The harder you chase, the faster love runs. Here's the real reason why, and what to do instead.
A friend of mine back in the day planted a seed in my mind that kinda messed with me and has left me thinking even to this day.
I was venting to him about someone I was interested in (arguably chasing) and how I knew she was interested but for some reason wasn't communicating in the same way. I told him I hated playing games. I just wanted to show up honestly, let the person know I liked them, and see what happened. Pure, clean, no drama. He looked at me and said: "Everyone plays the game. If you're not playing it, you're just playing it badly."
I wanted to argue, but the fact of the matter is I honestly couldn't once he broke it down for me because it made sense.
What I came to realize was that what I was calling "honesty" was actually doing something else entirely. Before you get after me for saying I should find a more mature person, yes, of course, that's definitely the case. But hear me out.
The fact of the matter is there are elements at play here related to the laws of attraction and natural animalistic behaviors. When something is chasing us, we have a tendency to run away, and when something is running, we often have a tendency to chase after it. Go figure. Kind of funny, I know. The giraffe and the ostrich in the photo below are not as silly as it may seem after all.
No matter how good my intentions were, the energy behind my pursuit was doing the exact opposite of what I wanted.
If you've ever poured yourself into someone and watched them pull back in response, this post is for you.
Why does chasing someone push them away?
It comes down to something psychologists call reactance. We are wired to resist losing freedom. When someone's attention is constantly available, we start to take it for granted. When it becomes rare, we value it more. That's just how the human brain works.
Think about the two-car example I use with clients. Imagine two identical cars, same model, same color, same everything. One you saved and worked years to buy. The other was handed to you for free. If you had to sell one tomorrow, which would it be? Every time I ask this, the answer is the same: the free one. Not because it's worth less on paper. Because it cost you nothing, and so it means less.
Apply that to love and it lands hard.
When you over-pursue someone, when you respond instantly, make yourself endlessly available, and orbit around their every move, you accidentally remove their ability to earn you. You've handed over the car for free. And whether they consciously realize it or not, something in them devalues the connection because of it.
I used to think I was being generous. I was actually being selfish. I was hogging the chase for myself, and robbing the other person of the very experience I was enjoying: feeling like something was worth pursuing.
The hard part isn't understanding this intellectually. The hard part is feeling the pull to reach out, to close the gap, to get reassurance, and choosing to sit with that discomfort instead.
How does your energy shape whether someone is drawn to you?
Before someone knows your history, your values, or a single detail about your life, they feel your energy. This isn't mystical. It's physiological. Our nervous systems read other people's emotional states constantly, often before we've consciously registered anything at all.
Anxious energy creates intensity. It can feel electric at first. But it burns fast, and it leaves people tired. There's a restlessness to it that others sense, even if they can't name it. It signals: I need something from you to feel okay.
Grounded, self-sourced energy is different. It doesn't ask for anything. It simply exists, steady and full. And people want to move toward it because it feels safe. More than safe, it feels free.
This is what I mean by self-possession. Not coldness. Not playing hard to get. Just being so genuinely rooted in your own life, your own sense of worth, and your own okayness, that you don't need any one person to complete the picture. That energy is quietly magnetic in a way that no strategy can replicate.
Here's the thing about attraction that nobody tells you: it lives in the space between two people. It needs room to breathe. When you collapse that space by over-pursuing, the tension disappears, and with it, the spark. Desire needs room. It grows in the gap, not in constant closeness.
What does genuine magnetism actually look like?
It's not a performance. That's the first thing to get clear on.
A lot of the advice out there around attraction is really just manipulation repackaged. Tactics like "negging," artificial scarcity, or withholding affection to trigger someone's insecurity. These things can work in the short term. I've watched them work on people I care about. And I've watched the damage they leave behind. I don't teach any of that, and I don't believe it has any place in conscious relating.
Real magnetism is simpler, and honestly harder. It comes from doing the work on yourself until you are genuinely okay on your own.
Not performing okayness. Actually being it.
When you know your own value, you don't over-explain yourself. You don't chase reassurance. You don't bend yourself into shapes that feel foreign just to keep someone's attention. And paradoxically, that groundedness makes you far more compelling than any tactic ever could.
The most attractive energy you can bring into a relationship is a quiet confidence that you'll be fine whether someone stays, goes, or meets you halfway. Not because you don't care. But because you are whole enough that another person is an addition to your life, not the foundation of it.
If any of this is landing and you want to go deeper, this is exactly the work I do through Love Unlocked. Whether it's the book, the coaching container, or both, the goal is always the same: getting you back to yourself so that what you bring to love is real.
You can also find more about my work and background at zacspowart.com if you want the full picture.
How do you stop chasing without shutting down?
I get asked this a lot, and it honestly comes back full circle to being true to ourselves.
You don't stop caring. You don't go cold or manufacture distance to seem mysterious. You redirect your energy inward, back toward your own life, your own growth, your own enjoyment of being alive.
Full presence in your own world is not a strategy. It's a practice. And when you genuinely have a life you love, you stop white-knuckling every interaction with someone you're drawn to, because your sense of self isn't riding on their response.
The push-pull dynamic that runs so many early relationships isn't something you engineer. It happens naturally when two people are each living full lives and choosing, freely, to move toward each other. That choice, made from wholeness rather than need, is what gives connection its weight.
You can't manufacture attraction out of nothing. But you can stop killing it the moment it appears.
So here's the question I want to leave you with: Are you pursuing love from a place of fullness, or from a fear of being without it? And if it's the latter, what would it take to feel whole enough that the answer changes?
Ready to go deeper?
If this resonated, my book Love Unlocked goes further into attachment, identity, and what conscious relating actually looks like in practice.
Want to work through your patterns together? I offer 1:1 Clinical Coaching and a 90-day container for people ready to break cycles and come home to themselves. Learn more at loveunlocked.com.
Or reach out directly at zac@loveunlocked.com.