Hung out on an IRC chatserver dedicated to a specific interest.
My girlfriend and I met on Usenet. In a fantasy writer’s fan newsgroup. And we’re STILL dorks.
Firstly I am glad for people who have found their mate.
Secondly I laughed at this exchange:
Floater " First GF knocked on my door in the middle of the night saying “I can’t stand it anymore” and threw herself around my neck.
Present GF just took my hand and said “Let’s go to bed”. "
Soapbox Monkey “Well, I’m assuming that these weren’t random women coming to your door, so how did you meet them?”
(If only there was a place like that!)
Thirdly I am still single. (If I knew 30 years ago what I know now, I would have had a lot more relationships.) So good luck to shy guys!
well, funny time for a thread like this…
i was/am not shy in talking to girls. telling em my feelings, now that’s a different thingy altogether.
anyway, last friday i was at a local gig, and as i drive, a gave a couple friends a lift. and then there’s this girl that i met a few times before too. she’s really sexy and just so fantastically like me, but i just couldnt tell her i liked her. me and this girl are friends, so i offered her a lift home. she lives even more in the middle of nowhere than i do!
so i drop everyone else off, and try and take her home. but we ‘couldnt find’ her house. so ended up at mine.
still couldnt tell her.
we sat and watched the animatrix and 28 days later, talking and flirting thru all of it.
still couldnt tell her.
she pulls me down and kisses me.
now i can tell her!
we’ve been going out a week now, and we’re just so perfect for each other it unreal. i was single for 5 years beforehand, and she’s really made it all worth it. i must’ve burned up a massive amount of stored karma for this one! 
Glad Internet dating works for some folks. It worked for me, too, in an ass-backward way.
See, I’d just been sort-of dumped by this girl I met online. Only sort of because we hadn’t really been involved – after one night of making out, she decided that she wasn’t really over her last boyfriend after all, so sorry, no need to call again.
Thoroughly disgusted, I decided to quit looking for romance. I decided a weekend hanging out with my brother, drinking and playing computer games, was exactly what I needed to take my mind off my lack of a love-life.
My brother had a dinner party that weekend. Since I wasn’t looking for romance, I had no problem flirting a little with this cute girl at the party: nothing would come of it, I figured, so it’s not like I was going to screw anything up.
Except I was wrong: something did come of it. Four and a half years later, my wife and I are getting ready to buy a house together.
Shyness for me came from pressure, too: I was so worried I was going to drive off a potential girlfriend that I seized up and became really awkward and awful to be around. It was only when I stopped worrying that I was able to be pleasant and fun.
Daniel
She employed me. I was backpacking round Australia, took some temp work, she was the HR manager at the company.
There’s a club I went to and found someone who really loved me.
My shy guy had no problem telling me how attractive he found me, but past that, couldn’t seem to get up the nerve to make the first move.
After a month of him pussy-footing around me, I went over to his place, took all my clothes off and jumped in his bed. Apparently that was the sign he needed from me to know that I wasn’t gonna reject him, so we got our groove on and are very much in luuuurve five years later on.
She was dating a friend. One night she told me she liked me better. I avoided her for 6 months. She kept dating the friend. We were out as a group and he was being a jerk to her. I figured he didn’t deserve her if he was going to treat her like that.
I’m very shy but very friendly to women I sort of know. I’ve known my SO since grade 10 (and didn’t really notice her at all).
One night (3 years ago) we ended up finishing our night early, she didn’t want to go home and so we ended up in the back of my dad’s minivan talking (nothing bad). Eventually we ended up talking in the back of the mini-van for months, ended up tickling and joking around then became quite physical.
Eventually ended up my GF and the love of my life.
Well, by freshmen year in college I figured out that dating girls by meeting them, getting to know them real well, going out a couple of times, becoming good friends and then agonizing over when and how I should make the first move so as to avoid ruining the friendship was a really long, stupid and pointless way to never get laid.
Turns out a simpler way is to walk into a room, do something that draws attention to you and lets everyone know how cool you are and then watch to see which girls seem responsive and start making out with them.
:o Hot in here or is it just me?
So, how soon was now again?
Agoraphobia, social anxiety and depression lead me to be extremely shy, met my current girlfriend here on straightdope.
I enjoyed her posts, looked at her profile and noticed we’re the same age, it took me hours to write up a very breif email, and it was extremely tense sending it.
Couples months later now, we spend all our time talking together, and she’s amazing.
That’s odd. I went to that club. I stood on my own, I left on my own, I went home and I cried and I wanted to die.
Heh… kinda strange story for me!!! And its LOOONG!!!
Went to one of my mates wild parties, which unfortunately won’t be happening again due to certain events involving me - details later! I wasn’t really looking for a girl at the time, just wanted to get leathered with a few mates.
I’d been chinwaggin’ with a few guys from college i knew, didn’t really know anybody that well so thought it’d be best to throw back a few bevvies to get maself loosened up a bit. After a while i noticed a pair of high school girls (this is England, i was in first year of college, they’re a year younger!) and got talkin to them cos they were both pretty hot, and they looked a bit lost too! I’m crap at talkin’ to girls i really like, and this was no exception, but thankfully the alcohol was doing its job and making most of the conversation for me.
After a few hours i’d downed a few too many, and my stomach was sayin “um… i’ll just empty myself, i dont feel too good!”. Surely enough it emptied onto my good friends kitchen floor, and from then the details get kinda blurry! (i had to be told what happened by several spectators). (its also the reason why there are gonna be no more wild parties at my mates house!!!)
Anyhoo!!! One of the aforementioned high school girls dragged me to the toilet and managed to keep me alive for the rest of the night, until i eventually fell asleep on her on a couch! And that was the last i saw of her till the mornin when i woke up on the same couch. She was gone.
Lucky for me, i’d somehow in the previous nights antics managed to get her phone number! I sent her a text message telling her i was ok and does she wanna go out some time.
We went to the cinema with a few other friends, and quite frankly it was a disaster. I couldn’t talk to her. Shyness. Shit. Wheres alcohol when you need it?! I thought i’d blown it.
The next week, i thought i may as well give it another go, and i asked her if she wanted to go bowling, just the two of us. Was WELL CHUFFED when she said yeah!!! However, it was another disaster. I managed to talk to her kinda ok, and even got her a rose from the old woman who was walkin round with the charity bucket thing. That went down well! By the end of the night, i really wanted to make a move, but shyness factor number 2 kicked in and i couldn’t do it, and i thought i’d REALLY blown it.
Then i didn’t see her for about 2 weeks, but we still kept in contact with the occasional text message.
“Meh” is the only word to describe how i felt. If thats a word?
After the two weeks of non-events, i got a text message (notice how we never actually phoned each other? Texts are the shy guys choice of communication!!!) asking if i wanted to go to one of her mates parties… get in!!!
I met her beforehand with a few of her mates, and one of mine whod been asked along too. We all walked up to the party together, and i didnt say a word, and i thought it was all going wrong again. We hardly spoke for ages, but somehow all her friends knew my name, which was a good sign!!! I managed to get the bottle to make the first move (with my good friend alcohol again) and it all started from there!
We’ve now been together nearly 6 months (its 6 months on 12th October!) and we haven’t been happier!
I know it’s kinda corny coming from a teenager, but I really think she’s the one… you’ll be seeing either an angst ridden thread or an i’m gonna propose thread in the future depending on whether i’m right or not!!!
Sorry I wasn’t there to hit on you Crusoe. I would have gone out that night, but I didn’t have a stitch to wear.
Oh, and I wouldn’t call my BF shy, but in his own words, he’s ‘conservative.’ However, after a 12-hour first date (met online) he thought it might be OK to ask if he could kiss me. It was.
Well, from this thread and one in the MHO forum, I’m getting the message that if I’m just myself, things will take their course natrually. But then some of those same people say that they only way to make things happen is for me to get out there and start trying to talk to girls?
But which is it? Be my usual quiet self, or put myself on the line? Not only am I shy, but I have a severe lack of confidence (which explains my shyness), and I think that I’m so boring that no girl would choose me over a guy who’s much more fun to be around.
I want to believe that there are girls out there who would be outgoing enough to approach me, but that just seems like something that would be too good to be true.
Do online dating services charge money?
First girlfriend, Priya, I met at a party… everyone was just hanging around, we were both standing by the counter by the bar. We started talking, and it turned out I knew her cousin (the cousin was in my friends’ theater company 400 miles away). She gave me her number, we went out once or twice. Her and my friend Marty basically had to club me over the head to get me to spend the night with her, since I was so clueless. Broke up two weeks later, but it was a learning experience.
Second girlfriend, Laura, I met a few times with my friends from Santa Cruz. I was at a party down there with her, the night was winding down, so I suggested we share a bed, instead of crashing on couches. See, Laura came up to San Francisco for Halloween with my friends, and I shared a bed with her and another of our friends, so I was thinking purely of couch-vs-bed. So we went to bed, I’m expecting nothing but a good night’s sleep, when she basically lay on top of me and we started making out. Right about then, a little light bulb went on above my head… “Hrm, maybe she likes me.” We lasted about a year and a half.
I’m single now, and kinda bummed since I’ve never successfully pursued a girl- Priya and Laura basically fell into my lap. Being shy sucks.
Well, that’s more than I’ve gotten.