First time posting- stuck in a rut

[TheWanderer88]

This is my first time posting here. I am a 23 year old man in his final year of college, and I've never had a girlfriend, and have very minimal sexual experience. Other than issues with my romantic/sex life, I am completely normal and fine in pretty much every other way. I have some guy friends and a little bit of a social life. I have no trouble talking to people, I'm not awkward around people. I'm doing fine in school and am about to graduate with 2 STEM degrees so hopefully that means I have a promising future financially. I'm relatively good looking. I am skinny and have a little acne, but other than that, my looks are fine. Uglier people than I have had girlfriends, yet I still don't. I work out lifting weights. I'm a DJ at the radio station and can play guitar. Yet, I get no attention from females these days.

I know what my problem is. It's that I don't talk to girls and I don't ask them out. I don't know how. I never figured this out when most people did when they were like 15. I want to change. I want to break out of my old habits, but I haven't been able to train my mind to. Whenever I am wanting to talk to a girl, my mind just 'blanks'. It's not that i'm rationalizing and making excuses not to talk to them, I can defeat that. It's that my mind just blanks out and I can't think of anything to say. For example,

*see cute girl I want to talk to*
mind: 'you can't go up to her you'll be bothering her and invading her space'
me: 'nope, shut up mind. I'm doing it.'
mind: 'you can't talk to her you have too much acne'
me: 'nope, going for it anyway.'
mind: 'no, you can't talk to her, you're too tired and not on your game'
me: 'no f*ck you mind, here I go!'
mind: '...'
me: 'sh*t, what do I even do now? I've got nothing to say.'
*walk away without doing anything*

This happens almost every time and I have never been able to figure out how to beat it. So yeah, that's me. Thanks for reading through this, and if anyone has any advice to offer, I'd love to hear it. I really don't want to keep being lonely all my life.

 

[Bizzle13]

Hi man it's late so no long reply (apologies) but just wanna say you've made the right decision in working to rectify your flaws and live a better life (at least socially, if it doesn't have a bigger effect). First thing is cut out the negative mind sets, you control the world you live in and positivity breeds positivity. In your head you can be the coolest motherfu**a in town and that mindset will flow through you resulting in confidence, stature and notice ability. Go out of your comfort zone once in a while and remember than any moment is yours to own if you do choose. You are not a victim of chance, fate or circumstance. You are the god of your world. If in doubt just think 'what would Bond do?'

 

[VladPatton]

Just talk to anyone you see around to get comfortable in doing so. When you do it to a girl do it with a mindset that you don't care what happens. Be outcome independent. You do not have to ask her to marry you when you talk to her. You don't have to bang her like a porn star in front of 20 people. Just make small talk, that's it. Once that comes easy, for the next girl you ask for her number. If she says no, so be it, not a problem. Take it in steps and be 100% indifferent of the outcome. We all get this and an indifferent attitude helps...a lot.

 

[NewJack]

In terms of practical advice, there's tons of it on here. You can put yourself through some version of a Bootcamp or some Approach Course, set some goals, and work on it that way.

There will be a deeper issue involved, and that won't be solvable by new approaches and schemes and talking to strangers. It also won't be solved by actually having sex with women. Internal issues require introspection and self-examination, because ultimately they require healing.

You can mix both approaches - external and internal - until you find a balance that is comfortable for you and as the years roll on, you may use internal practice to approach the source of your difficulty. The good news is that aside from this you sound like a wonderfully well-formed person. Bad news is that actually resolving this:

'you can't go up to her you'll be bothering her and invading her space'

...may be more of a lifelong path to walk than a quick-fix solution.

But with us crazies, you're in good company.

 

[Atom Smasher]

Yup, too target-fixated and outcome-dependent.

You need to learn to talk with women casually with no expectation of payback. Use each interaction with women in your day-to-day as practice. You can hone your sense of humor, confidence, timing, framing, and general verbal skills by leveraging those no-pressure interactions.

Eventually that will spill over into more important interactions.