When I was in my teens I was sitting on a field with a girl I was close to, chatting normally, getting to know her, and another boy who liked her came up and grabbed her shoes off and threw them. She did the whole "god you're a jerk" yelling at him, and later ended up dating him.

I think I even ran and got the shoes back for her.

A friend of mine met a new girl at college, she was from the US south, and he started asking her what it was like down there, having pleasant conversation. Another classmate started teasing her saying "oh, so you're a hick huh, nice to meet you hick" and he says she was laughing and punching the joker's arm saying "shut up", and she ended up being close with the joking guy.

After the "thrown shoes" incident, (more than a decade ago now) I suddenly realized that every boy I knew who I had seen flirting had done kind of playful teasing and jokey fighting. I talked about this with some kids my age and some of them agreed, sometimes they did it or liked it.

But none of the mentors/authority figures in my life I trusted would discuss this with me. I met a complete stone wall. I asked them "do I need to learn how to tease people to get a girlfriend?" and they completely dismissed me, said it was silly and the shoe-thrower boy just sounded like he was being an idiot and that had nothing to do with why she dated him.

In my early 20s I made friends at work with a very popular, lovely guy who everyone liked, and I saw him get close to a woman we worked with, and again, his flirting was based around joking that he was ignoring her and saying she was stupid, jokey insults.

I also got close to a couple of women myself that year who did "tease flirting", and I did it back to them for the first time. I felt I could get into the groove of it by thinking about what my friend would say and giving them zingers back.

I read some books about dating and flirting around then and none of them had anything about that. It was all just "ask questions to get to know her, be polite and show an interest".

Then a friend lent me his copy of "The Game", saying, "oh if you want a dating guide, this is interesting". It completely grabbed me. Reading the book was the first time anyone had talked to me frankly about the kind of flirting I'd seen all my life. I felt like I'd had this crazy thing for years of being the only one who can see how people flirt and now I was reading that I wasn't crazy.

I no longer read PUA books and I no longer, at this age, think teasing is as big a part of dating. However I believe that a lot of shy young men leap into PUA and RP because it's the first time they hear open talk about the flirting they see around them and have trouble joining in with.

The normal world will only give stubborn responses of "no, only a minority of idiots do that" etc.

And even now in the adult world, I see couples on dates all the time, and they have spark...they test each other with challenging debate..to see if they are able to disagree confidently. Mainstream dating advice doesn't talk about the ..edgy part of dating.