Playing Games

Why is it that when we’re trying to find our next partner that we feel the need to play games? Are we all just grown five-year-olds pushing each other on the playground and then ignoring each other the next day?

I was speaking with “B” last night, and he’s been having a hard time. He’s hung up on a girl that won’t give him the time of day. I’ve bit my tongue long enough, and last night I shot my mouth off like a .45 at a gun range. I told him that the girl he likes is stringing him along…keeping him at arms length so she can have him whenever the “lonely bug” rears its ugly head, but otherwise totally ignore him when she has better things to do. I gave him a huge pep-talk and my best advice: ignore her. I told him that ignoring her would get her attention. If he could ignore her, she’d come crawling back to him because as humans we always want what we can’t have.

Was that the best advice? The more “B” and I talked about it, the more I realized that ignoring someone is a “game” in itself. We all know what the probable end result would be. She would come back into his life seeking the attention she craves. But is this the end result we really want? Yeah. Sure. Maybe. Well, sort of. It could possibly be what we want…right?

Let’s think about it for a moment. Say she does come back. Say that “B’s” game did draw the girl back to him. What then? He’s already done a little song and dance to entertain her. Now what? As the honeymoon phase of the relationship wears off (quicker than usual), they’ll find themselves bored. So what now? More entertaining. They’ll begin to play more games. Push the envelope, if you will. They’ll begin to fight just to keep from being board. As they fight, they begin to enjoy the entertaining feeling of being on a rollercoaster with its ups and downs. Pretty soon they’ll be so addicted to the entertainment that it’ll spiral out of control like a tornado, wrecking everything it touches. And in a blink of an eye, what started out as a game will soon become deadly, leaving their broken spirits in the wake.

That leaves one asking the question: should we do a little song and dance to draw the crowd we’re looking for? Or do we step-up to the mic on Karaoke night, choose our favorite song, and hope that someone else in the crowd likes it as much as we do?