Rules of trespassing

There are so many unspoken rules in the land of dating. Rules that everyone seems to know instinctively and try to follow. One sign in particular interests me very much — no trespassing.

Some would argue that people can't help who they like. Yet we walk around gingerly, trying not to step on toes or hurt feelings. This is because, like it or not, there are certain people who are off-limits. Certain people have to stay in a romantic no-man's land for society to keep functioning. We can't play the dating game like it's every man for himself. We must play by the rules.

Rule number one — Don't go after the same person that your best friend is after. Let's face it. People are territorial. When it comes to relationships, we get upset about things before we even have the right to be. There were two boys in my fifth grade class who had a crush on me and they had been best friends for years. Every day, they fought over which one of them could sit next to me at the lunch table and which one of them could hit me harder on the playground.

The attention was fun for awhile, I suppose, but things gradually became gruesome. One day after school, one of them called my house and asked me if I wanted to go see "Home Alone" with him in the theater that Friday. I said OK. I didn't like either one of the boys, mind you, but I really wanted to see "Home Alone." Ten minutes later, I kid you not, the other boy called and asked the same question. I told him I already was going with his friend.

Well, the next morning they got in a huge fight out by the bus ramp and I started crying. Both boys were sent to the principal's office and they never spoke to each other again. And you know what? I still feel guilty, even though it wasn't my fault, and even though I had no way of knowing that the dating

rules were already in effect. In fifth grade, I still thought boys had "cooties." Those guys should have known not to pursue the same girl. Breaking that rule put them in conflict with each other and it put me in a very weird predicament.

Rule number two — Don't date your best friend's ex. Talk about potential for ugliness. Things can only get weirder and weirder between the two of you and you will begin to resent the person you are dating for being the source of the weirdness between you and your friend.

True, sometimes the weirdness can be minimized, say, by talking it over with your friend before you move in for the kill. Senior Hunter Christy dated his best friend's ex-girlfriend, but only after he spoke to the guy about it. "My friend was actually like, ‘I feel a lot better knowing. Hearing it from you, it's a lot easier to take and understand than just seeing little flirtations and assuming things,'" he said. But Christy got it pretty easy. People aren't always so straightforward or so understanding about this sort of thing.

"The talk" can be a tricky one. Gauging whether another person is OK with you dating their ex requires extreme sensitivity and insight into that person, including the ability to see through their lies. For example, when a person says, "No, I don't mind at all if you date my ex," are they really saying, "Go right ahead?" Or, if you go through with it, will they just throw something sharp at your face and scream, "You should have known that I was lying! What kind of friend are you, anyway?"

Everyone is different. My grieving period, for example, usually is short and the guy and I normally stay on good terms. So, most of the time my friends don't even have to ask me, because I'm probably already busy setting my ex up with them. But, I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm strange. I've seen friends whose breakups have left them in an extremely sensitive place with a lot of open emotional wounds. In scenarios like that, sometimes even a year or two later, sufficient healing still has not occurred for a new relationship to be OK. So, unless you know your friend better than you know yourself and can read them like a book, avoid the whole situation completely. It requires a certain level of empathy that some people just do not have.

Rule number three — Do not date one of the other members of a tight-knit circle of friends. Addendum — especially if it is going to cause problems with the other friends. An effective, if pessimistic, way to judge whether this rule applies to you is to imagine, long before you and said person ever get together, how the group of friends will be affected if the two of you break up. If you really do foresee an easy "That-was-fun-but-let's-just-go-back-to-being-friends" breakup, then by all means, go for it.

If all else fails, just remember the Golden one (do unto others as you would have them do to you) and stick with that.