Source: pixdeluxe / Getty
Any time you hear relationship advice, you have to ask yourself if that’s right for you. Only you know what goes on inside your relationship. Only you really knows how you and your partner work. You’re also the only one who understands your tolerance for certain dynamics, or fully understands your partner’s intentions and values. Not every piece of relationship advice is for everyone, even some advice that would generally seem good.
That being said, there is some antiquated relationship advice that has just got to go. I can’t believe anyone is still slinging it. It’s left over from some era when men didn’t view women as equals, women didn’t demand to be treated as equals, and, generally speaking, romantic partners weren’t friends. They were two people who were sexually attracted to each other and then engaged after months of game-playing, each trying to get the upper hand, until they got married too quickly to the wrong person because that’s what ya did.
“Play hard to get.” That’s one of the quintessential pieces of advice from this general category of garbage advice. That’s one we’ve all heard before, and it’s so juvenile. But it’s a symbol of the type of advice I’m talking about. It’s the advice that implies that romantic partners are competitors, rather than teammates, and that a relationship is about being in control rather than helping each other out. It’s a tyranny rather than a democracy. When I hear a woman say things like, “Play hard to get,” I feel she sets the women’s liberal movement back decades. Any piece of relationship advice that sounds more like a tactical move is BS. Here is relationship advice you can feel free to ignore.
Keep him guessing
“Make him always wonder if he could lose you,” “Make him work for it.” These are in the same family—the idea that a man should never fully feel secure in the fact that he has you. But that is so unhealthy, and nobody winds up happy there. Two truly happy people are two people who say, “I’m fully yours and you’re fully mine and I want to make you feel secure in that.”
