#11592 Here's how it's ideally supposed to work: if you like someone, you ramp up your interaction with them at the same time you ramp up your interest. If they don't reciprocate, your interest wanes and you move on. If they reciprocate a little bit, your interest deepens. That way, your emotional investment in them is never out of proportion to the interest they've shown in you.
Here's how it's NOT supposed to work: you develop a deep and intense interest in somebody before they have showed any sign of reciprocating your feelings, and you invest a great deal of effort in trying to induce them to like you, much to their embarrassment and discomfort.
"Putting yourself out there" means interacting with a bunch of people so you can find somebody who is interested in you. "Trying too hard" means investing a lot of emotion and effort in women who haven't given you any reason or encouragement.
It's important to note that people's emotions don't neatly conform to the ideal. In reality, it's common to suffer from unrequited love. People routinely fall head-over-heels at first sight for people who despise them. Your emotions may not conform to the ideal, but you should at least observe the ideal pro forma, for the sake of politeness. You might suffer from a horrible, gnawing emptiness that can only be filled by the love of a certain woman, but it wouldn't be polite to show it to her directly, because it's unfair to dump that on someone if they aren't in any way responsible for it. Unless you're a poet or a musician. They can get away with that shit; hell, they even fake it. But you need to play it a little bit cooler. Try not to let your emotional investment in a woman grow too far out of proportion with the interest she has shown in you, and if it does, do your best to play it down. No woman likes the pressure of feeling unwanted responsibility for some guy's mental health.
Move on, don't get stuck, keep moving, keep showing casual interest in women until you find one who reciprocates at least a little bit, then ramp up the intensity and see if she keeps reciprocating. If not, move on. Playing hard to get is passé. The market is bigger and more liquid than ever. No woman with half a brain in her head is going to hide the fact that she's interested in you.

#11591 i love how everytime i complain to you, you never seem to get tired of it and listen to me well. How i wish you can listen to what my heart is telling you...

#11590 About post #11516, I kind of feel the same way, but I wouldn't say I hate Purdue. I just feel like I didn't exactly choose the right college. I don't know if I should start doing things differently around here or what. Someone replied to post #11516 saying that he/she should leave Purdue, but I'm not sure if I can do that. I am going to be a junior next year. Wouldn't it be too late to transfer to another college?

#11589 I'm a guy who used to have two toxic female friends. If you constantly have to question the validity of friendship, it's a bad friendship. If you're the only one working to maintain it, it's not worth maintaining. You may have been best friends at one point, but it's better to hold on to the good memories of the people you REALLY became friends with instead of replacing them with the tarnished image of the people they used to be. Just move on...

#11588 The girl on the motorcycle in the boots- WHO ARE YOU?

#11587 Hoenn Confirmed!!

#11586 Soo I might be moving over the summer.. anyone from Moline, Illinois??

#11585 Oh Sameer Saiya, every time i see you my heart skips a loop. I'm so sad this year is coming to an end, I wish I got to know you better. See you next year my cutie! xoxo