One of the awesomest people on the Internet2, whom I will refer to cryptically as “Anna from Chicago,” has started a blog about singles, dating, and relationships called Datingwise. Here is a slightly-revised bit from one of her posts:
Men love challenges. Men don’t care for women who make things too easy for them. The girl who hits on a guy, asks him out, sleeps with him too soon? He didn’t have to work to get her, so he doesn’t value her.
I smell a lifehacking principle, ladies(!).
The standard advice that relates to this is “play hard to get.” The problem with “play hard to get” is that it is so standard and so overused that it seems like just another 12-step lifehacking principle such as, you know, #4- wear clothes that fit, rather than a foundational male mechanical postulate.
Let me rephrase Anna from Chicago’s statement above in a way that I think is a bit more semantically correct:
Men will not under pretty much any circumstances swoon over you unless they sense a challenge—unless they feel that they must “earn” you. Men are “prize”-driven creatures and it is almost impossible for them to cherish something unless they can associate it with their ego. In other words, it doesn’t matter how well your clothes fit if the dude doesn’t feel like he had to work to get them off of you.
Men reach their swooning peaks when they feel that you are just barely achievable.
But be warned: Being just barely achievable does not guarantee that he will swoon. We’re talking necessary rather than sufficient conditions here. You’ve also got to have boobs.
This kind of thing seems squarely in the behavioral economist wheelhouse. It suggests (even if you think I’m generalizing and exaggerating, which I am) that dudes aren’t judging women rationally based on a litany of hard-to-define traits and doing some unconscious internal calculus to determine an Overall Quality Quotient, but instead are relying on some stupefyingly simple heuristics to decide (= feel) whether you are worthy of their pursuit.
Watch out because this post is about to take a turn from lifehacking advice to existential rant.3
I hate to question the Universe on its design principles – it seems like it did a fine enough job – and maybe the just-barely-achievable heuristic is a reasonably valid and reliable method to judge a mate – but at least at the surface this “principle” just seems terribly twisted and cruel. In a universe where we pair-bond for life (or try to), where the decision of whom to pair-bond with is probably the most important one we face, can’t we dudes get a little more refined and sophisticated ways of judging a woman? You’re going to leave our judgments up to which woman is best at playing games?4 I sincerely hope, Universe, that you have given the females some better filtering mechanisms, because from a male POV, this is simply ridiculous.5
Your laziness, Universe, is probably the single biggest reason why relationships so often fail. If after a few years the lady no longer seems like an enticing “prize” to the dude, then he starts to lose interest in her and gain interest in other prizes. As the swooning dissipates, so too do his reasons for working to make sure the two of them can inhabit the same living room. If the end result is not a failed relationship, it’s usually a shitty one.
But what you’ve done, Universe, is worse than laziness. You have made relationships essentially profane. You have made relationships arbitrary, game-y, and something that is ultimately more to be fought through than fought for.
Which is why I have decided to lifehackily game the system and have my marriage arranged.6,7 Arranged marriages reduce the arbitrariness, the gameyness, and switch the pursuit to a more productive prize: Instead of the prize being a woman who will inhabit the same living room (since with an arranged marriage, that’s pretty much guaranteed), the prize is a woman who will grow to like you and respect you and with whom you can be satisfied sharing a living room.
I’m being half-serious, but that half is legitimate.
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1Well, err, future ladies?
2(and I am saying that strictly because she pays attention to me)
3(I hate it when that happens.)
4(plus the boobies, of course)
5Frankly, I’m disappointed and offended. I trusted you to be more conscientious in designing things.
6(Also because I’m lazy, which I think I am right in blaming on your influence, Universe.)
7Please send inquiries to my mom.
