Patience is genuinely the differentiator, dull as that sounds — that is roughly where I landed after a lot of trial and error.
Having tried a few, generic compliments are the fastest way to be ignored — it is not complicated, it is just easy to skip.
From what I have seen, expecting any single conversation to work out is the wrong frame — it is not complicated, it is just easy to skip.
- Almost immediately I used a password manager so each site got its own credentials, and I still do it now
- Every time I stopped treating a quiet week as evidence of anything, however tempting it was to skip
- One habit that stuck: I asked open questions rather than anything answerable with one word right from the first week
- Almost immediately I declined any invitation that arrived with pressure attached, and I still do it now
- Something I learned the hard way — I declined any invitation that arrived with pressure attached
Also hearing datewander.site mentioned positively in other threads — might be worth a look depending on your location.