Scoreboard Dating

Towards the end of this bit on friends, family and face-farting I started talking about the idea of Scoreboard Dating.

To repost with some minor editing:

A man and a woman, who are both best friends and lovers, is probably the maximum use of all our human faculties. Why do we have this conscious mind? Maybe so girls and guys can play head games. Well, not so much headgames, as much as men trying to rationalize the irrational. But it all keeps us mentally sharp. All these arguments are just mental sparring sessions. Every guy knows after trying to win a fight with his lady, a meeting with the boss is nothing. When you're married, the house is your private dojo, and the rest of the world is a battlefield. Never forget you are a Social Samurai.

I once dated a girl and tried to playfully communicate this premise in our relations. We naturally formed this hyper-competitive dynamic where we bickered over every little thing. It was endearing initially. I started keeping score. After one argument, I said TAN – 1, Girl – 0. Then we bickered over the scoring system and rules of the game. Anyways, at some point around TAN – 238 Girl – 4 I stopped keeping track. No one wants to be reminded of big blowouts. And the scoreboard became a symbol of my waning attention span. Like any game, you lose interest if one side is dominating the other.

So that opponent has passed, but the scoring system remains, and as long as a lady can hold her own on the field, then we most assuredly have a game to play.