Is the Library a Good Place to Meet Women?

Sometimes. The library is full of smart, curious women who are pleasant to meet. But its quiet floors are a bad place to start a conversation, because everyone nearby can hear it and she is usually trying to concentrate. The library works in its social corners, like the entrance, the cafe, the new books shelf and the events room. Talk to her there, keep it soft and short, and let her get back to her reading if she wants to.

A library is calm, free and full of people who like reading and learning. Women go there to study, work, borrow books or just get out of the house for a few hours. Many go alone.

Shared interest is built in. If you meet a woman browsing the history shelves, you already know one thing she cares about. The library says something about you as well: you are a man who reads, which plenty of women like.

And most libraries are ordinary public places, so your being there needs no explanation.

Most library visitors are trying to concentrate. A woman with a laptop, notes and headphones in a study area has a deadline, and an interruption costs her real work.

The silence is the other problem. Every word reaches the people around you, and anything that sounds like a pickup is embarrassing for her in front of strangers she may see again tomorrow. a dating coach puts it this way: if she is studying in a quiet library surrounded by people, "an over-the-top approach that makes everybody stare is a terrible way to start the conversation."

So never approach a woman who is plainly studying at a desk. That is the clearest rule the library has.

The library has places where talking is fine.

• The entrance and lobby, where people come and go and conversations happen anyway.
• The cafe, if there is one, which works like any other coffee shop.
• The shelves and the new arrivals display, where people browse slowly and a brief comment about a book is natural.
• Talks, readings, book clubs and workshops, which are social by design.
• The steps outside, where people take a break or make a phone call.

A woman browsing the shelves is in a very different state from one writing a dissertation. She is curious, moving slowly and open to a short word.

Keep your voice low and your opener simple. A comment about the book she just picked up works: "I've been meaning to read that. Is it any good?" If she answers warmly and asks you something back, step out of the reading area to keep talking, by a window or in the lobby, or suggest a coffee downstairs.

My very first approach happened in a library, when he was a high school junior. He walked up to a girl, told her plainly that she was gorgeous and asked whether she might want to go on a date. She thanked him kindly and said she had a boyfriend, and he was thrilled she had not treated him like a creep. Being direct can work in a library too, as long as it is soft and you take her answer well.

Do not hover, do not sit down at her table uninvited, and do not leave notes in her books. If she glances at you and goes back to her screen, that is a no. Libraries are local, and you will probably see her again, so make sure the story she tells about you is a nice one.

College libraries come with their own question: whether you belong there. coach recommends campuses as a great place to meet women for men roughly eighteen to twenty-five. Up to about thirty also works where there is a graduate school, because at that age being on campus is plausible. A man in his fifties wandering through a student library will have a hard time explaining himself.

A quiet man who reads, likes the setting and is happy to be patient will enjoy the library and meet the occasional woman there. A man who wants many conversations in one afternoon will not get them in a building designed for silence.

In a library, you have one moment and almost no volume to work with, so the first sentence has to come out sounding natural.

A Cold Approach Bootcamp trains that moment in person, in Miami and New York, in daygame settings like streets and cafes and night game settings like bars and lounges. A coach works with you on every approach and gives feedback after every set. Group is three consecutive days at three students per coach, and Private is 1-on-1 for one, two or three days. Each training day is two four-hour blocks in the field, the program specializes in approach anxiety, and you leave with a short written practice plan.