Thanks for your replies everyone. @GoodPersonEffed in particular that was a great response. I feel I'm at a maturity level where I completely agree with you and can indeed put things more in better perspectives nowadays - and you're almost certainly right about me projecting who I want them to be - HOWEVER, I still feel like how a lot of the other responses were saying: that a lot of it is about 'game', and me having no real 'game', it gets frustrating never getting to find out how they will inevitably disappoint me lol.
So currently I'm over my last major obsession but there's a few potentials and I can already see how easily I could slip. What tends to happen when I think there might be an interest on her side is I just send a friendly message or two, she replies once or twice, and then shuts the hell up. I don't send further messages. Sometimes she will reply again weeks down the line, sometimes not. But more often than not I don't feel like I ever get to find out whether or not she was ever into my 'flavour', as @GoodPersonEffed put it.
It's the open-endedness that frustrates me the most.
I'm glad you got value from anything I said. I'm enjoying this conversation and the thread.
I want to respond to your comment. Please forgive if I sound at all preachy or like I'm spouting feel-good platitudes. I'm into what I'm saying, but it's just my opinions and perpsective, imperfect, fallible, and not universally applicable.
I think people in general don't know or respect themselves. They reject things about themselves rather than accepting and working with them. They put on false fronts and hide things, and sometimes present themselves as only what they like about themselves, or as other than they are so as not to be vulnerable. But then they have to put so much effort into maintaining the false front, and their genuine needs don't get met because they're hiding them and not allowing them to get met. They don't give someone else a chance to reject them because they've already rejected themselves. They even hide themselves from themeselves, as if it's something to be ashamed of.
This feeds into the Game. Everyone is going after something with other people who also have false fronts. No one gets to what is genuine. It's all self-manipulation and attempts at other-manipulation. Any satisfaction is fleeting because it's not meeting genuine needs. There's no connection, only false connecting with false, and blocking access to what's real. It's sideways approaches rather than direct. Direct can get rejected.
If you're getting ghosted after a few communications, it's not so much open-ended to me, but passively ended. If there's not been any real investment in exploring the connection, I think it's okay to just stop communicating, especially if one feels awkward and just doesn't know how to assertively say, "Thanks but no." If that person comes back when they feel like it, it's not your flavor they're going for. They want you to feed them in some other way, indirectly. This can be a subconscious manipulation or it can be outright manipulation. They don't want what's been offered, they want attention or being made to feel good, and when you want something genuine, they'll get offended, redirect, do something to get you off balance and go back to agreeing to their way or they'll discard...and maybe come back again later to feed some more.
Personally, if there's been some investment in exploring a new friendship or romantic relationship, and I find I don't want to invest further, I'll tell them directly. I only don't tell them if I get a vibe that they are in some way unsafe for me, if they already don't hear my no, and I just end contact without telling them. But I've found that people have a hard time with directness, too. They'll complain about ghosting and hate that treatement, and they'll also hate having been directly rejected, though I try to make it clear I"m not rejecting them, but the connection, which is not going to work for me, which doesn't satisfy. Either way, they're going to dislike the rejection, but at least when I state it's over, that I choose not to pursue it further, they know it's over. I don't go back and try again, I know it's not working, that's been sufficiently proven. Digging for nuggets of gold in a shitpile doesn't change that it's a shitpile, or make it as valuable as gold just because there's gold in it. What they do with my telling them assertively and not unkindly is up to them (I don't tell them it's a shitpile, nor that there was gold), but at least there's not the discomfort of not knowing, and holding on to hopes and expectations that I will never meet. I may or may not tell them something about them that I can no longer deal with, it depends on how open we've been with each other, and if it's something truly harmful to them and their relationships that it would serve them to know. Either way, they'll probably reject at first. I'm not harming them, though. It may hurt to know the truth, but the truth does not harm. I try to not be harmful in the telling, to not wound when I do it. It's taken a lot of conscious effort and practice to be able to do this. Sometimes I have harmed. I've learned, and try to do better going forward, because I know I've got the idea right, just learning how to do it with finesse. It's never fully comfortable, I have to work out my own feelings and recover somewhat, but to me it feels grounded and right to do the right thing in spite of discomfort.
Disconnecting and coming back later is a dangling carrot. It throws the other person off balance. It's false promises, and it sets up feelings like addiction. A person with self-respect can recognize that the other person's behavior doesn't feel good, and that any subsequent behaviors from them will also not feel good and there will be no genuine satisfaction. They've already revealed how they're going to disappoint (but I get that you may need or want to experience this, it's one thing for me to tell you, it's another to know for yourself). One can walk away from the toxic connection. They can say to themselves, "That person's actions don't feel good. I wish them well. I'm moving away from them and moving on." Of course there are still feelings of rejection, but there's also a gift in knowing that if one had handed their heart to that other person, that person would not have treated it well, they were about treating themselves, and one got free of certain future pain and torment. Even if it takes a while to get to this point, one doesn't have to beat themselves up for any pain and torment they experienced, they woke up to what was going on and got free from additional and certain future pain and torment. The more emotionally invested one is, the more pain and torment. Like a drug, one may get some good highs, but the suffering builds and isn't worth it, and eventually will strongly outweigh the highs. The highs are just highs, they're not something real. Both the highs and the pain are passions that throw one off balance.*
Your flavor is gourmet and for discerning tastes. One doesn't make the effort of a gourmet meal to serve it at a child's party. The kids will munch it down the same as they would fast food, not like it nearly as much, and probably throw it around, play with it, chew it up and show each other their full mouths -- do everything with it except for what it was meant for (an awkward metaphor): appreciation of the flavor and the effort that went into it, appreciation of how the flavor blends with and enhances their own, appreciation of how that flavor is enhanced in return, and appreciation for how it is good for digestion, with lots of nutrients. I get that you may want to serve to kids for a while and experience for yourself what they'll do with it, but I hope you'll remember that you're still gourmet. The more you know that, the more likely you can enjoy your own flavor even if no one else is appreciating it. Seeing it unappreciated reveals much about who you're serving it to, and it's not bad to have that experience. They're just kids, though even a few kids can be sociopaths, but they're still just kids, one doesn't have to hate a kid for being a kid, but they certainly don't have to hang out with them to get their needs met; kids are all about getting their own needs met, they don't yet have the capacity to meet others', let alone recognize them. If I could hope for you, which is not my right but yours, I would hope you won't tweak your flavor to make it acceptable to unrefined palates, but instead use the experience to make your flavor even more refined.
* "When in the grip of passionate emotions, we run the risk of being blind to the best course of action." (Epictetus)
"Those who are without skill and sense as to how they should live, like sick people whose bodies can endure neither heat nor cold, are elated by good fortune and depressed by adversity; and they are greatly disturbed by both, or rather by themselves in both, and not less in those circumstances called good." (Plutarch) [Please note one gets skill and sense by the practice of living, we aren't born knowing how to do complex things, we learn by trying, failing, trying some more, succeeding, and then continuing, if we choose to, to strive toward excellence, like an athlete who aspires to be an Olympian.]
