A female friend of mine, whose opinion on such matters I always find accurate, has told me on more than one occasion that a woman has to give a man some kind of hard time or else risk being taken for granted: merely required, not desired. As I look around me at my married and unmarried male friends—and even at myself—I find there’s more truth to her words than I’m comfortable admitting.
Not long ago, a woman broke up with a friend of mine. Her previous relationship had been with a significantly wealthier guy, which was a fact she mentioned to him several times. My friend does just fine for himself, although he had no burning ambitions. Yet by the time of the breakup he had become preoccupied with his new stock portfolio and with conspicuously redecorating his apartment.
Another buddy of mine is aggressively flirting with a female colleague of his who’s currently seeing someone else (in this case slightly older and more “sophisticated”). My friend feels the challenge of his rival’s “edge,” but even more, the spur of there simply being a rival. And he has recently developed an annoying expertise in a ludicrously expensive French Burgundy (her favorite).
In conversations, my friends and I regularly analyze the obviously stupid or pathological reasons why women don’t get how wonderful we are. But sometimes we get around to picking over some of our own motives for being attracted to hard-to-get or hard-to-please women.
One seems to be a kind of avoidance function. By pursuing tough cases, we can safely stay clear of real commitment. We can enjoy the courting gestures, act out (within safe limits) romantic inclinations and fantasies but not have to deal with the actual responsibility of gaining a woman’s serious trust or affection. Thus we get a light emotional workout and some physical contact, but that’s all. Perhaps unconsummated desires, in a figurative sense, are the sweetest.
Another possibility is that the elusive lady serves as a means of self-improvement. That is, in choosing some particularly demanding woman’s acceptance as a prize and then going for it, we strive also for our own self-transcendence by measuring up to her (real or imagined) standards. She becomes a test we choose for ourselves to overcome our personal fears of inadequacy. But why pick a hard case? Well, by pursuing a prize perceived as difficult to win, we give ourselves the chance to exorcize a lot of anxieties and self-doubts. The harder won the victory, the more convincing the transcendence.
But there are risks to this therapeutic, Rocky-like psychodrama. I know.
ACT I
Just out of college I was a carefree dude. I slept late, drove a cab and actually was able to sell some of my artwork on consignment through an office furniture showroom. One night in a hipster watering hole near my basement apartment on the Lower East Side, I made the flirtatious, Posh Spice look-alike bartender (who also happened to be a Ph.D. candidate in economics) laugh. For a few weeks I had watched her get hit on by guys in Ralph Lauren suits and Tag Heuer watches. So I got interested. I started driving more hours to fatten my wallet, spiffed up (shaved), exaggerated my art career and asked her out. We had a good time. I can be really funny under pressure.
ACT II
She turned out to be extremely hard to hook up with because of her crazy schedule (we did, but way too irregularly for my taste) and also because (I found out) she still dated some of the Tag Heuers. So I stepped up a little more. I totally lied about applying to graduate school in journalism, and I actually did sell some cartoons to magazines so I could show her the tear sheets.
ACT III
One night at the bar she told me that she was getting tossed out of her apartment and needed a place to sleep. She asked if she could stay with me for a while, since I lived so close to the bar. I…I hesitated. The next day she asked one of the Tag Heuers, and it was all over.
EPILOGUE
I kicked myself afterward, but then I think I almost felt relieved. Maybe that was because I sensed I was spared the inevitable graceless shucking and jiving (“it’s me, not you…”) Seinfeld dialogue I had sweated through while withdrawing from previous relationships. If she had simply rejected me, I could have moved on to upgrade myself on the next motivator’s dime. If we had gotten into some serious dating, I could have adjusted over time (maybe). But she came right at me and knocked me out of my psychological comfort zone. All I could think was what was I going to do with her in my tiny basement studio? Did I win the lottery here, or was I being used? Jeez, economics?! And she was big into capoeira, too.
You see, there is a tendency while in hot pursuit not to look too critically or even too clearly at the hard-to-get objective. Desire is fun and ambivalence dilutes desire. Who is she, and what does she really think or feel? There’s the final frontier many guys find quite convenient not to explore. While this disinterest seems rather unflattering to men, I suspect that some women (even among those who like to ask, “What are you thinking?”) similarly indulge in such purposeful ignorance.
The preservation of this mystery seems somehow very close to whatever the secret of the attraction of the hard case is. Whether in seeking a romantic muse by which to achieve emotional liftoff or a surrogate ego through which to earn self-acceptance, a man must keep a woman at a distance, part fantasy of one kind or another. Perhaps a woman who deliberately plays hard-to-get actually plays right into the hands of the man who pursues her. But who’s really pressing whose buttons?
So I think my female friend has really put her finger on a key element in the sexual scheme of things. And I have asked her why she thinks her observation is true, because I am, of course, very curious about that too. But she won’t tell me.
Not long ago, a woman broke up with a friend of mine. Her previous relationship had been with a significantly wealthier guy, which was a fact she mentioned to him several times. My friend does just fine for himself, although he had no burning ambitions. Yet by the time of the breakup he had become preoccupied with his new stock portfolio and with conspicuously redecorating his apartment.
Another buddy of mine is aggressively flirting with a female colleague of his who’s currently seeing someone else (in this case slightly older and more “sophisticated”). My friend feels the challenge of his rival’s “edge,” but even more, the spur of there simply being a rival. And he has recently developed an annoying expertise in a ludicrously expensive French Burgundy (her favorite).
In conversations, my friends and I regularly analyze the obviously stupid or pathological reasons why women don’t get how wonderful we are. But sometimes we get around to picking over some of our own motives for being attracted to hard-to-get or hard-to-please women.
One seems to be a kind of avoidance function. By pursuing tough cases, we can safely stay clear of real commitment. We can enjoy the courting gestures, act out (within safe limits) romantic inclinations and fantasies but not have to deal with the actual responsibility of gaining a woman’s serious trust or affection. Thus we get a light emotional workout and some physical contact, but that’s all. Perhaps unconsummated desires, in a figurative sense, are the sweetest.
Another possibility is that the elusive lady serves as a means of self-improvement. That is, in choosing some particularly demanding woman’s acceptance as a prize and then going for it, we strive also for our own self-transcendence by measuring up to her (real or imagined) standards. She becomes a test we choose for ourselves to overcome our personal fears of inadequacy. But why pick a hard case? Well, by pursuing a prize perceived as difficult to win, we give ourselves the chance to exorcize a lot of anxieties and self-doubts. The harder won the victory, the more convincing the transcendence.
But there are risks to this therapeutic, Rocky-like psychodrama. I know.
ACT I
Just out of college I was a carefree dude. I slept late, drove a cab and actually was able to sell some of my artwork on consignment through an office furniture showroom. One night in a hipster watering hole near my basement apartment on the Lower East Side, I made the flirtatious, Posh Spice look-alike bartender (who also happened to be a Ph.D. candidate in economics) laugh. For a few weeks I had watched her get hit on by guys in Ralph Lauren suits and Tag Heuer watches. So I got interested. I started driving more hours to fatten my wallet, spiffed up (shaved), exaggerated my art career and asked her out. We had a good time. I can be really funny under pressure.
ACT II
She turned out to be extremely hard to hook up with because of her crazy schedule (we did, but way too irregularly for my taste) and also because (I found out) she still dated some of the Tag Heuers. So I stepped up a little more. I totally lied about applying to graduate school in journalism, and I actually did sell some cartoons to magazines so I could show her the tear sheets.
ACT III
One night at the bar she told me that she was getting tossed out of her apartment and needed a place to sleep. She asked if she could stay with me for a while, since I lived so close to the bar. I…I hesitated. The next day she asked one of the Tag Heuers, and it was all over.
EPILOGUE
I kicked myself afterward, but then I think I almost felt relieved. Maybe that was because I sensed I was spared the inevitable graceless shucking and jiving (“it’s me, not you…”) Seinfeld dialogue I had sweated through while withdrawing from previous relationships. If she had simply rejected me, I could have moved on to upgrade myself on the next motivator’s dime. If we had gotten into some serious dating, I could have adjusted over time (maybe). But she came right at me and knocked me out of my psychological comfort zone. All I could think was what was I going to do with her in my tiny basement studio? Did I win the lottery here, or was I being used? Jeez, economics?! And she was big into capoeira, too.
You see, there is a tendency while in hot pursuit not to look too critically or even too clearly at the hard-to-get objective. Desire is fun and ambivalence dilutes desire. Who is she, and what does she really think or feel? There’s the final frontier many guys find quite convenient not to explore. While this disinterest seems rather unflattering to men, I suspect that some women (even among those who like to ask, “What are you thinking?”) similarly indulge in such purposeful ignorance.
The preservation of this mystery seems somehow very close to whatever the secret of the attraction of the hard case is. Whether in seeking a romantic muse by which to achieve emotional liftoff or a surrogate ego through which to earn self-acceptance, a man must keep a woman at a distance, part fantasy of one kind or another. Perhaps a woman who deliberately plays hard-to-get actually plays right into the hands of the man who pursues her. But who’s really pressing whose buttons?
So I think my female friend has really put her finger on a key element in the sexual scheme of things. And I have asked her why she thinks her observation is true, because I am, of course, very curious about that too. But she won’t tell me.
