the dishes either?
Whether you’ve been out for years, are newly questioning, or just think Gayming Magazine is the best place for games – Find Your Player 2 is here for you!
Our Relationship is Routine And I Want a Do-Over
My girlfriend moved in with me at the beginning of first lockdown when we’d been dating for three months, which was fast, but we didn’t want to “lockdown long distance”. We’ve been together for a year now, and we’re happy! She’s great, nobody is doing anything wrong, but it feels very… old married couple. Routine has set in. For our recent anniversary she made my favourite meal, which is sweet, but we also have it in rotation in our meal plan. Maybe it’s just a pandemic thing, because it isn’t like 2020 didn’t suck for all of us, but I can’t help but feel like I want a do-over. What do I do?
2020 was a hard year for pretty much everyone! It’s shaped this first year of your relationship differently, in how quickly you committed, and the ways you’ve celebrated landmark occasions. That’s hard, and it’s okay to sit with your feelings that this wasn’t how you wanted things to go.
You can’t get a do-over on 2020 – I’m sorry, would that I could do that for literally everybody. There are some feelings I’m picking up on about your relationship that I think you can get a fresh start on, though! Some of the ways you talk about your relationship describe it as if it’s something happening to you. Your girlfriend moved in and a routine settled… but you’re a whole half of your relationship, and that’s a thing you construct together. Investing in things not simply being routine is a choice you get to make!
It also sounds like you and your girlfriend were maybe not on the same page for your anniversary. Did you discuss how you both wanted to celebrate it beforehand? (Have you talked about what other events mean to both of you, like birthdays, and Valentine’s Day?)
If you imagined the anniversary celebration of your dreams – in an alternate 2020 – what would that look like? Is the core of this imagined scenario something you can carry over to your date nights at home? Does the time spent together ice-skating become a co-op game night, or does a moonlit serenade become writing your girlfriend a love letter?
Even if things became domestic faster than you’d have otherwise planned, the first year of a relationship is still a ‘getting to know each other’ stage. You are not inexorably stuck in the ways things are – there is still time to learn about how you both like to spend time with and express affection towards each other!
What’s the Best Way to Ask Out My Disabled Crush?
I have been talking to someone online and they’re very funny and handsome and we’ve been kinda flirty! I want to ask them to meet up properly when it’s safe, but they’re also a wheelchair user and I don’t want to make an ass of myself. I’ve seen them vent before about being left out of things so I don’t want to be like ‘oh let’s get coffee at the top of the Eiffel Tower, meet you there?’ Do I vet accessible locations first or is that condescending? Is letting them choose the venue low effort for asking them out in the first place? They’re very cool and I don’t want to embarrass myself!
Asking someone out can be a lot, but disability complicates things less than you might think here. You’ve largely hit on all the right notes to start with: you’ve met someone you’re interested in, and you want to go out somewhere that works for you both. This is true of asking anybody out!
It depends a little on the personality of the person you’re asking, but I think all your options are fine! It’s easy to find out where is wheelchair accessible, particularly when you’re looking at tourist attractions or specific venues. It’s often on the venue’s own websites, or (a faster choice) listed as a feature on websites like Tripadvisor. I’d recommend not making a point about having checked out the venue unprompted – just not suggesting an inaccessible venue is a good enough place to start.
My answer changes slightly if you aren’t local to each other. There’s a hidden detail, I find, in the getting to places. “Walking distance” can be different for someone pushing their entire bodyweight plus a metal chair (or it might not be, if they’re a powerchair user, or have good upper body strength!) Similarly, depending on where you live, public transport can be an accessibility nightmare. It can make a lot of assumptions about travel become complicated calculations in reality. Here, if you still want to show your effort, suggest the activity, but let them pick the place they know they can get to.
P.S: The Eiffel Tower actually has decent wheelchair accessibility! Who would have thought? It’s not somewhere I’d recommend until things are safe (like any non-essential travel), but in the future: it’s technically an option.
Find Your Player 2 is Gayming Magazine’s fortnightly love and relationship advice column! Send your questions to advicecolumn@gaymingmag.com.
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