If you’re like me and you’ve been into all things fantasy, science fiction, and super hero related things your whole life, then chances are you’ve probably been the nerdy one in your relationships. Majority of my relationships have been with people who had little to no interest in comics books, Star Wars, or pro wrestling (Jake’s holy trinity) and I was never that good at introducing them to any of my interests. I started to think it was because most of my interests were started at an early age and I kept up with them mostly through nostalgia. Then early on in my relationship with my now fiancé I was able to get her interested in some of the stuff I like and follow. Now before I get into what I did succeed with, there were still plenty of failures… Two weeks into us dating she sat through 12 hours of pro wrestling, with no interest, over a weekend and I had to make up for it by watching a season of the Bachelor with her. As our relationship would go on she’d show some interests in nerdy stuff but I didn’t realize I was just making things boring to her by over explaining the context that was already being explained with the plot of whatever we were watching. I guess Star Wars isn’t fun for someone watching it for the first time if the person next to them is talking about legends lore and expanded universe stuff.
Two weeks before Avengers Endgame came out, my fiancé wanted to go see it with me, and I couldn’t have more excited and more surprised. We mapped out the movies she hadn’t seen, movies that I found essential for the lead up to Avengers, and movies she wanted to see again. I hadn’t realized at the time but I was doing what I should have done any time we watched something I had seen a million times and loved but was her first viewing, just shut up and let her enjoy the movie. It took me a few more tries and a few more fandoms to realize this. I think I ended up being able to get her into wrestling, SOME comic books, and Star Wars before noticing my blabber mouth and being overly excitement was making it not enjoyable for her.
I had tried with professional wrestling every chance I could, “Hey Marissa, would you want to join me and the guys and watch this 4-hour long ppv of sweaty people in tights throwing each other around?”. If you’re not a wrestling fan and that sounds fun to you then let me tell you what I unintentionally left out for her; the part where it’s really just me and my friends yelling over each other using inside baseball terms and arguing why our favorite sweaty person in tights is our favorite. Now what did work and got her to become a fan was one night I put on a match from a recent ppv that involved almost the entire women’s roster from WWE and then left the room to cook dinner. When I came back in the living room she had hundreds of questions, “Who’s this girl?” “What’s their deal?” “I don’t like that wrestler, why are they around?” and so forth. Nailed it but still had no idea how.
You’d think with being a manager and having worked at GCC for almost 8 years that I would be able to sell my fiancé on some books, right? Wrong. One time while waiting for me to get done with a shift, she came into the store without me noticing, looked around and picked out some stuff that looked interesting to her, bought them, read them while I wasn’t around and then came to me and talked to me about them. I’ve never been more thrown off in my life than when my fiancé came up to me to ask when the sequel to Batman White Knight comes out without knowing she read the first installment. I now know to just recommend something she likes and just give it to her with the least amount of info I can give (let’s face it a lot of spoil stuff for our loved ones when we get overly excited).
Once I started to finally get it, I tried again with Star Wars. The bargain being that I wouldn’t explain anything or mention other canon or deep cuts until after the movie or if she had a question. We got through all 3 trilogies, the two Disney movies, and every live action show out and now we’re slowly working through the Clone Wars and all I had to do was shut up. Instead of being that guy in the meme that’s all over the internet, just let your significant other enjoy things and figure out what they enjoy, and if they don’t like it, oh well! Just try another fandom or try to get into something she likes and if you’re already doing that, then good job and keep it up! And in case anyone is wondering yes, I LOVE the Bachelor now, it’s just pro wrestling but for a different audience with less spandex, and surprisingly the same amount of drama.
