Some months after my wife died, I was scrolling through YouTube late at night.
A video appeared.
This guy was talking about how to meet women in the modern world.
He said there was an honest way to do it. I wondered what the dishonest way looked like.
Anyway.
His idea was simple. Almost too simple.
Dating apps don’t give you the full picture. Photos can be old. Personalities disappear through text. Everything becomes an algorithm.
His suggestion was something ancient.
You simply walk up to someone you find attractive and start a conversation.
For me that wasn’t revolutionary. That’s how I met three women I had real relationships with.
One at work. Two in bars.
But what he was showing was different.
He was approaching women during the day.
On the street.
During lunch breaks.
Between ordinary moments.
At the time I was navigating grief — and I don’t think that journey ever really ends.
When you lose someone you love, life doesn’t stop. The world continues exactly as it did before. People go to work. They laugh. They complain about small things.
And you are somewhere in the middle of it, trying to understand what life is supposed to look like again.
Sometimes I wish life came with an instruction manual. Of course we’d ignore most of it.
But there are a few chapters we would eventually look for. Grief would probably be one of them.
So eventually I flew to Sydney to meet him.
He looked exactly like the guy in the video. Which was oddly reassuring.
Chinos.
RM Williams boots.
Button-down shirt.
Like the kind of man who had just walked out of an office. Nothing flashy.
We sat on a bench in a park. People walked around us. He didn’t lower his voice.
He explained everything openly.
This is how you approach women.
This is what you don’t do.
The goal isn’t to scare them. The goal isn’t to surprise them. The goal is to make your presence known — intentionally.
That was the first lesson.
Not worrying about what strangers around you might think.
Our first session lasted three hours.
We walked through Sydney CBD and I approached women — different ages, different styles — starting conversations.
It was raining. The end of the workday.
Probably the worst time imaginable to stop strangers on the street.
They talked.
One woman was on the phone in the middle of a business meeting.
When I approached her, she told the person on the line she had to hang up because something important had come up.
She simply wanted to talk to me.
That surprised me. In the best way.
These days men are often told women just want to be left alone. So most men leave them alone.
Most of that narrative lives in our heads.
And it’s far louder there than it ever is in real life.
After the first day we met three more times.
Dozens of conversations. A lot of rejection. But also moments that stayed with me.
One of them happened in Bondi.
She had dark hair, sun on her skin, and deep blue eyes that made the Blue Mountains she came from feel small.
The kind of presence that makes you look twice without knowing why.
She told me a little about her life — a story I’ll tell another time.
What stayed with me was this.
She is a free spirit.
I doubt you meet people like that through an algorithm.
Later I found myself replaying those conversations in my head.
They only existed because of one decision.
I walked up. And I spoke.
There was no secret technique. No clever line.
Just intent.
Then I realised it.
I wasn’t really learning how to approach women.
I was learning how to step back into life again.
To regain authorship.
And sometimes when you do that
life says hello back.