Hey, I'm back, went out again last night, just jotting down some public notes. Again, newbie shit, don't like it, don't read. I watched the video that was recommended to me last time.

The Setup: Another club, different than the one the night before but with the same meetup group.

The Goal: Three genuinely flirtatious remarks. Goal here is to make it so that I don't hide my intentions, which is my number one problem. Because I have difficult showing my intentions, I can't screen for girls who aren't interested or aren't available. So, three flirtatious remarks. I did not plan to push it farther, but if something happened, of course I wasn't going to shut it down.

What Happened: Got there later than I would have liked, but the place is in full swing so it's not really a loss. Immediately began to move around the drink area, mingling with some of the other guys. I spy a couple of girls, standing to the side and conversing with each other, and decide that they're going to be my first conversation of the night. I go over, hold out a hand, bright smile, the usual "hello" (note: I wonder if I need to be more forward with how I introduce myself? Maybe straight up giving a complement with the open would better establish my intentions). In any case, we get to talking, I'm doing my usual routine. Both of them seem mildly interested, but I can tell that one of them is more interested than the other. Or at least, so I thought, until she just sort of wandered away while I was talking to the other girl. Okay, whatever, no big deal, I keep talking to the girl that stayed, but I start to get this really antsy feeling, like I don't want to be there anymore. I could blame it on whatever, not clicking with the girl, a desire to keep scoping out the scene, something else entirely, but suddenly I didn't want to keep talking to her. I gave a hasty excuse and continued to move around the group.

By this point I had met a couple of people that I'd seen at other meetups, and I realized something that I'm going to take as a good sign: I'm beginning to get something of a reputation as the Meetup Guy. I didn't realize how much this extended until people who I didn't recognize asked me how I was; turns out I'd talked to them previously at other gatherings and didn't remember. One guy in particular told me "You're everywhere, man!" which I'm hesitantly judging as some level of social proof. I got to talking to one guy, we'll call him Jack, who I'd spoken with briefly at another meetup. I'm scanning the room, talking, when Jack asks me if I know any girls here. Another proof; this guy evidently thinks I'm outgoing enough to have connected with some girls. I decide that I'm going to try and use this validation as a springboard into another conversation, so I nod and say "follow me."

I turn and walk back into the crowd, where I spy a mixed group (guys and girls) that'd I'd spoken to briefly at another meetup. I join the group, say hi, and introduce my friend Jack. So far so good, I had a reason to come over and talk. I start talking to one girl (the leader, more or less) and make some brief small talk about the week since the last time we saw each other. Next to me, Jack's chatting up another girl in the group, a very attractive brunette. Turns out they work in the same field, or something. I talk to this girl a little more, but I can tell she's not very interested in continuing the conversation; she keeps turning to her guy friend and at one point vanishes to get a drink. So again, not flirting, just boring small talk. My conversational skills clearly need work.

We stay in this group for a while, and everyone starts to get a little more tipsy. Since this is all practice for me, I've set a firm cap on three drinks for the night, but I'm still feeling it a little. Eventually the girl I was sort-of talking to decides that she's ready to dance, so she pulls her friends along. And here I see another example of weak cohesion; Neither I nor Jack had managed to integrate ourselves into the circle enough to get an enthusiastic invite along. But we both went anyway. We move out onto the dance floor and I start busting out my best/worst moves (I'm really only good at dancing enthusiastically). We're dancing, having a good time, and I start to feel a level of social pressure to ask this girl to dance. I don't think she'll say yes; but I start to feel like it's a good thing to make myself do just for the practice of the thing. Long story short, it takes me almost thirty minutes to work up the courage to do so, and I'm proud of the request: instead of asking "would you like to dance," I reached out my hand, said "dance with me" and she took it. I twirled her a couple of times but I wasn't really seeing any interest in escalation; shortly after she let go of my hand. And that was that.

That was most of my night. In retrospect, after the rejection of the dance, I should have gone around more, continued to talk to people, tried to meet new people. My big problem area currently is achieving and maintaining interest; I don't think I'm saying or doing the right things to attract and escalate. As a consequence, I make a superficially good impression but nothing deeper, and nothing that makes a girl say, "wow, this guy's hot, I want to spend more time with him." I feel pretty sure it has to do with my difficulty in flirting properly, as well as my trouble keeping a conversation from going into "interview mode."

Homework:

  • Practice turning questions into statements, as is often recommended on this sub ("What do you do?" becomes "With a smile like that, I bet you work in sales" or something like that lol, still working out exactly how it's done. Hell, just writing that seemed kind of weird and stupid, which tells me that I'm going to need to do it more until I get used to it)

  • Look up some stuff on approach anxiety. As helpful as using Meetup has been, I'm beginning to suspect that it's a crutch. It gives me an easy way to talk to people that are there for the meetup, but talking to anyone else in the club is just anxiety inducing and very difficult. Part of why I hung around the group even after the girls weren't interested in dancing with me was because I didn't know what to do after. I should have approached more.

  • Not directly game related, but work on making actual friends that I can then go to events with. Self-explanatory; like I said before I'm in a new city and know absolutely no one, and while I've made a lot of superficial connections with guys and girls, I haven't translated any of those into actual friendships.

Thanks again for reading. Writing these out like this is proving useful for me to debrief myself. Edited for formatting.