There seems to be a seemingly unwritten social rule, the party that cares the most has all the power in the interaction, the one who cares about the friendship and relationship the most seems to get strung along. But I've noticed a consistent trend of a step further, if you show any sort of gesture towards investment in the other person, suddenly they respect you less. Now I mean obvious kind of gestures pathetic men make like telling their partner they love them really quickly, but I mean even simply things like suggesting that you and a friend should hang out, when prior to that the relationship has been centered around them making the effort, or giving someone a compliment to show you respect some aspect about their person, when previously they have been unsure what you thought of them.

Society in many ways pushes us on this expectation that being nice to others and making them feel good about themselves in an overt fashion is a positive thing that will end in closer friendships, but from personal experience and anecdotal evidence it doesn't seem that way to me. You want your relationships to exist because the other person respects you and likes associating with you, but the second you flip this and show you have any sort of admiration for their abilities at something, it almost degrades the relationship completely.

People play these games with their girlfriends, purposely withdrawing niceties to seem uninterested and distant and drum up interest from her, but it does seem to extent to all interpersonal relationships in my experience.