Playing hard to get – further thoughts

This is a short addition to the existing thoughts I have already expressed about playing hard to get. One further reason why for me “playing hard to get” is a bad idea is because these issues are so difficult and awkward to navigate anyway! Throwing unnecessary games into the mix only makes things even more complicated. While editing the existing PHTG posts I let my mind wander onto past interactions with guys. In my more distant history I was so shy with guys. They may well have interpreted my actions as “playing games”. However I was genuinely shy! And then my feelings run so deep that there is so much potential vulnerability at stake, and I naturally want to protect myself from getting my feelings trampled upon. I sometimes wistfully think to myself that my life interacting with guys would be so much easier if I threw away the idea of being totally crazy about my husband. If I nurtured no real feelings for the guy in question then there would not be that same fear of getting hurt, and consequent urge to protect myself, and I could play games with the best of them! But you’ve got to understand me: I just can’t do this! If we’re going to be joined together for life, I need those feelings. Everything that makes me personally yearn for marriage depends on these feelings: the talks, the walks, the copious holding of hands….and of course…the hugs! I’m sitting here, sighing to myself, envisaging hugging one tenderly and gently another in silence, and in soft darkness – possibly moonlight?! With shadows falling gently… (On a tangent, am I being completely unrealistic?! Is it more true that after the wedding (or at least after the honeymoon) most couples just have to “get on with it”, that is, the busy, mundane often unglamorous business of life, with little time for quiet tender hugs?! That would not be a great thought. However, predictably, I’m not going to let that put me off my own dreams!) So at any rate, my point is that I can’t contemplate the idea of trying to cultivate a relationship where I don’t have real feelings for the man involved. Yes this might largely cut out the vulnerability I’d be feeling. However I think that I would rather struggle through the awkwardness and communication deadlocks for the prize of a marriage suffused with real feelings.

And then I think to myself that perhaps I can just pretend (to myself) to not have real feelings, to just be playing the game, not getting too deep, or too serious… that is, not focusing on the feelings! If I could pull this off with myself, then this would be the best of both worlds, as in that case you could act kinda normally with the guy, but still have real feelings to look forward to in marriage. However, I think I know myself enough to state that even this is almost impossible, and my behaviour would be so wooden and stilted, and at the first sign of anything overly deep I would fly into self-protection mode, rolling up into a little ball. I can’t help shaking my head as I write this, thinking of the difference in the way I act with guys for whom there are “feelings” – and the straightforward, easy, lighthearted casual way I interact with everyone else. However, all of this is an aside…! 😉

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PHOTO CREDITS
Photo of moonlight on Irish beach by Endamac on Pixabay
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