On Pursuit

I love my “why don’t want to write this” little practice, which I did before writing this. I credit my efficiency writing essays to it.

My relationship to the pursuer role has been on my mind a lot lately, and it feels good to write about it, and feel like I’m gaining coherence around it.

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My relationship to pursuit is a long one. 

History

On some level it’s been hammered into me since I can remember. Boys chase girls, and not the other way around. 

I’m supposed to make the move, and have to make a move if I want to connect romantically/physically with someone. Conveniently, the few times that someone expressed interest in me were casually pruned away in my memory. They weren’t the people I wanted and so I didn’t even register. I have lots to learn here in terms of receiving interest/affection fully/lovingly/gracefully. 

When I made bids for connection with girls, sometimes I was rejected, sometimes it panned out. In some cases, I kinda allowed a handful of interactions to unfold that I wasn’t actually a full yes to. 

In college in particular, the pursuit was very much part of the water I swam in. “The hunt”. The implicit values of worth and status - hooking up with people, body count, being attractive, having people interested in me. And the lesser respect that was extended on some level to those that weren’t winning that game. I perceived it playing out interpersonally amongst my friends, and more broadly in the Greek social system.  

Motivation

I have a deeply held belief/fear that if I don’t make something happen, nothing will happen, in general (though that’s chipped away a lot), but particularly romantically. 

Which taps into deeper fears around life path/structure/coherence/WTF am I doing. In quitting my job 5 years ago, I put pretty much everything on the table and flipped it. I’ve been willing and actively interested in reexamining and rebuilding how I relate to pretty much every aspect of my life - my purpose/meaning, the nature of it, how I spend my time, what’s important, where I spend my time, my relationships, my long term future, etc. The one thing I didn’t put on the chopping block was the intention to have a family. 

So when pursuit is not happening successfully, what’s at stake is the one thing I’ve subconsciously decided was going to keep me tethered to sanity and life and overall life structure and narrative and how I was going to be safe and satisfied in my late years. When I really tap into the possibility of not having this, I don’t just feel fear, I feel panic and heartache. 

This is my work to be with, but suffice to say that at least for now, the impulse to pursue and to do it well is deeply tied to this fear.

There’s also aspects of the pursuer role that I feel good about, that feel exciting and engaging and that I feel celebration of, assuming some mutual consent/interest. I’m using the words pursuer/pursue-ee, but it maps to, or at least rhymes with, polarities like masculinity/femininity, dom/sub, yin/yang. 

One is seeing it as an avenue for deepening and honoring my understanding of, trust of, and connection to myself, in particular my desires. In the role I get to practice greater consciousness and clarity of my desires, and more power and effectiveness in naming and acting on them. I get to more unabashedly step into me and what I want, in a way that feels really great. 

Another, similarly, is seeing it as an avenue for stepping into and expressing my sexual power. Part of me feels sheepish even writing that sentence, but it comes from a lifetime of powerlessness, believing that “whelp either they’re into me or they’re not (and they’re usually not), guess I go fuck myself.” The idea and the experience that “oh there are ways I can show up that actually can create/increase chances of attraction, interest, sexual tension, etc., while feeling in integrity with myself” has been revelatory, and deeply empowering. Which is in contrast to how shadowy and shady hitting on girls felt to me in college.

A key desire here is to be conscious and at choice about stepping into the pursuer role. I want to choose it, not slip into it out of shame/fear. I want to collaboratively negotiate/feel into it with my counterpart, to be on the same page about wanting/not wanting that dynamic. 

Impact

Because it has impacts/consequences! That’s great if they’re the ones we want, and not, if they aren’t. Most noticeable to me are an outcome orientation and narrowed awareness, which are deeply related. 

One perspective to view the pursuer/pursue-ee dynamic is that it sets up a game. The goal of the pursuer is to successfully nab the pursue-ee, the pursue-ee gets to be free and do what they want at their pleasure. There’s a way in which the pursuer gives their power to the pursue-ee - the power to declare victory or loss. And I’m sure some analogous thing is happening on the other side. 

This game is actually quite important because in my observation/experience, this dynamic is precisely what generates the tension that creates attraction, the spark that fuels connection and romance. My sense is that some amount of pursuit is a prerequisite (one of potentially many) for a relationship to go anywhere sexual/romantic.

And in the playing of the game, my awareness narrows. I’m primarily noticing aspects of myself and the other person that are relevant to the pursuit game. I notice a lot about them as a pursue-ee, how they carry themselves, how they respond to me, how they play the game, etc. And I’m not paying much attention to other aspects of them.

In some cases, this is awesome. It’s fun, it’s playful, it’s sexy, it’s generative, it’s exciting, the vibes are good. We’re building a sense of us, our connection, and allowing, daring ourselves to start feeling and stretching into what it could be. It’s beautiful. Even with the focused awareness, people show a lot of themselves in this process, and I pick up on more of it than if we weren’t in the dynamic. I primarily get a sense of our chemistry together, and I still pick up on bits of them that aren’t quite relevant. 

In other cases, it sucks. Losing usually doesn’t feel good. Being a prize can be great or feel shitty. If the parts of someone that show up in the pursuit dynamic aren’t the ones that matter most to someone, then it can lead to feeling unseen, hurt, and even objectified/pedestalized - related to in a way that is not wanted, painful/dangerous, and systemically common.

So if we’re both into this power transfer, game playing thing, then great. But it has different properties from a fully neutral/impartial “get to know someone” process. Which is why I ultimately want to be really clearly at choice and conscious about when and why I’m going into this role vs not. 

Why This Reflection is Important to Me, Now

I keep harping on choice because as I started reflecting on this stuff, the previously fear/panic was alive - “am I doing this thing in a pattern, every time, in a way that’s dooming my dating life to the same mistakes over and over again?” And I’ve realized there’s at least 2 ways where the pattern probably isn’t serving me:

1. My connections are selected for certain forms of chemistry (eg physical) and not necessarily others (friendship vibes)

2. Connecting with people that only know how to be pursued and don’t know how to pursue

I’ve reflected on point #1 after every romantic split I’ve had in the last few years - how much do I want to have a continued relationship (friendship) with this person now? And of course every relationship is different, it’s not a binary decision, and thankfully I haven’t dated anyone where the answer was like “definitely not”. But sometimes the answer is “hm not really”, at least relative to the other relationships and things going on in my life. Something about that is slightly concerning to me - if I wouldn’t actively keep this person in my life in the absence of romantic/sexual intimacy, maybe that’s a bad sign for the longevity of the relationship, where certainly there will be times where the romance and sex are not firing on all cylinders. Thankfully, “insufficient” strength in the connection is basically the main reason on my side why those relationships haven’t (yet) developed into something more serious. 

But it does beg the question - in terms of prioritizing my time, would I be better off preselecting for friendship rather than chemistry? I.e. focusing on people I want to be friends with, developing those relationships, and then introducing possible romance later, as opposed to starting with the chemistry and feeling out the broader connection over time. I suspect the answer isn’t binary, but it’s something I’m wanting to at least be more aware of. 

I’m implicitly grasping at point #2 every time I get in touch with the part of me that wants to feel desired, wanted, pursued, prized even. And the now obvious tragedy for that part of me is that if I’m consistently leaning into a pursuer role, I’m never going to leave the space or awareness for someone to pursue me and have me take it seriously. That part of me is trapped, unable to meet its yearnings, in a prison of my own creation. 

I’ve landed somewhere non-dual/”both and” here, which is that ideally, I’d be amazing at both pursuing and being pursued, and could move fluidly/effortlessly between the 2. So that involves continuing to “practice” pursuit, as well as creating space and openness to being pursued. 

Conclusion

I’m really grateful for the opportunity to unpack and understand this tendency of mine better, and hope that in reflecting on it, I’ll be able to relate to it more consciously. So far the evidence is mildly promising. And I hope this is relevant to others, and curious how others relate to this stuff. I definitely have a bit of fear of being cast as shallow or trash or something, but let me know what you think!