When you grow up in a world of rules it’s often difficult to suddenly have to play a game blind, without knowledge of what is expected and what is not allowed.
To grow up with things like “no running in school,” which was set in stone and accepted as just what happens, or “go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars,” and then suddenly having to live your life without anyone handing you a rule book becomes a bit overwhelming.
And when it comes to dating, it seems like there isn’t a rule book, just the suggested rules of too many people and all too often the rules conflict against themselves.
The rule that I, personally, find to be the worst is “don’t have sex on the first date,” which I can understand well enough. But if it happens, who’s to say that it will destroy whatever relationship could have been there?
Who decided that having sex on the first date is like murdering the hope of having any sort of romantic involvement? Maybe going at it on the first date isn’t the best plan, but if one sets out without that in mind and it happens maybe it’s just as meant to be as the relationship that could have been.
Maybe it’s not so much that sex obliterates any prospect of a relationship but that our society has developed the attitude that all many people want is just that one act of sex and then they’ll walk away; withholding is the only way to make them stay around long enough to fall for us in romantic ways, beyond just the sexual.
The other rule that people seem to believe in a great deal is “play it cool no matter what.” When you’re after hot and steamy, why do we have to play it cool? And when it comes to getting into a relationship, maybe playing it cool isn’t such a great idea since a lot of people can’t tell the difference between coming off cool and seeming ice cold.
If you’re playing it cool when you really like someone, aren’t you just closeting your feelings?
Hiding how excited you are over the prospect over having sex just to follow some rule that some “dating guru” set out for you, someone who is probably no more qualified to give dating
advice than a talk show host is to practice psychology.
There are hundreds, maybe thousands more rules that everyone everywhere is constantly hearing, being told about or making them up themselves. While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, it’s one thing to make policies for yourself to live by, but it’s a completely different thing to be calling them “rules,” and telling people they should follow them.
Maybe the best rule of all, perhaps the only one that I think can and should be followed, is to allow everything to happen as it happens. Going with the flow is probably better than having to remember your 798 different rules of what is and is not appropriate for the first date, followed by the second date that has its own set of a few hundred rules.
Just allowing everything to happen is infinitely better than worrying about each and every action.
