By Bernardo Filipe / December 23, 2025
A couple of hours ago, I finally mustered up the courage to do my first cold approach on the street, after months of thinking about doing it. After all, I wrote about wanting to cold approach random girls on the street on my I Will Never See Her Again post, back in early July, and we’re already nearing the year 2026. It took me, therefore, several months to finally do it, if not in fact years, really, since I first heard about the concept of “cold approach” back in 2013, and it always stayed somewhat on my mind since that time. But back then I still had pretty healthy social circles, so I could meet new girls while socializing with friends in bars, university parties, and so on. Last July, though, I was certain that I had to start cold approaching, not merely thinking about it, so we can agree that it took me some months to get over the fabled approach anxiety.
And I gotta tell you, it went very well! She responded very positively to my approach and nearly melted in front of me. I was sitting in a kiosk and noticed her at a table next to me. I instantly thought she was cute, and I decided I was going to chat with her a bit. As soon as I finished my coffee, I got up, dropped my cup on the counter, as I always do, turned my back and faced again the tables and went to her specific table. “Excuse me”, I said. “How are you?”. She replied that she was fine and then I said, “You are very pretty”. She instantly smiled, almost in disbelief, and then I asked her name and we chatted a little bit. I was about to ask her out for a future coffee date, but then she told me she had a boyfriend. I said, “Okay. It’s better we don’t go drink a coffee together, then”, and smiled. A second or two later, I told her to have a good evening, wished her happy holidays, and left. It wasn’t therefore a resounding success, but it FELT like one, especially for a guy who had been finding excuses not to do this kind of stuff for MONTHS. Her reaction was so positive that the idea of me ever feeling approach anxiety in the past seems comical. And now I can’t wait for my next approach!
I have been getting contacts from girls these past months, but always in a social setting, so I am indeed getting more proactive about dating (I’m sure my testosterone getting fixed helps, too…), but haven’t had any real success, and it only happened a handful of times, anyway. If I start cold approaching regularly, I should be able to get more prospects faster.
Indeed, there’s this girl I asked out last week that I want to write about. I was only able to feel comfortable enough to ask her out after I entered the shop she worked at six or seven times and after I chatted with her those six or seven times. Right on our first interaction I complimented her hair and asked her name, and she became visibly happy. She seemed very happy to see me every time I went there the following days and was interested enough to ask me questions about myself. So this explains why I felt comfortable asking her out. She agreed to go on a coffee date with me, we exchanged contacts, and then we started texting each other. Everything was going great, until… the topic changed to university degrees and studies, and she found out I have no bachelor’s degree and indeed dropped out of an engineering degree after only completing the first year of studies. After I told her that piece of info about me, she asked me what my job was, to which I replied, “I invest in the stock market”. But it was already too late. She didn’t even bother reading my reply and ghosted me. I mean, I get it, she knows practically nothing about me, and stuff like bachelor’s degrees are good indicators of the intelligence, determination, and ambition of a person, not to mention the incredible status such degrees give to a person in my country, so I understand perfectly fine her sudden 180. After all, she has no idea that I wrote a 500-page philosophical book (in my opinion, the best philosophical book ever written in my country, by any of my countrymen, in the entire history of the country) and that I am therefore intellectual, well-read, focused and determined. The book is a double-edged sword, though, because some of my book’s entries can seem too radical for the average person. Which is why I don’t talk about it too soon.
That is all to say that her behaviour, i.e. the fact that she ghosted me for not having a university degree, gave me the final motivation I needed to go back to university, step on campus, go back to class and pay attention this time. After all, back in early July, around the day I published the post I mentioned above in the first paragraph, I also posted my The Limits of My Abilities entry. I was already seriously thinking about going back to university and getting a goddamn degree back in July, and this girl, it turns out, was the final motivation I needed to make the decision.
I was leaning more towards an engineering degree because I have some STEM knowledge already (stuff like calculus, linear algebra, physics, etc.), and I do want to challenge myself. But I changed universities and entered a humanities degree back in 2022, which means that the bureaucratic process of returning to university will be simpler if I just stick to this humanities university. The degree I enrolled in was European Studies, by the way. Unfortunately, I got some health problems right at the start of the first semester and had to spend three months in bed (that’s how I got belly fat for the first time in my life, incidentally). My neurologist wanted me to do a lumbar puncture, and I got insane migraines as a side effect. I literally could not stand on my feet, walk, or sit for more than twenty minutes at a time, and the migraines only stopped when I was lying in bed. All of this means that my first semester went to waste. On top of that, there were two or three courses on that degree that especially annoyed me, the most annoying of all being the law course. The Portuguese used in Portuguese law is atrocious! It’s as though it’s written so the fewest people possible can decipher it. So, I decided to “drop out” again, and forgot about getting a degree for a few more years. Thanks to this decision, I did get my philosophical book massively expanded and complexified, so it all turned out for the best.
But me not having a university degree never really left my mind. I come from an environment where everyone has advanced degrees. My mother had a PhD and was a renowned academic and university professor. My father has a master’s degree and was also at some point a university teacher. My brother has a master’s degree, too. My uncles have university degrees. Most of my cousins, too. I am the black sheep of the family that spent a decade reading philosophy books in his room and didn’t care about university degrees at all. But most people do care about degrees, and now that I’m actively trying to get a nice girlfriend, it’s time I do my family some justice and go get a degree.
Since I am already registered in the faculty of that humanities university, and since I looked up their available degrees and found an amazing one, the courses of which all seem interesting, mixing both exact sciences courses and humanities courses, I will try to enroll there. The degree has a very general curriculum, which is not something that I am against (philosophers are generalists, ultimately). When the time for me to specialize and to get a master’s degree comes, I’ll see what I want to do, but let’s take one step at a time.
And that’s it for this little update on my love and dating life (and future goals). I finally started playing this Super Daygame Turbo: Champion Edition and not only is it indeed fun, but it’s also already motivating me to “improve” myself and test the limits of my abilities. If I play this right and consistently, I should have a cool girlfriend in the next months and who knows, eventually children, and so on.
The Stillest 