In the game 'It', you chase someone, then they're 'It', and then they chase you. As soon as you're caught, you're 'It' again.
This can happen in all sorts of relationships: the attraction is not actually having the person but having the person approach you. This is the pay-off. You don't want them: you want to be wanted, and being wanted is demonstrated by someone else making a play. To repeat the payoff, the person must be reset back to a distance from which they can make another play, like pulling back the plunger on a pinball machine.
This is particularly common in intimate relationships and intense friendships. An acquaintance once described his dissatisfaction with the person he was courting, because, as he put it, 'I want to be WOOED'. It's not closeness that's desired; it's self-pedestalisation; it's power; it's control. Like all addictive conditions, it's also progressive, and ultimately fatal if not curtailed.