Look, the internet is full of these lists. “Give her poetry.” “Talk about her deep feelings.” “Be mysterious.” I tried all that crap. I wasted six weeks of my life on five steps that basically amounted to reading tea leaves and wearing a mood ring. It was a complete cluster, and I know exactly why those guides are garbage.
But let me tell you why I stuck with it, and how I actually cracked the code, because it wasn’t about the stars—it was about pure desperation and my rent money.
See, I met ‘The One’ (yeah, she was a Pisces) right after I blew up my last relationship and moved out of a shared apartment. I was sleeping on an air mattress in my buddy Mike’s spare room, and my old ’98 sedan, bless its heart, finally decided to become a permanent, expensive decoration on Mike’s driveway. I felt like a loser. Everything was falling apart.
This wasn’t some casual dating game; I needed a win, a distraction, a proof that I could still do something right in my life. She was the bartender at the local dive I went to drown my sorrows—cheap beer, dim lighting. I saw those dreamy eyes, and I thought, “Right, I’m going to follow the damn script, maybe it’ll fix the rest of my life.”
The Failed Practice: Following the Five Dumb Steps
I opened up the first guide I found. It listed the following conventional wisdom for approaching a Pisces woman:
- Step 1: Be Her Soulmate.
- Step 2: Use Romantic Gestures.
- Step 3: Be Mysterious.
- Step 4: Talk About Art/Music.
- Step 5: Give Her Space.
I jumped straight into Step 4. Art and Music. I read a Wikipedia entry on Impressionism for thirty minutes, figuring a “dreamer” would be into it. I brought it up the next night. I said something like, “The ephemeral quality of Monet’s light really speaks to the subconscious.” She just stared at me, wiping down a sticky counter. I tried to talk about obscure jazz that I didn’t even like. She pointed out the bar’s sound system was playing Nickelback and asked me if I wanted another beer. I felt like a pretentious idiot. Strike one.
Next, I tried Step 3: Mysterious. I decided to pull back. I stopped texting back for a whole day after a short conversation. She didn’t text me at all. I panicked after twelve hours of silence and double-texted her, asking if she was okay and if I said something wrong. She replied with a text that was just, “Yeah, just busy.” I looked desperate and completely failed to be mysterious. Strike two.
Then I went big on Step 2: Romantic Gestures. I went to the mall and bought her one of those cheap, cheesy “dream catcher” necklaces because the internet said Pisces were “dreamers.” I gave it to her at the bar, making a big deal out of it. She thanked me politely, immediately put it in the drawer under the cash register, and started chatting with the next customer about their order. My grand romantic gesture disappeared instantly. Strike three.
The whole thing was a disaster. I was acting like a character from a bad movie. I went home and almost gave up. I was sitting there, agonizing over another text message draft that sounded like it was written by a hippie poet, when Mike, my roommate, just snapped me back to reality.
“Dude,” he said, watching me type, “she’s a human being who slings beer for a living. You’re trying to win a chess game with flowers and Wikipedia facts. Just be normal.”
The Real Practice: Stripping Away the Script
That hit me hard. I realized the five steps were a smokescreen. The only thing I hadn’t genuinely tried was being myself. And being myself at the time was messy, broke, and honest. The next night, I walked in and skipped the script entirely. I didn’t try to be a soulmate or romantic. I told her the truth. I confessed my car was dead, that I was sleeping on an air mattress, and that I was completely out of ideas for fixing the engine on a zero budget.
I didn’t ask her out. I just asked her for life advice on getting my car running again. I involved her in my real, boring, broke life.
And you know what happened? Her face lit up. She leaned in across the bar, suddenly energized. She started telling me about her cousin, who was a backyard mechanic. She stopped being a “dreamy Pisces” and started being a person who felt useful and real. We talked for forty minutes about engine fluids, credit card debt, and tow truck prices, not art or poetry.
The Takeaway: My Real 5 Steps That Worked
So, here’s the real five-step program, the one I actually lived through, and the one that actually resulted in a dinner date a week later:
- Step 1 (The Real One): Stop following stupid internet guides. They make you look like a robot.
- Step 2 (The Real One): Stop hiding your life. If you are broke, tired, or messy, admit it honestly.
- Step 3 (The Real One): Ask for help or advice on a mundane, real-world problem. Give her a problem to solve. She wants to be useful, not admired from afar.
- Step 4 (The Real One): Use normal words. Keep the Impressionism and the fancy words to yourself.
- Step 5 (The Real One): Just show up and be the guy sleeping on an air mattress. That’s the real mystery, the vulnerability.
We dated for three months, and it all started when I stopped trying to approach a “Pisces woman” and started simply talking to a bartender with a mechanic cousin. Trust me. Skip the horoscope and start talking about busted transmissions. It’s the only method that ever got me a date.
