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When it comes to love, everyone agrees that “playing games” is bad. Yet we all play them.
Let’s say Kevin just started dating Karen. Kevin has to call frequently enough early in the relationship to communicate interest, but not so much that he communicates “stalker with boundary issues.” What’s the right number of times for Kevin to call?
There’s no set number. One person’s “too frequent” is another’s “thoughtless neglect.” It all depends on how often Karen believes she should hear from a guy that’s interested in her. But the rules of the game state that she can’t tell Kevin. That would be cheating. Kevin has to guess.
Once things are clicking, Karen has to be careful not to say those three magic little words too soon. She’s got to stifle that first impulse to say “I love you,” however sincerely felt, however mutual she suspects (or hopes) the sentiment might be, until an appropriate amount of time has passed. Because although Kevin, like everyone else, wants to feel absolutely irresistible, he doesn’t want to feel rushed into making a commitment. So what’s the right time for Karen to say “I love you”? Sorry, that information is classified. She has to guess.
Depending on where Kevin and Karen fall on the no sex before marriage/three sex acts before the salad course continuum, they could well be having sex before saying “I love you” becomes an issue. But whenever they decide to become intimate--on their first date or on their second honeymoon--they both have to be able to decode and send elaborate, unspoken, Kabuki-esque signals about when, where and how to initiate sex. Fail to accurately decode and send the right signals and they risk rejection at best, arrest and prosecution at worst.
Oh, and just to make matters a little more complicated: People’s sexual signals are like snowflakes--no two are alike. So whatever Kevin or Karen think they learned about sexual signals from previous partners does not necessarily apply.
We all play these games. Yet if you spend a few hours--preferably billable ones--surfing through Internet personals or reading a day's worth of my e-mail at "Savage Love," my syndicated sex-advice column, you’ll find at least two condemnations of “game-playing” for every endorsement of long walks on the beach.
But game playing, like hypocrisy, is one of those things people only think they’re against. In reality, we all do it. And our success in love and romance largely depends on how well we do it.
What’s more, we look for skillful game playing in our potential partners the same way employers look for college degrees in prospective hires. Most people don’t wind up working in a field related to their major. Unless you work in a highly technical field, employers typically don’t care if you took “Underwater Ceramics” or “Queer Theory and its Relevance to the Hedge Fund Market” or how good your grades actually were or how many months you spent in a nearly catatonic state (provided you didn’t plaster evidence of your youthful experiments with drugs and alcohol all over Facebook). They just want to see your degree.
Why? Because it proves that you can play the game. It’s not so much what you studied in college that matters to potential employers, but that you got through it. A degree proves you can navigate a complex bureaucracy, knuckle under and get your work done (or fake it well enough) and achieve distant, even abstract, goals. What you earned your degree in isn’t as important as what it signifies: You successfully negotiated the college experience, which requires emotional resilience (college is hard!) and intellectual capabilities (college is hard!).
Relationships are hard too, but the ability to successfully negotiate one requires a different set of emotional and intellectual skills. And how do we demonstrate those skills? By playing games. Just as your college degree tells potential employers what they need to know, your ability to successfully play romantic games tells your potential mates what they need to know.
Assessed on their individual merits, the games we play when we’re dating can seem about as silly as Underwater Ceramics or Queer Theory. But they’re important nonetheless. As proof of just how important, consider how many times you’ve listened to a loving, long-term couple fondly recall the games they played during their courtship. The hoops they forced each other to jump through, the mistakes they made, the care with which they weighed and assessed each romantic gesture.
The ability to successfully play the game--to call just enough to communicate interest, not desperation; to hold strong emotions in check until both partners are ready to acknowledge them; to read someone’s body language and accurately assess their feelings, needs and desires--demonstrates the kind of emotional skill and dexterity that a romantic relationship requires to thrive. And not just at the outset, but over the long haul.
When someone successfully plays romantic games at the beginning of a relationship, observing peculiar social customs and demonstrating due consideration for all the niceties and doing it effortlessly and imperceptibly, he has demonstrated the skills he needs to successfully maintain a long-term relationship. Because what do we ask of our mates? We want them to read our moods, anticipate our needs, be there for us without crowding us and somehow know when to sublimate their desires and when to make demands.
Playing games shows that you can read another person. But just as importantly, playing games convinces that other person that you are considerate enough to make the effort to read them in the first place. This is a trait that we all want in our mates. We want to feel important, and we want to be taken care of. And successful game-playing early on proves that you regard the other person as desirable enough to want to win the game.
They are, after all, the prize.
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