Hey guys. I stumbled across this site looking for something I had a question about, and I have realized something in reading the posts on here. My basic situation is this...

I have seemingly decent (decent at least in my opinion) PU skills right now. I was in a committed relationship for 3 years, and as soon as I broke it off, I f-closed 5 girls within the first month and a half of being single. I did this, mind you, with no knowledge whatsoever of any PU tactics or anything, just basically being myself and reading the girl and doing what I thought was the best thing to do in the situation. I even impressed my friends at one point by having a HG (a hooters waitress) hit on me, and she even went as far as to have her friend come tell me that she was interested. This seemed to be an extreme situation, but an opportunity presented itself and I played everything just right. I also closed in other forms on a lot of girls in that same period of time, but some of them flaked and some I didn't pursue afterword.

So after realizing this, I also realized that there were many other opportunities that I was ruining, but I wouldn't realize until later. The best example would be the waitress I was talking about earlier. She had her friend come tell me that she liked me, and she came back to our table and hung out for a very extended period of time, making all sorts of hints to me, like asking me repeatedly about my iPhone and how I liked it, etc. So I didn't try to close or anything, I just said thanks and left, and then I came back and very awkwardly gave her my number written on a piece of paper and said "If you want to hang out sometime, give me a call." I knew, however, by my approach and the response and stuff that somewhere in there I had messed up. I think I didn't close early enough when she was giving me the IOI's and stuff. I can think of a lot of other times that extremely attractive girls were giving me AI's and I was either unaware until later or too nervous to approach because of their level of attractiveness. So, I have joined here to ask advice and try and learn, because I feel like I could be extremely good at this given my natural tendency to read people and play social situations the right way. One of my friends once called me a "social genius" because I am incredibly good at making friends and being the life of the party, etc. The issue is, I am very good at attracting girls, no matter what level of attractiveness they are, as long as I am not extremely attracted to them. If I have a slight attraction to them, or I notice that they are very hot, but not my type, then I have no problem, but something changes if I really like them. I understand that this is one of the fundamental issues of the AFC, but at the same time I would like to think that I am beyond them at some level, because even my friends notice that I am more skilled than the average guy when it comes to picking up girls.

The other reason I wanted to post here is that I have a situation currently that I am stuck with. I was dating a girl that dropped out of contact, but from the beginning I was attracted to her friend, not her. Her friend and I are now friends, but we are not at the LJBF stage at all. In fact, I have noticed definite IOI's, but I have no idea what to do about them. I have done what I think is push pull with her, and it has been working, but I am far too honest and caring, and I know the AFC in me will come out when I spend a good amount of time with her and start falling for her or whatever. We have gone out a few times, but it has never been clear whether they were romantic or friendly encounters. When I hung out with her friend, it seemed friendly to me as well, until one night we were dancing and she started making out with me. She later admitted to really liking me, but it wasn't until after we stopped talking. Another thing to note in this situation is that her and her friend have both dated the same guy before, so I know I'm not off limits due to the fact that I dated her friend, so I'm good there. I know in her eyes that I have HV, and so far I haven't made any major mistakes when interacting with her, but I want help to be able to close and not screw this up. That is my other major problem in certain situations is closing. When I am able to close, it usually takes some time, but I am never able to close immediately (like same night girl at a bar type stuff) and it seems like once I make a conscious decision to f-close it becomes exponentially more difficult to overcome my own tendency to ruin the situation. I think this pretty well explains everything, so I would appreciate ANY input at all, be it positive or negative.

One last thing... I seem to do a ton better with friends around, and also when girls are in groups I seem to do better than when they're alone, because I'm good at impressing the other girls and building rapport with all of them. And my relationships with my close friends are such that we don't do the normal thing guys do and talk shit about each other in competition. We have all sort of come to an understanding that talking each other up not only helps out the person that you're talking up in numerous ways (showing the girl they have HV, which in turn makes them attracted to them, or allows them to tell their friends what HV your friend has, which of course seems more effective than you or them trying to display HV yourselves), but it also shows that you are confident enough to compliment your friend and aren't intimidated or challenged by them. Just two random factors that may help in any advice that I may get. Also, I think one of my negative tendencies is to tell DLV stories when I get nervous for some reason.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for any advice! Sorry the post is so long, but I figured the "introduce yourself" section was probably a good place to post something like this, and since I'm just starting out there is a lot of work to be done, haha. And also, my last problem is that I talk too much and overexplain things. I once had a female friend explain to me that my issue with a girl I was trying to talk to was that I do that. The end, lol.