All posts by Steven Zawila

How bad dating advice destroyed my relationships

Hey, you might know me as Steve from Quietly Romantic but in my other life I’m also a private equity accountant. To qualify for this role, I had to:

  • Get my bachelor’s degree in accounting
  • Get a master’s degree in accounting
  • Take several MBA courses
  • Learn how to use an abacus

(okay, one of those is a lie)

One piece of advice they hammered into us in business school that—spoiler alert—turned out to be completely false was that you need to bring your business cards with you everywhere you go.

You’re at a networking event? Bring your business cards and hand them out to everyone. Are you in the elevator or on the airplane next to a VIP? I hope you brought your business cards!! Carry them everywhere and hand them out to everyone. Make it rain!

Since I was just getting started in my career and didn’t know any better – that’s exactly what I did. I printed out a stack of business cards and brought them everywhere. I got them laminated. I treated them like they were sacred and protected them like they were my passport.

What stupid advice that turned out to be!! I’m still salty about that years after the fact.

Can you think of another device you can use to record a business contact’s info? What could we use instead of a business card? It might be in your pocket. You might even be reading this blog post on it right now!

Smartphones — better than business cards and so easy a baby could use them!

In hindsight, that’s dumb advice. That’s the thing about bad advice though – it’s hard to tell which advice is good and which is bad without already knowing what the good advice looks like.

And, unfortunately, the world of dating advice is overflowing with bad advice.

Here’s how I recommend sorting through it:

Continue reading How bad dating advice destroyed my relationships

Become confident by living a meaningful life

I’ve been reading a lot of self-books these days and it seems like many of them have a similar exercise–

(GOOD self-help books, I mean. Not those weird ones from other dating coaches with half-naked women on the cover, but reputable books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey or The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman).

Books like these ask you to imagine your own funeral and write a eulogy for yourself. What do you want people to say about you when they talk about you? What legacy would you like to leave behind when you’re no longer here?

I’m gonna be honest and say that I’ve been resisting doing this exercise whenever I read it. Yeah, I know I should, but…

…holy cow, what a depressing thing to think about…

After reading this one, two, three times though, I started to get curious. Maybe it was worth thinking about it if several different authors were independently saying the same thing.

Turns out, it highlights an important part of being confident around women.

One of the best ways to become confident is to live a meaningful life. And thinking about what you’d like people to say about you when you’re not around is a great way to do just that.

Maybe it’s a bit much to ask you to imagine your own funeral. I mean, I still haven’t done that exercise myself. Who am I to tell you to do it?

Another great way to start moving toward a meaningful life is to choose what I call your “Awesome Alternative”, and it goes like this—

Continue reading Become confident by living a meaningful life

The science behind feeling confident

Have you ever thought about how dangerous the modern world is?

You’re probably reading this email on your computer or phone right now. You would have had to plug in whatever device you’re reading this email on. If your fingers were just 1 or 2 centimeters off the mark, you could have fried yourself!

This could have killed you, ya know!

What an incredibly dangerous task! I’m sure you didn’t even think twice about pulling it off. That’s because you’ve already demonstrated to the part of your brain which controls confidence that you are capable of performing such a task.

The science behind where confidence comes from

That part of your brain is called the amygdala and it’s responsible for regulating your body’s emotional responses. One of those responses is fear and confidence. Its task is to keep you alive by making you feel unconfident around situations it believes you are not equipped to handle.

Continue reading The science behind feeling confident

The ABC’s of being confident

Lately I’ve been playing a lot of classic games using the NSO feature on the Nintendo Switch – you know, those old side-scrollers from the 80’s and 90’s.

When you play them on modern hardware, there’s often some Quality-of-Life improvements vs playing them on their original systems. For example, you can use ‘save states’ to reload at any time or even hold the trigger buttons together to rewind time on some games.

You can rewind time by holding the triggers like this…wait, why am I still playing Switch 1? Get the newest one you dinosaur!

I try not to use those features when I play because I’m trying to capture the feeling of playing those games from my childhood – and that includes the tension of not screwing up at the end of a level.

Think about that. Why would I feel nervous at the end of a level?

It’s simple: if I screw up, I got to restart the whole level again!

This perfectly highlights where confidence comes from, and what factors can increase or decrease how confident we feel.

The ABC Confidence Principle

Being confident involves three factors. This is what I call the “ABC Confidence Principle”, and it goes like this:

[Ability + Belief + Curiosity = Confidence]

Generally speaking, how confident we are at any given task is a combination of 1) Our Ability to do the task, 2) Our Belief that we can pull it off successfully, and 3) Having a positive curiosity about your successes/failures (there are a couple of exceptions, but we’ll cover that later). Being confident around women involves both knowing how to talk to her, and developing a positive Belief in our Ability to do so.

Let’s start by talking about Ability.

Continue reading The ABC’s of being confident

Let’s kick off 2026 with confidence!!

Welcome to 2026! Happy New Year!!

New year, new you huh. Have you made any New Year’s resolutions?

(More importantly, are you keeping them?)

Whatever you’re looking to accomplish in the new year – it all starts with being confident.

One of the best mindsets around confidence comes from a line you’re probably heard before if you watch any number of rom-coms:

“I just want you to be happy”

What does that line mean? Take a second and think about it.

Continue reading Let’s kick off 2026 with confidence!!

How to text her – including scripts and examples

Let’s talk about one of the scariest things around dating: how to text a woman you’re interested in.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worried that I’m texting her too little and she’s going to forget about me, or I’m texting her too often and she’s going to think I’m clingy, or even that I’m texting her something that gets taken the wrong way and now she’s super offended at an innocent comment I made.

And the worst of all is when you text her and she doesn’t respond…for…several hours. When that happens, all I can think about is basically,

  • “Did she see my text? Maybe she didn’t see it yet.”
  • “Is she busy? What is she doing?”
  • “Why hasn’t she responded yet? OMG she probably hates me.”

Continue reading How to text her – including scripts and examples

How to tell if she’s flirting or just being friendly

It’s been a while since my last newsletter, huh? At Quietly Romantic headquarters, there’s a tradition where if I go too long without writing anything new then I get to share an embarrassing story.

This one tops anything I’ve shared before.

Several years ago, I had a friend named Nicole that I always used to hang out with. We’d known each other for a couple of years and we’d always do things together such as…

  • Invite each other out to movies late at night
  • Cook dinner for each other at our apartments
  • Go out to restaurants at midnight to order dessert

…but we never went past just being friends.

Mostly because I’m a dense person.

One day, she invited me to her apartment and made dinner for me. She asked me if I wanted to stay late and play board games with her. We ended up playing Scrabble and, several turns into the game, she plays the word “W-A-N-T”.

On her next turn—I kid you not—she plays the word “S-E-X” right next to the word “W-A-N-T”. My reaction at the time?

“Okay, that’s +19 points for Nicole.”

And that’s why I stayed single that night.

Back then, I had no idea how to tell if someone was flirting with me or what the word “flirting” even meant. Sometimes my friends would even come out and tell me “Dude, why didn’t you talk to her? She was totally hitting on you” and I’d just stand there confused.

Was she really trying to flirt with me? Or just being overly friendly?

Continue reading How to tell if she’s flirting or just being friendly

My single biggest, most painful mistake with dating

From the first time I saw her face, I knew I’d love her until the day I die.

I can still picture it clearly today. All the other boys in my Middle School were fawning over that one redhead who looked like Mary Jane from Spider-Man (you know…the Tobey Maguire one).

On the other hand, I happened to crush on my classmate in English class who came in every day wearing a ridiculously cute Mickey Mouse shirt and headband. She was the first person I ever had feelings for.

I’d like to tell you that she never even knew I existed. That’s what I really want to write right now because it would hurt less to whitewash the story and remember it a different way than how it really happened. But that wouldn’t be true to myself.

What really happened is that some time later, one of her friends secretly came up to me and told me “You know, Chloe used to have a crush on you for like, forever.”

That hurts because it’s one thing if I never even had a chance. It’s another thing to know that the first woman I ever found myself crushing on actually liked me back and I just let that slip through my fingers!

Looking back, it’s a mistake I’d made many times throughout my dating life. Whenever I found myself romantically interested in someone, I’d fail to unambiguously convey my romantic interest. That’s the key. If you too indirect and treat women that you’re interested in as friends like I did, then you can’t be surprised when you only end up being friends and nothing more.

Here’s an example to show what I mean:

  • Morning coffee or lunch with a coworker? Not romantic because people do this all the time professionally.
  • Inviting a coworker to a group activity with you? That’s ambiguously romantic because friends also do this platonically, and professionals commonly do this for networking purposes.
  • Asking a coworker to watch a movie and have dinner with you on a Friday night? That’s unambiguously romantic because you’ve set up a series of 1-on-1 activities just for the two of you and you’re meeting her on a night when you can stay out late and not have to worry about going to work the next day.

The key is to unambiguously convey romantic interest. If you treat her platonically then of course your relationship will be nothing but platonic. But if you ask her out 1-on-1 to an activity at a specific time and place, then she’ll know that you’re interested in her. And maybe…just maybe…she’ll be interested in you back.

I’ve loved a lot of women throughout my life. I have two competing memories of the first woman I ever loved, and I wish I could remember it the less painful way but that just tastes like a lie. I can tell you with a straight face that most of the other women I crushed on probably never even knew I existed. Maybe I’m whitewashing those memories as well when I say that. But I honestly don’t know and that allows me to honestly remember it that way.

Derek Chauvin found guilty and what that means for us

Derek Chauvin was just found guilty. You know, the guy that knelt on George Floyd’s neck for almost 10 minutes until he died.

I feel a lot of emotions right now. Relief. Happiness. Sadness.

Like, a part of me is happy that he was convicted because of course he was guilty. And I’m relieved that justice was served in this particular instance. But I’m also sad that this even happened in the first place, and I still recognize that we have a long way to go.

Here’s what Derek Chauvin’s conviction means for us…

Continue reading Derek Chauvin found guilty and what that means for us

How to make #StopAsianHate a reality

Let’s talk about violence against Asian-Americans. Again.

Didn’t we just do this? Yes, we did. Somehow just 2 weeks after my strongly worded open letter, a series of mass shootings perpetrated by a single person broke out at three different spas in Atlanta, Georgia. Eight people were killed, six of whom were Asian women.

And what is there to say except…are you fucking kidding me?!

It feels like someone read what I wrote and thought “Hey this Steve guy makes a lot of good points…so I’m going to do the exact opposite of what he wrote!”

FUCKING HELL!!

Alright, alright. Deep breaths Steve. In for 5 seconds. Out for 5 seconds.

And…breathe.

Okeydokey. I can’t believe I’m writing another one of these after I just wrote one a few weeks ago, but here we are. The reluctant sequel to my open letter written for everyone holding animosity against Asian-Americans.

Here we go.

Continue reading How to make #StopAsianHate a reality