Just for reference to this title, I made this post just documenting my journey so far as approaching women. I think I see a lot of posts that are really too specific to a particular situation and too narrow of a focus to see a more general lesson. I think part of the problem is people need to go out more and just actually try approaching people (not just women) in general.

So I definitely had a little bit of success in this area. Ever since the beginning of this year, I got a FWB, was seeing 2 girls casually, and a ONS. Couple of them I met from Tinder and couple of them were by pure serendipity like standing in line at the groceries for a long time and she just happened to line up behind me. Regardless of how I met them, me going out and talking and interacting with people gave me a huge leg up.

  1. Strike up a conversation with anyone. If you can't have even a basic "great weather, isn't it?" or even a "hey how's it going?" You will have problems not only in real life, but also this will translate to shitty texting/tinder game. I see so many posts about what to text and how to message. I think one of the main reasons why guys have issues with this is that they don't know how to talk in general. One of the girls that i met on tinder showed me her Tinder match list (which was fucking too many to count), and I couldn't believe the number of guys that opened with such generic copy and paste pick up lines and nothing creative. Furthermore I see posts on here asking "how should i respond to her message". This subreddit is not to advise you for specifics. In my experience if you can develop social skills in real life, you will have an easier time texting and tinder messaging. Having a conversation forces you to think of stuff in real time. This is invaluable because if you can do that, you can take advantage of the fact that you have some time to come up with a good reply over text. Not only that let's say by some pure stroke of luck you managed to match on tinder, get number, text well enough for an in person date. If you didn't practice talking, there's very slim chance you will be successful when you meet in person.
  2. Even if the conversation is awkward force yourself to have at least a 5 minute conversation. Not only this will teach to be okay in a situation that you aren't comfortable with, but you will also, on the fly, start figuring out ways to develop a connection with the person. What I did when I first started out was, I set a timer on my phone and didn't leave unless the person got up and left or when the timer was over. As I got more comfortable I added more time. Eventually I stopped using the timer because I got fairly adept at managing awkward situations and it doesn't bother me too much.
  3. This may be a controversial advice, but if you aren't sure of what to say, prepare a list of mini lines/topics in your mind to give you a starting point and rehearse just a little bit of what you are gonna say. I've seen posts and a lot of people saying fuck it just do it, and I know where they are coming from. I think what they mean to say is "don't think about it too much and let the dices fall where they may". I want to add a little bit of amendment to that rule: sometimes a little bit of preparation can go a long way. For example I always opened up with a few lines with "hows it going" and "i wanted to say hi because of xyz reason" and ran through my topic list. In the beginning this was great, but as I got more and more comfortable I started trying different things. So treat this like training wheels: at some point the training wheels have to come off.

TL;DR

  1. have a conversation
  2. force yourself to have a 5 plus minute conversation. use a timer on phone if helpful.
  3. in the beginning it's ok to prep some lines/topics to talk about. But treat it like training wheels: they have to come off at some point.

Good luck everyone