OK, look, sorry, but I'll have to bite back a little here. The way you put it, it sounds like you think I write for show. Excuse the French, but GOD DAMN IT I'm tired of hearing iterations on that theme. I don't write and talk the way I do for show. This is me. This is how I think. This is how I feel. This is what I experience. The fact that you find it well articulated and perhaps even entertaining was, and is, of absolutely no concern to me. To state how my spontaneous experience here is: I try to say something about how I honestly feel, and I'm told to stop acting. Yea, that really leaves me eager to open up to people. It reminds of all the times when I've just given up on social interaction, because people get their panties all in a twist after I use some (in their esteemed opinion) fancy word.

And as for dating being a game. Well, in a certain sense it is, just as with all social interaction or just life in general. There are certain rules, traditions and expectations. If you don't know them, things are objectively more difficult. If you place someone in total isolation for the first twenty years of their life, what emerges will not be a socially functional creature. And one of the things he'll need to learn is: What are the rules? When do you say thank you, in what end of the line should you stand, what is money, when is it appropriate to hug someone, when can you walk up to a person and talk to them, when is it not okay for someone else to touch you. All of these things are an interplay between your personal assessment and the (often unspoken) agreements in society.

I'm not looking for ways to put up an act. I actually resent the accusation that I am. If anything, I'm looking for some understanding for the fact that I feel handicapped in this area and could use a little bit of guidance. Like a lot of people actually do get. Only they are spoiled by not having to think of it as receiving guidance. It's something that becomes very clear when you look at it from the perspective of someone who had to develop coping and survival skills during the years when a lot of other people learned the basics of such things as romance and dating.