I don’t think you should kidnap her, take her home, and force her to eat your lasagna. She might think you like her a little bit too much.
Anyway, the key is to have opportunities to do things with her—preferably in a group, so there’s not so much pressure on just the two of you. I don’t know. This is pretty geeky, but in high school there was this girl I liked. I was on the debate team, and I urged her to join, too, so that we could go to the library and research together.
It worked, and we spent a lot of time together doing research, but things never got any further because she was pretty religious. I did get to the point of telling her I liked her, but that was about it.
I was never one to just come out and ask a girl to go out. I was too afraid of rejection. So I had to resort to these other strategies. There was one girl in high school I knew from band and because she lived near me. I think we had one date—a walk in the snowy woods.
Embarrassing. But you know what? You do what you can. Some guys are confident and all the girls love them without them having to do a thing. Others guys have to work a lot harder and learn more about what women want. Let me tell you something. If you work hard to understand women (who are really people, like anyone else), it will stand you well later in life. Whoever you end up with will really appreciate all the work you’ve done to become a gentleman.