Dating is hard because of what is going on inside us, not because dating itself is broken. In July 2026 I wrote three posts about this, and each one names a different internal reason it feels so hard: unforgiveness, wanting an exception to what you actually need, and treating dating like a numbers game. I have been on more than 20 dates in 2026, and I went through a divorce last year after fifteen years together, so these are lessons I learned the hard way.
The short answer is that dating has never been simple. I don't know of a point in history when dating totally made sense. Back in the day it was arranged marriages, or you had only one person to date. What I think we feel now is an exaggerated sense of heartbreak. The way through it starts with forgiveness, then honest compatibility, then depth instead of quantity.
My view developed in that order, so it helps to read the posts oldest to newest. In Dating Is Hard Because We Haven't Forgiven I sat on my yoga mat crying, and I realized I was treating the whole dating world as the problem when my own heart was closed. I forgave myself first, then my ex, then the women who ghosted me. I came to believe that saying dating is broken is disempowering, because it keeps the focus outside yourself.
A few days later, in Dating Is Hard Because You're Looking for an Exception, I used a puzzle to make the next point. Dating gets hard when you sand your edges down to fit everyone. What matters is fitting one piece in one area, and for me that is whether a woman would be a great mother for my next two children. I learned how firm that is by going out with a 57-year-old woman who did not want kids. I could not see a long-term future with her, no matter how good the sparks were. Beauty matters less to me than that. I need to be physically attracted to her, and a lean, slim or average build works for me.
The newest post, Dating Isn't a Numbers Game—One Deep Connection Can Change Your Life, is where I landed. After more than 20 dates, I found that none of the shallow ones mattered where there was no depth. I paid a dating coach $1,200 and spent maybe 10 hours with her at real events, and that taught me more than any video I had watched. I also reviewed a hundred dating videos in a four-hour live stream, and I found most of what is taught there to be superficial and close-hearted. Depth means real emotion, and it takes opening your heart even when you get hurt.
Below the contents list you will find all three posts in full, newest first. The order is the argument: forgiveness opens the heart, compatibility tells you what to look for, and depth is what makes a relationship last. If you are dating after a divorce, my hub on dating after divorce covers that stage, and my dating mindset hub covers the bigger picture.
If you want a personal take on your own situation, I offer a personal video review at https://jerrybanfield.com/review/.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- Dating Isn't a Numbers Game—One Deep Connection Can Change Your Life (July 21, 2026)
- Dating Is Hard Because You’re Looking for an Exception (July 11, 2026)
- Dating Is Hard Because We Haven’t Forgiven (July 8, 2026)
Dating Isn't a Numbers Game—One Deep Connection Can Change Your Life
From my video published July 21, 2026.
Dating is not actually a numbers game. It's a game of deep connection. I was thinking of this as I was in pain at three in the morning, feeling a bit lonely in bed by myself, and I realized how most of us think in terms of numbers — shallow numbers. How many people can I get to watch my videos? Or how many dates can I get with women? I've had more than 20 dates with women this year, and what I can tell you is that none of the shallow dates mattered where there wasn't depth. If you get one thing from this post, it's to start thinking depth instead of quantity.
For me, what I notice is that shallow connections — one-night stands, one-off dates, short interactions, a dating app match — don't help me feel anything. If anything, they often leave me much more lonely. But having one woman I really love and will do anything for? That changes everything. I met a woman a week ago that I'm just nuts about, and I was really missing her last night. After a very intense first week of our courtship, she wanted a day to herself, and I just felt so lonely. I didn't turn to the rest of the people in my life. I talked about that in my Jerry Banfield vlog today — how I tried to escape my loneliness. What actually worked was prayer and reaching out for connection. What works to help loneliness is depth. What doesn't work to help loneliness is shallow.
The Same Shallow Approach in Dating and Business
I realized that in my business, I've been taking the same shallow approach that I've taken with dating most of my life. For most of my life, I thought about dating in terms of quantity — I just need to go out more — looking at it like it's a sales funnel, trying to see how many we can get to the bottom of the funnel. And that made dating consistently miserable. What I found is that opening my heart and really giving the deepest love I have to offer opens me up to have the most beautiful dating experience. It shows that dating is not broken. It's going around looking for shallow, transactional experiences that causes us to miss out on the massive amount of joy that's available when we date someone we really love. And you can feel that love immediately, as soon as you meet someone.
I've got to say, it definitely is transforming. It's a bit terrifying. And yet at the same time, the last week has felt like a long time, whereas many years of my life felt like they flew by. In the last week, I've made so many memories and felt so many emotions. The key to real change in your life is to feel deep emotion and/or use repetition. The woman I'm dating is Christian, and the faith is very important to her. So she sent me some devotional gospel songs, and I've just been crying listening to those. Up until now, I would never listen to music like that, and yet I've had such a deep emotional experience. That music is speaking to me now.
When you're dating in a shallow way, you're able to get away with so many behaviors that, when you really love someone and open your heart, you just don't want to act like anymore. You want to be the most loving, kind person you can.
A Lesson From 500 Women and a Lonely Ending
I know a guy who passed away recently. I talked with him about dating, and he said he'd been with over 500 women, at least. Yet none of those 500 women had a lasting connection with him, and he was so lonely at the end of his life that he chose to move on. That, to me, is a perfect example of what almost everybody's teaching. The whole dating environment on YouTube appears to be: close your heart, avoid getting hurt, protect yourself, assume betrayal, and use all these games and strategies to try to get what you want. Don't trust people. Whereas what works for me is to open my heart, to trust, and to have faith. Then when I hurt, when I'm scared, when I feel deep emotions and feel like a child again, I pray: God, please help me. Jesus, thank you for bringing this woman to me. Please let me continue to trust you. Please vanquish these insane thoughts I'm having right now that are not true.
What I Learned Reviewing 100 Dating Videos
What matters is depth. I was thinking about all my videos — you can watch all my videos, but there's a lack of depth to any video, even though my videos are much deeper than almost everybody else's you're watching on dating. There are certainly some good ones. I reviewed a hundred different dating videos, and I'd invite you to try watching that review and go through it. If you really want to see what people are teaching on YouTube, you can see how I studied a hundred dating videos so you can skip the nonsense. A lot of the most popular people are nothing but nonsense, and I went through and showed that with a whole lot of research in a four-hour live stream. What I found is that most people are teaching superficial, instant-gratification, close-hearted, insane strategies that will leave you miserable and lonely. What I care about is teaching strategies to really be fulfilled and connected with someone else — and that requires depth.
So what is depth versus shallow? Depth is where there's a huge amount of emotion. What I'm seeing is that there's basically a critical threshold, at least for me. The kindness of a stranger doesn't cross the critical emotional threshold most of the time. Someone letting me over in traffic is nice. A friendly Zoom call still ends up being just a Zoom call. Even when someone pays me and talks with me for 30 minutes, it means something, but it doesn't hit me at an emotional level of depth that's really there to change my life. If I'm lonely, like last night in bed by myself and up at three in the morning, I'm not thinking about the people who scheduled one-on-one calls with me. I'm not thinking about the woman at yoga who was nice and smiled. I'm only thinking about the people I really love. And to me, the goal is someone you really love. If you want to find someone you really love, you've got to give what you want to get. Even if you get hurt a number of times, it still takes opening your heart and going for depth.
The Risk of Going for Depth
It's a big risk to go for depth. I've had attacks of fear thoughts — the way you'd picture wasps attacking if you went and hit their nest. I've had so much love and joy in the last eight days, and I've offered and opened up so much depth, but the fear thoughts have been brutal on my open heart, just blasting my mind: You're crazy. You don't know what you're doing. You don't know what you're talking about. You're all wrong. You don't mean what you say. There is no God. Nobody's helping you. You've just made something out of nothing. She doesn't feel the same way. You're an idiot. All those haters are right about you. That's what it looks like. And then it looks like me crying out to anybody listening — God, Jesus, my dad, some of the father figures in AA who passed away: Please help me think true thoughts. Please protect me from all these insane thoughts that are not true. My heart and my loving is true. All these thoughts — and most of YouTube — are just crazy thoughts, and people getting paid to say the craziest thing they can. Then people click on it because it ends up being a spectacle, and because it's a spectacle, it attracts attention from people looking for real help and advice.
I know, because I tried shallow dating all year, and I found that if I don't open my heart up, nothing big happens. It makes sense to be careful about who you go for depth with. If you go for depth with the wrong person, it can be very painful. At the same time, though, that's where real change comes from. To me, that's part of the beauty of dating: to have somebody help bring out the best in me, for me to help bring out the best in them, and for the two of us to change and grow together and be something better together than we were separately — to essentially multiply each other's lives and to enjoy the world God's given us, together. And through that joy is the best way we can give to others.
Why In-Person Coaching Beats a Thousand Videos
Thus, I'm planning to focus more on helping people with things like dating in person, because while I know these videos are helpful and some of you love these dating videos, I paid a dating coach twelve hundred dollars very easily, and that was more helpful than any video I watched. I spent maybe 10 hours with her, going out to actual events. She had one of her friends meet me for a date. She found three different events for me to go to. She took pictures for my dating profiles — which I then deleted right after I got the professional pictures taken. Depth changes everything. Spending 10 hours with her in person — having fun, talking, dating, and going to events — there's no amount of videos that's going to substitute for that. Her work coaching me in person on dating helped me be prepared to meet a woman I was then ready to go for depth with. You could probably watch 2,000 dating videos and you would not get the same benefit as having one in-person dating coach.
I realize one reason I was feeling like that last night is that I need more depth with more people. My business has been very shallow — it's just creating videos. You can only go so deep on a video with somebody. Yes, you can have a good cry watching a video, but it's not a two-way relationship, and it's not really in person. So videos can help. Videos can make a difference. But they have limits.
I think some people are more open to shallow validation and love through small acts of kindness. For me, perhaps it's because I grew up in a family where my mom was in the military and we lived all around the world. To me, love was my mom, my dad, and my brother. That was love. Everybody else was transactional. Everybody else came and went. We'd move, we'd have friends, but my mom, dad, and brother were the only constants, and they were the only people I really loved. I had some family members I'd say "I love you" to, but my heart was three people, and almost everybody else didn't matter — just a stranger, an acquaintance, or a friend who would not stick around for long. Mom, dad, and brother were forever.
Thus, for the kind of person I am, it comes down to the woman I'm dating, my kids, my family, and the people in AA — but really, it often pulls down to about five or ten people. I have nice interactions with lots of people, but one person being friendly in an AA meeting doesn't make much of a difference in my life when it comes down to things like my will to live, my passion, why I'm here, and what I want to do here. That often comes down to a handful of people. Dating is the best place to find depth in your life, and I'm figuring one of the best things I could offer is to help other people find depth in their life the same way my dating coach helped me find more depth. It makes perfect sense that after doing a month-long dating coaching program with her, I was then ready to meet a woman who's extremely compatible with me. So I hope my videos can help you, but I also accept that they have a limited amount of help they can offer. I invite you — I encourage you — to try to find depth in everything you do, and be careful who you listen to. Anyone telling you shallow strategies that make dating a numbers game is misleading you.
Where to Actually Meet People
You shouldn't need to approach a thousand women cold. You shouldn't need to optimize your dating profile to find the perfect person. You shouldn't need to go do all these events and build up your status. If you will lead with your heart and look for depth, you will be able to find it. You do need to get out of your house, generally. In my experience, workout classes are one of the best places to meet women — women really like to go to those. And AA meetings — there are a few women I know who go to AA meetings to try to meet men — so I'll tell you, AA meetings are a good place to meet men, because it's men often being vulnerable and changing.
So I invite you: go for depth. I hope my experience is helpful so that you know what's important. Depth is important — not numbers, not body count, not matches, not messages, not validation, not having a bunch of options. None of that stuff matters. None of that stuff will prevent things like what just happened with my friend. None of that stuff has enough depth to keep someone here. What will keep someone here is a deep, loving relationship — a wholehearted connection.
I talk a lot about dating right now, and on Jerry Banfield Dating we focus on and always talk about dating. If you want to go deeper into everything I've learned, you can watch my Dating playlist, including the live stream where I studied a hundred dating videos so you can skip the nonsense.
And if you want to share your situation with me, I would love to have a call with you — you can schedule a one-on-one call with me and get my thoughts on it. I don't tell you what to do — I listen, and I connect with you.
Whatever you do next, lead with your heart. One deep connection can change your life in a way a thousand shallow ones never will.
Dating Is Hard Because You’re Looking for an Exception
From my video published July 11, 2026.
Dating Is Like Putting Together a Puzzle
Imagine that you're putting together a puzzle and you have this one puzzle piece you've tried in a hundred different spots. Would you think it was worthless, throw it out, or try to rip off parts of it to make it fit somewhere else? Or would you just continue trying to see where it fit? Dating is difficult because it's like putting together a puzzle where you really can't see a lot of the rest of the pieces. You're trying to make yourself match with somebody else, and in the bigger picture of humanity, fit together ideally in a way that benefits all of us.
Dating is difficult because most of us are trained to seek broad approval, to try to make everybody like us, to sand down our rough edges. But just like a puzzle piece, if you sanded down the rough edges of every puzzle piece, they wouldn't fit together that well. They'd all slide around and make a mess instead of something cohesive, and you could put one puzzle piece in some other spot and it wouldn't really matter. What makes a beautiful puzzle is having pieces that only fit together in one single way, and then when you look at them, they create a big, broad, beautiful picture.
With dating, what I'm learning is that all I need to do is find exactly the one person I fit with. I don't need to get women to like me. I don't need to genuinely understand women. In fact, women can remain a complete mystery, and I can still find a woman where she and I have fantastic chemistry together. The dating market is not broken. We're just not thinking of it the right way. All these people saying how broken dating is are making it hard for you. Oh, you'd like somebody to make it hard? Finally, it fits.
So dating is about finding our place in the bigger picture of humanity with a partner. It's like a big, giant dance, but there are no clear rules, no fixed set of chairs or fixed set of puzzle pieces. In fact, there are billions of puzzle pieces on the planet. What helps me with dating is to lean into the challenge aspect of it, because it shows me the magical nature of life.
The Date My Dating Coach Set Up
I just went out on a date last night. My dating coach fixed me up with one of her friends, and it turns out I already knew this friend. We'd already seen each other seven or eight times. We'd already spent probably an hour talking. I already had this friend's phone number and hadn't been texting her because of my policy of not asking a woman out. She seemed pretty happy to see me, and I didn't even think she liked me that much. It seemed like the two of us had very compatible lives.
If you get one thing out of this that's really important, it's to think about how your puzzle pieces fit together — not just the physical ones, but the pieces of your life. Lots of times we're looking for romantic sparks. I talked to this woman last night who went out with me. We had fun together, and she texted me first afterwards. I was like, nice. And yet she said she didn't see me romantically at first, which makes sense because we first met at a business networking event. Then we were on a podcast together. Then I saw her at a women's circle, and then I ran into her at a community event. So she was seeing me as kind of a guy who was around — not necessarily a guy that might be interested in dating her, or that she might be interested in. I said, well, that's interesting to me, because I was interested in you, but I didn't seem to get that mutual response. Although sometimes she did seem to be interested in me as well. But what the two of us both noticed is that our lives fit really well together with where we want to go in the future.
Puzzle Pieces Change Shape Over Time
Imagine trying to do a puzzle where the pieces were consistently changing shape on top of putting it together. That's human beings. For example, my ex-wife and I — our puzzle pieces fit together amazingly when we got together. It was so hot and heavy. I remember my sister commenting, "God, you two just don't stop touching each other." We were just all over each other all the time, and it was so much fun. Over time, we were able to get along, but our puzzle pieces shifted and grew to the point where we didn't fit together anymore besides being co-parents. I want more kids; she doesn't. I want to do YouTube and creative work and be an entrepreneur and have a woman who supports that and loves it. She wants a guy that's corporate like she is. We have different views on health, some different approaches to parenting, and absolutely different approaches to spending money. Our puzzle pieces just stopped fitting together.
Then when I went out with this woman last night, we both reflected that our puzzle pieces line up on the key things. She wants to have several children. She's from another country, so she's a lot more cooperative in some ways and wants to play more of the role of a traditional woman — she wants to stay at home, raise children, cook, take care of the house. She's not looking for a job. She's not looking to be out working and being one of these do-it-everything moms. She wants more of a traditional woman's role, and she wants her man to have more of a traditional provider role. She's also studying business and entrepreneurship, and I'm pretty business and entrepreneurship myself. So from what I've seen so far, the two of us seem to fit very well together. She thinks it's great I already have kids, because she wants kids. She looked at a picture of my kids and said the kids were beautiful. It's like, yeah, I make beautiful children. I do that — well, at least with two, I've done it with my ex.
The two of us seem to fit together pretty well in how our lives align, and that to me is the foundation of successful dating: finding someone where where you want to go in life and where they want to go in life, the capabilities you have and what you want, and what they have and what they want, all fit together. You notice puzzle pieces don't fit together because they're identical — one sticks out more, and the other one has space to receive it. I know that sounds so sexual, but with dating this applies across a bunch of different areas.
Dating Reveals the Shape of Your Own Puzzle Piece
To me, being on the same page about children is absolutely essential. The challenge with dating, though, is that lots of times you don't know yourself. One of my viewers said that when he started dating his woman, she said she didn't want kids — but now they have a kid and she's very happy. She realized she hadn't honestly looked within herself deep down to see if she wanted a kid. She'd taken on a narrative and hadn't really thought about it. That's the sense I get from him: deep down she did want a kid, but there was this stuff on top of it, and being with him cleared away the stuff on top.
That's one of the things that makes dating hard sometimes — it reveals the nature of our own puzzle piece. A lot of us go around not even knowing ourselves. We go around not knowing what we want until we bang up against someone else who wants something different. Then we get frustrated because we feel rejected, or because we have to reject them and tell them to stop texting us. But then we have the chance to say, thank you. Thank you that this person helped me see myself.
For example, I went out with a woman who was 57. Despite being with my ex for seven years and telling her the whole time I wanted more children, when I got divorced I thought, well, it'd be easier to date — I could really date almost anybody if I would just date someone who didn't want kids, or was wishy-washy, or was on the fence about having kids. I could really date bigger. But that's the problem. A lot of us are trying to use psychology that can work in other areas. In a family, it makes sense to focus on cooperating, fitting in to some extent, helping each other. But in dating, that approach actually works against you. When you meet someone and you have fundamental incompatibilities — where perhaps both your puzzle pieces stick out at the same angle and you can't put each other together — it doesn't matter about the romantic sparks or the feelings. In fact, sometimes when two people don't fit, it creates a lot more romantic sparks and energy, because there's something that's not going to work there. The drama and the chaos is what's really creating those sparks rather than true compatibility.
When I went out with this woman who was 57, I realized I didn't have the deep capacity to really want to take my time with her, because I knew she doesn't want kids. This was before I got so clear on where I'm at now — I was just fresh out of a marriage — and I thought, I could see this woman as a short-term relationship, a girlfriend, a hookup. But I couldn't see staying with her long term, because she doesn't want kids and she can't have kids at this point. And that helped me get clear: if a woman doesn't want children, then I don't need to be considering whether there's any compatibility between us. Nothing else matters.
Strong Compatibility in the Areas That Matter Most
So when I run into this woman who definitely wants multiple children — and has known that since she was a teenager — that is a clear area of very strong compatibility, where both of us have the exact same feelings about something very important. And in this day and age, when a lot of men are infertile from looks-maxing and taking steroids and other things men are doing to sabotage their fertility, a man like me with proven fertility, with a woman who definitely wants to have kids, is a strong fit in an area that's very important.
What makes the suffering and the frustration in dating make sense is to think about it this way: you're looking for high levels of compatibility in very important areas. A lot of people get distracted thinking, well, we need to listen to the same music or think the same thoughts about politics, when really those areas are generally not that important. Although, if you're both working in a political party, that might be different.
Then again, it perhaps might help if you both were on the same political party team so you could work together — although there might be some serious chemistry if one of you was in the local Democrat party and the other was in the local Republican party. That might make for some serious chemistry. At the same time, the things that are most important should not even be considered next to things that are not important.
One Primary Thing I'm Looking For
To me, when I'm dating, I've got two — well, I guess two primary things. Actually, I can boil it down to one primary thing for me: I want a woman that I think would be a great mother for having at least two more children with. And that automatically translates into a woman that's healthy. I do not want the mother of my next children to be an alcoholic, a drug addict, or a woman that is very unstable and unreliable. I want a woman that would make a great mother for my next two children. The best part about my ex is that she makes a great mother for the two children I have.
You can even see, I didn't mention beauty in that. I definitely want to find her physically attractive, but she doesn't need to be beautiful. Hence the video I recently posted — and all my videos are also blog posts on my website, where I'm grateful to see hundreds of you have already read this one within the first few days. I put out a video saying: only date average-looking women. Because you could just think of every woman as average looking. A lot of coaches and all these people on YouTube are telling you to looks-max and try to get with the hottest women and men, and to me it's insane. What really matters is finding the one absolute most important area of compatibility — because if that area of compatibility is not there, nothing else matters. I've filtered that down to: would she make a great mother for my next two children?
That encompasses a lot. I want a woman who wants to take care of the children too, because I have my passion in working and using my mind to create. So I want a woman who will stay home and take care of the children, who doesn't have to work, who's not all wrapped up in her career. She can maybe have a business or something, a side hustle, or want to go to yoga a lot — something like that. But I don't want a woman that's going to work full time, because then I need to slow down. I did that with my ex when she supported us for a few years. I had to slow down on what I was doing to compensate for her job, which meant doing an hour of dishes every day, taking complete care of the house — all the quote-unquote women's chores and all the quote-unquote men's chores, the cars, the yard, the laundry, the cleaning, all of it. I don't want to do that. I'm happy to contribute — I'm willing to contribute in a relationship — but I think it'll work best if I can be relied on, and my woman thrives and loves me making all the money, loves what I do and how I do it, takes great care of herself, and wants to have babies. That is the biggest area of compatibility to me.
Where Beauty Actually Fits In
And beauty, next to that, is not important. I need to be physically attracted to her, and to me, as long as a woman is lean, slim, or even an average build, that works for me. When I met my ex, I just wanted a woman who was beautiful. That was almost all I was caring about — I want a beautiful woman to have fun with. That was my simple thing at the time, and then hopefully that could turn into marriage and family one day. But now I want a woman that would fit as a wife I would be proud of — proud of in terms of what kind of mother she is, what kind of wife she is, what kind of partner she is, and what it's like to be with her every day. I don't care as much about what everybody else thinks of her, or whether she's going to impress my friends. It's: how does this relationship feel to me? Is this woman going to be loyal? Is she going to be on the same page about parenting? Does she want to have multiple babies with me?
When Puzzle Pieces Don't Fit, Nobody Gets Rejected
Dating gets so much easier when you start to understand exactly what the biggest parts of your puzzle piece look like, and then just accept it. You don't even need to call it or think of it as rejection. If I meet a woman who doesn't want kids, there's no element of rejection. Our puzzle pieces do not fit together. And if our puzzle pieces don't fit together in a key area, nobody needs to be rejected or hurt. There's nothing personal. It's: I want kids and you don't. There's nothing here.
An example of this: there was a woman I met up with on Hinge right before I deleted it — actually someone I already knew from real life — and I got her phone number. She was very interested in me until I told her, look, I want a woman that wants kids. On her Hinge profile, she said that she did not want kids, and she's in her early 40s. As soon as I had that conversation, I tried to waffle on it and open up a little bit of flexibility, but she wasn't buying it. And that's good. She totally lost interest in me after that, because she had the common sense to realize: if he really cares about having kids and I don't want to have kids, the two of us should not do anything else at all from here. There's no point in even proceeding.
At this point, the way I look at it: if a woman doesn't want kids and wouldn't be a mother and a wife that I'd be proud to be with — in terms of how healthy she is, how she takes care of the house and the kids, and how she supports me, not what everybody else thinks, but how we work together, how our puzzle pieces fit together in our own private home — then I have no interest in doing anything at all. We don't need to go out on a date. We don't need to get to know each other, and we don't need to make anything of it at all.
So when I get to know women, I try to talk as soon as possible about the kids thing, because then we can see if the puzzle pieces fit before all these feelings get attached ahead of looking at what's important. A lot of people in dating today are afraid to mention the things they really care about up front. This woman told me she just went out on a date or two with a guy, and she liked other things about him, but he did not want kids. She said there's no compatibility there — there's no point in seeing him again or doing anything, because I know he doesn't want kids and I know I do.
Dating Doesn't Have to Be This Hard
I hope this makes dating easier for you. Dating doesn't have to be as hard when you realize what's most important to you, when you realize you're just trying to fit your puzzle piece into the bigger picture, and when you figure out exactly what you have to offer and exactly what you're looking for. Then you can just look for it without making it anything personal, and without digging into all these psychological traps of calling the exploration failure — of thinking, oh my God, that conversation didn't go how I thought it should go, so it was all horrible, I'm rejected. It's like, no. I've been out on at least 20 dates this year, and the last one I went on was probably the most successful one, because we have a high level of alignment in where we want to go with our lives. I'm going to see her again tonight at an event we're going to. If you want to follow along with everything I'm learning as I go, I share it all in my Dating playlist.
When you stop trying to force your piece into the wrong space, when you get honest about exactly what you have to offer and exactly where you fit, then dating can be a lot easier — and that's what I'm all about. We are here to help make dating easier, and there are lots of other things we do in the Family. A family is a place where we help you in all aspects of life, and one of them is dating. We are there to help you get ready to date, to build a real-life dating plan, and to turn dates into relationships that last. I lead by example, and the way you participate is to share: join the group and post your situation with us so I can give you direct, personalized feedback — not some AI-thought-up thing, but real personal feedback — where other people in the group can do the same, and where you can stay accountable and talk to us over time.
And then one day you can tell everybody: man, that Jerry Banfield guy — that was the one guy I needed to watch when it came to dating.
Dating Is Hard Because We Haven’t Forgiven
From my video published July 8, 2026.
Dating Was Never "Not Broken"
Dating is hard because we need to forgive everything we've been through. The idea that dating itself is somehow broken is ridiculous. That implies that in the past, at some point, dating wasn't broken. Please tell me a point in history when dating absolutely made sense and was whole, when it totally worked. I don't remember any personally — not in this life or in past lives. Dating has always been crazy. Back in the day it was arranged marriages, or you literally had nobody else you could date except one person. I remember fifteen years ago, dating was crazy back then too. What we're feeling in dating today is an exaggerated sense of heartbreak.
This is what I've been working on personally. I dated and hooked up a lot in my twenties, and then I met a woman I fell madly in love with. We were together fifteen years, and then we got divorced last year. As I talked about recently, when I got with her, the main thing I cared about was beauty, and that eventually led to a lot of incompatibility. Then I've been trying to date again. It's not that dating itself is broken — that's a disempowering idea that tries to get you to feel like the whole system is a disaster. No. When you're hurt, when things are difficult, when you struggle, then there's a need to forgive.
Crying in Yoga Class
I was in yoga class crying again today. I walked in and put my mat down, and what do you know — one of these women who looked like she was in her early twenties, her and her attractive friend, one of them actually looked at me and smiled. And you know what I did? I gave her a dirty look and a frown, because I'm like, what? I don't even believe it. I don't even want your smile. I don't even want it right now. And then I felt bad afterwards. How hurt am I that when the thing you'd think I want happens — especially as a guy — I react like that?
As I've talked about in recent videos, I'm not initiating anything with women. I'm not asking for phone numbers, not asking women out on dates, not following up after dates — literally demanding that the woman chase me completely. Since women end most relationships, I think they should start most relationships too. I refuse to start or advance any relationship. I refuse to do anything besides reciprocate. Or as my friend said yesterday: you refuse to be vulnerable. Absolutely. I am not putting one bit of vulnerability out towards a woman without her doing it first. I will match her, but I will not step one foot ahead of her in vulnerability.
Because, well, I guess my heart's kind of broken after divorce. And the divorce is one thing, but then dating and trying to meet women, I've just been crushed over and over again. I'm sure there are a few women who would say I hurt their feelings too — maybe we both think we hurt each other. But the answer is not looking around and saying dating's broken. That's ridiculous and disempowering. The answer is to forgive everybody involved in the process.
Forgiving Myself First
I was on the yoga mat crying and just affirming: I forgive myself. One of the most important people to forgive in dating is ourselves, because our own behavior is often what truly bothers us more than other people's. You could at least argue that other people did what they did and you really couldn't do much about it — but in theory, you should be able to do everything about your own situation. So I was thinking and forgiving myself. I forgive you for having crushes on other women while you were married. I forgive you for not divorcing your ex immediately, as soon as she said no more kids and wouldn't even have a discussion — just laid that down as an immediate ultimatum right in your face. I forgive you for not divorcing her when you had a toddler, when you had a newborn. I forgive you for wanting a divorce and then for offering it up. I forgive you.
And then I forgive my ex for not being a teammate, for deciding unilaterally, with no consideration of me at all, what we were going to do about something really important in our future — without any kind of kindness or consideration, with just pure cruelty. I forgive her. And I forgive all these women who have ghosted me, who have gotten excited and then been turned off by my enthusiasm, by my joy, by my intensity. I forgive them.
What you'll find — and what I'm finding — is that the more we forgive, the more you'll see that these narratives about how dating across the whole world is broken are ridiculous. It doesn't matter how dating is working over there. What matters is: are you in a position to have the relationship you want to have? Forgiveness is the key to opening our hearts.
Whose Hurt Is It, Really?
Here's what was painful to face when I went to yoga this morning. There are all these beautiful people in there — maybe a handful of chads, and more beautiful women, and then some women not so beautiful. And then there's me, and I walk in with a closed heart, with a fuck-you attitude toward the girl who's giving me what you'd think I would want. And then I'm thinking: how many of the women I've come across really actually did want to connect with me? How many of the women who gave me that fuck-you look while I'm walking around the park smiling at them — they just look down, they give me some dirty look — how many of them were so hurt that it wasn't really about me at all? They're so hurt that they're projecting their hurt onto me. How many women has that happened with? Could I forgive them for feeling the same way I feel today, and for acting the same way I've been criticizing them for acting?
We need to stop this whole "dating is broken" dating war, gender war. All of this is making it harder to open our hearts and get what we want. It's not that dating is broken. It's that many of our hearts are broken and we're not doing the work to fix them. It's not somebody else's job. It's not my ex's job, even though I'd like it to be. It's not her job to come and own up to all the stuff she did that put us in the situation we're in today, because she seems to be getting along just fine without doing that. I did write a letter to her with all the stuff I did, and then I found more stuff. Maybe that helped her — it certainly helped me. The idea is that we first and foremost need to forgive ourselves.
Maybe It Was for the Best
A lot of us go around with these butthurt attitudes — like me. What, you're so mad that this single mom didn't message you back? That she didn't reply to your last message, your last call, the last video you sent? Why? Maybe that was for the best. Maybe you weren't going to have a great relationship with her. Maybe the best thing she could have done was not go there with you, so you wouldn't be stuck wasting your time with her. Especially since I want more kids — a woman who's almost forty and already has multiple children is probably not going to want any more kids either. So a lot of forgiveness is being able to say thank you. Thank you for helping me learn these lessons. Thank you for helping me be a stronger man.
Because getting divorced and then trying to date has helped me be a stronger man. It's made my work seem super easy. I had it so easy before, being married, getting all this love at home — and even though I'm divorced now, my ex and I mostly had a great relationship. My work felt so hard until I got divorced and started dating. Dating has felt so hard that with my work, it's like: oh, you published a video and it got 50 views? I just don't even hardly feel anything, because the emotions in dating are so much higher, so much attacking my ego, so much revealing my broken little heart — which is not actually broken.
Your Heart Is Not Broken
Look at your heart. It's not broken. For probably 99 percent of you, it's not broken. If you genuinely believe your heart is broken, in my experience it's worth getting real help with that. If it feels stuck and you'd like to talk it through with someone who has been in the thick of it, you can join Jerry Banfield Family and we'll sit with what you're carrying together. But your heart is full. It's whole. It's functioning properly. There are just some stuck emotions, stuck feelings, and some tears that need to come out. And all of a sudden you'll see dating's not broken — you just had a closed heart, and then you watched a whole load of videos that tried to tell you, well, it's not you, it's dating.
Yes, I understand there are some messed-up things going on with dating. I don't have my eyes closed — I see all kinds of people. Looksmaxing is just ridiculous to me. Geez, stop looksmaxing. Obviously I believe in eating well and taking care of yourself, but that turns me off. If you're a woman who's looksmaxing, that personally turns me off. It screams to me that you don't appreciate your own beauty. That's what it says to me. And I share my dating videos because I want to put a different point of view out there than what most of the algorithms are pushing. It's not up to me what the algorithm does with my videos. But the best part is that doing my videos helps me.
I did a video before saying I'm never asking a woman out again, and one of the comments was: you're just hurt. True. I am hurt. I'm hurt by thinking I had a relationship that was forever and mostly awesome, and having it suddenly end in divorce. I'm hurt by the treatment I've received from women. For every one woman I've given some cold or dirty look or ignored, there have probably been five or ten who have done the same thing to me. For every woman I've ghosted, or who's going around saying I hurt her feelings, there are probably two who have done that to me. So it feels perfectly equal in a way. This has been a tough process. And I think, based on all the men and women I've talked to, dating is tough because it reveals stuff you could get away with not looking at otherwise — whether you're dating and jumping straight into a relationship, naive and not even looking, or doing what I'm doing: dating and trying to really look at the woman across the table, or next to me. I'm trying to really look at her. So yes, there are a number of women I've said no to. Maybe the ratio is more one to one, because I have gone out with a number of women and never texted or called them after the first date, because I had no interest in seeing them again.
It's Not a Men Problem or a Women Problem
So maybe some of those women are hurt over that — I hadn't considered it. But for some reason I don't think that's hurtful, because they didn't text or call me either. They must not have been that interested in me either, which is fine.
I have a friend — actually, my dating coach — and she's talked about how some days she struggles with having a lot of thoughts that are critical and judgmental about men. That really helps me, because I have the same thing. I have days where my mind is critical and judgmental towards women. But a heart that's forgiven will override that stuff. And here's the thing: if my friend, who I love, who I have a great friendship with — and who I would probably date if she was interested in dating me — is having the same kind of feelings towards men that I'm having towards women, it's clearly not an issue of men or women. I also have many women I love, women I have happy, healthy friendships or acquaintances with. So the problem for a lot of us is that we're not doing our work: forgiving ourselves and forgiving everybody else.
Committed to Releasing the Hurt
I'm committed to releasing the hurt — forgiving all the women, and forgiving all the men, because there are a lot of men out there doing lots of stuff that needs forgiving too. And yes, it's unfair when some woman comes at me projecting all the hurt she's received from other men onto me. I feel that unfairness. I'm like, I didn't do anything to you to deserve the way you're treating me right now. But then again, that woman this morning at yoga class didn't do anything to get that kind of energy from me either.
I intend to be in a position where my heart is open, where I'm in a welcoming connection with others — and that requires forgiveness. Sometimes I have to just affirm it over and over: I forgive. And I like to do it by name. I forgive this woman, and I say her name. I forgive my ex. I forgive my mother. I forgive whoever it is. If all of us did that — even if a decent percentage of us did that — it would be obvious that dating isn't broken.
When Your Heart Is Open, It's Easier to Attract
I think a lot of us, when we do our work of forgiving and opening our hearts, will connect pretty quickly. The more I've done in forgiving and opening my heart — and I'm not using dating apps at all — the more I'm constantly connecting with women and making new connections. I have a date on Friday that my dating coach set up. I literally paid her, and she's setting me up with one of my friends. I'm telling you, when your heart's open, it's so much easier to attract someone to you.
But I got frustrated, and I cried on my mat today, because I felt out of control. I'm like, how the hell am I going to attract a woman that I love, and that loves me, when I'm going around with the attitude I've got right now? What if I'd had a different attitude? I might have had a really positive interaction at yoga class this morning.
Take Ownership and Stop Blaming Dating
So let's take ownership of ourselves. Let's stop blaming dating. Let's stop watching videos where people are saying dating's broken and defining exactly how broken it is. Instead, let's fix ourselves, and let's let others help us fix each other — because giving somebody else a hug, helping somebody else feel good, is a key part of helping ourselves get fixed as well. If you want more of my honest journey through all of this, I share it in my Dating playlist.
It's super easy, super fast — 30 minutes. You can just pop in and have a real conversation with me based on my experience of actually having a very happy relationship for most of fifteen years. I'm not teaching you from a hookup culture. I'm only looking for a wife I can have more kids with, only looking for another happy relationship — I have no interest in anything else. You will love having a call with me.