A woman can walk up to me in a bar and, depending on whether I'm interested, the night might end with us kissing or going home together. I can walk up to a woman in a bar and apparently the most ambitious outcome is an Instagram follow. Same man. Different person doing the walking.
I'm 30, living in the US, and being approached isn't some distant memory I bring out to reassure myself. It happens several times a month, sometimes more than once in a weekend. Bars, clubs, karaoke events: women come over and start conversations. Some of those conversations have led to sex. Others have led to exchanging details and arranging a date afterward.
Over the past couple of years, I've had enough of these encounters to feel reasonably confident that women can find me attractive. Some of the women approaching me have been very attractive themselves. I don't mean every conversation turns into something, or that I want it to. But when there's mutual interest, I seem capable of recognizing it and helping things along.
Then I try being the one who starts.
If I notice a woman I find attractive who hasn't acknowledged me, I'll sometimes go over and say hello. I ask her name, say it's nice to meet her, perhaps compliment her outfit or ask whether she's been there before. Nothing I would describe as a spectacular opening line. My approach does not involve a theatrical production.
Usually, I try to let the conversation develop. If she seems immediately uninterested, I notice. If she doesn't, I might offer to buy her a drink or ask for her Instagram. Yet these encounters have never turned into a date or anything physical. Sometimes the conversation simply ends. Sometimes I leave with contact details, message the next day, and get silence, a rejection, or an offer of friendship.
Getting the number is particularly unhelpful to my understanding of the situation. For a little while, it looks as though something might actually happen. Then I ask her out, and the apparently promising conversation doesn't survive into the following day.
The obvious difference is that a woman who approaches me has already decided she wants to talk to me. When I approach someone who hasn't acknowledged me, I know I'm interested; I don't know anything about her interest. Those are different starting points, even if my face remains admirably consistent throughout. That could explain some of the gap. It still leaves me wondering why my record in one direction is so completely empty.
I can't tell whether I act differently when I'm initiating, whether I'm choosing women who simply aren't interested, or whether being approached so often has made starting a conversation look easier than it is. I don't know what those women made of me. What I do have is a growing collection of encounters in which I'm perfectly capable of flirting once someone else has opened proceedings.
When the introduction is mine, I can get as far as exchanging details. The next day, I'm still the guy waiting to find out whether she'll answer.
