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Playing Hard to Get

That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.

Thomas Paine

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Conversation with skyspook 10/14/2010 on irc:

(1:01:50 PM)page: in the interest of full disclosure, i think you’re really cute
(1:01:59 PM)skyspook: Aww, thank you 🙂
(1:02:01 PM)page: though I probably won’t do anything about it because I’m seeing too many people as it is
(1:02:03 PM)skyspook: As are you 🙂
(1:02:05 PM)skyspook: lol
(1:02:09 PM)skyspook: I won’t take offense 😉
(1:02:18 PM)page: I was thinking after I got to town and settled down sometime in the future, I’d probably work up the courage to ask you on a date or something 😛

 

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Few things annoy me more than “playing hard to get,” when people I’m interested in do it to me, when people expect that it’s what I should be doing, when a friend approaches me for advice on how to do it to someone else, to plan their next move in the elaborate chess game of their courtship.

 

When I like someone, I tell them. I don’t mince words. I am frank, direct. I’ve never seen the point of beating around the bush regarding someone you’re interested in.

 

I wish this were standard relationship behavior.

 

Instead, for many there seems to be this unspoken dance, nuanced, full of mind reading, guessing, implication, inference, innuendo. While this is the stuff of sit coms, I contend it is far from a recipe for a good relationship, a suitable match, or a happy life.

 

While you may be able to imbue your partner’s “acquisition” of you with an inflated sense of value and inject a bit of perceived merit into the relationship’s infancy, those gains are often short lived and are not worth the precedent of dishonesty and circumvention that now comprises this new relationship’s base.

 

Just be yourself, for fuck’s sake. Be as easy or hard “to get” as you naturally would be. If they don’t like you, then find someone who does.

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