Among the so-called techniques of dating there is one called playing hard to get. Its advocates claim that showing your feelings too quickly puts you at a disadvantage, and that expressing a little less than the other person is how you gain the upper hand in the relationship. But even if this strategy looks rational in the short term, in the long term it easily produces an inefficient equilibrium. The structure of the prisoner’s dilemma explains why.

Suppose there are two people. Each can express their true feelings to the other, or act defensively to avoid getting hurt. If both express their feelings, the relationship moves close to its best possible state. Trust forms, the direction of each other’s emotions becomes clear, and needless guessing decreases. Conversely, if only one person shows their feelings while the other stays defensive, the one who opened up becomes vulnerable. They revealed more than the other did, and so they can be hurt more.

Because of this, from the individual’s point of view a defensive attitude looks safe. Even when the other person opens up, holding back a little feels like it costs me less. Even when the other person is defensive, being defensive too feels less pathetic than being the only one exposed. In other words, in every case defense seems like a decent option.

If we lay this situation out as a payoff matrix, it looks like the following. Each cell shows (my outcome, their outcome).

  Them: Open up Them: Defend
Me: Open up Both best — trust, closeness (3, 3) Only I’m vulnerable, worst (0, 5)
Me: Defend Only they’re vulnerable, I lead (5, 0) Ambiguous stalemate, second-worst (1, 1)

If you scan the numbers down each column, no matter what the other person chooses, defense always gives me the larger payoff. If they open up, I get 5 (the upper hand); if they defend, I get 1 (stalemate). Whereas if I open up, I get only 3 and 0 respectively. So if each follows individual rationality alone, both people choose defense.

The problem arises when both run the same calculation. When both people hide their feelings because they don’t want to get hurt, neither reaches the relationship they wanted. No one may get badly hurt, but no one is happy enough either. They are interested in each other yet cannot confirm it, they feel affection yet keep doubting, and the relationship stays in limbo. That is exactly the (1, 1) cell in the table. It is the point each rationally arrives at when looking only at their own share, but it is plainly worse than the (3, 3) they could have reached together. This is the prisoner’s dilemma of dating: the choice that looks safe for each produces a worse result for both.

This is precisely where the danger of playing hard to get lies. It turns hiding your feelings into a strategy. But a relationship is a game that gets worse the less information there is. If one person expresses less, the other expresses less too. If one deliberately replies late, the other paces themselves too. If one pretends to be indifferent, the other stops coming closer. In this way the relationship grows colder because of the very behaviors meant to protect each side.

Of course, this does not mean that revealing your feelings without limit is always a good strategy. Relationships carry risk, and there is a necessary process of checking whether the other person is trustworthy. The problem is when defense becomes the default. Defense should be an exceptional adjustment, not the operating principle of the relationship. Someone who keeps acting defensively may avoid being hurt, but they also end up avoiding intimacy.

In a repeated game, later interactions matter more than any single choice. So neither a completely naive strategy nor a completely cynical one is best. Showing a certain amount of trust at first, adjusting if the other person violates that trust, but then giving them a chance to cooperate again — this turns out to be more stable. It is similar in dating. Pouring out your whole heart from the start is risky, but revealing nothing at all invites a structural failure.

In the end, a healthy relationship is not a game of beating the other person, but a game of moving both people to a better state. Playing hard to get hides this fact. It makes the goal look like appearing to like the other person less, and it puts individual defense ahead of the relationship’s success. But in love the best outcome is not one side’s victory but mutual cooperation. A relationship where both hide their feelings may look safe. Yet that safety is often bought at the price of giving up happiness.

Playing hard to get, then, is less a sophisticated strategy than a way of teaching distrust in a repeated relationship. In the short term it may keep you from getting hurt, but in the long term it is likely to bind both of you to an equilibrium that is less honest, less close, and less happy. What matters in dating is not always revealing more, but revealing enough to begin trust.