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"TOXIC DATING GAMES"
transcript of a lecture by Reginald B. Humphreys, Ph.D.
date given: Oct., 1997
© 1997 Reginald B. Humphreys.
Duplication Prohibited. All Rights Reserved
transcript completed 11/11/97

"Toxic Dating Games"

(7588 words)

As soon as I mention the topic will be dating, I'm sure that some might wonder "what is the relevance of this topic to me?" And so I'd like to start off by discussing who this material is really relevant to. Without a doubt, this information is important for single people who are interested in finding people to have a close personal relationship with. That goes without saying. However, it might be thought that a married person would have no interest in this topic, but we have to remember these days that upwards of fifty percent of all married couples are going to eventually be single again someday. So usually when a divorced person enters the single world, they enter it with even less understanding of the current mechanics of what goes on the dating scene than a person who has been single for a while. For this reason, I think married people are equally interested. Also it is important to acknowledge that the married person often has many single friends who they are trying to help deal with the process of being single and looking for a spouse or a mate. So married persons need to be able to relate to the troubles and difficulties single people are undergoing. The same is true for parents, grandparents, or other relatives who are also trying to help their single relative negotiate this difficult arena of life.

Also at the corporate or business level, I think the topic of dating and difficulties in the single life are extremely important for corporate managers or corporate administrators to be cognizant of. Here is the reason for that: when a corporation or business or large organization really cares about its members it has to become expert in the culture of its employees. The culture of any group of employees will consist of people of only two types; those with a relationship and those without. So the concerned corporate manager will endeavor to be an expert in both single life, that is life without a relationship and all the difficulties attached to that, and then life within a relationship, which includes people in a relationship who are unmarried, people in a relationship who are married, and of course children may be involved in any of these situations. But I think the corporate manager mostly has to be concerned with the difficulties encountered by their employees of adult individuals in their primary relationship. When we talk about the corporate manager or the business owner becoming an expert in the culture of their employees, whether it is in the single life or involved in a relationship life, what we're talking about is managers and administrators who are willing to make adjustments and allowances that help the individual as they struggle through the difficulties involved in their lifestyle, single or partnered.

This philosophy of making adjustments stands against the old traditional corporate philosophy of, "we certainly cannot make any adjustments for someone because they are single, or someone because they're married, or someone because they have children, or someone because they have an ill relative." So the whole idea of being able to retain employees because who have a real identification with their company or their organization is by having an organization that they feel cares about them. We are talking about the manager being able to use the information to make allowances that will assist the single individual in being more well adjusted both at work and in their personal life. There is nothing that is more difficult for a single person to be dealing with some of the periodic difficulties involved in single life and to have a manager become very critical of them right at the same time they are dealing with the other type of stress. This is a sure way to run any valued employee away.

So whatever your perspective; whether you're single, whether you know someone who is single, whether you think you might be single again yourself someday, or whether you have the responsibility as a business leader to carefully and intelligently take into account the needs of a single person, I hope you will consider the information in this book to give you a new perspective on how you could aid in the adjustment of people that you know and value.

Starting off into the area of exploring some contemporary issues in dating life, we have to acknowledge there are many sources available on the market that purport to be able to advise the individual about how they should conduct their single life. And unfortunately, I have to give you the information right now that there are very few sources that are of any high quality whatsoever currently on the market. So this means that most of the advice that people find is either disruptive, destructive, or damaging to the efforts they have been trying to make succeed in their adjustment to single life. This is one of the things that all single people need to know about and to beware of; quick advice and poor advice, which is mostly what is available at this time. One of the following chapters is called, "How to Date." And this chapter title is really a satire, because realistically nobody can tell you how to date. And I certainly do not propose to tell you how to do that. Really the only thing a person can know that can help them is to have a good understanding of the phenomena of dating life. This phenomena of dating life in the 1990's is extremely complex and much more difficult to comprehend than similar phenomena that have occurred in prior eras.

The most offensive advice that you find in popular sources these days are sources that give direct advice to the individual regarding how they should manage their relationship. For example some sources will suggest that a person should immediately end a relationship if certain events are going on, or if they notice certain attitudes or characteristics of behaviors that are part of their partner. Truly, no one can tell you to end a relationship, or for that matter, tell you to start a relationship with a given person. The single individual has to live with all the repercussions of such a decision. So no one should take it upon himself or herself to be able to tell a single person what to do. This is one of the worst things that can happen; not only in the pop psychology literature, but this is something that friends, relatives, and associates are very quick to do; to give advice regarding how events should happen in single life, how these events should be understood and interpreted, and how these events should be dealt with. So what I will present instead is a compendium of a variety of types of situations that may be occurring for an individual. This is something that each single person or each interested person can learn about and be on the lookout for whenever they're evaluating a particular situation.

Having gotten out the way the idea that I'm going to tell you how to date or give you principles for how to date, what I am going to cover is the phenomenology of the dating landscape. What we would have to say about the dating landscape at this time is that we could liken it to a jungle. It's a jungle out there. Imagine if you were to make a journey to some tropical area and visit the jungle and you didn't know anything about what was in a jungle, what would be the most valuable piece of information that you could have? Obviously it would be good to have a list of all the different animals you would find and what they were like and what the dangers might be if you were associated or came into contact with these animals. This is my approach: it's a jungle out there in the dating world. There are many different types of toxic situations that may occur and that need to be understood in advance and then avoided. So really this is a road map of the jungle of single life.

In order to understand what is going on in the 1990's, we have to acknowledge that we've come a long way since the 60's. We need to review some of the games that were common in the 60's because these still survive in a somewhat modified form into the 90's. This is a big problem for people who did not grow up in the 60's but are experiencing their single days in the 80's or 90's is that they go through often some of the same toxic situations that people understood in the 60's, that were known about and discussed socially, colloquially and informally, and yet have not been passed down through any written or verbal lore since that time. We can call these the lost lessons of the 60's. There are plenty of these to learn about in regard to dating.

Before we go into the lost lessons, I'd like to make reference to what I call the first dating game. You might thing I will refer to some kind of cave-man scenario. We could imagine possibly the first relationship game that occurred when the caveman would have to say to his cavewoman wife, "I don't feel life clubbing you over the head tonight." And if his wife should complain, then he would say, "Maybe there's something wrong with my club, I don't know." And of course the real problem is he's been clubbing the cave woman on the mountain next door. So all kinds of deception are involved in dating games and certainly games are as old as the history of mankind itself. But truly the modern history of dating games begins in the early 60's with a psychiatrist named Eric Berne, M.D. Eric Berne defined a special kind of transaction that humans engage in that he called games. So we're using his definition of games and then expanding upon that greatly. Much of what Berne developed in his theory, which he called "transactional analysis," does not survive very much into the 90's. However, the concept of games is still extremely useful and has survived quite well.

For those of you who are familiar with these ideas, we could even say that talking about games constitutes an interactional macrolanguage. That is, it gives us special ability to be able to understand games. We have to understand that there are several basic elements to any game. These include the person running the game and then the victim, or the "patsy," as Berne referred to him. There is also the lure that the person uses in order to get the victim interested or involved in playing the game. The lure is usually referred to as the "hook." Also there is the "payoff" which is the desired result. Now for Berne the payoff would always be some kind of specific advantage or benefit that the individual playing the game or running the game was said to have.

In the 90's what we can add to his idea of the payoff is the idea that the result of games is toxicity. Toxicity can occur in a number of ways. But usually it occurs in the form of emotional pain of one kind or another experienced by the victim or the patsy. So as long as we're going to say that the person affected by the game is a patsy, we need to recognize that the person running the game should be referred to as a perpetrator. The whole idea that games are a type of interpersonal abuse falls right in with these concepts. While it may not be the same kind of abuse as physical abuse or sexual abuse as we understand it, still these are subtle forms of emotional abuse that have a definite toxic reaction on the individual. Of course these types of events absolutely prevent effective relating and effective relationships. Whenever these situations pop up in a relationship, it is clear the person has to do something either to extricate themselves from the game, or to bring the game to an end somehow, or to extricate themselves from the relationship itself, and seek a new relationship that could be game-free.

GAMES OF THE 60's
Understanding these basic concepts of game, we're ready to talk about the games of the 60's. The games of the 60's were very very interesting. Even teenagers in the 60's understood the idea of "he's using you" or "she's using you." So we can think of this as the most basic form of game. Even school children still refer to this idea. And what does it mean? How does it make sense that one person can "use" another? When we talk about adult relationships, you might be able to make statements such as the following; "she is only dating him because she doesn't have anyone she really likes right now and she wants to have company. And as soon as she finds someone else then she won't be involved with him anymore." So that would be a type of exploitation game where a person is being used in the sense that they're having a relationship, but the person involved really does not care for them as the same way as the victim. So various kinds of abuse can go on, and certainly I'll be using examples within all these games that involve both men and women. I don't mean to imply that either men or women engage in games more than the other. I will suggest, however, there are some types of games that are used more frequently by women, and other types of games used more frequently by men. When we think about teenagers, we can say, "well, what could teenagers really use each other for?" "She's using him in order to get him to buy her a malted milk at the burger shop." There's really nothing wrong with that kind of use of a friendship. Nothing we could object to at all in any way. So we're really not referring to that sort of thing. We're referring to situations where people devote long periods of time, lots of emotional energy and resources through relationship situations that they hope will have positive outcomes that will end in some kind of permanency. So when one person is in a relationship for permanency, and the other is the relationship for some kind of exploitation, then that is definitely a type of game where we could say that one person is using the other. I think that is really the prototype of all games.

AUTHORITY GAMES
We could go on to considering a game from the 60's. The type of games that were so common in society at that time were authority games and establishment games. That's what the 60's were all about. There was a great uprising among people in general against unfair practices of what they call the establishment. Well, who is the establishment? In terms from the 60's, and really the term still means the same thing today, people in the establishment are those who have vested authority and vested power, and who also have some control over things. Now in the 60's, American society was much more authority based than it is today. That's one reason the cultural revolution of the 60's happened was because society in general could no longer tolerate that kind of authoritarian control of individuals. So authority games and establishment games were some of the first to be addressed, and confronted, and attacked. We could reasonably ask what's the point of establishment and authority games when it comes to dating? The point is, consider if you are a business executive, and you're busy all day long using authority and wielding power, what happens when you go home to your spouse? At that point do you become placid and serene and emotionally connected? No. People who play authority, control, and power games at work do the same thing in their own relationships when they come home. It's very important that we understand even if severe authority and control games have been minimized in the workplace, or at least in many workplace settings, individuals may still be attached to these styles and may still engage in these forms of interaction when they're at home and when they're in their relationship.

Why would a person stay in an authority relationship where they were one down, where they were subservient to the power and control and authority of the another person? Well, we can't give one blanket answer of why this would be true. But there are so many different reasons, we should list at least a few. Financial dependence could be one reason why an individual would tolerate authority and control that feels very unpleasant or toxic to them. You could ask what is a young mother to say if she has several young children and if she doesn't enjoy the management style or the level of authority used by her employer? She's more likely to decide to act in favor of the best interest of herself and her children and tolerate that kind of interaction even though it doesn't feel good to her, and even though she knows it's wrong. The same holds true for a personal relationship. If a man or a woman feels financially dependent on each other, then they may continue the relationship where all kinds of abuses are taking place.

It doesn't take very much reasoning to figure it's not just financial dependency that can lead a person to tolerate things that they shouldn't. There is also emotional dependence. If one person is much more emotionally dependent than the other, or even just much more emotionally involved than the other, that is more in love than the other person, then this could be a situation where the other individual can use that difference as leverage, as power, and as advantage in order to achieve whatever games they may have in the relationship. So we have to look out for all forms of power, authority, and control as they occur in the relationship. Because the one thing we can say for sure about this is that these games are toxic and destructive to a relationship; however they turn out.

OPEN RELATIONSHIP
Another kind of game that was engaged in in the 60's was called "open relationship." Open relationship refers to a situation where instead of a commitment between two people would be in place, then a relationship would be open to multiple partners. Now what was learned in the 60's is that these types of relationships, for the most part, just don't work. While certainly friendships of all kinds can be had simultaneously and concurrently, having multiple intimate relationships at the same time has never really worked towards a successful marriage. And I know there are a great many factions of society who would like to advertise the idea that open relationships are possible, that open relationships work, that partners can have multiple sexual partners without interfering with the quality of their marriage. I think all of these ideas are patently false. What we have to recognize is the kind of marriage these individuals have is on a different level than the kind of monogamous committed relationships in marriage that most people are working toward and desire. The whole idea that open relationship can work is really a game. If you study couples, you'll usually find out that one person is the instigator and the other person is almost dragged into the open relationship scenario. When I've worked in therapy with couples in these situations, usually one partner does not want to be involved in the open relationship and has always hoped that the other partner would give up interest in such activity.

SUBSTANCE-RELATED GAMES
Another common type of game from the 60's involved the use of substances. And, of course, alcohol had been around endlessly before the 60's. Yet with the cultural revolution of the 60's we saw individuals in society attempting to use a wide variety of substances; drugs to alter their mind, to alter their consciousness. The kind of dating games that accompanied this usually were sort of entrancement or entrapment sorts of games such as, "if you take this drug with me, you're going to experience an emotional feeling that will be beyond anything you have ever felt and it will make you happy and it will make us happy together in this relationship." Promises that drugs can bring enhanced living, enhanced relationships, enhanced feeling, and enhanced functioning all around, was a game run in relationships usually by one person who would be a dedicated drug used, and another person who generally would be drawn into it also reluctantly. The lost lesson of the 60's from this game is that drugs do not provide any real enhancement to functioning or relationships. Even though these games still happen with a great deal of frequency today. And the drugs today in the 90's are much more dangerous than the drugs that circulated commonly in the 60's.

RAP GAMES
Another type of game we could call a "rap game". In the 60's, the term rap was invented and it doesn't refer to the type of rap music that is so popular these days. But it refers instead to talking. At that time, people had rap groups. These groups evolved from what were previously called conscious-raising groups where people got together and worked on current issues, current feelings, and awarenesses that attempted to enhance their own awareness and understanding. These evolved, or devolved possibly, into rap games where people would just sit around and talk or rap about what was going on. While there doesn't seem anything obviously toxic about rap games on the outset, what we would have to add is that often these situations are used to persuade or convince individuals in the rap situation to embrace a variety of ideas which could be destructive. The intensity of the rap situation and the rap group would lead people to be able to have tremendous amounts of influence over others. How do you resist six or seven other people who are all telling you you should change your way of thinking and get with the correct way of looking at a situation. So you can see easily that any kind of situation like that can be perverted into inappropriate goals and inappropriate messages. So many things were said in the 60's. Let me give you one example of a bad idea, a toxic idea, that evolved out of rap games. One of these is the idea that you really can't help a person with a problem unless you have "been there" yourself. Under this philosophy, any physician who wanted to treat heroin addicts would have to first become a heroin addict. Any physician who wanted to treat AIDs patients would first have to contract AIDS. Obviously we can see that this reasoning is totally faulty. In addition to that, it could be perverted in an infinity of different variations. So the lessons from the 60's that we ought to derive and rescue from that time is that we have to be very careful what we listen to from other people. We have to be careful who we listen to. We ought to be very skeptical about accepting ideas that may not really be good for us and may not help us with our relationships.

THERAPY GAMES
Another type of game that evolved from that time we could call "therapy games." And here we're referring to psychotherapy. There are an awful lot of things that happened during that time that made the public in general much more aware of therapy, much more aware of the benefits that could be derived from it, and much more open to talking about things in therapy. Unfortunately, many competing groups began to evolve at that time that would compete with the therapy market, that is with clinicians and psychologists and counselors who were legitimately trained at providing therapy services. But plenty of therapist wanna-be's began to spring up. Various kinds of self-help groups began to spring up and these groups, in addition to spreading ideas such as the one already mentioned that you have to have done it yourself in order to be able to understand it, or other ideas that began to be spread throughout the general public at a very rapid rate. For example, the whole idea that alcoholism and the idea of enabling the alcoholic emerged out of the support groups of that time. While these ideas may seem to be extremely helpful and quite valuable in understanding situations with alcoholism, we also have to be aware that any idea that is not accompanied by scientific research eventually is not going to be helpful. In the name of therapy, many ideas have reached the public that the public thinks come from psychology and from psychiatry and from therapy, which really just come from groups of independent individuals who have an agenda; which is to promote their own preferred philosophy and approach.

MODERN DATING GAMES
Having reviewed briefly those games from the past, we can move on to contemporary games. What we have to say about contemporary games is that they are much more toxic than the games of the past. With the passing of another thirty years, it has been a situation where every type of game that existed could be developed and elaborated until it became much more damaging and much more toxic than before. And now there is such a wide variety of games in existence, it would be virtually impossible for any single person to have a sense of what these would be and how to recognize them.

TIME GAMES
I think the basic type of game to understand within the 90's, I would call "time games." Time games involve the abuse of the other person's time, presumably in developing a relationship, but actually the deception is going on for some other purpose; not to develop a relationship. Let me give you an example. The first game that we could talk about in this group I call "call me." This is a message that a man may give to a woman or a woman may give to a man inviting the other to call them, set up a social engagement, have a date, spend some time together. You might ask "what could be a game about that?"  That would seem like a happy message for an individual to receive. Of course, the person who receives that message is quite happy when they're told, "call me", and then proceeds to call the person and probably set up a social engagement. At that point the person may begin to discover that a game is actually being run. For example, they may not be able to reach the person. They may find out they've been given a false phone number. Or they may call, find an answering machine, leave  messages repeatedly without ever receiving a call back. If they do reach the person in question they are likely to get a message of the following kind; "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm just running out the door. I'll call you back." And of course the call back never happens. So you can see the initial invitation to "call me" was not sincere at all. But why was it done? We'll have to study that question of why a person would be motivated to just lead another person on in this way..

MEET MY SCHEDULE
A similar type of situation would be called, "I'm busy." Or a second name for this game might be "Meet my Schedule." Think of how busy we all are in modern life. So many people pack so many activities into every week that it may leave no time for reflection or analysis or introspection at all. It is only through reflection and introspection that one can discover these types of games. So when a person says "I'm busy, talk to my secretary instead; talk to my answering machine, talk to anybody but me," then the idea communicated is, "you are less important than all the other activities that I have in my schedule." The person who is saying, "I'm busy" may be trying to reserve space in the other person's value system. They may want the other person to desire them, value them, to want to spend time with them. And yet, without ever wanting to really reciprocate. That is, the person wants the gratification of knowing that another person wants to be with them. So they will do anything they can to encourage feelings on the part of the other person without ever having the intention of reciprocating. So this type of game is pure deception. It is done just to feed the ego needs of the person running the game. So all of these games, "Talk to my Answering Machine," "Talk to my Secretary," "I'm Busy," "Meet my Schedule," "Call Me;" all of these are ways a person's time can be abused.

So what's so wrong with that? What's wrong with keeping another person waiting? Why is the abuse of time so abusive? Well, we have to know a little bit about individual psychology and also about the human nervous system to understand this. So we do know that in the time that a person is waiting for what they thought was going to be a joyous meeting or a fun date, that something else begins to happen in the nervous system. That fun and excitement begins to turn into something that no longer feels pleasant and actually begins to feel painful. It may feel painful at a body level, it may feel painful at an emotional level, and it may also hurt the person's general attitude toward life and dating. So if you think about it, every time or situation that you encounter a game that is toxic, it may lead you to decide that you don't want to be involved in dating anymore. And this is an attitude that you see quite prevalent in our society right now; for an individual to say, "I don't have a relationship and I don't want one. It's just too difficult and there are too many toxicities involved." But also you have to realize that at the nervous system level, negative things are going on which can permanently hurt the individual. So it's important to avoid toxicity. The idea of, "I can endure a toxic situation for days, weeks, or months, if it leads to the eventual goal that I had in mind," is patently false, because the person's body and mind are deteriorating as long as they continue to wait in the midst of this feeling of toxicity.

FADE OUT
Another interesting current game is "Fade Out." And fade out is an interesting phenomena that happens when two individuals have been seeing each other, possibly dating, and then suddenly one discontinues the process. Usually there is no explanation at all. Phone calls that were formerly returned suddenly stop being returned. Communication is shut off. So I often say to my own patients that the most common experience of the single individual in today's society is to have a first date, or several very pleasant dates with a person, and then never hear from them again, and never know why. This is so frustrating, to have this sense of incompleteness. At least if a relationship fails, you might know it is because of some specific incompatibility that has been identified. But for opportunities to be lost without any understanding about why they have been lost, this is something that is very confusing and very toxic to everyone who experiences this. One of the conclusions that I think individuals can draw in a situation of fade out is that the individual who disappeared probably was not being honest about one or more things. So whenever a person has a lot to hide, they probably will not be forthcoming with an explanation. So fade out is really the only option available to them because if they remain connected then the truth may become known eventually. What that truth is varies. It could be that the person is married, or that they have another relationship already in progress, or that they have some kind of disease they haven't disclosed, or some other situation that they weren't able to bring forward. So I think whenever a person is in mourning over having seen their relationship, or a possible relationship, fade out it really is unwarranted because usually those relationships had nothing in them that was going to be good for the person in the first place.

MEET MY ROOMMATE
Another interesting game that is quite common we could call "Meet my Roommate." And it is common for adults to have roommates to share apartments, share houses, to share various kinds of property, and yet the existence of a roommate can make dating extraordinarily difficult. For example, what happens between a man and a woman in a dating situation is really their private business. If they choose to talk to others about it, then that's one thing, but when a roommate is present, they automatically know anything that is going on. So this is just too much exposure to allow any relationship to work. I'm not saying that no one has ever developed a successful relationship while having a roommate, but it certainly works very much against it. The game that is run is that if the person entering the relationship or dating situation with a person who has a roommate feels some sense of invaded privacy, then the game that is run on them at that point is that they are just inventing problems, or that they're unduly uptight without cause, or various other ways of insulting or putting the person down rather than acknowledging that they have a real issue or consideration to identify. So the real problem with roommates can be quite extreme and certainly I advise people in the psychotherapy situation that their life could be better relationship-wise as soon as they're able to live on their own successfully.

I'M GETTING BACK TOGETHER WITH MY EX
Another interesting game that occurs is when one person tells the other, "We'll have to stop dating because my ex-boyfriend, or my ex-girlfriend, and I are getting back together. This isn't always a game. This does happen sometimes. But of course it is a statement used by one person to get rid of the other person, to get them out of the relationship. How can a single person know the difference between a situation where they're being told their partner is getting back with their ex legitimately, and when that is just a manipulation or a game? Here is the difference: if a person is re-establishing a former relationship, that still leaves them available for a social relationship, a friendship, another kind of relating. The person who is really getting back with their ex is likely to be interested in having ongoing friendships to some degree. They may not be as close as before, but they can still have a social relationship, which is important for any friendship to survive. However, if the person suddenly re-establishes an old relationship, and then vanishes and loses contact, that is the cue which should alert the individual that it is likely to be a misleading or false story. That is, it was just a convenience excuse for the person to dodge out of the relationship when they had some other reasons that were much less acceptable than "getting back together with their old girlfriend or boyfriend."

GAMES OF THE PERSONAL ADS
One of the most prevalent kinds of games occurring in society today has to do with personal ads as found in newspaper advertising, or personal romance ads, and special publications, and the Internet.  How are these games? This is a situation where usually what you see is not what you get. Usually what the person is advertising is how they see themselves in their own eyes. As much as we like to think that we see ourselves in objective ways, it is nevertheless true that many people have no idea how they come across to others. They have very limited self-awareness. So often, what people say they are asking for or what they say they can provide when they write a personal ad, is not really what they can provide at all. They might misrepresent their age, their height, their weight, their attractiveness, their education, their income, their interests; anything that they think might encourage the would be relationship candidate to become interested in them. Other aspects of toxicity found in personal ads include ways in which individuals will campaign for their personal philosophy of dating. In doing this, they will actually be making social statements. It's really the first time that individuals can write brief newspaper ads where they could campaign for their personal philosophy and put down everyone else who does not agree with that at the same time. For example one thing that might be found in a certain personal ad would be, "no couch potatoes." In this type of statement the individual is basically slandering and generally putting down as intensely as they can anyone who enjoys television and video. There is no research established that people who enjoy television and video are less desirable in relationship than people who do not enjoy it. In fact, the contrary may be true. A person who never uses television and video resources is probably failing to expose themselves to critical information that they need to function successfully. But nevertheless, putting down others who watch TV, putting down others who either go to or don't go to professional football games, who either like a certain type of ethnic food or don't like a certain type of ethnic food, who like a certain type of ethic music or don't like a certain type of ethnic music, etc; the list just goes on endlessly. But I think that is the first way to identify a toxic person in a romance ad, by asking the question are they putting anyone down in the ad, are they honestly stating who they are and what they want, or are they just trying to campaign for some personal or social philosophy? I think any person who is interested in pursuing personal ads will learn that they can detect all of the obviously toxic persons right away.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN SYNDROME
One very interesting variation on games I call "the Most Beautiful Woman Syndrome". This is really an aggregation of games or collection of games. We could say the most beautiful woman or the woman with the most beautiful woman syndrome really is playing many many games at once. Let me describe this kind of pattern to you. A woman with this syndrome is the kind of person who has an endless supply of interested men, and endless supply of suitors, and endless supply of offered dates, offered social events. So this is really a person who always has something to do, who never really has to go with any free time and is always in the position of turning down new dates because they're already busy; or canceling dates already made because they get a better offer. So this is the thing that you see most often is that a person will cancel a social engagement if they get an offer from someone offering to take them to a more interesting place or if the person is more interesting to them. Women with the most beautiful woman syndrome feel absolutely no obligation to conduct themselves with consideration for the men that they pursue. They may not return phone calls, they may not show up for a date actually planned and committed to, and they may interrupt dates to go off on another different date after only half an hour has passed. All the different things that can happen here can be very very staggering for a man who has never really dealt with this kind of rapport. So it's important to understand when a woman has become "too privileged" by the honor being the interest of every man that she encounters. Being one of the men on the list of a woman with the most beautiful woman syndrome is very very toxic. The game that is being played is that none of the men are likely ever to have a relationship with the woman who is running this kind of game. Really there is no future with a woman with the most beautiful woman syndrome because of course at any time she may meet another man who can provide more to her. So the commitment may end immediately.

THE INTIMACY PHOBIA SYNDROME
I don't want it to seem like I'm talking exclusively about women. I think men certainly play a great many games in dating. But I would characterize men's games as mostly falling along the dimension of what I call "Intimacy Phobia." We have a tremendous myth in society these days that men can't commit, or that people can't commit. So the idea is that men have commitment phobia. I really don't think that's true at all. I think that what men have, and often women have as well, is intimacy phobia. What this means is not a fear of sexuality, but a fear of becoming emotionally close. People can become sexually close really just in a single day if so choose. But to become emotionally close takes a lot more time, a lot of extended time with the couple being together. This is men often will fall and find much more interesting activities with their work, or hanging around with the boys, or athleticism, or spectator sports, or a wide variety of distractions. But really these things are not actually more important, it's just that the man has to get away from any situation that stirs up their closeness fears. So the woman who says, "I really would like to have a permanent relationship with Mr. X, but he just has commitment phobia;" I think this always a situation where the woman hasn't realize that she is not at all really close to the man. She may think she wants to marry him, but the truth is if she did, she would marry a man who would not be close to her at all. The problem with intimacy phobia I think is the most rampant and epidemic problem in relationship in our current society. Usually when a woman continues to pursue a man who has intimacy fears it's often true that she also has trouble with intimacy herself, and she does not know what really constitutes true closeness and she's not aware that she has chosen a man who is not capable of true closeness, as she herself may be. So I think it important for all of us in society to get away from the myth of commitment phobia and see what is really happening; it's getting harder and harder to achieve authentic closeness in relationships in today's society.

That's all the games I'll be covering in this recording, but I'd like to mention a general philosophy of games which is there are several things one can do when encountering a game in the dating situation. One is to play another game back. So this is one approach that many men and women take. They say, "I can identify that my dating partner is playing this kind of game with me, so I will counter with a game of my own and I will beat them at their own game." And of course this is very exciting and seductive to people who are drawn irresistibly to competition. But you have to realize that if you were to succeed and obtain a relationship with a person who is playing very heavy games with you, then you would be likely to have a relationship that would be filled with games, or a marriage that would be filled with toxic games. So even if you can beat a person at their own game, what you get as a reward is really not worth anything in the relationship sense.

BECOMING GAME-FREE
So the idea is to play or not to play? Should you play back or should you do everything you can to de-emphasize games and try to prevent games and to avoid people who are game players. And I think that is the main thing that takes us back to our jungle analogy. You don't decide to walk up to the tiger and try to persuade him to become gentle. You just go the other way. And so, with long term game players who have had toxic games in their relationships for many years, you're not likely to be able to change that person. So the only thing to do is to walk away and try to develop an authentic relationship with a person who is not so oriented towards game playing. So the goal of creating authentic game-free relationships is what I'm promoting throughout all the comments I've made during this talk. I hope you will all consider that if your relationships have games in them, then they're much less than what they could be."

End of transcript.

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