I'm trying to build a social life from complete scratch. A year ago I was a complete shut in, didn't know anyone at all, terminally online etc. I've since made a friend or two out of a religious group, who have been helping with dating advice.

I'm more and more finding that their advice isn't really useful to me because of drastically different lived experience. One friend married his high school sweetheart and, while he's socially literate, I'm not convinced he remembers what dating is like or what he had to do to earn her. The other friend knows a lot of girls, and doesn't really date them because he's hyper focused on his career, but more recently he's admitted most of those girls approached him, not vice versa, no seduction involved. It was just that easy for both of them.

Me? I was an asshole in high school, alienated everyone there, haven't had an offline girlfriend since I was 14. Thanks to my aforementioned friends I'm now dressing more presentable and feeling a bit more confident, even though I really have no idea what to say to girls, body language, etc because I've been so hopeless for the better part of a decade and never learned how adults even meet each other outside bars, or even inside them. So far I've had no luck: rejections have been more cordial than they were previously, but still rejection all the same, and this is in the rare event there even are girls around without their boyfriends.

Where do I even start? Where is the fabled "out there" that I'm supposed to "put myself"? How can I get women to look my way first, or even just have something naturally come together like other successful relationships all seem to?