Guest Post – Love is a (Nintendo) game

Christine Compas

There are few things that I am 100 percent sure about in life. Belly buttons, for instance: If you poke them too hard, they will pop open leaving a gaping hole for your insides to spill out of. I strongly believe this is true. However, science and my mom have been trying to convince me otherwise my whole life. I’m still not convinced, and to be sure this never happens to me, I do not poke my belly button under any circumstances.

One thing that I am 100 percent, without a doubt sure of is that dating sucks. No matter what stage of life you are at, embarking on a journey into the dating world is a time bomb of disaster waiting to blow up your heart. To those of you married fuckers who would like to disagree with me, saying that your whimsical romantic tale is the best thing that ever happened to your life – well, that’s because you’re married! You aren’t dating anymore! You have forgotten about the endless torment that you have traded in for your wedded bliss – so eff off.

Dating is just like playing Super Mario Bros. First you have to defeat all the other mushroom men trying to date your princess, collect enough coins to keep buying this bitch dinner and hope your flag is high enough to score some points when she jumps on your pole. If you are skilled enough to make it a few dates in, then you have to eventually face off with this person’s explosive dragon of a past. If you survive the heat from prior flames and all the mindless game playing and dragon slaying hasn’t fazed you out, you will eventually get to the prize room where you will soon realize that this bitch is crazy and sadly, your princess is in another castle. So you go through the whole routine, over and over again, until FINALLY you find your real princess and win the game.

Society has even come up with its own cheat codes for the dating game. Online dating? Cheat code. Texting? Cheat code. Sexting? … weird. Alcohol? CHEAT CODE!

So in an effort to educate myself (and others) on how to better tackle this game of dating and pinpoint where the situation is breaking down, I did a little research. First I looked up the definition of dating.

Wikipedia’s definition of dating is as follows:

“Dating is a form of courtship consisting of social activities done by two people with the aim of each assessing the other’s suitability as a partner in an intimate relationship or as a spouse. While the term has several meanings, it usually refers to the act of meeting and engaging in some mutually agreed upon social activity in public, together, as a couple.”

Problem numero uno has been located. The statement “in public, together, as a couple” eliminates half of the dates that I have found myself on, sadly. I feel as though there has been a serious breakdown in the dating process that has caused guys to not understand what a date consists of. Guys find it all too convenient to ask a girl on a date by a simple text asking “Want to hang out?”, to which the inevitable response is “Sure!” because yes, I would like to hang out with you. However, when my response is quickly followed up with “What do you want to do?”, well fuck, I do not want to plan the date you just asked me out on … that’s for sure.

Somewhere in my search to understand the dating conundrum, I read the book He’s Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt. This book really works for men or women, and it offers many great rules of thumb for dating. Some of my favorite reminders include:

• If he’s not calling you, you aren’t on his mind. If he tells you he is going to call and he doesn’t follow through … He’s just not that into you.
• If he’s busy ALL the time … He just not that into you.
• If he isn’t asking you out it’s not because he’s not capable of doing so it’s because … He’s juuuuust not that into you.
• Any person that makes you wonder about how they feel about you … is just not that into you!

If we could all just stop fooling ourselves into believing what we want to believe and pay attention to what other people’s actions are really telling us, we could weed out most of the game playing right there.

My last bit of dating game advice comes from my own research. Have no fear. Take caution when necessary! But don’t be afraid to open up and be yourself. If they don’t like you, game over, it wasn’t meant to be, moving on!

By no means am I a dating expert … in any sense. However, like I said, one thing I do know for certain is that the dating game sucks. While I haven’t found a cheat code that leads straight to eternal happiness, I hope the things that I have shared will help save you from a few unnecessary heartbreaks and maybe help you weed out some of the frogs in the search for your prince!