It’s OK To Be Clingy Sometimes
Why conventional women’s dating advice is the worst
I was probably 11 or 12 years old when I read a teen girl magazine for the first time. It was during middle school when I was just starting to develop an interest in boys. I developed my first celebrity crush on Ashton Kutcher, which involved hanging photos of him cut out from said magazines up in my room and watching countless episodes of That 70s Show. And I started thinking up strategies to get the popular boys at my school to like me.
None of which worked since I was not very popular myself. Apparently using certain strategies doesn’t actually help you if the attraction and compatibility’s not already there beforehand.
But I did notice a common theme in most of the dating advice I was reading and it was this: don’t be clingy.
Because apparently being clingy was the absolute worst thing a girl could do. Guys hated clingy girls because they made things too easy. They ruined the chase and didn’t present the challenge guys were craving. So if a girl wanted a guy to like her, she had to be as not clingy as possible.
Which at the time, I interpreted as show absolutely zero interest. Don’t ever call or text him first. Do not flirt with him. Don’t be affectionate. Play hard-to-get. Push off sex for as long as possible. And basically just be a chill robotic kind of girl who never shows emotion. Because girls who show emotion are “crazy.”
And from middle school until my late 20s, that was what I believed I needed to do if I wanted a guy to like me. Every time I did something that contradicted it, even something as minor as texting a guy first, I would freak out because it just felt so wrong.
Unlearning Bad Habits
The worst part about the whole “don’t be clingy” formula was that it felt so inauthentic to me. Now even as a teen, I was always fairly independent. I was the type of girl who would rather be single than be in a bad relationship, but I was also a bit of a hopeless romantic thanks to being raised on fairy tales and rom-coms.
So whenever I became interested in a guy, I hated feeling like I couldn’t be my true self or else I’d “scare him off.”
And it didn’t help that damn near everything seemed to run the risk of making me look too clingy. I would keep tabs on how often I was texting a guy first versus him texting me first, to make sure he was the one putting in more effort. I refused to touch guys on dates unless they touched me first. If I caught feelings, I would talk myself out of them unless I was 100 percent sure they were mutual.
Now there were a few times when I broke the rules, like by asking my high school crush to a dance and messaging guys first on Tinder. But I almost always got rejected or ignored, which just reinforced my belief that showing interest makes girls look bad.
It was really a lose-lose situation though, because not showing interest didn’t get me what I wanted either. Instead it just kept me single for years.
It wasn’t until my late 20s, after I’d done some serious personal development, that I realized maybe I should stop playing games and start being myself.
Because it turns out, men like attention too! They’re really not that different from women.
One of my best friends, who’s a straight guy, literally told me recently that he LOVES clingy girls because he’s a hopeless romantic and he loves being affectionate, so he prefers to date girls who are the same way. Which makes a lot of sense because compatibility is important. He’s actually the one who gave me the inspiration to write this article.
While other guys may not like that because they value their independence more. Every guy is different. So it doesn’t make sense to make assumptions solely based on stereotypes and what you were taught by the media.
The key is simply finding someone who wants the same things you want and paying attention to how potential partners react to your behavior. If you feel like your efforts are too one-sided, it may be best to leave. But unless you’re literally stalking them or something, there’s probably a reason for it that has nothing to do with you being “too clingy”, like a lack of compatibility or the other person not being in the right mindset for a relationship at that moment.
So don’t stop being yourself just because someone, or a few people, rejected it. One guy’s “too clingy” is another guy’s “not clingy enough.” And the same applies to girls of course.
Your ideal partner who’s the same level of clingy as you are is out there somewhere. Don’t give up hope.
