How "Hard to Get" Should You Play?

Every woman has been advised at one time or another that she can increase her attractiveness to a man by showing him less interest, that is, by playing "hard to get." Most people don't disagree with this advice, at least not completely; they understand that there is a psychological mechanism by which people tend to want what they can't have. But there is plenty of disagreement about the degree to which this tactic should be applied. A lot of girls obsess over how to strike a balance between "too easy" and "too hard to get." They analyze text messages, scrutinize their response times, stress out about when is the right time to sleep with a guy, or wonder if they will lose their chance with a guy off by not making a move themselves.

The reality is that there isn't any strict rule about how "hard to get" you need to play. Or rather, it varies for each girl and in each situation. Some girls need to apply it more than others. There are girls that immediately cling to any interested guy that meets their minimum requirements, and these girls could benefit quite a bit by showing some self-restraint. On the other end of the spectrum, there are girls with colder dispositions that would dissuade even the most persistent men by playing any harder-to-get than they already do. How hard-to-get you should play also depends on the guy in each situation. More persistent men will push through a higher amount of resistance, while those with a lot of options or lower degree of interest in a girl will be more easily deterred. You could drive yourself crazy trying to figure out where exactly along each spectrum you and he lie, and how to calibrate your behavior accordingly.

The good news, and the main point I want to make here, is that you really shouldn't over-think this. If a guy is interested in you, there is a wide margin between the behaviors that will make him think of you as "needy" and "uninterested." It will be incredibly difficult to change his interest in you by small things like agreeing too readily to a date, or being too enthusiastic in your texts. As long as you are agreeing to go out with him and not acting bored when you spend time together, you are showing more than enough interest to avoid discouraging the average guy. And as long as you aren't asking him out all the time, or initiating contact with him regularly, you aren't going to appear needy enough to turn him off.

Now, if a guy isn't that interested in you, the thresholds for "needy" and "uninterested" will be closer together, and smaller "mistakes" might cause him to change his mind about you. The girls that obsess over their behavior or the content of their text messages are usually dealing with a guy like this. In fact, his nonchalance about the relationship is usually what drives this hyper-awareness in the first place. The mistake these girls make is to think that their behavior that is responsible for the guy's decision to stop seeing them. While this is true in the limited sense that their behavior triggers the guy's decision, the reality is that his lack of interest was making it next to impossible not to trigger that decision.

Think about it this way: if a guy can be turned off just because you use the wrong adjective in a text, or sleep with him a couple dates too late or soon, or do some other small thing "wrong," then there isn't enough attraction there to sustain a relationship anyway. It was a losing battle from the outset. If the guy doesn't like you enough that you can behave naturally, then he doesn't like you enough for a relationship to last. There is no way you can perpetually guard every word and action around him, or control every emotional impulse forever; at some point you need to be able to relax and be yourself, and he needs to like what he sees when you do so. If you are in a situation where you are stressing out about what to do or say around a guy, your problem isn't your inability to know how to act, or your inability to calibrate your behavior, it is your inability to be comfortable with rejection.

This phenomenon can be illustrated with a simple plot, as shown below. The whole point is that it isn't worth spending your time in a dating situation that falls to the left of the dotted line. If you do, there won't be enough leeway between "needy" and "uninterested" behavior to allow you to be yourself in the relationship. In order to avoid the (red or blue) "no date" zones, you'll have to be constantly guarding your behavior in the same obsessed way that you are right now, as you attempt to get into or hold on to the relationship that is causing you so much stress. Where exactly the dotted line falls is something you need to decide for yourself; but you need to recognize that a limit exists. Until you do, you are going to give yourself a lot of grey hairs - and have nothing to show for it in the end.

Incidentally, guys make the same mistake all the time in their attempt to attract girls. It is particularly evident when you watch guys trying to figure out how to approach and pick girls up. If you could see how obsessively men try to figure out the right thing to say to a girl, or the best way (or time) to approach her, you would know exactly what I mean.* Men are constantly over-analyzing these things. What many men don't realize, is that if they need to force their behavior into a tiny, perfect mold in order to attract a girl, then they aren't going to be able to hold onto her for very long. The act can't be maintained forever; eventually they will need to relax and behave naturally, at which point the tailored personality that attracted her will disappear, and so will she.

In light of all of this, the goal - for men and women - should be to work at self-improvement slowly and steadily - in the long-term, but to relax and be themselves with the opposite sex in the moment. So if you are finding yourself constantly calculating your next "move" in a relationship, or watching your words too much, recognize that you are probably fighting a losing battle. Take a deep breath, relax, and focus instead on making yourself vulnerable to the possibility of rejection. Remember, sometimes it is a good thing.

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* In fact, you can see this if you just do a Google search for "pick up artist" or "approach anxiety" and read the uncountable number of websites, blogs and books that have been written in an effort to perfect these things. In fact, I am convinced that men freak out about this stuff way more than women do. Perhaps this is because the pressure is on us to make the first move, but the obsession is still there.


Related Posts
1. Self-Improvement Takes Time
2. On Being a "Typical" Girl
3. Get Used to Rejection
4. Living Vulnerably
5. Don't Initiate Contact

Why You Can't Get the Men You Want

Most women who complain that they "don't get any attention from men" actually mean that they don't get attention from the men they want. And the simple advice for women in this situation (which I have seen on other blogs, and have occasionally given out myself) is sometimes appropriate: "you aren't hot enough to get the guys you want; lower your standards." However, in most cases, I think there is deeper phenomenon at work.

Women tend to be aware of and rate their looks fairly accurately. I know this because a lot of readers send me pictures saying "I think I am an X out of 10, can you tell me what I really am?" Although I always refuse to give them my numerical opinion (because all men think differently), their guesses are usually very close to what I would have ranked them.

So why would they set the bar so much higher than what they know they can get? Some might point out that their "delusion" is caused by their experiences getting men who are out of their league for sex and casual dating. And though I agree that this happens, it doesn't capture the whole picture. Women just aren't that easily deceived about their own physical attractiveness. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that the problem is primarily an internal one.

Each of us has an inherent knowledge of our own capabilities and dispositions. We know the inner workings of our own mind: how honest we are, how prone we are to mood swings, our insecurities and strengths, what we've experienced, what we still need to learn, the strength of our ambitions, etc. This translates into an excellent knowledge of our personal capabilities, our personal potential. We all know roughly what we could achieve, whether or not we have achieved it. Occasionally we modify this self-perception when we realize the extent of strengths we didn't know we had, or weaknesses that have greater implications than we'd imagined. But in general, we know ourselves well; we know what we are capable of becoming. This is true in all aspects of our lives: business, working out, academic learning - everywhere. It also applies to dating. Because we know ourselves, we also know roughly what we should be able to get when it comes to the opposite sex.

A statement that often accompanies women's complaints about not getting the men they want is something to the effect of "I know I am a catch. I have so much love to give a man. Why can't men see that??" This is a symptom of the above-described phenomenon: you know that you have the right "raw material" to attract the kind of man you want (in fact, "the kind of man you want" is partially defined by your self-knowledge), but you are confused about why it hasn't happened for you yet.

The reason for this is simple: your self-perception of your potential is roughly accurate, but you aren't living up to that potential. You aren't the person you know you can be. You have the capability, but you haven't used it. You have the potential, but you haven't fulfilled it. You know you can be a fun and exciting person to be around when you feel comfortable, but you haven't confronted your insecurity in social situations, so men don't realize this. You know you have a great figure, but you haven't learned yet to show it off by correcting your posture, so no one notices it. You know you have great hair, but you don't put the effort in to style it well, so it does you little good. You know you are pretty, but you haven't confronted your fear of looking a little awkward, and this has dramatically slowed your efforts at learning how to dress yourself well. Your are well aware of your inner feminine self and you instincts to nurture and love, but you suppress them (as you've been implicitly told to do by your parents or the culture around you) and men assume you are cold and boring. You know that you are an incredibly sexual person, but because of your strict conservative upbringing, you cloak it in "modesty" and men are turned off.

The reason women can't get what they think they deserve is that we (men and women alike) always peg our standards to what we know we can be, not to what we are, while members of the opposite sex judge us - understandably - only on what we are currently. They have no access to the inner workings of our mind; and even if they did, they would have no guarantee that we'd ever reach the potential this would reveal to them. So your discontent in dating boils down to the fact that you aren't living up to your own standards - yet. Incidentally, this also explains why most people have such an aversion to settling: our subconscious knowledge of what we "should" be able to get is achievable (if not currently accurate), so it seems defeatist to accept something less.

I've illustrated an example of this in the diagram below. A woman who is a 5.5 out of 10 has the potential to be a 7.5, so she "knows" that she can get men of that caliber (red arrows). She is constantly setting her sights on men who are in the 7-8 range (dark blue arrows), and she is constantly being rejected by them. She doesn't understand why, since she thinks these men are in her league, when the truth is that she could get into their league. Her situation isn't helped by the fact that a lot of the men she wants haven't met their full potential yet either, meaning that they - also wrongly - have their sights set on women of an even higher caliber (light blue arrows).

Rank out of Ten (Combined Looks and Appearance)

So the bad news is that you probably can't get the men that you think you can get. But the good news is that you probably can eventually get the men that you think you can get - assuming you are willing to work at it, and do. The biggest takeaway, though, is that if you aren't getting the men you want (but you think that they are in your league), your first move shouldn't be to lower your standards, it should be to self-improve.

Related Posts

1. Self-Improvement Takes Time
2. Women Get To Play Out Of Their League
3. Why You Don't Get Approached By Men
4. Why You Don't Have a Boyfriend

The Female's Internal Conflict

It is built into our very nature as human beings to have to endure the conflict imposed by the combination of our biology and rationality, our bodies and our minds. For reasons that are beyond our abilities to completely understand, our minds work in such a way that we are driven by pride, while our bodies operate according to their inclinations to reproduce and (presumably) perpetuate the species. These two drives often push us towards opposite goals, resulting in a conflict that is reflected - perhaps at its strongest - in the dating world.

As a woman, your pride wants a man who values you above all other women, one who would do anything for you out of an overwhelming compulsion of feeling. You (like every person) need to know you are valuable and important, which is largely evidenced by feeling wanted.

Your biology, on the other hand, aches for a man who is strong and powerful, unfettered by his feelings, who can protect you and impregnate you with healthy children - children who in turn will survive and reproduce successfully.

But the fact is that men also have biologies that drive them, almost uncontrollably. They desire the most beautiful and healthiest women - those most capable of bearing their children. This means that the men who best fulfill the needs of your pride are those who are farthest below your league, and therefore want you most. But at the same time, almost by definition, the men who best fulfill the needs of your biology are those who are farthest above your league, and therefore want you least.

The reality is that - eventually, after all efforts at self-improvement - you have to choose a man who represents a balance between those two extremes. If you want a man who values you immeasurably, he isn't going to be the heroic hunk you desire sexually. If you want a man who can provide you with perfect babies, he isn't going to want you above all other women - because he probably can have all other women (at least all those at "your level").

Two factors mitigate the apparently unfortunate nature of this situation:

1. Men are faced with a similar conflict, and they too have to compromise, meaning that the object of your biological desires has fewer women to choose from if he wants a girl that also loves him as a person. Perhaps more important than the needs of his pride is the fact that he cannot have a woman that doesn't want him. Your best possible partner will be one who recognizes this, values your love for him, and is willing to curb his desire for other women because of it. Still, the fewer options he has to forego, the easier (and more likely) this commitment will be for him to make and maintain.
2. All men and women have different tastes when it comes to the opposite sex, so a single woman sits very differently on various men's scales. This is why I've placed "your level" in quotation marks above; is relative to each man's personal taste.

Admonitions not to "settle" are actually admonitions against settling too much - against choosing a man that doesn't fulfill one of these two needs sufficiently. In reality, we all settle in the sense that we settle for a man or woman that fulfills both of these needs, but fulfills them both only partially. No single person can fulfill both completely because the two sets of character traits that do so are (with the above caveats) mutually exclusive.

Women Get to Play Out of Their League

You won’t find many girls that have had sexual partners uglier than themselves, but you’ll find an endless list of guys that have – in fact, there is a contingent of men that have sex with girls less attractive than themselves almost as a rule. Because men can have sex without worrying about pregnancy, social stigma, rape, less about STDs, etc., they attempt to have sex more often. This is so obvious that it might not be worth stating, but ultimately, it means there is a deficit of women for promiscuous sexual relationships. The relatively high demand for females means that women have more and better sexual options.

Men will usually sleep with women that are between 1 and 3 points lower than themselves on a 10-point scale, which means that women are usually sleeping with men that are 1 to 3 points higher than themselves. Men may get laid more often, or at least, have sex with a larger number of partners; but women get to sleep with men of higher quality, in other words, men that are "out of their league."

I often wonder how much this affects girls’ self-perception. Do women know this, and high-five each other after sleeping with guys far more attractive than themselves, realizing all the while that they will someday end up marrying a guy that is much less attractive than what they've experienced until he came along? Or are they unaware of the above-described phenomenon, and conclude that their sexual exploits accurately reflect their options for a spouse, only to be disappointed later in life?