I recently started making a leaderboard for all the women I'm dating, and this has helped me so much to relax in dating, to take my time dating, and to be honest about exactly what I'm doing, who I'm doing it with, and where things are. Now, I know this might sound ridiculous, and yes, it doesn't sound very romantic in some ways, but the goal is to delete the leaderboard. The goal is to see who rises to the top over time, and the goal is to help me go through the dating process successfully.
I think a lot of people do this kind of thing subconsciously. Especially people on dating apps are doing this kind of thing without being so explicit about it. I'm just being very clear. Obviously, I'm not going to name or show any of the real women, and the leaderboard rankings can change on a daily basis.
What I Was Doing Before the Leaderboard
What I was doing before the leaderboard is I was married and with my ex-wife for a total of 15 years. So she was number one, and sadly, towards the end, there were some number twos and number threes I was at least thinking of on there. But for most of the relationship, she was number one, and she was the only woman I was thinking about until our relationship started to slowly drift apart.
Then when I started dating again, I was like, I've got to find my next wife. I want two more kids. I want a family. I want a wife. And what I would do is I'd essentially find a target, a woman, and I'm like, all right, she's it. We're going to focus everything on her. Since I'd been in a relationship, it felt like the most natural thing that I'd find one woman, get all excited about her, text her every day, want as much attention as possible, and try to see her as often as possible. And then I would consistently come off as desperate, as needy, as too much. They're feeling pressure. They just want to be friends. We're not romantically and emotionally compatible, et cetera.
I've dated like this where there's no leaderboard. There's just one woman, and I'm obsessed with the one woman. I'm waiting for her to text back. I'm nervous. I don't understand why it's been six hours and she hasn't sent a message. All of that strategy all year culminated with me dating a woman I nicknamed the queen, because I told her, literally on our fourth date before I'd even kissed her, "You're my queen, you're the one." And it went poorly. It was agony after that happened.
I did a whole series of videos on my Jerry Banfield channel documenting this day by day in real time, talking about how I finally feel safe loving someone, how I found my queen, how I met her five days ago and she's already the center of my world, how I cried walking home. This is exactly, exactly what I was doing before, and I finally understand what went wrong with the queen. Then after that I asked out 15 women in three weeks. My dating channel has very clearly documented that exact journey in real time.
What I've learned is that until a clear winner emerges, I need a leaderboard, and I need to fill the leaderboard, at least get a top 10. That way I'm not overly emotionally invested in anyone, and I'm ranking each woman on a variety of factors. I imagine many women are doing the same thing with me. I'm probably on a few other women's leaderboards right now, I'm not sure. So I guess we need to look at two different sides of that.
The Queen and Her Full Single Life
First, what I've noticed is some of the women I date have such full single lives. They've been single so long. This was the issue with the queen. She hadn't even been out on a date in months when she met me. And this was a beautiful woman who knows a ton of guys, and hardly any guys were even asking her out at all. She was on dating apps having guys cancel on her last minute, because she was probably choosing the same guy that the very limited number of other women on there were choosing. He had a leaderboard and she wasn't number one, so he was canceling on her.
So when I met her, I thought, great, the two of us can just focus on each other. She's very single. She has no other options. I canceled a date that I had with another woman, and I stopped talking to the rest of the women I was talking to when I met her, and I focused on her. Meanwhile she had this single life that was so full, she was doing so many things, that the first week she gave me 12 hours of time in person and it escalated. But then it got to be too much. She felt overwhelmed. She felt pressured. She pulled back, and she dove back into her single life. She could feel how her single life was rapidly disappearing and I was consuming a big part of her time.
So she pulled back, and it was agonizing because I had killed all the other options I had. There is a woman I'd been out with on several dates that I stopped talking to, who now doesn't respond to me after I took a couple of weeks dating this other woman and didn't message her back for a date. The last message I sent, she didn't respond to, and the same thing happened with a couple of other women. So I cut all my other options immediately within a week for this woman, and it was miserable, and then she's like, you're too much, I didn't agree to all this attention. It felt agonizing for her to just send me a reply to a regular ordinary message, to send any reply at all. I'd wait 10 hours for a reply sometimes, and then I'd be sitting there obsessed with why she hasn't replied yet. It was horrible. I'm like, there's got to be a better way to do this.
So I realized I need a leaderboard, and I need to be messaging and talking to so many women that I'm not significantly emotionally invested in any of them until they invest in me and until they prove that they are really worth my time and my attention.
Seeing Red Flags Instead of a Future Wife
I have a woman that's pretty clearly number one right now on the leaderboard. We've only had one date, and she's beautiful, she's very intelligent, and I love how I feel when I'm with her. We held hands. We had a great conversation. There seems to be a lot of compatibility. But what I've noticed is that when I was obsessing about one woman at a time, I had a hard time looking honestly at a woman's red flags. For example, when a woman tells me she's never had a long-term relationship in her whole life and she's only a few years younger than me, in my experience that's a huge red flag that she's probably not a very good teammate. She's a lone wolf. She's never even tried being a teammate and done a good job with it with somebody else. She doesn't even know how to truly grow and have a life with another person, and then it's less likely she's ever going to be able to do that.
What's nice now is my leaderboard is not just by attraction. Every woman on it is attractive enough. You have to be attractive enough to make it onto my leaderboard, but then attraction is just one consideration. A big part of the leaderboard is whether there's reciprocity. When I send a message, do I get a message? Does she actually show up for a date? Does she show up early? Does she cancel on the date? If a woman cancels on a date, she slides down the leaderboard. If she shows up and we have a great date, she moves up the leaderboard.
This allows me to compare women and to truly see each woman as a person instead of my future next wife. I look at the woman in front of me, the way this woman's acting, and how compatible we are. There are some women that, just based on some more superficial things, might deserve to be higher, but the compatibility is not as high. She's not that serious in her life right now. Her life is a bit of a disaster. So she's a few places down on the leaderboard.
The woman I'm going out with tonight, the one I have a date with, is number two on the leaderboard. Why? Because she actually has a date scheduled with me, and no other woman actually has the next date scheduled. So she bumps up on the leaderboard because she's actually got a date with me. And the date with me is a chance to either move up further on the leaderboard, to drop off it completely, to go down further, or to hold the position. This makes it more of a game.
Women Have Leaderboards Too
The last woman I dated felt very serious, although maybe it wasn't as serious to her, and she said she didn't want to play games. But what I've learned is that what I think of as dating without games is not what most women tend to think of as no games. Obviously, no one wants to be manipulated and controlled and feel like they're just being used or played games with. But women will often test men. And women often have lots of options and leaderboards for the guys they're dating. That means if you're third on a woman's leaderboard and the guy that's number one is available for a date, she's going to cancel the date with you last minute. That's because you're not number one on her leaderboard. I've accepted that some women do have leaderboards and lots of options.
The woman that's number one on my leaderboard now, I don't think she's dating anybody else, because she seems very hesitant to invest any time and energy in dating. That's her number one liability at this point. That's the area where she's most likely to fall off, because she wants effort put in by me, but she also has made it clear she has a very full life, and she's hesitant to even make much time for me.
So a woman like the woman I'm going out with tonight, if she is willing to see me a couple of times a week, may move up to the number one spot. If we have a great date tonight, she may move up to the number one spot. Things aren't physical with any of the women I'm dating right now, but if things become physical with one of them and it's good, she may shoot up to the top of the leaderboard. At the same time, though, the leaderboard also encourages me to choose wisely, because I want to get as much data about each woman as I can and make a great choice. In my experience, one of the worst choices you can make is to have a relationship that doesn't work for you.
When you're just going around focusing on one person at a time, you're very vulnerable to picking the wrong person, because comparison helps with perspective. This also helps me relax. For example, there was a woman I was pretty excited about that my friend connected me with, and she shot up to maybe number two on the leaderboard. But then she didn't respond to my text, so she slipped down a few. Then I texted her, she responded, and she moved up one. But then she didn't respond for another couple of days, so she slid down a few points. If I actually go out on a date with her, she might be able to move up.
It leaves me where I'm not pressuring any one particular woman. The woman who's number one on my leaderboard now is not getting all this expectation out of me, because I've got a date with another woman tonight. I don't have to pressure this woman who's not available to see me today or for the next week. I don't have to pressure her to fulfill my needs for attention from women.
How I Manage Ten Women at Once
Some people I talk to say, how can you manage this? How can you have 10 different women that you're all talking to, texting, trying to get dates with? They're all in various states. One's not responding right now, one didn't respond for a few days. It allows me to just pick whichever one I'm in the mood to check on and see where she's at. I'm like, okay, let's message her and see where she's at today. It allows me to leave women alone too.
What I've noticed since I started this leaderboard is that most of the women are usually waiting for me to text them back. I'll usually be the first one to text them during the day. Then they'll often send one reply, and unless there's some immediate call to action, like she's ready to go out on a date, that's it. The woman I scheduled the date with yesterday, I sent her a message and she was very enthusiastic and ready to schedule a date, so I exchanged several messages and locked down a date with her. Another woman, I asked her for a date and she said she's busy with work. So I don't respond to her for a couple of days, because there's no immediate call to action there. There's no reason to continue texting her.
This is what's really nice. If I only had one woman on my radar and she was busy, then I'd feel so sad that I have nothing else going on. But now when a woman is busy, she just slides down my leaderboard a little bit. This one woman I'd like to go out with, who says she's been busy the last two times, might be number one, but she's down to number three now because she's not available.
Dating Should Be Fun
This turns all of it into fun for me. It's fun because I'm interested to see who wins. In my mind, they're all competing with each other to win my number one position. Maybe they're doing the same thing, and I'm competing to win their number one position. I'm so excited to see who's going to win the number one position, because I don't know, and that's part of the fun. Dating should be fun, and I'd love to be surprised. Maybe number five will come up, and I'll have a great date with her, and she'll go up to four, three, two, and take the number one spot.
I do realize that, dating like this, there may be one or two women where I'm number one on their leaderboard, but they end up at second or third or fourth place on mine. I might be in the position to say, "Look, sweetheart, I really like you, but I'm committing to this other woman, and I'm going to need to let you go because of that." That could certainly hurt their feelings, and unfortunately, that's how this works. I've had a number of women, from the queen to several others this year, crush me with the exact same thing. They have some other guy who's doing the same thing, and they're desperately trying to get his number one spot. But when I'm focused just on them, they rank me lower because they figure I'm not as much of a catch, because I'm too easy. I put them number one on my leaderboard immediately and crossed the rest of it out, and therefore I must not be that much of a catch if I'm acting that way.
I don't like that it works this way. I would prefer that we could all just find the one and just love each other and not have to date 10 other people at the same time in order for everything to work better. But it seems to me, especially as a man, that a lot of the women I'm dating, whose demographics are often late 30s, single women, need some serious amounts of time and patience to open them up. Whereas some of the women I dated in my 20s would just put me straight on top of the leaderboard and immediately ditch almost everybody else. They were ready to jump into a relationship. Now, that's a generalization, and it's not going to work for everybody. But a lot of the women I'm dating now need weeks, if not months, even to just get them out on a date, even to get a second or a third date. It's much slower than I remember from dating in my 20s, where you'd go out with a woman and you're just in a relationship. After a few days, you're in a relationship, and it happens within a week.
The Goal Is to Delete the Leaderboard
I hope this approach helps some of you to be more honest about what you're already doing, and to see why pedestalizing and going all in on one person before they've earned that doesn't work. I fully intend for my leaderboard to be deleted. I'd like to think that when a woman and I both end up choosing each other as our number one on our leaderboards, we'll both delete our leaderboards, and for the rest of our lives, there won't ever be anybody else. That, to me, would be the ideal outcome here. That's the goal, that we both line it up like this.
If you enjoyed this, I have a lot more on my Jerry Banfield vlogs channel, where I talk in detail about all of this in the context of the rest of my life. I also have my dating channel, where I only talk about dating, whereas the vlogs can be any subject, my business, all that stuff. The dating channel has all my dating videos, with lots of powerful lessons I've learned that can really help you.
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