If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.
Inevitably, any time we are too vulnerable we feel the need to protect ourselves from further wounds. Often the best defense is a good offense, and sometimes this manifests itself in cynicism, the defense of the mind, for when we expect nothing we will never be disappointed. So the attack frequently manifests itself in sarcasm, in cutting humor, in sharpness of tongue, in criticalness, and in anything which will keep from exposing the soft, vulnerable tenderness within. Each partner then will tend to wait upon the initiative of the other for love, only again to be disappointed but also to be confirmed as to the rightness of his or her own past accusations.