I never had any luck with the talk to a stranger approach. So I rarely did it. I sometimes did better on a bus or train or plane where we are all captive so there’s nothing better to do than talk to your seat mate. I have the best luck meeting someone doing an activity I love to do. Anyway, I say that to make sure you know there are other places to meet women where it isn’t such a win/lose situation.
I know that in bars, the traditional approach is to send a girl a drink. Then you go over to her to talk, unless she’s already departed (to the bathroom or whatever) because she didn’t like your looks. That’s why they call bars a meat market. It’s mostly about looks, unless you’re funny and gregarious. Or even kind of mean, but you don’t care, so you say the most outrageous things, and you aren’t even very nice. “What are those shoes you’re wearing? We aren’t in Florida.” That kind of thing often flummoxes people. They don’t know what to do—tell you to fuck off, defend themselves or what.
Or you can say something really smart that they might feel makes them look stupid, so they’ll act as if they know what you’re talking about and engage with you. Of course, it helps to actually be really smart if you are going to take this approach. What you want is to get their attention, by having a strong personality that looks like it could be interesting. You also have the confidence to carry it off, and girls like that.
I was never able to do that, so I went with the first approach. Do it in a place where people can get to know me before I ask them to do something with me. I think I could do the elevator approach now, but only if it’s just me and the woman in the elevator. I don’t know about the approach in the middle of space. It takes women a little while longer to see that I’m interesting, but once they figure it out, they can become very interested. Of course, I’m in my 50s and married now, so it goes in a different direction—friendship. I like that, too. I like women.1`