If I text you first, I could be perceived as difficult, a nuisance, over the top, too much work.

But as long as I hang back, you'll still want me. One of the most common mistakes that people make when they want more with someone is playing it too cool. Have you ever played it too cool? Not asking for things,

not wanting to be demanding, not wanting to pester someone, because you're worried that if you do,

you will lose your value in their eyes that your value comes from being chill

indifferent easy convenient and that if you were suddenly to start asking for what you actually

want that person would leave.

There's the famous monologue in the movie Gone Girl where she is talking about what it is to be a cool girl.

Men always say that as the defining compliment, don't they? She's a cool girl.

Being the cool girl means I'm a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football,

poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex,

and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth

like she's hosting the world's biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size two

because cool girls are above all hot.

Hot and understanding.

Cool girls never get angry.

They only smile in a tregrinned, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want.

Go ahead. Shit on me. I don't mind. I'm the cool girl.

Now, that monologue struck a chord for good reason because it really explained the feeling

of so many women about the impossibility of what they needed to be and represent, which is

everything. I need to be everything all of the time. Not only do I need to be everything all of the time,

but I need to ask for nothing in return. Because what that monologue does very, very well is it shows

the utter imbalance at the extreme of giving everything, being everything, providing everything, and getting nothing

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