I won't lie when I say that the idea of approaching women scares me quite a bit.
Women are just people. If you can deal with men you can deal with women, it's just a matter of applying your behavior equally.
It's just something that I've never had to deal with, as for years and years I've taken the mental exertion of brutally and mercilessly beating and tempering my emotions, for the purpose of completely excluding the need for female affection in my day to day life.
Pretty much the same deal with me. Intentionally ignoring any crushes I developed was SOP for the last seven years or so. Didn't do me much good in the end.
Something has damaged my years of hard work though, in that my recent, albeit shallow and short, success in romance has left me with the tiniest fleck of confidence in my many years of living, and a great hunger to want to succeed more. The pure, coldly logical portion of my brain tells me that this will be the death of me, as in I'll literally die because of it, but I'd like to learn how to approach women and take control over my love life that has done nothing by dominate me for my entire existence.
The coldly logical part of your brain should be informed that meaningful social contact is a necessity for humans, as vital to keeping us alive and sane as oxygen is. If you don't have it, it just takes much longer to kill you, in the most deeply painful way possible. Remember that if you ever want to go back on this decision.
I've been obsessively reading through "Help" sites, explaining how to go about it, but there's a great deal of inconsistency from one supposed expert to another. So I thought I'd ask my internet friends who OBVIOUSLY have reliable and trustworthy experience in the matter.
First of all, do not, and I repeat,
do not ever listen to Pickup Artists (AKA:PUA or the Seduction Community). They are the worst people when it comes to understanding healthy romantic relationships. While I would admire their attempt to understand and quantify social relationships, they do so in a pseudo-scientific manner. There's also the part where they view women and sex in much the same way that farmers view cows and milk. That's no fun either.
In fact, you should probably just ignore internet help sites on relationships wholesale. The forum is another story because there's a different dynamic, but be prepared to dismiss our advice should you need to. Use your head on this.
I feel that my first steps are to overcome the crippling fear of approaching and making conversation with a woman. I've never had a female friend so much, let alone a real girlfriend. When I see a cute girl, just anywhere, I'm not sure how speak with her, my mind is overcome with fear and deep down I feel I still have the years old conception of myself as this creepy, disgusting guy that noone wants to be familiar with, that I've built up from my many failures from HS. My esteem has improved considerably in every other aspect of my life, but just in this portion, I'm still the creepy dude in my head. I feel that needs to change somehow, someway.
But how?
Pretend. Pretend you are the person you want to be. Pretend that the women you talk to are other men if that'll keep you calm. Pretend that you have all the positive traits you want to have. If you pretend long enough, it'll become a part of your personality. This is called internalization, and is a well recorded psychological phenomenon in which the outer facade will eventually alter the inner personality if maintained for long enough.
I would also suggest that you start running every day. Get some simple running clothes and cheap running shoes that fit you. Walk if you get tired, but keep doing it over and over until you can run the entire initial route, and then extend the route. Listen to music while you're doing this to alleviate boredom and distract yourself from fatigue. I suggest this because it will make you feel better in general, mostly because you'll be high on endorphins if you keep it up long enough. Don't worry, there's no negative side effects.
Disclaimer: I have also never had a romantic relationship, but I've observed human behavior for a long time out of curiosity towards the social dynamics of other people. This advice is the end result of my attempt to learn how to be more sociable. Except the running, that I do have some experience in.
And I've already placed cooper on my ignore list for his insulting disparagement concerning this issue that sits so closely to my heart. He gets the liberty of being the only non-spammer on it.
He didn't voice it very well, but cooper does have a valid point. If you think too hard about this you'll go nowhere. Beware your ability to analyze things mentally. It's useful, but it will only cause you problems and lead you to false conclusions if you overdo it. There's no way to progress in lifestyle changes if you are freaking out about it all the time. A relaxed emotional state is another thing you should try to internalize. People who do that successfully are what we generally see as "chill".