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.