The General Rules #2 - The Necessity of "The Game" (Part 2)

A few quotes, you've heard all of these at some point. "How come nice guys never win?" or "How come the pretty girls are always with the cocky jerk in the center of the room?" or "I just want a guy who is sweet!" (As she gravitates toward the next guy who will treat her like dirt and break her heart.) or "Why isn't he/she calling me back?"

At this point in this extended blog post we should all know the answer. Still, it may be helpful to try and give a short definition of what exactly "The Game" is. And what it is not. The watered-down and painfully simple definition is: the set of techniques or actions that a pursuer or the pursued takes to demonstrate a high social value, thus increasing desirability. The more complicated and cruelly frank version of the definition probably goes something like this: the things that boys and girls do to weed out the unfit objects of our affection. In very short terms, it is modern courtship. (This is why this is a three part post. Trying to define this is like trying to grab a slimy toad.)

"The Game" is not intended to be mean-spirited and cruel. (Though sometimes it may be used, wrongfully, to do so.) "The Game" is not your recent boy/girlfriend cheating on you. "The Game" is not meant to consistently break your heart. (Though sometimes it may feel that way.) "The Game" is not easy.

"The Game" functions in different capacities. Sometimes it may be used gain the object of our desires. Othertimes it can be used to tell someone "no" in a subtle manner. And finally, it is not the only path to everlasting love.

To focus in on a narrow complaint about the game, why DO girls end up with guys who consistently treat them like crap? Certainly no girl wants this. They aren't attracted to jerk guys. They are attracted to some of the qualities that most jerk guys have in common. For example, confidence. The love of your life may sit behind you in class for an entire semester, but if he has no confidence to ask you out, there will never be an opportunity. Girls like confidence. Most nice guys aren't as confident as cocky jerks. Thus, most nice guys won't get as many girls. This is one example out of many factors.

So for guys, "The Game" is focused around building these qualities that will help attract girls. For girls, "The Game" consists mostly of playfully denying the men that pursue them. This process is very circular and emotionally exhausting. A "good game" consists of not knowing what is going on. That confusion, those moments of mini-heartbreak, the late nights, the regrets, the coulda-shoulda-woulda thought process, the frustration, all make success so much sweeter, if it ever comes.

Some give up. They experience these mini-heartbreaks and they become so disheartened that they stop trying altogether. They relinquish all hope because it is easier that way. To quote Professor Young again, "...we are afraid our hopes will be disappointed. We don't want to be fooled, and so we create a life or a way of viewing life that is 'fool-proof' --so limited, so empty of vision, that there is nothing to be disillusioned about. Sometimes we even choose to offend those who could be our friends [or lovers], or we choose to demonstrate our own incompetence or irresponsibility, or we choose to imagine a life of intractable pressures, conflicts, and miseries, because we would rather lose everything we can and choose the worst we can imagine than hope for anything and have our hopes disappointed. ...I have always seemed able to make my life miserable and then say to myself, 'At least this is real.' And for some reason it seems that we find it easier to create what we fear and be done with it than to wait in awful suspense until what we fear comes of its own volition."

I think to some degree all of us share the same fear: that one day we will wake up and our partner will not love us anymore. Or that we will wake one morning and inexplicably not love our partner. This fear is deep insecurity manifesting itself. We all share this fear because, at its heart, is the simple fact that we can NEVER be exactly sure how someone feels, about us, about anything. I believe that even when we are in love, we are afraid. We are afraid that someone may be motivated by some strange sense of duty, rather than undying love. That someone may in fact simply feel obligated to love us back. That someone simply is saying one thing, and thinking another. This happens because on the battlefield of love, the lines of communication are badly flawed. We clutch the receiver with white knuckles and hope to receive some validation of feelings, and all we get are words. Words that are so fickle and fragile in their ability to communicate true meaning. Words that leave us wanting. And often do more harm than good.

I will admit, that the higher the level of dedication, the stronger the signal gets on the receiver. With marriage being the ultimate affirming step that both parties understand and want the same thing, and most importantly feel the same way. But even then, the only way to be really, beyond a shadow-of-a-doubt sure is probably through some metaphysical process, two spirits communing without spoken words. It may be good that we distrust words so much, because words can be used nefariously.

The point of all of this is to more fully explain why "The Game" exists. It exists because in those fragile first moments of contact and communication, in order to form a stronger bond later, we need to know what the other side feels like. We need to feel what the other person's rejection of us feels like. We need to experience their (seeming) apathy towards us, we need to feel what it is like to have that person break us. And then when those three feeble words, "I love you" are exchanged, they will have some small meaning behind them. Some honesty. If "The Game" was played, we will know more strongly that they mean what they say, because we know what the opposite feels like, and it isn't this.

[Keep following, I know it was a lot of hard reading. It's like homework.]