I studied more than 100 dating videos from more than 100 creators, every one published in the three months before June 2026, and my answer to what dating advice is worth right now is this: tactics get you the date, but they do not get you the marriage. Most of what is taught on YouTube is practical attraction content with very little on how to build a relationship that lasts. When I scored each creator on two zero-to-10 scales, the average practical score came out to 7.5 and the average relationship score came out to 6.5. That gap between the two numbers is the whole problem.
Here is where I stand now. Attraction and tactics are a real skill, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But I have been divorced since 2025 after a 15-year marriage and two children, and I went out with at least 20 women this year. Most of those dates never made it to a second one, and I had to ask honestly which advice was helping me and which was making me cynical. I now think dating is not a marketing funnel. The good advice is about emotional regulation and honesty. The worst advice is built on fear, contempt for the other sex, or clinical labels that diagnose a person before anything has happened.
My view developed in a clear order. When I started, I was mostly watching the kind of content that promised more dates, and I did not look at the bigger picture of what everyone was teaching. Doing the research changed that. I found that many of the creators themselves have no evidence of a great relationship in their own lives, and that the honest question is not how to get a date but what kind of person you will be once you have one. My full position is in Tactics Get You the Date — Not the Marriage, the long research post where I rank the creators, separate boundaries from comfort zones, and explain why I deleted the dating apps. I am a marketing guy with over a billion views online, and I still say dating is not a marketing funnel. The tactics might get you the date. They will not get you the marriage.
The second post, Stop Diagnosing Your Dates as Narcissists, is where I get the most blunt. Clinical terms and "love bombing" have become a way to dismiss anyone who is not perfect on the first or second date. I still think you should vet people, and I agree that waiting at least a month before physical intimacy is a great idea. But after I watched a woman I liked seem to use a strict vetting approach on me, and then slip into bed with someone else right after, I saw both sides. Zero tolerance is its own trap. Nobody survives a standard that strict, and the real question is forgiveness. Before you diagnose your date as a narcissist, ask whether you are holding them to a standard no human being could pass.
The third post, What It Actually Means to Be Good at Dating, gives the test I now use. Am I adding value to her life? Did we have fun? Am I being honest about what I want? Is this building a life together? Sex, in my view, is the fruit of those things, not the measure of success. That is why I do not count the one-night stand I had after my divorce as a win. It did not add value to her life, it was not fun afterward, and I was not being honest with her. I was just trying to get laid. Coaches who call that success are describing performance, not dating.
Honesty and fun are not the same thing as having no standards. Some of the best advice I found was simple: you need to be able to state what you want, ask direct questions, and own your part when a conversation goes wrong. Some of the worst was built on the opposite, like recording your dates or quietly lining up a new partner before you leave the old one. Below this opening you will find all three posts in full, with the creators, quotes and scores behind each conclusion. Read the long research post if you want the whole landscape, the narcissist post if someone has just used a clinical word on you, and the good-at-dating post if you want a way to judge your own dating.
If the mindset side is what you need, my dating mindset post covers abundance, agency and making your own dating life, and my post on dating after divorce covers what I got wrong and why I now take it slow.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- Stop Diagnosing Your Dates as Narcissists (July 1, 2026)
- What It Actually Means to Be Good at Dating (June 20, 2026)
Stop Diagnosing Your Dates as Narcissists
From my video published July 1, 2026.
Madeline Argy: saying no is a skill, but withdrawal is an overcorrection
Madeline Argy is another creator I ran into. I saw her videos and titles and thought, man, she's just saying anything to be viral. But I found myself vibing with what she actually said and ranking it, and it works out pretty well when you go into the details. Her video "Sex and the Power of Saying No" got a lot of views by talking about sex, and I agree with the core of it: you can't safely participate in dating or sex until you have the unshakable confidence to explicitly say no, plus the discernment to choose partners who will respect that boundary.
Now, it's tricky too, because if you get into saying no all the time, you can ruin a sex life. If you're saying no out of resentment because you haven't taken care of yourself, that's a problem. You should be able to say no, and ideally you should completely stop dating until you trust your own ability to say no. At the same time, watch out, because some of her stuff borders on fatalism about her own dating prospects. She says she rarely ever likes anyone. She seems to be struggling with some of the other things I've talked about across these creators, like looking for the perfect person and dismissing people very easily. The boundary-setting realization is healthy, but the extreme withdrawal is certainly an overcorrection.
The deeper question underneath all of this is: why do you need to set this boundary? I've certainly thought that just because you're not in the mood to have sex doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It can still be a very productive thing for the relationship. Like that scale I've mentioned before, if one person is feeling a five on the sex scale and the other is feeling a ten, it could be best for the relationship to go ahead, and it's also worth it for the person feeling the five to investigate what's going on with them. So there are significant ups and downs with her approach, but it's valuable to hold all these different points of view.
Jimmy on Relationships: stop diagnosing your dates as narcissists
Jimmy on Relationships talks about the signs that someone will be toxic, and his core thesis is: stop trying to clinically diagnose the people you date as narcissists. Yes, please, God, stop. Stop trying to slap all these clinical psychological terms on other people. To me, that itself is a red flag, or at least a yellow flag. I say this from talking with a lot of women in a dating context: as soon as a woman starts talking about narcissists and her ex, I immediately picture that she's going to be talking about me the same way down the line. Anytime you start throwing on these psychological terms, that's a warning sign.
Even the word "boundary" gets thrown around all the time. To me, boundary is not something that should be used casually. Physical safety, not being hit in a relationship, that is a boundary. You are not going to hit me. That's a boundary. You hit me, the relationship is over. I'm not going to tolerate physical violence, that's for sure. But most other things are not a boundary that severe. The idea of small boundaries is, in my view, not really a boundary at all. That's a comfort zone. That's a preference. Enforce the small stuff, yes, but you're going to push people away by arbitrarily enforcing silly-ass boundaries or playing games.
I absolutely believe you should stop diagnosing your ex as a narcissist. I hope the things I've said about my own ex reflect my subjective experience with her, and I hope I've named just as many opportunities for improvement in myself as I have in her. Taking it slow is definitely ideal, but then people start throwing around phrases like "love bombed." I didn't even know what love bombing was until I got divorced. There are so many challenges packed into this language.
Chantel Heidi: zero-tolerance vetting versus more love and tolerance
Chantel Heidi had one literally titled "Live Replay, March 31st, 2026." She says women must protect their safety and emotional well-being by enforcing strict, logic-based vetting strategies, specifically waiting three months before any physical intimacy. I do agree with waiting longer before physical intimacy. Three months can be a little long. I believe waiting at least a month before physical intimacy is a great idea, and using physical distance can help too.
Here's where it gets complicated in my own experience. A woman I really liked, one I've mentioned a bunch of times but won't describe in detail for privacy, seemed to be using something like this vetting approach on me when she first met me. But then it seems like what happened is she suddenly flipped and slipped into bed with somebody else right after that. So the downside of this advice is that it's quite extreme. Encouraging you to walk out of a date and drive away without a single word the moment someone asks a question you don't like, that's zero tolerance. If anything, I think we need more love and tolerance today.
I do understand there's an audience of women she may be speaking to who consistently get into abusive relationships, and yes, they may need much more logical standards. But that probably goes back to chemistry, because I've noticed that people with a history of toxic relationships often don't even seem interested in a healthy one. You'd think they'd want it, but the romantic chemistry isn't there, or the healthy person seems boring, or he's "too nice." When you're used to the drama of an abusive relationship, everything else feels boring by comparison.
I've been kind of practicing zero tolerance myself with women over a lot of different issues, and I can tell you it's time for more love and tolerance. I've been way too strict, and then I've been annoyed that I'm alone. I've come to believe you have to gently drop your standards a little at a time if they're too high. What's tempting, if you put up really high standards, is to then crash them down to zero. This kind of extremist advice encourages you to put your standards crazy high with no compromise, and often what that leads to is your standards sitting at 100 where you won't let anybody in, then dropping to zero where you'll let anybody in. If you recognize yourself swinging between impossibly high standards and none at all, I have lived that whole swing myself and would be glad to help you find the middle when you join Jerry Banfield Family.
Deborah Cooper: decide with logic, not temporary emotions
Relationship coach Deborah Cooper covers dating disasters and lessons learned. I agree a lot with her thesis: women in relationships suffer because they make decisions from temporary emotions instead of logic. Unfortunately, women do seem to be driven heavily by emotions, and men often are too. In relationships, some decisions really do need to be made on logic.
I'm not personally seeing much blatant disrespect in my dates, though I hear there's plenty going on out there. But all of us are translating through our own filters. Some of my fun and humor could be read as blatant disrespect. One woman wanted to hear my comedy routine, and I asked if there were any subjects I shouldn't get into. She said, "Don't say anything about women." So of course I said something just to be funny and provocative, and I can see how somebody could call that blatant disrespect and a red flag. Man, I'm amazed anybody can date in this day and age. I'm proud of any of you who keep trying, because this is hard.
If you're trapped in one-sided financial relationships, or you struggle to set boundaries with toxic family members, those are things worth considering. I think her advice gets pretty toxic on blended-family environments, where you really need to work together instead. To me the real line is simple: do not be blatantly disrespectful to me in public. Women and men both should be polite in public. You don't start yelling or screaming or putting your partner down in public. That's crazy, and I'm not putting up with it.
Dr. Ramani: love bombing as subtle grooming
Dr. Ramani's take is "the secret agenda of love bombing, it's not what you expect." Love bombing isn't simply over-the-top romance; it's subtle grooming and a series of loyalty tests. I agree, move slowly on new relationships. Don't try to love bomb someone all over the place, and don't dump a whole bunch of over-the-top compliments on them.
The downside is that this can push me toward not wanting to compliment at all, and I feel bad about that in this culture. A woman takes all this time to get ready and look beautiful for a date, and then I don't even want to acknowledge it because it starts to look like I'm desperate or like I care too much. So I try to acknowledge it carefully. I gave a nice compliment to one woman where I said I enjoyed the thought of her getting ready and trying to look her best for the date with me. I acknowledged the work and time she put in, which isn't a very dangerous compliment. Taking all of this in is difficult because there's so much, but that's exactly how you grow. This research benefits me as much as anyone, and I hope it benefits you the same way.
I do like his point in the discussion about whether butterflies are actually a trauma warning sign. A lot of the time, yes. If you're getting serious butterflies with somebody, instead of calmly getting to know them and being curious about them, that huge spark can be a warning sign.
Jonathan Asla: the conversation to have before sleeping together
Jonathan Asla covers the important questions to ask before sleeping together, and I agree. You should ideally have a direct, explicit conversation about exclusivity and deleting the dating apps. That's very good advice for building a healthy relationship. Filter anyone who isn't looking for something serious right from the start, absolutely. At the same time, presenting a full list of vows to a man before you've even slept together can be a bit off-putting, and you could lose something with it. But I do think some basic dating vows are an empowered boundary.
If any of this resonates and you want to go deeper with me, I'd love for you to work through it with me directly. You can join Jerry Banfield Family, message me, or talk with my AI, and I share a lot of this same thinking in my books and across my site. Dating in this era is genuinely hard, and I'm proud of anyone who keeps showing up for it.
The First-Date Conversation That Comes Way Too Soon
If you picture having this kind of heavy, deep-boundaries conversation on a first date, you can see how badly it lands. This, to me, is exactly why you shouldn't sleep with people on a first date, because having a conversation like this on the first date is way too soon. You're diagnosing a relationship that doesn't exist yet.
Boundaries vs. Personal Preferences
One creator's channel ran along the lines of "just ask girls" and "dating advice I wish I knew sooner" — love, heartbreak, and moving on. One of her lines was: if a boy crosses your boundaries to disrupt your peace, leave him immediately. And again, if you can clearly define a boundary versus a personal preference, that can make sense. That's the distinction I keep coming back to. So much of the red-flag, boundary, therapy-speak culture online blurs the two. A real boundary is about what you will do. A personal preference dressed up as a "boundary" is just a demand with better branding, and treating every preference as a hard line someone "crossed" is how you end up alone, convinced everyone you meet is a narcissist.
You Don't Need Endless Time to "Heal"
I don't think you need a whole lot of time to heal after a breakup, and here's the problem I have with the way that gets sold. There's a quote from somebody — I think it was Eckhart Tolle or Wayne Dyer. Supposedly there's a parable of a man long ago and his son. He was told in the morning that his 19-year-old son had died in a Navy accident. And that night the father was found out at a dance, participating in a celebration. Somebody was shocked and said, how can you be out at this dance having fun like this when your son died today? And the man said: well, at some point I'm going to go back to having a joyful life after my son has passed. And I say that today shall be that day, because I see no point in throwing away a day of suffering when my son would want me to have a day of joy.
That's what I think about breakups. A lot of people put themselves into what, to me, looks like — what they call "healing" is just voluntary suffering. Literally as soon as I got separated, I was immediately trying to date. I don't need time to heal or to be alone. In my experience, that is just rationalizing a bunch of extra suffering. The opportunity cost for it is high. You're wasting your time. Get out there and at least start meeting people and talking.
The "All Men Are Cheaters" Generalization
Then there's her generalization that men are lustful cheaters and liars. I unfortunately see how that is true sometimes — some men, sure. But speaking for myself: I was faithful for 15 years in my relationship. I had integrity, and I was honest — too honest for my ex lots of times. I was a little lustful, for sure. That's the thing, though: all of us are going to have some character defects.
Having a strict zero-tolerance policy — if someone makes one mistake, you're going to be alone doing that. Nobody is going to survive that standard. The real question is forgiveness. If both people have a strict zero-tolerance policy, then nobody is ever going to be in a relationship for long. So I don't buy the idea that your body literally rejects a toxic partner. I think a lot of us make things way worse than they have to be. Before you diagnose your date as a narcissist, it's worth asking whether you're holding them to a standard no human being could ever pass.
Where to Go From Here
If you want the full breakdown of everything I learned from studying these dating creators one by one, you can dig into my Dating playlist.
What It Actually Means to Be Good at Dating
From my video published June 20, 2026.
Someone recently said that you're not even good at dating, bro, and I started thinking, well, what exactly qualifies as good at dating? What can I say, like, hey, here's how I define good at dating, and these are the four things that I would say make you good at dating.
Number one: are you adding value to someone's life?
A lot of dating focus tends to be extractive, like, how can I get what I want, and that is on both sides. We often are thinking, here's what I want, whether it's getting laid, getting paid, getting status. We think about how do we get that. My philosophy in dating, and I've certainly struggled with thinking that success is conversions, success is getting laid, or success is getting a wife and kids. But to me, these characteristics, you don't have to have specific outcomes.
Number one, with every woman I'm encountering: can I add value to her life? And that's what I'm thinking with my YouTube videos too. With every video I make, every blog post that turns up on my website, am I adding value to your life? If I'm giving you information that's truly making you a better person, or giving you an idea that's useful. To me, this is first and foremost with dating. Are you adding value? If someone goes out with you, if a woman goes out with me, did I add value to her life? And what does adding value mean? Did I give her some new ideas?
Number two: did we have fun?
Did we laugh? Did we make memories together? Did we enjoy our time together? Was going out with me better than sitting at home by oneself? And just by being honest, that's going to be pretty easy. Because when we're trying to perform, and a lot of dating is performative, we're not being honest. We're trying to get a certain end result.
A lot of what passes for dating advice and dating coaching is people telling you how to perform, how to get what you want, and not really considering how your actions impact the other person. How to make a lot of dating videos, how to make your profile better so you can get all kinds of girls to match you. Or men to go out with you, or whatever. Is that good if everybody does that? Isn't that teaching you just to try and get more for yourself regardless of what happens with everybody else?
If you're honest with your dating, you are good at dating
I say if you're able to be honest with your dating, you are good at dating. Like Mark Manson's Models — out of the dating books I've read, that one is the best, because I say I am fantastic at dating because I'm honest. I'm not out here trying to make every woman like me and sleep with me. That makes me fantastic at dating.
Now, for my objectives, which is to build a life — I'm dating to build a life with somebody, because having lives together is so much better than having them separately. I have an amazing 1,400 square foot house right now that I'm in all by myself. And I have space to invite a woman to build a life here in this house with me. That's why I'm dating. I'm not dating to increase my body count. I did enough of that in my 20s.
And I had one night stand after I got divorced, and it wasn't good. It didn't add value to her life. It wasn't fun. At least it was some fun while it was happening, but it was not fun afterwards to deal with her being all really into me and liking me when I wasn't honest with her. I was just trying to get laid.
What dating coaches call success
A lot of the dating coaches that you see out there would say that convincing a woman of 40 to come over to my house and to spend a night with me — a lot of the dating coaches would call that success, that I got this woman through sending a few text messages to come over, spend a night with me, and I got laid. I don't consider that being good at dating. That's good at performing. That's good at hooking up. That's good at getting short term gratification.
To me, being good at dating is that at some point you're not going to have to date anymore, because you're going to add so much value to somebody's life. You're going to have so much fun. And in being honest, you're going to push the wrong people away. And then by being honest, having fun and adding value, then, like I did with my ex for 15 years, we built a life together.
15 years building a life with my ex
We went all over the place, had so much fun together, had a home together, had kids together. And we still have a life together. We can't even properly break up, because we still have kids, so we're still together. Even though I have my own house and she's got her new boyfriend while I'm single, we still have a life together. We still have an emotional connection together. And any guy that dates her still has to deal with me being in her life also. That, to me, is dating. My ex and I added so much value to each other's lives. We had so much fun together. And I love that I could just be myself with her. I didn't have to perform.
Back in 2011, I was less concerned with being honest, although I still did a good job. I still would voluntarily show red flags and be like, hey, if you don't like this, you should leave, before women were sufficiently emotionally hooked. I think I am a role model for dating, because this is my mindset. And I know this conflicts with what a lot of other people are telling you, because a lot of what we see in the world is not adding value.
YouTube videos that only extract value
For example, I watched a few YouTube videos where they're promising this one setting will make you go viral. Or you do these 10 things on YouTube, you will blow up. I watched the videos, and I'm like, come on, I could have got this information out of Gemini, which is Google's AI, and Google owns YouTube. I could have got that information out of Gemini in 10 seconds. I could have said, give me 10 tips for YouTube, and it would have given me the same tips. And then they're selling me a course and an email list also. And I look at their video and I'm like, all you did is extract value from me. You did not give to me. You tricked me with a sensational title that you did not deliver on. And I'm never watching your channel again.
And you'll know dating is not going well if you have a bunch of people where you're like, I never want to see you again, because you weren't adding value.
Being honest is also being loving and considerate
Now, if you're honest, that's not going to be everyone's flavor. So to me, being honest is also being loving and considerate. And that means if I'm not attracted to a woman, or she's not attracted to me — this one woman told me she wasn't physically attracted to me, and I really appreciated her honesty, because I'm not going to take my time dating someone who's not physically attracted to me. I'd rather her find somebody she is physically attracted to. And I'll find somebody that is physically attracted to me.
If you're having fun, no matter where — even if you can't build a life together, if you're adding value, being honest, having fun, you've enriched people's lives. I went on a first date with a woman, and she told me about how she had made contact with extraterrestrials in person, sober, or mostly sober, like not messed up on anything. That added value to my life. I love that story, even though I don't think we're going to see each other again. I had fun going on a date with her. I was honest about what I was looking for, which is why we didn't go on a second date.
I'm looking for a woman to build a life with, to have more kids with, and I'll be the provider. And she can live at home and take care of the kids and do whatever else she feels like doing, outside, like yoga, massage, having her own business. I'm down for that. And I love knowing that, to me, this is what good at dating is. It's funny.
Someone celibate for 10 years told me I suck at dating
Somebody commented on one of my videos saying, bro, you suck at dating. Then they said they were celibate for 10 years. I'm like, you know, I've got to say, if you're celibate for 10 years, I'm not sure how much a person would know about dating in that situation.
Now I personally am choosing to not hook up, because what is not fun is just having sex with somebody once, and one person really liked it and another person didn't. It might be fun in the moment, but it's like drinking alcohol. You can have fun sometimes in a moment, but the consequences are not worth it, which is why I'm sober. And what a lot of people do to hook up is dishonest. Because if we're honest with each other, it's like, hey, I don't know you. If I really care about you and I want to add value to your life, I have to know you better to get to add value to your life. I can have fun. Let's be honest and see if we want to build a life.
The friend who thinks I'm terrible at dating
My friend was telling me that he was looking at me as terrible at dating, because I haven't had sex with a girl in six months, seven months. And I've been out with around 10 to 20 different women on first dates. And it's mostly just been first dates, because when I'm being honest, a lot of women aren't interested. And when they're being honest, I'm often not interested. And I've had fun. I've added value. I remember almost all the women I've went out with, but I didn't want to build a life with any of them. But my goal with everyone is to build a life.
His philosophy is that you should just jump in bed and have sex and see if you can build from there. I'm like, no, that's like trying to build a house without laying a foundation. To me, the adding value, the having fun, and being honest — sure, maybe if that works for you all, to just jump in having sex right away. That doesn't work for me. I need to see that, because sex is not going to be the main thing you're going to do with your partner. It's going to be being friends. It's going to be having a business. Essentially, if you're having a house together and money, it's seeing if you want to build a life together.
Dating is like gardening: seeds before the fruit
To me, sex is kind of the gift, or the fruit, of building a life together — of being honest, having fun, and adding value. And when you're gardening, you don't jump straight into the fruit. You need to have the seeds, and you plant, and then you grow. And then from there, you get to enjoy the fruit.
I think I'm an awesome role model for dating, that I'm out there hoping to make every woman's life better, hoping to have fun on every date. I'm going on a date in 45 minutes. This woman just asked me — I had thought she wasn't that interested. Maybe she wasn't at the time, but she just blew my phone up the last couple of days. She's inviting me. She invited me to do three things today. I'm like, all right, I'll come do the first one and see what happens. And my outlook is, let's have fun. Let me see if I can help this woman have a better life. I'm going to be honest about what I'm looking for. And if she's on board and all that's going well, let's build a life together.
If you appreciated this, you can watch more of how I think about dating, honesty, and building a life in my Dating playlist. My goal with creating these videos online is to help you build a life you don't need to escape — one that has love, that has money, that has free time, that has joy, that has health, and where you're on the cutting edge of the world in technology. If you want that outcome, you're welcome to join the Jerry Banfield Family at jerrybanfield.com, where you can direct message me any time and access an AI trained on my videos. I hope this added more value to your life than my ask to join the community.