Thought I would throw my experience so far with daygame out there and ask for advice on where to go from here.
I'm 43 years old and a professor in a small liberal arts college in a town of about 400K. Divorced about 4 years ago, no kids. I'm in pretty good shape, really into muay thai and boxing. After taking a couple years to pick myself up and stop feeling sorry for myself, I started trying out daygame to get back into the dating scene. I started last year in about mid-June. Its been an interesting journey so far but I admit that I feel like I'm in a plateau.
With no experience, I started the first week by standing next to a girl whenever I was out running errands just to get a sense of walking up directly and placing myself in close proximity. The next week, I would do the same thing except say hello and make eye contact then walk away. Over the next month, I progressed to indirect openers and usually asked an opinion about something that was on a shelf at a grocery store and then go from there. While this was pretty easy to do, I found it difficult to take the conversation somewhere and things usually fizzled out.
After about a month of this I started getting frustrated and started to be more direct. For the next 4 months, I opened with "Hey or excuse me, I don't do this a lot but I think you are really cute (attractive, stunning, etc). I'm Paul". I did about 100-150 approaches like this. The worst reaction I got was a flat "no" and the girl kept walking by (which wasn't that bad but it still stung. Most reactions were thank you (then walk away), thanks but I have a boyfriend, wow, thanks you made my day, etc. I got about 10-15 numbers, went on about 8 dates and banged three girls ranging from 26 to 31. The 26 year old was the hottest and we dated for about 3 months but that ended fizzling out.
Since then, I done about 300 approaches total. I've changed my approach a little bit. Now I pretty much have a script that I try to follow that goes "Hi, I'm Paul. (shake hands. 8/10 times they will introduce themselves). I think you are really cute/attractive/adorable" If the girl doesn't walk away immediately, I usually follow up with "You handled that pretty well. This is where you say "you're not so bad yourself" (which usually gets a laugh). Then I try to move into a conversation but I always get stuck asking "so what do you do?" I know this is boring but its almost automatic and I need to practice taking a conversation in a different direction, I just don't know how do do it in the moment.
My last 250 approaches have gone nowhere. About 20 numbers and 2 dates that led to nothing. Its hard to get more than 3-4 approaches on a good day cause of the size of this city. And to be honest, I'm getting depressed and frustrated. Its a lot of time to spend doing this out of my day with no results. Should I keep plugging away? I was so psyched in the beginning and I am still proud of the progress I've made over the last 9 months but I don't seem to be making any progress at this point. At the same time, I wanted to share my experiences for the older guys like me to see.
I'm 43 years old and a professor in a small liberal arts college in a town of about 400K. Divorced about 4 years ago, no kids. I'm in pretty good shape, really into muay thai and boxing. After taking a couple years to pick myself up and stop feeling sorry for myself, I started trying out daygame to get back into the dating scene. I started last year in about mid-June. Its been an interesting journey so far but I admit that I feel like I'm in a plateau.
With no experience, I started the first week by standing next to a girl whenever I was out running errands just to get a sense of walking up directly and placing myself in close proximity. The next week, I would do the same thing except say hello and make eye contact then walk away. Over the next month, I progressed to indirect openers and usually asked an opinion about something that was on a shelf at a grocery store and then go from there. While this was pretty easy to do, I found it difficult to take the conversation somewhere and things usually fizzled out.
After about a month of this I started getting frustrated and started to be more direct. For the next 4 months, I opened with "Hey or excuse me, I don't do this a lot but I think you are really cute (attractive, stunning, etc). I'm Paul". I did about 100-150 approaches like this. The worst reaction I got was a flat "no" and the girl kept walking by (which wasn't that bad but it still stung. Most reactions were thank you (then walk away), thanks but I have a boyfriend, wow, thanks you made my day, etc. I got about 10-15 numbers, went on about 8 dates and banged three girls ranging from 26 to 31. The 26 year old was the hottest and we dated for about 3 months but that ended fizzling out.
Since then, I done about 300 approaches total. I've changed my approach a little bit. Now I pretty much have a script that I try to follow that goes "Hi, I'm Paul. (shake hands. 8/10 times they will introduce themselves). I think you are really cute/attractive/adorable" If the girl doesn't walk away immediately, I usually follow up with "You handled that pretty well. This is where you say "you're not so bad yourself" (which usually gets a laugh). Then I try to move into a conversation but I always get stuck asking "so what do you do?" I know this is boring but its almost automatic and I need to practice taking a conversation in a different direction, I just don't know how do do it in the moment.
My last 250 approaches have gone nowhere. About 20 numbers and 2 dates that led to nothing. Its hard to get more than 3-4 approaches on a good day cause of the size of this city. And to be honest, I'm getting depressed and frustrated. Its a lot of time to spend doing this out of my day with no results. Should I keep plugging away? I was so psyched in the beginning and I am still proud of the progress I've made over the last 9 months but I don't seem to be making any progress at this point. At the same time, I wanted to share my experiences for the older guys like me to see.
