State Of the Unions: Miho Walsh and Roy Prieb — State of the Unions

“I was impressed with Miho, because rather than poo-pooing the whole gaming experience when we were first dating, she dove in,” said Mr. Prieb, now 40, a founder of and partner in Saaspire, a technology consultancy in New York. “She dove in, not by creating her own character; she dove in by sitting next to me and playing with me. We both got into it, co-piloting one character around that world.”

Then they stopped, cold turkey.

“It was a bright spring day and we looked out the window and said, ‘Let’s quit,’ ” Mr. Prieb recalled.

But after hearing that the couple would be featured in a Vows article in The New York Times, the manufacturer of World of Warcraft sent them a free limited-time subscription.

“I brought back the character” — a brawny, helmeted warrior named Kwai — “and I resumed playing a little,” Mr. Prieb said.

Humorously but firmly, Ms. Walsh, 40, said, “I was not part of that revival.” And her character, a troll priestess named Kookamanga, remained idle.

She is now the executive director at the Asian Cultural Council in New York, a cultural exchange organization that awards grants to artists, scholars and professionals in the arts and humanities.

Since the wedding five years ago they moved from Ms. Walsh’s thimble-size studio apartment on the Upper East Side to a commodious prewar in Hamilton Heights, which better suits their growing family. There is their 3-year-old son, Ryden; one of her two brothers, Mickey, 33, who is living with them; and Toro, their English bulldog. The couple is expecting their second child in August.

“It was exciting going from the studio Roy and I shared to the life we have now — very full and very fulfilled,” Ms. Walsh said.

But almost immediately upon moving into their new home they were surprised to find at least one major blind spot in their relationship, despite having lived together for a year and a half before marrying.

Mr. Prieb was caught off guard by the fact that he and his wife had different philosophies about what he calls “stuff.”

“Miho has a lot of stuff,” Mr. Prieb said. He said it hadn’t been an issue when they shared her apartment because most of her treasures (including essays from high school, a six-inch-tall nunchuck-wielding hamster doll and enough ceramic teapots and cups to keep Alice in Wonderland happy for years) were in storage. When they moved to the larger space, Mr. Prieb said, “I thought it was a great opportunity to be done with the stuff.”

Big mistake.

When Ms. Walsh asked, “Hey, where is that bag of Halloween costumes” or “that bag of gift ribbons and wrapping paper” — silly things, she acknowledges — her husband answered, “They never made it” to the new apartment, she recalled.

Tears followed.

“I’m somebody who hangs onto things, and keeps things, and part of the beauty of moving into the new space was creating a new home, but Roy thought it was a great time to purge,” Ms. Walsh said. “But the purging happened without my knowledge.”

Mr. Prieb said it was a “wake-up call.”

“It was one of those moments, you think you know somebody, but you don’t, or you don’t really appreciate the meaning of certain things to people,” he said.

They discovered something else that would become important in their marriage: scheduling one-on-one time.

When their son was about 7 weeks old (he was not a good sleeper at first, so his parents had also endured seven weeks of sleeplessness), they found a wedding present: a gift certificate to a restaurant that was about to expire. They got a baby sitter and made a Friday night reservation.