Today is my 8th year anniversary dating my girlfriend Ena, so I wanted to write about a random memory.

Many years ago, Ena and I played a game called Realm of the Mad God. It’s an old multiplayer bullet-hell game where you spend hours getting upgrades and fighting monsters, with one twist: When you die, you lose all your levels and gear on you.

“oh no what happened…” - Ena after losing hours of progress in 1.3 seconds

We picked up the game again recently, and after every death Ena would pick the same class: Sorcerer. I would change my class around, and while Ena would occasionally ask for a rundown of different classes, she would always pick Sorcerer.

Finally, one day, after restarting from scratch on a Sorcerer one too many times, she was determined to change her class. She read the description of Rogue,

Cloak ability: Turn invisible for a few seconds

“Oh so like you don’t take damage?”, Ena asked.

“No no, you take damage, but like enemies won’t shoot at you, so I guess you don’t take damage?”

“Ok, I’ll try it out”.

Ena goes to the market to trade some of her stored items for rogue pieces, and starts talking about the item abilities.

“Ohhh, this one makes me invincible for 3 seconds”, Ena said.

“What? Damn, that’s pretty good. There’s a few items that make you temporarily invincible, but very few for more than a second.”

“Yea this one is invincible for 4 seconds”

“??? Let me see… …No, it’s invisible. Not invincible.”. I was a bit confused, but whatever, Ena understood.

We start playing the game, doing dungeons, and Ena is getting demolished. Never hitting anything, always getting hit.

“Rogue sucks!!”, I remember Ena saying. She said it a lot actually. She wasn’t a fan of it. “Even when I go invincible, I feel like the enemies are shooting at me”.

“No, Ena, you’re not invincible. You’re invisible. You still have to dodge the bullets that are on the screen, but the enemy won’t target you. Stand like, away from me, because even if you’re invisible they’ll be shooting at…”

“Wait I’m not invincible?”, Ena asked.

“No ?? It says invisible. Invincible is something else”. I felt like I was taking the crazy pills.

“Rogue sucks!! Invisible is useless…”

After dying (or suiciding) shortly after, Ena went back to playing Sorcerer. Some things never change, I suppose.

Since my blogs are usually serious, I’ll end on a serious note. This is why it’s hard for couples to break up; a better candidate can’t simply “show up”- they have to surmount all the past experiences you’ve had with your partner together. Everything you cherished together needs to be surmounted. That grows less and less likely, day by day. Keep your relationship healthy and reinforced, and the stability will carry it forwards ever on.