Game of Love

Game of Love
Courtney Schoen

David Peaden, 23-year-old junior at USU, says the process of dating girls can be troublesome, unpredictable and frightening; but the ladies are generally worth it.
Peaden, like many young adults his age, is getting tired of the drama in college relationships and unnecessary dating games that go on.
“Guys and girls see relationships in completely different ways,” Peaden said, “but everybody needs to experience a little dating ‘pit of despair’ before they make it to the ultimate goal of marriage.”
Sometimes it seems that instantly in a relationship, one or both parties start overanalyzing every little thing—jumping through mental hoops trying to figure out what the other is thinking.
Peaden and his roommate, jokingly called the Love Gurus by friends, created a theory—The Ladder Theory— that explains the different ways relationships are viewed.
Males are climbers and females are the ladders in this fascinating view of relationships.
Guys just believe in climbing; girls are a little more discerning.
“For a guy, up is good,” Peaden said, “The guys see ladders as strictly vertical, but what some guys don’t know is that girls have two ladders—one for courtship and the other for friendship.”
Peaden’s theory claims girls are going to relegate guys to be friends or romantics, so the guy needs to do something to let her know which ladder he wants to climb.
“Dating and ladder climbing is a hard enough process as it is,” Kyle Griffin, Peaden’s roommate, said, “why make it more difficult by playing head games with someone?”
Griffin, a junior in international business, said, “dating mind games are manipulative and break the barrier of trust immediately.”
Peaden and Griffin both agree that guys need some sort of obvious signal that the girl is interested; they called this the Law of Reciprocation.
This law, according to the Love Gurus, includes breaking the touch barrier, sending a flirtatious text or giving a sincere hug and “thank you” at the end of a date.
Girls need to express whether or not they are attracted to the guy, so when they play games like “hard to get” sometimes the guy just finds the girl too “hard to understand.”
“Dating is integral to the ladder theory,” Peaden said, “if a guy does not ask a girl out, then he will never be able to climb her ladder, which means no golden rung (marriage) for him.”
Thomas Cherrington, an instructor at the Logan Institute of Religion for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is known by many of his students as the most outspoken church leader when it comes to promoting dating.
Cherrington served as a bishop and stake president for his church and gave several talks on dating and how “youth don’t date anymore.”
“Girls need to lighten up,” Cherrington said, “and guys need to step it up.”
The question is how do girls lighten up and what can the guys do to step it up?
Rachelle Cazier, a 19-year-old sophomore in elementary education, says women just need to stop playing games and get off the emotional roller coaster.
“My brother-in-law loves my sister so much because she was the first girl he dated that didn’t try to get inside his head,” Cazier said, “he almost didn’t know how to react to a girl that didn’t play games or try to make him jealous.”
Cazier believes that once a guy does not have to worry about being a player in a mind game, he can devote more time to the girl and the actual relationship.
For the most part, most guys claim they prefer a game-free relationship because they hate it when they have to wonder whether the girl is being herself or putting on a pretense.
However, there are those who believe games are healthy for a relationship.
Clay Bingham, a 21-year-old from Spanish Fork, believes games are beneficial because you can learn a lot about a person without actually having to sit down and talk about each other’s personalities.
Bingham said he is tired of dating girls that do not have enough brainpower to even begin to play a mind game.
“I’m done dating girls that can’t think for themselves,” Bingham said, “I acted like a total jerk with my last girlfriend, hoping she’d take a hint and we could brake it off. I was the game player, and she never picked up on it.”