When I was in college, a long, long time ago, we had things called mixers where women from mostly the all woman schools in Boston came to the almost all male MIT. But even there, no one would start off by asking for a date. You danced, you talked, and you got a phone number if things clicked. But asking for a date before then would be creepy, even 50 years ago.
(MIT is now not mostly male, so I assume mixers are extinct.)
For us guys it sounds great in theory. However, imagine a world in which all women were twice our weight, significantly stronger, significantly taller, and an unknown some of them (I’m not saying that men, or all men, are necessarily violent) may be prone to violence and/or stalking or other unsavoury behaviour. Would you randomly hand out your contact info? And I’m a 6’3" guy btw.
And also don’t forget, a lot of these random people, some of whom are vastly larger, heavier and stronger than you and whether you find them attractive or not, want action with you.
This immediately came to mind.
As for my view, I’m 70, been married for 40 years, so my dating experience is somewhat ancient. But I’m not sure I’d respond well to “Hi - can I have your number.?” without some preliminary chat at a minimum. I’d want to know there was some bit of common ground before moving into anything resembling a dating scenario. Not that I intend or expect to deal with such a situation ever again. I’m too old for that crap! 
The balance is to approach a woman in a way that is seeking to find out more about her interests and personality prior to asking her on a date.
I am an active woman, and I have had lots of men approach me suggesting we train together. After a training session, the situation goes in one of three ways: (1) we realize we’re not really fans of each other and go our separate ways, (2) we enjoy each other’s company and continue to train together but keep it platonic, or (3) the guy clearly states his interest in taking me out on a date and I either accept or decline.
I do remember one time at the gym when a stranger approached me and asked for my advice on how to train abs, and then after asking my advice, asked for my phone number to take me out on a date. I was very young at the time, and panicked and handed my number over, but then later canceled on him before we went on the date because that made me terribly uncomfortable.
But I met my current boyfriend, my last boyfriend, and my former husband from roughly the template I outlined above.
With me, it’s “never” for the simple reason that, in fact, I don’t know you. If you are a “friend of a friend” whom I meet in a group setting at, say, “Happy Hour” and, if I get to know you during the course of the evening and feel I like you, then that would be okay for you to do. In other words, you have to get out and socialize and meet women. To just walk up to a woman you don’t know and ask her for her number is, for me at least, on the creepy side.
Yes, that’s just a bunch of romcom BS.
But remember, they’re people and there’s nothing magic here. Change the script a bit and imagine randomly going up to some guy in a crowd somewhere and just for the hell of it you strike up a conversation about something. If it doesn’t make sense with a guy it shouldn’t necessarily make sense with a woman, unless you are in a specific situation designed for that (pickup bar, online dating etc)
Disclaimer: I am no expert on online dating. My wife and I met shortly before online dating went “mainstream” so we have never been on ‘the apps’ and the whole thing feels pretty foreign to me.
That said.
As I understand it, the advice to not exclusively date on apps is not that you should be doing the same thing that you do on the apps IRL. Rather, you should still be going put and doing things you like to do - practice your hobbies, hang out with friends, etc - and date people who you meet in the course of doing so.
Even if the person you end up with is one you met online, continuing to have these experiences (rather than obsessing over online dating and on finding someone as a prerequisite for an interesting life) will make you a more well rounded and interesting person - and thus, someone that other people would actually enjoy dating.
The vast majority of women (and tbh men) are simply not interested in meeting men in this way in most contexts. If they are interested, they will let you know, by being found in a context where this kind of behavior is appropriate - a single’s bar, an online app, a speed dating event.
Because mutual attraction doesn’t sustain a relationship - it can sustain sex for a while if that is what you are interested in, but eventually, you want conversations - if you are a political news junkie and she avoids current events for her mental health, its going to be a difficult relationship. If you are obsessed with football and she doesn’t know what shape the ball is, its going to make for stilted conversations.
OP here. I appreciate the interesting and informative replies.
What I’ve gleaned:
Casual conversation is useful for sussing out whether a person is reasonably pleasant and potentially interesting, and is therefore very important to not gloss over as just some sort of perfunctory step before getting to know the person.
If you don’t have an opportunity for such casual conversation, an approach is likely not to be welcomed. In fact, it might be downright rude.
If you do decide, after the casual conversation goes well, to get to know the person better, it’s far more appropriate to offer your own phone number, rather than request theirs.
And, finally, people be different (well, I already knew that part). Some people are more receptive to meeting a stranger than others, whether due to their personality or their circumstances at the time. It just depends.
I’d just add that casual conversation is PART of getting to know someone.
It’s been done:
I would also add that people can tell if you’re only having a casual conversation with them because you want sex, or you want to sell them the product that the MLM scheme you’re a part of, or you want to tell them about Mormonism. And if they’re looking for sex, or Mary Kay lotions, or the gospel of Joseph Smith, then that’s fine, you’ll probably both half ass the small talk and move on to what you’re really after.
But if you’re not both using the small talk as a pretense for exchanging bodily fluids/makeup/religions, then the person with ulterior motives is likely to come across as off-putting.
Unless you’re at a place where what you are doing is obvious from context - a single’s bar, a makeup demo social, or an “ask me about Mormons” booth - then you’re likely to face a lot of rejection and even hostility.
You’ll get better results if you do things you want to do and chat with people you want to chat with, regardless of gender and attraction. Have casual converstions for their own sake, not for metting women. Then one day you’ll notice, “hey, the person I’m chatting with is attractive, we are hitting it off, let me get her number”.
Or, use apps and other social contexts where small talk really is a pretext.
But don’t expose random people who have not put themselves in a DTF* situation to your assumptions.
*Down To F… - someone at a single’s bar, or on (some of) the apps, is probably DTF. They may not be DTF with you, but here small talk really is just a pretext for finding that out.
Since my single years are >35 years in the rearview mirror, I don’t know how relevant my experiences are. But I did have a couple of times when I asked for, and got, the number of a woman I’d just met.
Just one example: she and I were in a slow-moving store checkout line shortly before Christmas. I don’t remember how we got started talking (this was >45 years ago), but by the time she got to the register, we’d had a lively, free-floating conversation for about fifteen minutes, with lots of laughter and good vibes. So I asked for her number, and she was happy to give it.
I hadn’t started the conversation with any intent of asking for a date, but by the time the conversation was going to be cut short by checking out, I was really enjoying talking with this person, and clearly vice versa. But I hadn’t been talking with her, or if such conversation as we’d had was really basic (“I hate these long lines at Christmastime.” “Yeah, me too.”) or stilted, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to ask.
This is absolutely true, and also: That not having any casual conversation to a) establish things in common or b) reasons for your interest beyond just the physical, if any, serve as warning signs that you don’t understand social norms and cues, and if you don’t understand those basic ones, you may not understand or respect more important ones, like a refusal to continue a relationship, or unwillingness to kiss/hold hands/engage in other activities.
Yes, it can be off-putting if you can’t establish ANY pretense at all for the causal conversation. It boils down to a more polite version of “Nice dress, wanna copulate?” And while casual sex is becoming more mainstream in today’s society, if that’s not what you desire it’s best to adjust your approach to make that more clear. (And no, “Hello, I’d like to get your phone number but have no interest in immediate copulation” is probably not going to work any better).
Very much so, and especially in the situation where “you” are the male simply due to the power dynamic (physical as well as cultural) which favors males in most societies.
And there is also the fact that making that casual conversation establishes the fact that you are capable of it, which to a vast majority of folks is a prerequisite for attraction and the desire to be in a relationship. It might be interesting to explore the cultural reasons behind why that is the case, but I think it boils down to the fact that we’ve evolved as beings into very social creatures, and we use this sociability to establish compatibility in relationships.
Are there members of both genders who will prefer a direct approach to one which starts with casual conversation? Absolutely but they are a small minority. And it will serve a prospect well to study the potential target of their affections a bit to see if they seem receptive to that style of interaction.
Yeah, people are different, and in a fleeting situation where you spot someone on the bus/train/sidewalk and are just mesmerized, you can always attempt something like:
“Hi, I’m Bob and I caught sight of you in a fleeting moment and you captivated me with your eyes, the way you deftly moved through the crowd, the way you throat-punched that last a-hole who approached you, and the dress/hairstyle/shoes/etc that seems to suggest a fun/playful personality, so I decided I had to at least say hi and offer you my number. I’d love a chance to find out more about you, and if you want to give me your number I’ll be sure to call an appropriate amount of times.”
What have you got to lose? Self respect? That’s overrated.
I suppose the correct answer is “when she finds him attractive”.
It seems to me, there is a natural sequence of events leading from seeing someone you are interested in to dating and having sex with them. Asking for someone’s number before you determine whether you can hold a conversation with them longer than 30 seconds seems premature to me.
_QFT_
There are some really great perspectives in this thread! I do think, though, that there’s no absolutely correct answer to the question. It just depends, but I think it definitely starts with small talk, and picking up on the cues you get from the conversation.
I think the most interesting approach I ever had was a guy that stopped me in a store parking lot. He said he noticed me in the store, thought I had a beautiful smile, and was trying to get up the nerve to talk to me. I headed out the door before he could, and he said that it was a now-or-never choice to just catch up and say hello. He said that if I left before he said something, he’d never see me again, and always wonder if he missed out. And, that would have all been very creepy, if he hadn’t been so self-conscious about it. He seemed very sincere, and I was actually kinda flattered!
It didn’t work out for him, regardless, since I was married at the time. But, if I were single, I’d have at least continued a conversation with him, and maybe exchanged numbers.
So…it just depends.
Even that needs a qualifier. It is very possible to find a random unknown guy attractive without feeling enough trust in his basic decency to justify acting on that attraction in any way.
Hot or not, strange men on some level are fundamentally scary. Guys, when you’re walking along next to somebody’s fenced yard and a large tough-looking dog comes bounding up to the fence, clearly taking some kind of interest in you, do you stick your hand through the fence to pat the dog?
I mean, maybe you do, and maybe it’s fine. But you at least instinctively took a moment to recognize how extremely not-fine the outcome might be, right?
If you want to know why women generally don’t like to be approached with completely out-of-the-blue expressions of attraction from random strangers, think about how you feel in that moment of considering whether you’re going to stick your hand through that fence to pat that dog.
Even if it’s a lovely-looking dog. You just never really know.
Yeah. In a world without rape or abuse, men would find it a LOT easier to get laid.
Sidetrack: DON’T. While with some dogs that’s fine, it’s a very dangerous thing to do.
Reaching across that fence line (or into a vehicle with a dog in it) means a lot more to most dogs than it does to most humans. The dog may think you’re doing the equivalent of breaking into their bedroom, and react accordingly.