I subscribed to seddit a few weeks ago after getting destroyed by a girl I really liked and telling myself "never again". I've got pretty heavy AA - I've never opened a girl in a bar, but I've realised it's fear and cowardice that hold me back in life and I'd better start fighting them, or I'm going to be on my deathbed regretting everything.

So yesterday night I'm out with some friends, and I set myself a target - I will open at least one girl tonight. My friends hit a pretty dodgy bar and there's some decent girls around, but I just... can't... do it. What am I supposed to say? In the moment I just can't come up with anything smooth. Egh, gotta work on that.

I do end up striking up a conversation with a guy at the bar once (which I know is good in a David Wygant sort of way) but it's not really helping me fight my fear. After a few more bars and a bit more deadlock I give up and take the train home.

Waiting for the train I'm getting angry at myself but still can't get into gear. I make eye contact with a tired looking asian 7, she walks towards me until she's ten paces away and starts adjusting her hair. At this point I'm thinking talktohertalktohertalktohertalktoher... then she finishes with her hair and walks away... to the other end of the platform. Was she interested? Maybe. Best way to find out? Talk to her. Did I? No.

Fuck.

I get on the train and there's another girl (5.5) sitting by herself in a block of 6 seats facing each other. Once again I note that I should talk to her, but instead cleverly walk right past and sit by myself. Ugh! At this point I'm ready to murder myself. I've failed even this modest goal.

However, after stopping at a few stations I think "all I need to do is talk to this girl and not matter what happens I can go home happy". Then, surprised by my own bravery, I get up, sit opposite to her and say "Hi... I've decided that I'm bored of all the music on my phone, would you like to talk to me instead?". "Ok."

Yes!

At this point I can't remember all of what I said, but my game was far from tight. Unfortunately it ended up very job interviewy - she turned out to be a student from Switzerland who didn't have a lot of confidence with her English and hence spoke really softly and didn't really go heavily into detail with anything she said (actual English was fine though). I tried to softly neg her about this ("You're not very confident with your English are you? It's really quite good though") - my one verbal nod to what I've been reading.

2 stops later she had to get off the train - I actually found asking for a number really easy. "Do you know many people in Australia" (that's where I am) "No" "Well then, do you want to put your number in my phone? :)"

And she did. The problem was that she didn't know her number as she'd just got her phone, so I went outside the train with her while she was finding it (my suggestion) so she didn't get stuck on the train. Showing too much interest? Maybe. After I got it I called her, said "that's my number... I'll call or message you later :)" and got back on the train. As I left she said "Yes, maybe we can go out?".

Wicked.

Unfortunately I'm going away for 5 days tomorrow, so today I called her about 12pm (didn't pick up) and sent her an SMS, greeting her in Swiss German and saying I was riding my motorbike to the coast to get a coffee and did she want to come?

Three hours later she sends me an SMS back saying she's at the beach and can't come today, but would really like to meet me, maybe on another day?

Rather than propose something else right away I message "No worries, having a girl on the back of the bike just makes me go slower anyway ;). How was the beach? Must be quite a novelty for Swiss people :)". I figure that instead of making plans that need to last a week and getting flaked on, it's better to build some rapport up over SMS then make shorter-term plans later in the week?

... still haven't got a response.

Sorry for the wall of text, this probably goes into pretty excruciating detail for something relatively minor, but it's a big deal for me to actually have something FR worthy. And someone needs to balance out the TofuTofus around. So how'd I do?

I think what I did right on the train was:

  • General confidence, which is much easier once you've got over the opening hump
  • Maintaining constant eye contact (you could see her soften up a bit when I did this)
  • Leaning in a bit - I've heard that this sort of body language you don't want to use because it shows too much interest, but doing it along with trying to smile and really use my eyes (widening them when she said something good) helped open her up. I can imagine it falling apart on a bitchy 9.9 though.
  • Finding out her stop - a boring conversational detail, but on the train in I saw some guy trying to pick up and holding the girl's attention so well that she eventually realised she was at her stop and had to run off the train, leaving him numberless.

Bad:

  • Question-plowing. I think this is just something that'll come with practice when talking to strangers - I'm normally not that bad a conversationalist :(
  • Sat across from her - it seemed appropriate at the time but this was probably bad, especially seeing how it meant...
  • No kino. I probably had the chance to 'accidentally' touch her legs with my legs or something but it was all too much to think about.
  • Probably should've sent her an SMS straight afterwards (that night) to get the rapport flowing, rather than going the wait-and-call route which didn't work out.