Desperately need ideas

[YoucancallmeAl]

OK, here's my dilemma.
I'm on one of the foreign dating sites. I've met a lot of cute girls on there, mostly Filipinas, and I've started communicating with a few.
The problem is that I keep running into the same problem that always ruined my chances with American girls:
I run out of stuff to talk about. And just like the American girls, they never fill in the conversational gaps. I have to do all the work. I have to be the one that leads the conversation, comes up with all the topics, cracks all the jokes, asks all the questions, etc. If anything, the Filipinas are even worse than US girls in this regard.
Whenever there's an awkward silence or gap in conversation, it's always MY responsibility to fill it, not hers. And I just don't have enough ideas to keep her interested.
These girls just give me nothing to work with conversationally and it gets stressful and difficult.
I've googled "conversation starters" and have used at least 20 ideas from there but it doesn't help much.

For example, I had a one hour webcam chat with a Filipina girl the other night. I brought a list of about 15 conversation ideas with me. I thought it would last me the whole hour but I had worked through the whole list in about 20 minutes, leaving 40 more minutes of mostly boring painful awkwardness. And this is one of the better personality girls!

I've come to the conclusion that I'm just a boring guy. I've never been able to be charming, exciting, or interesting to women. I suck at trying to tell good jokes or stories. And I can't seem to exhibit any attractive charisma. But I still need to get laid. (It's been 5+ long lonely years without now)
And it's very depressing to find that I'm not doing any better with these supposedly easier lower-tier women than I was with American girls.
What can I do???
If anyone has any ideas/suggestions I'd greatly appreciate it.

[Rock]

OK, here's my dilemma.
I'm on one of the foreign dating sites. I've met a lot of cute girls on there, mostly Filipinas, and I've started communicating with a few.
The problem is that I keep running into the same problem that always ruined my chances with American girls:
I run out of stuff to talk about. And just like the American girls, they never fill in the conversational gaps. I have to do all the work. I have to be the one that leads the conversation, comes up with all the topics, cracks all the jokes, asks all the questions, etc. If anything, the Filipinas are even worse than US girls in this regard.
Whenever there's an awkward silence or gap in conversation, it's always MY responsibility to fill it, not hers. And I just don't have enough ideas to keep her interested.
These girls just give me nothing to work with conversationally and it gets stressful and difficult.
I've googled "conversation starters" and have used at least 20 ideas from there but it doesn't help much.

For example, I had a one hour webcam chat with a Filipina girl the other night. I brought a list of about 15 conversation ideas with me. I thought it would last me the whole hour but I had worked through the whole list in about 20 minutes, leaving 40 more minutes of mostly boring painful awkwardness. And this is one of the better personality girls!

I've come to the conclusion that I'm just a boring guy. I've never been able to be charming, exciting, or interesting to women. I suck at trying to tell good jokes or stories. And I can't seem to exhibit any attractive charisma. But I still need to get laid. (It's been 5+ long lonely years without now)
And it's very depressing to find that I'm not doing any better with these supposedly easier lower-tier women than I was with American girls.
What can I do???
If anyone has any ideas/suggestions I'd greatly appreciate it.

Look man, don't sweat it. If you're more of an intellectual type, you may find Filipinas and other SE Asians difficult to talk to for extended periods. Or perhaps you're just a quiet guy. There are plenty of girls in Asia who are quiet and/or like quiet guys. Sometimes, I see close couples go out and eat with very little conversation. That doesn't mean they are not happy. Don't give yourself pressure to have marathon talking sessions with these girls. You can just call them, ask how they and their families are, tell them you've been thinking about them, etc. and then say goodbye. If the girl likes you, she will let you know over the course of a few calls. If you sense something is wrong, you can ask her about it and you may get lucky enough for her to open up. Just hope its not a money related problem, lol.

[zzzz]

I think online is harder myself as well. I much prefer in person and I'm someone who can talk for hours or alternatively listen for hours. It is good to weed out people a bit online however.

[wuxi]

I think you should start off by flirting with these women to try and gauge there level of interest in you. Just tell them you thought about them all day at work and you want to hold hands with them on the beach. If they respond positively to that you can up the ante. If they don't respond positively I would move on. However, I had one woman that was very interested in me but it was hard to tell. When I tryed to end our chatting sessions with her she was very upset about it. She spoke Illongo(Bacolod City), these women are a bit more reserved than the women from Cebu.

My verbal aptitude is not that high so I find I need someone that talks more than I do to keep things rolling along in a relationship. The filipina I chat with now is from Cebu province and she can talk all day long. Theres no doubt her conversation skills is one of the reasons we been chatting now for 10 months.

Also, I chatted with some women from mindanao that talked a lot too.

[pete98146]

I remember running into this as well. I can tell you from experience that MOST filipinas can talk! Problem is that when you talk to less educated girls they are self conscious of their English speaking abilities so they tend to be quiet.

I know I beat the drum over and over and over for guys to get focus on educated ladies (and I do apologize for the sermons) but here is yet another classic example of why the educated girls are easier to communicate with. The ladies that are educated should have much better communication skills, they'll have more life experiences to talk about and they'll be more insteresting.

[momopi]

I've come to the conclusion that I'm just a boring guy. I've never been able to be charming, exciting, or interesting to women. I suck at trying to tell good jokes or stories. And I can't seem to exhibit any attractive charisma. But I still need to get laid. (It's been 5+ long lonely years without now)
And it's very depressing to find that I'm not doing any better with these supposedly easier lower-tier women than I was with American girls.
What can I do???
If anyone has any ideas/suggestions I'd greatly appreciate it.

This reminds me of the funny Japanese omiai scenes where the guy doesn't know what to say, and the girl has to break the ice by saying "...so, do you have any hobbies?"

Look, you don't have to be this guy:




Try this guy instead:




Save some $$, pack your bags and start traveling -- or get a job that sends you to places. Bring anti-diarrhea medicine and eat your way across the world. Soon you'd accumlate many experiences and stories to tell, and you'd be a very interesting person, without the Dos Equis.

Also, be aware that calling someone "lower tier" can be very insulting to the person. I'd point to 1904 St. Louis World Fair, Philippine natives were placed on display as human zoo's. Quoting Rev. Sequoyah Ade:

"To further illustrate the indignities heaped upon the Philippine people following their eventual loss to the Americans, the United States made the Philippine campaign the centrepoint of the 1904 World's Fair held that year in St. Louis, MI [sic]. In what was enthusiastically termed a "parade of evolutionary progress," visitors could inspect the "primitives" that represented the counterbalance to "Civilisation" justifying Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden". Pygmies from New Guinea and Africa, who were later displayed in the Primate section of the Bronx Zoo, were paraded next to American Indians such as Apache warrior Geronimo, who sold his autograph. But the main draw was the Philippine exhibit complete with full size replicas of Indigenous living quarters erected to exhibit the inherent backwardness of the Philippine people. The purpose was to highlight both the "civilising" influence of American rule and the economic potential of the island chains' natural resources on the heels of the Philippine-America War. It was, reportedly, the largest specific Aboriginal exhibit displayed in the exposition. As one pleased visitor commented, the human zoo exhibit displayed "the race narrative of odd peoples who mark time while the world advances, and of savages made, by American methods, into civilized workers."

[YoucancallmeAl]

Thanks guys for the responses.
I agree that educated girls would be better conversationalists, but they're also harder to get. I've found that I'm not dumb enough for the uneducated girls and I'm not smart enough for the educated ones so I tend to be equally boring to both of them.

I will probably wait to contact any more girls until I'm there in RP as I've seen how easy it is to lose their interest if you're talking to them online for a long time before meeting. After all, if you've already learned everything about each other online, what's left to talk about in person?

I think I may have already lost the girl I was most interested in. I came across like a f***ing nerd in our last webcam chat. (just imagine the 'Cheers" character Cliff Clavin. That's what my banter tends to sound like. Not good.) And she hasn't responded to my email in several days.

What I really need to know is how to keep the conversation in a flirty, romantic, stimulating mood w/o bordering into sexual explicitness or falling back on corny schmaltzy cliches or repeating the same compliments over and over.
I've tried to think "What would James Bond say?", but of course you never actually see Bond having prolonged conversation with his Bond girls. They're always either in the middle of an adventure or they're f***ing. You never see what happens in between.
So what happens in between??? (in real life, not in the movies)
It's not that I'm a virgin. I've stumbled into a handful of sexual relationships over my 40 years, but they were purely by chance. I couldn't replicate my few successes if a gun were held to my head. That's why I've been tempted to check out some of those PUA programs. But since everyone here insists those strategies aren't needed overseas, what strategies do you use instead? Because I'm already seeing they're not just gonna fall into my lap.

[pete98146]

Al, it may a good time for you to pick up a used copy of Carnegie's How in Win Friends and Influence People. You were on the right track about asking them open ended questions about themselves but this book goes into more indepth techniques.

Lastly, don't sell yourself short. I'm looking at your writing skills and you'd be fine talking to the educated ladies.

[NorthAmericanguy]

OK, here's my dilemma.
I'm on one of the foreign dating sites. I've met a lot of cute girls on there, mostly Filipinas, and I've started communicating with a few.
The problem is that I keep running into the same problem that always ruined my chances with American girls:
I run out of stuff to talk about. And just like the American girls, they never fill in the conversational gaps. I have to do all the work. I have to be the one that leads the conversation, comes up with all the topics, cracks all the jokes, asks all the questions, etc. If anything, the Filipinas are even worse than US girls in this regard.
Whenever there's an awkward silence or gap in conversation, it's always MY responsibility to fill it, not hers. And I just don't have enough ideas to keep her interested.
These girls just give me nothing to work with conversationally and it gets stressful and difficult.
I've googled "conversation starters" and have used at least 20 ideas from there but it doesn't help much.

For example, I had a one hour webcam chat with a Filipina girl the other night. I brought a list of about 15 conversation ideas with me. I thought it would last me the whole hour but I had worked through the whole list in about 20 minutes, leaving 40 more minutes of mostly boring painful awkwardness. And this is one of the better personality girls!

I've come to the conclusion that I'm just a boring guy. I've never been able to be charming, exciting, or interesting to women. I suck at trying to tell good jokes or stories. And I can't seem to exhibit any attractive charisma. But I still need to get laid. (It's been 5+ long lonely years without now)
And it's very depressing to find that I'm not doing any better with these supposedly easier lower-tier women than I was with American girls.
What can I do???
If anyone has any ideas/suggestions I'd greatly appreciate it.

Look man, don't sweat it. If you're more of an intellectual type, you may find Filipinas and other SE Asians difficult to talk to for extended periods. Or perhaps you're just a quiet guy. There are plenty of girls in Asia who are quiet and/or like quiet guys. Sometimes, I see close couples go out and eat with very little conversation. That doesn't mean they are not happy. Don't give yourself pressure to have marathon talking sessions with these girls. You can just call them, ask how they and their families are, tell them you've been thinking about them, etc. and then say goodbye. If the girl likes you, she will let you know over the course of a few calls. If you sense something is wrong, you can ask her about it and you may get lucky enough for her to open up. Just hope its not a money related problem, lol.

Yea, this is true but I lump in all women. I think about SR-71 planes, mechanical engineering, race cars, human performance, history and other higher end subjects all the time, so when I get around women, it's hard to speak to them anymore then a few minutes because the conversation first turns on them, then they start talking about very childish things, or silly easily fixable problems that they just LOVE to wine and complain about.

The key with women, and talking to them is to let them talk about themselves, keep the subjects light, and crack jokes or tease them so you can make make her laugh and feel good. Sad to say, most women are little kids in the head (even the 40 year old women) and so it's pretty easy to even fake it that you like talking to them and that what they are saying is actually interesting.

[Asia Outback]

Hello-

With the words.."I've come to the conclusion that I'm just a boring guy. I've never been able to be charming, exciting, or interesting to women. I suck at trying to tell good jokes or stories. And I can't seem to exhibit any attractive charisma. But I still need to get laid. (It's been 5+ long lonely years without now)
And it's very depressing to find that I'm not doing any better with these supposedly easier lower-tier women than I was with American girls.
What can I do???
If anyone has any ideas/suggestions I'd greatly appreciate it."

You pretty well give yourself away. so...you believe all the bullshit you have been spoon-fed from an embryo as an American male?
When I come back to the US it is like coming back to an insane asylum. The p***y cartel has you thinking you should jump through hoops to get the worn out treasure they sit on. Don't project that on the rest of the world. If you are "charming, exciting, or interesting "
enough..you just might earn their favors?

Take some time to look at the world a bit..and dump all that crap you have rattling around in your head...

"And it's very depressing to find that I'm not doing any better with these supposedly easier lower-tier women than I was with American girls. What can I do???"

Lower tier women? WTF? You really need to get out more...get that passport busy...open your eyes..
and be just a little aware when you are dishing out insults...

If you came to Mindanao and referred to my wife as a "lower tier woman" you would deserve a good bitch-slapping.

dude..you really need to get your head out of the dark hole the American Golden p***y Club has put it in...

A couple of years overseas and everything would change...



Jake

[aozora13]

Thanks Asia Outback. I am slightly more in the same boat except that I am similar to Terence who is another poster here at Happier Abroad. I usually have a harder time talking to women too for a long periods until you meet them. Honestly, I would be happy if I was able to meet a nice girl who is able to look at me and like me because of me and not because of an external thing such as a car or because of another superficial thing.

Al, take your time. There are plenty of women in PI (believe me most men of all ethnic groups although mainly White foreigners should have no serious problems finding a decent women to possibly marry.

[YoucancallmeAl]

Lower tier women? WTF? You really need to get out more...get that passport busy...open your eyes..
and be just a little aware when you are dishing out insults...
If you came to Mindanao and referred to my wife as a "lower tier woman" you would deserve a good bitch-slapping.
dude..you really need to get your head out of the dark hole the American Golden p***y Club has put it in...
A couple of years overseas and everything would change...Jake

OK, first off, I'm not an idiot. I would never call a woman a "lower tier" woman to her face. Secondly, it's not meant as an insult. I only recently got the term from http://www.globaldatingrevolution.com/ which is recommended on this very site. The author refers to the "upper tiers" (wealthy countries where women have the dating advantage) and the "lower tiers" (poorer countries where men have the dating advantage). What terminology would you prefer? First world and third world? Wouldn't that be equally insulting?

Secondly, I have been overseas already. Iran, Germany, and Greece as a child. Then all over Europe (western and eastern) for 7 months in 2006. I discuss my failures in Europe in the Introduce Yourself forum.

[YoucancallmeAl]

Al, it may a good time for you to pick up a used copy of Carnegie's How in Win Friends and Influence People. You were on the right track about asking them open ended questions about themselves but this book goes into more indepth techniques.

I read that book when I was 15 and to be honest, I hated it. A church youth group leader saw how I was having difficulty fitting in with the other kids so he loaned me a copy. It was pretty useless. I think the problem with Carnegie's advice is that it may have worked beautifully in the 1920's and 30's when the book was current. But the strategies he recommends have become so routine and obvious over the decades that everyone in today's world can see right thru them. So that someone employing Carnegie's strategies today would appear like an insincere kiss-as suck-up and be scorned more than admired.
Yes, I know that Carnegie advices several times in the book to "be sincere" and "authentic" when you compliment people and/or ask them about themselves but even at 15 I could see how contradictory that was.
How can it be genuinely sincere if you're only saying/doing something because a book said it would win you friends???
Obviously it's NOT sincere if you're only doing it to influence people.

[Asia Outback]

You can call me al...

I'm sure you are no idiot- but if you are not catching fish, change the pond you are fishing in. It might be that European women do not sync with you at all...I know in my own case that is true. Even in Latin America, I did not really click with the girls there, and many were charming and quite pretty. By contrast, in Asia- especially East Asia, the "Orient" I seemed to have a really good connection with women there, both in rich countries and poor, so it is not just a matter of money. I found that many women in Asia really like me. I think I have the kind of soul that works there. THAT MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE!

I bet you have a lot to offer, but you are just feeling beaten down because you are not playing to the right audience!

With Filipinas- get to know them in general...study the Philippines a bit, including the geography...talk about where she lives...where she is going to school if she is in college, about her family (and it will be a big one!) what her motivations are...get to the point where you are having heart-felt conversations. Its a process of sorting...but their are lots of fish out there!

Don't undersell yourself. You have a lot to offer, so you can be selective.

Jake

[pete98146]

Al, it may a good time for you to pick up a used copy of Carnegie's How in Win Friends and Influence People. You were on the right track about asking them open ended questions about themselves but this book goes into more indepth techniques.

I read that book when I was 15 and to be honest, I hated it. A church youth group leader saw how I was having difficulty fitting in with the other kids so he loaned me a copy. It was pretty useless. I think the problem with Carnegie's advice is that it may have worked beautifully in the 1920's and 30's when the book was current. But the strategies he recommends have become so routine and obvious over the decades that everyone in today's world can see right thru them. So that someone employing Carnegie's strategies today would appear like an insincere kiss-as suck-up and be scorned more than admired.
Yes, I know that Carnegie advices several times in the book to "be sincere" and "authentic" when you compliment people and/or ask them about themselves but even at 15 I could see how contradictory that was.
How can it be genuinely sincere if you're only saying/doing something because a book said it would win you friends???
Obviously it's NOT sincere if you're only doing it to influence people.

The first chapter of the HTWFAIP is the best one. One phone company did a survey of the number one word used when people talk on the telephone. The easy winner was the word "I". People LOVE to talk about themselves. So when a person has a hard time striking up a good conversation, start asking open ended questions designed to probe the other person about their opinions, ideas etc.

You know that you are using a technique but the other person won't. You'll come across as really caring about the other person because you get them to open up and they'll be soon discussing their intimate thoughts. They'll feel closer to you and the girl will think that you really care. Give it a shot!

I still think that eventually you'll find a filipina that will talk your ear off. Let her do most of the talking and your job is to show that you care and love her. Afterall, that is what they are looking for. A filipina can get a good conversation all day long in Phils. They are extremely talkative people....extremely.

BTW, my filipina wife is now looking over my shoulder agreeing with what I am saying.