I've been told to just talk to 5 girls to get over my social

Everything is irrelevant. Everyone you are awkward around will forget about it and eventually die.

God speed.

I think your partially right about the finals thing. I mean, me being a fem myself, it wouldn't hurt to at least get a conversation going in a way where you can relate with the person your talking to. To be honest that's pretty much how I start my conversations myself. I start out with something relateable. But that's just me, I never really know what else to talk about after that point. I just kind of let the conversation flow where it wants to flow. I guess. I can't find any other way to explain it.

Okay. Pretend you've got a new job. You work in a room with one other guy. You're together all day. He seems kind of shy, introduces himself, but doesn't start a conversation. You're working together in silence all day.

You don't have any sexual interest in him, so obviously, you don't have any anxiety over whether or not he's sexually interested in you. You don't care. You don't even particularly care if he LIKES you or not, you don't need a new best friend.

But if you're stuck working together in a room all day, it'd be great if you could at least be friendly, have a chat. It's not the end of the world if you don't get along, but work would be more pleasant if you did. Since he seems a bit shy, you figure you should break the ice, just try to start a casual conversation and get to know each other a bit.

What do you say?

You're not going to give him some cheesy pickup line. You're not going to stress out about making him like you with just one sentence. You're probably going to just try to find some common ground, either talk about work/other people at work, sports, television shows, current events, make a joke, share something about your life, etc etc.

This is how you should start conversations with women. Treat them like people. Find common ground. Don't put too much pressure on yourself, don't act like there's a lot at stake in a first meeting, because there isn't. If it doesn't go anywhere, you say "goodbye" and walk away and life goes on.

>>16518761
Thanks, Nietzche, but really I do need to start adopting that mindset to an extent, I get too anxious about things.

>>16518768
It's nice to get a female perspective on this and it's surprising that this is pretty much how the first conversations with my friends before I knew well them started.

>>16518771
Wow, I always thought the "treat women as if they're people" thing was vague in that it never really helped me get over my anxiety but the way you put it really helps me understand it. Thanks a lot for this, really, I didn't want to feel awkward around 50% of the population all my life and this does help.

>>16518771

This is perfect.

>>16518771
I've been working in the same room with a guy for over a year, and we barely talk about anything unless it's job related. Maybe I'm just socially retarded.

Take a guess.

Seriously, don't act like you're incapable of guessing. The point of this exercise is as much to demonstrate the ease of success as it is to harden you against failure. If you screw up, nothing will happen.

>>16519409
I'm mostly over it now and this thread has helped heaps but one reason my life has gotten to the point where I need to do this comes from when I was even more distanced from people and a security guard at my uni approached me. He asked me a series of questions regarding who I was, why I was there etc, eventually he felt sympathetic and told me why he asked those questions, it turns out some girl falsely accused me of stalking her and I was at a point where I rarely looked at girls let allow trail. It fucked me up and led to a lot of self-talk that I'd never be someone a woman would be comfortable around even though I've been told I'm attractive.

So the "nothing will happen" thing just doesn't seem true, I didn't even talk to, look at or approach a girl and security came to question me.

I still appreciate the advice and I'm going to try my best to get out of my comfort zone but I have to accept that something could go wrong.

>>16519570
>I was at a point where I rarely looked at girls let allow trail.
So there's basically no way that you were the cause of that situation, and yet you let it change your behavior.

Sorry man, but if you STILL think that something happened because of you--despite you just admitting that you did nothing!--then that's just you lying to yourself. How can you have caused that situation by not even looking at her?

It's December 2015. I don't know when that episode happened but it's been months or years of drawing a really dumb conclusion from it. You can't get "bad things will happen if I screw up" FROM A SITUATION WHICH YOU COULDN'T HAVE SCREWED UP.

I'm sorry this ends with an insult but advice is wasted on the stupid. It's like telling someone to quit smoking when they don't understand what lungs are. You can't make positive change in your life from a retarded place. You have to act smarter first. Otherwise you live in la-la land and we can't help.

>>16518749
don't bother women are judgmental cunts and they will probably talk shit behind your back.

>>16519600
That happened a year ago.

Now I don't blame myself but at the time I kept thinking things like "I could've been walking the same direction she was for longer than she was comfortable with" which led to "just being around me makes them think I'm a creep".

With that mindset being in the presence of a woman is screwing up but honestly, FUCK that mindset.