I guess I found out about the community driving home from work last year. I heard a Neil Strauss interview on the radio talking about the Game. I went right out and bought the book.

I've never had a real problem meeting girls, but I was stud athlete in high school and college and I never had to work to hard, they basically came to me. Right now I do ok, but I'm seeing myself turn more and more into an AFC. I tend to have to drink my courage up to go talk to girls, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. My problem isn't talking to girls. Once I can establish interest and attraction I'm fine. The problem is that it's hard to get to that point, and I'm finding that I wait around all night trying to work up the courage and next thing you know it's closing time.

I've been practicing with some of the openers, start with time constraint, then I try a variation on the Maury Povich opener, but I use a local radio show instead. I don't think many girls will buy Maury Povich since I'm in Charlotte NC. I've opened sets successfully, got the attention and what not, but I still need to work on negging the target and then later isolating. I'm finding that there's a big sticking point about how to transition to the next phase after the opener. I can get the group talking, giving opinions and what not, but where do I go when the conversation starts to die out? Do I simply leave and hope that I've built interest for later, or do I need to move to another step? Any help on this sticking point would be appreciated. I have a long way to go and I'm just getting started, but I find myself not wanting to open at times because I'm not sure where to go after that.