Decoding Love - Andrew Trees [67]
What does all this have to do with dating? Quite a lot, actually. Take the animal kingdom. There are regularly situations when two males come into conflict over a female or a good mating territory. Some species fight, but others choose not to for a variety of reasons. For example, they may have particularly dangerous weapons, and a fight would possibly be fatal. In these cases, the animals often resort to something called “posing.” Basically, they stand there and eyeball each other to see who wants it more and is willing to wait longer. In other words, a classic dollar auction situation. How do they solve this? As we’ve already seen, humans are not very good at escaping dollar auctions. We tend to empty out our pockets and throw everything we can at winning the auction. According to the mathematicians, the animals should assign a value for whatever it is they are fighting over and then choose to pose for a random amount of time based on that number. For example, if one of the males decides that the female is worth twenty minutes of his time, he should pose for some random variation between, say, twelve minutes and twenty-eight minutes. If he wins, great. If not, he simply walks away when he reaches his limit. When actual animals in the wild were studied, it turned out that they followed precisely this logic. In other words, most animals act much more rationally in this sort of situation than one particular kind of animal, human beings.
If we keep this in mind, it might help end a lot of suffering and misery for ourselves as daters, although it will mean that we have to give up some cherished romantic notions, which tend to land people in dollar-auction situations. For example, take the idea of unrequited love. The romantic story line tells us that a lover’s constancy and persistence will ultimately be rewarded when the beloved finally recognizes his or her worth, but that is exactly the kind of thinking that can lead to a dollar auction. The more time that passes, the more the lover insists that there must be some sort of reward for all of his or her effort. And being in a relationship is also no protection against fruitless dollar auctions. Once you have been with someone long enough, you may avoid breaking off a relationship, even if you find it unsatisfying, because of all the time you’ve already invested. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that anyone who has much dating experience has unwittingly found himself or herself in a dollar auction at some point. If I could leave you with only one piece of advice from this chapter, it would be to avoid dollar auctions when dating. If you can’t avoid them, at least determine the price you are willing to pay beforehand so you know when to get out. Easier said than done, but no one ever promised that love was easy.
5
The Dating Dance
What I Learned About Dating from Hanging Out in Bars
WE’VE FINALLY REACHED THE POINT WHERE THE RUBBER meets the road, that electric moment when someone catches your eye across a crowded room, and you know that you are going to spend the rest of your life together. At least, that’s what the romantic story line tells us. In truth, much as you would expect given the earlier chapters, you can do a remarkable number of things to enhance or detract from your appeal during your initial encounter with your Romeo or Juliet.
Part of this chapter falls under a category that could be labeled “tricks” because it includes various methods to manipulate someone’s perception of you. I offer these “tricks” with a certain amount of hesitation. It’s not that I don’t think they will work—it’s that I think they might work too well. My intention