Hey guys, wanted to share a humorous story about my most recent approaches. striking out and becoming notorious in a small town overnight. My only move at the moment is to lay low, but I'm curious as to what you all make of this and your reactions:

I'm currently on a multi-month work trip that brought me to a small town in the USA. (I live on the opposite coast). The work I do is pretty "cool" and a great way to break the ice at bars, coffee shops, etc. I'm basically traveling alone, and am somewhat fresh out of a toxic LTR that reverted me to BP tendencies. As I've been rebuilding myself both mentally and in the gym, I figured this would be the best time for me to flex my rusty field game muscles and start making as many approaches as I can, being far from home and with no real stakes at play.

To quench my thirst when I arrived, I matched with a girl way below my league on Tinder and with basically a no fucks given attitude, got a one night stand out of her where we were both cool with it being NSA.

After that, I focused on my work for a bit until I had a few days off.

A week or so later, I made it back into town and throughout the course of the day, this happened:

  • I walk into a small mom and pop shop. Greeting me behind the counter is this CUTE girl with whom I immediately hit it off, within minutes she was showing me some items and we were talking close and mutually flirting heavily. I ask if she wants to hang out when she gets off work and I get the dreaded "I have a boyfriend." Followed by her proceeding to take my number and saying "but he's been a dick lately, so we'll see." I act unfazed and play it off, returning to normal friendly and flirty banter. The owner of the shop then walks in before I can leave, but I engage him in conversation in what became a lovely 3-person conversation about the history of the town, local hotspots and so on. The girl even went to go get us all coffee. This comes to an end, I thank them for their hospitality and see myself out.

  • I spend the rest of the day by myself, and head to the bar I like when it gets dark. As I'm sitting by my lonesome drinking, two adorable girls walk in and are promptly joined by a third at the table next to mine. I make an offshoot remark and give them an idea of what I'm doing and return to my phone/notebook at my table. Some 30 minutes or so later, I approach them with confidence, ask if I can join them and engage all three of them in conversation. They're digging me and ask if I want to join them at another bar. At this point, the one girl I was interested in is giving me some solid IOIs. She's touching me/my hand when she speaks, lets me isolate with a "come share a cig with me." (I know, I know), but it is revealed through her friends that she has a bf. I'm enjoying the company and they all made for good friendship, so I dial it back, enjoy the platonic nature of it, and we all hug with a "so glad to have met you." before parting ways.

  • As the previous three girls leave, I decide I'm not done drinking and head back to the original bar. Here, I find two not-so-cute-but-still-cute girls grabbing a night cap at last call. I make conversation and we hit it off. The bar closes and they ask me to join them at a second bar open late. We bounce on over and I play a series of foosball games with the cuter of the two. It gets late, and the other girl wants to leave. She does, and the girl I was playing foosball with wants to stay out with me and keep drinking, which naturally I take as a good sign and follow her to a third bar as she drunkenly goes on about "wanting to dance." Once at the third bar, my game is much more overt, hand on knee, caressing, but she is not receptive at all. She has a boyfriend that's enlisted and not around, and despite her telling me how "bad" she is and how she "always does this," she continues to push me off until we decide to call it and head our separate ways. I recognize that in this case I pushed and did not pull, but frankly, it being my third encounter of the day, I was basically throwing a hail marry.

WITH THAT SAID, HERE'S WHERE THIS GETS REAL:

The following day I get these text from my tinder hook-up.

  • "Boyyyyyy you know this is a small town right? Your name has been getting around. You've been making your rounds."

  • "I'm overhearing this shit at a coffee shop mind you. I'm not spreading any business. lol"

  • "And here I am, having fucked the same dude. Funny to me, but just letting you knowwww."

NOW, I would have laughed this off but the real kicker here, upon further conversation with tinder girl is that the girl from the store was making it seem as though I had been stopping by week after week and hitting on her despite her having told me she had a boyfriend, when the truth is that we only ever had that one encounter and that was the one and only time I ever walked into that store. I suppose the rumor mill churns extra hard in a small town, but this caught me off guard as it isn't exactly a good look if the whole town is being fed this story.

Needless to say, I'm done approaching or even hanging out in this small town (thankfully there's a big city not too far from here). I'm not trying to get jumped by a jealous boyfriend or pitchforked out of town by an angry mob of fathers.

Overall, I'm still glad I went out and shook the rust off, successfully approached despite effectively burning this town for myself.