The Game of Love

Typically, Mondays are not my favorite. I hate getting back into the groove at work, and the week seems so long. However, in my adult life, I’ve found a way to remedy the ‘Mundays’-- I’ve spent a great deal of evenings with a glass (or four) of wine, good friends, and the American Broadcasting Company.

Each season, there is a new cast of characters on one of TV’s most popular reality franchises; during my teens and early twenties I got to know them with my sorority sisters in the basement of Alpha Phi, and as I started my career I tore their flaws apart with my best girlfriends in my tiny Rapid City apartment. I’ve laughed at how cheesy some of the lines are and cried at the thought of finding true love in a room full of gorgeous people, yours for the picking. You’ve probably guessed by now—I’m talking about the Bachelor and Bachelorette.

Save your judging for the rose ceremony, please.



I watch/write/live/breathe the news 90% of my waking hours. This show is a straight-up guilty pleasure. Now, I’m not stupid—I don’t believe in finding love via reality show… but isn’t it nice to think it could be possible for someone else? Of course, most relationships born on that show crash and burn as quickly as they’re made.

Tonight, a total d-bag was sabotaged by the woman he called the love of his life. Some entertainment wrestler (Seriously… that’s your profession? Really? How did you ever get dates to begin with?) from Canada (Way to make your already lame country proud) apparently had a girlfriend the entire time. He thought doing the show would make him ‘famous’ (REALLY?!) and had promised her they’d get married after he left the show (Because that’s what ever girl wants… to marry a guy after he’d been publicly dismissed on a reality series).

Obviously, there are a lot of rumors that come with the territory when you’re a reality ‘star’—but these allegations were backed up with proof, in the form of several voicemails.

Idiot.

Technology has changed the way courtships begin and relationships end. I am fresh off of a breakup and in no hurry of jumping into this dating game, but the entire game has changed during the past three years. It’s now possible to contact anyone in the world at home, work, by cell, email, text, Skype, Twitter, and Facebook accounts at once; and, if you are lucky, they can choose to reciprocate immediately. It also makes it that much easier to get rejected… 8x over.

One of my closest friends has no problem meeting guys the traditional way—she is gorgeous and men are drawn to her. She’s also really nice… I always tell her I have ‘F- You’ on my forehead while she has ‘Thank You’ on hers. That could be why she has to screen calls and texts from various men at all hours of the day.

One of the most offensive things to me is voicemail. Seriously, I don’t check them. If you’re leaving them, you can pretty much guarantee I’m clearing out my counter without listening. Unless it’s work-related, send me a text or call me back, because the steps involved in checking voicemail are not worth my time.

My friend has gotten several voice messages from a certain suitor over the past few days. The only thing worse than leaving a voicemail to begin with, is leaving one where you say nothing. If you’re getting sent to voicemail more than once a day, it doesn’t mean you need to leave more messages; it means you need to stop calling and wait for the person on the other end to contact you. Have you ever used a cellular phone? They all pretty much work the same—missed calls show up on a missed call counter… the person you’re trying to reach will see that you tried. Be done with it.

Texts are a little more tricky. You never know for sure if your texts are being delivered or just being sent into a satellite somewhere in space, never to be seen again.

I’m being sarcastic.

When was the last time someone legitimately missed your text? Come on. There is a cell phone tower on every block. She got your text, and if she didn’t respond to your comment about the weather, or what you bought at the mall, or what kind of toothpaste she used that morning to clean the crud off her teeth, it’s because she doesn’t want to talk to you, not because she didn’t receive the message.

The worst yet most entertaining thing that happens when texts are not returned is the awful one-sided conversation the textee begins to have with themselves. Here is an example from the aforementioned friends’ phone:

Annoying: 10:41 pm Hey, what’s up?
Annoying: 10:46 pm I’m just chilling at x bar
Annoying: 10:57 pm Well just checking to see how you’ve been. Hope you’re good and enjoying life!
Annoying: 1:06 am thisbeertasteiasliekhavean
Annoying: 10:32 am Woah, sorry about that… obviously I was a little toasted last night. Sorry to be annoying.
Annoying: 11:18 am I don’t understand…

WHAT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?! SHE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING!!!

Turns out, this serial texting is more common than I realized. Another good friend of mine has had her inbox filled with one-sided Wikipedia definition conversations from a pest that wouldn’t let up. The relationship was born from a form of dating that interestingly involves the very same technological advances that I believe have made things so difficult for those looking for love.

She has an online profile, and has been contacted by just about every type of man you can imagine.

Putting yourself out there takes a special kind of girl, and I totally commend her for exploring every avenue to find the man of her dreams. But I doubt she planned to find one that had the woman of his dreams so clearly planned out in his head, he’d mapped the mathematical equations to prove it when it happened.

I’m not exaggerating. And to top it, he typed it out for the world to discover with a simple Google search.

In this world of need-to-know, up-to-the-minute 24-hour news ticker and social media crutch, I canNOT believe this girl didn’t type the man’s name into a search engine before going out with him. It’s literally the first thing I do when I meet someone new, and I don’t think that makes me crazy, I think it makes me savvy. You never know who you are dealing with in this big world; you might want to check that he, at the very least, isn’t on the sex offender registry.

It actually took a whole date (which he stiffed half the bill on) and an hour-long conversation (where he knew tons of facts about her hometown AND found her on YouTube) before it dawned on me she hadn’t looked him up at all.

I took it upon myself to search his name, and came upon his blog. It's taking every bit of class I have not to link it here.

Here’s just a taste inside the man’s head—taken DIRECTLY from his online posted requirements for his future wife.



As for my friend… she’s taken her profile down for a few weeks. And I am taking solace (pronounced sall-ahs) in the fact that even those who know how to play the game have a bad season every once in awhile.