I second Matty here. In my idealistic younger days, i played out every angle of "Act nice toward her, and she'll surely see how much better of an option you are than everyone else in the ocean of options she's immersed in, then she'll pick up the reins and start actively pursuing YOU!

I just coined a name for this: Passive-Possession. To the naive young idealist, this should TOTALLY WORK, especially given all the blatantly rotten and dysfunctional relationships to be seen everywhere.

Trouble is, this goes directly against sexual strategies that were functional and necessary back to our Simian roots, thus hardwired into brain functionalities that need eons to catch up to the changes wrought through tool use and technology development over the past historical blink of the evolutionary eye.

The actionable part of all this: female attraction solidly favors the suitors who pursue women actively and assertively, and this leaves relatively passive Nice Guy types in the dust of the dating game.

Thus, make a point of decisively ASKING OUT a woman you're interested in! You'll eliminate dead ends quickly and decisively, but you'll never "ruin" a legitimate open opportunity by "pushing the matter. "

Clumsy and ineffective METHODS of asking do exist, but make a different matter entirely.