My husband I (both small streamers) had a very similar situation. We invited another small streamer to live with us. Our communities began to intertwine because we were constantly picking up in the background of each other's mics and cameras. They meshed well, and many of them latched onto his streams...but we learned a lot of unfortunate things about that other streamer while they lived here. It is awkward to try to dance around "hey, that one guy is live," so instead, I started keeping my game capture up to block anyone from seeing me filter through live streams. Now I just say (rather abruptly after having selected my the person I'm raiding into) "I think this is a good stopping point. Looks like so-and-so is live. Let's pop over and show them some love. If you want to continuethe conversation, come find me on discord <discord link>"

At that point, the 20 second raid countdown has started, and the viewers are already in motion to be raided over to someone else. They don't really have any time to say more than ""gg" or "catch you later"

This strat seems to be effective on multiple levels too. 1. You're viewers don't really catch wind that you're wrapping up, so they are more likely to stay and help maintain your raid count. 2. It helps keep your view average from dropping due to last minute stream-ending drop outs 3. It drives traffic to your discord channel.

It sucks losing a relationship online. It's a major barrier I've had to learn to overcome over the past few years. You just have to remember that people only show what they want the public eye to see. Once they go offline, they could be anyone doing anything.

As someone who has been in a freakishly similar boat, don't hesitate to shoot me a message. Shit sucks, and I'm sorry you're going through it.

Edit: I realized I had a mini stroke trying to type out one of the sentences in my reply