Hi all,

I started studying PUAtry some 6-7 years ago, then fell into a LTR - for 5 1/2 years!

I am now newly back out there, but whilst I find that I have no problem approaching (which 7 years ago would have scared the living sh*t out of me), I seem to have a problem escalating or even keeping a girls interest after the initial approach.

For example, I'm out on Friday night just gone, I see a girl who's around an 8, maybe a 7 at the outset; I'm talking to a couple of friends (one male, one female) and the HB8 walks up the next table and lights a cigarette. I pull my phone from my pocket and without missing a beat or barely breaking from my conversation I hand it to her and tell her to do herself a favor and put her name and number in it. She looks stunned, looks around and tells me that she's sorry but she can't...I push just a little, then let it go and return to my conversation to the amazement of my friends. The female friend is amazed and has a huge grin on her face and tells me that in the future she's going to do a similar thing.
My friends and I continue chatting and then in walks a stunning 10 with a 9 in tow. Clearly the 10 has an impression on me as my female friend says "I dare you to go and try the same trick on HER!". I tell her that I'll go one better and get her to come over to me (to isolate her from the 9). I walk up to the ten, put my arm gently around her waist and say "hey, when you have a minute, come over and speak to me." and then casually walk back to my friends.
Within a minute the 10 is by my side asking what I wanted to talk to her about, I ask her what she's doing on the following Monday (implying a busy lifestyle of my own) and she starts to tell me that she's starting a new job on Monday in a restaurant named [insert name]. I happen to know the owner and let her know this (in a way to push a slight show of high value by knowing her future employer - a bit lame, but a step in the right direction). Then, and this never used to happen to me, I suddenly realise that I'm losing her and I can't seem to escalate the conversation or indeed, even keep her interested, so I get in first and break off with, "well, hey...I'm neglecting my friends, I'll catch you in a bit".
I do bump into her a little later, and in hindsight her HB9 friend was much more interested, but I didn't see it at the time sadly.
I did at one point forget her name, and made light of it by saying "well...you know, you look more like a Sophie to me anyway", but i'm fairly certain that I've crashed and burned at this point.
The other point was that this girl was probably 19-20 tops, and I'm...well...a LOT older than that. This could well have made a difference, but I've been out of the game for so long that I'm having trouble analysing it.
There were several other 'successful' approaches throughout the night...but I went home, empty bedded and without a single number.

Could it be that I'm too old? Or is it that I'm giving off AFC tendencies due to the length of time out of the game?
I've found keeping eye contact much, much more difficult that I used to (I went out tonight and tried a variation of Shade's eye contact experiment and whilst it wasn't getting me laid, it did seem to spark interest in one of the girls I tried it on - there were only two, bother waitresses - the second couldn't keep eye contact for more than a split second, the first kept looking straight back and every instinct in my head was screaming 'look away, look away').

Anyway, I'll stop now as I seem to be rambling - I've been out of the game too long...this is fun!