May the odds be ever in your favour...

 

We all need that little bit of luck...

I was talking to a good friend of mine, well I met her on Tinder but that's another story. Anyway she happened to tell me about her crush that she has on her best friend. "It's classic Hollywood" was my first thought and then as the conversation went on, boy, it got deep. To sum it up, they have both liked each other at different points in their lifetimes but the chemistry between them now was obvious. He was her first kiss, he would walk her to class and they talk to each other all the time. All well and good but then I thought that she needed to answer the million pound question: "So when are you going to do anything about it?".

Her answer hit me. I was so sure that she was going to reply with a classic "I don't know haha" or "That's his job lol" but no... She said "this Friday" (it's Monday as I'm writing this). Turns out her "side bitch" has planned the events of a party that day that would give my friend the best chance of getting the guy who she thinks and talks about 24/7. A set up truth or dare to reveal that she likes him, strip spin the bottle to get his heart racing and a biased beer pong to get the 'killer kiss'. If that isn't full commitment to the cause, I don't know what is. But it just reinforced one of my earlier thoughts about the state of how most modern teenage relationships in the West start.

One thing that had often been the centre of my thoughts is my opinion of love being a process of sorts. And in a weird way it is, most people plan how they are going to start that first conversation, how they are going to plan dates that will plug at the heart strings and in the scenario above, how to place their subject at their mercy to seal the deal.

But what I've now realised is that it's become a game. In the heights of insecurity and a fear of rejection, every guy, and sometimes girl, find themselves in a maze decorated with hints that lead you to that exit, that end goal: the possession of the 'bae'. But what are some of these hints? For a guy, there's not that many. Ignore her for a while and sooner or later she'll be stepping into those DMs all by herself. (That is if she's not playing her own game!)

For a girl, well I'm still trying to get around the average girl's mentality myself so can't help you there.

There's a silent code that we all subconsciously follow, a code that doesn't creep or scare the other person away, a code which includes the guy chasing the girl most of the time, sometimes it's a case of both.

All the way back in the cringeworthy moments of year 9, I had befriended a stranger on BBM. After a few months of talking we were 'besties' (Does anyone even use that word anymore?). She met a guy in my form at a party just before a school trip to Germany and I gathered from rumours that they had really hit it off. But I learnt some lessons from how they interacted on that trip.


#relationshipgoals

 

They flirted with each other at that party but he didn't kiss her. Doesn't seem like a big deal but she expected him to. She really liked him but never told him. He claimed he didn't like her as much as that yet but never told her. She got told by me and was hurt (I make no apologies) and then his friends 'fixed' it. What I found ridiculous though was his analogy of him and the girl with a rope, slowly pulling each other in and there I was, with a huge pair of scissors determined on breaking them apart. This wasn't true by the way but the main point stands.

Although going all out and saying 'I like you' straightaway isn't very charming, weeks of speculation cannot surely be worth it. We live in so much fear of not getting liked back, that most of the time we don't do anything about it. As time goes on, this probably won't change but hopefully some can take aboard the message below from good old Bob.



*sigh* Bob always knew what to say...

May the odds be ever in your favour.