Spring is in the air this sunny March, and with spring comes love, or more accurately, hormones.

The influx of mushy emotions and puppy love that is already cropping up on campus has gotten me thinking, not so much about love but about the awkward back-and-forth we go through in the pursuit of romance.

Men and women’s inability to communicate has been comedy fodder for as long as there’s been comedy. Entire movies and television series are propelled by the failure of two characters to reveal their feelings for each other, and while mixed signals and endless emotional back-and-forths are funny on screen, they make for a not-so-fun time in real life.

I’ve never quite understood the concept of dating. I mean, I understand why people date and what it is to date, but I just don’t understand how men and women interact romantically. It makes no sense to me to spend weeks or months dancing around the issue, dropping hints or trying to interpret imagined signals. I’ve never been a fan of subtext, and it seems to be me that flirting is nothing but subtext.

For instance, when a girl likes a boy, she’s supposed to ignore him, play hard to get. And if a boy likes a girl, he has to wait for the girl to give him some sign that she’s interested, too. But the girl isn’t supposed to make the first move. She can only drop subtle hints that the boy is supposed to pick up on, and so on and so forth. I’m confused just thinking about it.

Wouldn’t it be easier if we all just said what we felt? Granted, I understand that rejection is scary, and that we avoid frankness because that way, we can lessen the sting when our crushes don’t pick up on our signals. But why should rejection be such a bad thing? If we could all simply express ourselves plainly, rejection would become less of a boogey man.

For example, if Boy can go up to Girl and says, “Hey Girl, I think you are cute. Do you want to go out and get to know each other?” and Girl says, “No, thank you, Boy. I’m just not that attracted to you,” they could shake hands and move on. As it is now, we invest so much time and effort into flirting and sexual subterfuge that if and when we are rejected it’s tantamount to the end of the world.

Call me naïve, but I think everyone’s lives would be better if we stopped playing games and talked openly about how we felt. And this philosophy can be applied to other areas of life as well, not just romance. So many things in life would be so much easier if we could talk openly and honestly about how we felt without the cycle of build-ups and deluges that occur so frequently when we subjugate our true desires.

But I know that that simply isn’t going to happen.

In the mean time, happy decoding. I wish you all the best of luck.

Rebekah Locke can be reached at [email protected]