The long-distance relationship between two gamers
My name is Heather, I’m 29 years old and I’m here to tell you about my geeky love story. But first, let me give you some background information. I didn’t start gaming on consoles like alot people out there. My actual first encounter with gaming was in an arcade – more specifically, with Street Fighter and Pac-Man. After that, I found out about DOSgames and started playing Mario Kart on the Nintendo 64 at a friends house. I’ve written for a lot of gaming websites (for over 7 years now) and currently I still do so sometimes.
The Love Story begins
My love story started almost a year ago. I had been streaming games on Twitch for about half a year. I was also very active in the Twitch community for over a year as a moderator for several channels and as just a viewer. If I wasn’t streaming myself, I would be in my friends’ streams to support them. One day I was watching one of my friends stream and when he ended his stream he hosted and raided (this is when you send your viewers to someone else’s channel) another stream. This stream happened to be of a person named Hotsammysliz. His actual name is Samuel, but I call him Sammy.
When you’ve had a taste of what life could be, you want more.
See, if the nickname didn’t fascinate me already, his raid response dance totally did. I kept watching for a while and he seemed like a really nice and cute guy. A few weeks later I stumbled onto his stream again (timezones are a b*tch). He was playing Dark Souls and that’s when we started chatting. I ended up sending stroopwafels ( a populair treat in the Netherlands) to America so he could try them and it just grew from there.
Heather & Sammy go ‘Facebook official’
We started chatting more and more and I’d stay up late to watch his streams. After a few months we went ‘Facebook official’, eventhough we had never met in real life. But if you know someone’s the one, you just know. Online relationships are often hard to explain to friends and family and I was really happy when he told me he’d come to The Netherlands. Atleast I could say we’ve met in real life then. So here he was, on Kings Day. At first it was surreal, but it also felt like we had known each other for a long time and it all felt very natural. He stayed with me for three weeks and then he sadly had to go back to Pennsylvania.
Heather & Sammy, the streaming duo?
We have some games in common that we both like to play, but his main game is Monster Hunter. I’m more of an open world gamer. World of Warcraft (11 years, but retired), GTA V, Sims 4, Tycoon games. When he introduced me to the Monster Hunter franchise, I was hesitant at first. But I’ve been hooked on it ever since and Monster Hunter Generations has become one of my favorite games. I quit streaming on Twitch, but I still hang out with Samuel when he streams if I’m still awake. Oh yeah, and we also used to do some Monster Hunter streams together aswell.
When you’ve had a taste of what life could be, you want more. And just chatting online behind a screen isn’t good enough anymore. We’re now working on getting me to the other side of this big ocean between us. One thing I know for sure is that he’s the one for me, and I’ll one day move in with him. That will most likely be in the USA, but who knows what may happen. When will this happen? I don’t know yet, first I’m just going to visit, hopefully in January. Until then we’ll be gaming together from a distance and seeing each other with the help of technology.