I had a pretty good time over the holidays, but I didn’t follow too much advice to make it happen.

I was just myself. I did many things that were less than ideal. I wore clothes that could have fit better. Sometimes I texted back immediately, other times I didn’t check my phone for hours. We got lost. We didn’t have a place to have sex in besides my car, which had a lot of other stuff in it and wasn’t totally clean. But we ended up having sex in it on three different nights. I met her from cold approach in a bar, but besides doing that, I didn’t really use any dating advice.

I think you want to spend your time focusing on the important things. Focus on having fun, and determining if you actually like the girl. Focusing on little details like when or what to text is an unnecessary mental burden. You want your mind free to come up with fun things to say and interesting stories to tell.

But what about people who have no idea what to do? When you don’t have any success with women, you have a lot of anxiety. Anxiety fills your mind up and makes it hard to have fun. Reading about tips like how to plan a date help alleviate some anxiety. They’re basically a placebo. You believe you know exactly what to do, so you don’t feel as anxious, so you come across as less needy and more attractive. It’s not the words or tactics, it’s how you feel. If you’re confident in who you are and what you like to do, almost anything you say will be fine. We should be focusing more on what is happening emotionally rather than the logical, minute details that don’t even matter if you get the emotional stuff right.