The idea of making yourself more desirable by making yourself less available doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it. After all, Juliet would have plunged a premature dagger into the heart of her romance with Romeo if she hid in her room rather than go out on her balcony. The end of Sleepless in Seattle shifts from “awww” to “aw, no” if one of the two main characters skips the trip to the Empire State Building. As these examples from fiction show, making yourself available is key to finding a romantic partner — or for them to find you. But many people still choose to play games that make their lives difficult, says Dr. Venus Nicolino.
And staying unavailable ranks up there with some of the most damaging games of them all. That’s because by making yourself harder to find, you run the risk of not being found at all. Nicolino is blunt in her assessment of this romantic “strategy.”
“Who came up with the dumb, dumb idea that being less available is a proven way to be more desirable, a way to draw people to you?” she asked in a video on her popular TikTok channel. “By all means, be less hateful, be less arrogant. Those negatives need to be decreased.
“But being available is far from negative. It’s a unique kind of strength and confidence and a pathway to authentic connection with others. The more available you are, the more possibilities open before you.”
On the other hand, making yourself less available to become more mysterious and attractive is a formula for spending a lot of days and nights alone. Nicolino says it’s like deciding on “being less happy or less blissful.” Who wants that?
Being aloof and cool might work for rock stars and models, but it’s typically much less successful for ordinary people in their everyday lives. Still, there’s plenty of advice out there pushing the idea that the best way to become desirable is playing hard to get.
It’s sort of the Greta Garbo approach in Grand Hotel. That’s not a sound strategy unless, like Garbo in that movie, you really do want to be alone. Otherwise, it’s a bad way to go about looking for a new relationship, especially a substantial, long-term one. And a long-term relationship is the goal of 41% of single women and 25% of single men, according to the Pew Research Center[1] .
“Being less available isn’t some genius counterintuitive strategy,” Dr. Venus Nicolino said. “We live in such an odd time when we believe that the person who cares less wins. I’m here to tell you that the person who cares less gets less.
“Friendship, romance, goodness might be able to track you down in your bunker of unavailability, pretending to care less, but they damn sure will find you if you make yourself available.”
Even if someone finally connects with you after you’ve made yourself hard to find, it might turn out to be the type of person you wish you hadn’t attracted. For example, some people are drawn to unavailable partners (emotionally and otherwise) not out of caring and passion, but rather because of the challenge they present. They find the idea of breaking through someone's emotional defenses exciting and addictive[2] , fulfilling a desire for thrill and novelty in relationships.
Others find unavailable people attractive because of their own fear of intimacy. Being with someone who is distant allows them to maintain a safe emotional distance, reducing the risk of getting hurt. These individuals might subconsciously seek partners[3] who mirror the emotionally distant dynamics they experienced in their childhood or previous relationships, attempting to heal past wounds through familiar patterns.
In either case, it’s hardly the basis for a new, lasting relationship.
Conversely, making yourself available could drive these types of people away from you. Dr. Venus Nicolino says that another benefit of putting yourself out there. “Let them stay small,” she said of those repulsed by those who make themselves available. “Let them be less, too scared to love in a world that would gladly rain down love upon them but can’t because they’re too chickens--t, acting unavailable and pretending to care less.”
Deciding to make yourself unavailable means you’ve decided to build a fake fortress around your heart rather than attempt to make authentic connections. Nicolino explained it’s really just an elaborate game of pretend.
“That’s all it is, an act. The universe breathed life into you to be real, not to put on an act and play games with your humanity,” warned Nicolino. “So, make yourself available. The right people will find you and you’ll find them without all the wasted time that comes with confusing games. Let’s stop making it harder than it has to be to find each other. “
Based in Los Angeles, Nicolino is the bestselling author of Bad Advice: How To Survive and Thrive in an Age of Bulls--t. In it, Dr. Venus Nicolino takes on the endless parade of awful advice people can find on the internet — including the idea of becoming more attractive by being standoffish.
Nicolino also offers advice on her popular TikTok channel, as well as on her podcast, “The Tea With Dr. V.” A native of West Philadelphia, Dr. Venus Nicolino is known for her irreverent approach to tackling relationship and life advice. She’s earned a master’s in counseling psychology and a master’s and Ph.D. in clinical psychology.
A running theme throughout her book, videos, and interviews is the idea that people should stay true to themselves and recognize that when a relationship doesn’t work, it’s not automatically their fault. As Dr. Venus Nicolino shared in another TikTok video about how you can never be good enough for the wrong person, “You’re a person, not an interchangeable digit in a math formula that could work out if you just adjust your actions, expectations, and DNA.
“Even if you could change all that, it wouldn’t make you better or more valuable. It would actually diminish who you are.”
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