F*ck Your Rules And Games: Why Playing Hard To Get Will Get You Nowhere
“I’m spontaneous. I jump in. I kind of like getting married and then getting to know each other; I know that it sounds incredibly strange, but to me, it’s a more natural process,”
In a January interview with Elle magazine, Nicole Kidman talked about her unconventional theories on love and marriage.
While she doesn’t have an impeccable track record (that black spot right there looks a lot like Tom Cruise), she does what seems to be a strong marriage to Keith Urban; the pair married in 2006.
Track records, however, aren’t what we’re looking at. Many couples date for years and still end up getting divorced, so this is really a reevaluation of the hard to get game.
We’ve grown up being taught that playing hard to get is the only way to generate interest, but maybe playing hard to get was keeping us from getting anything at all?
Maybe being so unavailable made us undesirable. Maybe there’s a maturity to the jumping in approach… The "I’m over the games, let’s get into something real or walk away” type of approach.
Because when you jump in with someone, the awkwardness of not knowing where he or she stands is gone. That big barrier separating you from one another no longer keeps you from saying what’s really on your mind and revealing your true qualities, flaws and all.
You’re not worried about how that person feels about you or if he or she is going to walk away. You already know where this person stands so you can focus on just getting to know him or her.
It’s a liberating and refreshing approach to the conventional “lead him on until he forgets why he's chasing you” method. Because what are you gaining that way?
The ultimate goal of that approach is to start dating this person, right? So if you start dating right away, haven’t you already won?
It shouldn’t be about games
In dating games, no one wins. Playing is the thrill, but it always ends up with a scattered board or someone quitting too soon.
The main cause of this is that men and women are usually playing two different games.
Women are playing “Chutes and Ladders” and men think they’re playing Twister” (no, please don’t put your hand there!).
Why deny yourself something you want
The only thing that occurs when you play the hard to get game is you forget what you’re trying to get.
You’ve waited so long to see someone that it no longer interests you the way it once did. What was so great about this person again?
Is she hotter than this girl? I can’t remember... It's not about making someone wish he or she knew you, but getting to know someone until that person wishes he or she never had to leave you.
We could be dead tomorrow
It may be a cliché, but it's a true one. We really never know when it could be the end for us, so we may as well live like there is no end, right?
The moment isn't there to throw away, it's to embrace and fill with all the things you can accomplish and enjoy while you're still alive.
Wasting all those moments yearning for something that's right in front of you is just denying yourself a life your deceased self will kick you for.
You figure out if it’s worth it sooner
Rather than spending months only looking at small parts of this person, you see everything right away. You know his or her quirks, habits and flaws.
You can decide right then if you’re ready to accept them all or need to back out.
Instead of spending all that time making yourself as elusive as possible, you show this person what he or she needs to know and either move forward or move on.
You beat all the awkwardness out
You spend the entire week together getting all those inevitable awkward moments and first times out of the way rather than letting them happen slowly and analyzing them constantly while apart.
There’s nothing that really kicks the dust off your baggage than unpacking it in front of someone all at once.
Because waiting all that time won’t make you feel better when the sex is bad
Don’t you want to know right now if it’s even worth it? Because we all know, if the sex is bad, there’s just no going forward from there. Why wait forever only to find out something you wish you knew long ago.
Why waste all your time with the foreplay to still curse that horrible, awkward night?
Because that’s how you hold down a relationship
Holding down a relationship isn’t about chasing one, it's about working on one.
It's not about sending mixed signals and meeting once a week for coffee, it's about opening up and creating a foundation that's strong enough to endure the hard moments that will inevitably come, not the moments you refuse to let happen.
