Dating Games Galore

My best friend of 11 years recently went through a breakup... It's an interesting thing to witness because I'm a third party (with a lot of expereince in the breakup arena), but care too much about the girl to be totally objective.

Half the time, I want to hop on a plane down to Georgia and buy ice cream and chick flicks and fix all her problems with some estrogen therapy. And the other half of the time, I want to hop on a plane down to Georgia and slap her in the face for not realizing what I already know--that she's way too good for him... And not in a she's-my-best-friend-and-I'm-biased way, but in a she's-a-10-and-he's-a-4-from-the-boondocks-of-Georgia way. She is truly, genuinely too good for the poor schmuck.

Witnessing her breakup gave me a unique perspective, though. The phone calls, which initially came at 4 a.m. started coming at more and more decent times. And with each melt-down, I could actually hear more and more conviction in her voice. It was incredible... I suppose everyone goes through all of that in the course of a breakup, but in my experience, I've always been the one in the breakup, not observing it. (Come to realize... actually all of my closest girlfriends are "relationship" people. Some have been together for almost 6 years. Woah). So it's been really cool to see it from the other side of the fence.

Today, when I called up my girl to chat, she informed me that she couldn't talk for long because she was off for a date. A date. Granted, a date with someone whom she doesn't remember meeting, but a date nonetheless. And so what if she has no clue what he looks like. He's practice for when she finally gets back out there, right? (sorry, dude)

Anyway, this lovely lady had me thinking today as I was walking through midtown during my lunch break. I just find it ironic that the guys we don't care about are the ones we're willing to text twice in a row and we don't mind if they don't care enough to call us back. Because we don't care either. So we're comfortable; there's nothing invested.

But if and when we actually fall for someone, we have to play by all the rules. We can't seem too eager, we can't call back until two days after a date (do people really follow that rule?), we can't jump right into bed but can't hold out to long, either. I wrote a column about dating games a year ago for The Huntington News marveling at how ridiculous they are. Yet it never occurred to me that only when we like someone do we ever bother to play.