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.