The Men's Guide to Playing Hard to Get
A few days ago, a reader going by the name of Jimbob asked a very good question about feigning disinterest or playing hard to get with women. Here's the segment of his comment that had to do with it (I've added a few paragraph splits to increase readability):
"But anyway what I wanted to ask you is regarding what I sometimes read about when I stumble on to PUA forums or other dating websites. Apparently you're supposed to mix showing interest and feigned disinterest with girls, to make them want you more and try and come after you a little bit and win your approval.
"I've never really tried this consciously, but in my experience showing interest and then showing a lack of interest for whatever reason results in the girl recoiling as if she has been rejected and then she feigns disinterest with the “Oh, I wasn’t really interested in him" attitude you mentioned. Even with really beautiful girls I've seen this, they rarely respond positively to interest mixed with disinterest, sometimes they just act confused, once I actually saw a look of anguish on this girls face because she thought I was rejecting her by not flirting with her, after that she ignored me for quite a while.
"I think it's maybe a self esteem issue or issues they have surrounding rejection, or maybe they've been burnt too many times, but it seems that even the beautiful women have average self esteem these days (I live in the UK by the way). Maybe because they're so gorgeous they're used to guys hounding them 24/7 so if you show disinterest they take it literally, I don't know, but to me it seems like a pointless and hit and miss technique."
Jimbob, this is a great, sharp observation on your part. It took me about 2-3 years of actively approaching women and trying to improve with them before I started noticing this:
Playing too hard to get costs you women. Lots of women, quite often.
Why does playing too hard to get lose you women? Jimbob touched on the answer in his comment -- and I'm going to take you down that rabbit hole in this post.
You know, I've been called a lot of things. I've been called an extremely warm person; I've been called a cold man. And at times, I've been called a romantic.
In the post on 
I'm a reasonably well-traveled fellow. I've lived on two continents and ventured around on four, with time spent in between on islands in the Pacific and the Atlantic. When you travel a lot, one of the first quandaries you come across is this: how do you get foreign girls who don't speak English?
Wouldn't it be great to have the girl you want green-eyed with envy and madly 
I've always been a big fan of games. I invented games to play on the schoolyard with my classmates in first and second grade; I played Atari games and Nintendo games and games on the computer. Games are quite often a lot of fun.
An emotional connection is one of those fleeting, powerful things that can seem all too rare and all too outside one's control. It can seem like it's just chance when you happen upon one -- as if but by the grace of God it came into being. 
The other day I was walking down the street with a friend of mine when I happened to see a couple walking toward us. The man in that couple then lifted his arm up and wrapped it around the girl's shoulders; immediately though, she reached up and removed his hand from her shoulders, and a sheepish grin spread across his face. When he noticed that I'd been watching, he then hung his head a little lower.
Yesterday I went out with a guy I mentor, and he asked to watch me do some direct daytime approaches.
A reader recently wrote in to ask me why I thought his text conversations weren't going anywhere. He's been working really hard to get his game tightened down, and thought he was doing well... but here, again, he could feel this girl slipping away. The texting transcript he sent picks up mid-conversation: