What playing D&D with my fiance taught me about love

My fiance introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons when we first started dating six years ago, and the TTRPG has undeniably changed my relationship for the better and taught me so much about love.

Love and TTRPGs go together better than Pineapple on pizza (don’t knock it until you try it). After all, love is typically a key aspect of many TTRPGs, and such an experience around the table can often heighten romantic feelings between characters. On top of that, the skills required for games like D&D lend themselves to love perfectly.

After all, Dungeons & Dragons is all about communication, collaboration, connection, and, of course, an experience rich in emotions and heart, shared together. Dungeons & Dragons has taught me all about love, and hopefully, it can for you, too.

Collaboration

A great relationship is all about collaboration. Many say that love is all about two wholes coming together to create something fantastic rather than two halves relying on each other to make a whole. As such, collaboration is key to helping those two people come together and craft something rewarding and fulfilling for both partners, depending on their needs and wants.

Oddly enough, this is exactly the same for Dungeons & Dragons. In a TTRPG like this, a group of people will come together and create a group of characters that must work together and collaborate in order to craft a fulfilling and rewarding experience for all involved. Using such collaboration is imperative for success, and perfecting that collaboration will make the experience so much better for everyone.

This isn’t to say I learned collaboration because of D&D or my relationship. Most learn that as children, having to share toys or collaborate throughout school – but being able to directly collaborate with my fiance outside of the relationship and inside a fictional world, allowed me to indirectly improve those skills and see just how his brain worked under a variety of different circumstances.

After all, typically, you don’t have to fight dragons, make morally ambiguous choices, or speak to Gods directly in real life. While they’re extreme, those experiences allowed me to collaborate with my fiance under intense circumstances and even allowed me to see how such a conversation would go when the loss of a beloved character occurred, or a character’s past trauma was unearthed – meaning those real life conversations were already closer than we thought.

Communication

Those conversations felt imperative for our relationship, which began long distance, meaning communication and collaboration were vital. As such, being able to learn more about communication and have important discussions about topics we would otherwise never broach quickly became the norm.

For many, there are multiple sides to a relationship, but communication typically retains its place as one of the most important features, despite often feeling like one of the harder aspects to master. Communication allows you to recognize your loved ones’ needs, desires, hopes, dreams, and everything in between. It also lets you share the same elements with your partner and will ultimately help a pair feel closer than ever.

Similarly, communication is just as important in Dungeons & Dragons, with those hopes, desires, needs, and more being vital to help the DM, players, and yourself understand what the group wants out of the experience. As many know, Dungeons & Dragons is a team game where communication is often the key to success, whether it’s through solving puzzles, exploring story arcs, or just communicating with the DM about your character’s motivations or your own preferences.

Having come in from the long-distance side of our relationship, I initially thought our communication was strong, but diving into Dungeons & Dragons with him revealed just how much further we could take it. I found us sharing stories of our characters, exploring how the other felt about certain events like character deaths, tricky choices, and other elements that would otherwise be circumstantial in real life. Ultimately, the communication and shared journey we went through one night a week allowed for hours of deep conversation and plenty of communication skills to be taught and learned.

Sharing a journey in more ways than one

In fact, once a week, it felt like we went on an entirely new adventure together, resulting in a rewarding shared experience. After all, one of the best elements about love and even friendship is sharing your life with the people you love and experiencing shared emotions, adventures, and even hobbies – making D&D a perfect place.

When asking couples 50 years into their relationship what they adore about their love, many will answer with the journey they’ve been on together. The adventures and memories will be what you remember years into the future and will forever remain a special place in a relationship, friendship, or even your own life.

Dungeons & Dragons, for many, creates those memories and adventures. After all, just ask any D&D player what their favorite in-game memory is, and they’ll usually happily recount a tale of laughter, intense adventures, or even heartbreak. Such tales have helped bond a group of adventurers together and sharing that with my fiance has only strengthened the memories and created something we can fondly remember experiencing as a pair and as friends.

Ultimately, through D&D, I’ve been able to share a journey with my fiance both on and off the page, creating memories and rich emotions every day. It’s a truly special experience that is only heightened by our Dungeons & Dragons session, and has crafted a series of adventures I’ll never forget.

Conclusion

Plenty of a relationship is learned through trial and error, as well as a little communication and dedication. While that was certainly something I’ve learned over the six years we’ve been together – it’s D&D that’s truly taught me about myself, my partner, and love itself. Sure, Dungeons & Dragons won’t fix your relationship or make it fall apart, but it’s arguably one of the best hobbies a couple can do. It’s just fantastic.