The Rules

In the dating game that has become my life, I have decided to arm myself. I have now officially become a Rules Girl. That's right - I bought the book The Rules, and have been quite enjoying it. I think deep down, I was always a Rules Girl at heart; I just wasn't following the right Rules, and not following them all the time.

Basically, The Rules is a manual for exactly how to effectively play 'hard to get'. We've all heard the term playing hard to get before, but I don't think many women really truly understand just what that involved. It's actually a lot harder than I ever imagined. Even in times when I thought I was playing hard to get, I really wasn't. And I was harbouring under the delusion that it was good to give guys small signals that you liked them so that they would pursue you. WRONG! Wow, I am so glad I have learned the errors of my ways. Now, I am going to abide by the rules.

On a practical level, this guy (we'll call him M) that I met a while ago asked me last Friday to join him at the Pearl Jam concert. That concert was that evening and he asked me via SMS. This is a guy I had only met once and had never dated. I certainly was not going to accept his last minute (eg someone else cancelled) invitation. I politely declined via SMS and told him I already had plans but thanked him for the invitation. Then I didn't hear from him all weekend... until today when I got another lame SMS asking if I were free tonight and if I was he would call me. I've decided I'm not even going to dignify that one with a response. If he wants to see if I'm free tonight (or any night), he should call me and ask me out (not that I am free tonight, obviously).

Now some people might think that it's silly of me to act this way if I like a guy and actually want to go on a date with him. My friends would probably tell me to respond to his message and, if I'm not free tonight, to suggest other nights that I am free. But that's not playing the The Rules and that's making it too easy for him. If I do that, how will I ever find out if this guy truly likes me enough to get off his @$$ and call me? I won't, and I'll always be insecure about it, and, worse still, I'll be wasting my time with someone who doesn't truly care about me enough to actually call me and ask me out on a proper date. So now we wait and see. He's either interested, or he's not (in which case, his lame last minute text messages are probably fueled by boredom and the need for an ego boost, and that's one game I wont' play).

This is so much fun!