I am a 23-year-old male. Since the start of this year, I have been working on my social skills. Previously I was a typical introverted and shy guy who hesitated to talk to people but slowly and steadily I overcame my hesitation and now I am at a stage where I can strike up a conversation with anyone including women. To give you an idea of my progress , a few months ago I moved from my hometown which is a tier 2 city to a tier 1 city. Here, I attended a few meetups including Toastmasters Club where I initiated conversations with strangers including women as well. I also participated in public speaking events, debates, and auditions for various college clubs, where I often felt underconfident but still pushed myself to participate. In some instances, I was perceived as confident by others, and in a few moments, I genuinely felt confident from within. I even participated in a few of the group activities in my college as well as in other places also and in one of them, I represented my team where I had to publically address the audience for which my teammates praised me for the way I presented them. In all of them, I talked to women and collaborated with them well which was not the case earlier. I even marketed for an event which was conducted by my college club in which I had to approach and persuade people including women to join that particular event where I initially hesitated and stammered while I approached them but in a few attempts, I was in a flow and even I cracked few jokes with two females while I approached them to which they reciprocated nicely. Now the main problem that I am facing is that 99% of the time I take the initiative to strike up a conversation with strangers in social as well as in non-social settings and from what I observed is that males tend to re-engage in conversations a second time without me having to take the initiative again, and vice versa but females don't and I am not able to initiate the conversation with them the second time. Another thing I’ve noticed is that I can naturally talk to men without any specific context (such as group activities or event marketing), but with women, I often need a reason or context to start a conversation. How can I overcome this and build bonds with women (in a non-romantic context) as naturally as I do with men?
