However, in my personal experience it is not really so.
It might be worth thinking about where the bottleneck is. E.g. do you go on plenty of dates but they don’t lead anywhere? If not, is that because you ask people out but get rejected, or drop hints but don’t get asked out, or don’t drop hints and don’t get asked out, or?
Roughly speaking: I don’t go on many dates, I rarely ask men out, I do drop hints occasionally (without success). The actual situation is more complicated (don’t want to go into too much detail), but my overall impression is that men in the Cluster are rarely interested in me (at least, for the age group I usually interact with).
If you’re trying to penetrate the market of socially anxious STEM nerds but you’re mostly just dropping hints instead of asking people out, that might be part of the problem. Especially if you’re trying to drop hints in mostly male dominated communities; lots of STEM nerds are sort of explicitly conscious of the fact that they don’t want the one girl at such a function to be inundated with flirtations. But if you are the first to ask, this isn’t an issue.
I am not sure if you’re right or wrong, but this seems like actually the best place to start for OP. It’s all upside if the main problem is that she just needs to be much more overt about wanting to go on dates with the people she’s interested in. Perhaps no compromises needed?
It might be worth thinking about where the bottleneck is. E.g. do you go on plenty of dates but they don’t lead anywhere? If not, is that because you ask people out but get rejected, or drop hints but don’t get asked out, or don’t drop hints and don’t get asked out, or?
Roughly speaking: I don’t go on many dates, I rarely ask men out, I do drop hints occasionally (without success). The actual situation is more complicated (don’t want to go into too much detail), but my overall impression is that men in the Cluster are rarely interested in me (at least, for the age group I usually interact with).
If you’re trying to penetrate the market of socially anxious STEM nerds but you’re mostly just dropping hints instead of asking people out, that might be part of the problem. Especially if you’re trying to drop hints in mostly male dominated communities; lots of STEM nerds are sort of explicitly conscious of the fact that they don’t want the one girl at such a function to be inundated with flirtations. But if you are the first to ask, this isn’t an issue.
I am not sure if you’re right or wrong, but this seems like actually the best place to start for OP. It’s all upside if the main problem is that she just needs to be much more overt about wanting to go on dates with the people she’s interested in. Perhaps no compromises needed?