Then again, even if you're not in a relationship, is there really a way to avoid the games? I don't think so. I have discovered that both men and women act like any kind of relationship, be it friendly, romantic, lustful or just a crush, is a game with rules, ambiguities, penalties, winners and losers.

I'm guilty of it too. It is especially bad when you have a crush. The game is called obsession -- not necessarily obsession with the object of your affection, but obsession with analyzing the situation.

Oh, you scoff at me, saying, "That's not me, I don't obsess," but step back and think about it. How many times have you saved an IM conversation with someone you had a thing for just so all your friends could read over it and try and figure out the meaning that was supposedly hidden between the lines of poorly punctuated text? How many times have you copied and pasted a conversation into another IM conversation for the same reason? Oh, the joys of IM.

The same thing goes for e-mail. I know people who have taken days to write an e-mail to someone they just hooked up with or someone they have a crush on because they want to get everything just right so as not to give that certain someone the "wrong impression." Just what is the wrong impression? I know people who have written e-mails to someone who they are interested in, but they don't want to come off too interested.

What's the point? I like you, but I don't want you to know I like you, because if you don't like me, then I don't want to seem like I like you. Is it just me, or is this line of thought completely ridiculous? Is it just me, or do people do this all the time?

What about this university makes us act this way? Is it fear of rejection? Is it the drive for perfection? Maybe we're just all insane. In fact, I think that's very likely.

This obsessive impulse isn't just related to technological advances, either. I've spent many a Saturday morning with friends discussing the events of Friday night, analyzing every drunken flirtation, bump and grind on the dance floor and drunken profession of love.

It doesn't just happen on Fridays either. Any day of the week, you can sit in Benson and listen to people talking about how they made eye contact with the hot girl in bio for a whole ten seconds.

Oh yes, you read that correctly. Guys get just as obsessed with this kind of thing as girls. I've counseled plenty of guys on the inner workings of the female mind, and let me tell you, they're just as confused as we are. I once had one of my friends recount an entire evening with a girl he liked, just to see if what she said and did that evening meant that she had a thing for him. Apparently she was really hot and he wanted to make sure that she liked him before he made a move. Ha. That relationship was doomed before it started. No, really, they didn't make it past that first date function.

We all try to avoid games, but it seems to me that in order to avoid games, we're creating new ones that are even worse than the ones we're trying to avoid! By playing these games, we're not just missing out on "relationship games," we're also missing out on the perks of being in a relationship.

Why play the games when we could be in the game? Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Don't fall into the trap of hiding what you feel behind a mask of insecurity.

If we all followed this advice, then we wouldn't have to feel the need to play these obsessive analysis games. Then we could just play the "I'm not jealous, but I'll beat up any guy who looks at you" game. Wouldn't that be fun?