How to Play the Dating Game

The first game I ever owned was “Candy Land”, followed closely by “Shoots and Ladders.”  My favorite game of all is “Monopoly”, mostly because I rule at it.  We all like to play games.  As children, we play hopscotch and jump rope and hide and seek.  We become teenagers and discover the fascinating world of electronic gaming, and when we get a little older we find bar games like pool and darts.

But the most important game we play in life requires no board, no dice, no game controllers.  It is, in fact, a game that seems to have no set rules (or maybe the rules change all the time) but that everyone plays.  It is the game that you’ve heard people talk about so much – the one that you, apparently, must play in order to get yourself a mate.

No matter how you approach this, you’re going to have to play at some point.  Why?  Who knows.  Somewhere along the line, we humans have learned to complicate the dating process so much that now no one can find that special someone.  Animals in the wild meet up, pair up, mate up, and raise offspring.   People act coy, throw out lines, hide things, tell lies, skulk around, and try at every single moment to stay totally in control of what’s going on in any relationship.  Whether we admit it or not, whether we realize it or not, what we all really want is control. 

When you’re in control, you get to call the shots.  Everyone wants to be the one calling the shots. As if this will somehow protect us from the eventual heartbreak and pain and binge-eating that could easily result from a bad break-up, everyone thinks that if they are in control they will be somehow safer.  And since everyone has some issue or baggage that they’re inevitably carrying around, and no one has been able to get through today’s dating world while remaining game-free, we are all now players in this great, grand scheme that is the game.

Fuzzy Checker Board

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