> Part of me thinks that at the core, it's ALL an act of mind games to convince another person why you're worth their time (or conversely showing them why you're worth theirs) and there's going to be some level of duplicity involved.

I tried that for the longest time and it was exhausting and unfruitful. When I relented and simply focused on meeting as many women as I could - and having the patience for a natural attraction to occur - it made a big difference. It sounds a bit Zen but when I stopped trying to "score" it seemed much easier to meet plenty of interesting women.