Well congratulations, my friend, on your new-found ability to have lucid dreams! Recounting your dreams to your girlfriend certainly did help to infuse a conscious interest in dreaming that helped in becoming conscious during your dreams. So you should continue to either write down or tell your dreams to people, that will help.

You may be a natural LDer. Other than you recounting your dreams to friends, do you do anything else that may make a difference in your dreaming? Have you picked up any new creative hobbies, do you use psychedelics or other drugs, etc? Some people are simply more able to have LDs than other people because of how their minds work. Certain people are more in touch with their subconscious. Also being highly creative or imaginative helps.

If you want to continue having these dreams, simply spend some time during the day, intermittently, thinking about your dreams, and do the same as you go to bed. Then try to remember them as best you can as you wake up. You can try the WILD technique, but without getting up. When you wake up after 5-6 hours of sleep, just close your eyes and attempt to stay conscious as you fall asleep, and wait until you feel vibrations in your body, or sleep paralysis, and try to imagine a scene unfolding in your vision. It takes PRACTICE! Undoubtedly you will have more unintentional LDs. It helps to do reality checks when you wake up, and when you do things during the day. That means you just do a check to see if you are dreaming. When you do that during the day, you will be more likely to do it at night in a dream.