What you can learn from this is where you lacked confidence.

You were afraid of escalating on her because you did not know how your friends would react. What you need to do is escalate on more girls in front of your friends. Once you have those reference experiences, you will have a good idea of the outcome. Then you will be confident and you won't make this mistake again.

I know exactly where you're coming from. I was out skiing this winter with my friends. One friend brought a girl skiing. My friend mentioned that he wasn't dating her, but he was interested in seeing where it went.

The first half of the day, she was giving me clear IOIs but I held myself back because my friend said he liked her. For the second half of the day, she took my apprehensiveness as an indicator of disinterest and gave up the pursuit. What sucks about the situation is that my friend did not make a single move on her that day.

However, this was six months ago. That was when I just found out about seduction. Back then I was all, "Put my hands on her? What if she thinks I'm creepy???"

Six months later, I'm very comfortable putting my hands on anyone. I will make moves on the girls my friends are interested in because I know that I can recover. I know that I can work through a misunderstanding. I know that I can repair whatever damage is caused if my friend takes any offense. I know that a negative reaction is highly unlikely and most of the time a recovery consists of, "Sorry man! No problem."

What's interesting to me, is that if I made a move on that ski trip and my friend confronted me, I would have probably been able to recover. But because I did not have the reference experience, I didn't know that I could. I didn't have the confidence and I didn't get the girl.