I'm 22, in school, and feel like I'm wasting time and getting further down the hole every day I don't try and approach / make conversation with girls I find attractive. I'm a relatively handsome guy, smart, and overall am very social. I never have a problem making friends anywhere I go and I genuinely enjoy meeting new people. All that being said, my seduction skills suck. I've never been that great with girls. I have a very hard time stepping outside of my comfort zone and it's extremely frustrating. Sure, I've had sex with 7 or 8 different women and made out with a few dozen perhaps. But none of them have truly been meaningful. When it comes to a girl I am genuinely interested in or find attractive right off the bat, I freeze. I'm not sure what to do. My throat tightens up. I suddenly cannot be in the moment and struggle with what to say to show them I'm interested. I've had quite a few attractive girls in my life show their interest in me over the years and I fuck it up every time. There's no telling how many girls that didn't explicitly show their interested I've ruined chances with just because I didn't know how the handle the situation.

Now, I'm not sitting here depressed and hoping women will "cure my problems". Overall I'm a pretty happy guy and like the direction my life is headed. But up to this point, I've never had a solid relationship with a girl and I know if I don't begin stepping outside my comfort zone and improving, I will never get there. I'm just not really sure where to start. I suppose what spurred this post was my recent visit to the local gas station. There was a genuinely cute girl there, no one else was inside at the moment, and I couldn't mutter out anything besides a tense "how's it going" and "have a nice night". There's a number of girls I notice on campus every day that I would love to chat with, but goddammit it's such a foreign thing for me to actually approach a random girl and initiate a conversation with them. So, where do I begin? Was anyone else here in a similar boat as me but improved? I will say, over the past ~6 weeks I've been focusing a lot on improving my eye contact. I am getting pretty good at not diverting my eyes when a cute girl looks at me, and it feels good when the actually reciprocate a smile I give them.

No amount of motivation on reddit is going to do the trick for me. Ultimately I expect you all to say "just get out there and approach". There's plenty of people who started from a place a lot worse than me (e.g. super depressed, much less social naturally than me) and now are light years ahead of me in terms of "game". Why is this so difficult? Feel free to tear me a new one if I'm being a giant pussy.