Relationship Games

Tagged as: Life, Relationships, Seen-Around Jul 23

An easy way to differentiate between people that are young and old are how they deal with relationships. Even more important than their years (after all age is just a number) is the maturity with which they handle things.

So what do people do? They play games. What are games? They are things like:

• Girls saying no when they actually mean yes


Courtesy of Flickr user *Karla*

• Guys not wanting to express how they actually feel because it’s not “manly”
• Similarly guys pretending to be completely uninterested
• Girls playing hard to get (when they actually do want the pursuer to “catch” them)
• Both reading into all kinds of actions, lack of actions, subtle tones, sly looks, the way they laugh when you’re around, and all manner of intricacies that I do not have knowledge of
• A girl leading a guy (or vice versa) to think that a relationship might happen at some future time

When we play these games, it’s all smoke and mirrors. And if the goal of relationships is marriage, then how is that helpful in accomplishing that goal? It’s not.

Guys need to ask the girl out, straight up. (I had my fun being sarcastic about it On Asking A Girl Out by saying what you should not be doing.) But you need to make it crystal clear to her what you want and what you’re doing. Otherwise you’re just beating around the bush and wasting everyone’s time.

Girls need to act purposefully. You want him? Go with it if he asks you out. You don’t? Tell him the truth, brutal as it might be. Don’t sugarcoat things because that helps nobody.

These things don’t just apply to the chase, do they? I’m not even really sure why they would apply more specifically to guy/girl relationships. All I know is that I see it there more often. However, these thoughts and their ramifications could be generalized to cover any type of relationship with anyone.

The Majority Will Discriminate

Tagged as: Life, Relationships, Seen-Around Jul 10

Discrimination isn’t great. That much is obvious to most people.

Isn’t it strange, then, that it seems like most people will indeed discriminate against others if they are in the majority? That is, people that might be discriminated against for whatever reason in one location will discriminate others when they’re somewhere else.

What is within man that we do such things? Is it egocentricity? Original sin?

Awkwardness

Tagged as: Life, Relationships Jun 25

In a world that advances in technology, conveniences, and all sorts of other benefits, it is comforting to know that some things do not change. No matter where we go, no matter how high we fly, awkwardness will never leave us! Oh hooray!

More than that, it seems like things are getting worse. What with the age of the computer upon us, our social interactions are changing rather dramatically pretty quickly. Children, instead of playing with the other neighborhood kids, will play games online with strangers they’ve never actually met. And while I am not opposed to playing games (I’ve played a game or two myself), you must admit that it is changing things up. Instead of being active, we’re watching more television. The list goes on and on.

Even beyond childhood, we are maintaining our relationships through this newfangled phenomenon called the Internet. On websites for all sorts of topics and aims, we are interacting with people in a whole new way. We consider people that we’ve never met in real life our friends. We spend countless hours writing on blogs (kind of like this one!). You get the point. I don’t think that these things are bad in and of themselves, they are bringing our society to a place where social skills are declining.

On a related but slightly different note, is it just me or has the word awkward encroached everyday conversation over the past few years? And somehow, I don’t think that helps fight against the awkwardness. While it does seem amusing at times, I’ve grown to dislike it quite wholeheartedly. Perhaps it’s because any amusement is always coming at someone’s expense. Someone who usually cannot afford to be laughed at. Or maybe it’s because I’d much prefer if everyone were comfortable instead. Whatever the reason, awkwardness is no good.

Or am I the only one?

Difference Between Childish And Child-Like

Tagged as: Life, Relationships Jun 18

I, for one, am very amused by children. Of course, I’m also amused by a lot of other things. So I guess simply because I’m amused by something doesn’t make it noteworthy. And yet here I go writing about what I’m amused by.

Child-Like

With children, I think that I can break down my amusement to the fact that they are new to the world. They haven’t lived in society for the years and years that adults have. (Of course, that relates to this comment on a previous post.) So for lack of all of those years of social influence, they are new to the world. They aren’t jaded because everything is fresh. The ocean is huge, the mountains so tall, and everything is worthy of a question. And in addition to that, they are much more free about doing and saying things. That is, they aren’t inhibited because they don’t even know that they should be inhibited. So they’ll run and have fun, pick their nose when they feel a booger, and say what they think about people. Even when it’s inappropriate.

While I’m amused by all of this, it’s also likely because I don’t have to deal with my own children. Because…I don’t have any. Yet. Haha but really I’m positive that it can get old to parents when their kid(s) are acting up endlessly. Oh boy I can’t even imagine!

Childish

And while I enjoy this child-like charm, (as the title suggests) I don’t actually like it when people are acting childish. What’s the difference? Well in my terms, childish usually applies to those traits of children that are very undesirable. I think of things like throwing temper tantrums, being self-centered, not knowing when to be serious, and other such pleasant attributes. And while children obviously do this, I think that I’m even more turned off when I see it in people that should know better: adults.

In them, I find it to be such a turn-off. And I’m not just talking about in girls. When I meet a guy that acts childish, I’m almost immediately turned off to ever wanting to be friends with him. Childishness just shows (to me) a lack of maturity that is more and more exaggerated the more I’d expect them to be mature. They say that with age comes wisdom, but that, unfortunately, isn’t true for everyone.

So it all comes down to this: I want to continually be child-like and grow to never be childish!

Pleasantly Surprised > Horribly Disappointed

Tagged as: Life, Software May 22

Expectations. We have them about all kinds of things. Sometimes we base them on our experiences, but more often we seem to base them on our hopes and dreams. We can have them about things like birthdays, get-togethers, and other events. In our mind’s eye we see people being caring and loving, friendly and jolly. It’s not always so, is it?

But besides that, we can even have expectations about much more concrete matters. When we sit in the chair, we have that dreamy expectation that the chair will hold up our weight. If that expectation isn’t met, we sure aren’t too happy! And so it goes moment by moment with all sorts of things that we encounter.

More recently I’ve noticed how much people do this with things that they don’t understand. Or rather, I’ve noticed how this comes into play when people are dealing with those things that most of us do not fully understand. Things like televisions, computer programs, and automobiles will all sorely disappoint us when we expect them to work and they do not. But when we don’t know what to expect, and things work how happy are we?

When we try out a shortcut key and find that some programmer has made sure that shortcut key works aren’t we pleasantly surprised? Or when we go to a website, make a guess at what to do, aren’t we glad for whoever made it work just so?

I emphasize the computer software, but it’s obviously more.