Srsly, I suck at this.

FR of fail, for your delectatory delectation (and hopefully constructive criticism).

Actually, I am not bad at opening at this point. I can push through the inevitable "I'm such a loser" sort of mental gyrations, and get conversations going with a lot of girls. Believe me, it has taken me a long, long time to get even to this point. (I'm in my mid 30s, and have been a 100% AFC for the past several years.)

But I almost always get into situations like what happened to me today:

So I'm sitting at a bar for like an hour, talking to two random quasi-drunk dudes, whatever. It was pretty entertaining. And I wasn't planning on trying to talk to girls at that time because I was laughing and having fun, whatever.

And of course, it's always exactly in that situation that a girl is going to approach me, right? They say girls are attracted to guys that aren't interested. I can so attest to that.

So anyway.

This girl shows up, not super my type, I'd say a 6 or 7 on my personal scale (I generally am more into Asian girls or Latinas). But I was like whatever, why not talk to her. And I did, we started talking, blah blah. She was studying something vaguely related to what I study, so I could talk to her about that.

So this is a real issue for me. Should I just completely boycott talking about academic stuff? Honestly I'm an academic, and I'm always surrounded by academics, so it comes natural to me. The

But I'm starting to think talking about such things really isn't a DHV, and that I should train myself to not talk about that at all. Save it for later, maybe.

So in this particular case, her (cuter) friend shows up, and turns out to be doing something academic which is even more similar to what I do. So I start talking to her too, and it's seemingly going well, right? There's all this commonality, she is blatantly impressed that I understand the ins and outs of her work, etc.

But then, I get this feeling of like... well, this has been a lovely informative conversation, the two of us had a lovely time, thanks for talking to us, and now we're going to get a table and sit down, see you.

So rather than let that happen in front of me, I just got my check, said byebey good luck, and left.

Live & learn and all that, but this sort of thing kind of bums me out. Was there some way that I could have handled that situation in such a way that they would have suggested that I come sit down with them? Should I have just faked it till I made it and risked embarrassment by doing an FTR and saying "hey I have to go soon but I've got ten minutes, could I join you to hear a little bit more about your work?"

Or should I never have gotten into the whole academic thing in the first place...

I'm past the stage of being afraid of being embarrassed. If I get embarrassed, I get embarrassed. So what, I can always bail. But I would really like other peoples' opinions on such situations.

Thanks in advance...