All relationships, whether they're new or long-term, take a lot of reading in between the lines. Men and women are completely different species with our own beliefs of what is important in life and in a relationship.

That being said, it is hard to understand the opposite sex, to begin with. And in a perfect world, we would spell things out in black and white for our partner- but instead of doing that...

We play mind games.

Both men and women are guilty of it but have extremely different ways of playing them.

Let's start with girls... (because no offense to my own gender, but I think we are the worst with this). There are a number of different ways us girls play mind games with people of interest and our significant others.

When it comes to just meeting, girls like to play hard to get. Guys may call it teasing, but girls play this game to present themselves as a challenge. A girl wants to show her independence while also gaging the boy's interest to see just how far he is willing to go to have her.

In early dating, girls are still trying to keep their men on their toes. When you're first starting to get to know each other, a girl will purposely take longer to respond to your text, even if she read it right away. Why? I don't know, we don't want to seem too eager. We want you to know that hey, the world doesn't revolve around you and we're "sooo busy" doing other things so that's why we responded two hours later.

When you've been dating for a few months and are more comfortable with each other, the games start to get a little different. The silent treatment. If you are a girl reading this, I'm sure you are very familiar with this one. As women, we expect men to read our minds. In an argument when all of the sudden we stop talking and stare out the car window, you better know exactly what you said to piss us off.

But that's just it.

He won't know. He'll never know. So instead of passive-aggressive games, sometimes all your man needs is a nudge in the right direction.

And boys, you play mind games too! Us girls aren't the only crazy ones.

Although they are guilty for it too, boys have a completely different way of playing mind games than girls. Ever heard of mixed signals? Yeah, boys are notorious for this. You had a magical time on your date- sparks were flying, there was a great conversation, and you were really into each other.

At least that's what you thought until he suddenly dropped off the face of the earth! Boys often tend to play the "pull out" game (no pun intended) when they believe things start to get too serious. This all stems from their commitment issues. They get really caught up in a girl then when they suddenly start believing they're in too deep, they immediately retract. They don't want it to appear to the girl or other people that there's anything too serious going on, at least not yet.

All in all, we play mind games in relationships to require something desired. We also like to play them to manipulate our partner instead of being real from the start and communicating our problems.

The solution to mind games: don't play into them.

Learn to quickly recognize the signs of control and manipulation and call them out on their BS! Setting it straight with them will not only tell them you're not playing along anymore but also prevent further games in the future.