Sample chapter from
"Toxic Dating:
Dodging the Hook"
© 1998 Reginald B. Humphreys, Ph.D.
Duplication Prohibited. All Rights Reserved

HOW TO DATE

(8000 WORDS)

The title of this chapter is an important one, for several reasons. The book from which it is drawn originally evolved from a small booklet entitled "How to Date", and it could be reasonably stated that this theme is actually the main point or purpose of the book.

What may be less evident is that the title is also a kind of joke. If you haven't gotten the joke yet, I'll be happy to tell you about it. I'm sure some readers have already guessed it, or have at least some reaction of suspicion toward the idea that any author or title can tell you how to manage your personal affairs. And yet the bookshelves and airwaves are full of such blatant advice. "Leave him", or "dump her", or "reject anyone who believes thus and so". These are the kinds of outright advice that a person is likely to find in the popular psychology press and media.

These approaches to human relationships are irresponsible, naive, and damaging to anyone who listens. To me, the fact that such blatantly poor practices can remain in print or on the air constitutes one of the worst types of media abuse in existence. But to justify these strong statements, it will be necessary for me to explain exactly why these practices are so poor, and also to discuss the improper way that the media remains "stuffed to the gills" with what I call "junk psychology".

Why is it bad practice to give advice, and especially bad to give broad generic advice? This principle is one of the first principles which a beginning psychotherapist must learn in graduate school. The natural human tendency in a helping situation like psychotherapy is to offer good, common sense advice. And yet what decades of the use of psychotherapy have demonstrated is that in the end, giving people direct advice can often be a disservice, and even harmful and damaging.

This makes psychotherapy different from other professions. You pay for advice from your attorney or CPA, and also expect the best advice from your physician, dentist, auto mechanic, and anyone else you pay for services. So it is only natural that when a person begins therapy, they might expect to receive a lot of advice.

When a new patient or client enters psychotherapy (which from now on I'll usually just call therapy), the therapist is always in the position of taking one of two approaches: (1) give in to the patient's natural early expectations or demands for direct advice; or (2) refrain from giving advice, except for very basic health advice, such as whether or not to continue therapy.

When the therapist gives in to the patient's expectations for direct advice and guidance, then the service being provided would generally be referred to as counseling. When the professional abstains from giving direct advice, the service being provided is therapy. And this difference may be understood as constituting the principal difference between counseling and psychotherapy.

In making this distinction between counseling and psychotherapy, I am not suggesting any value judgment. I am not saying that one is good, and the other bad. Both counseling and therapy are good and valuable approaches, when each is used in its proper context. There certainly are times when therapy should have been used instead of counseling, or counseling instead of therapy. So how does the professional know which approach to use, counseling or therapy? On what grounds is such a decision made? And how does any layperson person know whether they need one or the other, and which one?

These questions, as important as they are, stray too far from the main topic of relationships to be discussed adequately here. But our starting point was why direct advice-giving is undesirable, and we can now state that it is undesirable from the psychotherapist's point of view. The psychotherapist sees it as undesirable to give advice for a whole array of excellent reasons, a few of which I'll enumerate:

As a therapist, I don't want the responsibility for the events in the lives of my patients. Whatever success or failure occurs, as a therapist I receive no direct credit nor blame, because the patient has made all the decisions, and feels responsible for all the results.

In addition to not wanting responsibility for the events in my patients' lives, I also don't have any belief that I know exactly what the person should do in life, or that I have any ultimately wise or guaranteed advice to bestow in each situation that comes up.

In summary, there are natural forces in the patient's unconscious mind which predispose the patient to believe that the therapist is all-knowing and all-seeing. Believing that the therapist is in possession of exalted knowledge and abilities, the patient waits for and even may demand that the therapist deliver this knowledge in the form of direct advice. These expectations are part of the patient's fantasy projections onto the therapist. If the therapist is naive or inadequately trained, the therapist may be seduced into accepting and enjoying the patient's fantasy-based projections and adoration. By giving direct advice, the therapist is buying into the patient's parent-projections and God-projections, in effect saying "You're right. You found me out. I am God, just as you imagine. And I will give you the advice you need to fix your life."

If the therapist takes this position, and starts giving advice, then the opportunity for psychotherapy to take place has been lost. In accepting the patient's exalted fantasies (by giving advice) the therapist has sold the patient's needs down the river. Rather than therapy having occurred, the patient has just paid the therapist a fee for acting our his or her personal grandiose God-fantasies.

Any adequately trained therapist ought to know better than to act out such unsophisticated dynamics while conducting therapy. However, there are plenty of persons practicing psychotherapy with minimal training and credentials. Also, many persons have the correct college degrees to work as a psychotherapist, but in getting these degrees never acquired enough understanding and expertise to handle patients' fantasy projections correctly. These persons flood society with such bad therapy, and foul up people's lives so much with their faulty advice, that the public may quickly begin to believe that all psychotherapists are as poorly trained and as flaky as the individual the person accidentally decided to hire.

In a way, it serves the person right, for accepting bargain basement therapy at cut rates, instead of paying the regular fee required to get a competent therapist. In therapy, like anything else, you get what you pay for. If a person accepts the fraudulent claims of managed care, and accepts the kind of therapy and therapists provided by a managed care system, they should never be surprised to find that what they actually got was nothing of value at all. In addition, what is received may even have been damaging, distasteful, or even frustrating.

At this point, the reader may reasonably be asking "Why is all this discussion being given to the topic of psychotherapy? I thought this book was about dating games!" Well, the reader is certainly correct in questioning the relevance of this discussion of psychotherapy, but its relevance will now be made clear.

Our original point of departure involved an analysis of pop relationship experts, and the damage these so-called experts cause. I promised the reader an explanation of why advice-giving is a poor practice, and why the popular psychology bookshelves and airwaves are saturated with little else. At this point, a good case has been made for why a psychotherapist would prefer not to provide direct advice to patients. But the question remains as to why it is appropriate to apply the standards of psychotherapy to the publications and broadcasts of so-called relationship "experts"

I am willing to take both credit and responsibility for the idea that these so-called media experts should be judged by the standards which true professionals are held to. They have literally been asking for this kind of accountability, and for a long time. The truth is, pop experts have been operating out of an outrageous regulatory loophole, a loophole which allows for the damaging of both individuals and society itself. This loophole is invoked as part of the first amendment, which basically allows the publication of anything, by anyone, at any time.

In our context, this means that a person can say over the broadcast airwaves or in a book or article, things which would be inappropriate, unethical, or illegal for a licensed professional to say while providing therapy or counseling. For example, a call-in talk show advisor may give direct relationship advice or family advice over the air. This is done without the "expert" having ever met the caller, and without the "expert" having performed any kind of diagnosis or assessment of any kind. There is an instant analysis and instant advice, all done "off the cuff".

A licensed professional could receive an ethical sanction for either one of these serious failures. The professional who provides treatment (advice) without first having given a diagnosis has acted recklessly and irresponsibly. Providing services to a person a therapist has never even met goes beyond the bounds of non-professionalism into the realm of the flatly incompetent. And yet a media expert can do this on the air all day long, or in print, with no repercussions at all.

What's wrong with our whole system that such bizarre inequities and inner contradictions exist? If certain actions constitute punishable violations for qualified therapists, but are the vehicle for wealth and celebrity for the unqualified loophole-user, then the social system has turned itself upside-down. This is clearly an area of systemic failure, where the existing systems are definitely not working. Along with this conclusion comes the question: Are there any possible system remedies for this state of affairs, or is society on an unalterable path of deterioration as far as pop psychology and pop relationship psychology are concerned?

I personally believe that there is some chance for improvement in the public's attitudes and reactions toward these pop experts. And there may be some chance for improvement in society itself, by way of legislative reform. But whatever chance there may be for such successful changes is likely to require an even deeper analysis of the context in which pop experts operate.

If you think about it, these is very little difference between the two activities of counseling people in a professional office, and counseling them anonymously over the air. The professional "hangs up a shingle", the license to practice, and dispenses services basically one person at a time. Such services are individualized, and presume a complete evaluation by the professional. The pop expert, by contrast, dispenses advice to their entire readership at once, and the same advice to everyone at once. Over the radio and television airwaves, advice is dispensed to millions of viewers at a time. All I can say is, if it applies to millions of people at the same time, it's some pretty awesomely good advice!

What I'm trying to say is, it's necessary for highly trained, licensed professionals to make careful assessments before providing any service. Even after completing a careful assessment, it remains a very dicey question as to whether a therapist can come up with good or competent advice to even one person at a time. How, then, do these untrained media experts manage to come up with advice which is applicable to everyone at once?

The answer, of course, is that they really aren't able to do this any more than any other human being can do this. This is a myth, a fraud, a con, call it what you like. However, regardless of their falseness, the public laps up pop experts' advice as if it were manna from heaven. The pop expert literally floats along on the admiration of their adoring audiences, so drunk on the power of being believed-in that they become seduced by their own ruses. Now believing in their own almost-divine gifts of all-knowingness, they dispense advice with a renewed vigor and confidence. This advice is often now communicated with a bizarre certainty by the "expert" that the advice being given is so correct that it is equal to fact itself. It is not uncommon to hear a radio talk-show "expert" resort to the most incredible ridicule and shaming of any caller who is not immediately "wise enough" to accept the "expert's" advice and analysis.

In engaging in such practices, the pop expert is playing therapist to society as a whole. But the privilege of playing therapist to society at large ought to require the highest possible credentials and expertise. However, as most state licensing laws currently stand, the laws regulate professionals holding a license, and prohibits others from falsely claiming the professional title or license. Often, there is no law to regulate the actions of individuals who are unlicensed, as long as they use no protected titles.

The solution to this problem is clear, as far as I'm concerned. Whenever a person uses the mass media to hold themselves out to the public as an expert on relationships or adjustment, they should be considered to be practicing some kind of health care discipline. Practicing medicine, psychology, or counseling without an appropriate license is a punishable offense in most states. What this kind of prosecution requires is that the offender offer direct services to at least one individual. The media "expert" gets around this by offering advice to everyone at once, but to no one in particular. This is how the loophole works for the media expert, as amazing as it seems.

Another aspect of this loophole is that the media darling expert seems clearly to be practicing something - either psychology, medicine, counseling, or some other health care profession which uses counseling and psychotherapy. But which one?! Since it is not clear exactly which mental health profession is being practiced without a license, any possible enforcement effort tends to collapse without any prosecutions. The pop "expert" remains free to engage in further unlicensed practice using the vehicles of publishing and broadcasting as a cover for playing therapist to the world.

This last point is the whole point. Even if these bogus media darlings have a loophole that keeps them from being prosecuted for playing therapist, it is still undeniable and clear that they are playing therapist. This leaves it entirely up to the public to protect themselves from the bad advice provided by these mock experts playing therapist.

How can this protection be accomplished? Obviously, a person interested in protecting himself or herself from damaging advice from bogus "experts" can just stop reading, listening to, or watching any "expert" at all. That is, by avoiding any form of psychology-related literature or broadcast, the damaging impact of all false experts can be eliminated. Unfortunately, the person who shuts out all psychological input may be eliminating resources which might be essential for their successful future adjustment. This is the Catch-22 of attempting to use counseling or therapy. If one uses and follows psychological advice, and it ends up being bogus, then it might ruin one's life. If, on the other hand, a person avoids using psychological advice, then they may never find a way out of the morass of their accumulated life problems and erroneous perspectives.

Clearly, the strategy of shutting out all psychological input is a crude and desperate way to try to screen out faulty advice. I say desperate because there is usually another reason behind the decisions of people who choose to shut out all psychological input. This reason is fear. Behind an individual's frequent statements that psychology is "stupid" is usually an inability to deal with psychological insights, leading to fear of anything psychological. As a result, it is easy in society to identify those individuals who are self-declared to be anti-psychological. These persons reject psychological concepts and insights entirely, and justify their position by citing cases of bogus experts and bogus theories. These persons ridicule and harass their social associates and family members if they elect to receive counseling or therapy, or seek help through books or broadcast programs which deal with psychological matters.

There are many persons in contemporary society that have good reason to fear psychological insights. These persons are the "bad actors" in society. These persons are the sources and spreaders of pain and suffering for many others in the world. Any psychological notion such as the idea of human dignity, or human sensitivity, or human feelings, is irrelevant and hateful to them. Psychology is intolerable to these bad actors because it immediately exposes these persons as non-legitimate exploiters and abusers. That is, psychology "busts up" their games.

In breaking up the exploitive and abusive games of bad actors, psychological concepts and interventions help to free the victims of these games from a form of interpersonal bondage. This development is to the everlasting dismay of the bad actor, who feeds off the pain and suffering of the victim. If the victim becomes free using psychological insights, then the user/predator will have to seek out a new victim. This leads to a general hypothesis which will be good for the reader to consider. This hypothesis is that any person who displays a vigorous hatred for anything psychological may actually be a predatory sort of individual. Such an individual can only make victims out of persons who are psychologically uninformed and naive. This leads to the additional conclusion that individuals who are psychologically uninformed are, in today's society, defensively naked and highly vulnerable to game-playing and interpersonal predation of a variety of types.

Why is contemporary society so often a society of outrageous extremes? Why, for example, does there even have to be a segment of society which is rabidly anti-psychological? And even more interesting is the other side of the coin, the more frequent social phenomenon of people becoming almost obsessed with anything psychological.

It seems that everyone in society aspires to be an amateur psychologist or therapist. Television talk-show hosts, regardless of their actual professional backgrounds and training, love to wear the therapist's hat. They continuously express their own theories about profound psychological matters, usually reflecting only their profound ignorance of how a real professional therapist would deal with the same situation. Instead, they attack and assault their guests, laugh at and ridicule them, and even shame them and blame them for their own difficulties. They glorify in any opportunity to personally affect the outcome of people's lives, and never seem to hesitate to tell people how to live, think, or be. They continuously cast themselves as hero or heroine to their audiences, personally intervening in people's lives and affecting the life outcomes of one unfortunate "beneficiary" after another. This hero-playing, seemingly done for the benefit of the recipient, actually serves only the glory-seeking motives of the host.

So it is quite easy to see that it is not only the pop psychology expert that is playing therapist to the world. Talk show hosts similarly presume to play therapist to the world.

If it is accepted that the talk show host is playing therapist to the world, then it is reasonable to ask what kind of job the talk show host is doing. That is, what is the quality of therapy offered by these pretend-therapists?

The answer to these questions is so discouraging that I want to alert the reader in advance. In regard to the quality of therapeutic approach used by talk show pretend therapists, we would have to admit that the situation could not possibly be any worse than it is. That is, the approach used by talk show hosts is so contemptibly poor and damaging that it is difficult to conceive of how it could be worse. And when I say worse, I mean that it is difficult to see how it could be worse for the public, for the endeavor of psychotherapy, or for the future of psychotherapy.

Independent psychological researchers have studied the "therapeutic styles" of talk show hosts. The idea of therapeutic style refers to the way the talk show host behaves and intervenes in the lives of their guests. Although the host is not a professional therapist, it is easy to identify elements of the method and style used by the show hosts as they pretend to be a therapist. The findings of these studies are that the talk show host, almost without exception, used a therapeutic style of a first year graduate student with no training. That is, the talk show host behaves in every way imaginable like a rank amateur, saying and doing the most naive things that only a totally uninformed amateur would do.

It must be mentioned that this kind of naive effort at being a therapist is tolerated in beginning graduate students for only a short time. The student must learn that many of their natural impulses and inclinations regarding how one should conduct therapy are terribly inadequate, and likely to be damaging to the client. The graduate student must quickly abandon their faulty intuitions about doing therapy, and stop behaving according to a layman's notion of psychotherapy. If the therapist-in-training cannot make this adjustment, they are generally dismissed as a failing student (flunked out). Very few professionals can actually make it out of graduate school without giving up their naive, layman's idea of how to do therapy.

Can you see the travesty of this situation? And how it could not be worse? Let me make this point crystal clear. What we have in America is a nation obsessed with pop psychology, and especially with talk shows. Since these hosts always play therapist to the world, we would hope that they represent the best that the field of therapy has to offer. Instead, our broadcast system beams to every American home every day this motley crew of therapist wanna-be's, every one of them using style and techniques that would flunk out any beginning therapist.

This is the quality of what we get in our homes from this genre. Instead of getting the best (our American way), every day the entire country receives the worst from talk shows. The lowest possible representation of therapy is boldly enacted by arrogant show hosts every day. And worst of all, these people are proud of what they are doing. They don't even know that what they are doing tragically misleads and misinforms their guests and their viewers, ultimately harming anyone who listens or takes the show seriously. You would think that a show host would try to figure out what would be competent or professional to say to people before broadcasting advice to millions of viewers or listeners. But this would be a responsible attitude, something entirely lacking in the irresponsible, "let's play therapist" world of the talk show host.

In summary, talk show hosts are busy playing pretend-therapist at every opportunity. Millions of people every day begin to think that the host's offensive way of behaving is what therapy is like with a professional therapist. However, the style of talk-show pretend-therapists could not be more corrupt or erroneous, and could never pass the first semester of graduate school due to being utterly inappropriate and incompetent. This unrespectable effort by unrespectable mock-therapists is the only representation of therapy that some people have ever seen. Not the best, but the worst possible representation of therapy is all the poor viewer ever gets in America. No one gets real therapeutic ideas from real therapists over the airwaves, but only the schlock which these con artists vomit up from the depths of their amateurishness. No matter what seems to be happening on these broadcasts, there is really nothing going on at all except the talk show hosts exhibiting themselves, and what they believe to be their "skills" and "benevolence". Truly, they are exhibiting nothing but their own personal defects (mental and emotional problems), and their deplorable ignorance of valid therapeutic methods and therapy ethics.

I'm sure that some readers may be reacting at this point, believing that I am being too hard on talk show hosts. But this is not the case at all. We are still treating the talk show host with kid gloves, applying a lenient double standard in the talk show host's favor. Remember what we said about the therapist who gives direct advice? He or she is playing God. So if we are going to be fair at all, if we condemn the therapist who tells people how to live and think, then we must similarly condemn the talk show host for doing the same thing.

So, the talk show host irresponsibly plays therapist to the world, and in the course of doing this, plays God. So does the pop expert, who is ready and full of advice on everything in life, including "how to date". So, that's the joke of this chapter, in its entirety! If anyone gives you direct advice about life, including "how to date", then the joke is on you. And it's not a funny joke at all, but a sick joke. It's a sick joke that leaves the pop expert and talk show host laughing all the way to the bank. Each of these occupations cultivates the worst kind of vulture-like predation of any and all who are gullible enough to listen and be taken in. In so doing, these persons commit a act which in some moral philosophies is considered to be among the worst of all sins or evils possible. This is the act of collecting a profit as a result of another person's misfortune.

Why do we put up with this kind of mediocrity in America? Why is it so easy for these smooth operators to have a field day in current society? And why is America so full of eager, willing victims of these pretend-experts?

One primary reason for the success of these shows and "experts" lies in the deteriorated state of America's mental health, as discussed in the first chapter. In a needy and deteriorated state, and deprived of access to adequate mental health resources, the majority of the public turns to the cheap and immediate alternatives: television and pop psychology books. Hungry for any kind of guidance at all, the great masses of the public end up loving anything they get. And since they know little or nothing about legitimate psychology, they are like blank screens in the sense that they will accept uncritically just about anything the pop expert delivers as wisdom.

In addition to being in a state deprived of adequate mental health, the public tends to assume that whatever is reaching their eyes and ears through the media of television, radio, and books must be of high quality. That's what we're used to in America, that we get the best of everything on television and in the media. So the public tends to assume that every "expert" on TV or in book publishing is fully qualified and expert in their fields, "or they wouldn't be on TV or published". This notion is one specific instance of the general belief or myth that "cream rises to the top". This cliché suggests that whoever is "at the top" (most visible) is also the "cream of the crop".

Those familiar with colloquial metaphors will know that it is not always the "cream" that is known to "float to the top". In pop psychology, it is usually the converse. This means that it is frequently the least sophisticated approach marketed by the least qualified persons that end up receiving the most visibility, attention, and popularity.

Why do the worst approaches make it to the top? Clearly, these approaches are only "at the top" in terms of public visibility. It is frequently the case that a pop psychology approach that is widely loved by the public is simultaneously the object of intense rejection and ridicule among professional psychologists and other mental health professionals.

I know that a large number of laypersons maintain the illusion that there are a lot of excellent approaches available in the pop psychology press. They believe that there are great books, great men and great women, great authors, great scientists and theorists. They extol the virtues of their favorite junk psychology author or celebrity in raptured and reverent tones, not realizing for a moment that they have been had! They are a victim of their own ignorance of real psychology, and of their own arrogant and inflated self-image. In this inflated self, they pretend that they have the knowledge and discrimination to tell the difference between the true expert and the charlatan. This, however, is the real issue and problem underlying all the camouflage and subterfuge: that the public is utterly unable to tell the quack from the real expert. That's why America has become the Land of Quacks. We get quacks on TV, quacks setting up their own offices pretending to have licenses to practice, and talk show hosts giving advice to the whole world, and behaving in every other way identical to the quack therapist.

I'm sure that at least some readers would like for me to provide a list of approaches, authors, and titles, and declare which is valid, and who is unqualified, and who is publishing sheer nonsense or trash (from a psychological perspective). However, I am not in the business of naming names (at least not in this book), and so the reader should not waste any time hoping that I'll provide a list of who's who in junk psychology. Nevertheless, plenty can be said without naming names. In current publishing and broadcasting, it is very clear to see that there are no great books for the public in pop psychology, no great authors, no great men or women, no great scientists, and absolutely no great theories at all! The current crop of pop psychology choices are all ridiculous to me, nor have there been any great translators of psychology to the public in the past either. We are all still waiting for the first great book to be written, for some great example of leadership to emerge in popular psychology publishing. But it is certain that it has not happened yet, so all current idols and models may be understood as faulty or false.

So, the reader may ask, does the author imagine that the current work will be that long-awaited, first great book on popular psychology? Hardly. Such an arrogant and grandiose self-expectation would ruin any decent book-writing effort. But I believe that it is correct for me to hope that this book can be a step in the right direction, and also correct for me to make every effort to make it a step in that direction.

When psychologists and other mental health professionals publish for each other, then there are many checks for the quality, accuracy, and appropriateness of what is written and published. In pop psychology publishing, the criterion for what will be published has little or nothing to do with validity, but instead is usually focused on what will sell books.

One result of this situation is that the public never gets exposed to psychology as psychologists see it. All that reaches the public are those titles which appeal to agents and publishers. And while I believe that publishers are probably innocent in their motives for selecting the pop psychology titles they end up publishing, it is very clear that the wrong filters have been in place with regard to pop psychology. The wrong titles have reached the public, and en masse. It would be better for society if pop psychology books sold very little at all, but were known to contain truly helpful and valid information, written by qualified experts. It's time for publishers to focus on the validity of what they're selecting for publication, whether or not the book makes people feel happy or self-justified. My belief is that valid and competently-written books could become popular too, as people begin to experience the benefits that mount up as soon as one turns away from the so-called wisdom of the pop expert.

Having earlier condemned the practice of giving direct advice about dating, I am the last person to try to tell you how to date. I would be guilty of every improper practice I just complained about. I don't know you, and even if I did, I couldn't tell you how to date. I don't think anyone can, reasonably. Those who claim to be able to, I classify across the board as charlatans and impostors.

No one has this kind of knowledge about dating, anywhere. The reason is that it is next to impossible to accurately study certain social phenomena. Dating is one of these social phenomena that is so difficult to study, and for this reason, science can give us very little help with methods for handling contemporary dating dilemmas. However, clinical experience, coupled with a precise analysis of the social and cultural context, can provide some answers about dating that pure science cannot. And so, even if no author can legitimately tell any reader how to date, at least we can say a few things about the social institution called dating. These observations about the institution of dating, though devoid of rules for living or decision-making, nevertheless can inform (and potentially enhance) the process of dating.

Before discussing the social institution called dating, it is worthwhile for us to consider what is meant in general by the concept of a social institution. A social institution is a social structure (such as marriage) which is enduring and stable, and which is participated in by most or all of society. The family, for example, is a social institution which can be analyzed, researched, and studied objectively as an ongoing structural element of society. In making a few observations about the institution of dating, no advice is being suggested to anyone, only ideas.

The most important thing to be said about dating as a social institution, is that dating, as an institution, is bankrupt. By bankrupt, we mean that the value of dating has been exhausted, and that dating simply does not work.

It is important to clarify at this point that dating does not work because it is not supposed to work. In not working, dating is actually achieving its proper outcome. Therefore, anyone who expects dating to work just doesn't understand enough about dating to know what's going on.

I can just hear the objections now! "And just why isn't dating supposed to work?" is certain to be the burning question.

Here's why. Dating is not supposed to work because dating is for teenagers. Dating is not supposed to work because teenagers aren't really supposed to "get together" like adult men and women. So it's great when dating fails for teenagers, because adults really don't want teenagers developing permanent relationships. In failing to promote successful permanent relationships among teens, dating is fulfilling the exact function it needs to fulfill, namely that of preventing teenagers from getting together very successfully.

So when I say that the institution of dating is bankrupt, I am not referring to teenagers or dating among teens. I am saying that dating works perfectly for teenagers, but is a bankrupt institution for adults.

It's often an absurd situation when an adult decides to start "dating". The individual may attempt to live life as if he or she were a teenager again, believing that mature adults can engage in the innocent dating of young people. And there is nothing more ridiculous than an adult man or woman engaging in the atrocious games which are a constant feature of the dating experiences of adolescents. When teenagers play dating games with each other, it is a fascinating and enchanting drama and spectacle. When adults dare to act out these same games of children, however, the result is no longer fascinating, but becomes instead a hideous mockery of adulthood. The whole idea of dating, as it occurs among young people, seems irrelevant to the topic of adult dating.

Many adults have sensed the pointlessness of engaging in an institutionalized activity which doesn't work. For this reason, it became in vogue for a number of years for individuals to declare "I don't date, I just hang out with people", or "I don't date, I have relationships". The whole idea of dating acquired such a toxic undertone that it was widely disavowed for quite a few years. And although the idea of dating is more accepted again now, it is still in vogue for an individual to declare "I don't date". This is most likely to occur when a person reaches an age or feeling of maturity where they wish it to be known that they have abandoned adolescent pursuits and approaches to life and relationships.

I don't want the reader to think that I'm suggesting that it is impossible for adults to have successful relationships. I'm saying that if they try to accomplish this through "dating", and conduct themselves in the process of dating in the way that teenagers do, then they can expect the same results teenagers get from their dating relationships. This means brief, shallow, and frustrating relationships, full of the most ridiculous games and manipulations. If, on the other hand, adults have an expectation that they can have successful relationships, they must first and foremost reject everything they thought they learned about dating during teenage years. It's not that these lessons learned are false; they are valid as long as applied only to teenagers. Advice which may be full of wisdom regarding teenage relationships is very likely to be poisonous as a guide to adult relationships.

Somewhere in this discussion I should acknowledge that there is a second use of the term "dating". In this alternate definition, dating refers not to a process, such as going out on a date, but to a status. When two people are dating, it is a stage or status where the two are seeing each other socially on a regular basis, possibly on an exclusive basis. Nothing I am saying in this book about the process of dating applies to this "status" meaning of the term dating. However, it should be noted that all the same games and interpersonal patterns and dynamics discussed in this book may also occur between people when they are in a status of dating each other.

Another interesting way of characterizing the contemporary dating scene would be to say that we can liken it to a war zone. To say that the arena of dating is a war zone may again sound extreme, but I didn't say it was actually a war. I am very skeptical about theories which suggest that there is (or was) a war between the sexes. I am not saying that one is likely to be attacked while dating, although that can happen. Rather than outright war and aggression, it would be more accurate to say that there exists more of a cold war, or a guerrilla war in progress in the realm of dating. Therefore, the tactics of the aware dater will be the tactics of the guerrilla: relying mostly on intelligence and alertness to the types of dangers to be encountered.

Our war zone analogy makes the most sense when we consider the task of the dater. This task is for the dater to find their way through all the uncountable occasions of hidden danger and difficulty. These situations remind one of a field of hidden land mines, making it difficult for the walker to make a single move in any direction. So, if the field of dating is a mine field, full of concealed dangers to anyone trying to navigate their way through, then the hidden mines are the games people play while dating. The dater must navigate his or her way through the minefield of dating games which barrage anyone who enters the arena of dating.

I know I have begun to use terms, such as games and game playing, without having defined them. Since interpersonal games, especially dating games, are the topic of this book, it's time for a solid definition of the terms and concepts related to game-playing.

A "game" refers to a certain form of interaction which occurs between people. These are referred to as games as a result of certain qualities which these interactions possess. Let's consider the original definition of a game from the originator of the concept, psychiatrist Eric Berne, M.D.

"A game is a series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined, predictable outcome. Descriptively, it is a recurring set of transactions, often repetitious, superficially plausible, with a concealed motivation; or, more colloquially, a series of moves with a snare, or "gimmick". Games are clearly differentiated from (other types of interactions) by two chief characteristics: (1) Their ulterior quality and (2) the payoff. . . Every game. . . is basically dishonest. . ."

Games People Play, 1964.

This definition does not really make anything clear, and tends to raise as many questions as it answers. As we will need a great deal of clarity to understand the many dating games presented throughout the rest of this text, it is necessary to define each of the following terms in detail: transaction, ulterior, complementary, "gimmick", payoff, and dishonest.

A transaction is a special type of interaction. In an interpersonal transaction, just as in a simple business transaction, something is given and something is received. What is given may be very simple. For example, when a person pays a compliment to another, this is a very simple transaction. Person A gives the compliment, while person B accepts the compliment.

A complementary transaction is one in which the behaviors of person A and person B work in harmony together. A complementary transaction is essentially smooth and cooperative, and without the contribution of either one, the entire sequence of behavior falls apart. For example, when person A throws the ball, person B catches it. When John asks Mary for a dinner date, she says "Sure, what time?". If she said "Why are you asking me that?", it would no longer be a complementary transaction. What's important about complementary transactions for the discussion of games is that the contribution and cooperation of both parties is required, or no game occurs. It is clear that while one person may always initiate the game behaviors, a complete game would never be enacted unless the second person does their part. Therefore, both members of a two-person interaction share responsibility for the fact that a game takes place.

Not all complementary transactions would be considered to be games. In fact, most complementary transactions are not games. To be a game, the transaction must first and foremost be ulterior. This means that the transaction is deceptive, and seems to be about one thing when it is secretly about another. A concealed or ulterior motive is the hallmark of a game, and is the most important aspect of the game to illuminate. As soon as the real motive behind the game is brought to light, the "jig is up"; that is, the game has been seen through.

A game then, is an interaction or transaction, with a series of "moves" or characteristic behaviors. While these moves are on the surface explained by some "cover story", they are actually motivated by an unstated, ulterior motive.

This cover story is referred to as the "gimmick". However, many different terms may be used to describe this aspect of a game. Synonyms for "gimmick" include hook, scam, ruse, distraction, diversion, and con, depending on the specific form the behavior takes. Of all these terms, the term "hook" is used most often when analyzing transactions. The hook is the behavior which person A uses to start the game and to draw person B into the game. The person most active in initiating the game may be referred to as the "perpetrator", while the person who responds in the complementary role is referred to as "the victim" or "the patsy".

Also, a game progresses to a well-defined, predictable outcome. This outcome is referred to as the "payoff". This is a somewhat strange term for the results of a game. This so-called payoff occurs in the form of material or emotional "benefits" to the perpetrator and victim. For example, the perpetrator may experience a feeling of satisfaction at seeing the victim feel humiliated. And the victim receives their own version of payoff as well, in the form of painful emotions which are secretly desired.

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