MetaFilter to the rescue!

Didn't write down which thread this came from, but quoting it anyway:

Any guy who only wants what he can’t have
isn’t the kind of guy you want.

From another thread,
http://ask.metafilter.com/184943/Love-vs-in-love-guy-language-translator
by catseye@3:39pm 3 May 2011

It might not suit you, but the best way I ever found for dealing with issues like this (the cryptic text messages, the ambiguous statements) was to refuse to decode them. They got, at most, about twenty seconds of my time to decipher, after which they fell into two categories:

a) things that made sense on face value, but might possibly maybe have meant something else (statements like 'no, I am not in love with you')
b) things that did not make straightforward sense.

Anything that fell into category a), I interpreted at face value. Anything that fell into category b), I filed under 'makes no sense' and disregarded.

This works really well when people are being straightforward and honest with you, since you're accepting what they say and not trying to read intentions and agendas into any of it. It also works really well when people are being all Mysterious and Elusive and want you to spend ages puzzling about what you've said, because you torpedo their whole strategy just by refusing to play along. Plus, it drastically reduced my time spent curled up on the sofa biting my nails wondering what 'nice to see you...? lol' might possibly have meant. Win-win.