A while back, a friend told me of this theory he had on relationships: the “80-20 Rule” he called it. In every potential relationship, according to the theory, each party has to give a certain amount of indication that they wish to pursue something further. And, as with most things dealing with gender, the numbers are not equal. The rule works like this: in a budding courtship, the guy must put forth at least 80 percent of the work. The initiator of dates, the first to call, the one to lean in first for the kiss. The girl picks up the remainder.

“Her 20 percent consists of…what?” I asked. “Picking up the phone when he calls? Just showing up for the date?”

This is where the rule waffles a bit. My friend gave me this example:

If the guy is watching a movie over her house and says “It’s getting late. I should go,” the girl’s 20 percent contribution is saying, “Well, you could stay if you wanted to…”

So, to the best of either my understanding or his explanation, the 20 percent just means she gives the go-ahead for sex. Ah, the male-female riddle—SOLVED!

Now this goes against my own personal rule: “You do all the work, and I might get drunk enough not be weird around you and we’ll hook up.” While, admittedly, this sounds ridiculous, it actually has a pretty good success rate; I’m adorable when I’m drunk. I’m jovial, witty, and a brilliant conversationalist. Never in my life have I been the sloppy emotional mess sobbing in the corner. What can I say? It’s a gift.

But the next morning, I wake up, and my grand carriage of confidence has once again turned into a pumpkin of awkwardness. I could be ecstatic about who I’m laying next to, but I’m so uncomfortable in my own skin I can’t relax and enjoy the warm, sexy breath on my neck. And anyway, I rationalize, the drunk-hook up is in no way an indicator of any feelings other than horniness, right? And even if anything sprouts from the bed of alcohol-induced plowing, in my experience it is fated to end in the manner expected of any seedling that bore life from straight tequila shots.

So should I take heed of my friend’s advice, suck up my Judy Blume self-esteem issues, and start contributing my 20 percent to society? Can the rate of my romantic happiness be exponentially increased by committing to this simple equation?

Or is the 80-20 Rule complete and utter bullshit?

No one ever wrote love math equations. And scientists may study the brain mechanisms that result in feelings of love, but they have yet to organically reproduce it. I wish to God that there was an invariable recipe for finding the person who generates those unique synapse firings, but at the same time am glad there isn’t. For leaving it to chance makes actually finding that remarkable individual such a serendipitous event. Strategically formulating the circumstances in which this happens would be, in a word, deceitful.

The idea of love is not meant to be crammed into a numerical expression. And thus, I should stop trying to assign a valuation to a person’s affection toward me and my reciprocal actions toward him, whoever he may end up to be. The very instance of finding myself in such a situation implies that I must have already beaten some predetermined cosmic odds.

I never was one to follow the rules anyway.

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