LF

Things I learned about picking up women during the 3-4 years that I realized "women are easy" This was between the 27 years of paralyzing shyness and my 17 year long term relationship)

1. If you don't try...it will never happen. I dated 12-15 women during this period and the only two I remember turning down my initial advance...became friends.
2. Girls are people and have as many fears and odd ideas as you. Some will hate the beard and some will be attracted by it. Some with think that they make you nervous enough to stutter is cute and others will think it makes you the Elephant Man. You likey have some odd ideas of what is attractive/scary to....
3. Asking out a girl you have never talked to has a >80% chance of failure for man-whores.... for regular guys >95%... so find a way to talk to her first. Become a person to her, not a face. Ask the time, a queston about class, where did she get that cool xxxx?, etc .....break the wall of silence..... if they will causally talk to you, the odds of them dating you are 100% higher...and if not, more friends is good.
4. Big gestures such as flowers are more likely to scare than please unless you already know the girl. Anything that might be considered stalker behaviour is bad.
5. ......self confidence is attractive. Try to keep to situations to where you are more comfortable. If you hate having others watching you...avoid the "a bunch of us are going to the ----" dates. Or if you are better one on one, try the coffee date.

^^agreed....and i'll add a little myself..

Landon..arent you in school? Ive seen you on FB...you're not a bad looking dude. You shouldnt be having girl problems like this. School is like the biggest opportunity to pick up women there is and you really should take this opportunity to get comfortable around them....its only going to get harder after school is over.

Get out of the mindframe of convincing a girl to like you and instead just let it happen naturally. Next time just talk to the girl like you would with any of your guy friends. Dont try to convince/impress her, instead decide if shes impressed YOU enough to be interested in HER.

If you talk to girls IRL like you do with everyone here I dont see why you'd have a problem with them. You seem like a cool guy with a really good sense of humor. Women love that. Sure you get the quick heartbeat, sweaty hands but dude ....thats one the best parts of it.

I took to heart two things that helped me get over self-consciousness problems asking women out:

1. I finally learned the old maxim that 'if you want to find a pearl, you gotta shuck a lot of oysters' - and realized that it applies both ways. So if you get turned down, it's not necessarily a big deal. She just wasn't finding her pearl in you.

2. Asking someone out is a validation for her. I learned enough talking with (and eavesdropping on lol) women to understand that their POV toward you is not unlike that of celebrities toward tabloids. They may complain about the attention, but once the attention is gone they know they have a problem. So ask away, give her some ego boost.

She may say no, but she'll be glad she was asked.

Feeling awkward isn't the worst thing in the world. I mean, nobody grooves on it overmuch, but if a guy only asks a girl out (or just for coffee/whatever) when there's no chance of it being awkward, nobody's going to be getting together. The trick is handling it in good humor and well overall despite the inherent awkwardness, not banishing the awkwardness, IMO.

Getting yourself married and asking people out = different skill sets IMO.

Tough love. LF is a serial offender in the wimp sweepstakes. Whatever that means.

But he is funny. But he's never learned to run with the awkward thing and just have fun with it, like David Letterman, Howard Stern, or Conan do. Being only human isn't all bad, unless you're around the wrong people. But who wants to be around them anyway?

Landon, instead of concentrating on how they're screening you out, maybe you should look at the other side of the coin. Their bad behavior gives you a chance to screen THEM out. In a way, they're doing you a favor by showing you right away instead of burying it for later, like when you've run out of money or somebody better looking comes along or something. Sometimes when people reject you they're doing you a big favor, and you should remember to be grateful. Othertimes it might be a useful lesson. Other times it's pretty arbitrary and just doesn't matter. At any rate it's far from always a big deal or something to chalk up in your own personal failure column.

LOL. I got myself married by using breakup skills. When I said forget it, I've had enough, vaya con Dios baby, that's when my wife knew she had to have me.

Agreed.

Anyway, if you only forgive people when you've come to feel better about their behavior, you may never forgive anybody for anything.

Are there any community activities you can go to/participate in so you can actually know a girl for ten minutes before you're married?

i think one of the biggest things for me when talking to chicks is self confidence...i think my confidence has definitely improved over the last year or so but i still need to work on it.

trip report of part 1 of machu picchu is up for anyone who is interested...not MP yet but just the hike/etc leading up to it.

http://www.orange87.com/2010/04/machu-picchu-part-1/

Sucks, man. Keep her chin up.

Always strikes me as weird when in this day and age, infections on the outside aren't taken care of within a week.

I know what you mean. I feel the same way when the season comes to an end on Miley Cyrus's show.

No, we're not at that point, which is exactly why I don't want to force the issue about what comes next. Because right now, it'd be more of a discussion about how much we actually meant to each other than one of mere logistics.

Elope and worry about logistics later. Not because it's the right thing to do, I just want others to be as reckless as I was!

Also - Being successful in a relationship/marriage and asking people out = different skill sets IMO

My GF of 17 years turned down my 1st advances and had no interest beyond friends til she knew me for a year or so. Even then she would not admit the attraction to herself until a old gf arrived on the scene and made her finally see the godlike awesomeness of me.

When it's a romance, you talk about love
When it's love, you talk about relationships
When it's a relationship, you talk about your weight

My apologies for fanning the flames. I regret doing so.

I regret overreacting last night.

I have a sore on my lip.

I think I know what you mean by this, I'm not attacking it. Still I just want to say LF is sensitive and brave enough to let it show. Not a wimp, and defiantly gutsier than me. Don't change for us LF, not for a women and not just to blend in.

I like reading really old 2p2 threads and finding a post I'd completely forgotten about, and then laughing at how sharp and clever I am.

"Yes! But no she's not, she's not. She's only famous when she's Hannah Montana. When she's wearing the wig."

I have a group of cactii growing in my front yard, and the biggest cactus is now more than twice as big as it was a month ago, no fooling.

Link?

I tend to have the opposite reaction.