Oh, the games adults play!

From Google Images

Some people will argue that games are for children, but recently I've been led to believe that games are very much for adults, too. I'm not saying that we're any good at it, but it appears as though we love playing with each other's minds and feelings.

In my honest opinion, the worst kind of game that can be played amongst adults is the kind between males and females. Let me create a scenario for you.

Boy likes girl. He waits a couple of months before he reveals his true feelings to her. They don’t live in the same city so their communication is via new age technology.

Girl realizes that she likes him too. So there's this flirting going on back and forth every few days or so. One day, boy doesn't reply one of girl's messages and what does she do? She starts assuming all kinds of things. "He probably has a girlfriend and was only fooling around with me" or "He's a player" or agrees with her friends who would say, "See, I told you - ALL men are idiots". Just when she's about to write him off, his name appears in her Inbox with a message laced with words of affection. The flirting picks up right where it left off and she's soon forgotten how upset she (almost!) got when he hadn't replied her before. 

What she doesn't know is that he was actually testing her! He wants to see if she only responds to conversations he initiates. 

He doesn't know that she was testing him as well. She wants to know if he was really that interested in her or if her friends were right - that all men are just after one thing.

Now, it's 11:53pm and she lies in bed - half awake, half drifting off to sleep. She feels like talking to him or at least sending him a message to say goodnight. She knows her sleep will be that much sweeter if she sees his name in her Inbox before she sleeps.

Does she send the message? No. Instead, she thinks: "What if he's sleeping?" or "What if he's busy?" and the worst: "What if he doesn't reply?"

This causes a whirlwind of thoughts to accumulate in her otherwise calm state of mind.

She falls asleep waiting for her cellphone to beep, buzz and do anything else it's meant to do to alert of a new message.
Nothing.

When she awakes in the morning, the first thing she does is check her phone.
Nothing.

Hours later, he calls her, but she doesn’t answer.  When the ringing stops, her phone beeps with a text which reads, “Hey babe, it seems as though there was no network last night, only got your text now. Sorry!Tried calling, will try again later. Hope you have a good day. Mwah.”

She doesn’t reply the text and she doesn’t call him back. She wants to give him the impression that she’s not that desperate to talk to him - despite the fact that her heart is pounding against her chest and she does feel relieved to hear from him.

All day, she thinks about him and wills her phone to ring. She will not call him. He must call her. He does. She answers as if she doesn’t have caller ID and tries to act surprised when she hears his voice. When he asks if she got his text and saw his missed call, she nonchalantly says that she saw it but was occupied at the time. 

The girl is playing hard to get.

Girls shouldn't play hard to get with a man who's hard to get.

When it comes to games, many of us are sore losers. And when, as adults, we play these mind games, there is seldom a winner and a loser. Either both win or both lose - with tears and heartache as a bonus.

Defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? So why do we torment ourselves – and others?

Oh, the games adults play!