Be yourself is actually the best dating advice, but it's also the most misunderstood. This is a big breakthrough I've just had recently, and I think you're going to be really excited to hear about it, because it makes dating so much easier. And for some reason, I hardly hear anyone besides Mark Manson and his book Models talking about this.
Normally, I've been dating with the idea that I can't be myself, because I'm going to offend women and push women away and nobody's going to want to date me. So when somebody says, be yourself, I have this subconscious response that I can't be myself. And also, who is myself? Many of us are so used to performing that we don't even know what it's like to actually be an authentic version of ourselves with somebody. The problem, too, is that often not being ourselves works better in the short term.
That's my frustration with dating YouTube. A lot of people I've seen on dating YouTube are teaching you to get short-term results. What they teach often does work in the short term, but look closely and many of them have never had, or consistently don't have, long-term happiness. They'll have a lot of people they get with, but very few that turn into anything real. This is why, in my experience, you don't need red pill or purple or black or whatever pills people are thinking about. Really, all you need to do is be yourself and figure out what that is.
What Is Being Real Versus Performing?
So the first thing we have to differentiate is, what is me being real versus me performing? I had this epiphany the other night, and it came based off the last piece I did talking about how she didn't feel the romantic chemistry. So I studied that. If you are having people say, well, I don't feel the spark with you, that's a great one to look at before this or right after, because it will make sense. I studied romantic chemistry, and it came surprisingly right back to just being yourself, because I am a person people feel a lot of emotion about, except when I go on a date with a woman and try to perform and impress and get picked and hide the truth. Then they don't feel that romantic spark.
In that last one I did live, I talked about how focusing on having fun and connection, and then crossing the lines a little bit when it comes to intimacy, is effective. That's what is being taught by some dating coaches in order to get women to feel something, to feel a spark. But before, I was thinking, well, I can't be fun on a date because I'm going to repulse women when I do that. So I had a great experience I'll tell you about. I put the stuff into action immediately, and I realized that when I'm focusing on being fun and connected and crossing lines, that is me being authentic. It's really more about a comfort zone than about boundaries.
I was out with the boys the other night, hanging out, and we were talking so much shit, dirty, dark jokes, laughing, roasting each other. And I'm like, that feels like I'm just being myself. That feels like playful fun. I'm sharing deep emotional stories. I'm crossing lines. I'm having fun. I'm unpredictable. But then I looked at what I've been doing on dates when women have told me they didn't feel the romantic spark. I've been doing the opposite. I've been showing up acting like it's a job interview. And the thing is, that stuff sadly will work in the short term, but in the long term, you're going to destroy yourself.
How I Performed With My Ex
What I did with my ex is a great example of that. When I met my ex, I was in this habit of performing, trying to be this person who's socially acceptable, when often I am not a person who is socially acceptable. If you think I'm mean based on my videos and the stuff I say online, which has a lot of terms and conditions, you should hear what I say in person. If you think this is bad, imagine what I say when there's no censor or filter. I'd been in that habit since my 20s, and then when I got divorced last year, I picked it back up. I was performing. All I was trying to do was convince a woman to get with me and have a relationship. I wasn't thinking at all about how that would work out in the long term. All I was trying to do was perform, impress, get picked, and absolutely hide the truth.
For example, when I used to date in my 20s, I would hide my alcoholism from women, because I wouldn't want to date a woman who would put up with me being an alcoholic. And at the same time, that put all this pressure on me, where I had to hide this big part of myself and my drinking. Then eventually my ex sees my alcoholism when we're married, and I have to stop and change. But what's worse than that is the humor. When I dated my ex, I did not come out with all my dark jokes. I was a corrections officer, always into listening to music, playing violent video games. I grew up with a mother and father who were both in the military. My mom was a career officer in the vet corps. So we had a dark sense of humor at my house growing up, and that's what feels very natural to me. That's the comedy I like. But when I would go out with women, I would absolutely take most of that dark edge off my humor. I felt like I couldn't go for my own jokes. So I would often be kind of boring, sitting there trying not to offend her. I'm trying to make a sale rather than make a successful relationship.
So what happened is, 15 years after I started going out with my ex, I'm riding in the car with her, and I feel like I've been so suppressed for so long, I've censored my personality so much, that I just take it for granted that the internal monologue I'm having can't be shared with her. And that feels awful. It sucks to work in the short term trying to perform, but then to land somebody you have to keep performing with indefinitely. If I had just been myself, there's no way my ex would have gone out with me on a second date. But 15 years later, I'd probably be with somebody who really liked the honest version of me.
The Night I Stopped Performing
So let me compare that to what I just did two nights ago, applying being yourself and stopping performing and trying to impress and hide the truth. There's this woman, and I'll minimize any details about her since this is public, but I really like her. I'd seen her months ago and hadn't seen her in months, and then I saw her at this social event I went to. In the past, I would have tried to do all this stuff, perform and impress. Ironically, the first time I met her, somehow I didn't do that. Somehow I ended up talking all this shit and she thought I was hilarious. I've gone out with at least 20 women this year, and none of them have laughed at the stuff I've said like she has. And yet I was too eager. I had messaged her immediately the next day after getting her phone number. She shut it down right away. I gave up. Then she ended up getting a boyfriend, I deleted her number, and I hadn't seen her in six months.
So I run into her a couple nights ago. She says hi, but she's hungry because she just played tennis. In the past, I would have just desperately tried to keep talking to her, because I'm trying to get as much of her attention as possible. But instead, after she started to introduce me to her friend, I'm like, look, I'm hungry, I'm going to go grab some food. And she seemed kind of surprised. After not seeing me for six months, I immediately dismissed her. And I felt great, because I'm like, I'm so hungry I can hardly pay attention. Obviously I'm paying a lot of attention to her, but not constantly, and I'm talking and hanging out with other people as well.
Then I see that she's sitting in the hot tub at this event. And I'm like, all right, now I feel like talking to her, so I'm going to go talk to her. I slide in next to her in the hot tub. She's having the most boring conversation with this guy. She is just sitting there, and I'm like, oh my God, that's me. That's what I've been doing. This guy is scared to offend her. He's having, I swear to God, a copy-and-paste conversation you could have with AI. It's like I'm watching what I've done with 20 women this year in the third person. I'm like, oh, this is what they're talking about. This guy is performing. He doesn't want her to not like him. He's having safe conversations. He's using cheap copy-and-paste phrases. She's clearly bored. And I sit there and watch the conversation for like five minutes, because I'm just thinking, is this ever going to get interesting? How can she stand to have this conversation? This is so boring. And I'm like, God, this is what I've been doing on dates.
So then I'm like, all right, I've had enough of this, I'm going to start being myself. And I just intuitively know what to do, without trying to think about whether I'm going to like her or she's going to like me or any of that. I kind of look at it like I'm in the hot tub with the boys. What am I going to do? I'm loud and boisterous. I'm talking shit. I'm making darker and darker jokes. And she slides away from him, slides up next to me, starts bumping into me. But from there, a lot of times I would have switched into, okay, now I've got her attention, now I need to calm it down, now I need to try and keep it. But I didn't, because myself is just what you see here. I'm just out there being me. And she starts saying flirty things to me, and I just keep talking shit. Then I remember she missed my comedy routine last week, so I'm like, do you want me to perform my whole comedy routine again just for you? And she's like, yeah. And I'm like, okay, well, I customized it for the audience, so what should I do for you? And she's like, well, don't say anything negative about women.
So the first thing she does is tell me not to do something. Well, I'm going to do the opposite. So I literally made a derogatory joke come right after that. And she looks slightly offended. Do you think I stopped? Because I'm not the kind of person, if I'm being myself, who wants to walk around on eggshells and be super careful and gentle. I'm a little rough. Then she said something else, and I was talking about my ex, so I started telling emotional, personal stories too. The same kind of thing I told you about my ex, how I hooked my ex emotionally by being just enough of myself to get her interested, but filtering enough to not really show her the parts she wouldn't like.
So I was telling a story like that. I was talking about how mad and angry my ex got on one of our first dates. I was talking about some issue, and my ex was all worked up about how important it was. I'm like, no, that's not important. It's not worth focusing on. It's ridiculous. Pay attention. We don't need to worry about that. That's not that big of a problem. People are starving. Tens of thousands of people are starving a day. We need to handle that. We need to work on priorities. Feed people first, then we can worry about other stuff. The issue you've raised is not important at all. And my ex was so mad she didn't talk for 30 minutes. We were at this theme park, and she was furious, because most men wouldn't talk to her like that, since they're trying to perform and impress and hide the truth from her. But that's why my ex liked me, because I made her feel a huge range of emotions, from anger and "I can't stand this guy" all the way to "oh my God, he's so amazing, I love him." I was just enough myself to show her the things she would like. But I also hid some things. This was on like a 10th date when I made her that angry. I avoided making her that angry earlier, even when there were chances to, and I probably should have, because then she probably wouldn't have gone out with me again.
So I was telling this woman that, and she then tried to tell me, I don't want that kind of emotion with a man. I want just to feel a little bit. And I blatantly disagreed with her, boisterous, right over the top. I'm like, that's ridiculous. You're trying to tell me that if you go to a theme park, all you want to do is ride the kids' roller coaster and have these little tiny ups and downs? I'm like, no way. You want big drops. You want big ups and downs. And it's hard to admit, but that's what's true. And then she got up out of the hot tub right after that, because I kind of overloaded her. All these dudes in the hot tub are just quiet, watching me as I'm talking to her. And it felt really good.
When She Walked Away, I Didn't Chase
As she gets up out of the hot tub, now in the past, a lot of times I would have been like, oh my God, I offended her, what did I do wrong, I shouldn't have done that. But I'm like, if she doesn't want that real, raw side of me, if she can't handle that, then the last thing I would want to do is try to convince her to have more of it. I went up and talked to her again a little while later, and then I had more of a conversation that wasn't quite so polarizing. It was a nice conversation. I was playful and messing around, having her throw stuff in the trash can, and she was laughing all over the place. And I'm like, see, this is what happens if I'm myself. The real version of me draws extreme, polarized reactions from women, where they either love me or they hate me, but it's not lukewarm.
I never again want to hear from a woman that she doesn't feel that romantic spark. That's an indication. If she didn't feel the romantic spark, then I'm being inauthentic. Because if I'm being authentic, she's not going to say she doesn't feel the spark. If I'm being myself, she's either going to love me, and that's not going to happen most of the time. Most of the time she's not going to love me. Most of the time, if I bring this personality to a woman, 95% of women are probably going to be like, ew, you are offensive, you are mean, you are too much, you are not who I'm looking for.
So I've been trying. I've gone out with like 20 women in the last year, and I've got so many lukewarm responses I can't stand it. Because what a tragedy it would be. Sure, maybe 19 out of 20 women would be like, absolutely not, I can't stand you. But what if that 20th woman would have been like, oh my God, I feel so much with this guy? But she didn't feel that, because I was trying to take the edge off my personality. Talking to this woman helped me see that for 15 years with my ex, I often didn't feel like I could just share from the heart with her. I felt like I had to perform and adjust my personality, which I eventually did. I tried as hard as I could to adjust my personality so I wouldn't offend her and aggravate her and get her mad as much. And then she didn't seem to like me as much when I did that.
But this woman, I talked to her and I said, you laugh more than anybody. You laugh more than anybody out of all the women I've gone out with this year. Nobody's thought I'm as funny as you. But I also realized I haven't let most women see my real sense of humor, because I've been afraid of pissing off that 95% who are not going to be down with this. But then I've missed out. Maybe one of those 20 would have loved to see the real version of me. And that's what be yourself means.
Why Most Dating Coaches Get It Wrong
This is so much harder, because you're going to filter fast. Almost all the men giving dating coaching advice tell you not to do what I just said. The more you try to remain a mystery, the more you try to not get the woman's ick factor triggered, the more you try to just perform and impress. Almost all the dating coaches are talking about perform and impress. They're talking about putting on a show for the woman, having these stories ready to go. You're doing a performance, and they even encourage you to use the same performance with multiple women, because then you already have your lines down, you already know what will impress the woman. But in all cases, you are hiding the truth. Do not tell her about this or that. Don't tell her anything she shouldn't know up front. If you don't have your money right, you hide that. Take an Uber if you don't want her to see your car. Almost all the dating advice is short-term, and almost all they have is short-term results to show for it in terms of hookups.
But imagine, I was thinking on the way home from this event, imagine riding in the car with a woman where I could let my real sense of humor rip. Because riding in the car with my ex, she would get annoyed or offended when I would say some of the stuff I was thinking about other drivers. In the beginning of our relationship, I just flat out didn't care, I was so myself. But eventually, the longer I was with her, I slipped into just performing and trying to impress her, because I got tired of making her angry all the time. My ex enjoys a sense of humor that's different from mine. She likes this real, thoughtful, witty humor, something like The Office or Jim Gaffigan or Nate Bargatze. That's the kind of humor she likes. I like Anthony Jeselnik, Dean Cole, Louis CK, Jimmy Carr, Jim Norton. I like graphic shock value. I'm going to swear. I'm going to tell stories that are going to push the limits. Like Anthony Jeselnik, fire in the maternity ward. That's funny.
It's funny, I was so into my ex's world, and I had censored and filtered myself so much, that when I first watched Anthony Jeselnik, back when I was deep in a relationship with my ex, I had a hard time laughing and was offended. But I watched his newest special back when I was getting out of that, and oh my God, that was funny. I had just gotten separated, and I was dying. I'm like, oh my God, this is so funny, I love this, this is my humor. The darker and more graphic, the more crazy it is, the more hilarious. That's normally what makes me laugh. If you see me sitting around somewhere smiling, I'm thinking something really mean and nasty a lot of the time, and it's entertaining me. And I'm like, oh my God, imagine riding in the car with a woman where I could rip the same stuff I'm laughing at, and I could speak it out loud, and she laughed too. That would be so good. But the hard thing is, when you actually lean into being yourself, you will filter so much faster, which is good, but it conflicts with all the stuff you're being taught most of the time to convert for the short term. And what's funny is, me being boring is also filtering faster too.
What I Care About Now
What I care about now is this: if I can't make the kind of jokes I want to with a woman, if I can't talk the same kind of shit with a woman that I can talk with the boys, no thank you. If I can't rip on somebody else and use all kinds of obscene language and dark humor and crazy shit that I can't even say online, if I can't do that with you when we're going somewhere, then forget it. No, I am never getting into another relationship like that again. From now on, that's how you talk. From now on, I never want to hear a woman say she doesn't feel the chemistry with me. I either want that one out of 5%, maybe even a one or two percent woman, to be like, oh my God, if you don't marry me, I just am not going to be able to even date again. I either want that reaction, which is not going to happen that often, or I want a woman to say, I would never go out with you again, you are offensive, you are mean, you're an asshole, you're a jerk, you are an arrogant person I couldn't stand to be around.
I should be triggering extreme emotional reactions, because that's what I do with everybody. I am a person who gets those emotional reactions. And I think most of us, if we're being authentic, that's exactly what we're scared to do. We're scared to have someone we're out on a date with disgusted with us right to our face. But if you're being yourself, if you're being real, you should be off-putting to the majority of people, because the majority of people are not going to want to date and marry the real you, which is understandable. But you want to filter and get with someone who loves the real you, the you that doesn't have to perform.
How disgusting for me to realize that I ended up performing in a marriage, and I got tired of performing at the end of it. I got desperate to be with a woman who would actually accept me as I see and experience myself. A woman I could share my thoughts with and be brutally honest with, who wouldn't be all offended, and a family environment that would support that. My ex's family, they're happy to go around and talk about the weather all week. I can't stand that. They're going on a vacation right now, and I'm so glad I'm not there this year, because it sucked last year. Nobody wanted to talk to me. Nobody asked me anything about myself. And that's what happens when you perform in the short term. You may win, but you will get punished for that in the long term, when you're on a family vacation 14 years later and no one wants to talk to you because you're too dark, you're too graphic. And then when you're not doing that, you're too boring. I want to be with a woman whose family I could go to where all of us could talk shit and laugh together. God, that would be good.
Most People Don't Think Enough
I hope this has made a difference for somebody, because if I hadn't thought of this... Some people on my videos say, do you think too much? I'm like, most of you don't think enough. You should be analyzing and thinking and improving and checking yourself, because that's how you make changes. That's how you do better. If you're just on autopilot, if you're not thinking and questioning what you're doing, you're going to get a life designed by somebody else and by your past choices, instead of a life designed by you.
I am so excited that I just realized this: if I'm rigorously honest, if I'm real, yes, most women will be like, fuck you, I don't want to ever see you again. That should be the response from at least half the women I go out with, when I make a joke that puts them down and they're all butthurt and roasted by it. If you can't take a joke like that, I don't want to go out with you. If I can't say the rudest thing I can think of to your face and you can't laugh at it because you appreciate I'm being playful, then I don't want to go out with you. If you're all serious and you think politics are important and we've got to take that stuff seriously, I don't want to go out with you. If I can't make fun of everything you think and believe and try to destroy your whole reality, and you can't laugh about that whole process, I don't want to go out with you.
And I'm not saying anything specific to men or women. The woman should be able to crack jokes about men to me. I want my woman to do everything back to me. My woman should be able to crack all the jokes I've said to her right back. It was imbalanced in my relationship with my ex, because she did that stuff to me. She would crack all these jokes at my expense. But I didn't feel safe cracking jokes at her expense, because she gets so upset and butthurt. She could dish it out, but when I would even do a little bit of my humor, she couldn't take it. We should have figured that out in the first three dates. But we didn't, because I was performing and trying to impress, especially because I thought she was really attractive. I was trying to get picked, and I was trying to hide any truth that would result in her not picking me in the short term. But in the long term, it becomes this one-way thing.
Cut the Bullshit on the First Date
So I encourage you, figure out who you are that is most authentic. If you're a man, how you're acting with the boys is probably most authentic. If you're a woman, how you're acting with your girlfriends is probably most authentic. And what I'm thinking from now on is that I'm going to come into a first date and say, look, cut the bullshit with me. That is not going to set a tone a lot of women are going to like. They're like, what do you mean, cut the bullshit? I'm like, don't bullshit me. Treat me, act with me, how you do with your girlfriends. Give me the straight talk. Tell me the real shit. Don't bullshit me. Don't try to perform for me. Don't try to get me to like you. I want to see the real you, the teenage girl, the five-year-old kid, the 30-year-old woman you are now. Show me who you really are right now. Don't bullshit me, and don't try to get me.
Men and women both do this. Dating has often become stressful because you get two people showing up, and both people are trying to perform, impress, get picked, and hide the truth. But I can't stand that anymore. I'm showing up, I'm going to be real, and this gives me the chance to be loved fully. I left this party, and wherever it goes with this particular woman, I left with this amazing feeling like, the next woman is going to love the real me. The next woman is going to love my humor. The next woman is going to really be able to love me. And I'm not going to have to always be hiding stuff from her and trying to change myself to get her to love me, to like me, and to approve of me. And she's going to be able to be her full self too. Because all the stuff I've talked about that happens with men happens with women too. Women have a dark sense of humor and sometimes have to hide it from their sensitive husband. Nothing I'm saying is intended to be even about gender. It applies across the board.
I think a lot of us are so scarcity-minded that we feel like we can't be ourselves, because there aren't enough opportunities. But I think the more we're ourselves, the more we'll also clear space for the right person to be there. Because if you hook somebody, like I did with my ex on short-term strategies, look at what happened: I just blew 15 years with somebody, and she used to consistently say she didn't think we were that compatible. Why did we get to having kids and not being that compatible? Because I wasn't real on the first date, the second date, the third date. If she'd have seen all my humor and my alcoholism and how much I was into video games and talking shit and the music I listened to, if she'd have seen that stuff right up front, she would have run.
And I'm grateful for all the women who saw a little bit of the real me this year and were like, oh, I'm not feeling this, my intuition says you're not the right one. I'm like, good, because if you don't like what I'm being, honestly, then you are not the right one. I'd rather be single than get stuck with somebody I performed and tried to impress. And I noticed in some of the comments, people saying, you're mean to women, your standards for women are crazy high. No, I am being honest and authentic and myself. If you find that mean, you are not the right person for me, because there's a lot of love, unconditional love and loyalty and generosity and self-introspection going on. There is a lot of compassion and joy and empathy and understanding and thoughtfulness and intelligence underneath everything that's going on with me.
I've come to believe that if you want to have a whole experience of the world, you need to be able to face the light and the dark. We're often constantly getting funneled with this toxic positivity. You should be able to look at the dark and the shadow side and all the crazy stuff and embrace it and have fun with it and laugh about it, because that's how you have a complete experience. And if you don't agree, great, then we should not hang out. I want a woman where we're aligned. I don't want a woman I feel like I have to do short-term stuff to get with. I want a woman I can be real with. And look, if you don't fit, get away from me. I'd rather have that space, because if you fill your space with somebody who's not right, then you're not ready for something better. If you want to go deeper on all of this, I've gathered everything I'm working through on this in my Dating playlist.
If this has helped you, I would love to know that. You can send me screenshots from a text conversation you're having, you can ask the community, or you can talk to my AI that's been trained on my videos.