josterD opened this issue on Aug 08, 2010 ยท 45 posts
momodot posted Mon, 09 August 2010 at 12:22 PM
OT: How do you talk to Strangers and where? Seems nobody wants to be approached...
Easily in New York City. Just joking :) I have found people very friendly to strangers in New York City but no other place I have lived or visited in the US, Canada, Central America, Southern Europe, North Africa etc. unfortunately. When my kids were little and saw friendly people they would ask me if the people were from New York even though I had never discussed the matter with them... usually as it turned out the people were from New York.
Anyway, what you might benefit from is practice with semi-strangers. That means taking a night class through the local high-school or college Adult Education Program. You will meet people in class who share an interest and you can find a compromise between being friendly but not forcing yourself to be overly talkative. I have often been friendly with the quite type.
As for meeting girls, when I went to a paint-your-own-ceramics place to paint a vase all sorts of young women approached me to talk... found the same thing in knitting class. Maybe it helps to take some non-traditionally-male class like cooking to meet girls. I was doing it out of sincere interest though so maybe it helped that I was not putting out a super hustling attitude... although my brother's sleazy hustling attitude seems to serve him very well :) He takes dance classes etc.
Also, where I live at least there are informal meeting groups at coffee shops for things ranging from Conversational French to Bi-Polar Disorder. Maybe in your area there is a group for people with shyness or social phobia or even something like movie trivia that you could try if it seemed interesting.
Anyway, experience with semi-strangers might give you some confidence with day-to-day interaction with actual strangers.