Maybe your love life consists of 5:00 "conjugal visits" every hour on Sundays, or every vacation you guys take must coincide with pca or wsop tour, or the only dinner dates you go on are to places where you have comps... or when you wear sexy lingerie, he asks you to please cover your pointy elbows.

Poker-playing boyfriends are a quirky species. ITT, we make fun of them.

Oh dear....what if the female is the one who plays more poker?

I'd say the only thing I can pick on my b/f about is when he suddenly swears loudly and slams his fist onto the table, which tends to make me jump outta my skin since it's coming from the other room. Do Not Like.

so what shoud i talk about first: that i dated a fellow PLO grinder for 3 years or that i recently started dating the guy with the most posts in all of 2p2? I can make fun of either endlessly.

Aaaargh that drives me nuts. One of my guy friends just mangles furniture and needs a new mouse every week. I don't agree that we're the more emotional ones, lol.

Also irritates the crap out of me that he insists on being logical when I'm on tilt or bitching about some monkey getting there with ATC, but when he's running bad he's like a small, moody child and is allowed to snarl at me all he wants.

The sheer fact that my bf does not tilt, tilts the hell out of me actually.
How dumb is that.

No, I get that completely. Like, how can you not tilt after your 12th bad beat in a row?

Hahah that's awesome katie, I'm in the same boat. I'd rather him tilt a little, so I don't so feel bad when I casually suggest sacrificing small animals most Sunday nights.

Sgt, you have no idea how perfectly I understand your last statement...not with my current bf, but with every other guy I talk to about poker. Too funny.

Everyone has their breaking point. The PLO player I dated for 3 years would keep calm LONG past the point where I would have tilted, but on the 1 or 2 occasions where I actually did see him tilt it was fascinating/a little frightening.

True, and I've seen him break down. What I don't get is, he knows what it feels like to tilt, so why does he get all rational and vaguely condescending with me when I do it? I've even pointed this out, and told him what I want from him at that point (just agree with me that donkeys are awful luckboxes that deserve to burn in hell for beating me), but he seems incapable of remembering that for more than 5 minutes.

Yup, you basically just want a little empathy for a second. I do think it's helpful not to have anyone who will indulge me for an hour when I want to wallow in self-pity though.

You all are making me glad I'm the only poker player in the house lol
I will admit that I've been caught multiple times with the earbuds in, music cranked, grinding away and singing at the top of my lungs... luckily I have the earbuds in drowning me out, my people don't enjoy the same benefit though lol.

He's only allowed if you allow him . My wife sure won't put up with that crap, lol.

My BF and I generally have a healthy relationship when it comes to poker-related stuff. I tend to degen long sessions way more often than he does, but he's ok with that.

The only thing that is slightly irksome is that I don't always want to do full hand analysis when I've just completed a session. I know that he's trying to help (and he loves analyzing hands), but I often just want to sleep. He has gotten very good at knowing when to save the talk for later

oh my sweet zombie jesus my ex used to do this ALL THE FREAKING TIME and it got on my nerves like none other. however, he was the one who always wanted to do the super-long degen sessions and i'd want to go home halfway through.

Wow. It is officially confirmed that I am the man in my relationship

My husband and I both play. We both started playing a few years before we met each other. We actually met on a poker forum.
We started out with completely different playing styles but over the years, I have lagged up a bit and he has tagged up a bit. He is still far more Laggy than I but I win more so....
I HAVE to analyze hands as soon as my session ends. I enjoy that part almost as much as the playing itself. Matt would rather save the analyzing for another day.
I also play far more often than he does. I get 2 free rooms per week at Foxwoods and we go down Wed-Fri and I am so excited for the time that he gets 2 free rooms so that we can stay Mon-Fri!!! He is not on board with this plan yet but I do have my ways of persuasion.
I also want any and all vacations to be about poker. Vegas is the one and only vacation destination, IMO.

Confirmed Vegas rules.

For any ladies who play full-time, do you think you could possibly seriously date someone who doesn't play poker again? I feel like I'm too weird now. I feel totally at home at Borgata, basically lived there for a few months, and spend A LOT of my free time playing tourneys. Also, the guy would have to be on the super-hero level of confidence and security to let me hang around with a bunch of dudes all day without being jealous.

Anybody dating a normie right now? I'm just very curious how this works out.

My hubby doesn't play poker. I think you are right it takes a LOT of patience on his part. I'm insanely lucky that he has a great job and we don't "need" my income so I was able to put in the copious amounts of time required to really learn this game. I didn't know that this would be my job when I started playing, it just kinda evolved into that as I improved.

He balked a lot at the very beginning, not understanding poker vs. other forms of gambling, but as I learned so did he. After I final tabled and then won some bigger field tournaments and I started showing him statistics he became more comfortable with it. BUT its still very hard for him when someone asks "what does your wife do?" Understandably so.

There were hard times along the way, he was pretty much neglected many many nights and weekends while I figured out how to balance poker/home.

As for hanging out with a bunch of guys, well, when he and I met I was playing darts and travelling to tournaments almost every weekend with mostly men and 90% of my friends were men so he was "conditioned" from the beginning lol... but he does still have some insecurities about me finally getting to meet some of my online friends (99% male obv) from the poker world.

The money that these gentlemen make adds a different element for him despite the fact that he makes very good money himself, but we have talked about it a lot and will continue to talk about it as I get out into the real world.

I'd have to say that a whole lot of things came together in a good way that could have potentially gone horribly wrong between us over the past couple years. I think we got lucky and we are also "older" (I'm 42 and he is 39) so some life experience probably was one of our saving graces.

Thinking about our whole journey through this I'd have to say that most couples where one plays and the other doesn't won't make it, and established players have a better chance than brand new players do.

I'm dating a guy who doesn't play poker. Though he's a poster here and very immersed in the lifestyle. To him it's a hobby though.

I hate casinos though. I absolutely hate them.

Yea, I have a hard time seeing how it would work, although I'm sure it does for some people. At the same time, I do think that sustaining a relationship with 2 full-time grinders, presents problems unique to the profession. I have seen many, many failed relationships that started and revolved around poker that ultimately went bad due to cheating, money/br issues, overall stress of poker or other instabilities in the relationship.

I don't think that a relationship built around 2 pro poker players resembles the more "traditional" relationships we grow up seeing/understanding/expecting due to the nature and variance of the game. In a poker relationship, both partners are fighting to make it and the responsibility is equal. For a lot of men and women this concept just doesn't work for them. A poker relationship also requires you to motivate and push each other, which can create tension in a normal relationship. Since tournament poker is constantly evolving, the necessity to improve and keep up with the changes is constant. This can be stressful and trying on the relationship, but is something that will always exist. Getting used to it is mandatory.

Personally, I would not and could not have it any other way.
I have an amazing bf who forces me to believe in myself by his resolute confidence in me. He inspires me, pushes me & helps me to improve on a daily basis.
I plan on being with for a zillion years.

Any "man" that says this, please report the fool to me. I'm make sure the shop steward revokes his man-card.

It might be easier for me and my b/f because, while both of us play poker, neither does so professionally. I'm also the only one heavily active here 2p2.

Lmao, I'm just alluding to the "I'd hit it, but she has pointy elbows" running joke on nvg

I knew what the source was, but he's going to have to hand over his balls card if he's thinking of online posts at such a time.