hmmm - I still think that getting someone else to ask is a little weak. …IMHO
My usual tack is to ask the person out with a group. “hey, my roommate and I are going to see a movie, you want to come?” Then, you get a good feel for the person without it having to be a “DATE” (cue scary music). After this, if you hit it off and she likes your friends, you can ask her on a real date.
ps. That’s how I got Ardred.
Those are great opening lines, all right.
And don’t forget “Do you feel, as I do, that herpes is the gift that keeps on giving?”
Good advice. Or ask her to study with you.
You know, technically no one has yet answered the OP, which is how can Wesley use a woman to successfully get a date with another woman. No worries, though, because I’ve got the answer:
When you’re standing around after class, with your female friend and the girl you like, grab your friend’s arm and twist it behind her back, hard. Tell the girl that if she doesn’t go on a date with you, you’ll break the friend’s arm. (It would really help if your friend could take over the Good Cop role, with a "He’ll do it! He’s crazy! But of course then you’d have to tell her your plan in advance and she may not go for it.)
She’ll likely agree to the date to spare her friend a broken arm. If she doesn’t agree, you’re better off without her – who wants to date someone so selfish?
I do wish you the best.
I like your idea of inviting her to study. Asking someone to go get coffee is natural if you are both people who regularly go out for coffee with others. Asking someone to join you on a group date is natural if you both often go out in groups. It sounds like studying together is what would come naturally to you as a next step to the relationship.
I never said that was what i’d do though. Why does everyone assume that, did I come across as saying that is what I wanted her to do?
What I meant was ‘how’ can I get this friend of both of ours to make this woman I like feel more comfortable with me. Not ‘how can I get her to ask for me’. I can ask women out, and I know most people here don’t believe me but trust me, i’ve asked over 20 women out in the last 9 months (all said no for various reasons, but some liked me) so its not like i’m terrified of women. I just do not like alienating friends or people I like talking to or working with.
There was an article about wingwomen in that thread I linked to earlier. A woman who introduces you to another woman makes you less of a threat and makes you be taken more seriously than if you approached that woman yourself, more or less. That is what I was going for and trying to do, not get this other girl to ‘ask her out for me’.
But that may be unnecessary since I already am casual friends with the girl I like so its not like i’m some stranger in a club.
Damn good idea, and I agree this is great but I do not have a social network of people right now. Well, I have friends but I do not ask them to go with me in clumps to social outings, but I could if I needed to. I need to gets me one of them social clumps though to invite women to, but yeah youre right and i’ve been trying to figure out how I can do this for the last few months.
Actually, it wass closer to 15 women but you get the idea.
‘Dates’ really aren’t scary things…unless the guy approaches it with a “I LOVE you, and want you to have my babies!!! can we get coffee?” attitude. A first date should be slightly more than a meet and greet. “hey you seem cool, let’s go get coffee and get to know each other.”
Having friends help you, or put in a good word is a sign of insecurity. Asking a girl out in a group because you’re scared to ask her on a ‘date’ is another sign of insecurity. (I’m assuming that’s how most women would see it…correct me if I’m wrong)
In my experience, heterosexual women like men. And by ‘men’ I don’t mean a human with a penis. I mean a male who is confident and sesure, and is willing to take the (very small) risk of rejection for a chance at the (very large) reward of meeting a wonderful woman.
I hope that didn’t sound mean, because that’s not the way it was intended, and either way, good luck.
So I saw her walking the halls before class started at 1010, and I approached and we talked a bit about the test on wednesday. After a minute of talking I said ‘do you want to meet up on tuesday to study for the midterm’ and she thought for about 15 seconds then said ‘I have alot of things to do on tuesday’. So that was a no. I had a backup plan where i’d say ‘alright, next week a friend and I are going to a movie would you like to come with us’ but decided against that due to her first reaction. Girls spending 15 seconds thinking then coming up with a lame excuse isn’t a good sign from my experience. Ah well.
petelin - actually that fact bothers me a bit. When I read on this board where all the women say ‘i’m ok with guys asking me out for coffee, thats ok’ then I go out and do it and get tons of nos I assume there is something wrong with me if that is the typical female attitude. To be honest, there probably is. Maybe I approach the wrong women, maybe I approach wrong, I do not know but I know its at least partially under my control I just have to find out what it is.
Either way, i’m not really bothered by it. The social skills I gain by doing this are really valuable. Before I started asking strange women out last summer I couldn’t make friends or aquantances. I would start a class and have no friends when the class ended. But when you ask women out you have to develop certain personality traits. You have to stop being intimidated by people, you have to pick up on subtle body language and verbal cues, you have to think of yoruself as valuable and desirable, you have to be assertive, you have to be willing to face rejection, etc and all these traits transfer into the rest of your life. I have no problem making lukewarm friends now and I think i’ve made about 10-15 in under 8 weeks this semester because of the personality benefits I get from doing this, it used to be that i’d make 0-1 in a full school year. My point is, don’t feel sorry for me. I was pretty sure she’d say no due to my past experiences with this kind of thing (hence the fact that I wanted to try a new approach method of going through a friend), so it doesn’t bother me much.
And before you guys assume I was sweating and hunched over and trembling when I asked and thats why she said no, I was not. Asking women out is like riding a roller coaster, the first time is terrifying, the second is ok, by the 4th or 5th time its still intimidating but you know what to expect. I am at that stage now after asking out 15-20 women.
However I don’t have anyone watching who can give me honest feedback on what i’m doing wrong since nobody watches me do this stuff who I can get honest feedback from.
This is why they invented streaming video! 
Sorry it didn’t work out for you – glad you’re not taking things too personally. Continue talking to her – it’s possible (just possible, I have no idea of knowing) that the reason she took 15 seconds to answer was that it really did take her that long to do a mental run-through of what she will be doing that day. Sometimes when someone says, “so, coffee Saturday?” I have to think, “Okay, I’ve got X, Y, and Z on for this weekend, X is at a specific time Saturday, but Y and Z I could do Saturday or Sunday; but if I’m doing Y on Sunday instead of Saturday, I’d have to switch the time I’m meeting this other friend on Sunday, but he’s usually pretty flexible, so that might work…” These calculations really can take 15 or 20 seconds, long though that seems to the person waiting for an answer. And even when X, Y, and Z are things like “clean the bathroom,” “drop something off at my sister’s,” and “go to the library.”
I wouldn’t chalk this up to a total loss. Maybe she really is busy on Tuesday, but was trying to figure out if she could make space. Maybe she was tempted by the idea, but doesn’t study well with others (yep, I was this way).
Seems like if you waited until after the crush of midterms is over, you might want to give the coffee-after-class suggestion a try. Or maybe right after the exam. “Hey, what the heck was question number 12? Want to grab something to drink and talk about the exam?”
Its not a total loss, as I said I have gained social skills by doing this. You have to learn to like yourself, to not be intimidated by people, to really listen to people when they talk, to pick up on subtle cues, to find out what interests another person and play on that, etc to do this and those abilities will transfer to the rest of your life. And since EQ is supposedly more important than IQ the skills I have now could really help me out in the job market or when I have family problems or whatnot.
I was thinking of just asking her to a movie next week but as I said I dont want to alienate her. If she truly isn’t interested and I keep asking her out that could be like dumping gasoline on a small fire.
And today wasn’t a total washout. I was browsing OKCupid on monday and looking at the women and one in my town had a link to her facebook profile. So I sent her a message via facebook essentially saying “I thought you were really cute and wanted to tell you so” and asked her a few questions about her major, and she actually wrote back with a long email on her career goals. So I have that going for me, don’t know where that’ll lead but I may have made a new lukewarm friend and a potential date by doing that.
Sorry to hear it didn’t work out the way you wanted it to…but it sounds like you have a great attitude about the whole situation. Don’t let it get you down, don’t feel wierd around her. Keep her as a friend, and look for other girls…it turns out the world is full of them.
Obvoiusly I don’t know you, I’ve never met you, I’ve never even seen you, but I’d imagine you’re right…there’s probably something in the way you’re acting or asking that is giving a bad/wrong impression…you said you knew her from class before? Is it possible you talked to her/treated her in a way to have her look at you as a friend only? I’ve found as you’re getting to know women, once you’re a ‘friend’, they tend to not even consider anything romantic as a possibility. There are, of course exceptions.
However from this:
I think you’ve got a great attitude, and you’re on the right track. I went through (and am still going through) a similar shift in mindset. At least you’re out there being more social, making friends, asking girls out and (hopefully) having fun while doing it. Just because of that, you’re well ahead of a lot of people.
Good luck.
You have a good attitude and I think your persistence will pay off.
As for this woman, she seriously needs work on her interpersonal skills. Not you, her. It’s quite possible that she is more nervous than you are, and that’s her problem, not yours. Anybody with any savoir faire would have settled the matter by answering you in a way that lets you know whether a study get-together could ever happen. All she did was let you know that she was too busy Tuesday.
If you’re still interested, I’d give her a few days to buck up and then I’d ask her again. Maybe by then she’ll have thought of a way to answer that either gives you hope or crushes it, instead of leaving you hanging.
As for alienating women, it doesn’t make any sense that asking them out would alienate them. If you feel like you were overly awkward back then, try renewing their acquaintance and having a good natured chuckle over the past, demonstrating how much more suave you are these days.
Figure it this way: you are asking out women who don’t know you well. When you ask them out it’s probably one of the longest conversations you have had with them so far. They are still assessing you. They might have a notion in their heads that you are too dorky or whatever, but after talking to you for a few minutes, they realize you are cooler than they thought you were. It’s too late, because they’ve already rashly turned you down. But you could try again later after their impressions have had more time to form.
My brother had a whole system for meeting and getting to know women when he was in college. He had a matrix of the women he found desirable rated by how likely he thought they were to date him. He made a point of picking out the most desirable woman in a class on the first date and approaching her immediately. It was very cute. It did wonders for his confidence. The one woman who told him she was busy “indefinitely” probably hurt his ego, but it improved his sense of humor.
Why is it that there has to be something wrong with this woman’s interpersonal skills if she said she’s busy Tuesday? And why does she owe him an explanation? Saying, “I’m sorry, I have plans” ought to suffice.
Also, I think it’s silly for this woman to have to spell out the potential future of their relationship because she can’t make it to a study date Tuesday. Unless she’s psychic, she might not even know the OP is thinking about her that way. After all, the OP mentioned that they’re “lukewarm friends.” When you ask your acquaintances out to a casual get-together, do you demand to know the future of the relationship?
I’m female, and though I’m married now, when I was still dating, I never even noticed if a male friend had a crush on me unless I was pulled aside by said friend and told explicitly.
I don’t know. I’ve asked out strange women I only met a minute or two before I asked them out, I’ve asked out women I knew pretty well over a several month period and i’ve asked out women I ‘somewhat’ knew and the reactions are not different so I don’t think its because i’m in the friend category. Many are flattered, some are interested but in relationships but I do not get any ‘yeses’ that are actual yeses. Sometimes I get a yes but that is because the girl is nervous and doesn’t know how to blow me off, but I can largely avoid those types now.
This facebook thing may be a good idea. I wrote another woman on facebook, I looked at the friends list of one of my friends and found a woman, then I said something along the lines of 'I was looking at my friend ‘x’‘s list of friends to see if I knew anyone, saw your picture and your interests and decided to write.’ Then ask her a few questions. She too wrote back with personal info, which is always a good sign and it means the person wants to talk to you.
So far this method seems to work, i’m going to have to keep doing it. Being a friend of a friend is a great way to put women at ease (damn you people for talking me out of using that route with the original woman this thread was about ;)), and a little flattery seems to help out too.