HeAd GamEs

I just saw a commercial for match.com that made me smirk a little bit. A guy introduces the girl he's dating to a friend of his (a girl) and he refers to her by her name, without prefacing it with "my girlfriend". The girlfriend tries to follow the conversation, but in the running dialog in her head, she's wondering why he didn't refer to her as his girlfriend and she starts getting worked up about it. In the end, he nonchalantly throws in a reference to her as his girlfriend and the other friend comments about how she's heard so much about her. The dialogue in the girl's head disappears and she happily kisses her boyfriend as the other girl walks off.

I don't know why that commercial made me think, but I guess it touched something in me. Something about how I've had that dialog in my head before, and how ridiculous it is, but yet it seems so important at the time. It makes me think of all the games we play sometimes, in our heads. The games in which the other person has to say the right thing at the right time, or it proves that they don't really love us or they aren't in the same place as we are in the relationship. And what's so truly stupid about it is that if the other person doesn't know that they're playing this game, they're bound to fail at some point or other.

I have really tried to learn not to do this, and I think I've gotten better. If there's one thing I've learned about J, it's that he doesn't have the magical powers of mind reading, and if I want something from him, I need to ask him and see if he's willing to give it. (He usually is.)

I see this game playing a lot in other people too. My sister complains that her boyfriend doesn't have the kinds of conversations with her that she wishes they would have, conversations she says she has with other people. She wants to have conversation that goes a little deeper than just commenting on something that has happened. She wants to talk about why. And how. And what it all means. So she waits to see if he'll bring up a conversation like this, or if he'll follow her lead when she tries to deepen the conversation.

Now I think it's possible that maybe he just isn't going to go there. It's not in his nature and if she wants this kind of conversation, she will need to find it in someone else.

But it could also be that he's just not used to talking about things like this, and sometimes he's tired and doesn't really feel like getting into a long conversation about something that's not immediately relevant to his life. Maybe it's not that he can't do it, but that he's not in the habit of doing it. So my advice her to was to tell him what she wants from him, and then see if he can meet her in conversation where she wants him to. Instead of throwing out a vague line, waiting to see if he takes the bait, and then condemning the relationship when he fails to do what she's looking for, she could alert him to the rules of the game.

Not that it's easy of course. No one likes to be told that they're boring in conversation! And I wouldn't have given her this advice if I hadn't once been told the same thing myself. Or well, not exactly the same thing, but something similar along the lines of it seeming like I wasn't interested in many things and so I wasn't bringing new ideas to the relationship, or something like that. I was pissed when I heard that. I wrote a five page letter in response, detailing all the things I was interested in and berating the person for not seeing them in me and blaming the problem on him for being too egotistical to have taken the time to look for these things in me. But... I also took it to heart a little bit and tried to open myself up a little. Instead of thinking about things internally, I tried to talk about them a little more often and more openly. Instead of being fascinated about something I came across online or wherever and then closing the window and moving on, I sent him links with my thoughts and asked what he thought.

I have no idea if it helped, or if it was overkill. I have no idea if maybe I was right and he was being egotistical and just hadn't looked hard enough. But I think that what really made the difference was that the rules of the game were out there. I knew what was wanted from me and I tried to give it. He knew that I felt he wasn't trying hard to enough to get these things from me, and so he increased his effort. In the end, it seemed like the problem disappeared somehow.

Playing games, wishing to see a certain trait or behavior in someone, and then being disappointed when you don't see it, is just plain silly. Not that I think that all problems can be resolved just by telling someone what you want from them. If the person is boring, just telling them to become more interesting isn't going to make it happen! And like in the commercial, if you want to hear your new boyfriend refer to you as his girlfriend to give you evidence that he cares, just telling him to say that you're important to him won't make it true. But it doesn't hurt to let people know what you're wondering about, what you may need to hear from them, rather than just hoping for them to somehow divine what you need to hear at whatever time you need to hear it. :)

Comments

[Johnny the Horse]

I don't think there is anyone on the planet who hasn't done what you describe to some degree. And I agree with your sentiment. I always know when I'm in that situation when the look on her face doesn't back up her assertion that "nothing is wrong". Eventually it comes out that I hadn't said the right thing at a specific moment, even though I was completely unaware that it was required. I get very righteous about it until she points out how often I do it myself.

[Fool]

Good advice, Seadragon.

[anonymouscoworker]

When I first started dating ACWF, I would only refer to her by name, never by title. My reasoning was twofold:

1) I wanted other people to refer to her by name, and not by gender specific title

2) I was still trying to figure out exactly what I wanted our relationship to be, so I didn't want to assign titles, because I thought they were childish

Needless to say, it drove ACWF crazy, and my friends kept calling her my non-girlfriend.

It all turned out well, I guess, since we're engaged. This has been the most non-traditional "courtship" process I've ever heard of, and though it may have driven her crazy, my fiance agrees that by waiting for myself to be completely ready for each step was better than assigning arbitrary titles along the way.