Monday, April 4, 2011

The myth of playing hard to get – Why every book you’ve ever read about how to get men is wrong

There is a great myth in the dating world that has been sold to women as solid dating advice for years.

The “Great Myth” can be summed up in eight words:

“MEN WANT A WOMAN WHO IS HARD TO GET”

Let me start by saying: THIS BELIEF IS A FALLACY. And I’m going to tell you why.

In fact, I’m going to stick my neck out and say that this belief leads to more unhappiness and unfulfilled relationships than you ever could imagine.

First let’s look at some classic examples of “Hard-to-get behaviour”. Below are a couple of recommendations that followers of the “Hard-to-get” methodology would usually advise:

• “If he approaches you and your friends at a bar, don’t give him any attention”
• “Don’t answer texts from him the next day”
• “Be elusive when he tries to make plans with you”
• “Tell him you’re busy when you’re not”
Have any of these described your current attitude?

I can see why this intuitively sounds like a good idea – “Make myself the prize. Yeah, that’ll make him try to win me. He’ll put massive value on someone he has to work really hard for.” But it’s this simple piece of psychology that leads women to manipulate men, hide how they feel and shut themselves out from letting men discover who they really are.

So you play games. You might tell him you’re busy when you’re not. Or you stop answering his phone calls. Or you even cancel plans at the last minute without so much as an apology.

Simple psychology right? – The harder you are to get, the more he wants what he can’t have.

Well that’s what will happen initially. But take that simple psychology a step further and what you’ll find is this – once you finally give him the thing he wants, it won’t seem so good anymore! This is known as cat-string theory.

If you dangle a string above a cat, it will keep clawing at it in a desperate desire to possess the object. Of course, when you finally give up the elusive string, the cat doesn’t want it anymore.

And that’s what hard-to-get does. It attracts him to the process, the game itself, instead of to you. It attracts him to the idea of possessing you, but when he finally does, he will start to question why he was ever that bothered in the first place.
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