Dear Seddit, I want to tell you a story and ask you a question at the end. I'll try to keep it readable, but not too short, because you weren't there to see what happened.

Me: I have started lurking here a couple of months ago. My skills with women were flat 0 (never had any meaningful interaction with one, even friendship) and my inner game was abysmal. I have also started NoFap, 3 months ago, as my brain had been damaged by years of pornography addiction.

I don't aim at becoming a PUA but at having decent relationships with women as any normal men should have. Being able to pick up girls at a bar isn't something that I really care to do, but also never having a girlfriend throughout all my life would be bad. I think knowing a little bit of game might help me in my goal. Even guys who are not great and don't do everything right have relationships, it's just the utterly bad ones (as I was) that never do.

This said, I don't hit on random women. Sometimes, if I felt like it, I have tried to chat with them and see if we hit it off extremely well (never really happened for now). In the last month I have had 2 rejections and a sort-of-rejection (well in a way this was me turning her down) in 3 different social circles. One of them was tonight and I felt 95% sure it'd have gone well before it happened.

Her: strange Asian girl. Was quite ugly (maybe a 6.5) up to some time ago (judging by Facebook and ID), then something changed, she started to take care of herself, learned how to use make up, and now is a 7.5. I think some people view her as a 7 and some as an 8 due to racial polarization.

She gave me the impression of being very naive and not involved in relationships or affair. Doesn't ever say the words "girlfriend" or "boyfriend", only "wife" and "husband" (see the part on IOIs); I thought she had been under a strong conditioning from her youth about this. She has been in China for many years, spent the last 2 years in Europe, but not in a city with a college system, so it's theoretically possible that she didn't meet many people, but also that she did. She never mentioned any boyfriend or guy-friends and I've never seen here with one.

I am sure she never goes to clubs. I think she might occasionally go to bars with friends but in the moderately-small English city I am in people don't often speak to strangers at bars and don't go there to pick up as it would feel very awkward (they go to clubs). The stories I read about bars in this reddit would be very, very strange here.

I think she gets hit on by guys frequently here, as I have seen one trying to do it at one of the social events we went to. He kept talking to her for an extremely long time. She talked to him but never really gave him any signs of being interested. Also, his friends were mean (saying out loud things that clearly implied he was trying to sleep with her) and she overheard one of them. She later complained with me about how mean those people and how she didn't understand their behaviour.

Previous interactions: I met her through our social circle and saw her at two events with other people, were we chatted a little bit. Then I met her again with just one of her friends and, I think, gave several DHVs and she looked quite interested to me. Then I organized an expedition to the celebration of an event I liked and she found it interesting (Chinese NY celebrations); it was me, her and two other friends, but they eventually left and we were alone. I applied the multiple venues technique with coffee shop + museum nearby + celebrations, we spoke a lot and made strong eye contact (to which she sometimes smiled and blushed away) and I did my best to talk of deep stuff, also showing honest vulnerability, and it looked like it worked. I was also trying to make her qualify with things I like, profound things like showing something I could appreciate of Chinese culture, and sharing some of my emotions in the museum and see if she appreciated them... Though she kinda failed them (she appreciated them but was unable to be profound, which turned me off for a while... I was actually thinking she wasn't my type and I didn't want to ask her out, and that's why I didn't make any move on that day).

Even from the first meeting, she asked me to go to the dinner at her college, but she never picked a day, which I attributed to her uncertainties and having bad game. At the end of the day of the celebrations, she asked that again and this time I picked a day, which was three days later, that is tonight. I kept the texting to a minimum in the meantime; she initiated it the first day, I did the second day but I had a good reason, and we only exchanged a few funny messages both times. See the IOIs part.

IOIs: I thought I received many IOIs at the New Years celebrations and by texts. These include: she mentioning that the guy in my driver license looks handsome (to which, I: "why, isn't this handsome?", indicating myself, to which: "face is a bit too round"). She saying, at the restaurant when one of the other guys was making orders, that I should be the one speaking with the waitress. "Why?" "Because you're handsome so she listens." She often playing with her hair and once with mine. Though I've seen her playing with the hair of other girls as if it was normal. When I noticed a weird character in a word she typed in chat, she replying: "wow you're so cool! how do you notice such little things" When I told her I wouldn't say what some characters in my email address are, she saying "are they related to your wife?", which I thought was a way to check whether I was engaged. I replied "I'm not married." and she said "You will be", I said "I will? [worried snoopy smilie]" "Won't you marry? Single forever?"

Today: I went to the dinner, made her show me her college, and suggested to go to my or her place to see some funny videos on the internet, pushing for her place due to the distance. I showed her an episode of a TV series which I know to be very funny, and she laughed a lot and liked it and kept talking about it for a while. Then I panicked a little bit and we've been talking for a long time, say 1 hour, about many things in our lives... Family, hometown, and similar stuff. But it still there seemed to be a good connection. I think you can feel it when two people that are both non-native speakers struggle a little bit to communicate and laugh every time there is a misunderstanding or they have to explain again, and this happens over and over and they keep laughing with each other.

Then, I decided that I had to do something before it was so late that she mentioned I should go. I went for: "I think I like you, do you like me?". I know it sounds a little childish/needy but I had almost never given her signs of interest (both because I wasn't interested the first few times I met her, and because I am scared and unable to give them) and I thought she had given me several, so I thought this was ok. I thought asking for a kiss would have scared her off, due to her naiveness, and just going for one had the same problem and is something I am absolutely unable to do (I never kissed a girl!). She: "What do you mean.. Like?" I: "Like... Like kiss" [yeah, played badly here, but try to reply in a smooth way being nervous and speaking in a language you're not fluent in!] She: "Oh! [disgusted/worried face] No!" I: "I see" [little pause, maybe 10 seconds, I go back to the computer] She: "But I always treated you as a friend" I: "You can never know." Then I went back to speaking of other things, and after a few minutes: She: "We can still be friends, can we?" I: "Yes" [nodding as to say: of course, I'm not a child. Though the truth is: of course, I need you to build a social circle, but I'll push you away if I can't handle it] Then I went on showing her things in google maps as I was doing before, than after 10-15 minutes she has to go to sleep, and I leave.

Kino: I am terrible at kino. Absolutely terrible. I would have never considered touching a woman in any way up to a few months ago. Now, I have made some little improvements, but very little.

Except for the first time I saw her, I greeted her with hugs. A few times in the New Years Celebrations and today, I pushed her away like you do when someone says or does something stupid with which you can tease her. None of these came out as awkward.

Due to my impression of her naiveness, I thought too much kino would have scared her off.

The questions: of course I am angry that this didn't work out and I made another failure inside the social circle, which is bad. However, there's also something I can't answer to now: why did I fail? The chances are:

  • She wasn't ever interested, at all. Those were not true IOIs.

  • She might have been interested but I played it too softly. I should have pressed on kino and escalated a lot. She wasn't as naive as I thought. Maybe she even fucks guys regularly? How can you ever be sure?

  • She might have been interested but I played it too strongly. The word "kiss" scared her off. She was even more naive that I thought.

The fact that I can't say if I played too strongly or too softly is particularly upsetting. I know I played it much less strongly than what PUA techniques recommend but they are calibrated on girls that are in bars and for which a quick hook-up isn't completely unrealistic, so that might be different in this case.