Hard to be Hard to Get

The headline on the women’s magazine caught my eye: How to Make Him Fall in Love With You. It struck me as a rather handy talent to have. It might be nice to be able to make men fall in love with me in three easy steps: it’d probably get me out of a few parking tickets for one thing.

However, after buying the magazine and perusing said article, I realized that it wasn’t random fun tricks to generally appeal to people with penises (the sort of thing that I imagine French women are born knowing) but was actually about making a particular ‘him’ fall in love with you. The very ‘him’ in fact. I was astonished. I can vaguely remember such dating advice articles in teenage magazines. Teenage dating, as I recall it, is less about compatibility and connection and more about which bloke has a car (or at least the keys to his parents’) and will impress your friends; so I can understand the necessity of having a few handy seduction tricks up your sleeve. But surely to goodness as adults we’re a bit beyond that?

I’ve never held much truck with anything designed to manipulate things that are best left to fate. My one experience on an internet dating site was when a friend and I surfed around one for a laugh and came across profiles for both her long-term boyfriend and the bloke who’d just dumped me saying that he wanted to spend time on his own. It simply doesn’t make sense to me that in order to meet my thpecial thomeone I need to do things that are out of character for me or behave in an unnatural way. Surely it makes more sense that I will meet someone who will suit me – and me him – doing the sort of things that I do anyway? What's more, the advice in the article frankly disturbed me. One suggestion was – this was for blokes you meet at work – to match your mood to his. So (this was the example specified) if he is pissed off with the boss, I must be too. What on earth would I want with a bloke who was so thick he didn’t get that I just happened to fall out with the boss every time he did? What if I had just been given a raise, and an hour later the object of my affection stormed around the office yelling about what a jerk the boss is, I am supposed to jump up and agree and add – for good measure – that I think we should all go on strike? What if someone said ‘but Claire, you just got a raise’… ?

Perhaps I would have more time for following these sorts of rules and regulations if I was any good at them. I once read an article about ways to come across as more flirtations and sexy in everyday life. Again thinking of getting out of parking tickets, I thought ‘great, I’ll give this a go.’ One tip was to try to look up at guys through your eyelashes. Easy enough, one would think - except that I am not especially short. Maybe I am just used to ginormous Canadians, but I have noticed recently that – especially in heels – I am as tall if not taller than a good proportion of the men in London. So, to look up at them through my eyelashes I have to lean my head down which gives me a double chin which surely cancels out the seductive qualities of the looking up, not to mention I can’t see a bloody thing through the clumps in my mascara. Another tip was to think about sex a lot, which will apparently immediately make my body language unconsciously sex-kitten-like. This would have been fine, if it wasn’t for the fact that – surely I can’t be alone in this – unless I am actively participating, the thought of sex is frankly hilarious. Unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way that suddenly snorting with laughter at the thought of a quivering willy headed for me doesn’t do much to increase the chances of it happening.

Some time ago, I was having a conversation with a friend about the latest state of play with an on/off situation I was in last year. Her exact words were “if you like this guy so much, why do you keep being so bloody honest with him?” And, to be fair, my directness about my feelings for him clearly was making the poor guy pretty nervous, but do I really have to put in an Oscar winning performance of not being interested in order to get the guy? Just to be clear, I can be unavailable. I am, in fact, unavailable to every bloke I don’t fancy – it’s with the ones I do that the problems start. Even if I was willing and wasn’t such a crap actress so might actually pull off a cool, perfect girlfriend act – at what point would I be able to give it up and go back to being me? After we were officially boyfriend/girlfriend? There would still be a chance for him to run a mile in fright, so perhaps I should wait until the wedding night? Perhaps the naughties equivalent of a blushing bride shyly revealing her virginal nudity would be me sitting the poor guy down to reveal on no uncertain terms that I would rather stick pins in my eyes than watch another football game and that I actually really like our boss?

Having said all this, I realize that as I am currently single I am perhaps in no position to dismiss tips or advice that might get me all loved up the way I am apparently supposed to be. But – and perhaps this makes me a hopeless romantic despite my cynicism – I still believe that the bloke who is right for me is a) out there somewhere, and b) whenever I do stumble across him he will fancy me clumpy mascara, disagreeing with him and utterly un-unavailable and all.