Desire, Ambiguity, and Nintendogs

Or, If He Wanted to, He Would...unless

Over a lunch of bagged salad that may or may not have needed to be part of the listeria recall, I thought about playing mind games.

No one wants to play games. Everyone would say they dislike playing games. Everyone would say they want to be with someone who does not play games, someone who communicates well. (And if you’re a man on Hinge between the ages of 29 and 36, you’ve probably put that you’re a good communicator on your profile.) But…do we?

I’m drawn back to ContraPoints’ Twilight video, specifically about the nature of desire, how part of desire is knowing that what you want is somehow out of reach, and knowing that if you obtained the object of your desire, you wouldn’t feel the enjoyment of satisfaction as deeply as the yearning associated with its absence; desire can never truly be satisfied, it can only be whetted and begotten.

We wish the object of our romantic desire would say what they mean, say what they feel, not lead us on, not play in our faces. We say we’re frustrated by mixed signals. We rehash conversations in the shower to no one trying to find the right way to prompt someone else to say, “When I said I’ve been enjoying hanging out with you, I really mean I want to buy a house and a dog with you and pay off your student loans.”

But we do more than just talk to ourselves in the shower. We craft text messages with friends. We post on forums and make TikTok videos asking someone else for advice. Everyone who is happily partnered gives shit advice and everyone who is not happily partnered also gives shit advice (if their advice worked, they wouldn’t be unhappily partnered or unhappily unpartnered). We make a display of this frustration.

And in the haze of all of this performative frustration, we get a rebuttal, a rallying cry: If He Wanted to He Would. 

I love IHWTHW. It’s so true! If I wanted to run a marathon, I’d curate my life to support my cardio health, I’d google how to decrease my mile time and get better sleep, I’d buy a massive fuck off Garmin watch that tells me my recovery is shit, I would put on my sneakers and run. But I don’t want to run a marathon, so I don’t do any of those things. And if someone isn’t interested in making sure you feel cared for and seen in your interpersonal relationship, they won’t put in effort to do things that make you feel cared for and secure (the experience of someone accidentally doing things that make you feel seen and cared for is a gray area…a plot of land in the kingdom of Mixed Signals but we all secretly like mixed signals so these are categorized neatly, too).

I matched with a guy on Hinge weeks ago—his profile made me laugh and he’s handsome enough that I’d be willing to grab a coffee and walk around in a public place in broad daylight with a stranger. I keep pretending that I’m ready to rip the bandaid off and go on a date (I am not.) He had a one-liner on his profile about soup so I made a comment about that. Slow pitch softball some would say. About a week of back and forth yada yada and he hasn’t asked me out. Hasn’t asked if I have weekend plans. Hasn’t even hinted that I’m anything more than just a Nintendog on his phone.

I am so wound up on “Do I not know the song and dance I’m supposed to engage with on Hinge?” about this whole soup fiasco that I texted my friend to complain.

Here’s how my song and dance goes (in my head): I give a man an opportunity to ask me out. He doesn’t ask me out. I text my friends and say, “I don’t understand why he didn’t ask me out!” My friends say, “He’s stupid. You’re a goddess among women. The sun rises because you wake.” Rinse. Repeat.

But if I genuinely wanted to go out with this guy, if I genuinely wanted to say, “Enough with the soup already!”, I would text him exactly those words. (Or maybe something more polite…idk.) Obviously, I’m annoyed that he’s not making a move. Obviously, I would rather set something up that get an errant message once every couple of days about soup!

…unless I don’t.

Isn’t there an element of play and enrichment in sending a text to your friends where you try and decipher what a romantic interest has said? With your combined mental powers, you will certainly find the hidden meaning behind his use of punctuation (or misuse)! Unless, the ritual isn’t about breaking a cypher. Unless, the pseudo-frustration I feel at not knowing for sure that this guy wants to ask me is more whole, more complete, than getting the thing I desire. Will I feel any satisfaction at being asked for coffee? (Probably just low level anxiety.) And if I go and the date goes well, will that excitement feel more vivid than the frustration from earlier? (Doubtful.)

Do I secretly like the game? Do I secretly prefer spending my time guessing at what other people could mean or might mean or what I hope they mean? Would I really rather spend a million efforts guessing at what someone meant rather than just asking outright? Is this because women say one thing and mean another? Is there a desire to be desired so greatly that someone is willing to patiently unravel your secrets that keeps us all from saying what we mean? That if you build a labyrinth around yourself, only those who are truly worthy will get to the heart of you and all others will get scared off?

Is there not some thrill at texting a third party and saying, “I have no idea how this person feels about me” and giving examples and dissecting? Is the act of revealing and dissecting some attempt to perform being well adjusted? What happens when we give up on revealing and dissecting? What happens if we accept that actions are actions and words are words? Well…then there’s no story to tell.

And what is a story if there is no conflict? No one wants to spend an entire brunch listening to their moon-eyed besties gush about how well they’re treated in their relationship, how spoiled they are. You can be excited during apps or drinks but not an entire brunch. Some envious friend will bemoan, “All the good ones are gone!” and open the doors to dissecting their own woes. Everyone wants to feel like a wordsmith, crafting the perfect response and decisively using two y’s at the end of a ‘hey’ because it shows you’re not too serious. Everyone wants to feel like they’re solving the world's problems with a coffee in one hand and a bacon-egg-and-cheese in the other.

To bring it full circle, please enjoy a quote from a book I thoroughly enjoyed,

She lies in bed and deletes every picture of Moon on her phone. She is sick of looking at these pictures on her way to work, cosseting herself with the prospect of seeing and touching the real thing when she’s back home at night. She recognizes that her frustration with the pictures is actually a pleasure to feel, fortifying as it does the notion of a real thing. But the real thing is not real enough. Moon himself is not real enough. She wants him too much. Her appetite is unnatural. He can’t possibly give more than he already does. Still, she wants everything he isn’t and everything he will never be. How he exists in the negative - she wants this, too. But the contradiction is insurmountable. She can never have it; that’s why she loves it; she loves what she cannot have; but she will die if she cannot have this thing that she loves not being able to have.

And the lyrics to an Olivia Rodrigo song that started a weird fight between me and a friend because I couldn’t understand why he didn’t love this song,

She's got those lips, she's got those hips
The life of every fuckin' party
She's talented, she's good with kids
She even speaks kindly about me, ha-huh
And I know you love me, and I know it's crazy
But every time you call my name, I think you mistake me for her
You both have moved on, you don't even talk
But I can't help it, I got issues, I can't help it, baby
I'm so obsessed with your ex
I know she's been asleep on my side in your bed
And I can feel it
I'm starin' at her like I wanna get hurt
And I remember every detail you have ever told me
So be careful, baby
I'm so obsessed with your ex (ah)
Yeah, I'm so obsessed with your ex (ah)
Is she friends with your friends? Is she good in bed?
Do you think about her? No, I'm fine, it doesn't matter, tell me
Is she easy-going? Never controlling?
Well-traveled? Well-read? Oh god, she makes me so upset