This is the follow-up to part 2

When I got home from the UK after visiting my friend Mark, where he installed a dating app on my phone, I was sitting in front of the TV when my phone made an unfamiliar sound.

A girl called Bianca had sent me a message.

'You look good in a braided shirt'

I checked out her profile and she looked beautiful.

Me, 2014 (I still used hairgel).

I was training hard at the time which had increased my confidence a bit but it was flimsy.

Any unknown female contact I still considered pretty much a miracle.

I had no experience at all at seducing anything.

So I choose my reply carefully.

'Thank you, you look really nice in your picture too'.

I don't know why, but it worked and we started to chat.

She was a Brazilian coming to the Netherlands for a year as an au pair. We started to chat about life in Brasil and where she would live in the Netherlands.

The chat turned from hours into days into weeks. I loved talking with her about life and people in general. We had lots in common. Not once did it turn into anything sexual. Which was fine with me, I probably would have screwed that up anyway.

I started to grow very fond of our conversation. It was also giving me confidence. I was in actual contact with a woman and it was going well.

First date

The first time I met her in real life was in the Central Station in Rotterdam. It took her many weeks (of being in the Netherlands) to finally meet me. Not because she didn't want to but because she was a bit scared. (she only told me this after....guess I wasn't the only one lacking confidence.)

We went to the city of Utrecht that day. It was our first real date. She was much more comfortable than I (or pretended to be). We walked around the whole city and we had dinner near the canal.

At night we walked to the Dom tower. It was lit up from underneath with different colors of light. My master plan was to kiss her under the tower. (It was never a plan really, I came up with that on the date itself...)

Dom tower, Utrecht

But when we arrived there I realized that I didn't know how to approach such a situation. Like I said, I'm not very smooth with the ladies, and it was a long time since I kissed anyone.

"Do you want to kiss me?", she said.

That was all the encouragement I needed.

We kissed.

After the kiss, I'm pretty sure I heard her say 'Wow!' under her breath.

I was doing the moonwalk in my head. I can tell you that.

I turned out I still had some magic left in me :)

Confidence +100%.

Not long after the date, I went to the UK to participate in the mud run.

It was a great success and we made it.