After completing half a semester of a theories-based course that I like to call Computer-Mediated Flirting, I am suddenly an expert at effing up the art of friends with benefits.
*record scratch* Wait, what?
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What kind of university offers classes that prompt their students to analyze the fall-outs of their most unsuccessful dating encounters? Not my university — It’s just that I tend to interpret every lecture in this course as lessons to learn for my, indeed, personal problems.
These words, I assembled especially for you 20-somethings whose eyelashes batter so hard at the sight your more-than-one-night-stand at the bar that you waft out the scent of the perfume you obnoxiously spritzed on your wrists, underarms, hind-ears, and neck.
Whenever that happens, I suggest you control your flirty gaze because the last thing you want is for people to stomp on your $20 falsies that fell off after blinking 20 times per second.
He loves me, he loves me not. You’re a liar if you say you never picked up a flower for the sole purpose of playing that game. What game?
Pick a flower — one that's in full bloom. Each petal represents a 50 percent chance, more or less depending on how many petals the flower has, that the person you feel a little somethin'-somethin' for either would consider exploring a love interest with you or not.
For the first petal you pluck and every other after that, you must recite the phrase, "He loves me..." and for the next, "He loves me not..." and so forth. The idea is that the phrase of the last petal you pluck is the fate of your flirtationship with hypothetical bae.
Yeah, this dumb petal plucking thing is something people really do, more so confide in, when they're too stubborn and ungracious to attend to their friends' blunt advice that "he's just not that into you."
If you ever catch yourself in the act, my hope is that you just really needed something to pluck, with the reason being that you're doing everything you can to resist thinning out your freshly waxed eyebrows more than your brow lady intended to... Not because you're patience in figuring out what exactly you mean to this boy is thinning.
Computer-Mediated Flirting introduced me to the Onion Theory, which breaks down the concept of how relationships develop in stages, where both people engage in greater self-disclosure and acts of intimacy as the relationship progresses from short to long-term.
According to the Onion Theory, the outer protective layer of an onion represents the beginning of a relationship, where both partners only go as far as knowing each other's likes, dislikes, and physical attributes. The inner layers refer to the stages where both partners gain more insight about each other.
From this, I compared the peeling property of an onion to the unchallenging effort it takes to rip a flower petal from its pistil.
