So I took the test at the love-shy site, just cause tests are so amusing.

I got 85. Typical score for an average college male is 104 and a Love-Shy man of similar age is about 48. Putting me about where I'd have guessed.

The reason for the lowness of the score is essentially: I do not initiate conversation without a good solid in. Unless I have the first several sentences of conversation and an idea for a direction to take it in I will almost never initiate a conversation with someone whom I'm not already good friends with. Furthermore I assume that people don't want me to introduce myself unless I have some solid reason to guess that this person in particular wants me to talk to them now.

A result of this is that when I meet people they're usually people who are good at meeting people, because I can't carry the water in the first 5 minutes of conversation. In particular this means i meet girls for whom there is typically a lot of competition. On the other hand, I've managed to be able to go into a room of mostly strangers and usually meet some people and have a decent time.

This weekend was an interesting example, where between the wedding and the gathering the night before I had several hours of socialization with people none of whom (other than Meg, Thom, and Meg's parents) I'd met more than twice. I somehow managed to actually keep myself busy talking with people, but for the most part it was people who did a good job initiating conversation with me. The girl I spent the most time talking to I was standing next to at the gathering in different conversations and when hers ended i looked over and she gave a sort of "i'm trying to remember who you are and am about to introduce myself look" which was all i needed to introduce myself. But had she been as shy as I was and looked away I never would have said anything. The result is that I can meet people whose company is wonderful for a day or two, but not necessarily the sort of person who would want to date me or who I should want to date. Because the girls I meet skew outgoing I think the girls I meet tend to have plenty of options better than I.

But anyway, I can now meet people who are substantially less outgoing than those i met a year ago, so I think I'm improving and will work my way down the ladder to more difficult people to initiate conversation with.