Messed up by using romance enhancement mods while my girlfriend was around

This went down a few days ago and I’m still processing how crazy it got.

I’ve been doing another run through Cyberpunk with a bunch of mods to make the experience better. Not talking about weird sexual stuff, but actual quality of life improvements that make the world feel more real. Better character development, improved story pacing, that kind of thing.

One mod I installed expands the romance storyline with Panam by adding extra text messages. It’s not perverted content, just additional dialogue that makes the relationship feel more developed beyond the basic game story. The writing is decent and matches the game’s style.

So my girlfriend stays over and I get up early to play. She wakes up and apparently sees me reading through some of the mod messages from Panam. Then she asks me who Panam is.

I tell her it’s just a game character. She gets suspicious and wants to know why this character is sending me messages.

I try explaining about the mod and how it adds story content. Even showed her the mod page to prove it’s just extra game dialogue. That somehow made everything worse. Now she’s saying I’m emotionally invested in fake women instead of focusing on our real relationship.

She starts looking up Panam online and finds all the fan art and suggestive content people make. Shows me her phone with inappropriate images and claims I’m playing adult games behind her back.

At this point I realize she’s actually jealous of a video game character. Not joking around, but genuinely upset like I was talking to another woman. I keep explaining it’s programmed text from a modification, but she says I’m being dishonest.

She even went through the in-game messages and accused me of using some app to chat with real people. Nearly lost it when she saw one of the more flirty texts the mod added.

Now she thinks I’m weird for wanting detailed stories in my games, and I’m supposed to apologize because a fictional character sent encouraging messages after completing missions.

I’m starting to think this level of insecurity over RPG content might be a red flag for our relationship.

At least she didn’t see my Baldur’s Gate save file, that would have been even more awkward to explain.

Panam romance mods are actually pretty tame compared to what’s out there. Your girlfriend treating game characters like real people is definitely concerning though.

Man that’s brutal. I’ve been using story expansion mods for years and they’re just part of making RPGs more immersive. The fact she went full detective mode looking up fan art and everything shows she really doesn’t understand what modding is about. Definitely sounds like a bigger trust issue than just gaming.

That’s a wild situation. I get why romance mods can look weird from the outside but man, she really went down a rabbit hole with this one. The fact that she thought you were chatting with real people through the game is pretty telling about how little she understands gaming. Might want to have a bigger conversation about boundaries and trust because getting jealous over modded NPCs is honestly pretty concerning.

Yikes, that’s rough. Romance mods are pretty normal in RPGs but explaining that to someone who doesn’t game is basically impossible. Sounds like she doesn’t really get how story mods work.

Romance mods in single player games are just extended storytelling but good luck explaining that to someone who thinks NPCs are real people. This whole thing sounds exhausting to deal with.

Wait until she discovers Mass Effect romance options exist

BG3 romance mods would definitely break someone’s brain if they can’t handle Cyberpunk ones