In the Age of Desperation, Are We Still Playing Hard to Get?
“Hard to get”: power move or sad little game?
In the Age of Desperation, Are We Still Playing Hard to Get?
“Hard to get”: power move or sad little game?
Sascha Seinfeld
May 31, 2025
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(Warning: HETERONORMATIVE. Sorry—no same-sex relationship experience to draw on.)
Part of me thinks a man will only be into me long-term if I lead him on like a Hot Wheels pull-back car. Tension builds as the car clicks backwards, then you release, and
zoom
. If initial thrust determines longevity, I figure I should drag this thing as far back as it can go.
I’ve been told that, traditionally, the longest-lasting marriages are the ones in which the man likes the woman slightly more. As bleak as it sounds, it tracks: things work better when the person with more power also feels like they have more to lose.
My mom, a devout believer in HTG (Hard to Get), proudly attributes her reverse-pursuit of my dad as the reason they wound up together. If one of my brothers is moping about a girl, she’ll say, “You think I’d be married to your
father
if I didn’t play the game? You are
my
son and you will PLAY. THE. GAME.”
She has a point. In all the best romance books and movies—
Much Ado About Nothing, Pride & Prejudice
,
10 Things I Hate About You
—the woman spends most of the story either disliking the guy or barely registering him as a sexual being. Feminine indifference is what launched a thousand ships for Helen, shattered a church for Anne Boleyn, and brought down an empire for Cleopatra.
On the other hand, why start a relationship pretending to be cooler than you are? They’ll find out how empty your schedule is eventually. Plus, if a guy likes you more the less he sees you, maybe he just likes not seeing you. Might as well take off the push-up bra hoisting up your personality and breathe a little easier.
The “booked ‘n busy” facade seems to have melted away as we’ve gotten freer in our communication and more desperate to lock something down. Why are there so many dating apps and reality tv dating competitions that can barely contain the willing applicants? It’s all about the DMs that follow.
To most of us, the eventuality of a secure partnership by 35 feels as unpromised as a color printer functioning correctly. Our romantic fate feels as delicate as an egg membrane. So we glom onto the one thing we can control: meticulously crafted texts.
Early-stage texts are energy signalers, subtle cues for how “into it” each party is. Preserving tension, showing interest, and never once implying
this is all I have going on
is a tricky laser-dodge that quickly becomes a group project. Even ChatGPT, with all its futuristic advancements, suggests try-hard, clownish messages that feel more like sabotage than support.
According to Pew in 2023, 80% of singles aged 18–35 say they screenshot texts for feedback before replying. A meager “What u up to tn?” can reduce an Ivy League grad with a six-figure salary into a puddle of “
help me
,” as they thrust their phone at the nearest emotionally stable person.
The phone, now a live grenade, turns a relaxed hangout into a
high-stress think-tank
. The result—a crowdsourced Frankenstein personality made of
four equally rizz-less friends.
Some girls keep hapless guy friends around for emergency on-call text-support. Instagram accounts like @
WeMetAtAcme
have capitalized on this ineptitude—accepting screenshots of followers’ texts and offering “anti-ghost” text templates—a modern-day “psychiatric help 5¢” booth.
Today, dating is rife with relationships built over text. At times, it feels like I'm in two relationships—one between me and my boyfriend, and the other between my phone and his. And if one isn’t going well, neither are.
One summer in early high school, I got getted by “easy to get.”
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