On the one hand, we have this quote from the novel Call Me Irresistible, which says, “Chasing after a guy who’s not interested in you will rip the hell out of your self-respect. Better to face facts now because the longer you put it off, the harder it’ll be.”
This quote purports that a chaser eventually has to deal with how impractical chasing someone’s affections is because it’ll hurt you deeply in the end.
However, we have another quote, this one from the book, The Goodbye Song, which states, “My greatest fear is that she’ll look at me sad and say, ‘if you fought one day more, I’d have said yes.’”
This is the other side of the argument. This is why people think it’s a good idea to chase love because persistence is key; because if you really want something, you’ll go after it no matter what; because even though you aren’t promised anything, your devotion could win you what you desire.
And while those thoughts could prove to be right in other contexts, here are a few reasons chasing love really is going to hurt you in the long run and has little to do with actual love. If you see yourself in any of these reasons, reconsider the chase.
1. Intermittent Reinforcement
You might have seen me talking about this before, but just as a reminder, intermittent reinforcement is when one receives something desirable but they receive it inconsistently and unpredictably.
How does this factor into chasing a relationship? When you give someone your attention or you do something nice for them in an attempt to win their favor, they will not reward you with attention every single time.
As a result, you try to do more to get them to notice you, to like you and to choose you. But then there may come a point where they give you attention for no reason whatsoever. Now you’re not really sure what to do because you aren’t sure what they want.
The truth, however, is that you know exactly what they want. You just chose to ignore it. They want to date someone who isn’t you. Or maybe they don’t want to date at the moment.
Their actions confuse you and instead of leaving, you decide to figure them out, even though they have already given you your answer.
This is why gambling is seen as such a dangerous thing to society — it is literally intermittent reinforcement. You do something to get a reward that you may or may not get. But with a little taste of success, you will believe that there’s the chance for more. But that belief isn’t founded on facts.
You simply believe it because it is what you want to believe and you believe it’ll feel so damn good when you finally get it. However, many lottery winners would challenge you on that belief.
2. Sunk-Cost Fallacy
Another recurring theme is the sunk-cost fallacy where one believes that they have invested too much time, energy, money or resources to walk away. It’s like paying to see a movie and even though you’re halfway through it and it sucks, you stay and watch the whole thing anyway.
We do this because we don’t want to throw away the resources that we’ve already given, and in the case of romance, many of us feel like we’ve come too far with someone to just throw away everything we’ve given to the person we like to start over with someone new.
What those of us who’ve fallen for the sunk-cost fallacy don’t realize is that you’ve already given away your time, attention or love. You cannot get that back no matter what.
But if you stay in the situation, you are throwing away even more time, attention and love that you could’ve been given to someone else or for yourself.
So you’ve essentially wasted your time, then realized you’ve wasted your time but to not look dumb, continued to waste more time.
3. Desperation isn’t Attractive
If you really think about it, there’s no reason to chase anyone because we’re all equal. And while we do need each other because humans are social creatures, it wouldn’t benefit you to try to convince someone that you’re a catch.
If they can’t see it, that’s because of who they are.
But more importantly, if you can’t see it, that’s your problem and a problem that is way more urgent that getting into a relationship.
When someone is chasing after someone else, it illustrates two things. Firstly, you are overvaluing the other person. You think they have the key to your happiness. Secondly, you are devaluing yourself because the only person who has the key to your happiness is you.
Chasing someone who isn’t choosing you is a sign of a lack of self-esteem and self-respect. To be honest, you’re also disrespecting the other person by trying to change them into what you want them to be.
4. Unconscious Fear of Intimacy
When people get burned in a close relationship with someone else, it is natural to want to recoil and to be by ourselves.
Intimacy was present in that relationship but it was either used against us or completely discarded, so it makes sense to take some time to heal.
But sometimes we fear that we may never put ourselves back out there or we fear losing the person we like to someone else or we’re afraid of being forever alone. This is when we deny our fear of intimacy, which then makes the fear unconscious, and allows us to re-enter the dating scene.
With the fear of intimacy now being unconscious, we can never see ourselves as fearing intimacy (which is what we initially felt and still feel deep down) which allows us to interact with the world as people who seem to love intimacy or even crave intimacy.
The truth is that even though you hid the truth from yourself, the truth will find you in your relationships.
So when you fall for the aloof person who doesn’t want a relationship, the person who’s already in a relationship, the person who flat out says they’re not interested in you or the person who looked totally sold on you but then hit you with the friend card, that’s the truth finding you and reminding you of what you tried to deny within yourself.
Take the opportunity to revisit how you feel about intimacy, especially in the contexts of past relationships where someone hurt you despite how close you were to them.
You may find that these are the emotions that you need to go through in order to have the relationship that you always deserved.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
 White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism |
 Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box |
 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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Photo credit: Chiến Phạm on Unsplash
