How does a person get by in this wicked world of dating? Date no one and you become too strange, too wolf-like, too feral to date.  Date too many people, on the other hand, and you become ostracized, a deviant, a lustful creature of the night.  There’s a fine line you must walk and at any moment, you can be jousted off that line by your own hormones.  A desire too strong, too forthcoming, or opposite, too passive — all end in disqualification.  

These aren’t real rules.  These are beaten and boring pathways, trodden by too many mediocre people.  These are animalistic tendencies to keep everything controlled under the safe canopy of normalcy.  Outside the lines is dangerous.  Animals that don’t behave under the specific set of acceptable rules are mauled, killed, dragged away and eaten.  The pack watches, safety in numbers.  A smugness twists their faces.  They warned you about straying from tradition.

Relationships shouldn’t have to appease these rules.  Relationships, human relationships specifically, are too complex, too subjective.  Love doesn’t play by the rules of tradition.  Love and friendship and attraction work under many different circumstances.  They are affected by the weather and silent smells, pheromones.  They’re affected by posture and brain chemistry and confidence.  Relationships live and die on communication — and communication is dynamic.  It happens in words, written, spoken, sung.  It happens in the passing slide-show of train-car art.  It happens with the vibration of guitar strings.  Communication happens with movement, eye-contact, touch, and taste.

That’s why it’s a flaw to become trapped in the regulations of dating.  It’s a mistake to work solely on the lessons in the book, while refuting experiential evidence.  This is not a purely hypothetical game.  Human on human interaction doesn’t take place in a simulator. The moves must be made, in person, communication and kiss and chaos must be played out.  

This is part of the fun of life.  To play.  To accept free will.  To move with passion rather than fear.  The rules can be guidelines.  They will keep some people safe and secure and comfortable.  But magic is rarely made inside the rules.  Not with love, not with relationships, and not in honest communication.  To express oneself honestly, the training wheels, the governor, the safety must all be off.

Teachers and mentors cannot play the game for you.  Society cannot make the decisions on your behalf.  Romance doesn’t operate with spotters and safety nets.  It has to have an element of danger or risk.  If it was a sure-shot, it would lose its allure.  The uncertainty brings in the butterflies.  A romantic accepts this as the wild space between a match and a forest fire.