books. They offer guidelines to help you “land” a partner, such as:
Don’t make yourself too available, say you’re busy even when you’re
not, don’t call him—wait for him to call you, don’t appear to care too
much, act mysterious. Presumably, you preserve your dignity and
independence in this way and gain your partner’s respect. But in fact,
what you are doing is behaving in a way that is not true to your genuine
needs and feelings. You wave these aside to appear strong and self-
sufficient. And indeed, these books and the advice they give are right;
these behaviors may indeed make you seem more attractive. What
they don’t mention, because they are unaware of attachment science,
is that they will make you seem more attractive to a very particular kind
of partner—an avoidant one. Why? Because, in essence, what they
are advocating is that you ignore your needs and let the other person
determine the amount of closeness/distance in the relationship. The
avoidant person can have his/her cake and eat it too, so to speak—
s/he can enjoy the thrill and closeness you naturally project when you
are together without having to consider your needs for intimacy and
togetherness the rest of the time. By being someone you’re not, you’re
allowing another to be with you on his or her own terms and come and
go as s/he pleases.
Another problem is that if this type of game playing is only an act for
you, it’s going to backfire in the long run. First, your avoidant partner
will quickly catch on to you—they are good at detecting people who
want to impinge on their autonomy. Second, eventually you’ll think it’s
time to let your true colors show. After all, what you really want is to
reach a high degree of intimacy, to spend a lot of quality time together,
to be able to let down your guard. But you’ll find that when you do so,
your avoidant partner will suddenly get cold feet and start to
disengage. Either way, you lose, because you are attracting the wrong
kind of partner for you.
lily
(lily)
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