Pink is the problem player. Pink was a tyfling warlock (can you see where this is going?) that had every cliche imaginable. She constantly interrupted me when I was trying to speak, was on her phone till combat, constantly told people their roleplay was bad, spoke down to me and claimed her other DMS were better (I was 3 years younger than her at the time). I eventually spoke to her outside the group, which resulted in her trying to murder hobo her way through the campaign. Anyway, I eventually kicked her ass out and moved the father and son duo to a better game with more positive players. I heard recently she tried to run a pathfinder campaign which went awfully, with players dropping out because of poor quality.
That's very not cool. You were a new DM and the lady seemed to just want to powergame or something, from what you're saying she didn't seem actually interested. A shame that you had to direct the duo somewhere else, but I'm glad that you're doing better than that other lady. I am also glad that did not put you off DMing, because you're really good at it.
Basically one player’s girlfriend WOULD NOT LEAVE HIM ALONE. Ever. She’d call him every five minutes of the session, demand pictures of who he was with ect ect. Eventually we invited her to the session so she’d stop. Bad move. Basically she demanded an in game relationship with her partner and tried to describe flirting between them, which made everyone uncomfortable and is the reason I don’t do romance in my games anymore. Eventually she moved away after they broke up, but it was a weird few weeks.
I myself have never personally experienced both possessive relationships or extreme preferential treatment of significant others in DnD. The latter is because usually DnD couples are cool and both understand that becoming OP isn't fun, but I have seen em get a couple more magical items than normal, but it's tolerable. The former I have experienced secondhand happening to people I know, and that's probably one of the worst types of relationships to be in. Top 5 for sure.
But I DO know is couples making people uncomfortable. Get a different room. That's not allowed.
Not gonna lie, I also am kinda adverse to romance in DnD because of a bad experience, but it's sad to see that you've metaphorically closed of your heart to it. It can be a great character-building tool. Especially if you KILL the people they grow attached to.
Essentially a player (male) was really, aggressively into one female NPC that travelled with the party for a while. She was pretty timid, but I am not currently (confidence has come easily to me because I’ve realised I’m incredibly sexy). Anyway, he asked me out. I said yes because I am a people pleaser. We lasted one date before I realised he wasn’t into me. He was into the NPC. He wanted to date the NPC I was playing. Obviously I avoided him from then on.
Dang. While I am glad that you have a great amount of self confidence, it is sad to hear that someone only liked your personality because of your character. That's no good. I think I can relate, because I've played DnD with people who didn't really know me, and I guess they sorta thought the character I was playing was a self-insert or something. Whenever we hanged out afterwards, they would see that I was not a gigachad or smart guy or furry because I was playing a dragonborn druid.