There've been a handful of good posts lately that beat on how you can't expect every interaction you have with a woman ending with a phone number or her in your bed. In fact, the opposite... you will end up failing more times than you probably think you deserve to.

With that in mind, instead of a field report on my success, let me tell you how I've failed as of lately (and what I'm doing about it now).

Striking Out

In the past week, I tried to set plans with three different women who I was in the midst of having a conversation with. Each interaction seemed to flow pretty well, and I didn't set out to ask for a number from the very beginning... so I tried to just read the chemistry.

Guess what all of these girls have in common (besides all 3 rejecting me). They all worked somewhere that I was in attendance to. I'll summarize my thoughts on that at the bottom.

Girl #1

The first girl was the hostess at a nicer restaurant up in a town about an hour north of where I live. She was really conversational, had a big smile, dressed well, and was extra kind beyond what was normally required of the position.

I was there up at the bar right around when they were closing, and suggested that we meet and chat again some time when she wasn't working.

She seemed enthusiastic about it, but also asked to take MY number rather than give hers over. This is not usually a great idea, because it puts all the power back on them... and it's fairly unlikely you'll hear something again.

Case-in-point, I haven't heard from her.

Girl #2

The second girl was one who has just started working at the local food co-op by my apartment. She's cute, knows how to talk to people (which is hard to come by in the northwest) and actually has some wit.

We flirted back and forth and it totally seemed like I had a green light.

I suggested getting coffee the next day when she would be off, but she went into a hesitant explanation of "Oh, I'm not doing that right now..."

She claims that she is "trying to find herself" or similar thing like that. Whatever though — it's not an excuse, it's just a rejection. Fair enough.

I took the rejection more calmly than I ever have before and still kept talking to her for a few, even playfully poking at her purported journey of self-discovery and making suggestions of what to do.

Left things amiably and just moved on.

Girl #3

The last girl is a cashier whose line I've gone through a few times, and even when I was silent and disengaged from her, she would ask me questions about how my day was going.

I took it as a possible IOI and kept my eye on her. She seemed like she might actually be interested.

When I asked her to meet up outside of work sometime, she said SURE, but then when I asked for her number she said...

"Oh, but.... I'm at work right now...."

Implying that it wouldn't be appropriate to give over her number. Which is just another soft rejection.

Recognizing that it was a no-go, I said, "Well, you know my name..so just track me down sometime." (I've got a membership here, with my first/last name.

Obviously, I haven't seen any of that.

Takeaways

Well obviously, I was feeling kind of like a loser for a minute having struck out 3 times.

In the past, I've relied almost exclusively on Tinder and similar apps for my dates and all that follows. But I made a commitment to stay off of all of that while I work on my ability to approach during the day (and night).

With all that in mind, I am chalking this up to experience and genuinely happy that I took the risk and allowed myself to be rejected. It's going to have to happen a lot for me to ever be in the right mindset for approaches.

And while I'm sure there are proper Chads out there who have a FAR higher success rate on this than me, these experiences reminded me of a quote from one of my funnier, beta friends.

>"I'm not going to hit on somebody who's being paid to be nice to me."

If you have to pick a demographic to try to connect with, it's probably not ideal to go after anybody who is actually collecting wages in order to be friendly and warm to you. Sometimes I forget that and go for it anyway.

And again, I'm sure that there are others out there who can do this with no problem. Just saying that I personally think I should focus on girls who have no real reason to even engage with me.

So, just remember that failure is part of it. And not every story is going to be a "success story." But you have to go through more than a few rounds of failure before you finally start to internalize your lessons.