One month of approaches and game

enzyme · 2025-12-06T01:37:11Z

I made the decision about a month ago to get myself out in the city more often and start doing some approaches to get over my anxiety and hopefully improve my social skills - mostly for dating but I've found it helps me with being social in general. I've wanted to write down my experiences so far and hopefully give helpful advice for anyone else new to this. I'm a 29 yo male from UK.

Best locations - During the day I'd walk around the busy high streets and shopping centres. Coffee shops are really good, bookstores, clothing stores, pop culture shops (in UK we have HMV and some anime/comic book stores), the plaza, and some parks.
How I'd approach - This mostly depends on what environment I'm in - e.g. in a store I would open with some sort of observation. The girl may have been flipping through a book and I'd ask her if it was any good. Or in the Hot Topic I'd ask if she liked this particular band or not. If I was approaching a girl just as we were walking down a busy street I would be more direct by saying something among the lines of "excuse, do you have a sec? I know this is kinda random, but I just saw you as I was walking, and I wanted to come say hi". Eye contact and a smile is also being used in all these scenarios.
Dealing with the anxiety - The key thing I've learned so far is that getting rejected is not the end of the world. It's honestly pretty liberating when you get knocked back and realize there was nothing to worry about. You learn it doesn't faze you and that you should be proud for actually having the balls to even take a shot at all.
Approach without knowing what to say - The best approaches I had were the ones were I acted first before thinking. It's better to let go and trust yourself that you can just flow into a conversation.
Making observations - When asking questions like "what do you do" or "do you like x or y", I found it didn't do much just to be like "oh cool" or "oh I see". It felt more engaging to make guesses. e.g. if a girl had tattoo's and piercings I would say she seems like one of those 'ex-goths' and she'd laugh a little.
Light teasing and common ground - If a girl told me something about herself I'd generally either do some playful teasing over it or find a way to relate to her in some way. e.g. a girl mentioned to me she was going to get dinner later with a friend out in a restaurant, when I asked her whether she worked or was studying she said she was a student. Since students here are on a tight budget I teased her by going "ha, as if you could afford a dinner out in the city". Or I could've said something like "oh you're eating there? I love their food! I make that stuff at home" if I chose to try and be relatable in some way.

Out of the 30 or so girls I've approached I've not been able to get a number or a date yet. The only thing that's happened so far was me and one girl ended up making out while I was out in a club.

My favorite approach so far was probably with this one girl I saw while walking down the busy street - her looks blew me away (an alt girl with tattoo's, dyed white hair and some piercings). Without thinking about it I had waved as we were walking past each other. I stood in front of her and while making eye contact I went "I just wanted to say, you're very pretty" and she went to me "oh thank you! so are you!". While it didn't go anywhere (she said she had to keep moving and I just thanked her and moved on), I remember the massive confidence boost I felt. When you do these approaches you'll get counter-evidence to any limiting beliefs you have about yourself.

I'm on the spectrum and I've lived most of my life being super logical and flat and my social skills suffered as a result, but I'm trying to make up for that now.

Edited 57 minutes ago by enzyme