RELATIONSHIPS 101: The danger of playing hard to get

Nothing captures Adhiambo Okinyi’s longstanding predicament as well as Robin Williams in his song "Feel". You will often find her humming the song and singing her favourite verse aloud, as if it were a fervent prayer. So it goes:

“I just wanna feel real love, feel the home that I live in,

Cos I got too much life running through my veins, going to waste,

I don’t wanna die, but I ain’t keen on living either before I fall in love …”

You see, 33-year-old Adhiambo is every man’s dream woman: She is beautiful, has brains, can keep house, and is financially independent. She has everything that she could ever ask for, save for a man. Adhiambo has been single for the last two years, but she is dying to change her relationship status. And though she yearns for a male companion, there’s this one thing that stands in her way – she plays too hard to get.

She can make a man chase her for years without giving in to his advances.

 “Mark chased me for one year and a half after my breakup … Nathan had tried to persuade me to go on an overseas trip with him to celebrate my birthday, but I kept him waiting for 18 months, and when I finally agreed and everything was finalised, I declined to accompany him at the last minute,” she reveals.

HARD NUT TO CRACK

Over a Saturday Magazine interview cum coffee date with Adhiambo and her friends, Sarah and Beryl, they mentioned two other men who they felt were a good match for their friend, but the two suitors soon got fed up of Adhiambo’s games and stopped chasing her.

Now in retrospect, Adhiambo regrets playing games with one particular man, and making him chase her for ages.

“Nathan was persistent and caring. He kept calling and sending me texts that showed that he cared about me and my life. He remembered even the tiniest details I had shared with him about my life… He made me feel like I was always on his mind,” she says with a tinge of remorse.

So why does Adhiambo keep men chasing her forever?

“When I was younger, I was too available to men and they treated me like crap. They would stand me up on dates and do other things that made me wonder whether giving in to a man’s advances too quickly was a good approach. Now my policy is: treat them mean, to keep them keen,” she explains.

This approach, as she now knows, has not worked in her favour.

“Playing hard to get made me loose a good man. Nathan is now married to another woman, not me. Sometimes I wonder how things could have been if I hadn’t kept him waiting to the point of giving up. It would have been a blessing to wake up to his compassionate self every day,” she says ruefully.

While playing hard to get for too long may lead to a gem of a man slipping away, peculiarly, science encourages it, but only when practised moderately. A past study published in the European Journal of Personality looked at a group of young women and men, attending four different universities in the UK.

The study showed that those seeking a long-term relationship had a better success rate when playing hard to get because women subconsciously believe that a prospective partner who is willing to put in the hard work of chasing them is probably in for the long haul.

Sarah, Adhiambo’s friend, agrees with this science, and points out that the problem is not that Adhiambo plays hard to get, the problem is that she takes it too far to the point that she misses out on chances to get into relationships with good men.

“Adhiambo’s problem is that she is too proud, to admit that she cares for a man. She wants love, but she sees it as a sign of weakness to accept it when it is offered to her. She is one very confused woman,” she remarks.

Twenty-six-year-old Mariah Nzomo also swears by the findings of the above study. She believes that women shouldn’t give in too easily because it diminishes their worth.

 “When you make yourself too available, you become just as common as a perfume worth Sh50 – everyone can get it easily – but when you make yourself scarce, you become like a luxurious designer perfume which only serious buyers can afford,” she says.

However, unlike Adhiambo who makes men chase her endlessly, Mariah knows that she should not hold up a good man she is interested in for too long.

“He may care for you, but he will not wait forever,” she says.

Ngare, a writer, agrees with Mariah’s sentiment. He says that men have a breaking point in the chase, which when reached, the man will lose interest.

“If I ask a girl out and she says she wants to think about it or that she likes another guy, I will take it as a challenge and chase her. But playing hard to get cannot be about being mean to me and it cannot go on for too long. After a few weeks, you should stop playing games and determine whether you are ready to be in a relationship with me or not,” he says.

Robert Ouko, is another man who doesn’t waste time chasing women who want to be chased forever.

“Just the same way a woman claims that she is valuable (hence why she wants to prolong the chase), I am also valuable and I don’t need to be kept hanging forever. Moreover, you may work so hard and long to win her over only to realise that she was not worth the trouble,” he says.

For now, Adhiambo is learning that if she wants love, she may have to give it back as well and stop keeping men waiting forever.