- Joined
- Apr 2, 2016
- Messages
- 187
Happy 2023 gentlemen! Hope this year brings you tons of success and personal growth.
SYNOPSIS
I’ve got an interesting dilemma that I’ve been mulling over for the past few months, and I’ve decided that it’s time to toss it to the forums to see what you guys think.
In a nutshell, my fundamentals/appearance blows my game out of the water. My game is so far behind my fundamentals that it’s not even funny.
And I’m not talking about general social skills. I’ve got pretty good baseline social skills and then some.
I’m at the point with people now where I’m easily deep-diving people and having them open up to me very fast. This female co-worker of mine whom I just became friends with a little over a month ago joked with another co-worker of ours “oh you know, I basically told Emerald my life story and now we’re friends.”
To which our other co-worker replied, “yeah, there’s something about Emerald that makes it easy for you to open up and trust him.”
The same thing with a third co-worker who is younger (about 22 years old) and was telling me about some of the girls he asked out at work, including a botched escalation on a date. As he was telling me this, he mentioned how he feels he can trust me, that I give good advice, and so on.
Now I open up to these folks too, it’s not all one-sided where they share all these details about themselves, yet I give nothing in return. But I seem to be non-judgmental enough and communicate trust and some degree of warmth to be getting these types of responses from people.
And this is nothing new for me. Ever since my early 20’s (I’m 30 now) I’ve been good at getting people to open up. I’ve repeatedly heard things like “I’ve known you the least amount of time from everyone here, yet I feel I can trust you the most.”
I interpret these as really good signs that my conversational ability is at least halfway decent, along with my general social skills and coolness.
Of course, there’s always room for improvement, but I wouldn’t consider basic social skills/lack of social calibration my major sticking point here.
I’m talking about my game with girls. Even if I get girls chasing me, I still don’t know how to take that and lead it into the bedroom.
STICKING POINT
I struggle to pounce on escalation windows, approach invitations, and other signs of interest. It’s part nervousness and hesitation due to my lack of experience, but it’s also part overthinking and feel so overwhelmed with every step of the seduction process.
If I get approach invitations and proximity, which I’ve been noticing TONS of recently (not just at work/social circle, but when I’m out and about in public too), I don’t know how to open or start the conversation smoothly, so I hesitate.
I also find myself internally debating as to whether or not it’s truly a sign of interest, or if the girl is just being friendly or polite, etc. Thus, I hesitate and miss the windows.
This is causing me to miss what I believe to be golden opportunities and it’s stressing me out.
When I was younger, I used to think girls didn’t notice me or didn’t find me that attractive. Now I’ve started to realize (as I’ve studied the approach signals/signs of interest more) that girls did like me and found me attractive, but I didn’t know what to do and/or hesitated out of nervousness and doubt.
It feels like if I could get my game to a halfway decent level, where I’m comfortable leading and making moves and not letting rejections or resistance stun me, then I would be getting laid fairly regularly. At least 1 new girl a month or 2.
It’s to the point where I’m feeling some major impostor syndrome. People look at me, and see the way I carry myself, see me being cool, social, and friendly and even flirting with girls with confidence and they all think I’m this guy who must be good with girls, but I’m not there yet.
Girls also tend to think I’m a fuckboy/player more often than not. Thus, when I miss these shorter escalation windows (because they assume me to know what I’m doing), they get miffed or disappointed.
I’ve noticed girls cooling off after one or two interactions (now this is at work, so it’s social circle not cold approach. I need to get cold approaching ASAP and quit being a pu**y for sure).
WTF?
This is why I’m struggling right now. Girls give me (very) short escalation windows, but because my reference points and experience level isn’t up to par yet, I miss them left and right and it’s FRUSTRATING AS HELL!!
I should also mention that I’ve lost 20-25 lbs in the past year. I had gotten quite chunky after college and throughout COVID, but I got back into the gym in 2021 and have hit my stride with it, combined with working a warehouse job 20+ hours per week.
My physique is getting me lots of attention, combined with my fairly good fundamentals and looks, and honestly, I get a little shy about it sometimes.
And I think this shyness is causing people to interpret me as aloof/arrogant. People comment on how I seem very confident because of my walk and the vibe/way I carry myself.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m fairly social and outgoing and most people seem to respond well to me and like me.
QUESTION
But what do I do about those short escalation windows and everyone (girls included) expecting me to be really good with girls when I’m not (yet)?
How the hell am I supposed to get better and level up if I only have very small windows with which to operate?
I feel like a major impostor right now, despite knowing that I have tons of potential. And it doesn’t help that I see guys who are wayyyyy more schlubby than me getting laid at least occasionally. Meanwhile, I am not.
What should I do?
TL;DR
SYNOPSIS
I’ve got an interesting dilemma that I’ve been mulling over for the past few months, and I’ve decided that it’s time to toss it to the forums to see what you guys think.
In a nutshell, my fundamentals/appearance blows my game out of the water. My game is so far behind my fundamentals that it’s not even funny.
And I’m not talking about general social skills. I’ve got pretty good baseline social skills and then some.
I’m at the point with people now where I’m easily deep-diving people and having them open up to me very fast. This female co-worker of mine whom I just became friends with a little over a month ago joked with another co-worker of ours “oh you know, I basically told Emerald my life story and now we’re friends.”
To which our other co-worker replied, “yeah, there’s something about Emerald that makes it easy for you to open up and trust him.”
The same thing with a third co-worker who is younger (about 22 years old) and was telling me about some of the girls he asked out at work, including a botched escalation on a date. As he was telling me this, he mentioned how he feels he can trust me, that I give good advice, and so on.
Now I open up to these folks too, it’s not all one-sided where they share all these details about themselves, yet I give nothing in return. But I seem to be non-judgmental enough and communicate trust and some degree of warmth to be getting these types of responses from people.
And this is nothing new for me. Ever since my early 20’s (I’m 30 now) I’ve been good at getting people to open up. I’ve repeatedly heard things like “I’ve known you the least amount of time from everyone here, yet I feel I can trust you the most.”
I interpret these as really good signs that my conversational ability is at least halfway decent, along with my general social skills and coolness.
Of course, there’s always room for improvement, but I wouldn’t consider basic social skills/lack of social calibration my major sticking point here.
I’m talking about my game with girls. Even if I get girls chasing me, I still don’t know how to take that and lead it into the bedroom.
STICKING POINT
I struggle to pounce on escalation windows, approach invitations, and other signs of interest. It’s part nervousness and hesitation due to my lack of experience, but it’s also part overthinking and feel so overwhelmed with every step of the seduction process.
If I get approach invitations and proximity, which I’ve been noticing TONS of recently (not just at work/social circle, but when I’m out and about in public too), I don’t know how to open or start the conversation smoothly, so I hesitate.
I also find myself internally debating as to whether or not it’s truly a sign of interest, or if the girl is just being friendly or polite, etc. Thus, I hesitate and miss the windows.
This is causing me to miss what I believe to be golden opportunities and it’s stressing me out.
When I was younger, I used to think girls didn’t notice me or didn’t find me that attractive. Now I’ve started to realize (as I’ve studied the approach signals/signs of interest more) that girls did like me and found me attractive, but I didn’t know what to do and/or hesitated out of nervousness and doubt.
It feels like if I could get my game to a halfway decent level, where I’m comfortable leading and making moves and not letting rejections or resistance stun me, then I would be getting laid fairly regularly. At least 1 new girl a month or 2.
It’s to the point where I’m feeling some major impostor syndrome. People look at me, and see the way I carry myself, see me being cool, social, and friendly and even flirting with girls with confidence and they all think I’m this guy who must be good with girls, but I’m not there yet.
Girls also tend to think I’m a fuckboy/player more often than not. Thus, when I miss these shorter escalation windows (because they assume me to know what I’m doing), they get miffed or disappointed.
I’ve noticed girls cooling off after one or two interactions (now this is at work, so it’s social circle not cold approach. I need to get cold approaching ASAP and quit being a pu**y for sure).
WTF?
This is why I’m struggling right now. Girls give me (very) short escalation windows, but because my reference points and experience level isn’t up to par yet, I miss them left and right and it’s FRUSTRATING AS HELL!!
I should also mention that I’ve lost 20-25 lbs in the past year. I had gotten quite chunky after college and throughout COVID, but I got back into the gym in 2021 and have hit my stride with it, combined with working a warehouse job 20+ hours per week.
My physique is getting me lots of attention, combined with my fairly good fundamentals and looks, and honestly, I get a little shy about it sometimes.
And I think this shyness is causing people to interpret me as aloof/arrogant. People comment on how I seem very confident because of my walk and the vibe/way I carry myself.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m fairly social and outgoing and most people seem to respond well to me and like me.
QUESTION
But what do I do about those short escalation windows and everyone (girls included) expecting me to be really good with girls when I’m not (yet)?
How the hell am I supposed to get better and level up if I only have very small windows with which to operate?
I feel like a major impostor right now, despite knowing that I have tons of potential. And it doesn’t help that I see guys who are wayyyyy more schlubby than me getting laid at least occasionally. Meanwhile, I am not.
What should I do?
TL;DR
- My fundamentals are so much better than my game, that everyone thinks I’m really good with girls when I am not (yet).
- As a result, girls give me short escalation windows and I miss them left and right because of my inexperience.
- This causes girls to cool off relatively quickly and/or probably think something’s wrong with me.
- Guys think I must be amazing with girls because of my looks, and confident vibe. Plus, they see me having conversations with girls and getting warm receptions, along with some flirting.
- I feel like a major impostor; a phony; a fake. I also feel tons of pressure to live up to this expectation of me being really good with girls.
- I feel a lot of pressure to live up to this because I don’t want to feel like an impostor.
- All of this is causing me immense frustration and stress, because I feel like I should be getting laid way more than I am now (which is not at all)
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