You Don’t Have To Play Games, Sometimes Being Yourself Is The Only Way To Win

I’m certain that you’re tired of people telling you that you need to play hard to get, that you shouldn’t be too available, don’t text first, don’t send more than one text, try to be witty and funny, try to be mean, try to be cute, try to be sexy, be aggressive but don’t be too forward, be mysterious but also show that you’re interested.

People contradict themselves, they tell you what they know or what worked for them, they tell you what they should have done or what they think pushed their partner away. They tell you things that seem to work in theory but when you put it into practice, it doesn’t work. It still falls apart. It doesn’t make your love life any better, sometimes it only makes it worse.

It makes it worse because you’re trying to be someone you’re not. You’re doing something you don’t believe in. You’re going against your natural instincts. You stopped following your heart and started following other people’s logic and that’s not the way love works. That’s not the way attraction works. Attraction works when it’s natural, when it’s real, when the connection is genuine between two people who are comfortable being themselves around each other more than they are with others.

Playing games that you don’t the rules of is the fastest way to lose. Playing games that you’re not good at is the quickest way to get out of the competition.

And I know you feel like being yourself doesn’t serve you well either, it feels like you’re always making the same mistakes with different people. It’s like you’re living the same old story over and over again, but I don’t think that the answer is changing who you are or playing more games, sometimes the answer is simply to continue being who you are until you find someone who is willing to embrace everything people are telling you to change about yourself. Someone who doesn’t force you to act like someone you’re not to attract them. Someone who makes you feel like you can finally be yourself without having to play games you’re not good at or do things that you secretly hate.

I learned that as long as you’re working on becoming a better person, as long as you’re kind and genuine, as long as you don’t try to be someone else’s idea of perfection, you will eventually attract the right person for you. The person who loves you for who you really are, not for your calculated games.

I learned that as long as you’re not part of the game, you can never lose. Because if you won someone because you followed a manual, you’re bound to lose them when you start following your heart. And when it comes to love, you should always follow your heart because it will always prevail, no matter how many times you try to defeat it.

Rania Naim is a poet and author of the new book All The Words I Should Have Said, available here.