This Saturday I will be a college graduate. I have only been on 1 real "date" in 22 years (and a failed one). Outside of this, I have never had a romantic relationship with another girl. I would like to think I've made progress over the past year in dating, but I really haven't.

I did have a date a few weeks ago with a girl on my sports team that I carpooled. This went OK I guess, although I never called it a date. I just asked if the girl wants to go to breakfast, and I ended up paying because she claimed she didn't have money. As I said in a previous post she mentioned that she was going to see Endgame with some guy that weekend, which wasn't as bad as waiting to tell me she had a boyfriend (like what happened 2 years ago) but it still wasn't what I wanted to hear when I was about to spend money.

Yesterday I studied for most of the day with a girl in my math class who also happens to be on the team (I recruited her). She's pretty talkative, and as I could tell from her Instagram it appeared as though she had a boyfriend as late as October. Come to find out after I played a prank on the team group message (where I used her phone and said we were dating because someone assumed it based on pictures we were taking), she said she did have one, and joked that she had an overseas boyfriend (from a friend of ours), and that I'm the third one. Again, this didn't shock me at all, although she's mildly attractive, I already knew my boundaries. It's clear that we will remain friends though, she gave me a thank you card/graduation card and money, and I enjoy her conversation.

However, my frustration is, I cannot understand why some girls will want to be near me and engage in personal and flirtatious banter when they have no intentions of dating me. I don't have the ability to read minds, and I would rather not spend $25 or six hours trying to find out whether a girl is single (which could mean dating) or has a boyfriend. I believe this is a total waste of my time and isn't honest, and is why I avoid flirting with girls in the first place, because I get embarrassed when the truth comes out.

Having said that, I would rather not use Tinder or other dating apps because I can't judge people based upon a profile card, and everyone on there is just a commodity at the end of the day.

Other than cold approaches, I don't know what to do going forward as I prepare to leave my medium sized school and enter the real world. I think I have friends, but I don't know how wingmen work, and none of these girls have "shown me their single friends" like a lot of people here suggest.