My Husband Woos Me on ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’

Kim Kardashian and I have one thing in common. During the pandemic, we both flew to private islands to escape the mounting pressures of our lives. Kim fled to a Tahitian paradise crowded with glamorous celebrities who swam with whales and danced the night away in metallic scraps of fabric. Whereas I was welcomed onto my weed-sprawled island—The Arrr! (intoned with a pirate’s growl, if you please)—by a trio of entrepreneurial raccoons wearing knockoff Tommy Bahama button-downs. Their tittering bureaucracy soothed me: They told me exactly where to go and what to do with myself. After the disorder of the last year of pandemic life, I relished the opportunity to start a new one—a humble and straightforward existence, somewhere far from it all.

Of course, unlike Kim, this was all happening virtually for me, through the imaginative genius of Animal Crossing, a cozy social simulation video game series developed by Nintendo and first published in 2001. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the latest iteration of the game, was released right at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, on March 20, 2020. New Horizons quickly gained popularity among seasoned gamers and neophytes alike, supplanting the online conversation around high-octane battle-oriented games like Fortnite with pressing questions born of agricultural concerns, such as, “Is a horse mackerel worth more than a crucian carp?”

Many pinpoint the astronomical success of New Horizons to its frighteningly fortuitous timing. It was said to promote a sense of simulated safety in a time when the world felt patently unsafe. There is no sickness on your private island, no grinding jobs or childcare woes to consume you. The graphics are bubbly and bright. Even the music makes you feel like your brain is gently bouncing on a series of jiggly marshmallows.

Jiggly marshmallows sounded downright erotic, after the sharp-edged months of psychic turmoil we all had to endure. For my part, I had the privileges of working remotely and the resources to hire a loving nanny. My husband conducted his meetings virtually. We stayed away from others, though there were some socially distanced picnics, airblown kisses across an expanse of lawn. The three of us made our own fun where we could.

But did we yearn? By god, we did. There was something missing in our lives—a deliciously unpredictable otherness, the delightfully mundane adventure that comes from encountering people outside of your immediate family. Of being able to conduct our lives independently, outside of our home, for at least a few hours at a time. As the pandemic endured, we all began sniping lightly at each other, then apologizing profusely. We weren’t even mad at each other; we were just furious at the circumstances around us. It turns out that even the most steadfast of relationships can feel rather oppressive in a vacuum of fear.

Our marriage was fine, but there was a flatness to it. The kisses were perfunctory. We still held hands when we took walks together and never watched an episode of The Queen’s Gambit without the other person. But we shuffled big gestures of romance to the depths of a mental filing cabinet labeled “Things We Don’t Have Time for While the World Is Ending.” Sometimes, I saw us from a distance, as a kind of still from a TV sitcom. I’d think, “Well, that’s rather sad, isn’t it?”

Our marital malaise was exacerbated by the pandemic, but some could say it’s a normal state for couples who’ve been together for a decade-plus. The clichés apply: Butterflies wither into dust; bickering ensues. And of course it isn’t terrible at all—otherwise we wouldn’t choose to remain together. But it was clear that we needed something that wasn’t a global crisis to shake us up.

Enter the racoons.

*

Though I had dabbled in gaming in the past, I hadn’t played anything for years when Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out. During a Zoom meeting—one of the more insidious products of pandemic work life—my manager confessed that she was playing the game before work. She told me, “There’s something incredibly meditative about diving for pearls in a virtual ocean, you know?” I didn’t know. But I soon would. For Christmas that year, she gifted me my own Nintendo Switch, complete with a copy of New Horizons.

During the holidays and the long stretch of unstructured days after, my family and I visited the island. My husband, daughter, and I each created our avatars and staked our tents next to each other. We set to exploring our new home and getting to know our neighbors. We chatted with non-player characters (NPCs), like Rocket, the warm pink gorilla, and Lyman, the bodybuilding koala. Compared to rabidly watching the windows for anything to break up the hours, collecting branches in a candy-colored world seemed far more engaging.

It was clear that we needed something that wasn’t a global crisis to shake us up. Enter the racoons.

Interestingly, our avatars demonstrated characteristics that we hadn’t exhibited in real life. My sweet four-year-old daughter began low-key bullying the NPCs and spreading tabloid-level rumors about Blathers, the island’s bumbling, bespectacled scientist who is also an owl. For my part, instead of whipping the island into perfect order the way my type A self might in real life, I ignored the weeds and ambled. Sometimes I just let my avatar vibe in front of the ocean, marveling at the colors of the sunset, an activity I haven’t participated in since a bygone era of personal peace—maybe in the first Age of Bennifer.

And my husband, my even-tempered, understated, community-minded life mate—well, let’s say that there is an alarming amount of Jeff Bezos inside of that man. I was convinced that he and Tom Nook (the lead racoon and island facilitator-dictator) had made some kind of secret blood pact to turn our bucolic little island into a sleek getaway for billionaires with offshore accounts.

Not only did my husband acquire a house with multiple rooms before I’d even finished unfurling the cot in my tent, he moved that house from the plot next to mine up to a big hill overlooking the water. What was I to make of this abandonment? He shrugged and said, “Prime real estate!”

That was just the start. Soon, on his luxe compound, he installed man-made lakes, bonfire-lined paths, a lighthouse, and—most befuddling—a giant cannon that released showers of confetti when you passed. Every day I visited The Arr!, I saw more evidence of his newly accumulated wealth. I worried that the lifestyle was getting to his head. What if rampant capitalism was not so much the system he’d been born into, but the one he was determined to replicate, like a happy-go-lucky Hank Rearden?

When I gently reminded him of the purpose of our leisurely island life, he said blithely, “It is what you make of it, toots.” (He did not say “toots” but may as well have.) I had nightmares of waking up one day to find him in a lounge chair, newly amped up with midlife-crisis abs, with Rocket the Gorilla feeding him grapes as he murmurs insider bell-trading tips to her. You know you’ve sunk low when your suspicions zero in on a pink gorilla wearing a soccer jersey.

It wasn’t that my husband had given me any IRL reasons to worry. But during the long hours of the pandemic, I’d begun to bore myself silly, and in turn became petrified that he felt bored by me too. And perhaps my nascent worry was but an echo of the niggling fear experienced by millions of spouses before me: What if my partner is leaving me behind?

*

Then the bodysuit arrived.

One early spring day, among clusters of cherry blossoms and swooping peacock butterflies, I walked out of my island home (now begrudgingly upgraded to a small house) to find a gift on my doorstep. It was a bedazzled Festivale outfit in neon pink, with a feathered hair clip to match. It was magnificent. As I said, my avatar is typically low-key, preferring to jog around the island in a found hot dog suit over spending time at the local haberdashery. But when I donned my Festivale jumpsuit—complete with a sassy spin to show off the outfit—I felt transformed into someone who might have attended Kim Kardashian’s real-life island getaway.

Mystified, I speculated whether this was a gift from the game gods. Tom Nook trying to bribe me into compliance? My daughter claimed ignorance. That only left Junior Jeff Bezos.

Determined not to encourage his profligacy, I ignored the gift. But the next day, there was a new brick path around my house, lined with red cosmos flowers. I kind of liked the color, to be honest. A week later, after I’d complained about not having enough iron nuggets to complete a DIY project on the island, I stumbled on a pile of them heaped by my mailbox, winking in the sunlight. Soon, there was a fully harvested potato garden in my backyard, a nod to my real-life conviction that the spud is a food group unto itself. Bafflingly, a carrot potage appeared on my doorstep. I ate it, wondering what the heck a potage was.

There were never any notes that accompanied these gifts and gestures—as in real life, the gestures meant more than the gifts, though I still wore my neon bodysuit with pride—but it was clear who they came from. Clearer, still, the intended purpose. I was being wooed by my husband on Animal Crossing. And despite my initial reluctance, it was definitely working.

*

Ours has always been a quiet romance, made more so in recent years after a child and multiple cross-country moves. We prefer experiences over things, sometimes forgoing gifts so that we can travel someplace together or save for practical purchases, like a plumber or a replacement car part. We show our care through actions, by picking up lunch when the other person is sick or fielding calls from in-laws to save our partner from the agony of scripted small talk. Our love is enveloped in satisfying, well-worn affection that seems to deepen in comfort with the years, like an old blanket. So this unexpected newness felt like a bit of fairy dust sprinkled over the deeply grooved marriage we’d nurtured for so long. Each item my husband procured in New Horizons was a peek at some inner quirkiness or extravagance he rarely indulges in real life, pragmatic as he is.

When I finally approached him about the gifts—“Did you leave me a potage?” I demanded—he feigned innocence at first. Then he said, a bit abashed, “I wanted you to know I’m always thinking of you.” I melted like the last of the winter snow. (Here, I’m gonna say that if you think my standards are too low, I’ll point you to the above note about him saving me from in-law-induced small talk, which is as selfless a gesture as I could summon in a partner.)

Of course, after his confession to being my secret admirer on the island, he ruined it all by suggesting I join him on his hilltop compound, now encapsulating three cliffs and boasting a garden network so profuse that Big Ag has begun taking note. “It could be our empire!” he declared.

This unexpected newness felt like a bit of fairy dust sprinkled over the deeply grooved marriage we’d nurtured for so long.

I refused his invitation of compound cohabitation, though I remained charmed by his offerings. (My daughter is another story. She moved her belongings up to that hilltop faster than a wink, after a hasty Princess Peach costume bribe.) My husband’s gifts trickled after a bit, not from any undue Rocket interference or waning affections, but because of something far more practical.

The vaccine had arrived in the United States. The world opened up. We hugged our friends again, twirling together in the sunshine. And the island, though now teeming with activity and new NPCs (including a heavily browed troubadour-dog that I found myself disturbingly attracted to), became an afterthought.

But I remain grateful to Animal Crossing: New Horizons for what it brought to my marriage, no matter how temporarily. The game allowed us to be together, yet apart. In contrast to the ways we tripped over one another in our real home, the island gave us space to appreciate each other at a distance. To get to know the parts of ourselves that we may not have otherwise revealed. Each day, we found Easter Eggs in the game—not just the ones left behind by the designers, but ones we left behind for each other.

In any relationship that has stood the test of time, there are bound to be peaks and valleys. Or, more commonly, plateaus that can seem everlasting. Sometimes, an unexpected change of venue—virtual or otherwise—can breathe fresh life into a slumbering love.

*

Recently, after months of abandoning The Arr!, I logged back in on one sleepy weekend morning. There were cockroaches scurrying around my house. The weeds were at an all-time high. The NPCs lobbed some very pointed comments my way: “Where have you been? You should have at least given us a heads-up, dear!” Listen, if I wanted to endure that sort of passive-aggressive scolding, I would have stayed put in the Midwest.

After some aimless wandering, I decided to visit my husband’s compound, stopping along the way to shake some peaches from a tree. Interestingly, nothing had changed around his sun-dappled multistory manor. The confetti cannon was still there. The gardens were filled with fruits—ripe, magically unspoiled, and unharvested. It shouldn’t have affected me so much, I know, but I felt genuinely morose to see that he’d abandoned his plot of land, the way I’d abandoned mine.

Animal Crossing Husband had disappeared—as he should have—into Real-Life Husband, who walked our daughter to school and cooked sweet potato chili for dinner and gamely read every book I asked him to, so we could discuss it together afterward. I love Real-Life Husband dearly. But I couldn’t deny missing my virtual husband too.

Quietly, I set to pulling the weeds around his compound. I cleared about a hundred bundles out. I watered his plants, even though they don’t really require watering in Animal Crossing to grow. After a few minutes, I caught a horse mackerel and made him an aji fry. I even contemplated purchasing a personal suntanning machine that reminded me of him. I suppose I was wooing him a little now.

Truthfully, he probably won’t log on for another few months, thereby rendering most of my gestures unseen. Who knows what weeds will spring up by then? Maybe Rocket will eat the aji fry and crow over her new status as island kingpin. Maybe The Arr! will get overtaken by a band of potato-loving pirates.

With one last look at the rising sun, the sparkling blue waves, and the gently swaying coconut trees, I left the island. Shut off the console, if not for good then for a good while. This departure felt like an ending, deliberate this time, rather than circumstantial, as my last months of absence were. I’m still melancholy about it, but the truth is, maybe I already got everything I needed from our island escape.

That day, when I made my way back upstairs to my real life, my husband was in front of the stove. He was making pancakes while my daughter colored at the table. When he turned to smile at me, indicating the French press he’d just set to brewing, I saw a few versions of him overlaid onto the person I know most intimately, the man who has found a way to romance me again and again, sometimes in the most unexpected ways. And it turns out, a pancake isn’t at all the same as a potage. It’s infinitely better.

• 0