The RULES VS The GAME

A test to the rules of dating

Every one, at least once in their lives, has been heartbroken. It’s just what happens with love, I guess. After breaking up with Mr Ex, every woman goes through brutal self-analysis. What went wrong? Sometimes the answer significantly changes our approach to relationships.

My mum’s hippy attitude guided me to be myself and always fight for love –see Cheryl Cole and tell me how you think that went! Soon, things get confusing and I start wondering, why is it so obvious to my mum –and to Jane Austen and the three Brontё sisters- that the woman should be the one who has to fight for her love?

As far as I know, normally Sleeping Beauty sleeps tightly while her Prince Charming fights against dragons and witches for a tiny kiss on her lips! Forget about the whole “being myself” thing. Why be someone that always fails? Forget about free love, and the emancipated freedom of that evening call to the man who does not call you. We are all good at saying that we don’t care if a man does not call us after we slept with him. But we all know that it’s a lie. Forget about heart-ache; some of us are clearly addicted to it, as if hurting for love was better that hurting from a broken leg! It is the same, it has to be cured! So, I guess The Rules seems to be the cure for me.

Why the Rules?

I knew about The Rules from another book, and obviously from the bible-series Sex & the City. My girlfriends’ constructive criticism suggests I am a half-rule-girl naturally. Nonetheless, they admit that my choice of men is often the personification of Mr Wrong. Even without saying it, they agree I do a lot wrong. I have to have the book! I just need to be told. I need to be given a scheme to follow, something that probably my mum would have done if she was not too much of a free soul (and obviously single). So I buy it after eagerly devouring the intro in the Amazon look-inside tool.

Since reading the first few pages, my attitude to dating is totally new. The first reason for trusting The Rules is that I really hit the bottom. Secondly, like many friends said, I was already a half-rule-girl: I just had to perfect the details, to interpret the bits of the book I felt were too old-fashioned.  I had to make them mine, and just like the book suggests, I had to “practice, practice, practice!”

The book guides ladies through all those little things that a woman that plays “hard to get” should do. At first it reminds us of some basics, for instance Rule n.1: You are a creature unlike any other. And Rule n.2: I should never talk to a man first or ask him to dance. Then it gets to less obvious rules such as “don’t live with a man” or “don’t see him more than once or twice a week”. Throughout the reading, it feels like going back in time a little, to times when all women wanted was a successful marriage and a lovely family. Certainly not the type I fit in. But after a few chapters, I learnt to see the old-fashioned tone a bit as if the mother who never told me these things was actually talking through the pages. After all, don’t we all just dream to be Cinderella? We might be happy with our career, our ambitions, and we are confident with our bodies and our sexuality. Still we all need love! The question is: will The Rules help us to have it all?

Keep reading the article in NOIR magazine, the Film Issue.