The Freeze-Up: "It's the little things that matter."

Hey, Seddit, I've noticed I have a little problem and I suspect a few others have the same issue:

I freeze up, forget to do what I know how to do, and thus the opportunity for closing of any sort never even comes up.

I've been in bit of a dry spell of late. We're coming up on six months since I was last able to do a little "owch owch, you're on my hair" with a lady, and it's led me to come to a few realizations about myself, some positive, some negative. First off, I've come to grips that I'm at that difficult level of "good looking." In other words, I'm good looking enough that if I open a girl, she won't mind, but I'm not good looking enough that a girl will open me. What this means is I have to approach women, or I'm going to not live a very happy life.

I've also realized that I really want physically attractive women in my life. It's part of what I need in order to be happy in other parts of my life. If I'm not getting attention regularly from a girl that I could call beautiful, it distracts me in my professional career, it colors my social interactions, it's just Pop-eye's spinach. Call it shallow, call it immature, but another realization I've come to is just to admit what I want to myself and be damned with the consequences. Life is far too short to keep compromising what I want, and I'm not getting any younger.

Another realization, and this is the kicker, is intellectually, I know much of the theory behind attraction and how it works. I know how the importance of kino, push/pull, "negging," psychological questions that lead the mind to rapport, sexualizing the conversation, all that stuff. I've read bunches upon this, found some things that apply to my personality, others that don't.

But even though I know all these things, I find that when I get into conversation with an attractive girl, I simply won't remember to do any of those things.

How This Usually Plays Out

I approach a target, I use a spontaneous, often observational, opener and start the conversation. The first five seconds she keeps the shields up, but I ignore it, carrying on the conversation whichever direction she indicates, she loosens up. After a couple minutes, the conversation develops a natural flow, she seems intrigued, she starts asking me things about myself, sometimes shit tests, sometimes not, I play cocky/funny. Things go well for a half hour. And then ... they ... just ... peter ... out.

Now, I have suspicions for why this happens. I've noticed it's far more common when I haven't broken the touch barrier doing the usual tricks: touching her arm or elbow when I make a joke, going for the playful high five, escalating from there.

In addition, I suspect that because I'm sticking to "friendly banter" and not introducing a sexual undertone to the conversation, that it makes me come across as incongruently confident in the approach, but afraid to make any sort of assertive move in the transition.

As such, I think that women either notice that I don't have the wherewithal to be direct, or they're just under the impression that I'm being friendly and I'm not interesting in anything more with them.

Now that's infuriating, knowing what you're doing wrong, but still doing it anyways because they're bad habits you fell into. I know that if I just applied what I know, I could do some damage out there on the scene, and start attracting the kind of women I want.

So here's where I could use some help, Seddit:

*How do you simply remember to do the little things (kino, introducing a sexual tone) and not fall into the trap of being "friendly?"

*Do you know of any relevant material that would help me over this hump?

*For the women: What's your thought process when you see a guy do this?

*Am I just overthinking this as I am wont to do?

Thanks for the input.

TLDR: I freeze up, I don't put into practice the things I've studied and internalized, and I don't close effectively as a result. How can I fix this?