Scarleteen

So I hear a lot of my girlfriends talk about how they are interested in their respective guys but they had to wait the requisite 3 days or so before contacting them so they didn’t come off as to interested or something.That you respond to one of every 3 ways he communicates. They also said something about how if the guy didn’t contact them after so many days that he wasn’t a keeper. I feel so confused because if i was interested in a guy i feel like i would want to let them know by texting them. I don’t understand these waiting periods. I mean I also get not wanting to come off as to clingy or something but if I’m interested whats wrong with letting him know. I also hear these cute relationship stories about people that threw away all the dating rules and it worked out great- but there are probably lots of situations where that turned someone off because they didn’t get how to play the relationship game. can you provide some clarity in all of this dating do’s and don’ts madness?

Hi CButcher95,

I can. The short answer is: there are no rules of dating (other than if the other person is not interested, do not keep pushing them). People are hugely variable in terms of what they look for and respond to in another person, so what works with one person may deter another.

There are things that generally help with dating. Being friendly, being direct about your looking for (friendship, casual dating, serious partner), communicating, all help you meet cool people and stay connected to them. Things like the "how many days before you can call/see/whatever" are arbitrary, and are often likely to lead to misunderstandings between people. Does that help at all?

I'd add that the fact that YOU clearly don't want to pursue intimate relationships as if they were a game is a good thing, IMO. It makes it a lot less likely you'll wind up in things that really are and feel more like gaming than real connection with other people.

I'm sorry to hear your friends feel they have to employ strategies like that, but I'd suggest you don't and stick to your instincts here telling you that's not the way you want to go. There have been countless bestsellers over the years selling strategies for dating, and people are so hungry for them, they sell like crazy. But year after year, decade after decade, none of them that claim to be the key to making something very individual and complex - human interpersonal relationships - ever are, as clearly evidenced by whatever given book or strategy of the moment never lasting much longer than a moment.

The only thing that really seems to work is just people being real with and respectful of one another in the ways that work with who we each are as individuals, and accepting that there is no magic formula to get what we want with others besides just being honest about what we want and seeing what happens. Which seems to be exactly what your instincts are telling you to do.

Thanks this definitely does help. I feel like it more reaffirms what I already thought that I knew. Before I thought that it was important to just go off of the connection with the person and be real- but I got confused after hearing about some of the games my friends thought we( as women) were required to play in order to pursue a relationship. I’m happy to hear that that doesn’t have to be the right answer and that there are other ways to go about forming a relationship with someone else.

Glad it helped I do think there are tons of cultural ideas about the rules (indeed there is a whole book titles "the rules") of dating, but, in my experience anyway, the relationships I've been in and the relationships of the people I know have followed all kinds of different paths. Which I find reassuring, in some way. Like, because there's no one set of rules, there's not a way to somehow fail at the game. I'd be curious to see what other people's run -ins with the rules had been.