It's hard to know what kind of a friend he is by this.
It's possible that this guy is like me. I'm a guy who's very ineffective at picking up or asking out women. I've learned to mask my spinelessness as aloofness. If there's a really cute girl in our group, the kind who's way out of my league, I might make snipes at her or give her the stink eye just to prove to myself that I'm not under her spell. This is probably unfair, and probably why I'm alone. Not that I'd have a chance with these types, but when other women see me behave this way, it doesn't make them feel good either. How are any of them to know that I'd respond favorably if they asked me out? Even I'm not so sure I'd lower the shields.
But you say that he does weird things like have friends say things to you that he pretends not to mean later, and this could easily be some jerkoff playing high school games on you. And that's even worse, because he doesn't care about you. Worse than rejecting you, he might just be trying to alpha-male you into going to bed with him, and might already have other women in the rotation. If you have the wherewithal to detect this type of guy and avoid him -- and a lot of women don't -- then you're better off.
>>32
Women fear rejection more than men? What do women have to lose that men don't? I'd love to hear a woman's worst rejection story versus a man's worst rejection story.