I feel like this sub, and the PUA community has developed an unhealthy obsession with approaching women. I feel like most guys see PUA as a process where you just approach a million girls, get rejected by 99.9% of them, and then fuck that one girl that doesn’t reject you. That, to me, sounds like a miserable existence. You cannot possibly have fun approaching every girl and getting rejected by all of them. It is also makes you look incredibly creepy. I’ve heard of PUAs getting banned from malls and other public places because they were literally approaching every girl there.

More importantly, approaching women is super hard for most guys, and I feel like a lot of you guys are psyching yourself out and not making any progress because you are too afraid to take the first step. I even saw a guy who posted “I’ve been lurking for 5 years and I just did my first approach!!” It blew my mind – you wasted five years of your life that you could have been hanging out with girls because you got hung up on approaching? That’s crazy!! Instead of blowing your own mind with obsessing about approaching, just focus on talking to people and meeting girls in other ways first. If you can approach, great. If you can’t, make some progress elsewhere.

Approaching random women is HARD: most guys, even attractive and confident ones, can’t do it. It feels awkward, it goes against all of society’s rules, and it usually leads nowhere. If you approach random women, you have a 99% chance of getting rejected. Some women will just not like you. Some women are already in a relationship. Some of them had a terrible day and don’t want to talk to a stranger. Some are on a girl’s night out and just want to drink and dance. Some of them are looking for a long term relationship or something else you are not offering. Basically, approaching random women is like going to war and you need to have a ton of emotional fortitude and courage to be able to do it for any amount of time. If you think PUA is just approaching, then you are probably going to get stuck in the mud and spin your wheels.

Approaching girls also puts undue emphasis on appearance because when you approach a stranger the only thing she knows about you is your appearance. I can approach randoms because I look ok (and I clean up well), but if you aren’t naturally attractive approaching is a lot more difficult. There are a lot of girls that won’t ever talk to a random guy who just approached them unless the guy literally looked like God.

If you are scared of approaching, don’t freak out. Find other ways to talk to people. Make random chat with strangers on the street. Have in-depth conversations with people you know. Try chatting with women in public with no intention of fucking them. Try some type of hobby where you meet people and talk to them.

This may sound like sacrilege on r/seduction, but approaching strangers really isn’t my thing. I mostly meet girls through mutual friends or at small gatherings where everybody naturally introduces themselves to each other. I mean, I definitely have the ability to approach randoms but its usually a waste of my time because of the low acceptance rate. I also get terrible approach anxiety and I think anybody that says they don’t ever get approach anxiety is either lying or they have killed their natural emotions to the point where they are a borderline psychopath. Meeting women through mutual friends is MUCH easier because 1) you probably already have something in common with them and they are already probably the type of girls that would want to hang out with, 2) your friends automatically validate you to the girls and you don’t look like a random creep, 3) you don’t have to “approach,” which is awkward and scary and 4) you usually meet the mutual friend at a pregame, pool party, or some other small gathering, which is much better than a huge, loud club. I would go so far as to say that meeting a girl at a club or a bar is probably the hardest way to meet girls because they are being bombarded by creepy guys and it is hard to prove you are something different unless you have somebody vouching for you. It is a lot easier to meet girls during the day or actually in any other situation.

You may ask: but what if I don’t have mutual friends that know hot girls? The answer is “find some.” If you don’t have friends, that’s a much bigger problem than not meeting girls. That means that there is something wrong with you. If you don’t have the confidence and social skills to maintain friendships with cool guys, you definitely aren’t going to get any girls. And if you are going to make meeting girls part of your lifestyle it’s much easier if you have some guy friends that are into the same thing. You also need girl friends. If you’re the type of guy who tries to fuck every girl he talks to, you’re a creep. There is no guy that is attracted to every single girl, so if you are trying to fuck every single girl it must be because you are desperate or severely insecure. Get some actual real girl friends and don’t try to fuck them.

If you go to a club, introduce yourself to some of the guys there. Try finding a hobby that you enjoy that hot girls also do. Try also speed dating or other singles events. There are tons of ways to meet hot girls, and approaching isn’t the only way.

All that said, I do approach strangers sometimes. If I think a girl is super attractive and nobody I know knows her, I have to approach or else we will never meet. Or sometimes I’ll be at a bar, bored, and I’ll just want to talk to somebody. And sometimes I like to “game” just for fun. But I have strict rules – I don’t let approaching take over my night (or ruin it), I don’t do anything that will offend the people I’m around, or the establishment I’m at, and I’m not mean to the girls. I won’t approach a girl who is clearly with a guy, or a girl who is in a deep conversation that looks like she doesn’t want to be interrupted. I won’t approach a girl who is looking like she isn’t having fun or is in the middle of some drama. I also usually won’t approach a girl that I can’t go “full on” with – I don’t do half-hearted or indirect approaches. You can say that those are self-limiting beliefs, and maybe they are, but that’s just how I choose to live my life. I have a very high success rate with approaches because I am so selective in who I approach.

My most high value approaches are 1) when we make eye contact and she smiles or something at me (that is almost a 100% success rate), 2) when she is clearly having a fucking blast – girls that are having fun are much more receptive to approaches, 3) when I am in a situation where I look super important (for example, if I am at a Hollywood party and I’m hanging with a celebrity), 4) when I am just in the fucking zone and I know that every word that comes out of my mouth is gold – being in the zone is a subconscious thing and I can’t really teach it but when I’m in the zone I’m on fire, or 5) I see somebody I KNOW I can get (I can't teach this either) or I immediately think of something I can say to them.

Eventually you want to build up the confidence where you can approach anybody. But that's a long road, so it's better to work on other stuff first. In fact, don't even think of it as "approaching" - that's too much pressure. Instead, just talk to people. If you see a pretty girl, say hi. Or wave at her. If you're standing in line at Starbucks just turn around and make a comment to the people in line, with no intentions of fucking. If you're at a party, go join a conversation you wouldn't have otherwise joined.

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