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.
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.
A 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.
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?