"Use Absence to increase respect and honor. Too much circulation makes the price go down: the more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity. [...]

Everything in the world depends on absence and presence. A strong presence will draw power and attention to you -- you shine more brightly than those around you. But a point is inevitably reached when too much presence creates the opposite effect: the more you are seen and heard from, the more your value degrades. You become a habit. No matter how hard you try to be different, subtly, without your knowing why, people respect you less and less. At the right moment you must learn to withdraw yourself before they unconsciously push you away. It is a game of hide-and-seek. [...]

The truth of this law can most easily be appreciated in matters of love and seduction. In the beginning stages of an affair, the lover's absence stimulates your imagination, forming a sort of aura around him or her. But this aura fades when you know too much -- when your imagination no longer has room to roam. The loved one becomes a person like anyone else, a person whose presence is taken for granted. This is why the seventeenth-century French courtesan Non de Lenclos advised constant feints at withdrawal from one's lover. "Love never dies of starvation,' she wrote, "but often of indigestion." The moment you allow yourself to be treated like anyone else, it is too late -- you are swallowed and digested. To prevent this you need to starve the other person of your presence. Force their respect by threatening them with the possibility that they will lose you for good; create a pattern of presence and absence."

Robert Greene - The 48 Laws of Power, p.199