Do ‘The Rules’ Really Work?

Do The Rules Work?

I am slightly ashamed to say that I read The Rules.  I took it out of the library, so at least I didn’t buy it.  I was curious to see what it had to say as I began navigating the waters of online dating.  Should I be embarrassed to admit I understood it a little?  I mean, I didn’t think it was the right thing for me to practice, but on one hand it made a lot of sense. We always want what we can’t have, right?  It reminds me of this pair of Nine West Tinao peep toe shoes that I saw at the Nine West outlet in Manchester, VT.  I couldn’t have them because I didn’t have enough money to pay for them (these were my pre-overdraft days).  I reasoned that as soon as payday came along a few days later, I would order those puppies online and all would be right with the world.  Well, my paycheck comes and I cannot find these shoes on ninewest.com.  I checked ebay. I even went back up to Manchester and they were gone.  It was like a shoe dream that I had conjured up.  A mirage in the desert of a day of intense shopping.   And can you guess what happened?  I wanted those shoes more than anything else I ever wanted in my life.  I thought about them when I wore certain outfits or when I pressed my nose against the window of our Nine West store in Albany.  I first saw these shoes almost 2 years and still to this day I will google them or search ebay.  In reality, I would have worn them for a bit and they would have been cast aside for the next favorite pair that came into my life.  I would certainly say the rules came into play here, albeit on shoe shopping.   It only made sense that it would apply to dating as well. 

This week, unbeknownst to me,  I practiced the rules on a guy.  This is someone I had met on Match.  I will call him Cowboy.  We had emailed back and forth for a while a few months ago. Then I started seeing someone and let Cowboy’s emails kind of fell to the wayside.  I heard from him shortly after the person I was seeing and I stopped seeing each other.  We spoke on the phone a few times and I defnitely had a good feeling about him.  As soon as we were making plans to finally meet, he disappeared.  He reappeared a couple of weeks later claiming a hectic work schedule and he still wanted to get together.  Well, about a week or two ago the same thing happened.  Sensing a pattern, I was over it really quickly.  Onto the next match!

Just a couple of days ago a call, with a phone number I didn’t recognize, came through on my cell phone. I answered it and was surprised to hear Cowboy’s voice.  As I was about to sit down to dinner, I only kept the conversation to a brief minute, telling him I would call him the next night.  The next night, I ended up with plans and didn’t have the opportunity to call him.  Sure enough he called me.  And the following day he emailed me.  It was then I kept thinking maybe the rules I do work.  I might have to do more investigation into this…

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