This week, I want to discuss a particularly frustrating, fickle foible of the Dating Players' Game. It's a strategy which I have entitled the 'I don't want you, but I continue to randomly text you, just to keep you dangling, because I am a... Dicktard.'
I'm sure you are familiar. These specimen tend to have options and they know it! They also let you know it. On Facebook or out-and-about you will see such him or her, photographed in the arms of the non-you. These Players are cautious about entering into an actual relationship with actual feelings, placing all their eggs or squirmy semen in one life raft! Much better to drift and send up a flare every now and then, to see if the eggs or semen of the rejected castaway, come whooshing back for more.
It's definitely a trend I am seeing and hearing of more and more, and guess what, it is by no means gender specific, women throw out that text lasso as often as men. So what does it say? What should we do, how should we react to this?
Let's break this down. It's just a wild stab in the dark--pardon--but if someone of the opposite sex, who you may have had a dalliance with at some time or another, is contacting you, it is generally not because they are concerned about your happiness quota, or to discuss the weather.
Textual comms. are usually resumed because Mr. or Mrs. Dicktard Dangler wants to know if you are still 'on the hook'. Do you still give a damn? I guess this is a power and control thing. It's part of their game: will they/won't they respond? Maybe he/she is lonely and misses the witty textual repartee. Maybe, but either way, this re-connection is more about them than you.
But your reaction says a lot about you. Perhaps the 'ping' and glow of one's phone revealing the name of him/her and their inane sentiment, sends you breathless with longing, delighted that, though spurned, you are not forgotten. (It is, after all, horrid to be easily forgotten.) Maybe, as tortuous as it is, you would rather be stung by remembrance, than shrivel with neglect. And if you've been more stung than little Macaulay Culkin in My Girl, then maybe re-evaluate why you are attracted to someone who persists in hurting you. You are a masochist. Seek help.
I have a dear male friend, who was kicked to the curb recently by the gal he'd been dating. She revealed she was dating someone else--TA DAH!--and that someone else was not him. Booooo. So--because he has a spine--End Scene. He was actually fine with it; he's buoyant like that and can't be kept down for long. He sulked for a few hours and then got on with things--chaps can do that compartmentalizing so well, can't they?
Well, he is going about life, setting up dates and then BAM! There it was...like kryptonite glowing green from the face of his phone:
Ms. Dicktard Dangler 6.09PM
Hey! How are you? I miss you!
Well, that's as maybe. She might very sincerely give a crap, she might honestly care as to his well-being--I'm sure that's what she would say to him if he asked; but odds are, she just misses the attention and her Texan-sized Ego wants to know that she's still got it and could get him back if she chose. But when you choose someone else, you relinquish the right to feel lonely and tell the one you jilted about it! It's not sweet, or thoughtful, it's selfish.
I'm all for remaining friends with past flames, but to fan them just for one's ego, makes you an Arse-onist. Certainly, you may be thinking, "Well, surely if you don't want to play the catch and release game, if you have been rehooked and gaffed enough to know that that shit hurts, then block their number! Simply don't respond. Ignore. Delete. Move on." But when you care, it's really hard to give up, Jay Gatsby never gave up.
I wonder how The Great Gatsby would have ended if Daisy Buchanan had had the ability to text. She would have been the prime example of a Dangler. I imagine her in her sheer, gauzy, draped world, languishing on her chaise, tapping idly on her I phone:
Jay, darling. How are you? I miss you! (She's sad for herself of course, but rather oblivious to all else.)
Daisy! Old Sport! Come away with me. Jay would reply, sucked back in, as hopeful as always.
Oh darling, I would if I could. It's just impossible! And there, reassured, she would go back to... what? Lying on a sofa, playing with her drapes, being fay and slightly pathetic.
Maybe that's harsh, maybe Daisy just annoyed me because here was someone wanting to give her the moon on a stick, someone she loved in returned, but she was too spineless to communicate that. She just kept Jay dangling... promising much and delivering nothing.
So what am I saying here? When you end things, chatty check-ins are not on? Well, poor Jay Gatsby doesn't get the chance to find out, but for the rest of us... heck, we are adults in this crazy communicating circus. I think it would be pretty sad if former flames did not communicate, but maybe there needs to be a period of time, a statute of limitations, during which there's a text ban. This gives Danglee time to galvanize spirits without the passive aggressive, emotionally-regressive influence of constant texts, designed to whip, lasso and reel him/her back to heel. Then maybe, when a season of other deliciously awful, or--hopefully--awfully delicious dates have pushed disappointment into the darker, distant whorls of memory, maybe, just maybe you can be friends. Though whether opposite sexes can ever truly be platonic friends... well, that's a whole other blog, isn't it?
I'm sure you are familiar. These specimen tend to have options and they know it! They also let you know it. On Facebook or out-and-about you will see such him or her, photographed in the arms of the non-you. These Players are cautious about entering into an actual relationship with actual feelings, placing all their eggs or squirmy semen in one life raft! Much better to drift and send up a flare every now and then, to see if the eggs or semen of the rejected castaway, come whooshing back for more.
It's definitely a trend I am seeing and hearing of more and more, and guess what, it is by no means gender specific, women throw out that text lasso as often as men. So what does it say? What should we do, how should we react to this?
Let's break this down. It's just a wild stab in the dark--pardon--but if someone of the opposite sex, who you may have had a dalliance with at some time or another, is contacting you, it is generally not because they are concerned about your happiness quota, or to discuss the weather.
Textual comms. are usually resumed because Mr. or Mrs. Dicktard Dangler wants to know if you are still 'on the hook'. Do you still give a damn? I guess this is a power and control thing. It's part of their game: will they/won't they respond? Maybe he/she is lonely and misses the witty textual repartee. Maybe, but either way, this re-connection is more about them than you.
But your reaction says a lot about you. Perhaps the 'ping' and glow of one's phone revealing the name of him/her and their inane sentiment, sends you breathless with longing, delighted that, though spurned, you are not forgotten. (It is, after all, horrid to be easily forgotten.) Maybe, as tortuous as it is, you would rather be stung by remembrance, than shrivel with neglect. And if you've been more stung than little Macaulay Culkin in My Girl, then maybe re-evaluate why you are attracted to someone who persists in hurting you. You are a masochist. Seek help.
I have a dear male friend, who was kicked to the curb recently by the gal he'd been dating. She revealed she was dating someone else--TA DAH!--and that someone else was not him. Booooo. So--because he has a spine--End Scene. He was actually fine with it; he's buoyant like that and can't be kept down for long. He sulked for a few hours and then got on with things--chaps can do that compartmentalizing so well, can't they?
Well, he is going about life, setting up dates and then BAM! There it was...like kryptonite glowing green from the face of his phone:
Ms. Dicktard Dangler 6.09PM
Hey! How are you? I miss you!
Well, that's as maybe. She might very sincerely give a crap, she might honestly care as to his well-being--I'm sure that's what she would say to him if he asked; but odds are, she just misses the attention and her Texan-sized Ego wants to know that she's still got it and could get him back if she chose. But when you choose someone else, you relinquish the right to feel lonely and tell the one you jilted about it! It's not sweet, or thoughtful, it's selfish.
I'm all for remaining friends with past flames, but to fan them just for one's ego, makes you an Arse-onist. Certainly, you may be thinking, "Well, surely if you don't want to play the catch and release game, if you have been rehooked and gaffed enough to know that that shit hurts, then block their number! Simply don't respond. Ignore. Delete. Move on." But when you care, it's really hard to give up, Jay Gatsby never gave up.
I wonder how The Great Gatsby would have ended if Daisy Buchanan had had the ability to text. She would have been the prime example of a Dangler. I imagine her in her sheer, gauzy, draped world, languishing on her chaise, tapping idly on her I phone:
Jay, darling. How are you? I miss you! (She's sad for herself of course, but rather oblivious to all else.)
Daisy! Old Sport! Come away with me. Jay would reply, sucked back in, as hopeful as always.
Oh darling, I would if I could. It's just impossible! And there, reassured, she would go back to... what? Lying on a sofa, playing with her drapes, being fay and slightly pathetic.
Maybe that's harsh, maybe Daisy just annoyed me because here was someone wanting to give her the moon on a stick, someone she loved in returned, but she was too spineless to communicate that. She just kept Jay dangling... promising much and delivering nothing.
So what am I saying here? When you end things, chatty check-ins are not on? Well, poor Jay Gatsby doesn't get the chance to find out, but for the rest of us... heck, we are adults in this crazy communicating circus. I think it would be pretty sad if former flames did not communicate, but maybe there needs to be a period of time, a statute of limitations, during which there's a text ban. This gives Danglee time to galvanize spirits without the passive aggressive, emotionally-regressive influence of constant texts, designed to whip, lasso and reel him/her back to heel. Then maybe, when a season of other deliciously awful, or--hopefully--awfully delicious dates have pushed disappointment into the darker, distant whorls of memory, maybe, just maybe you can be friends. Though whether opposite sexes can ever truly be platonic friends... well, that's a whole other blog, isn't it?
