Run Game Practice

How to be yourself around girls (when nerves take over)

6 min read

"Just be yourself" is advice everyone gives and nobody explains. It's also hard to use when your heart is pounding and the version of you that shows up feels stiff, quiet or strangely loud. This post breaks the phrase into things you can do, and is fair about what it can't do.

What it means

Being yourself in conversation comes down to a few concrete things:

What it doesn't mean: saying every thought out loud, skipping effort, or using "this is just me" to excuse being rude. It also doesn't mean you can't improve. Learning to ask better questions or speak more clearly is skill-building, and you're still the one doing it.

Some self-presentation is normal

Sociologist Erving Goffman's 1956 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (US edition 1959) described ordinary social life as a kind of performance. People manage how they look and act depending on the setting. In his terms, there's a "front stage" where you present yourself to others and a "back stage" where you relax. That framework is an academic way to describe something familiar. You dress up for a date, you're a bit more polite than you'd be at home, you tell the funny version of a story.

None of that is fake. A line worth watching is where the picture you're giving stops matching reality in ways that matter to her, such as an invented job, lifestyle or set of opinions. One rule of thumb: would you be comfortable with her seeing the full picture by the third date?

Why the performance backfires when you're nervous

When you're running a script, part of your attention is on the script. You're monitoring how you're coming across, planning the next line, and watching for her reaction. That leaves less attention for her. That's a common explanation for why scripted conversations can feel flat, though it's a plausible account more than a measured result. When the monitoring turns into a loop you can't switch off, that's overthinking, and how to stop overthinking is a separate skill from being natural.

Two pieces of research are relevant, though neither is about dating specifically.

The spotlight effect. In a study by Gilovich, Medvec and Savitsky (2000), student volunteers wore a T-shirt bearing Barry Manilow's likeness and briefly interacted with other students. Afterward they guessed about half the others had noticed it. Fewer than a quarter had, according to a Cornell alumni magazine account of the work, which doesn't give the sample size. The takeaway is that you're probably being watched less closely than it feels.

The liking gap. Boothby, Cooney, Sandstrom and Clark published a set of studies in Psychological Science (2018). They found that after conversations, people consistently underestimated how much their partner liked them. The effect appeared with strangers in a lab, with first-year students who lived in the same dorm (it lasted for months), and with members of the public at a workshop. A commentary in Scientific American, which describes the work, reports that shy people noticed the gap more often. The measures were self-reported liking and enjoyment, not romantic interest. But it does suggest your read on how you came across might be harsher than the other person's.

What a speed-dating study shows

A McGill University team led by Lauren Gazzard Kerr and Lauren Human studied 372 people at speed-dating events in Montreal in 2017 and 2018, producing 4,723 pairings of three-minute dates (Journal of Research in Personality, 2020). On average, people judged each other's personalities with relatively low accuracy (the study is reported here through a Neuroscience News summary, and the paper is closed access). People who reported higher well-being, self-esteem and life satisfaction were easier to read.

That's a correlation, and the researchers consider both directions plausible: feeling better may make people more open, or being seen more accurately may help them feel better. More authentic self-presentation is one possible explanation, but the study didn't test it. It also didn't measure whether being yourself leads to more dates. So the honest summary is that there's interest in the question and no firm answer.

Practice dropping the performance

Pick one of these for a week.

  1. The honest answer drill. When someone asks "What do you do on weekends?", give a real detail. "I've been trying to learn to climb, mostly I fall a lot" works better than "Just chilling."
  2. One opinion a conversation. Mention something you like or don't, and why, in a sentence. "I'm bad at brunch. Give me a long walk instead."
  3. Name the nerves once, lightly. "I'm a little nervous, ignore the weird pauses" can ease the pressure. It doesn't work for everyone, and one mention is plenty. A slow minute of calming your body with breathing and visualization first can make it easier to say lightly.
  4. Drop one borrowed line. If you use a canned opener, replace it with a comment about the room, the weather or what she's holding.
  5. Ask the question you actually want answered, not the one you've been told to ask.

A fair note on scripts

Some dating instruction teaches prepared lines, routines or a persona. Other instruction stresses being natural. People report results from both, and there's no clean research comparing the two. Some people use a script as scaffolding while they're learning and drop it as they get comfortable. If a prepared opener helps you start, that's a choice you can make. The part that tends to matter is what happens after the first sentence, which is where you're talking as yourself. See from pickup lines to authenticity and inner game vs outer game for how that debate has developed.

What to do next

  1. Write three real opinions (food, music, a town, a show) with one reason each. Say one of them aloud this week.
  2. Do the honest answer drill for a week, with friends and coworkers, not just dates.
  3. Delete one canned line from your repertoire and replace it with something specific to the situation.
  4. Afterward, rate two things 1 to 5: how much you felt like yourself, and how it went. Over a few weeks, see whether the numbers move together. It's a small private dataset, so don't over-read it.
  5. Pick one thing to improve (listening, volume, eye contact) and practice it without turning it into a character.
  6. If nerves are intense, read first date nerves and nervous around a girl you like. If anxiety is taking over your life, a professional can help.

Run Game lets you add an optional note when you log an approach. A line like "told her the real reason I was here" is a simple way to notice when you were yourself, next to the outcome. For the longer game, building real confidence is the base this all rests on.

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