It’s all the game of love
The ladder tells all.
David Peaden, junior in accounting and economics, says the process of dating girls can be troublesome, unpredictable and frightening, but the ladies are generally worth it.
Peaden said he is getting tired of the drama in college relationships and unnecessary dating games that go on.
“Guys and girls see relationships in completely different ways,” Peaden said, “but everybody needs to experience a little dating ‘pit of despair’ before they make it to the ultimate goal of marriage.”
Peaden said instantly in some relationships, one or both parties start over-
analyzing every little thing – jumping through mental hoops trying to figure out what the other is thinking.
Peaden and his roommate, jokingly called the Love Gurus by friends, created a theory they call the ladder theory that explains the different ways relationships are viewed.
Males are climbers and females are the ladders in this fascinating view of relationships.
Guys just believe in climbing, he said, while girls are a little more discerning.
“For a guy, up is good,” Peaden said. “The guys see ladders as strictly vertical, but what some guys don’t know is that girls have two ladders – one for courtship and the other for friendship.”
Peaden’s theory claims girls are going to relegate guys to be friends or romantics, so the guy needs to do something to let her know which ladder he wants to climb.
“Dating and ladder climbing is a hard enough process as it is,” said Kyle Griffin, Peaden’s roommate. “Why make it more difficult by playing head games with someone?”
Griffin, junior in international business, said, “Dating mind games are manipulative and break the barrier of trust immediately.”
Peaden and Griffin both agree guys need some sort of obvious signal that the girl is interested, which they call the law of reciprocation.
This law, the Love Gurus say, includes breaking the touch barrier, sending a flirtatious text or giving a sincere hug and “Thank you” at the end of a date.
Girls need to express whether or not they are attracted to the guy, Griffin said, so when they play games like “hard to get” sometimes the guy just finds the girl too “hard to understand.”
“Dating is integral to the ladder theory,” Peaden said. “If a guy does not ask a girl out, then he will never be able to climb her ladder, which means no golden rung (marriage) for him.”
Rachelle Cazier, 19-year-old sophomore in elementary education, said the “golden rung” is a lot more fun to reach when mind games are not involved. Cazier said women need to stop playing games and get off the emotional roller coaster.
“My brother-in-law loves my sister so much because she was the first girl he dated that didn’t try to get inside his head,” Cazier said. “He almost didn’t know how to react to a girl that didn’t play games or try to make him jealous.”
Cazier believes that once a guy does not have to worry about being a player in a mind game, he can devote more time to the girl and the actual relationship.
However, there are those who believe games are healthy for a relationship.
Clay Bingham, freshman in biology, believes games are beneficial because he said he can learn a lot about a girl and she can learn more about him without actually having to sit down and talk about each other’s personalities.
Bingham said he is very familiar with dating games and he has even dated some girls that do not have enough brainpower to even begin to play a mind game.
“I’ve tried to send breakup signals before and they didn’t take,” Bingham said. “I was the player and sometimes the girls just don’t get it.”
For more information about the ladder theory, visit http://cc.usu.edu/~dpeaden/ladderstheory.htm.
– courtney.schoen@aggiemail.usu.edu
MEN’S LADDER:
The men’s ladder represents the way men see relationships. The ladder represents a relationship. When a man meets women that he is interested in then he begins to “climb” the ladder. If he decides that he is no longer interested then he simply climbs back down the ladder. He then can ascend other ladders he has more interest in.
However, the man ladder theory is virtually useless to women, because it isn’t the way that women see ladders.
WOMEN’S LADDER:
As men look at the women’s ladder they see it is much different than the men’s ladder. As they begin to climb the women’s ladder they simply go up.
However, soon the women relate men to one side or the other of the ladder. One side is the friend side, the other is romance. Therefore men must be wise to assure themselves that they relate them to the side they desire. If men end up on the side they don’t desire, they must make a dangerous jump. This is because there is no climbing down the women’s ladder, there is only climbing up. If men are on the friend side and wish to move to the romance side they must make the dangerous “jump” over the pit of despair.
Likewise, if men are on the romance side but have decided they don’t want to be then they must either jump in the pit of despair or make “the leap” to the friend side.