Drew Perez9 said:Alright folks, I’m opening this thread to act as a sort of unofficial advice column here.🙂
First question on the table: how do you avoid those exhausting little dating games? You know the drill—you reach out, they ghost you, then suddenly they pop up out of nowhere, or if you don't reply instantly, they start blowing up your phone asking why you're ignoring them. Has anyone else dealt with this kind of manipulation? I brought it up to my girlfriends, and honestly, they don't see what the big deal is. They actually seem totally down for it, arguing that you have to "prove yourself" when you're the new one in the mix. They claim this whole hunter-versus-prey dynamic is actually desirable. Is that true? Or isn't genuine passion and attraction enough?
Video games aren't just some mindless distraction or a way to kill time; they’re actually a sophisticated form of communication, a way for people to prove themselves, and a constant struggle to validate one's own sense of control over an environment.
Look, here’s the thing about attraction: a woman needs to see strength and stability in a man first and foremost. That sense of security is what makes him magnetic. But there’s a catch, a bit of a psychological dance, if you will. She has to find a way to subtly undermine that very strength by making him dependent on her emotional support. It’s like a slow pivot; she creates a scenario where he relies on her to maintain his footing, which effectively gives her a backstage pass to tap into all that power and security he possesses. It's a strategic trade-off—she gains access to his strength by becoming the one thing he can't function without.
It all comes down to the fundamental balance between men and women—it’s that classic yin and yang dynamic you see everywhere. Honestly, whether you're looking at the way animals interact in the wild or how we function in modern American society, it's the bedrock of every relationship. It's just nature's way of keeping things in equilibrium.
Look, we need to talk about how people actually function, because most folks are just walking around performing a script they don't even realize they wrote. Think about it: every external move you make—your gestures, your actions, the way you manipulate a relationship—is essentially just a learned set of "signs." It’s a language. We aren't just acting out of thin air; we are using these outward behaviors as tools to test and validate something happening deep inside our own heads. It’s how we try to confirm things like our sense of control, our need for connection, or even our dependency on someone else. The problem is that this internal stuff—these raw feelings and needs—is invisible. You can't exactly hold a feeling in your hand and show it to someone to prove it exists. So, what do we do? We take that complex, messy internal state and we "cheapen" it. We strip away its nuance and convert it into something external, like a specific word or a calculated action. It’s a sort of psychological shortcut. We throw this simplified version at another person, basically baiting them into a complementary reaction. We act a certain way so that they respond in a specific way, and in that moment, their reaction serves as the "proof" we need to validate our own projected internal reality. It’s all just one big cycle of projecting an internal state onto the world to see if the world reflects it back.
When you look at how they function, there’s always this inherent power dynamic at play—it's basically a constant seesaw between being the one in charge and the one taking orders, just a perpetual balancing act between those two extremes.
When a woman starts feeling like she’s somehow superior to her husband, she stops acting like a partner and starts acting like a mother dealing with a particularly difficult toddler. It's that condescending, hovering, constant supervision vibe—treating him like some kind of wayward child who can't be trusted to tie his own shoelaces without a lecture. She turns into this nagging maternal figure, managing his life with a sort of malicious, controlling energy, treating her own spouse like a problematic kid who needs constant discipline.
When a woman feels like she’s constantly being kept in a subordinate position by her husband, her entire demeanor shifts—she starts acting more like a daughter seeking approval from her father than a partner to a man. It’s that dynamic where she’s looking to a good, steady father figure for guidance rather than standing as an equal next to a spouse.
Those two types of relationships are basically hardwired during childhood, and once you hit adulthood, you’re just stuck running those same outdated scripts on loop. Think about it: you go through puberty, and suddenly all those old dynamics with your parents become impossible to maintain because your hormones are screaming at you to find someone new—someone you can actually be intimate with and, you know, reproduce with. But here’s the kicker: once you finally find that new partner, you don't start from scratch. Instead, you just end up projecting those exact same childhood patterns onto them, recreating the same messy cycles all over again.
Games and video games aren't just mindless distractions; they mostly function as a training ground for synchronizing and recognizing those deep-seated patterns people use to navigate power struggles within their relationships.
When someone comes out of nowhere and immediately starts laying out their intense desire for marriage and kids, they aren't actually seeing you. They’re just looking at you as a tool to satisfy their own unmet cravings for a family life. It’s pure objectification. In their head, your actual personality and who you are as an individual don't even matter; you're just being cast in the role of "the perfect wife" to help them soothe their own anxieties about being single. It’s a massive red flag, and honestly, it shouldn't be treated like some cute, romantic gesture or a little game. It's unsettling. It means this person has already built an entire future around a fantasy version of you before they’ve even bothered to learn your middle name. They aren't falling for you—they're falling for a blueprint they've projected onto you, and that's a recipe for disaster.
Some people try to assert control by playing those petty jealousy games, while others do it by picking a fight over the most insignificant, trivial nonsense imaginable. Either way, the end goal is always the same: they’re looking to smash through your personal boundaries just to prove they can. It’s this desperate attempt to break down your independence to force a sense of unity—basically, they want to tear down your autonomy as proof that you’ve entered some kind of unbreakable, suffocating symbiosis.
