Dating After Divorce: What I Got Wrong and Why I'm Taking It Slow

Short answer: I don't rush dating anymore, and that now includes sex itself. I've had sex with about 20 women and never had an STD, and in my live-stream answer on when to stop using protection I explain why I'd now rather not have sex at all with a woman I feel I need protection with. If we need it, we don't know each other well enough yet. I want the next woman I have sex with to be someone I'd have kids with, and the last. When the last woman I slept with offered something more adventurous on the very first night and I said no, she told me I was so vanilla. I think we could have worked up to that.

I finally understand why I used to rush. I hid my alcoholism from my ex-wife for the first six dates, lied about drinking on my Match profile, and kept the truth back until she was emotionally hooked. We married, and fifteen years later we divorced, because I had won her by maximizing short-term lust. In my live-stream confession about hiding my alcoholism for six dates I lay out the system I ran in the 2000s: a date was a sales funnel, success meant sex, and I censored every topic a woman might not like. What hurt most was seeing that I had carried that mindset into the year after my divorce, and that the women friends I'd had while married all left when I switched to "date me or I'm gone."

So now I go friends first. I tell a woman about my debt, my sobriety and my unusual career up front, even though honesty on date one costs me second dates, because the only woman I want is one who sees the real me and desires me from there. After more than 20 dates in the year since my divorce in 2025, my view is that a woman should have to earn each step and that friendship comes before romance. I'm not claiming I have it figured out. This is the approach I trust most right now, and I got here the hard way.

The core of it is simple. Treat every woman the same way you'd treat a guy friend. Don't send a stream of good morning texts, don't call someone your queen after a week, and let her be the one who texts first, asks you out, or moves things forward. In my October 2026 post on not wanting a woman to fall for me too fast I explain why I'd rather be known for who I really am than be lusted after for a version of me. It filters out people who only want the chase and protects my time. It also means I sometimes wait a long time for the phone to ring.

My thinking has changed in stages. In my September 2025 journal entry, written a few days after my ex-wife and I agreed to divorce, I wrote that I wanted love to find me in real life, through a friend, yoga, or even an AA meeting, rather than through an app. By June 2026 I was writing about matchmaking and about being a divorced dad in my 40s who wants more kids. That's where I learned how much filtering early helps: being clear that I'm sober, that I have two kids, and that I want more.

Dating Works Better When You Care, from June 2026, is where I was most frustrated. Almost any enthusiasm I showed got read as desperation, and I was tempted to stop caring at all. Looking back, going cold is the wrong fix. The better answer is to stop managing someone's feelings with enthusiasm or apathy, and to watch how she acts over time.

The same lesson shows up in my own dating log. In I Went on 20+ Dates After My Divorce. Here's Everything I Was Doing Wrong, from September 2026, I list the mistakes. I gave up on women too quickly, offered exclusivity before a woman did, called one woman my queen after a week and over-invested in her. After tens of thousands of dollars on matchmaking, coaching, apps and photos, I still had to learn that effort has to come in the right order. Dating should also be fun, and I'd rather stay single than rush into another marriage.

Some of the practical questions here overlap with other hubs on my site. If you're weighing apps, see my dating apps hub, where I cover the addiction, the bad deal, and whether to go back. If sobriety is part of your picture, my sober dating hub covers restraint and staying in your body on a date.

Below this opening, the posts run from oldest to newest: the 2025 journal entry, the June 2026 posts, the September post on mistakes, the October post on friendship first, the live-stream section on hiding my alcoholism to win my wife, and the live-stream section on waiting for sex and protection. Each appears in full, so you can read the reasoning and not just my conclusion. I'm still dating and still hoping to build a lasting relationship. What has changed is how I go about it, and rushing never worked for me.

If you're going through a similar stretch and want my perspective on your own situation, you can get a personal video review at https://jerrybanfield.com/review/.

I've Slept With 20 Women and Never Had an STD. Now I'd Rather Wait Than Use Protection. (October 15, 2026)
I Hid My Alcoholism for Six Dates to Win My Wife. Now I Make Friends First (October 6, 2026)
I Don't Want a Woman to Fall for Me Too Fast (October 13, 2026)
Dating After Divorce: What I Got Wrong and Why I'm Taking It Slow (September 4, 2026)
Dating Works Better When You Care (June 20, 2026)
Divorced Dad in My 40s Wanting More Kids: What I've Learned Dating Again (June 15, 2026)
I Can't Date Like I Did 15 Years Ago (June 13, 2026)
I Want Love to Find Me the Real Way (September 29, 2025)

I've Slept With 20 Women and Never Had an STD. Now I'd Rather Wait Than Use Protection.

From my live stream on October 15, 2026.

I've had sex with about 20 women and I've never had an STD. Now I'd rather not have sex at all than have it with a woman I feel I need protection with. Someone on my live stream asked me at what point in a new relationship it's okay to stop using protection, and my honest answer was that it depends on how fast you want to go and how well you know each other. Here is how I think about it now, as my own experience and not as advice for anyone else.

If it's a first date, I think you should definitely be playing it safe. I haven't always done that, but that's what I want going forward, and the last time I had sex I was playing it safe. Think about how dumb it would be to be married and in a relationship for 15 years, then catch something or get someone pregnant who you don't even know that well. For me, the first time with someone new would not have been a good time to take that chance.

If We Need Protection, We Don't Know Each Other Yet

For me, it comes down to how well we know each other. Say I've gotten to know a woman over a long period of time, like months. We've been friends, I have a high level of trust with her, I know we both want a family, we've both done our research on each other, and she fully accepts me, the good, the bad and the ugly. If we got to that point and hadn't had sex yet, I'd say there would be no point in protection.

Ideally, I'd get to know a woman so well that protection would be unnecessary. To me, protection is mostly for someone you don't know that well. So if I feel I need to use protection with a woman, I'd rather we just don't have sex at all, because clearly we don't know each other well enough yet. We should focus on being better friends and getting to know each other first. I realize that doesn't make sense if you're trying to move fast and have sex on the first, second or third date. I'd just rather get to know a woman over a much longer time first.

Part of the reason is that it's way too easy to stop using protection too quickly with somebody you don't even know. You have sex on the first date, and by the time you're half a month in, it's very easy to just transition out of it in the heat of the moment. I don't want to end up in another divorce 2, 5, 10 or 15 years from now. I want the next woman I marry to be the next woman I have sex with.

Sex is so powerful. It can create life. It can also destroy life through diseases, and it can create all kinds of destruction through emotions, through people making things up afterward, and through sexual regret. It's both creative and destructive. So I'd rather take care of myself on my own until I'm with a woman I'd be willing to have children with. I wrote about why I think talking honestly about sex early matters in my post on sex education, and this is the other side of it: talking openly doesn't mean rushing.

About 20 Women, No STD, and I'd Like to Keep It That Way

Another person on the stream asked me straight out if I have any incurable diseases. No. I've never had an STD, even though I've had sex with about 20 women. Roughly half of the time I was careful and roughly half of the time I wasn't, including some first dates and including one night after a strip club. The last STD test I had was right before I started dating my now ex-wife.

I'd like to keep it that way. You can get an incurable disease out there when you're with the wrong person, and I'm not trying to get one of those. So I'd prefer to meet a woman where we really love each other, we really know each other, we wait to have sex, and then she's the last woman I ever have sex with. Sex is fun, but I don't need to get that crazy with it.

The way I figure it, you can always get adventurous later. If I ever want to explore something wilder, like BDSM, I can get into that in my 50s, 60s or 70s. Why not? The older you get, the less time you have left to live with the consequences. Don't mess around and catch something in your 20s, because you might have to live with it for a very long time.

"You're So Vanilla"

Someone else asked whether my marriage included more adventurous things in the bedroom. In the beginning it did. The first couple of years we were together, my ex was much more open and much more eager to please me. Especially in the last few years, there were many more boundaries, and she wasn't interested anymore. It wasn't a very big issue on its own, but it wasn't only the bedroom. It was all kinds of things. I'd say, let's go to a yoga class, and she didn't want to. Now she goes to the same kind of things with her new boyfriend that she didn't want to do with me, because she was carrying resentments going all the way back to around 2012. So I am very interested in the next woman being more open-minded, more willing to explore, and more willing to have fun.

Here's the funny part. The last woman I had sex with offered something more adventurous right away. I said, hold on, I just met you like this, I don't think I'm ready for that the very first time. She said all right, she was just checking, and asked if there was anything I wanted. I said no, I'm good, I don't need anything. I hadn't literally just met her, since I knew her from another context, but it was the first time we were having sex. She said, "You're so vanilla." And I said yeah, this is the first time we're having sex. I don't need to do anything wild the first time. I think we could work up to that.

That's where I've landed. I want to be open and have fun with the right woman, and I want to get there slowly, after we really know each other. If you're working through your own dating or relationship choices and want my perspective on your situation, you can get a personal video review from me.

I Hid My Alcoholism for Six Dates to Win My Wife. Now I Make Friends First

From my live stream on October 6, 2026.

I hid my alcoholism from my ex-wife for the first six dates, and it worked. I won her, we got married, and fifteen years later we divorced, which is about the outcome you should expect when you win a woman by hiding who you are. I said that out loud on my live stream after a night of strange dreams, because I woke up with a realization I'm not proud of: in the year since my divorce, I have been the problem in my dating, not the women I kept making videos about.

I had a lot of dreams that night. I dreamed my ex was with me again. I dreamed we were getting attacked. I dreamed I was drinking and enjoying it and everything was going fine, then somebody showed up with a bunch of cocaine and people came to steal it from us, and I was reaching for my friend's gun but he had too many guns and none of the magazines matched any of them. It was a mess. When I woke up, for some reason, all these insights about my dating were sitting there waiting for me. I had been writing dating titles that made it sound like dating had been so rough on me, as if one woman after another had done something to me. I can't control what other women do. What I can control is how I behave, and when I looked honestly at how I behaved dating in the year after my divorce, I did not like what I saw.

The executive summary: I was dating like it was still the 2000s

The short version is that I had been trying to date the way I dated in the 2000s, and I am a different person now. That mismatch set up most of the conflict. Back then my objective was to get into bed with a woman as soon as possible. That was the goal, and that was the energy I put out. A woman knew I desired her, that I was lusting after her, that I was very horny, because I made sure she knew. At the same time I censored anything she might not like. I carefully curated the experience a woman had with me. I knew there were topics I should not bring up, points of view I should not mention, things about my life I should not talk about. I was performing.

To me a date was a sales funnel. Get as many dates as I could. Success meant having sex. After sex, I would see whether I actually liked her, and if I didn't, I stopped calling. The one real benefit of that system was clarity. I knew exactly what I wanted, I pursued it intentionally, women could figure it out fast, and I pushed away anyone who was not interested in the same thing.

One night I had two dates scheduled with two different women, and the first one came over wearing a promise ring and talking about Jesus. I made sure to make no moves on her at all. In my head it was: get out. You are not interested in anything but taking things slow, I have zero interest in that, get out. I never called her or responded to her again, and I didn't feel bad about it. If anything I felt a little disgusted. That's how synced up my behavior and my attraction points were back then. The woman knew what she was getting, because the whole show was built around getting it. I've written before about two dates in one day in my post-divorce dating, and the contrast with that older night tells you how differently the two versions of me operated.

How I won my wife: six dates without a drink and a lie on my Match profile

When I attracted my now ex-wife, I had what she wanted and she had what I wanted. She was gorgeous, and I worshipped her, while very clearly playing the game to get what I wanted. I did not call or text a lot, because my whole strategy was that she needed to be as turned on by me as possible and nothing else mattered.

Here is what that looked like in practice. I was an alcoholic who drank quite a bit, and I did not drink around her at all until we'd had sex and were in a committed relationship. I decided she should not see any of me drinking. For the first six dates I intentionally lied on my Match profile about drinking, I never brought it up, and I hid my alcoholism from her until she was sufficiently emotionally hooked. I kept hiding it a good way into the relationship, until she was at a point where it would be hard for her to break up with me. That is what I did.

The logic was simple and ugly. I wanted sex, so I hid anything that might discourage a woman. I hid every red flag I could find, because I did not want to give a woman a chance to reject me. If I hid every reason she could reject me, she couldn't.

She was dating another guy at the time who probably would have been more appropriate for her. I got her to want me more, choose me, and get into bed with me, because that is precisely what I was optimizing for. Then fifteen years later we got divorced, because we had grown apart and because I had essentially maximized short-term lust. Short-term lust is not a foundation for a relationship. What works in the short term often does not set you up well for the long term, and my marriage is my best example of it.

Honesty would have cost me a second date, and that was the point

Someone in the chat said honesty is the best policy, and what's tricky in life is that in the short term it often isn't. If I had told my ex-wife on our first date what kind of alcoholic I was, she would have run. There is no way I would have gotten a second date. Back then I had learned exactly that lesson: being honest sabotaged me getting what I wanted, so I said what I needed to say and got laid.

I'm a different person now. I'm rigorously honest and transparent, and I do not want to hide the reasons a woman shouldn't be with me. Take my debt. I don't want to walk around with a woman acting like I have a bunch of money when I have debt. I don't want to act like I have a normal corporate career when I don't. I want a woman to know exactly who she is getting and exactly what is going on with that. I've argued elsewhere that telling a woman everything is not the whole answer in dating, but it is the only policy I can live with now.

Here's the catch I finally saw. I have been doing the modern equivalent of saying "I'm an alcoholic" on the first date, over and over, and women have not been giving me second dates. In the short term that sucks. In the long term it is going to work out much better, because I am only interested in a woman who sees who I really am and desires me from there. In the short term that may mean I'm single and celibate for longer. In the long term I'm much more likely to end up with someone I'm with for 30, 40, 50 or 60 years.

I'll add one thing about honesty, since the subject came up in a Facebook discussion someone brought to the stream: telling someone you want a relationship when you don't is dishonest, but I don't believe in turning that into criminal charges. Men could claim the same thing about women. Unless there is a serious act of violence, dragging the police into dating is manipulative and insane. Ideally we are honest with each other, and that is on each of us, not on the courts.

The dumbest thing I could do now is sleep with the wrong woman

I'm not that kind of guy anymore, and I don't want to date like him. The dumbest thing I could do, the worst possible decision available to me, would be to have sex with the wrong woman. I learned that the last time I did it, about a year before this stream. I knew her for at least a month. We spent hours and hours together. This was not a random date off an app or a matchmaking setup. Then we had sex, and the old mindset kicked straight back in: all right, have her come over, I'll listen to her, and I'll see. She did not want a monogamous relationship either, but after sleeping with me she wanted to see me a lot more. She had a great time, she was thoroughly satisfied, she really liked me and wanted to keep going. I did not want to keep seeing her, and she was hurt. That is exactly what the old system produces, and I did not enjoy producing it.

What I see in most dating advice is that it never asks what kind of relationship you want or what kind of person you are. Looking at the person I am now, I am the kind of guy who needs to be friends with a woman first. I need time to get to know someone. I don't want to jump into bed. And I was still approaching dating as if I were me in my twenties, carrying the old mindset without being able to fulfill it. I'm not triggering that trauma-bonded, lust-driven thing I used to trigger in my twenties, because I'm not that person, yet when women put me in a position where I could simply be their friend, I said no, and then I felt like a loser about it.

The women friends I lost by saying "date me or I'm gone"

When I was married I had a bunch of women friends. When I started trying to date those friends after the divorce, they all went away. I was consistently impatient, and impatience does not match who I am, so I was being inauthentic. Out of all of those friends, probably one would have turned into a girlfriend if I had not switched overnight from "I'm married and she's my friend" to "I'm getting divorced, I want to date you, and if you don't want to date me I won't be your friend anymore." Nobody stays for that. The morning I went live I kept asking myself how the hell I had not realized this sooner.

I think women usually fall in love best over time, even more so than men. I saw a study that said a man's superficial attractiveness matters less and less the longer a woman knows him, to the point where after about six or nine months it almost does not matter at all. That is the timeline that feels natural to me now, and it is the exact opposite of the sales funnel.

What a pushy AA sponsor taught me about gentle energy

The clearest picture of this came from Alcoholics Anonymous, where I was looking for a new sponsor. One guy was aggressive about it. He all but told me he was going to be my sponsor and then said, let's go take a walk outside, right now. My reaction was: ew. I appreciated that he wanted to help me, but coming on that strong made me want to work with him much less. The guys who just came up and chatted with me, and the one who has been texting me every morning, made me want to work with them.

Then it hit me that the pushy guy was me. That was my whole energy in the 2000s. I came on very strong, I would try to pick up a woman at the grocery store, and I followed through consistently with that energy. It quickly put off any woman who didn't want it, and the ones who did want it were over at my apartment soon enough. The way I am now, that does not work, and I don't want it to.

My personality now is the kind of guy you'd be friends with, come to love and respect over time, want a long-term relationship with and want to father your kids. I'm not optimized to get women lusting over me. Maybe that happens sometimes, but it is not my lane. So I have to do in dating what those gentle sponsors did with me: no coming on strong. If you go after that lustful energy, you accept the consequences that come with it. I don't want those consequences anymore. I have to go with the gentle energy, and accept its consequences instead, which mostly means waiting longer and hearing no more often in the short term.

I go much deeper on all of this, with the stories I left out here, on my dating channel at jerrybanfield.com/date/. The takeaway from this one is simple: know what type of guy you are now, not who you were, and date like him.

I Don't Want a Woman to Fall for Me Too Fast

From my video published October 13, 2026.

I Used to Rush Every Woman Into Falling for Me

I used to try to get a woman to fall in love with me as fast as possible. And if it wasn't happening right away, I would give up. I figured that if we weren't instantly building chemistry, if we weren't immediately escalating, if we hadn't kissed by the second date, if we hadn't had sex by the third date, then this was dead. There was nothing here. It was a waste of time. I've seen how crazy that is as it's played out over the long term, and I've watched what's happened in other people's lives as well. I laid a lot of those mistakes out in I Went on 20+ Dates After My Divorce. Here's Everything I Was Doing Wrong.

So now I'm going to take my time. I'm going to take it slow. I'm not going to rush it, because I can see why I tried to rush in dating before: I was afraid that if a woman really got to know me, she wouldn't like me and she'd leave me. The basic idea was that I'd try to get a woman hooked emotionally, and especially to have sex as soon as possible, because then it would be much harder to break up with me, much harder to leave me. You see, I was afraid that if a woman knew the real version of me, she wouldn't want to stick around. So I tried to move as fast as possible so that I could secure access to a woman and sex and build a life, and then maybe a woman would tolerate me after she got to know me. I went into that fear in You Can't Find Love While Trying Not to Get Hurt.

The problem with that is it's a bad strategy. When you're making a big decision, is it usually a good idea to rush into it without thinking and without doing much research? Or is it a good idea to try to think it through, ask some people's opinions, and see how you feel over a longer period of time? Take college, for example. I did piss-poor college planning and research because I was playing video games just about every day. I put the minimal effort into picking out a college, and I ended up going to the University of South Carolina on a scholarship I did not want. I didn't want to go there. It was my backup option, because I didn't put much effort in.

Dating Feels Exhausting Because We're Performing

A lot of us find dating today so exhausting, and we don't have time for it, because we're overwhelmed doing too many things that don't matter. We waste our time trying to get more views online when it doesn't pay the bills for most of you. It does pay the bills for me, because I'm a professional and I've done this for 15 years. But for most of you, you're wasting time trying to get views online. You're trying to impress too many people. You're trying to make money you don't need, or you're trying to do too many things. And then dating is exhausting on top of that, because you feel like you have to perform.

I know what that's like. I'd show up on a date thinking, well, I can't say this. I can't say that. I've got to get this woman to like me, to lust over me, to want me, to feel chemistry. Do I need to ask her to kiss tonight? Do I need to hold her hand? Man, dating is so much better when we just approach another person and investigate: would we like to know them as a friend? Would this person even be a friend?

Earlier this year I got way too excited about a woman because she did yoga, she was attractive, she played tennis, and she was a content creator. Those were like checking boxes, and I've since realized those are not big things that really matter for having a relationship. A lot of us are dating today with way too superficial ideas. Superficial, in terms of dating, the way I see it, means you're not really looking at what's important. I've said before that it's not you, it's the dating apps, and the apps train us to screen on exactly this surface stuff.

What's important to me in dating is health. Is a woman healthy? Are we healthy together? Is she mentally and physically healthy? Number two is family. Does she want family? Does she love family? Does she love kids? Is family an important part of her life? Number three is communication. Can we talk? Can we understand each other? Can we respect each other? And I can't get to know those three things very well on one, two, three, four, five, even six, maybe even 10 or 20 dates. I just can't evaluate all of that very well, because a woman might look really healthy on the surface, but then you find out about some mental health issues that just destroy everything. Or a woman might say she wants family, and then the next day say that she doesn't want kids, that she doesn't have time for that. Or a woman might appear to communicate when she's trying really hard to impress me, but when you see her on a bad day, she's not responding to text messages. I worked through the question of how to find the right person in Learn Love Episode 3.

So what I've learned is that I don't want to get a woman lusting really hard over me. I want a woman who's curious and wants to see if I'm worth getting to know better.

My 15-Year Marriage Started With Both of Us Performing

Now, I acknowledge the difficulty: if you take more time to get to know somebody, you can have a sunk cost, where you put all this time into someone who ends up not being worth it. After you get to know them better, you're like, man, I just wasted my time. Here's the thing, though. In the short term it might look like that, but think about the long term. I just got divorced last year, and we were together 15 years. If we had tried to be friends first, I guarantee you it wouldn't have worked. My ex used to say, lots of times when we were married, that the two of us wouldn't have been friends or met naturally if we hadn't met through online dating. And then she'd say that when we did meet through online dating, we pretty much didn't communicate except to set up a second date and a third date and so on. We didn't spend much time talking on the phone.

We were both kind of just rushing to have sex, while also trying to act like we were waiting. We were both performing, and both focusing mostly on: wow, I'm so attracted to her. I want her so bad. I want her to like me. I'm going to try to avoid saying things that will make her not like me. Maybe occasionally throw out a little thing here or there to test her a little bit, to get her emotional. The two of us were just locked in on getting laid, and she'd hate to admit that. What she'd also hate to admit is that there was another guy who was trying to get to know her more slowly, and she chose me instead of him, even though on paper he was a better option, because I was feeling and fueling chemistry more. I was doing everything I could to get her to fall in love with me, to fall for me.

But she wasn't even seeing the real version of me. I made sure to hide my alcoholism from her. I'm sober 12 and a half years now, but back then I did not have a single drink with her on any of our first dates. Not until we'd had sex and were in a committed relationship did I have a single drink around her. Now think about how dishonest that was. Drinking was such an important part of my life, and I minimized it because I knew a woman with any level of sanity, or any kind of knowledge of alcoholism, would not want to be around a guy who drank the way I did, who binge drank, who would drink for 10, 12-plus hours, get wasted, be in bed with a hangover the next day, and then do it again as soon as possible.

The Queen: How One Great Week Fooled Me

That's what I see as the main problem people are having in dating today: this bounce back and forth that comes from desperation. Ideally, what we would do in dating is take it slow with a bunch of people at once, by simply having a bunch of people as friends. I credit Ashley Cummings, in the discussion she had with me, for helping me see this. And I definitely ripped off the basic idea for this title from a woman I dated earlier, whom I nicknamed the queen, because I told her "you're my queen" after a week of dating.

I see now how nuts that was. Really? You've known this woman a week, and this woman's your queen? This woman is everything you've been looking for? Bro, you don't know this woman. You don't know somebody when you've only met them and dated them for a week. You don't know them, because anybody can have a great week. But soon enough I got super excited about this woman. I spent 12 hours or so with her in the first week, and I was crying. I was like, this is great. I found the love of my life. And then over the next two weeks she withdrew and showed me the negative side of her personality: the side that couldn't be bothered to pay attention to me, that would play games, that would take 10-plus hours to respond to a text while doing a whole bunch of other stuff like editing videos. She showed me over those next two weeks all the things that were not so friendly, not the kind of person I would want to date.

If I had taken things slower with her, I would have seen that. And she said she wanted to take things slow. This is the crazy part: a lot of us do want to take things slow, but we get so desperate, because a lot of us today are having a hard time dating. We're using too many of the wrong things to screen people, and that puts us in a position where we're often single, or we get with the wrong person. Then, when we get with the wrong person and break up, we're not happy, and we think it's somehow them. I wrote about wanting to do this differently in I Want Love to Find Me the Real Way.

Be Friends With Lots of Women for Months

The better way that I'm seeing, and the way I'm doing things now, is that I want to be friends with a woman and get to know her over months. The way to do that is to get to know and be friends with lots of women for months. This allows me to not just be obsessed with one woman. It allows me to see which woman is consistently more interested in me, and it allows me to see if I think about her, and if I miss her when she's not messaging me. When I first started doing this, which I described in I Started Talking to 14 Women at Once. Everything Changed., the whole thing shifted for me.

This also allows me to provide an equal opportunity to every woman and to treat women the same as I treat my guy friends. When you're trying to date really fast instead of taking things slow, what you end up doing is giving the people you're dating special treatment. It can feel good when you're on the receiving end of it, having all those flirty text messages and constant attention. But it feels horrible when that's withdrawn. The woman who was texting me all day every day, sending flirty messages, seven messages in the morning with songs to listen to and all these things, suddenly switches. Literally in a period of a few days, she switches to now she doesn't have time to talk to me. She can't talk to me. She's canceling our date. She's taking hours and hours to respond to messages. I'm lucky to get one message from her all day, and it'll be a question like, "Hey, what are you up to today?" Then 10 hours later I get this exhausted voice memo reply. And it's like, wait a minute, what happened to the woman who three or four days ago was all over me, super enthusiastic and in love with me? Where did that woman go? Who is this woman now who doesn't have time for me?

That's the problem with dating fast: you over-invest, and then it's brutal pulling back. But I understand how challenging it is to make the switch, because at first it's like, well, I don't even know anybody to be friends with. I pushed away a bunch of women I could have just been friends with. And how do you even be friends with somebody without trying to jump in bed with them, or navigate dating, or get jealous?

Everybody Gets Treated the Same

Here's what I do now, and I'll go deeper on this in future posts. Everybody's equal. I treat everybody the same, and that means when I'm getting to know a woman, I'm not giving her special extra attention. I'm not thinking about her all the time. I actually sit back and wait for the woman to invite me to do something. I wait for the woman to text me first, because this is how I operate with my guy friends. I don't go around good-morning texting my guy friends. Not a single person in the world gets a good morning text from me, especially if they didn't send one, and especially if I sent the last message. There's nobody I just go around saying good morning to, or constantly checking up on, wondering how they're doing. I don't do that with my guy friends. I don't do that with my brother. When my daughter is with her mom, I won't even message my daughter all day. Sometimes I will. If I'm not going to see her all day, she's 11, I'll send her a "good morning, hope you have a nice day" text. But other times I don't, and that's my daughter. There are days I don't call my mother, because if she wants to call me, she knows where I'm at.

And yet I'd been giving these women all this special treatment, trying to get them to fall in love with me by messaging them all the time, and then it doesn't work. This is a different lesson from the one in I Thought Waiting to Text Made Me More Attractive. I Was Wrong. Back then I was playing games with timing to seem attractive; now I'm simply treating a woman like every other friend. It's so nice, because now every woman is just a friend until she reaches out and wants to date. I only respond to what women send to me. If a woman doesn't message me, I'm not going to message her. If a woman drops off in her messaging with me, I will drop off in my messaging with her. If a woman takes forever to reply, I can still be more responsive than that. But if a woman in the past has proven she's unreliable, inconsistent, prone to not responding to my text messages and ghosting me, and then she suddenly shows up again, I'm not going to continue the conversation. She's going to have to do more work than usual and prove that she actually wants to be at least a friend.

This protects me. This gives me a clear focus for my energy. This allows me to just let the women who want to date me present themselves. And I make it clear when I communicate with women, too. For example, I have a woman friend who's married, so there's no possible dating interest there, and she called me today. I almost never reach out or call her or ask how she's doing first, because it seems to me, at least, that women tend to be the social planners. They tend to have many more friends than men, they tend to organize and be involved in more social activities than men, and from my view, what women tend to present to me, at least, is that their lives are busier than mine. They have more options for places to go and people to see, especially girlfriends and places they're invited.

So I look at it this way: if a woman's not inviting me to something, if a woman's not interested in seeing me enough to send me the first text, if a woman is not the one who makes sure she's getting attention from me, then I treat her the way I treat everybody else. You're just a friend. This allows me to see over time which women are consistent, and it allows the women to fall for me slowly, because I'm not out here trying to make them lust after me. And if they go find some other guy and bang him on the first date, then that's fine with me, because they haven't taken up much space in my life anyway. As I put it in You're Winning at Dating Even When It Doesn't Work Out, that's not a loss.

The Woman Has to Escalate Every Step

And then maybe at some point there's a woman who sees, hey, this is Jerry, and I really like Jerry because I really know Jerry. In the long term, that's what I want. In the short term, friendship provides a lot of the validation I was seeking from dating. A lot of times, when you're trying to rush into dating, you'll also blow up things that could have been a friendship. What I'm finding now is that women start in the friend zone with me and get no special treatment, and thus the only way things escalate is if the woman escalates things with me: if she starts texting me more often, if she starts sending me photos, if she asks me to do something, if she starts calling me. I do not escalate things anymore, because I'd prefer to take as long as possible to get to know a woman. When you don't do that, you end up married to somebody, having kids with somebody, and wondering, how the hell did we get here? We're such different people. We don't seem compatible in so many ways. Oh, we were just in a hurry, and we both didn't research each other that much. That's a big part of why I can't date like I did 15 years ago.

With going slow, I'm able to have lots of women as friends. I'm able to get validation from my women friends, and then I'm able to just sit back and relax. If a woman invites me to something, I'll consider going to it. Otherwise I'm at home filming videos, going to meetings, hanging out with my kids. And this is a place that's peaceful. I'm around women. I'm interested in women. But I'm not out there trying to get a woman to fall in love with me, because if a woman falls in love with me, I want her to know who I really am and what I really stand for, not some fake, superficial, surface version of me. I want her to know the kind of jokes I like, to know my exact financial situation, to know what I do on YouTube and the kind of videos I make, and how I feel. To me, that's where you can have real, long-term, lasting love: when you get to know each other at that level. That's the kind of love I described in The Right Person Makes You Want to Give, Not Take.

So to me, the ideal dating strategy, at least for straight dating, is to be friends with a lot of the kind of people you might like to date, take your time getting to know them, and don't put expectations on it. These days, at least to me, it seems the woman needs to escalate things, and I don't escalate things anymore. If you want to get my phone number, go out, kiss me, have sex with me, it is a hundred percent up to the woman to escalate every single step of that, because I'm satisfied just being friends otherwise. And I know that the more women I'm friends with, the more likely one of them falls in love with me. If I have a woman as a friend, in many cases, not all, but in many cases, I would be willing to escalate. You can watch how all of this has unfolded over the past year on my Dating playlist.

Thank you for reading. If this post is helpful for you, go to jerrybanfield.com and grab a review. You can tell me your dating situation, and I will give you my perspective on it. Telling so many people about my thoughts and my dating situation and getting feedback has been incredibly helpful for me to get at peace with dating and stop using ineffective strategies. I'm there to help you. All my links are at jerrybanfield.com.

Dating After Divorce: What I Got Wrong and Why I'm Taking It Slow

Originally published September 4, 2026.

Short answer: I don't rush dating anymore. I used to try to get a woman hooked as fast as I could, and I now think that was the main reason so many of my relationships went nowhere. After more than 20 dates in the year since my divorce in 2025, my view is that a woman should have to earn each step, and that friendship comes before romance. I'm not claiming I have it figured out. I'm saying this is the approach I trust most right now, and I got here the hard way.

The core of it is simple. Treat every woman the same way you'd treat a guy friend. Don't send a stream of good morning texts, don't call someone your queen after a week, and let her be the one who texts first, asks you out, or moves things forward. In my October 2026 post on not wanting a woman to fall for me too fast I explain why I'd rather be known for who I really am than be lusted after for a version of me. Does it work? Partly. It filters out people who only want the chase and it protects my time. It also means I sometimes wait a long time for the phone to ring.

My thinking has changed in stages. In my September 2025 journal entry, written a few days after my ex-wife and I agreed to divorce, I wrote that I wanted love to find me in real life, through a friend, yoga, or even an AA meeting, rather than through an app. I was still open to online dating then, but I already doubted how distracting it would be. By June 2026 I was writing about matchmaking and about being a divorced dad in my 40s who wants more kids. That's where I learned how much filtering early helps: being clear that I'm sober, that I have two kids, and that I want more, and wearing a hand-written t-shirt that says the same thing.

Dating Works Better When You Care, from June 2026, is where I was most frustrated. Almost any enthusiasm I showed got read as desperation, and I had a run of women who warmed up only after I went quiet. I wrote then that I was tempted to stop caring at all. Looking back, going cold is the wrong fix. The better answer is to stop trying to manage someone's feelings with enthusiasm or apathy, and to watch how she acts consistently over time.

The same lesson shows up in my own dating log. In I Went on 20+ Dates After My Divorce. Here's Everything I Was Doing Wrong, from September 2026, I list the mistakes. I thought dating wasn't worth the effort. I gave up on women too quickly. I offered exclusivity before a woman did. I told one woman she was my queen after a week, and I over-invested in her. I had already spent tens of thousands of dollars on matchmaking, coaching, apps and photos, and I still had to learn that effort has to come in the right order: I put effort in first, and I back off when the effort doesn't come back. Dating should also be fun, and I'd rather stay single than rush into another marriage and more kids.

Below this opening, the posts run from oldest to newest in order: the 2025 journal entry, the June 2026 posts on matchmaking, enthusiasm and being a dad who wants more kids, the September post on mistakes, and the October post on friendship first. Each one appears in full, so you can read the reasoning and not just my conclusion. The summary: I'm still dating and still hoping to build a lasting relationship. What has changed is how I go about it, and rushing never worked for me.

If you're going through a similar stretch and want my perspective on your own situation, you can get a personal video review at https://jerrybanfield.com/review/.

I Don't Want a Woman to Fall for Me Too Fast

From my video published October 13, 2026.

I Used to Rush Every Woman Into Falling for Me

Dating Feels Exhausting Because We're Performing

So what I've learned is that I don't want to get a woman lusting really hard over me. I want a woman who's curious and wants to see if I'm worth getting to know better.

My 15-Year Marriage Started With Both of Us Performing

The Queen: How One Great Week Fooled Me

Be Friends With Lots of Women for Months

Everybody Gets Treated the Same

The Woman Has to Escalate Every Step

Dating Works Better When You Care

From my video published June 20, 2026.

My biggest struggle in dating over the last year, since I got divorced, has been that almost any kind of enthusiasm I show seems to immediately turn into the woman interpreting me as desperate, and then just not responding, ghosting, immediately losing interest. I don't understand what's happening. I've had some women that I've been interested in, and they seem to be very interested in me, until I said, "I like you. I would like to go out with you again." Instantaneously finished. Or, "That sounds like fun. I'd love to meet up and go swimming. When are you available?" Ghosted. I'm like, what? What is happening?

The opposite approach keeps working on me

But then there's the opposite approach. I just had a woman message me today. I went out with her several weeks ago. I was enthusiastic for the first week. I texted her every day. I mean, this woman's in her early 20s. I texted her every day, and I had met her in person originally. And she was very enthusiastic the first couple of days. Her enthusiasm started to drop the last couple of days. And then when we actually met up to go to the beach, she seemed totally uninterested in me. She tried to look as ugly as possible with her clothing, just a baggy t-shirt, baggy shorts. The other times I'd seen her, she'd been looking very good, tight shorts, trying to look attractive. I'm like, what happened?

So then I got totally uninterested after that. I'm like, ew, what was this? Why did you act like that? So I give up on her. And immediately after the date, she then starts enthusiastically texting me. I'm like, this is ridiculous. It's like she can feel I don't care and I'm not interested anymore, and now she's more interested. So I invited her to do one more thing. She didn't respond. So I'm like, whatever, this is done. Weeks go by. She texts me out of the blue all of a sudden today. I'm like, you've got to be kidding.

Why do people think, oh, if this guy's apathetic, he doesn't have time for me, he's avoiding me? Why was my enthusiasm off-putting, and then me being apathetic and avoidant, why does that get her to reach out again? Maybe you could argue, well, something else was going on in her life that disrupted how she was experiencing me. You could say something like that. But at the same time, I've noticed this experience across all the dates I've been on.

For example, this woman said that she didn't find me physically attractive. Well, is that because I told her I found her attractive and that I would love to see her again? I can't separate the two of those in my mind. In my experience, if I act more apathetic and less interested, there's a significant chance that she feels differently.

The manosphere, and why enthusiasm feels like it's being punished

I've been watching all these videos from the manosphere talking about how to get women to really be attracted to you. And I'm a very enthusiastic guy. So I am just frustrated, because it seems like any enthusiasm I'm having is getting punished. But maybe it's just not been the right woman.

I've known this one woman a couple of weeks, and I had some time to talk to her last night. And she said it seems to be the same problem for women. That as soon as they show a little bit of enthusiasm, men will perform for them. But men, from her experience, don't generally have any intention or ability to follow through on their performance. They'll try and mirror back the woman's enthusiasm and say whatever they think she wants to hear. They'll act. And then as soon as they get a conversion, a sale, then they're out. And I'm like, that's awful. So what she's describing is that her enthusiasm has been used against her to get her to put out. And then my enthusiasm has been interpreted as I'm a loser, I'm desperate. And then there are women that come back and are messaging me again. And then it happened again.

The dance-floor woman who only wanted me once I ignored her

I had the same kind of thing happen a few months ago. This woman, I met her, I was very interested in her, communicated that. She immediately makes it clear she's not interested in me, even though she was originally trying to attract me, to notice her on the dance floor. And then I guess I was too enthusiastic, because she immediately puts the fire out. So I don't message her for two months, because I'm like, well, I'm not wasting my time there. Next time I see her, she is very interested and all excited to see me. I didn't even notice her, which was kind of funny. And then she's texting me after that. And as soon as I get a little bit enthusiastic, ghost town. I'm like, this is so insane right now. I don't even understand why people are behaving like this.

Why is enthusiasm the problem? Because I've been talking to people and they're saying, well, you're coming off as needy or desperate. Like, no, I'm coming off as I'm alive, that I'm honest. And people are like, you can't be that way. I'm like, you mean I can't be honest and enthusiastic? Really? Because that works well for my work.

Why enthusiasm works on YouTube but seems to fail in dating

I've gotten hundreds of thousands of YouTube views from scratch creating six channels. I've got millions and millions of impressions. My videos are all over YouTube, because my enthusiasm does work when I'm talking in most circumstances. But why in dating do I not even understand what's going on?

It seems like on some level that a lot of us have somehow been trained. It wasn't like this 15 years ago when I was dating my ex. It wasn't like this at all. I'd let a girl know I liked her, she'd let me know that she liked me, and we'd get together. I don't remember all these games about trying to act apathetic, and don't text back, and wait a long time to text. Like, what? This is crazy. There must be some of these more recent manipulations. But I just hope I can communicate that apathy is not attractive to me. If this whole pattern resonates with you, I share a lot more of these dating reflections in my dating videos on YouTube.

The woman who was way too enthusiastic

I've only had a couple of women that have been enthusiastic about me. This one woman was way too enthusiastic about me. And of course I was not interested in her, because I didn't find her that attractive, but especially not her personality. Her body was okay, but her personality was like, oh. And she went nuts over me, texting me all day, wanting to come over any time, even though she had to drive like an hour. I'm like, this is so ridiculous. It's as if my apathy, like I wouldn't respond to a text for like six hours, and she just sent another one, because I had to tell her multiple times to stop. Stop. I'm not just being apathetic. I'm not trying to get you to chase me. I do not want to see you again, because I felt bad after she left my place. It's just not a good connection for me.

And then I'm like, why? Maybe I just need to keep trying. Maybe at some point my enthusiasm will be mirrored, and maybe it's just because I haven't found the right person. The advantage of my enthusiasm is that people who are easily scared off, the women who for some reason want this avoidant man, usually aren't wasting much of my time, because I'm not going to pretend that I'm apathetic.

This process is tempting me to stop caring

And yet the crazy thing is, I swear, the more I go through this process, the more it is making me want to not care at all. But you can't have two people who don't care at all get together very easily. One person has to at least care. And it seems that it's not even clear who that should be these days. Should the woman chase and the woman be the one that's interested? Should the man? I mean, I've seriously thought about being gay a few times in the last couple of weeks. I'm like, at least being gay, I know there are issues, there are challenges there, but probably the same kind of stuff happens being gay. But at least, statistically, you're probably getting a lot more action, just men dealing with men. I've seriously thought about that sometimes, like, whatever's going on right now, the dynamics between men and women is crazy.

So I hope this is helpful. It's not just you. If you want to keep building a life where dating is one piece of a much bigger picture, I'd love for you to join the Jerry Banfield Family and walk through this stuff together.

The "high status man" who still can't crack this

I mean, I'm a high status man, according to myself. I've got over a billion views online as a YouTuber. I've made lots of money in my life. I'm lean, and in my experience I'm in fantastic health and shape. I've already proven I can have kids. So according to some, I would be quite a catch. Maybe I just haven't been in front of the right audience.

Maybe this woman I've known for a couple of weeks, the one I talked to last night, maybe she's it. She actually sent a whole bunch of emojis on her messages. And you know what? That makes me like her more, her enthusiasm texting me back. But then look at my messages. I sent her a couple-of-sentence message. She sends me a paragraph text back. I react and send a couple of sentences. She says, thank you. I ask if she wanted me to pick her up. She's like, oh, thanks, I'll just drive myself. So I don't respond, because I'm like, maybe... I asked her if she's going to this event tonight. And I'm like, if I respond, this starts to sound desperate, doesn't it? There it goes. Now I can't even tell when I'm acting honestly, or when I'm trying to be apathetic. So I'm not desperate, and then I'm curbing my enthusiasm. This is such... oh my God, this is so crazy.

Why people settle, and why I'll persist anyway

I see why people stay in bad relationships. Because they don't want to deal with all of this again. Being single has some advantages. Being in a great relationship is the best. But dealing with all this stuff single just makes you... I can see how people settle. But I will persist.

If you identified with this, I would love to hear it. I'm here to help you build a life that doesn't demand you escape it, a life with strong relationships, money, and health at the forefront of technology like YouTube, AI, and crypto. That's everything I've got to offer in one place, the Jerry Banfield Family, where you can message me directly, get on calls, and decide together how we build all of this. If you watched and read all the way here, I'd love to see you in there.

Divorced Dad in My 40s Wanting More Kids: What I've Learned Dating Again

From my video published June 15, 2026.

Why I'm Sharing This Journey

If you're a divorced dad in your 40s that wants to date and have another family with more kids, I'm here, I'm on that exact journey right now, and I'll describe all that I've learned over the last six months to hopefully make this easier for you. Because this has been challenging and brought me to my limits, and yet I've learned so much and I'm excited to share with you. I have a lot of people I'm accountable to, and that helps me massively. So let me share my journey with you. So I didn't plan on being in this situation. I am 41 years old. I have two kids, a 10 year old daughter and a 7 year old son, and I have an ex wife that we met 15 years ago.

A big part of that accountability comes from talking it through with someone who gets it, and if you want that kind of honest sounding board, you can schedule a private call with me to work through what's actually going on in your dating and life.

We dated and were married 13 years. I was very surprised. We were getting divorced, and yet we had grown apart, especially on the issue that I wanted more than two kids. I said on my match profile, I wanted three kids, definitely. I had talked about four kids at one point, but my ex just cut things off and said no more kids after our son. I tried to be okay with it for years, but every time we'd have an argument, I'd always bring up the more kids thing. Then when we actually got divorced, it's like, great, now I've got the opportunity to find a woman. And have more kids with, it's been quite a challenge in dating.

So I'm going to share some of the things women have said to me and some of the key takeaways I've got for this process.

Why Dating Apps Stopped Working For Me

First, I've found dating apps have not been very good because while you can filter for women who want children, and I did go out with a few women who wanted children, the time I spent on dating apps felt it was draining. There was so much swiping. There was so little response. Now, even though I've been on dating apps for a long time, I've been on dating apps for a long time. Like I'm a good looking guy. I'm five foot 11. And yet something, the dating apps are not working for most guys because there's often three times as many guys. And I swear if you want, if you're a guy that wants kids and has kids, you're competing against all these guys that don't have kids.

And women are often not just women, but people are often being very superficial on dating apps. So what to me, I've had my best results like meeting women in person, because that the vibe of dating apps is so superficial. And I've had my best results like meeting women in person, give off, and the dad vibe really can make awesome chemistry in person. Some of the best conversations I've had with women have been in person, whereas the dates I got on dating apps weren't very good.

The Strategy I Recommend Most: Matchmaking

However, the number one strategy I'd actually recommend is to consider matchmaking. So I've actually got a matchmaker and some of the best dates I've had have been on Talkify, which is America's largest matchmaking company. And they're consistently able to find me women who want kids who are okay and happy to date me even though I'm already divorced and I already have kids. I've done some videos like I did a video about my third Talkify date that I, so you can get an idea of how that goes. So it's called my first date with my third Talkify match. And I got my third Talkify match. So these talk about the matchmaking process a little bit.

And I talk about why I don't recommend dating apps. I got a bunch of videos on these things. However, the key takeaway is it's it often when I was married, I kind of got away from doing dating for a long time and dating now, if you've had a family and been married and been off the market for quite a while, dating now is drastically different than it was back when you met that first wife. And this has been quite an adjustment for me. And the dating apps, for example, I met my first wife on match com. But back then, when I ran the search criteria, there were twice as many women in my area that met the search criteria compared to men.

I walk through these matchmaking dates and the lessons from each one in my Dating playlist, so you can see how the process really plays out.

If this shift feels familiar, I dug into it more in I Can't Date Like I Did 15 Years Ago, because the whole landscape has flipped since most of us were last single.

And now it is the exact opposite direction, which means it's five or 10 times harder to successfully match than it was back then. So today, the opposite of a dating app is being out in person. And so for me, I'm out in person, but at the same time, it gets to be annoying and stressful for me to go somewhere with just the purpose of meeting women.

Turning My T-Shirt Into a Lead Magnet

So my latest strategy I've done is I started wearing these t shirts when I go out that says dear single ladies, I'm a YouTuber with, two kids who wants more, give me your phone number. So this allows me to just be passively places like yoga, or coffee shops, or taking a walk in a park and my shirt is a lead magnet that then sets me up to get women to speak to me directly. And this is addressing the problem that if you are a man who's divorced, who wants more kids, this, is a niche, this is not most women in dating, this drastically narrows down who you're going to be able to date.

And on dating apps, that means I swear when I was matching women, or messaging, it was so much easier, I tested it, it was so much easier to get a date without wanting kids, like I literally took wanting kids off my profile and search for all women, I literally got a match with an attractive girl within two hours. Whereas I'd been struggling to get a date with a I didn't even get one girl I was attracted to putting in hours and hours across multiple dating apps when I was wanting kids, and only filtering that but literally, I got a date with the hottest girl I'd met on a dating app since my ex in two hours.

So right now, the dating apps are optimized generally, for, guys that want kids, it is in a rough position, but there's no harm. You could lose some time, but testing the dating apps in your specific area could be worth it. But generally, this is not going to work. So I'm not going to be able to get a date with a high value man. And this is why I did a video saying dating apps are a bad deal for high value man.

If You're a High Value Man With No Time

Now, if you are a father, and then you have income, and you actually show up for your kids, you are a high value man, like that is a man that's adding value to the world that is doing something useful who works as kids, your main problem is you don't have much time to actually date. And dating apps can be really attractive. Because when you've got time at night, you can just sit there and swipe. Or heart. But where you really want to be is out with women in real life. So best place to be out with women are any kind of like sober event or like some of these community, light and love like hippie events.

These can be really nice places to meet women who want kids. I met several very attractive women that I had very fantastic conversations with at these kinds of events locally. That was actually the best strategy I used before the matchmaking service. And I think that's what I use to meet women. And the nice thing is even if you don't meet women, it can be a good time. Now I got tired of going to those events. Because I don't like just going somewhere for the purpose of meeting women specifically, because then if I don't meet a woman, I feel like I wasted my time. So it is nice if you can put yourself in situations to naturally be around women, like when I go to yoga class.

The problem is today that I used to be I used to approach women all the time, like 1520 years ago, I just go up and get phone numbers everywhere I constantly go. And I'm like, I'm not going to be able to meet women at this time. And I'm like, I was trying to be a pickup artist, like I just go up and say whatever I need to get a girl's phone number, then call and ask on a date. But today, that doesn't work as well. I got one yoga studio, they said they asked me to stop talking to women at that yoga studio, because a couple of women complained.

And like, I didn't do anything like I literally was just saying hi, and like giving compliments, and then I asked for a couple of phone numbers. And to these days, some women are super sensitive about being approached, and they quickly will create a fuss about whatever business you're in, which is annoying, because other women really do want to be approached. And if you're looking for women that will be happy that you have kids, and see that as a sign of validation that, this guy already has some kids, then you need to be filtering and getting out around as many women as possible, which is why to me, anything you can do to signal like, oh, I'm going to be a pickup artist, I'm going to be a shirt is a very good strategy.

Now, I talked to a guy yesterday, he's like, I'd never wear a shirt like that. I wouldn't have the balls to wear a shirt like that. And I think, well, if you really want something in life, aren't you going to do what it takes to get it? Like, I really want another family and marriage. And I enjoyed that last one. And I want another one. So wearing a shirt is like, that's all I have to do. Like, I'd much rather wear a shirt. Now this shirt, I just bought a t shirt and markers and hand wrote on it. But you could pay to have one made more professionally.

And if your mind's like, that's crazy, I'd never do that. It's like, how bad do you want this next family? And for me, one of the hard things, after years of arguing with my ex and wishing she would have more kids and compromise and wishing arguing my with myself wishing that I could compromise and saying, I already have two kids that are healthy and amazing. Like, why do I need more? After all that arguing, then there have been times when I've thought what, I don't even need I don't need that second family. I don't need any other kids, the kids I have enough. And while that's true, I do want more.

And today being a man that is fertile and active and healthy and is contributing life. These are very valuable things that you have to offer to humanity. And thus, if it takes wearing a t shirt or paying for a matchmaking service, to me, it's worth it or going to events where the kind of women that you want to meet are there.

Asking People I Know For Introductions

Also, what I've found is asking people for advice, asking the people I do know, like, hey, do you know a woman who would like to have kids and would find me attractive and would be able to live a healthy, sober lifestyle with me? Do you know anybody like that? Now, I've had some friends give me phone numbers and connect me with people. I've also just asked out and asked the girls I've already known that met that criteria. I've been willing to get told no, I've got lots of first dates that didn't lead to second dates. So one of the key things is you do not want to have your time wasted.

Because if you're a guy that's got kids and work, you can't afford to waste your time doing things like putting hours and hours into dating apps that go nowhere and where people are incompatible. If you're a busy dad trying to figure out your own next step in dating, you can schedule a one-on-one call with me and we'll talk through exactly where you're at.

Getting Clear On My Non-Negotiables

Thus, on first dates, I don't want to go too deep on first dates, but I always make sure they know I'm sober, I have two kids, and I want at least two more kids. And we should not do anything else if you're not on board with all that stuff. So it's really important. It's been important for me to get super clear on what exactly is absolutely non negotiable for me. And for me, I want more kids. I want a healthy lifestyle. And you got to be okay with the kids I already have. And you got to be okay with my work as a YouTuber. If you don't like that my videos are public, and then I talk about things that are very personal, then we don't need to date.

So if you have considerations like that, putting those up there out front as a filter is ideal. Because the worst thing you can do is wait. Waste your time with some girl where the things aren't right and they're not going anywhere. I know a girl who's very attractive. And she wanted a guy that would marry her and have more kids with her and have a house with her. And she struggled to even find a guy that matched these criteria because she didn't like using dating apps. And she ended up settling for a guy who didn't want kids and couldn't have any more kids. And he didn't want to move in with her or get married.

And so she just settled and they broke up and they had this on and off relationship. And now she's just given up on most of the stuff she's wanted. And it's years later. And where the thing is, though, where were you going to meet her because she's so busy that, she either is out doing things with her child, or she's at work, or with her family. So there weren't a lot of opportunities to meet a girl. But where could you meet a girl like that? You can meet her out at the playground. But if you're out at the playground, and a lot of times when you're out doing kid activities, people aren't going to realize that you are a single dad.

So this is why again, a shirt makes it super clear. Because yes, you might just get lucky. And yes, you do always want to start conversations. Now I normally start conversations, but it's hard to try and start a conversation with a woman when I'm trying to parent my kids and watch some of the playground also. But still, I've started conversations with lots of women. I even back up my phone and I'm like, Oh, I'm going to meet a girl. And I'm like, Oh, I was married. Sometimes I'd get phone numbers just for like arranging play dates. But also it felt like validation. I'm like, I'm gonna just get this mom's phone number, to arrange a play date.

Not that I ever did anything with any of them. But just to feel like I can still do this. But now it my kids are 10 and seven, they're not going to the playground as much. I'm not even around potentially other single moms that much. But when I am out at the playground with my kids, I got this shirt on. Now, if there's another single mom there, like you got to realize some of these single moms that want to have more kids, they really want to meet a man. But it is not very easy for them to meet a man either. So to me, it's up to us as the men to be out there signaling and to be leading.

And again, the shirt makes that easy. But you could do that with a hat. Or you could just do that by consistently starting conversations and very quickly getting into the details. I've had moms I've asked before, like I seen a mom out with their kids. And I'm like, hey, are you single? And then I always look for the wedding. If they don't have a wedding ring, I'm like, you're single. And then they're like, No, I have a partner. I'm like, well, I had to ask at least right. So I've learned that it's up to me to be the women are often not going to just start the conversation for me.

But then it's also challenging because these days, lots of times women that I've interacted with, if you are too enthusiastic, and it can be like after just getting out of a 15 year relationship and having two kids and living on my own again, I was very enthusiastic. For another relationship, very ready, very emotionally available and interested. But then women were reading that energy is like desperate, and overboard. And they were being put off by that some of the exact women that potentially are great matches with me, my energy of being very eager, and came off as desperation sometimes. And then I also didn't have a good level of confidence about being this divorced dad, until I talked to, some women and women said that if you're a woman who wants kids, a dad who already has a family is a very strong positive signal in some cases.

Now, other cases, there'll be women I've seen on dating profiles, they're like, if you have kids, do not message me and or if you have kids move on. So this is why you've got to filter and not take things personally, because some women if you've already got one family are absolutely not interested in being your second family. But the single moms are often very interested in finding a guy that wants to have a second family and blend the families together. The trick is how can you get around them? Dating apps, a lot of single moms don't want to use dating apps either because they have kids and they don't want to have some guy just come over their house and hook up or something.

Lots of single moms I've seen are still going out to bars to try and meet guys, but the problem with bars is you bring alcohol into it and often bars, there's lots of confusion and it's not a good place to really be honest and it can make a weak foundation. Thus, if you don't go out to bars, there are some sober places like Kava or whatever. I don't know if those are. There's other sober bars that are popping up and you can always just walk around. Again, if you've got a shirt or something like this, just walking around where there's a bunch of women around, you never know who you might come across and what kind of conversation might be started.

The more women I talk to, the more unexpected things happen. At the same time, I'm not going, Alcoholics Anonymous has a picnic today and I could wear my shirt there, but I don't like going places just to try and meet women because then my mind and as men, our minds are very objective and goal focused.

Why "Just Be Yourself" Doesn't Work

So many people have told me, well, just be yourself, and when you're not looking, it'll happen. I don't agree with that at all and I made some videos addressing that like the black pill dating is a trap. You don't want to get into this place like where you think it's all about looks and stuff like some of these people are so you don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but also the opposite end of that, like just be yourself doesn't work in dating either. Like just going around and telling people I'm sober and I'm healthy and I've lost all this weight and I have two kids and I want more kids.

Women are just running away from that level of honesty and it can be hard also like when you're putting women on a pedestal and you're like, oh, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. I don't want to go down that pedestal and which I did. One reason my ex loved me is because especially when we were first together, I really put her on a pedestal and she really liked that and when I stopped doing that, things didn't work as well. So it really helps to kind of level yourself up as a man and then to really get your single life down so well that when you do meet a woman who might be right, you can meet her with a level of energy that's just right.

You don't want to be too withdrawn or whatever. But you also want to be like comfortable that if it doesn't work out, that's okay. So I had three dates on Talkify and the first three of these dates, like I was way too eager. I was starting to like fantasize already like, oh my God, the second wife, this is going to be great. We're going to have awesome life together. And the problem is what I've found is sometimes I'm trying to make my next family validate my divorce. That in my mind, it's like if I should have just stayed married and done anything to make the marriage go away, I'm going to have to work.

If I can't get a second family, then I should have done a better job of the first one. And that's an invalid argument because in most cases, most of us tried. I did everything, not everything, but I put a lot of work in to try and be the best husband I could be with my first wife. And I still, see my kids almost every day. I have them at my house three nights a week for overnights. I take them or pick them up from school almost every day. And I tried with my ex, both of us. For years to make things work. And I've found that, my mind is like a bit too goal oriented on the second family that it needs to be urgent.

We need to get that because that'll validate how things went with the first family. And it's like, well, it's how even if I never got to start up the second family again, I'll be okay. Because for me now, I'm grateful that as a single dad that's not dating anybody right now, I've got time for gaming. Like I played Call of Duty, Black Ops 3. Origin Solo, the Easter egg yesterday. I got, I played that for four hours. Like that's just an incredible amount of time. And I've started five YouTube channels now. Like I got a YouTube coach channel and I've just started all these different channels now.

So I have so much time and I'm grateful for that. So what's helped me is to really lean into getting my single life down where I'm really happy living my life. I don't need a woman in my life. Now, I'm very interested in finding a compatible woman, but I would rather be single than just accept anybody. I tried also just doing like hookups and just accepting, anybody and lowering my standards. And that felt awful. It felt like I was disrespecting myself, that I was wasting their time. And I've got a very firm approach now. Like if I'm not certain you would add a lot of value to my life and I would add a lot of value to your life.

That experience convinced me I'd rather hold out for the right person, which is exactly what I argue in Men: Stay Single, Skip Hookups, and Seek an Amazing Woman.

If we're not both really into each other, then I'd rather be single. I'd rather take the time to do more YouTube videos. I'd rather take the time to make sure I've got that time with my kids. One of the girls I've had since I've been single for a long time, I've had a lot of time with my I met at one of these like, hippie, light, love and light, sober dance events. She told me when I was talking to her, she said, well, I want to have kids, but you already have two kids and you see them like every day. I don't think you'd have time to actually be there for me and the baby that we'd have together.

And I thought about that for a while. And it's like, I have a lot of experience parenting and the kids I have now, I have time to also be there for another woman. Like there's lots of guys that don't have any kids that aren't hardly there for their kids with their first, family anyway. And I, I love kids. I have plenty of time that I can be there for, the second family. And yes, that might mean I end up seeing the kids from the first family a little less, but they're 10 and seven, like they're growing up fast and I can't have a baby anytime faster than like nine months at this point.

If I met somebody today, it immediately got into that. So realistically, I'm going to at least have a daughter who's a teenager. By the time I even start another family and a son that's headed to middle school, like the older my kids get, the less they even need me. They don't need me constantly to be there all the time for everything for them. So I, I don't have to work that much either being on YouTube. I'm looking at like, 30 hours a week of work. Like that's plenty of time and it's working from home and it's a flexible schedule. So it really takes a lot of, like leaning in and getting confident in myself.

And I've had so many conversations with women. I feel like I've just scratched the tip of the iceberg here of all the stuff I've thought about and tested and worked on with being a single dad that wants more kids. So if you'd like to talk much more with me, I can really help in this particular life situation because this is exactly where I'm at. And what's helped me is I've talked with so many other dads who've been through similar things. I've, for every story I shared about myself, I've like five about other things. So if you really want to help through this process, grab my coaching offer, talk with me for 30 minutes every month and share your journey with me.

And that'll totally transform your situation. It's well worth it compared to wasting your time, just throwing it around on dating apps and going to bars and things like that.

I Can't Date Like I Did 15 Years Ago

From my video published June 13, 2026.

I can't date the way I did 15 years ago, back when I met the woman who became my wife. I was a different person then, and dating itself is different now. If you've been struggling — especially after a divorce or the end of a long relationship — I want to share the lessons I've worked hard to capture lately. See how many of them you recognize in yourself.

I used to date like a hunter

Fifteen years ago I dated like a hunter. I was looking to get with women as fast as possible — basically a salesman trying to close — and I approached every woman that way. I'm still a little surprised it worked. My ex and I were together for 15 years, and back then I could barely say the word "relationship." I was trying to get to the bedroom as fast as I could, and to make as many women like me as possible to get there.

That approach doesn't fit me anymore. When I got divorced I was still operating like the old me, but it no longer matched who I'd become. Getting sober and doing the work in recovery changed my personality — I'm more friendly, more introspective, more willing to actually evaluate a connection. Hunting was pushing away the exact kind of woman who would genuinely like me, and the times I wasn't hunting were still a mess. I'm grateful I finally adjusted this in my own head.

Slow is a feature, not a problem

Now I want to take the time to get to know a woman and to see how I really feel before jumping into a bad situation like I did so many times before. Guys often try to rush the romance and the physical side as fast as they can. I don't want that anymore — it doesn't even feel right. Why would I want to be physical with someone I just met? Part of that is finally taking care of and respecting my own body, something I didn't think about at all 20 years ago.

Going slow also protects me from getting attached to someone I don't actually want to be attached to. It takes time to know a person — being around a woman for a month, seeing how she communicates, how consistent she is, and whether I truly like her as a person. My ex and I are a good example of the cost of rushing: we still like each other and co-parent well, but we were never very compatible. We forced it and manufactured things in common, because I sprinted into romance instead of letting it reveal itself.

Stop chasing the romantic payoff

The biggest shift is this: I'm no longer chasing the romantic payoff. When you chase it, you're just trying to reach the fantasy as fast as possible — love-bombing, saying whatever fires her up. Instead I want to evaluate the friendship and notice how it actually feels to spend time together. That gives the other person room to feel her own feelings instead of being pushed into mine.

What I'm after is long-term attraction and love built over time, not falling headfirst into lust and being head over heels one week and done the next.

Healthy connection doesn't feel like wild sparks

This part is tricky, because we're taught that wild romantic sparks are where the real action is. In my experience, a healthy connection usually doesn't feel like that — at least not at first. The strong relationships I see between men and women, and most of the good people in my own life, didn't start with fireworks. There often wasn't much initial attraction at all; it grew slowly and in a healthy way. That's what I want now: attraction that grows over time. If you want to see more of how I think through this, you can watch my dating videos here.

Getting clear about what I actually want

I've also gotten specific about what I'm looking for: a healthy woman who wants kids and will support my work as a YouTuber by being loving, happy, and enthusiastic about what I do. Sometimes the women I'm drawn to live at a distance, which means building an intentional connection through FaceTime and real conversation rather than seeing each other for an hour or two once a week and expecting something amazing to appear out of nowhere. If you want to get clear on what you actually want and talk it through one-on-one, you can book a private call with me and build a life you don't need to escape from.

The more I look at it, the more I see that community is the natural setting for all of this — being around each other consistently, as friends first, is how healthy attraction actually forms. This new way of dating feels completely different from the old me, and I wanted to write it down so I don't forget it, and in case it helps you too. And if you're telling yourself you're perfectly happy on your own, I'd gently push back on that in you're not happy being single.

I Want Love to Find Me the Real Way

Originally published September 29, 2025.

This is my journal entry from September 29, 2025, part of my daily autobiography The Kind Divorce — my real, unedited days, published in order.

I enjoyed another great night of sleep and took the kids to school in the morning. On the drive, I read a few pages of my Author in St. Petersburg book aloud to my son, who sat quietly in the back seat. It struck me how much of the book is about me—my own growth, thoughts, and experiences—and how little of it is about my children. I realized how often the day-to-day moments with them don’t make it into my writing, maybe because they feel less dramatic or complex than my inner world. Still, I want to create more stories and memories with them that will be worth writing about. My books are mostly written for adults, filled with the kind of themes that don’t fit neatly into the innocent corners of childhood—but they’re still the center of my life, and I want that reflected more.

After dropping them off, I came home and spent time talking with my ex-wife. We’ve both been working through the process of planning our futures as divorced individuals while also supporting each other through the emotional weight of grief. Small, unexpected things still sting. I’ll look at the refrigerator we bought just a few months ago and feel a pang, realizing it’s no longer mine. We discuss the house and how we’ll eventually split it, though neither of us knows exactly how that will look yet. Despite the uncertainty, I’m grateful to be walking through this process with my ex-wife. I trust completely that everything will unfold fairly.

Lately, I’ve been feeling the urge to make financial amends to her. I want my ex-wife to feel secure, cared for, and free from the financial stress that’s weighed on her ever since I wrecked our finances back in 2019. She carried so much of the burden from her own income while I was struggling, and I want to balance that in any way I can now.Afterward, I worked on I Was Famous on the Internet again and felt a surge of gratitude knowing I’m so close to finishing. My plan is to have it submitted to Amazon within the next week and to order author copies shortly after. It feels incredible to be at this stage—to finally hold something that represents years of work, lessons, and healing.

At noon, I went to yoga with my yoga instructor, one of the instructors I’ve practiced with the longest. I first met him back when he was doing donation-based classes around 2020, right after my in-person show that summer. My friend a friend tried to connect us during that time, but it didn’t work out until later when we crossed paths at one of those donation classes. We laughed when we realized she’d already introduced us virtually. I love how St. Petersburg can feel both small and infinite that way—tight-knit but endlessly full of new connections.

My yoga instructor’s flow class today was grounding, and afterward we talked for a while about the divorce. He said he was sad to hear about it, and I told him I understood the sadness too—the grief that comes with realizing my marriage won’t turn out the way I once imagined. When I got married, I thought success meant staying together forever and being happy the whole time. Anything else, including divorce or even long-term unhappiness, felt like failure. I’m grateful that my perspective has expanded since then.

I reminded him that, in some ways, he’d been part of my inspiration. Years ago, I’d encouraged him to keep dating after heartbreak, to risk rejection, to believe that love was possible again. Eventually, he did meet someone wonderful. He smiled and suggested I try online dating again myself. I told him I wasn’t quite ready. It’s only been a few days since my ex-wife and I agreed to divorce, and though she’d be completely fine with me dating again—she might even cheer me on—I want to wait until I’ve had an open conversation with the kids first. I don’t want to sneak around, hiding a dating app on my computer and scrambling for an answer if my son or my daughter asked what I was doing. I want to stay honest and transparent, even as life continues to shift.

What I love about honesty and transparency is how effortlessly they guide my behavior. When you’re willing to lie or hide things, you open the door to chaos—you create opportunities to hurt people, to make messes you later must clean up. But when you live by a rule of openness, when lying or hiding isn’t an option, your choices narrow in a healthy way. You start to act in ways that are honorable, because you know you’ll be accountable. You think carefully about what you’re doing based on whether you’d feel comfortable sharing it with others. That kind of self-awareness creates integrity almost automatically.

That said, I’ve opened my mind to dating online again, even though I know how distracting it can be. I’ve spent enough time in that world to see how easy it is to lose focus. Ideally, I’d love a different kind of story this time—something spontaneous and meaningful. It would feel so much more real to meet someone through yoga, a friend, or even at an AA meeting. Anyone can upload photos and type out a profile, but there’s something magical about meeting a woman naturally, face-to-face, through shared energy and timing rather than algorithms and apps. If you’d rather build that kind of real-life connection too, you can schedule a one-on-one call with me and we’ll trade notes on choosing presence over apps.

When I think back, that’s how my ex-wife and I met—on Match.com. It worked then, but it also feels ordinary now. I want something extraordinary, something that reflects the person I’ve become. Besides, I’ve noticed in my own experience and from watching others that online dating seems to attract a lot of toxic energy. Many people there are rushing to fill a void, or they’re trying to hide unresolved issues. I did the same thing when I was still deep in alcoholism. It’s easy to project who you wish you were online instead of who you really are. My instinct tells me that my best chance of finding someone truly compatible will come through real-world connections.

The odds feel good here in St. Petersburg, too. There are so many incredible women—beautiful, spiritual, interesting—and I see how often they seem to be settling for less. Some get involved with men in open marriages, others stay stuck with partners who are struggling with addiction or who can’t be present. It makes me believe there’s space for a man like me—someone healthy, emotionally available, and grounded—to meet someone who’s been waiting for that.

After my conversation with my yoga instructor, I gave him a copy of Author in St. Petersburg as a gift. Then I drove to the kids’ school and arrived about an hour early for pickup. Normally I wouldn’t do that, but I want my ex-wife to have the house to herself as much as possible right now. She deserves that breathing room—to feel her own space again without me coming in and out during the day. We’d had some great conversations earlier that morning, and I didn’t want to risk disrupting her focus. Plus, it saved me ten minutes of driving to head straight to the school and wait there.

I spent the time talking to my sponsor on the phone, then reading a few books I’ve been working through—The Unknown Reality, Volume 2 by Jane Roberts, one of the Seth books annotated by Robert Butts, and Can You Catch a Cold? Both fascinate me in completely different ways: the Seth material is deeply esoteric and mind-expanding, while Can You Catch a Cold? takes a practical, scientific swing at germ theory, showing what I find to be a fragile and questionable mainstream narrative.

When the kids finally came out, they weren’t in a talkative mood. I tried the usual questions—What did you do today? What did you learn? What’d you play at recess?—but all I got were one-word answers. “Nothing.” “Play.” I let it go. Some days they just need quiet, and I’m learning to give them that space. We drove home together in comfortable silence, the kind that doesn’t need to be filled.

After dropping the kids off at home, I headed straight to my 4 p.m. AA meeting. A couple of the women from last week returned, along with one of my fellow home group members. With three women and just me, it felt more like a women’s meeting, and I actually loved the energy of it—gentle, grounded, and emotionally open. There’s something comforting about being in a circle like that, where honesty and healing flow easily between people who barely knew each other a few months ago.

After the meeting, I came home and poured myself back into editing I Was Famous on the Internet. I lost track of time until my ex-wife arrived to drop the kids off after visiting her parents. She headed out again for her Toastmasters meeting, leaving me with the kids for the evening. We played baseball in the front yard until sunset. I told them I’d give them $5 each if they could catch the Nerf football I threw about thirty yards. They had five chances, and although they got their hands on it once or twice, neither managed a full catch. Still, they were laughing and chasing the ball across the grass, so it didn’t really matter.

After that, we switched to using a kickball as a makeshift baseball and took turns hitting it around the yard. Then we went over to my mom’s house, where I treated myself to an Italian ice before bringing the kids home. My daughter took a shower while my son brushed his teeth, and both were in bed by 8:25 p.m. I’d promised them $5 each as a bonus if they could be completely ready for bed, lights out, at that exact time. The way I’ve set up their money system, bonuses have to be earned. They get $20 an hour for actual work, and any bonuses are paid at the same rate, meaning they can earn up to $40 an hour if they’ve got bonuses waiting to unlock. It’s funny watching how little motivation they have until there’s something specific they want—it’s the same pattern many adults fall into, just smaller stakes.

Once the house was quiet, I got back to editing I Was Famous on the Internet. I’ve now made two full passes through the entire book. Tonight I added a new section about what the time I spent online really cost me—the loss of presence in my marriage and family. That feels like one of the book’s most important messages. I keep reminding myself that the beginning is everything. If the introduction or first third of a book doesn’t pull readers in, they’ll never get to the parts that matter most. For me, once I’m hooked on a story, I almost always finish it. But if a book loses me early, even one with brilliance hidden later on, I’ll probably never return to it. So I’m putting extra care into those opening chapters.

When my ex-wife came home from Toastmasters, we had another long, supportive talk. We both keep checking in to make sure this new path—separating, opening ourselves to new relationships, and rearranging our family life—is still what we truly want. Each time, the answer feels clear. There’s sadness, of course, but there’s also excitement and a deep sense of rightness.

She told me that the most frustrating part of the whole process so far was Saturday night, when I handed her that note saying, I’m sorry, I was wrong. I’ll do whatever it takes to make this marriage work. I don’t want to get divorced. I smiled and said, “Aren’t you glad it was me who did that instead of you?” She laughed and agreed. If she’d been the one to write that note, it might have made everything much harder. She admitted that if she’d leaned into her powers of seduction—sex, affection, closeness—it might have been nearly impossible for either of us to resist falling back into old patterns.

I’m grateful it was me who made that last stand. Seeing how shallow that moment really was—how much it came from fear rather than truth—helped both of us accept what’s real. Staying together would’ve been easy for a few days, maybe even a few months, but happiness wouldn’t have lasted. Now, with everything out in the open, we can move forward freely, with respect and love still intact. My ex-wife and I are both ready to show people what a kind, loving divorce can look like. There’s no bitterness here, just two people walking separate paths with mutual respect and gratitude.

When I finally went to bed, I noticed something surprising—my sex drive seems to have surged since my ex-wife and I talked about getting divorced and I made it through that first wave of grief. I already thought my libido was strong, but this feels like a completely different level. What’s striking is how turned on I am by the idea of being with a new woman. Being intimate with my ex-wife when she didn’t truly want it had become painful and discouraging. Now, the thought of being with someone who genuinely desires me feels electrifying. If you’re moving through your own transition back into dating and want to talk it through with someone who’s been there, you can book a private call with me and bring it to our call.

Part of me wants to be ready for that. This renewed energy and vitality feels like good preparation for being with someone new. It’s fascinating to witness how quickly my body has responded to this new phase of life. It feels like living proof of everything I’ve learned from books like You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay: that our physical health is deeply tied to our mental and emotional environment.

My sex drive skyrocketing almost overnight shows how much my old patterns—my thoughts, my choices, even my relationship dynamics—had been suppressing it. I can see why I did it. I didn’t want to let my imagination wander or get lost in fantasy. I didn’t want to be constantly aroused when it was already too much for my ex-wife. There were even days that scared me, when my body felt shut down, and it seemed like a sign something was deeply wrong.

Now, though, it’s the opposite. My vitality has returned in a way I haven’t felt in years. The shift in my mindset changed the internal terrain almost instantly, and my body followed suit. To me, it feels like compelling firsthand evidence for the principles of terrain theory, which I’ve only just begun to study but plan to dive deeper into.

I went to bed at 11:41 p.m., feeling grateful, alive, and excited for tomorrow. I lay there appreciating the chance to sleep in the same house as my kids again—a privilege I know won’t last forever. That awareness makes every night feel precious. Each moment here, under this roof with them and my ex-wife, feels like a gift I don’t want to take for granted.

If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Dating playlist.

Dating After Divorce: What I Got Wrong and Why I'm Taking It Slow

On this page

I've Slept With 20 Women and Never Had an STD. Now I'd Rather Wait Than Use Protection.

If We Need Protection, We Don't Know Each Other Yet

About 20 Women, No STD, and I'd Like to Keep It That Way

"You're So Vanilla"

I Hid My Alcoholism for Six Dates to Win My Wife. Now I Make Friends First

The executive summary: I was dating like it was still the 2000s

How I won my wife: six dates without a drink and a lie on my Match profile

Honesty would have cost me a second date, and that was the point

The dumbest thing I could do now is sleep with the wrong woman

The women friends I lost by saying "date me or I'm gone"

What a pushy AA sponsor taught me about gentle energy

I Don't Want a Woman to Fall for Me Too Fast

I Used to Rush Every Woman Into Falling for Me

Dating Feels Exhausting Because We're Performing

My 15-Year Marriage Started With Both of Us Performing

The Queen: How One Great Week Fooled Me

Be Friends With Lots of Women for Months

Everybody Gets Treated the Same

The Woman Has to Escalate Every Step

Dating After Divorce: What I Got Wrong and Why I'm Taking It Slow

On this page

I Don't Want a Woman to Fall for Me Too Fast

I Used to Rush Every Woman Into Falling for Me

Dating Feels Exhausting Because We're Performing

My 15-Year Marriage Started With Both of Us Performing

The Queen: How One Great Week Fooled Me

Be Friends With Lots of Women for Months

Everybody Gets Treated the Same

The Woman Has to Escalate Every Step

Dating Works Better When You Care

The opposite approach keeps working on me

The manosphere, and why enthusiasm feels like it's being punished

The dance-floor woman who only wanted me once I ignored her

Why enthusiasm works on YouTube but seems to fail in dating

The woman who was way too enthusiastic

This process is tempting me to stop caring

The "high status man" who still can't crack this

Why people settle, and why I'll persist anyway

Divorced Dad in My 40s Wanting More Kids: What I've Learned Dating Again

Why I'm Sharing This Journey

Why Dating Apps Stopped Working For Me

The Strategy I Recommend Most: Matchmaking

Turning My T-Shirt Into a Lead Magnet

If You're a High Value Man With No Time

Asking People I Know For Introductions

Getting Clear On My Non-Negotiables

Why "Just Be Yourself" Doesn't Work

I Can't Date Like I Did 15 Years Ago

I used to date like a hunter

Slow is a feature, not a problem

Stop chasing the romantic payoff

Healthy connection doesn't feel like wild sparks

Getting clear about what I actually want

I Want Love to Find Me the Real Way

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