Isn't it a bit late for her to start playing hard to get?

Apologies for the length of the post, I'm a man of details.

I've had 4 dates in the last 3 months with this plate I'm spinning. I approached her at a festival, discovered that we have a friend in common (good friend of hers, just an acquaintaince of mine), hit it off quite well and her IL was going through the roof. She gave me her contact details without me really asking for it.

First date, "one thing led to another", and we were going at it until 5am when she had to get home to get ready for work. Second date, we went for a marathon that night and another one after we got up until nearly 5pm the next day. She's obsessed with the gym (similar to me with fitness training) & has a fantastic body & energy to match. Third date was a simple dinner then a stroll in the park on a week night after work, heavy makeout session & she said how much fun she's having when she's with me.

The fourth date was where the "fun" began. Between the 3rd & the 4th dates, she moved out of her parents' place and is now living with her female cousin & two girl friends. She was really busy with that, and I was going on holiday, so we didn't catch up for a month. When I got back, I arranged a date in her new area, which has some really good restaurants I want to check out. She still sounded very enthusiastic, but before the date happened, I noticed some not very good signs. I can't remember all of them, but the main one was that she rescheduled her two main gym nights to be on the same ones that have the regular activities I'm going to that she said she'd love to join (& I've invited her to join one of those two clubs). That's fine with me, since I can use the time to spin other plates or collect more, but that action said to me that her IL had dropped.

I went on the 4th date which went well, and we were heading back to her place (I checked out in advance with her and thought that her housemates wouldn't be there) after some heavy make-out in the park, with me expecting a good romp. When we got there, her housemates were home (hmm) and invited us along to a picnic. She's never met any of my friends and I wasn't too keen to meet hers that soon, but I went with it anyway and they were cool with me. However, she appeared cold (relatively to what she was before) all of a sudden & spent most of the time looking away from me. She never properly introduced me to others, just said I'm "a friend". In my experience, girls who had high IL in me were very enthusiastic when they introduced me to their friends. I thought maybe she was shy or whatever, so I just chilled with her housemates & their boyfriends (they were all in a relationship). We left together as she had to work, and as soon as we were a little further away from those people, she was holding hands and all that. WTF? My gut told me that something's up.

During the next month, I asked her out again 3 times, she rejected all of them saying that she's busy, with no counter-offer. By then I believed that her IL had really dropped and maybe she found a better offer elsewhere. Cool, so I dropped her priority on my list and focused on other plates. I ignored her on V-Day and went out with another plate instead. I thought that she'd have something lined up but on V-Day while I was at work, I noticed that she updated her Facebook status a number of times, complaining how busy she is working & saving up to go to Japan (in 6~12 months - I knew this and so never thought of her as a potential relationship). She's still complaining about how busy she is now. That to me meant that she had nothing on for V-Day and was probably quite pissed off.

Her behaviour from the 4th date onwards is very much like the ones playing hard to get, in my experience, but I'm wondering why she's doing it this late? Usually those game playing chicks would do it while withholding sex, but this one isn't really in a position to do that. My guess is that her girl friends are advising her to do this, likely without knowing that we had slept together a few times.

Anyway it doesn't really matter what the hell she's up to as I still have other plates and have acquired some potentials since then, so I'm kept busy and haven't contacted her for 2 weeks, but I'm curious to know why she's changed so quickly. I do like her body & energy in the bedroom but I can get over it.

Jitterbug said:

The fourth date was where the "fun" began. Between the 3rd & the 4th dates, she moved out of her parents' place and is now living with her female cousin & two girl friends.

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This is where you lost her. That and the long time between contact. She went from being with the parents to out on her own, being able to bring home a new c0ck every night.

I think seeing a women 4 times in 3 months is way too little and hence why she forgot about it.

Oh well, live and learn, keep spinning those other plates.

You're probably right about her new found freedom...

It's more like 4 times in 2 months, as I haven't seen her for about a month since the 4th date. Those 2 months were from Dec to Jan and between them there's Christmas (which she spent with her family) and my 2 weeks holiday, so 4 dates were actually a lot for me, since I'm also dating 2 other girls.

I'm glad that I read about the plate theory here a while ago and have been applying it. This would have really fvcked me up during my AFC days.

Sounds to me like she may have thought of you as good enough as a Boy Toy, but doesn't think of you as being in her league? Is there a class issue, for example, you're blue collar and she's white collar? Anything like that? I'm wondering because when you met her roommates and she seemed to disavow you as her date in front of them but got cuddly again when alone with you, makes it seem that way.

She may have then gotten ridicule or heat from her roommates and now feels embarrassed to see you. If this is the case, she's a low self esteem person who kowtows to how she appears to others.

The big mistake you made was sticking around when you discovered her housemates were home and they invited you along. You should've politely declined their offer and told her, "I'm going to run. I don't want to take you away from your friends."

That's what you should've done because you only had four dates in and she wasn't yet at a point where she was crazy enough for you where her friends' opinions wouldn't matter.

I don't think you lost her when she moved out, as MacAvoy suggested, and with all due respect for his opinion, because her ability to have sex anytime was evidently in full force while she was still living with her parents, and you're an example of that. I also don't think that a date every fifteen days or so makes a gal lose interest necessarily, in fact, it could even build interest being not so available. I've done that schedule and girls go crazy because they desire to see you.

Like the chic uptown professional woman who has an affair with the hunky janitor, I think that's the kind of mentality you were dealing with.

Mr. Me said:

Sounds to me like she may have thought of you as good enough as a Boy Toy, but doesn't think of you as being in her league? Is there a class issue, for example, you're blue collar and she's white collar? Anything like that? I'm wondering because when you met her roommates and she seemed to disavow you as her date in front of them but got cuddly again when alone with you, makes it seem that way.

She may have then gotten ridicule or heat from her roommates and now feels embarrassed to see you. If this is the case, she's a low self esteem person who kowtows to how she appears to others.

...

Like the chic uptown professional woman who has an affair with the hunky janitor, I think that's the kind of mentality you were dealing with.

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Where are you drawing these conclusions from? Are you just picking it out of the sky? Cuz I don't see anything in his post where you can make an educated guess like that.

I also fail to see the DJ qualities in your post. I don't see why your cutting this guy down, I don't see anything drasticly wrong in his post but here you are for some reason trying to make him feel like this women is superior to him and above him.

Mac, I'm not cutting him down. I'm not "trying to make him feel" a damn thing.

I'm guessing you're saying that because I gave a "chic uptown professional woman who has an affair with the hunky janitor" scenario? I gave that as an example of the probable mentality of the woman he's dealing with, since I don't know exactly what the situation is.

Being a "hunky janitor" is NOT a put down.

But you see how you perceive it is? So it is that I got the sense that it has something to do with her being embarrassed about him in some regard because she wouldn't acknowledge him as her date in front of her friends, yet she was all comfy cozy with him when alone.

Furthermore, she was willing to bring him home when she thought her housemates weren't there to see him.

So from where do I draw these conclusions? First of all, I'm not "concluding" anything, I'm speculating based on the information Jitterbug gives. Just like you did about her increased freedom meaning she was getting more action (Actually, when you think about it, she has housemates that she can't bring her supposed army of new lovers home to without having them all think she's a slut. She was bringing Jitterbug to her house when she thought her housemates weren't home).

When people act like that, disavowing you in front of their friends but when alone being intimate, they're usually with someone who, from outside appearances, wouldn't be someone they see themselves as normally being with - or want to be seen with - but whom they do find attractive. What is it about their lover that they wish to hide because they feel others would disapprove? A class distinction? A person of another race? A person of another generation? Being with an overweight person? An ugly person? Who knows in this case?

But that's where I was pointing Jitterbug to look for an answer.

Thanks for the explanation, it didn't pop out to me and you never made it obvious why you were drawing the conclusions that you did. My comments about her new found freedom were more to bang the point home that at this point he's wasting his time with her as she's obviously moved on and doesn't have high IL.

I agree with your assessment though about the way she reacted in front of her friends. The only reason I called it a put down was because I didn't see where you were drawing your conclusions from and I only seen negativity.

Are you sure you just didn't keep up being a DJ on the 3rd date? Maybe you got a little wussy on her, I don't know, hard to tell. But we do know that her IL surely dropped, very much so.

Mr. Me brings up a good point about class, you should comment on that. One thing is for sure, this girl is out as a relationship candidate, but if you liked the sex, I wouldn't keep her on the backburner just in case you're drunk one night and all other plans had failed.

My best educated guess at this point was that you weren't a challenge and she met someone else, probably through her friends. I mean, it's not like she isn't quick to jump on a new c0ck anyway.

I am more curious about why she got "cold" in front of her friends. Mr. Me made some good analysis and speculation.

One aspect that I never thought of earlier and I don't know why I'm making excuses her for this flake but here goes anyway: Is she that she's that religious that she wouldn't want her friends to know that she actually has a b/f. But I stand by my original thought that she had low IL from not seeing him often enough.

But I agree with Mr Me & others that the whole thing in front of her friends is a huge red flag.

MacAvoy said:

This is where you lost her. That and the long time between contact. She went from being with the parents to out on her own, being able to bring home a new c0ck every night..

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Haha, now you starting to sound like me!

Yep, this is why she just introduced you as a friend and was acting cold towards you - her friends know she's blowing another dude and she doesn't want to come off as the hor that she is by giving you affection in front of others.

But then she'd continue to see him on the sly, like she was doing before.

Jitter, I was going through the EXACT same thing as you. Like Mac said, it's because she moved out and joined a bunch of girls who have a lot influence in her behavior. The chick I was dating started getting distant the moment one of her alpha female friend broke up with her bf - now she has someone to party with who's as attractive. This girl was always the leader of their pack and now she's available to party and tease guys. One thing I noticed is that they do get cold on you when they're with their friends. They're proving or displaying to their friends "don't worry pack leader, he has no control over me". So what you should've done was not accept that offer to chill with them. You need to be somewhere more important. All that has to happen for a chick to lose IL for you is one negative comment about you by her "pack leader" friend and you're done. It'll stick in her head forever. Pack leader does not want to lose one of her pack members to a BF.

When I date chicks and someone says something negative about her attitude or looks or whatever, it sticks in my head bigtime. Not that I base choices on what my friends say but deep inside it affects me. Once my friend told me that the HB8.5 I was dating appeared old or older among other slight negativities and that stuck in my head and eventually lost interest in her. I hate to admit that but it's true. After I broke though, they all say stuff like, "she looks hot tonite". Those were not my real friends I discovered quickly. WTF! Friends sabotage other friend's relationships my friend. They don't want to lose their members. Of course they aren't your REAL friends because your real friends have positive things to say and they don't worry about losing a pack member.

In my case, the "pack leader" alpha female told her my actions were "shady" among other things - that did me in. Until then, I'd booty call and she'd come over everytime. Needless to say that stopped along with everything else.

The moral of the story: Don't underestimate the power of the pack!! When they eventually get a bf, especially the leader, they all get bf's or at least start dating more seriously. And when they're single they all seem to be.

This is a lost cause.

Please eject for your own sanity.

One more thing I'd like to add to my above post that may make this even more crazy. I left out the part that the pack leader chick used to like me before I was dating this girl. This was kinda important. I don't know how I left that out. Now you can really see the strength and influence friends have in dating. So until you've developed a strong bond already, stay away from the friends. That way they can't judge you negatively. And remember, if they don't have bfs themselves, they will find something negative to say.

Just to add a few bits of information:

- Career-wise, we work in the same industry (white collar), about the same age and I'm far in front of her (and her housemates).

- I was the same on the third date as on the first two. I don't think I behaved any differently.

- I've never thought of pursuing her for a relationship from the start, purely because she said she's going overseas to live & work for a couple of years later this year. I don't do LDR.

Yep in hindsight, I think I should've excused myself and left when we got home and met the housemates. Staying was a bad move, although I behaved normally and didn't make a boob of myself. The pack were polite & pleasant towards me.

The pack leader comment from Mr Wise is very interesting. However, does it apply in this case where the entire pack are in a relationship (and by the look of it, LTR) except the chick I'm dating?

It could be that she's also screwing other guys & the housemates know about it, like some guessed, that's why she appeared cold. Heh, I don't mind that at all. I'm doing the same thing myself.

Or it could be one of these:

What is it about their lover that they wish to hide because they feel others would disapprove? A class distinction? A person of another race? A person of another generation? Being with an overweight person? An ugly person? Who knows in this case?

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I'm Asian and she's white anglo. I've never made race a big deal, and in this case, I thought it's not likely as she has plenty of Asian friends (some of the guys are also in a relationship with white females) and has admitted that she has a thing for Asian guys herself. However, I don't know about her housemates.

If the housemates have LTRs, that should work to your advantage. However, the need for her to complain about how busy she is now days is a strong indicator of low IL. You need to distance yourself from her for good, it's the only way to get over her and the only way she'll ever develop high interest again. This might sound crazy but, they need to know you have the ability to walk away without looking back before they can like you.

When people act like that, disavowing you in front of their friends but when alone being intimate, they're usually with someone who, from outside appearances, wouldn't be someone they see themselves as normally being with - or want to be seen with - but whom they do find attractive.

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In my case, the "pack leader" alpha female told her my actions were "shady" among other things - that did me in.

The moral of the story: Don't underestimate the power of the pack!! When they eventually get a bf, especially the leader, they all get bf's or at least start dating more seriously. And when they're single they all seem to be.

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Wow, that's gold for me.
I dated this girl that had 2 groups of friends (like we all do),"good" friends and acquaintances (work colleagues, faculty classmates...).
So whenever I went out with her alone or with her acquaintances she was VERY cool,but whenever we meet with her "good" friends it was like I am her brother (and in not a good way).And she never wanted us to go out with her "good" friends (the exception was our's third date,after that I met them maybe once or twice and that was by accident).She didn't even told them that we were fvcking
And I didn't really understood what's up until now.
But I still can't understand what she was thinking:"he is good for me,I like him and stuff",but "he is not good enough for my best friends" ...

But I still can't understand what she was thinking:"he is good for me,I like him and stuff",but "he is not good enough for my best friends"

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Her thought is probably more along the lines of "I think he's hot, but what will my friends think of me if they know I'm attracted to him?" and that's because SHE perceives that you don't meet some imagined "standard", and that's because SHE cares more about how she's perceived.

For that type of person, it's all about perception. Do you catch that? Her perception of him, her perception of her friends, her perception of how her friends will perceive him and her...

"He's Asian. I should really be going out with a Caucasian", she may think. "I think he's really super frickin' hot and I really like him, but [because I perceive an Asian as being not the best I could do], I believe my friends will likewise look down upon me for dating him."

This is one good reason why, as I posted earlier, you don't meet their friends or hang out with their friends until you have a bunch of dates in where her interest in you is now sky high, because then her friends can't influence her anymore.

At that point, they could say anything they want and Jane will defend you and will say, "But when I'm with him, I'm happier than when I was with any of those obnoxious white frat boys I used to go out with!"

Mr. Me said:

For that type of person, it's all about perception. Do you catch that? Her perception of him, her perception of her friends, her perception of how her friends will perceive him and her...

"He's Asian. I should really be going out with a Caucasian", she may think. "I think he's really super frickin' hot and I really like him, but [because my friends perceive an Asian as being not the best I could do], I believe my friends will likewise look down upon me for dating him."

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I made a small edit in bold but more importantly

I think Mr Me is DEAD ON in his assessment. However the most important thing here is, be thankful that this has happened. You've seen her true colours, do you really want to be with someone so shallow?

To me its not the fact that your asian, she's obviously attracted to you, that isn't the issue. The issue is she's more concerned about what OTHERS think than her OWN happiness.

I've dated women like this and they are nothing but trouble, they will constantly do things and change their minds & be irrational. They will put EVERYONE ahead of you, everyone, because what matters most to her is what others think.