My answer to anyone searching for how to set up a dating profile is simple: build it to filter, not to please everybody. My profile is designed to be honest about who I am, to put off the people who won't fit, and to give the right woman a clear reason to want to meet me. That is what I believe now, and it came from a lot of mistakes. I deleted Hinge three times in nine months before I came back and rebuilt my profile in July.
A profile has one job, which is to get you a real match you can meet in person. That means accurate photos from how you look now, a candid description, deal breakers limited to what you truly can't live without, a small search radius, and a willingness to accept that some people will not like what they see. I have stopped trying to be mysterious for the sake of more matches, because mystery worked against the thing I actually wanted, which is a wife and a real relationship.
My thinking developed over this year, and the posts below show the order. In June I wrote about a date that went badly because the woman's profile did not match the person I met. Her photos looked like they were years old. She Didn't Look Like Her Dating Profile and It Really Hurt is the honest account of how I felt, including my own temptation to shave years off my age or add inches to my height. The lesson I took from it is that deception is the one deal breaker I will not compromise on, and that a profile should show where you are right now.
That same month I wrote I Spent Hours Testing Hinge Preferences. Here's What Works, which covers the practical side. Deal breakers are a two-way filter, so every woman you see has already not ruled you out. I keep mine to kids and substances, since I have two kids and I am sober. Distance is the biggest lever I have found. When I narrowed the radius, a woman I already knew showed up in my matches immediately, and I no longer want two-hour round trips now that my kids are with me several nights a week. I pay for Hinge X so my likes get priority, and I only write thoughtful comments where the odds are decent.
Then in July I came back for what I called round four in I Installed Hinge Again After Deleting 3 Times. Here's My New Dating Profile. That post walks through the profile line by line, and it is intentionally polarizing. The headline photo is the one I paid a photographer for, the second photo shows my body, and my faith is described as an honest work in progress. My voice memo asks for a walk at sunset or a game of tennis, not coffee. I say I am a Christian, that I want children and monogamy, that I don't drink or smoke, and that my job is YouTuber. Some women will be put off by all of that, and I would rather find that out before the first date than after it.
Here is the lesson from both sides. Honest photos, an accurate age and height, and a profile that says what you want will cost you some matches. The matches you keep are the ones that can survive a first date with no surprises. I have been sober for 12 years through AA and have kept 80 pounds off for about a decade, and I would rather be the same man on the app as the man across the table. The lie I told on Match.com 15 years ago, about how much I drank, is exactly the kind of deception I now refuse to repeat.
The rest of this hub is the full record. Below this opening you will find the contents and then every member post in full. For the broader picture, my Hinge guide covers what the app costs and what has worked for me, and my take on dating apps covers the addiction and the bad deal they can be. Read them in any order, but if you only read one post, start with the honest profile.
If you want a second opinion on your own profile, I offer personal video reviews, and you can book one here.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- I Installed Hinge Again After Deleting 3 Times. Here's My New Dating Profile (July 31, 2026)
- She Didn't Look Like Her Dating Profile and It Really Hurt (June 15, 2026)
- I Spent Hours Testing Hinge Preferences. Here's What Works (June 15, 2026)
I Installed Hinge Again After Deleting 3 Times. Here's My New Dating Profile
From my video published July 31, 2026.
Why I'm Back for Round Four
I deleted Hinge three times in the last nine months. And your boy's back for round four to see if we can get Hinge to actually work this time. So why did I delete Hinge the last three times, and why do I have my profile set up the way I do? I'll show you every single detail of my Hinge profile here, why it's laid out like this, and I will document my journey. This is day one, my first 24 hours back on Hinge, and I already spent $200. Technically I spent $198. I spent $99 on Hinge Premium, or HingeX, for three months, and then I spent $100 to buy 50 roses, because roses work. Hinge's own data says you're twice as likely to get a date with a rose. So it is pay to play. Can we just be honest about that?
I got back on Hinge because I've already paid $7,500 for matchmaking. I did get some dates off Hinge earlier this year, at least one date, and that was cool. And while Hinge probably doesn't work most of the time, my ex is dating somebody that she met online dating. And the woman I got all excited about from yoga, she was online dating too, and got stood up by some guy there as well. So even though online dating might not work a lot of the time, it just opens up some additional possibilities. I've learned from all my previous mistakes on Hinge, I'm making this to keep myself accountable, and I am ready to at least see if there's a chance. There's a chance I can meet my next wife on Hinge, and I might as well leave that opportunity open. So let's go through my exact profile and my exact strategy on Hinge, and I will document exactly how this works.
My Day-One Stats and Strategy
So far, I have had zero results in the last nine hours. I ended up going to bed at like 12:30 last night. I sent 10 roses and probably 20-something likes, maybe 30 likes. I sent a few personalized comments, and I kept everything within a three-mile radius of my house. The stats are not looking great on this right now.
In the past, I got overwhelmed starting out on Hinge, where I would do this big radius and try to search for the perfect woman based on deal breakers and stuff. Hinge stopped calling them deal breakers, and now they call it search criteria, flexible, all that stuff. So what I'm doing is I put a good bit of work into my profile, and I'm starting out looking for women that are closer, and then I'll consistently expand a little bit. I also am only looking for women that are active today. In talking to a lot of women in person, what I notice is women will often be on a dating app one day and then might not check it for weeks. So the last thing you want to do is waste your time putting energy into a woman who's not actually active on the app. I sort by active today because that seems to be a sign that the woman's actually using the app. And here's what happens with a lot of women dating: as soon as they meet somebody, their profile will just be sitting on a dating app, but they're not checking any of the likes. So ideally I want to minimize interacting with women that aren't actually using the app.
That said, the dating apps are a numbers game as well. I recognize that if I send 50 roses and a hundred likes, I might turn that into a date or two. But at the same time, it's not my only strategy. It's a supplement.
The Headline Photo
Let me explain my dating profile. For pictures, I got photos that I actually paid for. Well, actually, no, there's literally only one picture on here that I paid for, and it's this first photo. I paid a photographer for it. A friend of mine, an attractive woman, looked at the profile and said, "This profile looks good. You can see that you have some muscle, your shoulders, you're smiling, the color, you have a watch on, your shirt has your name on it. This is an accurate communication of you."
For this first picture, I gave ChatGPT a bunch of pictures, and it's actually getting pretty good at this. And my dating coach said that this is my best picture and it should be the headline. It shows off my arm muscles, it's a smiling picture, it's got a nice red background, you can see I'm out doing something, and you can see somebody else took the picture. It looks like I put some effort into this picture, and I look good in it.
Polarize, Don't Maximize
Now, my profile is not designed to maximize leads. My profile is designed to filter heavily and get a woman that really looks at me and thinks, wow, and feels something for me. And that's not going to be every woman. A lot of dating guys on YouTube are telling you to basically try and appeal to everyone: don't be specific, be mysterious. I don't want the kind of woman that just wants to look at a couple pictures of a guy, doesn't read anything else about him, and then just wants to go out with him. I want a woman that's like, oh, he's a YouTuber, that's cool. Oh, he's Christian. All right, he wants children, he doesn't drink, he wants to build a marriage. I don't want to waste my time on dating apps with women that want to hook up. Maybe in real life I might consider it, but not on dating apps.
My whole profile is designed to polarize, where either you look at my profile and you can't stand me, which is probably a normal reaction, or occasionally it filters for one woman who is very eager and very interested based on my profile. I don't want to waste my time with lukewarm matches. My profile is designed to be out there and give me a chance to get a very warm lead off of Hinge.
The Voice Memo
The voice memo sets the rest of my profile apart. In my voice memo I say, "Let's get together and start planning the wedding and sending out the baby shower invitations. Wait, hold up. First date stuff. I love going for a walk at sunset at Crescent Lake Park or Upham Beach. So beautiful. I also am consistently at Beach Town Yoga for a power flow and would love to meet you there. And major bonus points if you'd like to meet up and play tennis at St. Pete Tennis Center."
So my voice memo is immediately playful, which contrasts with all the serious stuff on my profile. A lot of women I've talked to in person complain that all the guys on dating apps are just looking to hook up. So my profile is serious, even though, I swear, what they say they want versus what they choose often seems to be the opposite. They see a serious profile and then don't want to go out with me, but see some guy that is not serious at all and go out with him. That's on them, because I'm filtering for a woman that actually does want a real relationship. And at the same time, my voice memo makes it a little lighthearted and playful, which contrasts sharply with the rest of my profile.
I probably did 20 takes on that voice memo. I have a custom GPT trained on hundreds of hours of my videos, so it knows me very well, and I combined that with the AI power to get this voice memo down. It's funny, it's real, and it gives a woman an idea of exactly what I want to do on the first date. I don't want to have coffee. I don't want to go to dinner. I want to go for a walk, I want to play tennis, I want to go to the beach, I want to go to Beach Town Yoga. If you don't want to do that stuff, then I'm not interested in hanging out.
The Life Goal Prompt
Then ChatGPT came up with this life goal of mine: "Building a peaceful, playful marriage where we raise a loving family, stay active, put our phones down, and still flirt in the kitchen." This contrasts with me being a YouTuber, and this is my vision. This is what I'm looking for on here. The right woman will see this and feel the vision and feel something, and be like, oh, this is the kind of guy that I want to go out with. And the wrong woman will immediately move on and be like, ew, it's too serious, not interested. But GPT wrote this, and it's actually really good.
Honest About My Age, My Faith, and My Job
Then I've got my age, honestly. I'm not lying on a dating profile to try and get more dates. I could put 39 or 38, and I could pass for that, but that's stupid. Come on. If you gotta lie on a dating profile, you're a loser. Okay? Just don't be a loser. Be honest. I don't believe in setting something up based on dishonesty. For relationship type, my profile is so serious that maybe we don't even need it, but I put life partner. I put my hometown, Michigan. I also put Christian on there, because I'm reading the Bible every day and it does speak to me more than any other religion. And I want monogamy. I don't want non-monogamy. I put my school, USF, and for my job title, YouTuber.
Yes, if I put something else and was mysterious, maybe it gets more women. But ultimately I don't want to deal with a woman on the first date who's then looking up my YouTube videos and getting all pissed off, which has happened before. Even the woman I dated from yoga, even though she's a content creator, some of my YouTube videos put her off. Ideally a woman should look me up on YouTube first. And even if I don't get a match, I'd rather just not deal with the woman who looks at my YouTube and says, "I don't want to deal with that." I want a woman who will film videos with me, who'll do a dating video with me and talk about how we met, where we could give advice to everybody else based on our story. I want a teammate who's on board, who loves that I'm a YouTuber.
So again, this profile is not designed to maximize leads. It is designed to get a wife, and I'd rather not have all the distractions. Because I meet women in person, and I can meet women in person and be mysterious, as long as I don't wear a shirt with my name on it.
One Job: Bring Me a Wife
In person, I don't need a dating profile. My dating profile has one job, and that's to bring me a wife. And to not waste my time is the second thing. That's what it's for, so make yourself very clear.
My dating coach said I should put six feet for my height. I'm like, I'm not lying on my dating profile about one inch in height, because what kind of person does that? A loser. I mean, I understand maybe some women filter for six feet, but I don't need to date a woman who's doing six-feet deal breakers. You're not my type if you're that superficial. I don't need to meet you. I've got where I live, I put that I have kids, that I want kids, that I don't drink, don't smoke, et cetera. Again, those are polarizing, but the right woman will see all this and be like, wow, I finally found my husband.
The Shirtless Photo and My Filters
Next page. The idea of this profile is to give an accurate presentation of me, so that when she meets me in person, what she sees matches the dating profile. Now, I've put the shirtless picture as my second picture. This signals that I appreciate when I can see a woman has a body that is attractive to me. Maybe that's a bathing suit picture, or maybe it's something else, but for me, I don't trust profiles where she hasn't made it clear that she's active or that she's fit. And just don't say fat. I want to see that you have a body I would be happy with, that aligns with my body. Okay? And if that's not clear from your profile, then we don't need to date. This is my filter, my type.
This photo shows that I'm strong, and I'm at yoga. It has the name of the yoga studio, which is recognizable, and it matches how I say I lost 80 pounds and kept it off. You can see I'm strong, lean, and in shape, but I also still have some fat, some skin hanging from when I was fat. So to me, this is substance.
The Washington, D.C. Photo
Then I've got a picture from the Washington Monument, which is lifestyle stuff: I'm in shape, I'm healthy, I travel. It's a picture from the National Mall in Washington, D.C. And my shirt does say The Jerry Banfield Show on this one, which also sets women up so they can Google The Jerry Banfield Show and just look me up. And then if they don't like it, I don't have to deal with them before we match, which is ideal.
The Prompts ChatGPT Helped Me Write
Then I ran my prompts through ChatGPT, which really helped with this because it has so much data on me. It went through, found all this, and put it in there. What I want to communicate is warmth, emotion, and my story. These are things I could stay up all night talking about. I love talking about why people fall in love. Is it transactional? Is it magical? I love hearing people's stories of where they met. I love talking about what keeps attraction alive in marriage, because that's the thing I struggled with in a 15-year relationship, and these are things I'd love to talk about with a woman. Why people fall in love, what keeps attraction alive. This separates me from so many guys that are just shallow and are not going to be able to have a conversation. A woman can tell when she looks at this that this guy is going to be able to have some serious conversations.
Then: how I lost 80 pounds and kept it off, 12 years sober through AA. This is a man who's been through some stuff before and is living a recovered, healthy, plant-based life.
Dating in 2026 Is What You Make It
Then there's my prompt about why dating in 2026 is awesome. I've X'd out some women I thought were attractive but who were so toxic about dating. Dating in 2026 is what you make it, and I want to make it awesome. I had a lot of fun dating the last woman. Even the suffering was kind of hilarious and a great learning opportunity. I don't think dating sucks in 2026. I think if dating sucks for you in 2026, you need to change your mindset. There's a way to make dating fun, and I know because dating was sucking for me in 2026, and now it doesn't. Now I'm having fun, and I'm so excited to see the next women I'm going to go out with.
And then for the conspiracy theory prompt: ancient aliens and why we're here. That's a huge one. When you look at this, the idea of my profile is that you can very clearly see what kind of man I am, and then to polarize, as I said. These are things that will put off plenty of women, but there's a certain kind of woman that will listen to this voice memo, that will read this, that will look at all this and say, oh my God, look at this stuff, and be like, damn, this is an amazing guy.
The Rest of the Photo Lineup
Then I have a picture with my friend. ChatGPT said I had too many pictures with my name on them. Literally, like five of the pictures had my name on them before, and it said that's a bit too much, and that you need one picture with somebody else to show you have friends. So this is one of my best friends from college, one of the best friend pictures I had, and it's got a shirt promoting Internet Computer on it. Again, it shows I'm very geeky, techie. If you don't want a man that's geeky and techie and into all this stuff, this is another filter. And my friend and I are both in it, and it's a good picture of both of us.
Then, because some of the women I'm most compatible with are Christian, and they're filtering hard on whether this guy has a faith in Jesus, I put this for my last prompt. I'm actually doing it, too: I read the Bible every day and attend church most Sundays. But ChatGPT said I should take the edge off and not make it sound like I'm too over the top, so it says, "I'm still learning, but faith has become a meaningful part of how I live." This is being honest about exactly where I'm at. It's very honest. It seems like some of the women who were Christian before, who aligned with a lot of the rest of the stuff in my previous profiles, were not seeing what they needed to see. This is a very clear signal for those women that I'm someone they could go out with, someone they could go to church with, talk Bible stuff, and be on the same page.
Then there's a lifestyle picture with the Hogwarts castle at Universal in the background. Maybe not the best picture of me, but again, it shows lifestyle, it shows that I travel, it shows that I do fun stuff. Then I've got a picture of me playing tennis. You can see I'm lean, you can see I'm in shape, it's at sunset, and it's a nice picture of me.
What This Profile Is Designed to Do
This profile is extremely what-you-see-is-what-you-get, and I imagine it will be very effective. A lot of women are not going to be interested in this. They're not going to want to be a part of The Jerry Banfield Show. They're going to be put off that I'm a YouTuber. They're going to wonder if their life is going to be public. They're going to think, God, this guy's way too serious, especially if they don't listen to the voice memo. But this is designed to get one woman who will make an extremely compatible match with me, to then match with me and be ready to go out on a date. If a woman reads all this stuff and matches with me, then I should be able to just ask her immediately on a date, because you know all this about me. You don't need to sit there and ask me a bunch of questions. My view is, as soon as I get a woman that likes all this stuff, let's meet in person and see if the chemistry is there.
So this is my first day on Hinge, this exact profile I'm using, and why I use it. I'll keep you updated on how dating goes for me on Hinge over on my Dating playlist.
I hope the only way I delete Hinge from now on is by getting into a successful relationship. I hope that after all the times I've deleted it and found it unsustainable, I've finally got a formula, a mindset, and a profile that works for me to be able to date.
If you want to talk to me about your dating profile — and you have the courage to post it up in my community — join the Jerry Banfield Family and I'll give you personalized feedback on your profile. I would love to just chat, connect, and hear any of your feedback in there too.
My hope is that I can just let this profile sit there, bring me some dates occasionally, and maybe it'll have a chance to bring me a wife. Or at least it'll make it easier for me to not obsess about one particular woman in person.
She Didn't Look Like Her Dating Profile and It Really Hurt
From my video published June 15, 2026.
When the Profile and the Person Don't Match
I matched with this girl on Hinge three days ago who looked absolutely beautiful and I was really excited to meet for a date yesterday because she said she already knew me in person. But there's a red flag here because what I saw on her dating profile didn't remind me of any girls I knew in person. Even her name wasn't ringing a bell. Although my mind kept giving me a picture of this girl that I remember thinking that she's not that attractive, especially because she's significantly overweight. And my mind kept saying that that's the girl her, that's her. And I'm like, no, it can't be. I did a video yesterday titled Hinge Date Anxiety, Money Fear and Saying Goodbye to My Dog.
My mind was trying to warn me. But when I showed up yesterday, well, I got the real deal. As soon as I saw her, I felt like a popped balloon. I'm like, oh my God, of course I know her. And I can see why. I didn't pay much attention to her. And I just felt so sad and disappointed for so many reasons.
Please Be Honest on Your Dating Profile
My whole point with this video is to try and encourage all of you, be honest on your dating profile. I know exactly why a girl would put her most beautiful pictures up that to me looked like they were from years ago and use that to try and hook someone and then hope that you could convert that into a relationship. I was shocked at how bad I felt. And I'm grateful that I noticed that it wasn't just her. Now, yes, I had gotten for a few days, three days ago when I matched with her on Hinge. We had a nice text conversation for like an hour.
And then I talked with her again two days ago. We'd had another nice conversation and scheduled to meet up yesterday and take a walk in a park. And I was so excited because she seems so perfectly aligned with my life, except that there's an amount of extra weight that just doesn't matter. And I'm grateful that I noticed that it wasn't just her. And I'm grateful that I noticed that there's an amount of extra weight that just totally physically turns me off. And meeting up with her, I was like, I wouldn't, the dishonesty really got to me because she told me that, well, there's just like 10 extra pounds and her friends put her profile up for her.
But at the same time, she said that she's done a lot of online dating and that a dating app at one point offered her to get paid to go date guys in different cities. So on one hand, she was saying that it was just a minor difference. And on another hand, she was saying that she has deep experience with dating apps. She did validate my profile and say that my profile looked really nice, which good. My profile is an accurate representation of the me you get now. I don't have pictures from 10 years ago where my face is absolutely no signs of wrinkles on it.
And my hair is longer and beautiful and combed over. I have everything as rigorously honest on my profile.
I Get the Temptation to Lie About Age and Height
I know it's tempting because I'm 41 now, and I'd love to match with some of these girls that have set their filters to 39. And if I just lied about my age, I can match with some girls that probably really turned me on a lot more than some of the ones I've been matching with. And if I added a few inches to my height, I could do the same. And I recognize this isn't just a guy and a girl thing. I know girls get crushed when they meet up with a guy who adds several inches to his height, takes several years off his age, and also doesn't accurately present his appearance. If you feel that same pull to shave years off your age or add inches to your height just to get more matches, I understand it completely, and I would be glad to talk through a more honest approach that actually works with you on a call with me.
This is something that's difficult for everybody. And what I realized talking to her is that she was really triggering me on the things I'd done. I am proud that as we walked together, and it was just, every moment felt awful because I like to be there to help make a girl feel good, to feel good about herself, to feel that I'm having a great time with her. And I felt so bad that I have this just popped balloon crushed reaction as soon as we meet up in person. And I know she can tell. I know she can see that I feel bad and that the feeling bad was, it was personal.
I keep coming back to this idea of showing up as who you really are across every video in my my Dating playlist.
Like it was her. It was not something else. It was like, I felt awesome. And then as soon as she walked up, I felt awful. And I'm proud of how well she took it. I guess this has probably happened to her a few times before. And I'm proud I told her, I said, look, the profile you showed me was so different than the reality I see in person that I did. Not recognize you at all from knowing you in real life. That I struggled to even remember anything about her because the picture my mind was trying to show me, I'm like, that can't be her.
Look how beautiful this girl is. That can't be her. And it was, I do feel validated. At least my mind had an accurate memory of this girl. But I also told her she, when she talked about the weight, she said it in the context of, well, I've just gotten to a place of real love and acceptance with myself. And I'm proud of that. And I'm proud of myself. And I just love myself. And I just, I don't want to be with somebody who can't accept me as I am.
What Self-Love Actually Looks Like
So I countered and I said, look, I love myself too. And yet when I, I used to be 80 pounds overweight myself, I weigh 170 now. I'm five foot 11. I have awesome, cardio, cardio. I can go do a yoga power flow class. I have 130 pounds of muscle. Like I'm very proud of how my body is today. And loving myself to me means saying no to cookies and candies and cakes and ultra processed foods. And it means I did the hard work to cut back my meat intake to almost zero and to eat a whole plant based diet based on reading the book, how not to die.
Loving myself means that I look at this body like a car and I try and put the right gas in it. And even though it tastes great in the moment to eat something like a cookie or a piece of cake or candy, and that other people around me might doing it. I say no, because I love myself because I love this body and I want to take great care of it. And just like how I stopped drinking, loving myself and poisoning the body with alcohol do not go together. And same thing with food and the way I look at it, like putting food in here that causes the body to be bloated and overweight.
And I have to detoxify and strains the body. That's not self love that's delusion. And I know because I've been in the delusion thinking I love myself going around 80 pounds overweight, drinking alcohol and eating a bunch of food that leaves me overweight and feeling bad. So I also, countered her by saying that too. And I hope that while this was definitely a hard date with her, I hope that I helped her see that, tricking people into meeting you based on how you used to look years ago is wrong and hurtful and deceptive. And that bothered me much more than having a bit of extra weight.
The deception was revolting. And therefore I, I suggest always set the bar low. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's lower if you can, when my ex met me dating, I just put regular old pictures of me. She thought I was barely attractive enough and she was impressed that in person, I was more attractive than my pictures. That's the angle to go. If somebody is willing to go out with you as you are, then there's an opportunity. I also was surprisingly triggered by what she did reminded me of things I did.
The Lie I Told on Match.com 15 Years Ago
When I met my ex wife 15 years ago on match com, I was intentionally deceptive when it came to drinking. I put that I was a social drinker on my profile, which was a blatant lie. I was an alcoholic who would drink three to seven nights a week and I'd consume a handler or more of vodka and some rum and 12 packs, 24 backs of beers. Like I drank anti socially playing video games on Xbox in my apartment, sometimes often drinking from like 2 p m. To four plus a m. In the morning. That's not social drinking. I rationalized it, saying that, well, I hang out with my Xbox and drink.
I dug into how much my whole approach to dating has shifted since those days in I Can't Date Like I Did 15 Years Ago.
I'm a social drinker because I knew that I didn't want a woman who'd want to be with an alcoholic. If I put a drank daily or heavily or several times a week, if I was honest, it would repulse the kind of girls I wanted to be with. I certainly get the logic of thinking that you want to repulse the kind of guy who'd want to be with this heavier version, who would accept that and you want to get a better man. I get that, but doing that stuff sets you up. For heavy disappointment, I couldn't hide my feelings. I think that's valuable because showing how hurt I was and being honest about it, I hope would help this girl change her behavior and hope save some other guys from the same experience and help her get honest like either to make changes, the changes she needs to in her life, which I don't know what those are, but I know for me, it's important for me not to deceive. If you want to look honestly at your own dating patterns with someone who won't judge you for them, you can schedule a one-on-one call with me and we'll talk through your situation.
Ironically though, seeing her deception, also got me thinking maybe I should put my birthday a few years back. Maybe I should say I'm 38. I could totally get away with 38. Then girls that are like 29 that don't want a guy older than 39, I could match them. I should just add an inch or two to my height. Who'd even notice? If I put six foot, that might work out better. That's not going to work for the long term though. When you poison the foundation with lying, I don't know if I would have got with my ex wife. If I had been honest about my drinking, she probably would have ran if she knew what an alcoholic I was.
That would have been healthy for me to either get rejected and to try and fix myself up to get the kind of woman I wanted, like get sober and lose weight, or just be with a woman who's an alcoholic and you can both drink together like alcoholics.
Why Honesty Brings the Right People Close
The value of honesty is that it brings the right people close to you who are actually representing where you're at in your life and pushes the ones away from you that are not. So I'm really grateful that me being rigorously honest with her also helped me get honest with myself. I am grateful. She said something about that we could be friends or something. I have no interest in being friends with someone who led with deception. That's a critical deal breaker to me. And yet, how much have I deceived in the past? And how can I be rigorously honest with her? And how can I be honest today?
I noticed also an uncomfortable level of honesty. And yes, I may have a pretty face and a body that's in shape, but I noticed an ugliness inside of me walking around with this girl too.
The Ugliness I Noticed Inside Myself
What I noticed is that I didn't immediately recognize her when she told me her name and the context she knew me in, because even though I'd seen her a number of times and she knew me well, I wasn't paying any attention to her. Because I notice I primarily, if you're a girl, I primarily, pay attention to attractive women. And if you're not an attractive woman, I generally am not paying attention to you. She was talking about how some family members talk down on people that make minimum wage or things like that. I would argue mine in some ways is worse. If you're not a man I think of as successful in terms of you do something useful for the world, you have money, and or you're a parent raising your kids, or you're a guy that's committed to being a quality man.
If I don't think of you as a successful man, or as an attractive woman, and I guess you could put successful as more of a broad category, but you're not even part of my world. I can't even hardly think of you. And that I was facing as I looked at her deception as being ugly, and then the disillusion, the unable to be even honest with herself about these things. I look at it, wow. I look at myself as this nice, generous person who is not so superficial, who wants to go deep with people. Yeah. If you meet my superficial criteria, I will give you my heart and you'll get the best of me.
But if you don't meet my superficial criteria, I'll do everything I can to minimize my time and attention that I give you. And that's ugly, isn't it? Like, wow. So I'm grateful for this experience, even though I felt catfished and I felt like I'd wasted my time. I never would have met up with this girl if she'd been honest on her profile. It's like, okay, what have I learned from this? I'm still grateful for this experience. And I'm grateful for my emotional resilience because, this totally ruined my day yesterday. I was so excited to see her in person. And I was even willing to admit that maybe I just wasn't paying very good attention.
But no, I am grateful my brain had an accurate memory. And it's like, yeah, I can see why I wasn't doing it. I can see why I wasn't paying attention. So I hope this experience is useful. Never be dishonest on your dating profile. If you don't want to put that you drink all the time, or you don't want to put a picture of you today on your dating profile, then maybe you should look at working on yourself and make yourself the kind of person that you'd be proud to be honest about. And from there, when you can be rigorously honest, you can attract someone who's really right and sees you where you actually are.
Turning the Hurt Into a Desire to Help
The best part about this too, though, is it really stirred up a desire. I'm like, I want to help people lose weight. Because there's so many people, like the one thing is the weight. And I've lost the 80 pounds. I've kept it off for a decade. I take great care of myself. And as I've been stuck and still feeling so hurt, both off of her behavior and the reflections on what that means about me, I, I tried, I was thinking, please, give this girl a chance. So much of the rest of her is awesome. We are so compatible in so many other ways. I'm like, please just give this girl a chance.
If you want the full story of how I dropped the weight and kept it off, I walked through every step in How I Lost 80 Pounds and Transformed My Health (Full Story).
Could not do it. My entire body felt shut down. And my heart felt completely closed and hurt. And my mind was like desperately just trying to make some conversation. And even I eventually got silent. Can you picture me getting silent? And she's like, what's wrong? I'm like, what's wrong? And I then I explained all this to her face. And I've read I've filmed this video three different times to try and be as, appropriate for public audiences as possible. After Google said I shouldn't say certain things in the video, try and be a good boy for Google. And I've also thought I'm like, I do want to communicate like I am grateful for this experience, but it's not sustainable.
And I would hope I would never get tricked like this again. And I would hope, we can build a world of being honest with people. And I know deception is so tempting. But don't do it. And I want to help people lose weight out there. I've lost the weight and it did. I came away from this thinking, man, I wish I could help a girl like her drop the 30 or 40 pounds because then she'd be perfect for me. She it would I'm like, I want to help all these people overweight, drop the weight because I've done it. And I know a lot of people feel hopeless on the weight and have even gotten so delusional that they think it's, it's okay.
And maybe it is for some people, at least in my world. And for a lot of guys, I know it's not. And it's like, I was so down. The only thread I could hold on to is like, what can you use to help someone else from this experience? It's like I can make a video to help someone else with this experience. And I can use this experience to see how what I can do to help people be as healthy as I am.
I Spent Hours Testing Hinge Preferences. Here's What Works
From my video published June 15, 2026.
I spent hours testing Hinge preferences to build the most efficient system for finding the best women in the least time — and wasting the least time liking women unlikely to respond. Here's exactly how I have it set, as a sober single dad who wants more kids and doesn't want to drive far.
Deal breakers are a two-way filter
Whenever you set a deal breaker on Hinge, anyone who answers differently can't see you and you can't see them. That makes them powerful and tactical — and it means every woman you do see has already not deal-breakered you, which is its own validation. I keep mine focused on what matters most to me: a kids deal breaker (I have two), and substances — I set drinking, smoking, marijuana, and drugs to "no" or "sometimes," because someone who answers "yes" is likely too heavy a user to fit my sobriety. But don't go so narrow you run out of people: when I tried "wants kids" plus no-everything at 100 miles, there were only about 100 women in the whole Tampa metro. Leaving deal breakers off entirely is just as frustrating, because then Hinge floods you with people who don't match and hides the best ones in the paid "standout" section.
Distance is your most powerful lever
Distance matters more than people realize. Many of my matches have been women I already knew in person, and they only appeared once I narrowed the radius. While testing this, I had the distance set wide and didn't see a very compatible woman I know — the moment I narrowed it and made it a deal breaker, Hinge's algorithm showed her immediately. I met my ex-wife on Match 15 years ago and was happy to drive 40 miles; now, as a single dad with my kids several nights a week and work to do, I don't want two-hour round trips. So set distance as small as you can stand, then gently expand if you need more people — you never want to be infinitely swiping.
The five-minute daily system
I pay for Hinge X so my likes get priority, and I only write thoughtful comments where the odds are decent, because women who date a lot tell me they ignore profiles without one — but thoughtful comments take time, so I don't waste them on low-odds likes. The last step: filter by "active today." Hinge has an incentive to keep showing you inactive profiles so you stay on the app, and "active today" is one of the best ways to filter for people likely to respond. With deal breakers dialed in, distance locked, and "active today" on, I get a small daily pool I can review in about five minutes — including women I've known in person who I didn't realize were single. Minimize your deal breakers to what truly matters to you, then test and tweak. If you want help with your profile, watch my dating playlist here.