I met my SO (racinchikki right here on the SDMB. She mentioned in some thread or another that she liked my sig and username, then we hijacked “Very Vaguely Creepy” into flirting, had a thread where she fought with another girl over me, and were among the last in the wave of virtual marriages in fall of 2000. Almost exactly a year later, while going to college in Mississippi, she came over to meet in person, and visited about once a month thereafter, and moved here from New York in July '03 so we could be together forever. 
Dear SDMB,
I never thought it would happen to me. I mean, I had read stories about people spitting out various beverages when they read something which made them laugh, but I kind of figured they were exaggerated.
Until this morning…
I met my first two girlfriends online.
The first I met back when I was active on alt.folklore.urban. A new person joined in and I noticed from her email address that she went to the same school as me. I emailed her, we chatted a bit, and I asked if she wanted to grab dinner together. We had a good time, but I was too shy to try to push it beyond ‘just friends’. Finally, when we were sitting in my dorm room, she got tired of my cluelessness, grabbed me by my collar and pulled down onto the bed.
The second was also a student at the same college, and I met through chatting during spring break while 90% of the other students were away. The rest happened in pretty much the same fashion as the first.
At a rodeo. I’m not a rodeo/cowboy type, but I went to the County fair. Since I work for the County (Information Systems) I got elected to get the cow that the cowboys rope. They pick ‘em out before hand. I had now idea.
“Go get number 44. The one squeezed into the corner on the other side of all those other cows.”
“Ummm, yep. There is an ambulance here, right?”
I was in shorts, a tee shirt and running shoes.
Anyway, after getting kicked a few times, I went back to the truck that the County employees where hanging out at. I was sitting on the roof, Mrs. Enipla to be was sitting on the hood.
I was 32 at the time and had just about given up. You never know.
I met my wife (and her twin sister) at a church dance when I was 16. Having lived for years in a relatively small town, I had seen them at school all the time, but being utterly clueless, I had no idea they were twins until I became interested in them. After a few hours at the dance, I finally got up the nerve to ask them to dance, one after the other, and then had my friend Matt find out more about them from one of their friends. The next day I looked in the phone book and found three or four listings with their last name, so I randomly picked one and called it. Turned out to be their grandma; it also turned out that their phone number was unlisted, and even if it hadn’t been, their mom had a different last name anyway. Fortunately, their grandma gave me their phone number, and I called it, although I was almost ready to pass out by that point. Fortunately they turned out to be nice, and after a couple of weeks of “dating” both of them, I ended up with the quieter, shyer (and, as it turned out, the much nicer and smarter) of the two. That was my first girlfriend … and now we’ve been married for almost eight years.
The only downside of us getting together is that we’re both really shy, so even simple tasks like ordering pizza or returning a broken purchase to the store is a matter of “You do it.” “No, YOU do it.” “No way! I’m too scared!” And our two daughters are pretty shy too – the older one is so shy that she refuses to say anything to people who aren’t close friends. She refuses to talk to anybody at school, which makes it difficult for her teachers. But she’s gradually opening up – she’ll whisper quietly to her teacher now, for instance.
But I guess those are the hazards you face when your genes and environment are both created by shy people. 
That is an awesome story. Romance! I love it!
Here’s my suggestions:
Get out of the house. Get involved in something. Maybe go to a dopefest. But make yourself available by getting out.
Pay attention. You never know who might be sitting there thinking “He’s yummy.” but not moving on it. If you can figure that out, you should have it made.
chorpler:
Ha! It’s me and Gun!
I should’ve worded that differently.
I mean it sucks knowing that I probably won;t have the balls to pursue anyone, so I’ll have to wait until I get lucky again, which may not be any time soon.
Most do. There are a couple that don’t. MeetChristians is totally 100% free. But I encourage you to make a donation.
I’m also painfully shy. I tend to like the sweet and shy girl who wouldn’t ever ask a guy out, and I fear I’ll never be able to ask one of them out without some help. Alcohol doesn’t really help me, as it has so many of you. I don’t drink. But I’ve had maybe half a dozen girls ask ME out. I’ve not been happy with the results though. Still, I absolutely LOVED being asked out. And I can’t imagine that I’ll ever say no to a girl asking me out.
Now to my story. But she ain’t my SO. In fact I just met her, about two hours ago. I noticed that I get some “attention” (glances, smiles, eye contact) when I am well dressed in the grocery store, so I make sure I go to the grocery store every Monday after work, when I’m best dressed. Not everybody goes to the clubs and not everybody goes to church (or your church), but everybody’s got to get groceries from time to time, right? There have been some close calls before, but I haven’t been able to find the nerve to actually talk to a girl in the grocery store. Even when I absolutely know she is interested. But tonight, the man upstairs was on my side. I walked into the store right behind this girl. She smiled at me as we were getting our carts. We kept bumping into each other. And every time she let out this big grin. Then she finally made some little comment on how I was following her. (Honestly! I wasn’t!) I accused her of doing the same and we kept this cute little competitive “stop following me” - “no, YOU stop following ME” attitude until we got to the checkout lines. I checked out first and man it took for EVER for her to come out to her car. Good thing I LOCKED MY KEYS IN THE CAR! Do you believe that? Holey schmoley, what timing?! I don’t know how my spare key walked out of my wallet, but I’m glad it did. She parked a couple of cars away and before she could drive away I walked up to her car and asked her if she could help me. She kept me company until I was able to get ahold of a wrecker and since I was so humiliated already and she was nice and she seemed to genuinely like me it made it a cinch to ask her out. The cost to unlock my door: $40. Worth every penny.
So the moral. You never know when love will hit. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Ain’t it great?
And don’t worry about carrying that spare key in your wallet. I did and fat lot o’ good it did me for my car tonight. But losing the key did get me a date.
One thing for advice I would like to give is that if the shy guy wants the girl he needs to be a little receptive to her advances…
I met my shy guy in college. I thought he was smart and funny and attractive and interesting and just plain wonderful. He thought he was boring and that no girl would ever give him a second glance. So I was flirting like crazy and he was oblivious.
I would ‘break’ my computer and ask him to come up and fix it. Then I’d try and get him to hang out or go for dinner so I could say thanks and all that stuff… He’d just tell me that wasn’t necessary and leave!
I was beginning to really think he totally was not interested at all. I finally got him to go for dinner by asking him to take me to pick up my paycheck… then while we were out I finally got him to go to dinner with me. Then we went to the arcade and when that closed we went for a walk along the river… it was then that I finally asked the right questions that got him to talk to me and discovered he really was interested.
Anyway moral of the story is that I had to work really hard to land my shy guy because he really did seem uninterested… So try and be more aware of the clues girls around you are sending. If they seem at all interested don’t chalk it up to them being nice… take a leap and see what happens!
(Oh that date was 12 years ago. We celebrated our 7th anniversary last month and had our second child this week!)
I had known my soon-to-be-Ex for a good 12 years or so as one of those distant see-them-once-or-twice-a-year friend of a friend. I thought she was nice, if a bit old for me at the time (she had a teenage daughter when we first met and I assumed that she was a good 10+ years older than me when she was only 6 years older). That and I was very immature and insecure.
About 2.5 years ago she took in a stray mother cat and her 6 kittens. Mutual friends pushed us together and at first, I went over “to see the kittens”. We got together that June and I asked her to marry me at Thanksgiving. We got married last October and separated at the end of August. We’re now in the process of divorce.
But hey, I had two good years with her. I became a better man because of, and for her. I changed a lot.
Unfortunately, as I said in the “Things I Recently Learned the Hard Way” thread; “I learned that if you drive through an entire forest of red flags to marry the woman you love, you will be beaten with every last one of them on the way out of the relationship.”
The basic fact was that she was already on SSDI for mental illness. For a time, she got better. A few months after we married, she started a long, slow slide into madness.
Regardless of all the subsequent pain and loss, I wouldn’t give that time up for the world. Despite what she may say (she’s claiming abuse), I am a much better person for the experience. (And I don’t mean that in a Holier Than Thou manner. I was an asshole and I couldn’t be one, didn’t want to be one, for her.)
Well, I would be receptive, if there were any signals at all, which there aren’t. I’ve been here for 3 weeks now and 3 girls have spoken to me. All 3 are involved with guys.
And I can relate to the way he felt. I too am very boring and can’t see why any girl would approach me. All the other guys are funny and spontaneous. They have amazing lives and have all these awesome stories to tell. And they can impress women and make them laugh at the drop of a hat. I can’t compete with that.
Good lord, the last thing I want from a relationship is men competing with one another. That totally turns me off.
I met my very shy guy when I was hanging out with some friends. I’d met him a couple of times before, and I thought he was great. He has the prettiest smile and the sexiest voice.
So I flirted! It’s not hard. Remember back when you were a kid and you teased your siblings? Threw things at them and whatnot? Well, I bumped into him a couple of times, deliberately, when we were walking around, and instead of saying “excuse me” I grinned really widely and did it again!
Then later when we were all sitting on the couch I picked up a throw blanket and dropped it over his head and pretended like I hadn’t. I teased him all night, flustered and annoyed him, because I wanted him to notice me.
It worked. Today’s our third anniversary.
You never know – that girl you have been jonesing for may secretly be hot for you. Throw a paper airplane at her next time you see her.
Remember, you only pull the pigtails of the one you love 
Remember that many people actually find it difficult to interpret social signals. Yes, there may be additional factors, such as (in my case) a belief that no-one would be interested (happily, this belief is fading for me), but sometimes the apparently-uninterested one may be interested but unaware or unable to pick up on subtle signals.
Sometimes you have to be very obvious.
I’m not with anyone now. My last two exes I met at college, one only because I happened to be talking to someone about cricket and she joined into the conversation, and the last because I was invited to a dinner and I wouldn’t have accepted the invitation if I’d had to pay for it. The last one was funny–I was seated with her and two people that I knew. I kept trying to draw her in to the conversation, but she was too shy to talk. I didn’t see her again for another three months, but only six months after that we were engaged.
Those two events just seem so far out of the range of normal possibility (how many times will one talk about cricket in the States? how many free dinners are you going to be invited to?) that sometimes I start thinking that only some strangely unusual event needs to occur for me to find someone. Since my divorce was finalized 18 months ago, I’ve been on 12 dates, probably more than I’d been on in the years before I got married, and, being shy, I’ve felt like all of them have been very difficult. I’ve tried hard to do well and I think the trying has shown through.
But I have another date tomorrow night, and so I will try again.
Elysian, I think you get the idea of what I meant when I said “compete.” I just have none of those fun, outstanding qualities that so many other guys do, so naturally the girls flock to them and I’m left sitting in the corner by myself.
Yeah. You do. You should need no more proof of this than the fact that you’re registered here. You obviously can converse on a somewhat social level, and I’d wager that you’re far more interesting to girls than you can ever imagine. I mean, to be honest, most of the people who are terminally dull think of themselves as just incredibly interesting and exciting because they’re just so fucking boring they wouldn’t know excitement if it bit them in the apple sack.
It helps if you realize that the vast majority of girls will probably never make a move so overt as to leave no mistake of their intentions. It’s a terrible burden to almost always have to make the first move, I know. But if you can make it past the first few moves, she’ll start making a lot more of them. And those are the fun ones, lemme tell you. They’re the kind of moves where she tries to restrict you movement via strategic placement of her body, usually by exerting the majority of her body weight on, say, your pelvic region, or oftentimes your face. And those moves are usually performed naked, as an added benefit!
Listen, I was in your position for a long, long time. I’d put even money that no matter how many of these threads you read, how many of your friends you ask, none of this, will instantly turn you into a suave heartbreaker. Sure as shit never did for me. About the only thing it can do is help you start to realize the following:
It’s your pride (and the fear of its loss) that are holding you back.
I began to break out of my shell when I realized that. Now that I’ve spent some time on the other side, I can tell you a few things.
-Pride doesn’t wear nice perfume or sexy clothes.
-Pride will never carry on a conversation or tell you a joke.
-(And sorry for the lewdness)A vagina tastes better than pride. Promise.
Nope. No pride. Just an extreme lack of self worth.
And yet sometimes we have to. Except that a lot of guys don’t realize that six dudes having a swordfight around a girl generally means none of them will get her.
I went to a college where the ratio of guys to girls (it’s always about the ratio) was something like 5:4. Take into account unhookupables and the fact that more guys tend to go out to parties for longer periods of time and you end up with a sausage factor of maybe 3:1 at best or as high as 10:1 or ever greater. And most of those guys there were rich jocks who liked to party a lot.
In that kind of environment, you learn pretty quickly how to meet girls and “close the deal” quickly otherwise you’ll have 10 other guys trying to sausage their way in. In time, and if the Force is strong in you, you should be able to walk into a party and already know which girls you can probably hook up with and go hook up with them.
Admittedly, I was somewhat of a complete dunce in high school when it came to girls though. Like most things, dating and meeting girls takes practice. I will impart this wisdom based on my own personal experience:
-Be agressive
-Know when to back off and let her come to you
-You can go out with someone even if you don’t think they will be the love of your life.
-If you aren’t sure, err on the side of hooking up.
-Don’t be a freak or a psycho
-If a girl gives you her number, try actually calling it.
OK, the people who are giving me tips to approaching women need to know right now before they start giving anymore, that this is not going to work. I’m not even going to attempt.