[The Quiet Hours Chronicle](/blog/series-the-quiet-hours-chronicle.html) · Part IV of VI
Category: Human Connection · Personal Essay
By Morgan Rivers, Staff Essayist
After Part III, one question dominated my inbox: "How do you get a girlfriend?"
I will answer — after dismantling the version of the question that ruined my early twenties: the one that treats another person as an unlock screen and loneliness as a bug to hack.
I did not find a girlfriend by trying to get a girlfriend. I arrived by becoming someone who could sustain connection — and meeting the right person at the right hour. Those are different labours.
I. The performance era
I rehearsed openers before mirrors. I practised "casual" lines for cafés, parties, applications — anywhere a woman might become a yes.
It succeeded once, awkwardly. She sensed the script. One date, interview-like. She was kind when she did not write again.
I blamed the algorithm. In truth I was hiring for a role called Girlfriend instead of meeting a person.
II. The unromantic pivot
The pivot was dull. I mended my evenings (Part II). I carried sadness without drowning (Part III). I held ordinary conversations without hidden purpose — strangers about television, colleagues about weekends.
I grew easier to speak with because I ceased auditioning.
III. Where I met her
Not on a forum. At a friend's game night — six people, a guest I had not met. We discussed a podcast, not romance.
I did not "close." I suggested coffee with two others present — low pressure. She agreed because the invitation did not feel like a trap.
Months later she said what she had noticed: I listened; I did not perform coolness. Unremarkable virtues. Remarkably rare.
IV. What nearly undid it
Jealousy. Reassurance-seeking. Reading her replies like markets because loneliness had taught me to fear abandonment.
Relationships fail not only from wrong meetings but from old loneliness habits imported into love.
Three truths beneath the story.
One: Attraction follows familiarity, respect, and timing. Random chat practises speech; most love still wants repeated context.
Two: A partner is not loneliness medicine. If you need completion, need shows itself as pressure. Finish enough of Parts I–III that love is additive, not oxygen.
Three: Rejection is information, not verdict. Each refusal I survived made the next risk smaller.
Two actions for thirty days.
Interest without outcome — speak without hunting. Train presence.
One recurring room — club, class, mutual friends — where you are the same person twice.
Part V holds the mirror question: how to get a boyfriend — same ethics, different pressures.
Continues in Part V — Finding a Boyfriend Without Losing Yourself · Previous: Part III
Before that game night I rebuilt conversation in low-stakes text — practice without a dating profile. Browser chat and safety basics were enough for that season.
— Morgan Rivers
