Confession: I read The Rules.

I read "The Rules," once.

This would be back during the last time that I was single, and if my memory serves rightly, my second-first date with my most recent ex was right around the corner (already planned, hadn't happened yet).  I was talking about this with a lady friend who was also single, and she asked with ferocious concern if I'd read The Rules because apparently the parameters of the date- which involved out of town travel and the date having acquired a hotel room in town due to his living in another state- set off great big trumpets of warning according to The Rules.  At that point I had heard of, but not paid attention to them, and the conversation concluded with her loaning me her Kindle copy so that I could read them that very night before I managed to completely destroy my virtue and make some huge misstep that would eventually lead to my ending my days as a sad dowager cat lady.

Can't have that, now, can we?  I read the damn book and thought it was damn fine Sorority Girl Satire, except it wasn't.  Advice straight out of Stepford (or Mayberry, maybe) that included a Rule about not discussing The Rules with your therapist, I left the book mighty sad that men get "The first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club" and women get "Always End the Date First."  I also completely ignored the book and things went just fine.

Unlike The Rules, these rules actually make sense.

My friend Cliff posted this article to Facebook earlier this week, and I finally think I GET why The Rules and other such "rules for girls" infuriate me so much.  I won't paraphrase the whole thing - go read the damn article, it's worth it.  I will say that the lightbulb moment for me in the article came with this paragraph:

"When we send the message that resistance is a form of flirtation—a strategic move in the game of love—we romanticize the imposition of one human being’s will on another. The building block of violence. By looking at love and sex as a game, a chase, a fight, we give violence our social permission, cultivate a rape culture, and throw consent out with the bathwater. If, as Rhiannon says “I don’t know means No. I’m drunk means No. Maybe means No. I don’t seem into it means No,” then that should apply to every aspect of the dating experience. Hard To Get and No Means No don’t—can’t—exist together. One lives in a world of conquest and the other of communication. And if you say No when you mean Yes or infer Yes from another person’s No, I’d say you’re not really communicating." - Why I Never Play Hard to Get by Rachael Kay Albers

Admittedly, the "do you like pina coladas?" game is hard.  Finding people that I click with in a way that makes me want to spend quality time with them, doubly so- though some may doubt my formula, I'm actually really picky about the characteristics I require in anybody hoping to hold my attention for more than 12 minutes- friend or lover, really.  So if I happen to encounter somebody I want to date- I'm going to encourage that in a way that I hope conveys genuine interest. It may be awkward, but that's just part of my charm, not part of a "maybe if I'm not busy doing something more interesting" game.  And the awesome part of that? If I'm not interested, I know I'm not sending the same exact signals I send to the ones I DO like... but feel compelled to lead on.  

It'd just be nice if the rest of the broads would quit scrambling the signals.

(every single bit of self control I had went into NOT posting a YouTube video of Antoine Dodson as the conclusion to this post.)