Four Dates Canceled in a Row
I'm Jerry Banfield, it's August 6th, 2026, and this is my vlog for the day. What's happened in the last 24 hours for me? Who cares, right? Nobody cares. I care. This is for me.
I had four dates cancel in a row. Quite the losing streak, you might say — or perhaps it was quite the protection streak, where I might have been wasting my time somewhere in any case. I had one woman supposed to come over to the house on Friday. Canceled, blowing up, saying she's all stressed out — maybe come see me later. I had a tennis date Monday. It rained, so that got canceled. I had a date yesterday where I was supposed to go down to Sarasota — I even had to change my video title yesterday to accommodate it. I was going to go to the place where I got married and meet this woman. Then, oh, her meeting's running long at work. And to be fair, the traffic on my end was horrible — thirty-plus extra minutes of traffic. I'm like, whatever, skip it. Two of those were online dates, one was someone I knew in person, and two of them were first dates.
Then I had a tennis date this morning, and I got an email from Hinge saying that she got banned for fraudulent conduct. So the question is, will I have a tennis match with a woman that I think is a date? I guess I'll ask her opinion on that. I'm supposed to have a tennis match in about four hours with a woman that I sure would love — that's the date I'm most excited about. There's about a 50 percent chance of rain, 45 percent at 3 p.m. So I'm going to do my thing and pray to the weather: thank you for being sunny out, I want you to keep it sunny today. Then we'll actually see if she really wants to play tennis.
The Mind That's Always Telling You to Feel Bad
It's funny, though, because my mind is like, yeah, you should feel bad because of the way your dating's going. I'm like, really? Because when I was married, you told me I should feel bad because of my wife. And when my business was doing great, you said I should feel bad because others were doing better. You said I should feel bad because the world's a messed-up place. You said I should feel bad because people are cheating at Facebook gaming. There's something in our minds that's always trying to tell us why we should feel bad, and I'm tired of believing it. It's like you're always making up some reason I should feel bad.
I have a friend who's so ill, struggling with his health so much, that he's pretty much confined to his house. I actually know two people in that situation right now. And that really puts things in perspective, because he's single and he doesn't care at all about being single. There's no pain for him in being single, because he's stuck in his house, he can't physically get out, he hurts all the time, and his sleep's messed up. It's like — see, compared to him, you don't have any problems at all. There's nothing wrong in your life compared to what he's dealing with. You don't have a single thing wrong in your life. But still, I felt a little sad to have another date canceled yesterday.
Rethinking the Dating Apps
I realized I need to do something with Hinge and these dating apps. I know I'm just not going to go on with them deleted, because I know they do work sometimes. I've got to use them somehow. My ex just picked somebody off of a dating app and is still dating him months later — I think at least five months later. So you can be chosen on a dating app, and I think that's the secret: just sit there, and it's an opportunity to be chosen. Some women will go through dating apps with very fine filters. If a woman filters for no alcohol, no drugs, no marijuana, no smoking, and wants kids, then I'm going to be one of the — I was going to say relatively few. But you know what? I need to switch to pretend I'm a woman and then look through all the dudes, because there are maybe a couple hundred women within 20 or 30 miles meeting those search criteria, and there are probably a thousand dudes. I don't know. I'm interested to see how many dudes there are. I'll sit there and count them.
It's such a hard thing to comprehend. My mind's trying to generate one stupid story after another about women this and you that, and I'm like, this is all crap. All I need to do is find one woman I love that loves me and wants to make a life of her own.
Grateful for the Business: $557 a Month Recurring
I'm grateful my dating videos are doing awesome. I'm getting hundreds of views on every dating video. The dating channel is up to almost 200 subscribers, and this vlog channel is over 500. I had three people join my Skool community yesterday, and I'm so grateful, because compared to my dating, the money situation matters and the dating does not. We've got 25 members in the Skool community now. That represents hundreds of dollars a month — $557 a month in recurring revenue, with $287 in new monthly recurring revenue in the last 30 days, which is awesome. There's an affiliate program, too: if you want to sell people on my Skool community, you can earn 40 percent lifetime. As long as I can make things work financially, it doesn't matter how long I'm single.
What's funny is how toxic my mind has been about dating while it's been really positive about my work. It's like: you are going to crush this. You are growing on everything. You are growing on every single channel right now. Yesterday I made a system to be more efficient with my shorts. One of the slowest points in my workflow was thumbnails, and right now I have 58 thumbnails ready to film, titles done. It seems like I need something to obsessively do on my phone, and if I don't have something to do on my phone or my laptop when I need to rest, then I'll just waste time on dating apps or watch content. Now I realize that when I'm on my phone, I need to be grinding out thumbnails and titles. Because when I'm ready to film, I can step up and film 20 or 30 videos in a row when my energy is up and I'm ready to speak. As long as I've got thumbnails ready, I don't want to stand there waiting for a thumbnail to be generated and a title idea to show up — I want to just whip through 30 videos at once.
Then yesterday the kids played like four hours of video games. I'm like, I think we need to make a change — because as soon as they get off the video games, then they want to do everything else. No, we need to do other stuff first before we do video games.
I also got a message last night, which reminded me: when you join the family, you can message me anytime. I look at all the messages, all the posts, all the comments, all the likes. You can have a relationship with me, and you can feel good supporting me.
Would I Sell That Video?
Somebody sent me a message yesterday saying, hey, I heard on one of these podcasts that they'd pay like $500 for that video I made for the queen. And I was thinking about that. Would I sell that video? I'd have to use AI to edit out her actual name and any clearly personally identifying details. Would I sell that video for $500? Right now it's a private video — I deleted it off of YouTube as soon as she watched it, and it's just sitting on my hard drive. It's not on a cloud drive or anything. And that video is some horrible roast material. You think these public videos give you some good roast material? That one's worse. At the same time, that video was real. And I have faith that one day a woman will love me as I am — that maybe I have to play the dating game with most women, but maybe there's a woman out there who's different, who would just appreciate me and would love for me to be obsessed with her. I don't know. And if that's you, you should join the family and get started. It's definitely worth it.
Obsession, Faith, and Waiting for the Queen
I've actually seen some women say on dating profiles that they want a guy to be obsessed with them. I have a friend — the one I did a video with when I paid for dating coaching, and I don't want to dox her too much — who said that's the kind of guy she likes. She likes a guy who's so obsessed with her he'll just stop by her house unannounced. I'm like, all right, I'll get obsessed with a woman, but I have not tried coming by a girl's house unannounced before. That's how you get stalking charges, isn't it? The last woman I dated, I know where she lives — she was kind enough to walk me over to her house the second time we met. I'm not going by her house uninvited, that's for sure. That's crazy. You don't just come by somebody's house uninvited. You get the police called on you doing that. But my friend told me that's the kind of guy she likes — the guys that get absolutely crazy obsessed with her and possessive.
Then I'm thinking, do I need to be any crazier to really attract the right woman? No. I've been reading the Bible every day, and I've been thinking about how people put this faith in Jesus. The way people talk to Jesus — I need to talk to my queen like that and have absolute faith in her at all times. I'm going to have to wait for her to reveal herself to me and to make it clear. And I can see where I went wrong with, quote, the queen: I told her way too much and she couldn't handle it. Maybe that means we're not right for each other. I think the queen needs to reveal to me that she thinks I'm her king. She needs to reveal that to me first. That's how I'll know.
I was thinking, too — my mind's like, oh, I miss the queen. It's like, really? Look how she treated you. She treated you like crap for a week and a half. She canceled a date on you and said, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going with you. She didn't show up when she said she was going to for a call. She made all of your attention into some negative story and pressure. She ignored you in favor of paying attention to everybody else. She didn't want your help with her business when you could absolutely eliminate hours and hours of work for her every week and help her do what she's trying to do way better. You think that's the kind of woman that's right for you, when she acted like that?
Standing Up for How It's Going to Be
The video I sent her actually called some of that stuff out. It's like: if you want to be with me, then either we need to be equals or I need to be leading this thing — especially if you want to be a good Christian woman, you should be prepared to follow. And I'm kind of proud of that video now, because for once I actually stood up and said, look, this is how it's going to be if you want to be with me, and if not, I'm going to move on.
Going forward, I am the kind of guy that will tell my woman, look, you need to drop some weight — this isn't acceptable. My ex got tired of that. With her it wasn't as much about weight, but I'd say, you need to exercise. What have you done all week? You need to be out doing something. Just sitting here working and taking care of the kids isn't enough — you need to go exercise, you need to get out and take care of yourself. To me, a proper man is going to call those things out, and out of love. And it's funny — a lot of the stuff my ex resented me suggesting, she ended up doing anyway. As we split up, she started doing that stuff: going to yoga, going out playing sports, going to the same kinds of places I suggested. So I need a woman who's going to be a good follower or a good equal teammate, and we might as well get that straight in the beginning.
$400 in Roses, Zero Dates
I was feeling a bit down about Hinge, too, because I spent four hundred dollars on roses on Hinge. Now, I got a number of matches and phone numbers, and all I've had is canceled dates. I haven't had a single date off a rose. I spent four hundred dollars, so at least I've got enough data now: four hundred dollars in roses did not get me one actual date. All the Hinge dates I got were free — off the top of my head, I don't think I got any of them off of roses. I think all the online dates I got came off the premium version of the app, at least, so I didn't pay extra for those, which is good. So hold me to this: I'm not buying any more roses. I'm thinking I might set up Bumble profiles. Tinder was just full of spam, so I don't think I'll use Tinder.
Honestly, I don't think I'm optimized for dating apps. The woman I dated for about a week — I picked her up in person, and to me she was about as beautiful as a woman could be. She was really into me in the first week, until she watched my videos and decided to pull away. And yet I'm going to be with a woman who's going to love these videos, and I'd rather be single than be with the wrong woman. If I need to be single for a while, I'll be single for a while. I'm not going to believe my mind when it tells me that I'm sad because of dating. Quit lying to me. Human emotions are normal and real. And it's funny — so many of these women say they want a guy with emotional intelligence, but they don't want to see me have any emotions. You want emotional intelligence? Well, to me, emotional intelligence is being able to feel your feelings honestly and express them, which could mean some tears — and then to not do that in a destructive way, but in kind of a childlike way: express the feelings and move on.
A Morning Cry with My Son
I had a good cry with my son this morning. He got up at like 8:30 and snuggled me on the couch for like 20 minutes, and I could just feel his innocent love. I actually started crying. I got a little aggravated at first, because I wake up full of energy every day. I remember talking to a woman who was significantly overweight, and she asked, how do you wake up when you just don't feel like doing anything? I'm like, no — every day, every day I wake up bursting with energy, ready to get into my day. And she said, you need to tell women about that. Women like that. Women like a man that has a ton of energy — especially since I was born in 1984, and I wake up bursting with energy every day. But sometimes, if that's not managed carefully, it can turn into irritability. So at first I was a little irritable. My son snuggled up, he was messing with me, and then he just relaxed, and I just started crying — my little boy.
It's funny how your brain will make up some dumb story about why you're unhappy. But nothing's wrong with my kids, and I'm really grateful for that. Because if something was wrong with my kids, nothing else would matter. I wouldn't care at all that I was single. My money wouldn't matter at all. You've got to get your priorities in life: my own health, my kids' health — nothing matters next to that. Anything's possible if I'm healthy. I can figure out money and a place to live. I can figure out someone to date. And my kids are very healthy, too. Part of the reason is me, because they live in a healthy household where I don't give them a bunch of BS reasons to be sick and create all the negative crap that so many parents do. If you want to make a household like that, join me — join the family and ask me about that, because my kids are fantastically healthy, and I'm a big part of the reason they are. I show them by example how to be healthy all day, every day.
I don't get sick — I haven't been sick in years, almost four years. I've had some days where my energy wasn't 100 percent, but I still did everything. I still did my videos and played tennis and went to yoga. My body's fantastically healthy, and my mind is pretty functional. Some of y'all don't think my mind's that healthy, but my mind can handle emotional and thought extremes, and still all I do is what I need to do. I don't care how crazy my mind is or how bad my emotions are — I do what I need to do. That, to me, is emotional stability: no matter how I feel, no matter what I'm thinking, I get what I need to do done, I try and help other people, and I take care of my kids. That's healthy. Just trying to numb your feelings and blot out everything besides the tiniest point of reality — that's not healthy. That's numbing yourself. That's bypassing. And you're often going to pay for that in all kinds of other ways.
Real Talk About Health and Weight
It's funny talking about my life. I was wondering what I was going to do with today's video, and it turns out I feel really proud talking about my life today. I'm proud of my life. And I'm certain there's at least one woman out there who will want to be with me that I will also like. There are probably a number of women who'd like to be with me that I'm not interested in, according to what I see on dating apps. And it's sad — there are some of these women on dating apps where everything else looks great about them, except they're 100 pounds overweight. Can we just be real about that? Do I have to censor that? If you took care of that, everything else about you would be amazing. That's kind of a coping mechanism, too. In my experience, when you eat whole plants, it makes it very easy to not be overweight — and that's according to How Not to Die, How Not to Diet, and How Not to Age, which are written by medical doctors.
I wish I could help all these women. If you join the family and talk to me, I can tell you exactly what I do and answer all your questions. The one woman I dated said she had been 100 pounds heavier, and then she was way too light, and now she's kind of in the middle. I want to help people. I really want to help people, because I've been through so many things. I've been overweight — I've been 80 pounds overweight. I know what that's like. And unfortunately, it's easier for a man to be overweight; often it's harder to be an overweight woman than an overweight man. There are so many people that are overweight, and I'm like, I wish you'd let me help you and lead by example. All you can do is try to show up and try to help somebody. And there are obviously lots of different ways to have a beautiful body. My ex liked me better when I was overweight — she found me more attractive then. She doesn't think I look as attractive now as I did when I was overweight, which is interesting, because I think I look just beautiful now. So not everybody thinks the same way, which is fortunate.
I'm Here to Help
All right, this is getting a bit long — that's what she said. If you want to follow this whole journey day by day, it's all in my Daily Vlogs playlist, one day at a time.
I'm here for you all day, every day. I'll help you with anything I've been through, I'll lead by example, I'll tell you what I did, and I'll answer any questions you've got — when you join the family, you can even schedule a one-on-one call with me in there. I've solved most of the hardest things I've been through in life: alcoholism — sober 12 years; overweight — 80 pounds, kept it off for a decade; used to be sick and stuffy all the time — now healthy. I'm sometimes just baffled. How is my life going so well in so many ways? And I just want to help other people have the same thing. Outside of the internet, why does nobody want it?
Women say they want a man like me, and then when a man like me comes along, they're like, no, let me go get a man that's a jerk. Let me get a man that won't pay for me to take an Uber 30 minutes, not once. That will never come pick me up. That'll stand me up on dates. It's like, man, come on. But it's okay. We're all doing our best. We're all trying. This world's tough, this game's tough, and I'm trying to help somebody here. I'm just trying to help somebody here, trying to be the best person I can be. Thanks.