Wow Missing, you get discouraged so easy
I thought we had agreed you where going to be the social superstar and the shining envy of your city from now on, with an army of men at your door and jealous girlfriends and sycophantic followers as far as the eye can see. Haha
What happened?
[img=300x450]
https://m.popkey.co/06ad50/jrWXZ.gif[/img]
I know it's frustrating and you are absolutely right, the putting yourself out there and that oh so very horrifying rejection chance is always very much in play
Sometimes people will be receptive, sometimes not, will you meet asshats, you betcha, will you meet nice people, of course, will you meet indifferent people, yup you will. There is no single interaction that comes with any sort of guarantee, despite best efforts or best intentions or expectations. That is just cold hard reality, but it doesn't have to be a daunting wall, just the shape of the stage in front of you that you have to work with, but it can be a hell of a lot of fun and full of discovery in the process if you let it be
Try to consider what you are really describing up there. You are saying the casual chatting up and initiating and highest rejection risk cold social start skills is something you are already employing and doing so on a regular basis. I'm sure there are people here who would give up a kidney or more for that ability alone
It's natural and easy to want to poke holes or criticize something that is not working out exactly as you want, it is much harder to recognize the deep value in your own abilities or think of ways to make them work for you.
[img=500x282]
http://www.reshareit.com/wp-content/uploads/look-normal.gif[/img]
In this case your impressive openness and cold approaches are doing exactly what anyone can expect, giving you lots of shallow and tentative acquaintances. You're not doing anything wrong, that is exactly what should be happening in my experience and by the sounds of it, it very much is. It's great you can get to that stage, give yourself a pat on the back or a smack on the ass, whatever will help you motivate yourself more
I think you are right to be focusing on the next part of that whole process, the steps and minutia between acquaintance and a deeper friendship. I wish I could tell you there is some one size fits all magic bullet here, but you will always be dealing with individuals and individual approaches and awareness will apply as much as any blanket strategies that could be applied.
But, there are a few things that have helped me that I can tell you about and maybe you can find some use for them too.
You are very focused on your new found accountancies inviting you to do whatever it may be as a sign that it is going anywhere. Have you considered inviting them for any activity or venue you might enjoy? One thing to understand is that most people are not leaders they are followers. I think you might notice that in most groups of friends there is usually a few really active social people who try to rally everyone else together by setting up events and meet-ups etc. They are also usually the people that are the most likely to touch base with people most regularly. Now I'm not saying you have to, or even that it's possible to just flip to this type of leader personality, but when you are the one that is lonely, the one trying to solve the problem, you can very much use their type of strategy to help catalyze your own friendships from your group of acquaintances. It's not really a complicated formula in the end. Touching base regularly and setting up events and coffee or lunch or whatever you enjoy in a more personal interaction does help bring acquaintances out of whatever venue or theme you met them in, to more of a recurring daily life routine and closer to a real friendship which to me requires some sort of two way investment.
Another thing that will trip you up quite a bit, especially at the initial stages of this kind of relationship is keeping score over who contacts who and how often. Drop this, especially when you are just starting out in a friendship, who cares! It will just create a bunch of emotional turmoil for you that ends up being counterproductive. Remember the part about most people being followers, it can be very much at play here. Most people prefer to have events and interactions handed to them on a silver platter, understand that. I'm not saying you have to put up with all your friends being the kind who have to be led by the nose everywhere lol, because the reality is that once you break the acquaintance glass with a few more intimate meet-ups or deeper and enjoyable conversations you are very likely to see reciprocal invites and regular time spent much more often until it reaches some kind of balance more true to that kind of friend's specific personality. In the end you end up with a wide range of friends, some who need coaxing, some who are reaching out all the time and some in between. But if you get pissy at the start in the acquaintance stage, which by definition has few psychological obligations, you aren't really going to see where the person will end up on that spectrum.
There are some broader things which may seem self evident, but I'll mention them anyway. Try to be a reliable person, flakiness tends to really drive many people apart. Don't be afraid to do someone a favour or help them out when they need it, even if it's just moral support, reciprocation in this is a really good indicator of a blossoming friendship. This is kind of basic at even the evolutionary level of why friendships exist, but I think people tend to underestimate the importance of this kind of thing or how our minds react to it.
I think one thing that could help you quite a bit is to focus more on local socialization, when you are out stirring up acquaintances. I think this would be beneficial, because one of the most important things to do when trying to deepen superficial relationships is to facilitate and participate in more one on one, or more conversation inducing interactions. So things like going for coffee, breakfast, lunch, dinners, house meet-ups, walks, jogs, walking a dog, hike etc. Basically things that encourage a lot of conversation with not as much distraction. This is obviously not all inclusive, but keep that high conversation situation in mind. This is another place where your ability to talk to everyone and social skills on that front will again be a big helper to you.
Now you mentioned vacation venues and they do have that nice communal and low consequence element to them which you mentioned has helped you get better results with people. Now think about similar venues that are more local you can get a similar atmosphere in. Just to give you some ideas of places I met some really great people at, that have that similar, "you can talk to anyone" vibe: men, women, couples etc. Some places for me have been: historic bus tours of your own area (small group, tons of talking), museum tours, hiking clubs, rafting tours or rafting classes, historical community tours (an old fort or castle for example), microbrew tasting events (these are hilllarious), could just as easily be wine tasting. Some other ones that come to mind where I met people either romantically or as future friends are botanical gardens, festivals, hobby clubs, trade shows etc. There is a lot of places that people are that aren't strictly for dating and you do get that "likely won't see again atmosphere", that is to say unless you make that happen.
Eventually when you do start to get closer to some people, you will naturally gravitate to those you really like and the proportion of time you spend in reaction to that will guide you along a bit. You will meet their friends and tie in your other friends into that group and eventually you are likely to meet a few of these super active social people mentioned earlier that make events and outings happen constantly and away you go on the Social Queen Missingthesun Express
hehe
Now I know I make it sound rosy and it won't all be quite so easy, there will be rejection and lukewarm interactions and ******** and stalled starts and relationships that peter out and frustrations. But really it's all part of it, it's not really as scary as you might think and you end up pleasantly surprised and entertained by people way more than you are disappointed. You also get better at gauging reactions and develop better instincts the more you do it.
So get out there and catch some hearts, make some friends and prove some things to yourself that letters on a forum just can't. Nothing I can tell you will ever teach you as much as you can learn with your feet on the ground doing it.
Go get em tiger! (for real this time, hehe)
[img=400x225]
