Casual Conversation

Personally, from puberty through most of high school, I never approached any girls because I never had to--in my social setting it was totally normal and acceptable for girls to ask boys out, and I guess I was approachable enough, despite not being very popular, to get asked a fair amount. Yet I still had this culturally inherited concept that it should be me who was doing the asking, or at least learning how to do it. So I struggled with this a lot in my teenage years... part of the problem was that I also didn't have the stereotypical physical attraction to women, but a more personality-based one, so a lot of time was wasted trying to convert close platonic friendships into romantic relationships (maybe that works for some people, but not in my experience).

Ultimately, the woman I married was someone I approached without knowing her beforehand, but only after like weeks of making very mutual, not at all creepy eye contact walking back and forth on the same paths in the music center of our college campus. I think that's sort of the bare minimum: some signs of shared context, some shared interest or hobby, some smoke signals indicating mutual attraction. And for a minute I still thought maybe we were meant to be just friends, but obviously I was wrong, and part of how I know that is the way we met: with clear physical attraction established. This was all before dating apps, and I think I can see their appeal from that perspective; they reduce the uncertainty about "what kind of relationship is this going to become" to some extent.

Anyways, though, I'm pretty sure that I didn't have to put myself through the suffering of trying to "be a man" and build up the confidence to ask women out, because I was lucky to have a milieu in which they could comfortably take the lead. Heck, my wife might have been the one to break the tension eventually if it wasn't me. What I do regret, for sure, is the platonic friendships I lost with women during that phase in which I felt I was "supposed" to be converting them into girlfriends. The kind of reasoning that draws a direct line from changes in who is doing the asking out (for a variety of reasons) to male loneliness is really not helping any young men who are similarly confused.

I told her friend that I liked her. She married me (eventually).

I approached a woman in a bar once back around 2009. after that it was nothing but tinder, I've got no clue how to figure out if a woman is interested in person.

The idea that a stranger cold approaching a woman was a significant factor in couplings is quite overblown. Most couples met through some sort of social grouping such as family, friends, religious gatherings, work, etc. This doesn't mean it didn't occur, just that it wasn't an overall productive method of finding a partner. As time has gone on, society has advanced to a place where women are too not only discuss openly about the problematic behaviors exhibited in cold approaches, but also be heard. The affect on young men is that most will not approach a woman due to the already present fear of rejection and the now added fear of being perceived as a creep.

It is not necessarily a bad thing that this is going away, but the large issue that should be addressed is the loss of a community many (I'm speaking for the US here) face. Many young people are frustrated with the dating scene and their inability to find partners. A community not only allows for opportunities to meet potential partners but a framework to enforce (through social pressure) acceptable standards of conduct to ensure all parties are safe and comfortable. I don't have the answers, but we as a society need to figure it out. There has been unfortunate trend of this frustration driving young people to extremist ideology. This has been most prominent with young men, as is historically the case, but it is starting to take root with some young women as well.