I will never forget that phone call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The problem we were trying to solve wasn’t technical. It was social.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both of us had navigated mainstream dating in our twenties as people whose lives were built around gaming. That experience is exhausting in a specific way. You learn quickly how to manage the disclosure \u2014 when to mention it, how to frame it, whether to lead with it or bury it. You get used to seeing a certain look when it comes up. Gaming was a thing you explained, not something you shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What we wanted to build was the opposite of that. Not a dating site where gaming was a checkbox. A dating site where gaming was the premise. Where you didn’t lead with an apology and nobody asked you to justify the time you spend doing the thing that matters most to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the beginning, that’s what LFGdating was for: “a clean, tasteful dating site for mature gamers.”<\/em> Not for the stereotype of gamers. For the actual community \u2014 which is bigger, more diverse, and more interesting than the stereotype would suggest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To build it, I turned down a varsity boys basketball coaching job. I turned down an offer to teach a higher-level curriculum \u2014 which, for a non-tenured teacher, was not a casual decision. Pat, coordinating from Hawaii across a four-thousand-mile gap, was up at 4:45 in the morning working on this. Neither of us came from a tech background. We just kept building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The members who make it on LFGdating \u2014 who find someone, who stick around \u2014 they’re not despite being gamers. Gaming is part of what made the relationship work. The patience you develop in a soulslike carries over. The communication skills from years of coordinating in multiplayer environments carry over. The capacity for commitment that any long-term RPG player has demonstrated extensively carries over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gaming is not a liability in a relationship. With the right partner \u2014 someone who actually games, not someone who tolerates that you do \u2014 it’s a genuine asset. The research now says so explicitly. We built for this before we had the data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Introduce yourself as someone who plays video games, and you already feel a judgment coming.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That line is still on the LFGdating website. I wrote it a long time ago and I still think it’s true. The problem we were solving in 2010 hasn’t fully gone away. Gaming is mainstream now in ways it wasn’t then \u2014 but the stigma around it as a romantic identity? Still present. Still the thing we’re designed to eliminate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a large difference between sticking out as a gamer and standing out for your passion. LFGdating is supposed to make the latter possible. I think it does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People ask me sometimes what success looks like for LFGdating. The financial answer exists. Pat and I are both clear-eyed about the business side of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the actual answer \u2014 the one I have trouble describing to people who aren’t running something like this \u2014 is the cancellation notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When a paying subscriber cancels because they found someone, we get a notification. To most subscription businesses, that’s churn. That’s a number going the wrong direction. To me, it’s \u2014 honestly, I don’t have a better word for it \u2014 it’s basically every great holiday wrapped up into one email notification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first bottom line at LFGdating has always been how many people are actually meeting and communicating. The second bottom line is financial. That order matters. When a paying subscriber leaves because they found their person on LFGdating, both bottom lines did what they were supposed to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We built this because we needed it. We’ve kept building it because the community that found it needed it too. Thirteen years in, that’s still why I’m up until midnight and Pat is up at 4:45.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We spent this week writing about the research behind gaming and relationships \u2014 the data on gaming couples, the psychology of how gamers form connections, the practical question of where gamer singles should be looking. It’s all real, it’s all sourced, and I recommend reading all of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the underlying point of the whole week is the same thing that motivated the phone call from Hawaii in 2010: gamers deserve to find each other. The premise that gaming is something you disclose and manage on a dating profile \u2014 rather than something you lead with and share \u2014 was always wrong. We built LFGdating to be the correction to that premise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The research catching up to something we knew anecdotally is gratifying. The community that keeps choosing this platform over 13 years is more gratifying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stay classy, Casey Tebo co-founded LFGdating in 2010 because he needed it. 13 years later, here’s what running it taught him about gamers and love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[671,646],"tags":[674,675,673,57,61,676,672,472],"class_list":["post-2284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-founders","category-gaming-relationships","tag-building-a-dating-site","tag-casey-tebo","tag-founder-story","tag-gamer-dating-site","tag-gamer-relationships","tag-gaming-and-love","tag-lfgdating-founders","tag-why-lfgdating"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.lfgdating.com\/gamer-dating-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/featured-built-gamer-dating-site-what-i-learned.png\")
What We Were Actually Building<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What 13 Years Taught Me About Gamers and Love<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gamers Are Actually Great Partners \u2014 and Now There’s Research<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Stigma Was Always the Problem, Not the Gamers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Thing That Still Gets Me<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Why This Week’s Theme Felt Personal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nCasey and Pat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"