You are about to experience an incredible dating course for straight men seeking a woman, based on my experience, in which I've had a lot of failure and a lot of success. I'm going to unload all of that right now. If you want to chat and ask questions, the best way to do that today is to join my community, where I'm available and happy to help you work through your own situation: come hang out with me in the Jerry Banfield Family.
Do I Have What You Want?
The first key thing you need to know is: do I have what you want? So here's what I've got. From the year 2000 to the year 2011, I was mostly single. I went on a ton of first dates that didn't convert to second dates, a ton of second dates that didn't convert to third dates, and plenty of third dates that didn't go farther than that. I had lots of uncomfortable situations. I also had lots of sex and hookups, and tons of pain and loneliness and frustration, and one girlfriend that cheated on me and left me. I lost a job because of dating a dispatcher at work, and that went downhill from my own actions.
And then in 2011, I met my gorgeous wife. We have two wonderful children. We've been very happily married for almost 10 years now. And we still have sex every other day, and it's the best our sex has ever been. We had sex almost every single day, sometimes as many as six times in one day, from 2011 to 2015 when our first child was born. We have an incredibly happy, supportive relationship. People frequently say that they've never seen a relationship as good as ours before. And that's why I'm telling you about what I've got.
I say all this first because I think it's important, when you are learning something, to consider who you are listening to and whether they have what you want. When I was 18 years old learning about dating, I often read these just stupid blogs, because that's all they had back in 2002 — stupid blogs from guys talking about being players and all this crap. So I'm not here to give you any crap. I'm here to give you my experience with what didn't work dating with women and what did work, because I've done all of it. I'm so amazed and grateful I've gotten where I'm at, and yet it's pretty obvious, at least from my own point of view, that this is where I was going all along.
So I'm going to give you all of my experience here. If you're struggling to even get first dates, to convert first dates to second dates, and to have a happy, amazing relationship in your life, this will be extremely helpful for you, and you will be able to do it. You will want to take in all of it, maybe even twice.
What Our Relationship Has Survived
In terms of the quality of my relationship, my wife and I have gotten through me getting sober, my dad dying, and all of our living grandparents passing away — they're all gone now. We've gotten through having two kids and big career changes. We've gotten through massive financial challenges, like barely being able to pay the bills because of me borrowing a whole bunch of money. We've gotten through each other making way more money. We've gotten through a bunch of different situations together, and our relationship is better than ever.
I'm telling you all this because the number one most important thing with anything in life that you want to have is focusing on the exact picture of what you'd like before there's any evidence you might get it. And while this is a course that will have some specifics for men as it relates to dating women, it may be very helpful also if you're a woman looking to date a man, because men and women are ultimately human, and beyond that, divine energy or source or God. Men and women are extremely similar. Almost the only real difference, besides the obvious biological stuff, is all these stereotypes and differences we carry in our heads. Ultimately, whether you're a man trying to date a woman, or a woman trying to date a man, or a man trying to date a man, or a woman trying to date a woman, or you're looking to have polyamorous relationships, all of us are extremely similar, and the same principles work in almost every situation.
So most of this is based on general principles and will be relevant to everyone. However, I am going to include some more specific stuff that may be more relevant to men trying to date a woman, because that's my most direct experience. I've never tried to date a man, and I've never, at least not recently in this lifetime, been a woman looking for a man, or anything besides a man trying to date a woman.
Make a Clear Vision Your Target
The first thing that's most important is something that could easily be dismissed by some of you as, "Oh, it's just woo, manifesting." No, it's actually really, really important. The first thing that's most important is to make a clear vision a target. For example, if you're shooting a weapon, you aim at where you're firing first. You imagine the bullet going exactly where you want it to go, then you set up and fire. This is what you want to do with dating, and this is something I did really well.
I was doing it as early as elementary school. Since I can first remember, I had a very clear vision of how awesome it would be to be with a woman that I really loved and who really loved me. I very clearly imagined how it would feel, and I practiced. I used to make out with my pillow at night in first grade and imagine what my wife was doing. I knew she existed. I knew I just couldn't see her yet. I knew I would run into her one day. From being a kid, I had this very clear vision of the relationship I wanted.
Of course, it was inspired by my parents. I saw my parents' relationship, and I basically disregarded or discarded the things I didn't want and just imagined what I did want. I didn't want the exact same relationship as them. I wanted somebody I really loved, who would bring out the best in me as a man, who would help me want to be the very best version of myself and give the most I could give, and do it all together.
So this cannot be understated. You want to be very clear about exactly what it is you do want. And sometimes you will get this clarity by having what you don't want. So if you've failed in the past, if you've gotten divorced or you're separated, or you've had a lot of breakups, they cheated on you, they kicked you out, they left you — it doesn't matter what happened. Let go of that stuff and use it as material to focus. Okay, now I know what I want. I want somebody who will be loyal and not leave me. I want somebody who will inspire me to be the best version of myself, not a slovenly, halfway-done version of myself, but somebody who will inspire me to really fulfill my potential and be as amazing as I can be. I want to be with somebody who makes me want to be as attractive as possible, who makes me want to think about them and do things for them.
These are real things for me — this is a relationship I actually have. I wanted to be with somebody who is not an alcoholic or addict, not a slave to some substance. That was something I was very clear on, too, because when I was dating, I was an alcoholic, and I knew it was a real bad idea for me to be with somebody just like me. I wanted to be with somebody who could essentially teach me how to not be like me — somebody I could learn to be like. And that's exactly what my wife has done. I wanted a person of moderation who could show me how to not drink so heavy. It turned out I need to be sober, but my wife has taught me moderation in a lot of the rest of the areas of my life.
Consciously Switch to What You Want
So I want you to really get clear about exactly what you do want. Get extremely clear about it. And every single time you catch yourself thinking about what you don't want, what you don't like, what happened in the past, what's wrong, how sad you are, how lonely you are — every time you catch yourself thinking that, I want you to consciously switch over into thinking, well, what do you want, and how far are you willing to go to get it? If you're not willing to go that far to get what you want, then you may not get it. Sometimes you need to be willing to put in a lot to get a lot. And it's worth it.
One of the most supportive things you can possibly have in your life is a happy relationship with a partner — a husband or wife, if you prefer to get married, or a boyfriend or girlfriend. The relationship I've had with my wife has been one of the best things that's ever happened to me in my life. It was a big part of me getting sober and going to Alcoholics Anonymous. It was a big part of me changing my diet and getting into a healthy body instead of being 80 pounds overweight. It's a big part of me now going to yoga and building muscle and strength and flexibility. My wife brings out the best in me.
So dating can be very high stakes in terms of your emotions, and it can be very high reward, if you're willing to do what it takes to get what you want. If you're a man who wants a woman who looks like a model and is really nice and attractive and supportive and has a great, beautiful personality, and you're basically the opposite of that, it may be very difficult for you to find what you want. I've got a little image of a Venn diagram here, and ultimately this is what dating comes down to. When you're dating, picture the pink as the girl and the blue as the boy.
Find where your most important areas overlap
The thing with dating is that you want to find someone where the most important areas of your life overlap. Right from the very beginning, what's most important to you and what's most important to them should fit neatly in the middle. For example, if she really wants kids but you really don't want kids, that's not green. That's over. She's got this area, you've got this area, and you should not be together. This is why I'm going to suggest you make some of the most important things as clear as possible before you even go out, preferably, or on the first or second date. It can take quite a while. The hard part of dating is finding an area where the two areas overlap and meet all the important criteria for both of you.
Where most people fail at dating is that they don't have a common vision of life together. The things that are really important to the woman are not really important to the man, and the things that are really important to the man are not really important to the woman. You're setting up the seeds of failure in your relationship from the beginning. It's like building a house. If you build on a weak foundation, it's much easier for the house to collapse. As soon as a baby's born and he didn't want the baby, now she's shutting him out of the bedroom, now he feels sorry for himself and lonely. He gets mad, she kicks him out of the house, he goes and cheats, and now this massive wedding that was paid for turns into a huge failure and a divorce. That could often be addressed much earlier and preventatively through communication.
Communication is the most critical element
This is why having a clear vision in your head to start is important, because then the most critical element in dating is your communication. Communication is two things. One, and most importantly in terms of what you say, is that you can communicate what's really important to you. What aggravates me with communication is when people talk and talk but don't say what's really important. When you talk, you need to be able to share about the things that really matter to you. This is why coming up with a clear vision in your head in the first place matters.
If you have a vision of a relationship where you have lots of sex that's great and monogamous, where you have a child or two, where you have a home together, where you are nice to each other, where you're not screaming at each other or slapping each other or throwing things or drinking on different levels of the house and isolating from each other, then you need to be able to communicate that vision first and then listen to what the other person wants. Communicating what you really want will help inspire the other person to communicate what they really want. What's silly is when both of you just go out, don't talk about anything important, and hope for the best.
Listen for the dealbreakers early
I'm remembering right now, for example, that for me, sex is very important. I saw that the average married couple has sex once every two weeks, and that's not going to work for me. I have a lot of creative sexual energy, and if I'm going to be monogamous, I want one person who can handle all of my creative sexual energy, and I want to have lots of frequent sex. Therefore, I looked and listened for any indicators that the woman I was potentially dating would not be up for the sex I wanted to have.
For example, I remember messaging one girl and she did great, by telling me that she had some problem with her bones and that she either couldn't have sex or couldn't have hardly any sex. We never even went out, because as soon as I saw that message I thought, all right, clearly you're not going to be able to provide what I want, so we shouldn't be together. And if I went out with a girl and she was talking about just wanting to be friends on the first date, I would think, good, you know what, friends split the bill. I didn't say this, but when the bill came, I just sat there and left it for like five minutes, because if she just wants to be friends, then friends can split the bill. Especially when it's fifty dollars. Yeah, you pay half and I'll pay half and we'll just be friends, and I'm not going to go out with you again. When I was looking at dating, my attitude was, if you don't have lots of sex to offer me, I'm not going to go out with you again. I have no interest in going out with you.
Start from the ground you're actually looking for
So the best way to start a conversation to find common ground is to be very upfront. This is why I said the vision first: to get a clear vision of what you want so that you know exactly where the ground is that you're looking for. For example, if you're in your 60s and you're not going to be having any more kids, what is really important to you? You need to know where your ground is first. From there, pretty much any angle you start the conversation from will work. A lot of people don't really think about and get clear about exactly, in detail, what they do want, because when you're focused firmly on what you do want, pretty much any conversation you start will emanate from there.
This is why it's so important to stop thinking about what happened in the past, what you don't like, what you don't want, what's wrong, and why the dating seems unfair. You need to clear out all of that negative stuff from your mind and immerse yourself completely in a vision for exactly what you do want. For example, if you're dating in your 60s and you're not going to be having any more kids, what exactly do you want out of a relationship? Do you want a relationship where you can stay together until one of you passes? Do you want to both pass together? Do you want to be there to raise your kids, or help your kids raise your grandkids? What exactly is your vision for your life with somebody else? Get clear on that, and mainly get clear on the things you really care about. If you've got grandkids and you really want to be there for them, then hey, if somebody doesn't want to hang out with my grandkids every day, I don't need to be with them.
Get clear, then be flexible
From there, be flexible. What I've noticed is that some people get too rigid. This is why you want to dial into what you really care about. For me, I really care about great communication, great sex, integrity, and having kids together. That's what I really care about. What I see some people do is focus on all these meaningless details. The kind of music they listen to doesn't matter. What they like to do for fun doesn't matter. What they like to watch on TV doesn't matter. My wife and I have almost completely different interests in almost all of those areas. We rarely overlap in music. We rarely overlap in TV shows. It's an art form to figure out something we can watch together. She's watching Star Trek right now, which is just like, wow, that's awesome, and it's surprising we overlap in that area.
A lot of people look for these kind of stupid, superficial things, and you don't make a clear enough vision of what's really important. Like, ooh, I just want to be with a guy and listen to some music together. Well, okay, how about if he beats you and drinks and cheats, but you listen to these songs together? Will that get it done? No, I don't want that. Okay, well, I guess it doesn't matter what kind of music you listen to, does it? What I've learned is, don't ask stupid, superficial questions when dating. It doesn't matter about your common interests if they're not relevant. Stop the small talk. Get to the point.
If I had to date ever again, I'd ask straight out: how do you feel about kids? I wouldn't necessarily need to have more kids, but would you like to have kids in your life every single day and raise them and be a good mom? Yes? Okay. Are you capable of being completely honest and telling me the truth even when it's very difficult, and being totally transparent with me about your life? Yes? Okay. Are you willing to have sex anytime I want to? I don't care how you feel, I don't care what kind of mood you're in, I don't care about basically anything else in your life. Are you willing to give me all the sex I want? No? Okay, then I don't need to talk to you. Let me go talk to somebody else. It all comes down to getting clear yourself on what's really important.
Refuse to waste time on what doesn't match
Get clear on what's important, and then refuse to waste time with anything that doesn't match what you want. What I see so many people do is waste time with people they're not that interested in. Once you're clear on exactly what you do want, you can stop telling yourself it's a failure when you go out with someone and you don't end up on a second date. There are lots of ways to fail. One of the worst ways to fail in dating is to get into a relationship that's not good for both of you and drag it on for a long time. You don't have the chance then to have a great relationship in your life, because you took this relationship where being with her was just barely better than being single, so you tell yourself, let's just be together and do our best here. We're going to fight. We're going to have an awful relationship. We're not going to have that much sex. We're going to resent each other and argue and complain to everybody about our relationship.
That, to me, is my idea of failure. I would rather be single than do that. I'd rather go out on 100 first dates and not get to a second date than be stuck in a relationship that sucks. That can't be stated enough.
Make your vision, and be ruthless about it
Make your vision for what you want, and be absolutely ruthless that you don't let in anything that doesn't match your vision. That's what's really important to you, and everything else can slide. If you want to find common ground in a conversation, you simply ask questions and lead with what's important to you. I love questions, because a good question opens the door to the things that actually matter.
If you have a dating profile, you can often do this directly on the profile. You put it up there. Match.com is where I met my wife, and I put my requirements right on it. Under wants kids, I put "definitely," and I refused to even go out with anybody who said anything besides "definitely" on wants kids. If there was anything at all besides "definitely," I did not go out with them at all. If there was anything in a profile that indicated someone might not be a person who enjoyed sex, or that I wouldn't find them attractive, or that they might not have very good character, I passed. To me, if they put anything besides "social drinker" or "doesn't drink at all," I thought, nope, I don't want to date an alcoholic. And if you find it's very difficult to find someone who wants to be with you, this is where the opportunity to change yourself comes into play.
Throw out the stereotypes
What's my opinion on a woman proposing to a man? I think it's fantastic. It's 2022 as I'm filming this, and it's time to throw out these irrelevant notions. Get very clear on your vision for your life, and then stop with the stereotypes. If you want to marry somebody, just ask them. It's stupid to sit there because society tells you that you should wait. And this is stuff you need to talk about as absolutely soon as possible.
I know somebody in my life who really wanted to get married. They went through a divorce, and as far as I understand, they really wanted to get married again, move in, and have a house together and have more kids. And guess what? They dated someone who doesn't want to get married, doesn't want to move in, and doesn't want to have more kids. From everybody else's point of view, they're just being lame, stupid, settling. From their point of view, they're learning a lesson, and maybe this relationship will teach them something valuable.
Sometimes people are so scared of being single that they'll just literally grab onto anybody who's around. In my experience, your time single is a great time to work on yourself. It's much better to just be alone, take care of yourself, and get prepared to have what you really want than to desperately cling to anybody who will go out with you. Because that's how you end up in lame relationships. That's how you end up fighting with somebody so badly the police get called. That's how you end up having a kid with somebody you don't even really like. That's how you end up having to go through a divorce and having them take half your stuff. If you want to have a great relationship, you need to know what's important to you, make that clear immediately, and refuse to settle for anybody who does not want that.
Backlash comes from people who won't follow their own heart
When someone gets backlash for getting on one knee and proposing to their future husband, here's what I've come to believe: usually the people giving backlash do so because they don't feel comfortable following their own heart. They don't feel comfortable doing what they think is right. When they see somebody else living their own life, being courageous, and daring to defy the norms, they react.
I saw the same thing with masks. I hated all the mask stuff, and I refused to wear a mask. I would disregard signs that masks were required. And the people who were the nastiest to me about not wearing a mask were the people who didn't want to wear one either but felt like they just had to, because everybody else was going along with it. When they saw me saying, I don't care what the law says, I don't care what y'all are doing, what y'all are doing is wrong in my opinion and I will resist it in any way possible, they lashed out. The people who genuinely thought the masks were fine mostly just put their heads down and didn't react much. But the people who hated the masks and were wearing them anyway, because they felt they just had to, those are the ones who lashed out at me.
So anyone who's lashing out at you for being a bit different when it comes to dating and relationships is probably doing it because they wish they could do the same thing, or they want to do the same thing, or really they think what you did is awesome, but it's bringing up stuff within them that's causing a volatile emotional reaction. Instead of looking at their own stuff, they project it onto you.
Be willing to fail your way to change
This is why everybody's definition of successful dating is not the same. If you want to just keep going out with more and more people over and over again, be willing to fail, because that will give you motivation to make changes. Maybe after you go out with four or five people who all don't give you a second date, even though you didn't even like half of them, that will get you motivated to make some adjustments. The more you keep going out with people who don't want to go out with you again, the pain will actually get greater, and in my experience that pain is what finally pushes you to change. I went out on probably hundreds of first dates, and most didn't go into a second. I sent so many messages. I dated online for most of 2002 to 2011, and I had just about everything you can imagine happen.
Communication and reading between the lines
What about when schedules don't go according to plan, like when the every-other-night sex doesn't happen? Do you discuss it? Yes. This is where communication is so important. You can start dating somebody, and some people are so desperate they will just say anything they think you want to hear. Some people are very skilled at reading others. I've gotten very good at reading people. I can tell exactly how somebody feels about me. I can often read people fairly accurately even directly over the internet, and especially when I'm with someone in person, I can sometimes sense their thoughts.
Some people are very adept at reading others, but they're having some serious internal issues and they are so desperate to please you that they'll tell you anything you want to hear. Oh, sure, I'll have sex all day if you want to. Sure, I'll have kids. Yeah, that's great, I'll do whatever you want, anything for you. Then you'll start dating them, and things will start falling apart, because while they would like to give you everything you want, they've totally disregarded what they actually want. This is why you want to try to probe the other person as much as possible about what's really important to them.
Sometimes you have to read between the lines. Sometimes you may not be as good at directly communicating, but you can read between the lines on what someone says. I remember on my first date with my wife, she said something about being a little bit allergic to tuna, but that it was worth it sometimes to just have the tuna even though her throat would swell up and it was uncomfortable. I remember thinking, this is the kind of person who will be willing to have uncomfortable sex with me. This is someone who, even if she has a headache, will still connect. Sometimes you have to read between the lines like that, because we've been conditioned not to talk about the most important things in our life.
Talk about sex, money, and health
We've been conditioned not to talk about sex, money, and health. This is why I'm talking about it, because if you want to have a great financial life, and you want to have great health, and you want to have great sex, it helps to talk about it with everybody so that you can get a diverse set of perspectives. Our system conditions you not to talk about sex, so you basically have to rely on things other people tell you, and you're left alone in your relationship, very vulnerable to problems like cheating, or just feeling alone, not having any sex, and being disconnected.
Our system encourages you not to talk about health, so you're stuck just talking to your doctor about health, and therefore you're vulnerable to your doctor prescribing you all these things which, in my experience, actually make you sicker most of the time. You're vulnerable to your doctor playing God with your health. You're giving your power away. Whereas when you talk about your health with everybody, you'll find all these amazing stories of people healing themselves from cancer, people healing just about every kind of condition you can imagine, broken and fractured spines, going against doctor's advice, their backs healing and then being able to walk again. Once you start talking about things, you realize that lots of different points of view really help you.
So my suggestion: if you're dating and you're struggling, listen to lots of different points of view. Don't just take mine. Mine may be a bit different than what you've heard, but ask everybody in your life about dating. I know dating is hard. I struggled so much with it. Dating is one of the areas where I consistently got so depressed I wanted to end it all. I know how hard dating can be, and yet no matter how hard it got, I didn't give up. I didn't give up in the form of just settling for somebody I didn't really like, and I didn't give up in the form of just stopping, quitting dating altogether.
Body language and facial expressions are easy to read for some people, and if that's you, that's a real gift. Guys especially, you need to understand that women often can read you much better than you can read them. I had a bit of an advantage, because if you go out on a lot of first dates, you start getting good at reading people quickly. If you haven't dated that much, you'll often struggle to read people fast. But when you've been out with tons of different people, you start to read them pretty quickly. On top of that, I went to school for criminal justice, and I was a corrections officer and a police officer.
Reading body language the way a police officer has to
I learned to read body language and facial expressions as fast as possible, because like being a police officer, you sometimes only had a second or two to react. If I could read somebody's body language, I'd say, "Sir, place your hands behind your back," and they'd start talking instead of moving their hands. That gave me a very limited window where, if I immediately struck right after that, I got the first hit. They'd go down very easily and the arrest happened with minimal problems. If you're not reading body language, all of a sudden they just punch you in the face and you wonder what the heck just happened. Now you're down, you need assistance, and you might be going home in a body bag.
It works the other way too. If you're reading someone's body language and they're very relaxed, then you can take a calmer approach. So I learned to read people's body language, their facial expressions, and the tone they're speaking in, and this is a skill you can intentionally cultivate. Now, men, this is an area where the women are often way better at it than you are. Because I was a police officer, I was still not quite on even footing with most women, but fortunately I was able to read them well enough to make an accurate assessment of whether we'd be good together or not.
I talk about it because I want you to know what's possible
I have great sex with my wife, and I talk about it because I want you to know what's possible. I think it's great to encourage conversations about all different aspects of life. Some people out there do not realize it's possible to marry a woman, or a man, whatever you want. There are lots of men who think it's almost impossible to find an attractive woman with a very honest, loving personality who will have sex with you every day or every other day. There are lots of guys who have given up on that as a real possibility in life. Meanwhile, there are lots of women out there who would love to fulfill their dreams and have given up on the possibility of finding a guy who's not an alcoholic, a drug addict, dishonest, or a cheater.
Here's the thing you want to understand. It's just as hard for women as it is for men. There's nobody out there having a very easy time with this. We're all in this together. I know I've focused a lot of this on men dating women, but everybody is in this together.
When the odds are stacked against you, reposition
One thing you can do if you're having a really hard time in the particular area where you live, if it's an option, is move or date in a different area. I remember when I was in Columbia, South Carolina, I looked on Match.com, and you can get an idea of how your area is by doing what I did. When I searched Match.com in Columbia in 2009 as a man seeking a woman, there were 400 women who met my search. When I swapped it and pretended I was a woman looking for a man, there were 700 men who met the search. That means dating is going to be difficult in that area.
Back when I drank, I remember going up to the bar in Charlotte, North Carolina with my friends. In Columbia, the bar was consistently a sausage fest. Almost any bar you went to was a sausage fest, often two or three dudes for every one woman, and especially if you looked at the ratio of dudes to women you'd actually want to be with, sometimes it'd be five to ten dudes for one attractive woman. I went up to Charlotte and the girls were swarming on me. I'm like, "Oh God, this is different. What is happening?" There were more attractive women at the bar than men. I'm like, "Oh my God, I need to move to Charlotte. This is amazing."
That's because of the law of attraction, and people often put themselves in similar positions. So I've got news for you: attractive women often live near other attractive women, live with other attractive women, and are attracted to cities with other attractive women. So you might need to move. One big reason my wife and I ended up in St. Petersburg, Florida is because I remembered what I learned living in Columbia. When the odds are stacked against you, you just need to reposition yourself. There are certain places where I don't care how good looking or how nice you are, you will probably struggle, because the odds are stacked against you. If you move, the odds can be in your favor.
I go to yoga here in St. Petersburg, and I see beautiful women that are single all around me. If anything happened to my wife, I am certain there are hundreds of beautiful women in this area who'd be compatible with me and could fill her shoes. Now, I've been with my wife since 2011, and I do not want to be with another woman. I love the memories we have together, I love the loyalty and dedication she's shown, and I have something with her that I don't want to spend 11 years building with anybody else, and then I couldn't have 22 years with my wife. I'm also not afraid of losing my wife, because I can see there are plenty of beautiful, nice women here, and plenty of wild women I wouldn't want to be with, and plenty who aren't compatible. But there are so many attractive women in St. Petersburg, and they seem to struggle to find decent guys, because a lot of the attractive, nice men brought here by the law of attraction, in one way or another, are gay. So a lot of the men women look at and would want to be with don't want to be with them.
This is what tends to happen in life. You'll get whole cities where there's a bunch of single dudes and not that many single attractive women, and then whole cities where there are tons of single attractive women and not that many straight, attractive men who actually want to be with them. So you might need to move, or just date a bit farther away. My wife and I lived an hour's drive apart when we met each other. That's the nice thing about living where I live now: there are so many people, and the bigger the area, the easier it may be. I very much considered this when I picked which grad school to go to, based on putting the odds in my favor. You need to always think in life about putting the odds in your favor, instead of being oblivious to it.
Know thyself
Now, if the odds are in your favor and you're still struggling, or if the odds aren't in your favor and you're having a lot of first dates, remember that each of us has a unique life path and a place to find joy. Someone told me they feel dating is overrated, that they're their own best soulmate. Well, in my experience, dating has been a lot of fun, and also very painful when I was in my teens and twenties. Very painful. My whole life, since I was a child, I've wanted to have a beautiful relationship with a woman. You may not have that, and that's okay. All of us aren't programmed the same, and that's what's beautiful.
I talked to the mom who cleaned my teeth at the dentist the other day. People ask her, "Why do you want to be up in people's mouths cleaning teeth all day?" And she's like, "I don't know, I just love it. I feel so good when I see how clean I've just made somebody's teeth." However you want to think of it, God, source, higher power, highest self, we are all created from a collective, and that collective creates us with many different desires. So if you're asexual and you'd rather not be with anybody at all, that's okay. This is where you've got to know thyself.
What's tricky is when someone says they've been with enough people to know they're happiest alone. That's tricky, because if you've only been with people who weren't very nice, who cheated, who were sick and sluggish and struggling themselves, then you really don't know what it's like to be with somebody where it'd be much better than being single. This has happened to a lot of women especially. It seems to me that men are more often, generally, sick or unconscious, completely identified with their human body and often drawn to things like alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction, or just being constantly obsessed with work and ego. I think there are a lot more women who are more spiritually awake, realizing "I'm not just this body and this mind," more connected with God. And it seems men in my situation don't end up staying single very long, because what women really see as attractive is that awakened spirit. Men often get stuck at the physical body and "can we have sex here," while women are often looking beyond that.
Become the kind of man women are actually looking for
One of the best things you can do if you want to make your dating easier as a man is to see how nice, kind, considerate, and awakened you can be. One of the ways you can do that is to do the things that men like me do. I go to yoga. I go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, if you're not an alcoholic, that might look like being part of a church. It might look like volunteering somewhere. It might look like having a job where you do work you love and where you help people, not just going to work trying to make money, but a job where you really feel connected, where you feel you're making a difference, which often might pay less than you'd make doing something just for the money.
Men like me are very connected to other people. I don't have any addictions today. I don't drink alcohol. I don't smoke weed. And a man like me is very attractive to lots of women, because I'm awakened.
Waking Up Makes Dating Easier for Men
A man who is not awakened can actually be very attractive to a woman who wants to help a man awaken. So I'm not saying you need to be like me, and I'm not saying every woman wants to be with someone like me. There are lots of women who want more of a project in their life, or who are simply not up for being with somebody like me. I turn off lots of women. So I'm not saying I'm the ideal template. What I am saying is that if you want to make your dating life easier as a man, wake up a bit more. Break out of the societal conditioning. Let go of your addictions. Let go of your bad habits. Take really good care of yourself, and take good care of your physical body. Things like yoga, massage, and consistent exercise. If you go to the gym consistently, that's a good place you can run into people too.
The more you surround yourself with the kind of women you'd like to be with, the less friction there is. Here's what happens that makes life difficult for dudes trying to date women. What's the first thing you do? You go to work every day, and you work mostly with other men. Then you come home and you play video games mostly with other men. Women end up feeling like they're from another planet you don't understand.
If You Work Mostly Around Men, Change the Rooms You're In
Let me give you a different scenario. You may not be able or willing to change one thing or another, like your job, and that's fine. If you have a job where you work mostly with men, you might still be able to get to know your coworkers, not necessarily to date them, but just to make some relationships with your female coworkers as friends so you get more comfortable with women. And if you work all with men and there's really nothing you can do about it, and there are no female coworkers you can build relationships with, then I'd suggest it's very important to start doing some activities where there are mostly women outside of work. At yoga you're usually going to find mostly women. Massage is another one, since most massage therapists are women.
I'll tell you what, if you want to start feeling more connected with women as a whole, have an attractive woman put her hands on you and give you a massage for an hour. All of a sudden women don't feel like this far-away alien entity, but instead, "oh, this is someone just like me." This is why you need to know women. If you're thinking, "I don't even know what women do around here," go try some different activities. Go experiment, go out, go somewhere new. Try a class at the gym like Zumba, try a dancing class, and go look around at the things there are to do.
The gym can be a great stress reliever, and it can be a great place to be. Personally, I don't love the gym for meeting people, because a lot of girls at the gym don't want to talk and it can feel kind of isolated. However, just putting yourself next to an attractive woman you'd like to be with gets you closer and helps you imagine that you're not that far away from what you really want.
Don't Label the Other Sex as Good or Bad
Men and women, you never want to label the other sex as bad or good. It can be easy, if you've been a woman who's been with one loser after another, to label all men and say all men suck, all men are immature, all men are addicts or alcoholics or obsessed with themselves or cheaters. That's not true. There are lots of men who are sick in one way or another, whether it's lying, cheating, substance abuse, or just a plain old lack of care, selfishness, a lack of care for anything but themselves. But there are also a lot of men who are very like me, very loving, open, considerate, and kind of feminine, you might say.
Some women are attracted to a very manly man, but being more balanced is often very attractive too. Not being such a manly man. This is where it's not one-size-fits-all. If you're an ultra man's man, you might attract an ultra woman's woman, and that could work well for you. This is where you have to know thyself. Having some female friends can really help you here, because you can get some feedback.
Ask for Feedback, Even When It's Uncomfortable
One thing you can do if you have some female friends is ask for advice. This might sound disgustingly vulnerable, but you can ask them, "Hey, I went out with a lot of girls, and none of them have wanted to go out on a second date. Do you have any suggestions or advice, or anything you see in me?" It can feel disgustingly vulnerable, and you probably want to give them permission to hurt your feelings. Because sometimes they might see something, and when they tell you, and then five other people tell you, all of a sudden you might realize it. Okay, maybe I will go to yoga. Maybe I will go to the gym. Maybe I will start losing some weight.
For a lot of people, one of the easiest things you can do as a woman to get more dates is actually make eye contact and smile at men. You'd be amazed how many women won't even make eye contact or smile at a man. And the second thing, if you're struggling to get dates as a woman and you're overweight, in my experience men are often very superficial about weight, for better or worse. Personally, I have no interest in dating a woman who's overweight, and I never did. That was an immediate deal breaker for me. It didn't matter how nice you were, or if everything else in our life lined up. My wife says, "You're going to divorce me if I get overweight," and I say, "I hope not, but let's not find out." If my wife put on a hundred pounds, I hope we don't have to face that scenario, because I might be watching my own advice play out right there.
Standards Around Substances
Someone shared with me, "If you need to rely on a substance to feel good about life, it's a cover for other things going on in your life," and, "I have standards and those covers don't fit my future." Exactly. I have standards too. I know a very good friend who's very attractive and single, and one of the consistent things she runs into with men is alcohol dependency. Sometimes it's very subtle. We're not talking about somebody who's a raging alcoholic like I was. She went out with this guy and brought over a bottle of wine. She doesn't drink very often, maybe once or twice a month, like my wife. So she brings over a bottle of wine for a second or third date as if to say, this is a special occasion, let's have some fun. This guy had already had a glass of wine before she came over. To her, that's, "wow, he's pre-gaming, this is a sign of alcoholism." He couldn't wait until I came over to have a glass of wine. She refused to go out with him again after that, and I'm proud of her, because she's ruthless about it. She's put up with a lot of relationships in the past, and she has no interest in working on some man's alcoholism. She wants a man who is not addicted to alcohol or other substances. As women get more mature, I feel like that often becomes more and more of a deal breaker.
My wife went out with me, and I made every effort to hide my alcoholism from her when we first dated. I had a feeling that if she realized the extent of it, she wouldn't want to go out with me, or she'd demand I change. There were three years in our relationship where I tried to drink as little as possible, then I'd get sober for a little while. Those first three years, my alcoholism was the biggest discomfort in our relationship. I do not recommend trying to hide something about yourself and then having it come out and hoping the other person is okay with that. I'm just lucky that it worked out with my wife. I was motivated to get sober because my wife finally came to a point after three years. I'd had maybe nine months sober in that three years, and then about a year where I was in the middle of drinking a lot, and she finally said, "Look, I can't stand to be around you when you drink anymore." As often as I drank, I knew she was about to leave me over my alcoholism.
Get Clear on Your Priorities
This is where you have to get into priorities in your life. If dating is really a priority and drinking is not as high a priority, cut it and get help. It's simple. Going to Alcoholics Anonymous will teach you how to live sober if you let it. I know it's hard, but being single and using your hand every night is hard also.
One thing you want to do in dating is don't just limit your thinking to yourself. I know so many people in so many situations. I have a guy I know who's been struggling with sex addiction. We're talking massage parlors. He says he thinks he spent over a hundred thousand dollars over the last ten years on massage parlors, escorts, and porn. Right now he's got a few weeks clean, not watching porn, not going to a happy-ending massage, not getting an escort, and not just hooking up with somebody he meets right away.
I used to weigh 80 more pounds than I do now, so I appreciate those of you who watched back then. If you knew me in 2016, I weighed something like 50 more pounds than I do now. And women are often much more accepting of a guy being a bit overweight.
Getting in shape makes it easier to attract
If you get yourself in better shape, you'll make it easier to attract better women. I told this guy, and he's also an alcoholic, that it's really the same thing. In my experience, selfishness and self-centeredness are the root of our trouble. That's the root of your trouble. You go around thinking about your own addiction so much that you're not thinking about the woman who would love to be with you but can't be with you because you're stuck in your addiction. If you actually think about that, there is somebody out there on the other side of things who wishes they could be with you just as much as you could want to be with them. And if you'll prepare to be with them, imagine being with them, and get your life ready to be with them, then it doesn't just benefit you, it benefits them.
The relationship I've had with my wife has been the best thing that's happened to me as an adult. So if you're a woman who looks at a man and thinks, "I'm going to change him," well, in many ways I'm my wife's greatest work. I'm pretty sure when my wife saw me, she could see, "I can help him a lot. I can help him become a better version of himself." This is why very nice, loving, caring women are often drawn to men who just look like a disaster.
I'm not saying you need to fix everything about yourself as a man before you get with a woman. It's just your willingness. What if, maybe, I found a woman who really loved me? Maybe I'd get sober to be with her. Maybe I'd lose weight to be with her. Maybe I would take better care of my body. Maybe I would listen to her and do what she wanted. Maybe I would change. Just the willingness and the flexibility. Okay, God, I'll make you a deal. If you give me a great woman, I'll do whatever it takes to be with her. How about that?
How you think dictates what happens in your life
If you can't picture it, how you think is dictating what's happening in your life. So if all you do is tell yourself negative stories that women just want guys who are jerks, that's one of the stories I used to tell myself. So I ironically made myself more of a jerk. And it turns out lots of women don't want to be with a jerk. Lots of women don't want to be with a guy who grabs their ass on the second date when they're making out. It turns out. That was a lesson I learned.
With dating, a lot of times you're just guessing. I hesitate to give you very specific things, like you should or should not kiss on the first date or the second date. What I would say is that 99 percent of the time you should not have sex on the first date. Having done that, I can say it's something you're generally almost never going to want to do, because sex creates a very high and irrational level of emotional attachment. If you can't have enough patience to get to know somebody before you have sex with them, in my experience it goes badly. All the girls I had sex with on a first or second date, things did not go well with them. With my wife, I waited. The women I felt had the most emotion over made me wait the longest. That stands out. My wife and I went out for a month before we had sex and committed to being in a relationship.
Set your boundaries clearly
I also think there's no point in being boyfriend and girlfriend or being exclusive until you're ready to have sex. That's just my opinion; some people do it differently. One girl I was dating, we had this nice awkward conversation where a cashier asked, "Is this your girlfriend?" and I said no. The girl looked at me, really sad, and said, "What? I thought I was your girlfriend." I said, "We haven't had sex." This girl was a virgin too. I said, "We've done nothing to commit over. We went to the store together. We've made out a little bit. Why would you be my girlfriend? I could go to the store and make out with all kinds of different people. I didn't ask you. I didn't say you were my girlfriend. I didn't ask you to be exclusive."
If you don't want to assume things, this is why you need clear communication. If you haven't explicitly agreed to be together, you need to set these boundaries very clearly. Sometimes you can get away with not setting them clearly. I asked my wife to be my girlfriend, and thankfully both of us just assumed that meant we didn't have sex with anybody else. But later on in our relationship, we made that explicitly clear just in case anybody might get confused. We didn't explicitly say early on that having sex consistently is required. So my wife's condition is that monogamy is an absolute, non-negotiable requirement to be with her. And my requirement is that sex on my terms is an absolute, non-negotiable requirement to be with me. If you want to be with me, I want to have sex. And of course I will consider you. If she's sick and laying in bed, sure, you can have a night off, we can wait another day. But if you've been sick for a whole week, you might just need to lay there for a little while.
Don't use sex as a weapon
In that same context, you don't get to use sex as a weapon. A lot of women go wrong because nobody's ever told them the hazards of using sex as a weapon. It seems a lot of women are conditioned that if your man's not doing exactly what you want, just withhold sex and make him pay. And then he cheats, and you don't see what you did that led to that. Or you know what you did that led to that, and it hurts even more. But also, some men are just so sick that if you're having sex with them all the time, they're going to cheat anyway. I realized that when I was drinking, I was close to being that sick. If I didn't stop drinking, I probably would have cheated just because I was so sick and could never have enough sex. So getting sober, going to Alcoholics Anonymous, really sharing and working the steps has helped me get my sex life very focused.
Confidence is what's attractive
This is why dating is often very difficult. But there are things you can do to make it easier. One of the biggest things that's attractive to women is confidence, or self-love, or a knowingness, a knowing of your own attraction. And it's the same thing for men. Women who know they're attractive, who know they're worth being with, that is very attractive to a man. You can see how it often goes together.
A woman who knows she's attractive doesn't mean she puts on makeup all the time and tries really hard. In fact, to me, a woman who constantly won't go anywhere without makeup, who's at yoga with her makeup and her hair done and her nails done all the time and she's got the fake boobs, that's actually unattractive to me. Because I know if you're putting all that on, you actually don't think you're very attractive. A woman like my wife is extremely attractive because she knows she's attractive. She's comfortable going out without makeup. She doesn't have to try too hard to look that good. And she's so attractive that she knows she doesn't have to wear sexy clothes that reveal her butt and show all kinds of skin. When she was dating me, she knew she didn't need to dress that way to get me interested. I once said my wife dresses very wholesome, and she acted kind of offended. But if you really know you're attractive, you can dress wholesome and not wear makeup and go out there and know that you still look good, because you love yourself and you respect yourself.
Women are very good at picking up on this in a guy. Men are often okay at picking up on it on a superficial level, but women will often very clearly read your confidence. If you don't think you're very attractive, and if you don't think women really want to be with you, women are very good at picking that up. A lot of women don't want to be with a guy who doesn't think he's worth being with. The more confidence you can get as a man, the easier it is to attract that which you want.
Yoga, your body, and what you bring to a date
Sometimes that process can be very painful, but you can also turn it into something good. For example, doing yoga is such a great way to make your body look better. If you're so overweight and you've got health problems that you won't even try yoga, then that's the same present you're bringing to a date. You're bringing a person to a date who's not very flexible, who's not very confident in themselves, who doesn't trust their body enough to even do some yoga.
So many people in our society have had injuries of one kind or another. If you want, you could do a private yoga session or a few private sessions with an instructor and tell them, "Hey, I've got these shoulder injuries, knee injuries, back injuries, neck injuries," whatever it is. Learn to do some of the basics of yoga with them and learn what positions you might need to modify. Go really slow. Or you could just go to a yoga class and do what feels good and don't do what doesn't feel good. If you get into a certain position and your knee hurts, back off. I always use knee pads at yoga because I've got some really pointy, knobby knees, and when they do a bunch of knee positions, that hurts, so I get an extra knee pad. When I first went to yoga in 2013, I weighed 80 more pounds. My body was very rigid and unflexible, and yoga hurt a lot.
When I met my wife, I had just lived with my parents, and physically and mentally I was in the most confident, attractive shape I've ever been in. Then I did the bait and switch on my wife and went downhill for three years into the worst shape I've ever been in, hating myself, the most overweight and out of shape I'd ever been. And my wife got ready to leave me in that state, because I was not the man she started dating. If you start dating somebody who was really sexy when you met them and they let themselves go downhill, you have a right to leave. My wife said, "If I get fat, will you leave me?" And I said, "I hope not. And I hope you wouldn't do that to us."
My wife said to me once, "Well, I was with you when you were fat." And I said, "You were, but you got ready to leave after three years, didn't you?" So the better you can take care of yourself, the more attractive you will be to others. Chicks dig yoga, by the way. They do. Chicks dig yoga.
How My Confidence Actually Grew
What I noticed too, and I'll give you a couple of different examples about my own progression with confidence, is that when I was younger I had this very low level of confidence. I didn't think women really wanted to be with me. I hung out with almost all men. I played video games. I hung out with guys at school. In high school I had a couple of platonic girlfriends who didn't want to be with me, but I mostly hung out with guys and played video games with guys. So girls seemed foreign to me, and my house was very masculine. My dad raised us, although a lot of people would argue that's actually feminine. I was raised at home with my dad while my mom went to work with mostly guys, so my mom was not very much what you'd think of as feminine either. Girls really felt foreign to me. I grew up with just a brother in my house and a dad who was there. I grew up in a man's world, and women were like some other species to me.
When women stopped seeming like the other to me is when it got to be a lot easier to date. And this is where dating can get really complicated too, and this is why you want to look at your past and use stories from your past to learn and educate you now. I don't care if every relationship in your past has resulted in divorce, death, breakups, cheating, drama, arrests. It doesn't matter how the relationships in your past have gone. Those are simply educational material for how to make the relationship of your dreams today. If you've seen a lot of what not to do, then you have the material to understand exactly what you want, and you have the material to be strongly motivated to have a great relationship.
Age Is No Excuse
And I don't care if you're in your 60s or 70s. I have an aunt who I gave just a little bit of advice to. She went out with one guy online, got all frustrated, and said online dating was not for her. I said, "Seriously? You went out with one guy and you're going to draw conclusions about online dating? Just be very clear about what you want and go out with guys until you find what you want. It's that simple." And she's been in the best relationship she's ever had ever since. The very next guy after that, she went out with and it worked. She met him in her late 50s or early 60s, so I don't care what age you are. In fact, at certain ages there are more people alone than ever at those ages. At any age you have the opportunity to help someone else have a better life through dating. If you're in your 70s, I'm sure there's somebody else who'd love to date you in your 70s. I know a guy who's single in his 70s and he goes out with women all the time. It doesn't work out almost every time, but he's out there, at least he's going out, at least he's trying, he's giving somebody else company, he's learning, he's advancing himself spiritually.
Even if you go out with people the rest of your life and never find anyone to be happy with, at least you were playing the game, because it's hard to stay stagnant when you're dating. Dating will bring out things in you that you need to work on. Dating will trigger you emotionally. Dating will challenge you to learn and grow. Whereas it's so easy when you're single to just sit at home and not grow and just be the same person you've always been. To me, that which is healthy and alive is growing and expanding and learning and flexible. That which is dying is rigid, no longer expanding. Think about it: people who are about ready to die are often very rigid. They're stuck in their ways, they won't change. Dating will force you to either suffer a lot or change, which is great.
The Beer Problem
Here's something related I've noticed. As somebody like me who's a sober alcoholic, I can tell almost instantly if somebody's been drinking, just from the energy in their body. Even if I didn't see you drinking, even if I can't be close enough to smell you, I'll know someone has had a beer. And this is why people become alcoholics: they drink a beer and they become more likable. But the solution is not to just keep drinking beer. The solution is to figure out why you're so unlikable before you drink a beer, and to figure out how you can be a better person without drinking one. That's the logical thing to do.
I remember this girl down the hall from me in college. She's actually the one who got me to think that maybe I should drink, because she was an absolute B when she was sober, but she'd drink and she was really cool and friendly. And then I realized, you know, I'm kind of a B when I'm sober too, maybe I should drink and be a bit more friendly like her. But the more effective solution would have been to look at how I could make a better personality sober, because there are lots of people who just have great personalities sober, and you can change.
Women Read Your Whole Life
Especially for men, the thing about women is that they have this entire energy that is about you, and that often comes out as a feeling to a woman: "I like him and find him attractive," or "I don't like him and don't find him attractive." This can be hard to understand as a man. Like, I just showed up and she can tell all these things about me? Not often consciously, but often. Men are not nearly as adept as women at this. If you go out on a date, men are often not as sensitive to their own feelings either. It's like, "Okay, well, she's got a vagina and she's not totally horrendous, that'll work." Whereas women are much more like, "How do I feel when I'm with him? Do I feel sexy and alive and fun when I'm with him, or do I feel kind of sad and depressed and wish I was back at home?"
What a woman is perceiving in a man is a function of your whole life as a man. If you're working with a bunch of dudes, playing video games with a bunch of dudes, drinking at home by yourself, and you don't have confidence and you don't like yourself that much, then you go out with a woman, she will often feel, "This guy's not that fun, I don't really like him, I'm not that attracted to him." Whereas if you understand women, if you see that women like you, maybe you go to yoga and you're used to being around beautiful women, then it comes across completely differently.
Confidence Came From Experience
What really worked well for me is that I kind of hooked up with hotter and hotter women as a second step. My first hookup was with a friend who was quite cool. She was a hot-stuff girl and I had no idea she actually was at the time. When I first had sex, my friends called her a name and unfortunately it was pretty accurate. A lot of the first hookups I had were with girls who were sometimes cute, sometimes not at all. Sometimes I got what I paid for.
Where things really took off for me is I met a girl who was pretty attractive, who liked me and who I liked, and we had some great sex, and my confidence went up quite a bit. And then I went out with a girl I dated at work who was an absolute 10 in terms of her physical appearance. Oh my God, she was gorgeous. When I had sex with her, it was very emotionally volatile, and we were not very compatible together on the Venn diagram, and I wasn't prepared to have a relationship of my dreams. However, it did one thing for me. After that, I absolutely knew that I could be with a very attractive woman, that some women who are very attractive would love being with me, and I had this massive level of confidence afterward.
So if you've never been with a really attractive woman, or haven't been in a while, that is one area where you don't want to settle, because getting with the most attractive woman you can possibly be with, even if it doesn't work out, will help you with your confidence. After I had that experience, though, it was also one of the worst points in my life. I was so depressed when things didn't work out with her, because I wasn't prepared for things to work out with her.
This is one of the last things I'll cover before we wrap up. Ever since I had sex with that 10-out-of-10 beautiful dispatcher I worked with, I've had this massive confidence about myself. I know that the hottest women, some of them, will want to be with me. And ever since then, I had no problem getting girls who were attractive to go out with me. I was utterly ruthless that if you're not hot, it's not happening, and women pick up on that. I had this knowing. I know I'm good looking. And it started when I met the dispatcher.
She never would have gone out with me off a dating site or anything. And this is why, guys, especially if your life is underperforming a bit, dating sites can be really brutal. This is why you want to surround yourself with other attractive women. Because if they get to know you first without thinking about dating you, it's much easier to get to know a woman that way. And then she might want to date you, especially if she's attractive and you're not at your best. That can work much easier than just dating sites. On dating sites, women often do have their pick of lots of men, at least on the surface, who are attractive, and then those men prove to be pretty sick or not worth being with after a few dates. But often on dating sites, you need to be at the top of your confidence game to succeed.
I'll give you an example. When I went out with my wife, I was at the top of my confidence game. My first impression of her was, oh my God, she's hot. Absolutely, I would love to be with her. And her first impression of me was, oh, he looks better than his dating photos. What can happen a lot to guys is that women put a ton of effort into getting pictures up that don't accurately represent how they look. Then you meet them in person and it's disappointing. So you do not want to disappoint on a first date. Guys, in my experience I do not recommend putting a ton of time and effort into your pictures. If she's not willing to go out with you based on some regular pictures of you, you don't want her to be disappointed when she meets you in person. So don't put a ton of time and effort into your pictures. Get some decent pictures, put them up there, put effort into your dating profile and being clear about what you do want.
Confidence on the second date
On the first date with my wife, I had massive confidence. And it really played out on the second date. On the second date, we had a very nice dinner together. Because I had massive confidence, I imagined that she really liked me. I'm reading her body language, and my intuition is that she really likes me. Therefore, I'm going to act as if she really likes me. So when it came to wrap up the end of the second date, she was parked like a block away in a parking garage at night. I said, hey, do you want me to walk you back to your car? She said, no, thanks, I'll walk back on my own.
Now, my wife was actually going out with another guy who was not as confident as me, even though in a lot of ways he probably would have been the better choice. He was actually a full professor. He already was a professor instead of a graduate student. He probably wasn't an active alcoholic at the time. But I had massive confidence. I'm like, I know hot girls want me. I'm not going to take that answer, I'm going to try again. I'm going to persist, because in my mind, I really liked this girl. She's really hot. And we needed to test the sexual chemistry as soon as possible. Making out is the best way to give your sexual chemistry a try. So I was absolutely rigid, or ruthless: if I'm not really attracted to you and we can't have a great makeout session on the second date, there's nothing for me here.
So she says, no thanks, I'll walk to my own car. I basically ignored that. I said something very smooth, like, hey, it's late, let me walk you out to your car, it'll be fun. I made her see that she would enjoy walking out to her car with me, and she could tell based on that confidence that it would be great for both of us. So I walk her out to her car, and right when we get in front of her car, I slide my arm around her waist, because I'm very confident. I know attractive women want to be with me. I have no doubt about that, and I'd read her body language. I know she likes me. I figured, of course, if I get a big negative sign, I'll back off. But until then, I will proceed as if this is exactly what she wants. I slide my arm around her waist, pull her over to me, and we have an incredible makeout session. I was about ready to faint afterwards. It was so intense. I had never experienced that level of sexual chemistry with someone before. And I could tell she felt the same way too. Because I'd been out with so many girls, I'd seen lots of them that didn't feel the same way about me. And I'm like, oh, this is different. I could see she'd had the same kind of experience I did. She was about ready to pass out, she liked that so much.
From there, I knew she really liked me. All I needed to do was just not screw this up, and it would go well. This is going to be really good.
Why the confident guy gets to be with her
Now, Laura went out with a guy at almost the exact same time, in almost the exact same situation. He doesn't have that confidence. He doesn't make any moves on her. Now we're married 11 years. He's probably got some nice woman too. But I got to be with her because I had the confidence in myself that I am worthy, that I deserve to be with a beautiful woman. And that I have the ability to look and pay attention to see: does this woman like me? It's a positive reinforcement loop, because if she likes me, I like her more. So the more we like each other, it feeds itself. That's why with my wife, it's turned into just a level of love and romance that I've never experienced before, because her liking me makes me like her more, which makes her like me more, and it just feeds on itself. It is so intense.
And when somebody you go out with doesn't like you that much, it makes you not like them as much either. So trust your intuition. If you go out with somebody and you don't like them that much, okay, that's good. Now that's one person I know I don't want to go out with again. There's no chemistry there. In my experience, you should absolutely never go out with someone again that you did not like that much. You're not only wasting your time, you're wasting their time, and that's rude. It's really rude to even try and get another date with somebody that didn't just blow you away on the first date.
And it can look difficult. My wife had a friend in college who was single for years, and she would not settle for a guy that she didn't really like. Now she's married to a guy she's really happy with and has a child. My wife and I were dating at the same time; her friend was dating her boyfriend before they broke up. This girl was single for years, almost all of the years. Then she met someone she really liked, got married, and it works out. So it's much better to be single and prepare yourself to be with the right person.
You can do a lot to make yourself more confident. If you're doing things to sabotage yourself, it drains your confidence. For me, my alcoholism was definitely draining my confidence. But I had been with so many attractive women in my past that my confidence was so high it was almost difficult to sabotage. I knew beautiful women love to be with me. Not all of them, but some. All I needed to do was watch for when one actually wanted to and I wanted to be with her. When I find it, you go for it. Then it's just a matter of getting into this Venn diagram. Once you've found that person, don't screw it up. This is where being prepared to receive comes in. When you've found a person where what's really important to you overlaps, and then the ways you're different don't really matter, this is where being prepared to receive what you want makes a big difference.
Back to 2001, and the proof of telepathy
Let me go back into a parallel, into the year 2001. There was a girl I worked with at my first job. We were cashiers. She had the exact same first name as my wife, Laura. She is absolutely gorgeous. Oh my, just as beautiful as my wife. The most attractive girl that had ever shown interest in me by far. A perfect 10. Beautiful face, beautiful hair, beautiful body. And she came on to me. At that point I was in a man's world in my mind. I was just going to school, playing video games, wishing I could be with a woman, but identifying as a guy who's single. I'm a single guy, I'm lonely, this is who I am, I play video games when I'm not at school. At this point, I'd never gone out with a girl I was really excited to go out with. I went out with a girl a couple of times in high school. Neither of us really liked each other that much, and we didn't have that much chemistry. It kind of fizzled out pretty quickly and never turned into anything more than tiny makeout sessions where I felt frustrated she didn't want more. And I guess she felt frustrated that I didn't really understand her at all.
So this girl named Laura came on to me very strongly. I was just checking out in her line one day. She's got another customer, and she just stares at me, right in the eyes, maintains eye contact. It went on forever. I remember the entire energy of my whole body stirring up and heating up. I was like, oh my God. I knew I needed to go out with this girl. And she very clearly communicated to me telepathically, which is an important thing. If you don't see any evidence of telepathy, and you don't think it's real, that's fine. Because I am certain: not only am I able to read people's minds sometimes, I am able to give ideas to others. I have seen absolute undeniable proof of telepathy. I've seen other people instantaneously read each other's minds in ways that are absolutely not guessing or luck, that are not possible to attribute to just chance or a lucky guess. I've even done some little tests. With my daughter, I could look at a card, and she could guess exactly what it was a significant percentage of the time. Telepathy certainly works differently between different people. My wife and I have an extremely strong connection where, for better or worse, she can look at me.
Being Truly Seen Can Scare You
My wife doesn't even need to see me sometimes. She can read exactly how I'm doing. And what can be really scary about being in a relationship is that kind of nakedness. You don't even get to have a body anymore. Someone looks directly at your soul, and that can be terrifying, especially if you're used to being a private person and not letting people see your darkness and your shame. Someone who can see past all of that can actually really scare you. In my experience, it can trigger your mind into attacking them, into all kinds of negativity.
I very nearly pushed my wife away after our third date. She was not ready to give up the sex yet, which was absolutely the right move. She should not have had sex with me on the third date. What worked for me, looking back, is that you're better off going out on at least five or six dates with somebody before you have sex with them. Because once you have sex, it's so much easier to get into a relationship than it is to get out of one. When you've just gone out with somebody and you haven't had sex, it's often much easier to say, look, I'm not feeling this. Once you've had sex, it gets much more difficult.
My wife had promised one of her friends that she wouldn't have sex. She was going out with me and another guy, and she'd promised she wouldn't sleep with either of us. She'd go out with us, get to know us better, and then make a decision. And I very nearly sent her a really nasty message after that third date and very nearly pushed her away.
The Old Pattern of Self-Sabotage
After our third date, I got really drunk and played Call of Duty with my friends online. Normally when I got drunk it was kind of a planned, premeditated drunk. But as soon as she left after the third date, I felt so rejected because she didn't meet my expectations. It was awkward, because I thought, okay, it's the third date, we should have sex. And this is exactly why it's good, especially as a man, not to carry these preconceived ideas around: okay, second date we have to make out, third date we have to have sex, fourth date we have to get married. Let things happen a bit more naturally. But also trust your intuition, and watch out for the tendency to sabotage things.
What I did is I asked my wife to be my girlfriend on the third date, and she said no. I felt really rejected. And at that point I could tell she was dating somebody else, and that's why she'd said no.
Now, sometimes in life the only way you're going to get better is through repetition. I had been in this exact situation several times before, where I'd gone out with a girl I really liked, who appeared to really like me, and for one reason or another something didn't perfectly line up. And I would send her a really nasty message at that point. I'd find some little vulnerability or flaw with her, rip it to shreds, send that nasty message, have that crazy phone call. And often it would happen drunk. Like with the dispatcher: two weeks after we had sex, she wasn't answering her phone one night, and I just blew her phone up with all these nasty messages. Felt really bad about it, called an escort to come over, then wanted to kill myself. So I've been through a lot of painful scenarios of my own creation while dating.
Because I'd been through all those painful scenarios before, I withheld sending a message to my wife that day. Instead I called my ex-girlfriend to come over and had sex with her the day after the third date with my wife. And that actually helped me not self-sabotage the relationship, or the future date with my wife, because I'd been feeling all righteous and high and mighty. Like I'm such a great person, and here she is dating somebody else, and I'm just dating her, and she's awful because she's dating two people. When there's no reason you can't date multiple people at the same time. It can be easier to focus on one person at a time, but unless you've agreed to only date one person, you can date however many people you want.
Why Communication Is Everything
This is why communication is so important. You should not expect things that haven't been explicitly agreed upon. My wife said no to being my girlfriend, so I figured, okay, this means I'm still single. I can hook up with my ex. So I called my ex to come over.
Now, my ex was not somebody either of us really enjoyed being with. It was one of the few relationships I had where I wasn't that passionate, just because I was scared of being single after I moved out from my parents' house. Fortunately, after three months, the thought of being single became really exciting to me, and she got to the point where she said she couldn't live without me. So I waited until she was home with her parents, then dumped her, because I figured, well, if she gets suicidal, she'll be home with her parents and they can deal with it. I actually was considerate enough to think, all right, let me not dump her while she's living by herself away from her family. So I found the time, dropped her off at her parents' house, and dumped her. And then a couple months later I called her, hooked up with her, and felt really disgusted with myself.
Here's the thing. From feeling really disgusted with myself, I thought, wow, I clearly have some significant issues myself. And I really wanted to be with Laura. And I decided I didn't care if she was dating another guy. I'm not going to screw it up on my own. I'm going to do whatever it takes to be with her, and I'm not going to hook up with anybody else. I'm just going to relentlessly go out with her until she agrees to be my girlfriend. And that, again, is why communication is so important to me.
Raw and vulnerable communication is so powerful, because so many conversations, especially in dating, are a whole date's worth of talking that could have been said in one sentence or one paragraph. Often you could have just summarized everything that was important very quickly.
Winning Her Over, One Honest Date at a Time
So after the third date, it was a few more weeks, and I went out on a fourth date and a fifth date with my wife. I kept thinking, oh my God, I'll do whatever it takes to be with this girl. I'm going to totally focus on being with her. On the fifth date she said no again to being my girlfriend. And I thought, okay, I know this is what I really want. I'm going to keep going out with her until she says yes. As long as she keeps going out with me, I'm going to keep asking every time. And on the sixth date she had sex with me and then said she'd be my girlfriend. And I thought, wow, that actually makes a lot of sense. It's been great ever since.
Then, a few weeks after she became my girlfriend, she said, I have something to tell you. And I thought, I know what this means. I've got to tell her too. She said, I was going out with another guy when I was going out with you. I said, I know. I got a very clear sense of that, and that's why I had my ex come over and had sex with her after our third date. She said, what? I said, you said no to being my girlfriend, so that means we weren't exclusive. She said, ew. I said, you said no to being my girlfriend, so that was allowed.
That transparency has been very helpful and was a good foundation for the relationship. I know a guy personally who was an alcoholic, and he felt so bad that he'd had sex with somebody else when he and his wife were first dating. Years later, they'd still never talked about it. I'm telling you, you need to have great communication in your relationships, and you might as well start as soon as possible. That was one of the first big things my wife and I got through in our early dating: having that level of honesty.
Transparency as a Commitment
My wife knows she can trust me, and I know I'm trustworthy, because I have an absolute commitment to talking with anyone about anything I do. If you want to know what discourages bad behavior, it's a commitment to putting everything you do out in the open for everyone to see. It's almost inconceivable for me to think about doing something I wouldn't want everybody to know about.
This is why, in my experience, it's been very easy to be faithful in my marriage. I see hot girls, and the thought comes into my mind that, man, wouldn't it be great to hook up with her? And then I think, how much fun would it be to tell everybody that you hooked up with her, even though you've got this hot wife who really loves you? How much fun would it be to see everyone react to you cheating? And then the idea is destroyed. I can't even think any further. I'm teaching you basic stuff about reality here, but if you refuse to think about an idea, you will not manifest it. When I used to relapse after periods of sobriety, I lusted over a drink for quite a while before I took it. I don't think you cheat without lusting over it for quite a while before you actually do it. So if you want to be faithful in a relationship, just be transparent about your thoughts.
I've told my wife when I've gotten a lot of thoughts about other women, and now my mind won't even hardly think about other women too much, because then I go, all right, have we thought about this girl enough that I need to talk to Laura about her? And it's like, all right, let's just stop this right now. Because I'll tell you, it's real interesting when you have a girl who's a friend, who's attractive, and you've thought about her so much that you need to talk to your wife about her. That's an uncomfortable conversation, and it's one I'm willing to have today. That kind of communication makes our environment very trustworthy. As long as Laura and I have been together, it's taken a very conscious decision by both of us to grow in the same direction. And that's what's really challenging over time.
The most honest first date I ever had
Communication, respect, and vulnerability really are some of the main things for a great foundation. Listen, this is why I had a girl before I made a lot of these changes, back when I was pretty reserved and would not even get honest with myself about my darkest spots, let alone share them with somebody else. I once had a girl who told me all of her darkest secrets on the first date. Things like childhood sexual abuse, an abortion, and cheating with a guy who was married. She told me all of these things on the very first date, and this was a very attractive girl.
At the time, I also realized, man, this girl is seriously into sex, and I had the worst picture come up in my mind of shaking her dad's hand at the wedding and saying, thanks for breaking her in, dad. It's just the most horrible picture you could imagine. All of this happened on the first date, and afterward I went home and told my parents how horrible this girl was for telling me these things so soon.
But you know what? I look back now and I'm like, my God, that kind of honesty is extremely attractive. Because she said, I get sick of these things coming up later and ruining the relationship, so I just tell everybody this on the first date. And I tried to tell her some stuff on the first date too, but I couldn't tell her things like I'm an alcoholic, because I wasn't ready to even be honest about that with myself. I couldn't tell her I was ashamed of a lot of the stuff I'd seen online and the women I'd paid to come over and be with me. I told her about the dispatcher and how that went down, but I couldn't even share the rest. At that time, I was simply not capable of being as honest as she was.
Now I look back, and out of all the first dates I went on, besides my wife, that was one of the most attractive women I ever went out with. If for some reason I couldn't be with my wife and I had to go back in time and pick somebody else, out of all the people I went on a first date with, I would have liked to do that first date again with my current personality, because the way I am now, that level of honesty and transparency and commitment to honesty and transparency is really attractive. Different strokes for different folks. I was not ready for that back in 2010. I was not ready for that, and since I've been with my wife, I've gone through that process.
Laying out the darkest things
I've gotten out all the darkest things I've done in my whole life. I've laid them out with my wife, I've laid them out with people in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I've laid them out in a book called Speaker Meeting 2017 and in Officer Banfield on Audible. I've even put them in more generic terms on my live streams and in my videos. Because I've learned that if you want to put the most graphic descriptions somewhere, put those in a book that's a little harder for the general public to access. Don't put it on the home page of your website. The police might come to your house if it's on the home page of your website and one person gets the wrong idea, which actually happened. So I'm grateful today to be where I'm at.
Dating can be a very long, difficult, painful journey, but it can also be something you look at like a roller coaster ride. You don't have to treat every time you go out with a girl who doesn't like you as some reflection of you. You don't have to assume that success means you go out on a first date, she likes you, and everything goes great from there. Success, when I look back on my life, was refusing to settle for that which was not right for both of us. It was saying no to a girl I wasn't attracted to. It was a girl saying no to me being an active alcoholic and a very self-centered person. That was success, because it gave me a chance to get where I'm at. Getting rejected over and over again because people don't like certain parts of you can be good motivation to change that which people don't like.
Are you prepared to receive what you want?
I'll close out on this note. Earlier I was talking about a girl named Laura, whose phone number I got in high school when I was a cashier. The general theme here is: are you prepared to receive what you think you want? One of the craziest things in life is when life gives us exactly what we want, and because we are not prepared to receive it, we shove it away.
Someone asked my opinion on the saying that you can't love someone if you don't love yourself first. I am absolutely on board with that. In my experience, you can only love someone else as much as you can love yourself. You can only give that which you have to give. I mean, I suppose I could borrow money and give you the borrowed money, but that always catches up with you in the long term. You can try to love somebody more than you love yourself, but that will catch up with you eventually. So yes, I'm big into the idea that the more you love and take care of yourself and cherish yourself, the more love you have to give, and people will generally find those who have a lot of love to give very attractive.
And sometimes, even as you are, if you're active in addiction or you're stuck in your past and self-centered and all you think about is poor me and these bad things that have happened to me, there may be someone who comes along who can see your capacity to love way more than you can. That's why dating can be so helpful, because my wife saw my capacity to love and to be how I am today more than I could. Being with her has helped me to be myself and to get out of the prison I was stuck in, the one I had put myself in of this is how I am, this is how I think, this is how the world is. My wife helped me get out of that, and I have helped her expand her world as well.
What my wife and I saw in each other
My wife had a relationship with a drug addict before me, and I thank God for him today, because in some ways it was a second chance for her to have a similar kind of relationship, and in other ways it was easier and something that would actually go well. The guy she dated before me who was a drug addict is dead now; he died from his drug and alcohol addiction.
So here are two stories to wrap this up. My wife went out with a guy in high school who was a little older than her and in college. He seems like he was a very nice guy, and he was very willing to do whatever she wanted, very cooperative, but she found him boring. He was not that interesting to her. This is kind of how my relationship with my first serious girlfriend was too. She was too willing to just say whatever I wanted and do whatever I wanted, and I was too willing to just bulldoze over her and not listen to her. That ends up creating resentment or boredom, so I ended up feeling pretty bored with my ex-girlfriend, and she ended up resenting me. She tried to dump me, I cried and whined that I couldn't live without her, and then she cheated on me and had to dump me after that, which is how she looks at it. I thank God she cheated on me and dumped me, because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten to date my wife, who I have a much better relationship with than I did with my ex-girlfriend.
My wife dated a guy who was very nice but just bored her; he wasn't interesting enough for her. Like me. I've been interesting for my wife. I have not bored her. Maybe I better check, though. Maybe lately I might be, maybe I'm not as interesting. But when we first dated, I was especially interesting for my wife. You never know what Jerry's going to do next. And yet that was not sustainable. What my wife found exciting was not sustainable. She liked the excitement of being with me the way I was as an active alcoholic, a selfish person, kind of volatile. She liked the excitement and the challenge of it, but it wasn't sustainable.
Two people helping each other change
So even if you are full of defects and you can hardly do anything about them, if you just keep going out with people, you may find someone who helps you be the best of yourself and change the things you just can't change on your own. One of the most beautiful things I've seen is when two people who are overweight, who have been struggling and alone and had a hard time finding anyone to date, get together, and they both motivate each other to lose weight and get healthy. God, that's beautiful.
My wife was very codependent when we started dating, and therefore drawn to somebody with lots of drama, like a drug addict or an alcoholic, so she was drawn to me. We both ended up helping each other a ton in our lives. She helped motivate me to get sober, and I helped motivate her to take responsibility for her life and not say, well, I'm upset because my boyfriend drank too much last night. No, you're upset because of the choices you've made, not because of what your boyfriend did. It's the boyfriend you chose. It's the husband you chose. Own your decisions. I've helped my wife take ownership of her life.
Often you have somebody like my wife, who was drawn to me because both of us wanted me to be responsible for all the problems in the relationship. Well, when I got sober, it was an uncomfortable adjustment, because once I get sober and I'm starting to take better care of myself, I don't want all the problems in the relationship to be about me anymore. That was an uncomfortable change for my wife, because instead of everything being basically my fault, now it was, oh, you know what, maybe I was a jerk in that situation and so was he, but I see what I did that caused a lot of problems here. This is why dating is so great: there are so many things you can do in dating that you just can't do by yourself. The people I know who are generally the happiest are generally people who are dating and in relationships.
Being alone, and being open
People who sit home by themselves watching TV and going to work seem to struggle to make any change at all in their lives. Dating and being with somebody else really will encourage you to make some change. And yet there are times in your life to just be alone too. If you've been with somebody else your whole life, then you barely even got to know what it's like to be yourself, and getting that time could be a good thing. People have different phases in their lives.
What can help is to just be open. If you're enjoying being by yourself, maybe be open, and don't just think about yourself. Think about what's best for everyone, because maybe there's someone who would really benefit from being with you, and you would really benefit from being with them. Maybe that might not be obvious, but maybe it's possible. It helps to be open to possibilities and not closed off, insisting it's got to be this way.
This goes generally. A lot of times we'll say, "Well, I can't date anybody because I'm divorced, because I have a kid, because I work too much, because I've got addiction issues." There's somebody out there who will date you just as you are. The more you're willing to craft yourself to be with the person you want to be with, the more responsibility you take, the more it may make things easier. But I don't care if you're in the middle of a divorce, if you're in the middle of an addiction, if you're overweight and unattractive. And those aren't even mutually exclusive: you can be overweight and be attractive, you can be a healthy weight and unattractive. I don't care what it is. If you go out with enough people, and you're ready to have somebody in your life, and you think about how good it would be for both of you, you'll find somebody. I don't care what else you've got going on. If you just keep going out on dates, you'll find somebody.
But if you'd rather go out on 20 dates instead of 200, there are changes you can make that'll help you lessen the number of people you need to go out with, and lessen the amount of suffering you need to go through in order to be with the person you want to be with. The faster you get ready, the faster it can happen.
Do you love yourself as you are?
Someone mentioned losing 130 pounds at the end of their marriage, only to find out their husband liked chubby chicks. What's beautiful is that all of us have different tastes. I have a friend, a real thin dude, and he likes chubby chicks. I don't get it, but I think our natural desires are created for every different situation. And this raises a question: do you really love yourself as you are? My wife says she actually preferred me when I was a bit heavier. She liked when I weighed like 200 pounds, and it was almost all fat too. When I met her I was like 210 pounds, and now I'm like 170. She said she misses that bigger version of me. She liked that thicker version. I like how she sees chubby chicks too, and she can't stop.
The girl who had everything I wanted
I've always had this drive. There was a girl who had everything I wanted. She was very attractive. She really liked me. I don't think a girl who liked me this much had come along for quite a while in my life. She really liked me. She had a car. She had a cell phone in 2001. I didn't get one until 2003. She had a cell phone in 2001. This was a popular girl at school. She went to a different school at night. She was very popular. Her friends were calling her constantly. She came over and picked me up in her car. She had money. Her parents had money. This girl had everything I could have wanted in a woman, except maybe I don't know if she liked to play video games or not. Maybe that might not have been there.
We go out to a movie. Mind you, I had never been out with a girl like this before. A girl who really liked me, who was really attractive, who was independent to the point of having her own car and her own money. I had never been out with a girl like this before, one who really liked me.
All my mind did the whole date was criticize. I could not even hardly enjoy the date at all because my mind constantly criticized one thing or another about her. "God, she's on her phone the whole time. I don't know if she actually does like me that much. She's on her phone. I don't know if she likes me so much." When really, think about it this way: you've got a girl who's 17, this popular, she's going to be on the cell phone. That's just what's done. I imagine these days everybody's pretty much on that cell phone all the time at 17. But my mind found anything it could look for.
I also got my mind focused on how terrified I was that she was going to kill us because she was on the cell phone. She had a sports car. Looking back now, I'm like, oh my God, I was not ready to get what I wanted. But back then, as soon as she picks me up, my mind is criticizing. Instead of enjoying, "Oh my God, I'm getting what I want," all my mind's thinking about is how she's going to kill us. She's on her cell phone. Maybe she was. She's on her cell phone driving a manual transmission at 17 years old. If you're on a manual transmission, you need one hand for the gear shift, one hand for the steering wheel, then two feet, one for the gas and the brake and one for the clutch. This girl was doing it, and she must have had experience because she was smooth with it. She's shifting, moving the phone from hand to hand and driving, and all I'm thinking about is dying. I'm too young to die. She's going to kill us. She's not even paying attention to me.
We watched a nice movie together. Then we went to one of her friend's houses afterward, and again my mind was just constantly criticizing her. My mind was wishing I could be back home and play video games too, because I'd played video games like six hours already that day, and I guess I hadn't had enough. Then my mind's afraid. We go over to her friend's house, and all of her friends are banging hot, because hot girls often have hot friends. All of her friends are hot. I'm like, I'm in way over my head at this point. We're in this really nice house with all these beautiful girls, and there's just me. There's no other dudes there. There's me and all these beautiful girls, and she's introducing me to all of her friends, which I realize is a pretty big compliment. She really likes me. And I am freaking out. I'm having an anxiety attack. "Oh my God, I'm going to be out too late." It's like 8 o'clock. "I'm going to get in trouble with my parents."
She's saying, like anything, to anybody, "Okay, we're going to get in the car and go over to one of my other friend's houses now." It's like 8:30. My parents would have been fine if I was out quite a bit later. But my head is just blowing up: "I need to go home. I'm going to get in trouble. Can you just take me home? It's late." She's like, "It's 8:30. Really?" I'm like, "Yeah, I just, I need to go." My dad hadn't even said I needed to be home by nine. So she takes me home, and it's a pretty quiet car ride home, and she's devastated. From her point of view, she doesn't understand. She really likes me and she doesn't get what's going on. She drops me off, and I feel relieved at first. "Oh, thank God, I can go home and play video games."
Waking up to what I'd done
I go upstairs and I go to play video games. I was playing this game called World War II Online, which I've actually played on stream, and we'll play on stream again. I check my email, and I get an email that I've been kicked out of the clan because my behavior was so immature, I was not working with the team and following orders. And all of a sudden it's like I wake up from falling asleep, and I see what I did. I'm like, no, I had exactly what I wanted, and somehow I screwed it all up. I was utterly miserable and depressed after that. God, that is one of the worst I've felt in my whole life, because for years I just told myself I'll be happy when a really hot girl comes along and just wants me really bad and I want her. And it was put right there, literally in front of me, and I was not ready to receive it.
You will notice your lack of readiness to receive what you want, too. When what you want comes along, your mind ruthlessly attacks it. For example, my favorite yoga instructor: the first few times I went to his yoga, my mind ruthlessly attacked his yoga, unlike lots of other instructors I've been to. My mind went after every part of his yoga. "He does the same old moves over and over again. I hate the music this guy plays." And this guy is my favorite yoga instructor.
The ego death of getting what you want
I've learned now that what happens when you're about to get what you really want is that it actually threatens your ego. Because if you get what you really want, it's going to have to make such big changes that, to some degree, it's going to annihilate you. It's going to be like you're dying. And this is why it can be really comfortable to just be by yourself and criticize everybody else: because you are in this position where you're kind of safe as an ego. But if you step out and you get to be with somebody else who's really great, it somewhat kills you.
The only reason I was able to get with my wife is because I was willing to go through the ego death to be with her. I went out from a place of, "I'll be with her, anything, I don't care. I'll get sober. I will stop playing video games. I'll lose weight. I don't care. I'll do anything to be with this girl." If you really want success with dating, and you really want to be with somebody you're happy with, the willingness to do anything to achieve that is essential. And what I notice when people are struggling is that the willingness is what's missing.
Rigidity is what stops you from receiving what you want
The more rigid you are, the less prepared you will be to change in order to get what you want. I am not going to say this comes with age, because some people in their 20s are extremely rigid and some in their 70s are very flexible. But rigidity is the block. When I look back on my dating life now, I see it as a great learning experience, because I have come to believe that life will consistently give me whatever I want. The main thing that stops me from getting what I want is my own unfulfilled preparedness, my own lack of readiness to receive it. And that often comes in the form of a kind of mental attack.
I have exactly what I want now in my career. I am filming a course on something I have huge passion about, and I am prepared to receive it. But in the recent past, my mind ruthlessly criticized every angle of my career. You do not have enough people watching. You are not making enough money. You are not making enough of a difference in the world. What I have realized is that often, when I am in the exact right place and I am getting exactly what I want, my mind will ruthlessly criticize it to test whether I really want it. Once I stick with it and confirm that this is what I want, my mind settles, and I can say to myself that I wanted this for a long time.
It is almost as if your mind tests you to see if you really do want something. This is difficult if you are identified with your thoughts, because when you think a critical thought about somebody, you believe that is the truth about them. What I have learned is that my mind will often be most critical right when I am about to get what I want.
When to disregard the criticism and when to listen
Now, sometimes that criticism is real, and this is exactly why you need other people's perspective. If you go out with someone and they are a total disaster, and all your friends think they are a total disaster, and your mind is saying they are a total disaster, that is where other people's point of view is helpful. I do not remember asking any of my friends about going out with the girl I ended up with. If I had asked all of them, they would have said, oh my God, how did you get a date with her? That is what my friends are still like with my wife. Oh my God, how did you end up with the hottest wife out of all of us? How did you, who could hardly get a date, who was hooking up with girls you did not even like that you paid to come over, who failed in every single way you could imagine, end up here?
Not every single way, but I had some bad first dates. I will put one out here for you as an example of a bad one. I go out with this woman. I meet her at a gas station in rural Mississippi. Not attractive at all. And I am thinking, well, maybe I can at least have sex with this woman even though she is not attractive. So I go back to her house, and she has got a daughter there, and the daughter is way, way younger than 18. And the daughter is telling me and her mom about how she is going out with these older guys. My intuition is screaming, get the fuck out of here. This is how people go to prison. You need to get out of here. This house has bad vibes and you need to go.
I still managed to ask the mom if she wanted to go back, and thank God she said no. And I got up out of that house right away, thinking, oh my God, that was ugly in there. I do not need to be in a situation like that. I told my friends about it and they laughed, saying, dude, that is so sketchy. I know. I just met this woman dating online, and that is what can happen. So I am glad I listened to my intuition too. My intuition said, look, this is not going to be a pretty situation if you stick around, and I got out. That is how I got here, by listening to my intuition. And I finally became ready to have exactly what I wanted.
Your dating life can save lives
I share this today with the hope it can prepare you to get ready for what you want. Because look at the world today. Almost all the bad things that happen are some single person who is miserable taking it out on other people. A shooting is almost always some lonely, miserable guy. Now imagine, in some parallel universe, if that guy had met somebody to date and build a great life with, maybe that awful tragedy would not have happened. You do not think of your dating life as something that could save lives, but I am telling you, it makes a big difference.
I want to give you a little painful motivation. If you are sitting at home just thinking it is too rough out there, that might be something you look back on in a review of your life and think of yourself as a coward for. I realize it is easier to hide. I realize dating can be brutally painful from all different angles, and it seems safe to just not participate anymore. But you getting out there and dating can make a huge positive difference in the world, and you might find somebody.
If you do not like sex, you might find somebody else who does not want sex either, and you can be asexual together and have a very nice relationship. Dating does not have to be this rigid idea that you have to be straight, get married, have a baby, and die together. You can be in your 60s or your 70s and find someone to keep you company, and at that point you may or may not want to have sex. Just talk about it. There are so many different possibilities.
The happiest periods of my life are when I am most connected
I have noticed that the happiest periods of my life are when I am most connected, and in our culture, dating is one of the best ways to be connected to other people. It is very difficult in most other relationships to achieve the level of intimacy you have when dating. Maybe dating for you is just somebody you are comfortable seeing you naked, when you are in the shower, someone you can really be yourself around, someone you do not have to put on makeup to impress. I encourage you to open your mind. What keeps you alone is usually your own unwillingness to adapt to be there with somebody, or your unwillingness to face the pain of meeting up with someone and it not working out, or meeting someone and it working for a while and then hurting again.
You can literally save lives and make a massive difference by getting out there and connecting with somebody. Now, it is okay if you need to be celibate for a while. That is fine too. I am just saying, listen to your heart. When your heart and your mind disagree, it often produces depression and anxiety. Most of the time our hearts are saying, get out there and love somebody. Sometimes our hearts are saying, okay, I need some space to be alone and find who I am again. But most of the time our hearts are saying, get out there and love somebody. And it does not have to be dating. It does not have to be a sexual relationship. To me, the essence of dating is just getting to know somebody and being intimate with somebody.
So I encourage you, have fun with it. Look at it as a journey. It is a ride, and it is not about the destination. I look back at the pain I used to suffer dating and today I think it is funny, even when it was scary. Even when I had a gun to my head and I was ready to end it all because my ex cheated on me and did not want to be with me anymore, I am glad I did not do that. I remember the last girl I went out with before my wife. I was so depressed, thinking, how many times can this not work? Am I just going to be alone forever? But I had that vision of how great life could be in true companionship with someone else, and I decided, I do not care how many times it hurts, I am going to keep trying until I get it right.
Even the greatest joy of your life may still be ahead
It can be scary to have as great a relationship as I have with my wife, because I realize that if something happened to her, I have the potential to be absolutely gutted, crying every day, hitting a level of misery I have never experienced before. And yet, even if that happens, I know there are more women out there who would be willing to be in my life and have a relationship with me. Not only that, but if it happened, I would be in a better position to help everybody who has been through that. Right now I am not in as good a position to help people who have lost a spouse, because I have not been through it.
So I love each of you, and I really appreciate you. If you are here right now, you are one of the few people who has really taken all of this in, and I hope it has made a positive difference in your life. There is so much good that can come into your life through dating. What is hard is that our minds focus on the negative, and the negative appears so large. But often it is just the unknown of dating and being with someone new, which could be the greatest joy you have ever experienced. Even if you are in your 60s or 70s and you think you cannot really have it that good dating again, you might find the greatest joy of your life. It may be yet to be experienced by you.
You might get a person into your life and think, well, I am never going to have a greater joy than having my kids or my first marriage. It changes the meaning of your past. It makes life useful. You can do an essentially unlimited amount of good in the world.
Being at your full capacity
You usually need somebody else to work with, though, whether it's a co-worker, a friend, or family. I find that in our culture so much is funneled into this one intimate dating relationship, and the truth is you really need it to be at your full capacity. So I'm glad that today I'm at my full capacity. Thank God for my wife, and thank God I stuck it out and went through so much pain and misery that I've finally made it to the promised land.
And you know what, things can happen. Ten years from now I could have a completely different situation. But I sure hope that in ten years, as my wife and I come up on our twenty-year anniversary, our relationship is just as happy as it's ever been. That's my vision for the future. I'm glad I'm at my full capacity, and I offer that same possibility to you as well.
If any of this spoke to you, I'd love for you to keep going with me. You can find much more of this story across my Dating playlist, where I share everything I went through to get here, in the hope that it saves you some of the pain and gets you to your own promised land a little faster.