This page is the start of my dating course, "How to Date, Fall in Love, and Live Happy Ever After in a Relationship." Below you'll find the full text of the opening lessons: why I thought I was qualified to teach it, three tips I learned the hard way, one simple way to attract people, and three lessons on what dating is really like and what you're working for. If you're new to the course, read them in order.
Here's the honest context. I recorded the first four lessons in February 2017 as a new introduction, and the other three about two years earlier, in December 2014 and January 2015. I was married when I made every one of them, and I met my wife on Match.com. Since then the marriage ended in divorce in December 2025. I'm a single dad of two in St. Petersburg, Florida, and I've been on about fifty dates in the year since, with no lasting relationship yet. I've left the lessons exactly as I recorded them.
In the welcome lesson, I say I had spent nine or so years in miserable frustration before I had been with the same person for more than six years. I explain that the course starts with the single person and ends with marriage and lifetime partnership, and that I think it applies to anyone. I tell about my aunt, who found the first love of her life at 60.
In my experience lesson, I tell you why I wanted to teach this at all. From age 15 until I was 25 or 26 I was miserable over dating, I went out with hundreds of girls, and I describe how it usually went: lots of excitement and no first date, then no second date, then no third. I met my wife when I was 26, and I say it was better than anything before it from the very start.
In the three tips, the first is that this is your world and what you give is what you get. The second is to get comfortable with uncertainty, and I tell about the day my wife was an hour late in traffic. The third is faith, trust and being trustworthy.
In the lesson on attraction, I say that health and vitality matter, and I talk about being fat and sick for most of my adult life. I describe the whole plant food diet that worked for me, half raw fruits and vegetables and the rest beans, nuts and whole grains. I also tell why my dad's early death made my health my number one priority.
In the gambling lesson, I compare dating to playing the lottery. The losses that hurt most are the near misses, and I explain why a gambler's brain gets excited by them. I say not to go all in before you've seen the cards, and to keep playing all the time.
In the lesson on what you are working for, I say the stakes are high but there's no pressure except what you apply to yourself. I use the picture of going for a billion dollars in a marriage. Then in you get what you give, I go back to the idea from the tips and tell stories of treating girls badly and feeling like the victim. I say to be honest and tell people early when you aren't attracted to them.
The course continues with Getting Ready to Date: Become the Partner You Want to Attract. These days I also work with people one on one as a dating coach, and you can read about that at my dating coaching page.
On this page
Every lesson is below in full, in course order, each under its own heading.
- 0) Let's begin finding and building your happily ever after relationship! (February 15, 2017)
- 0b) What experience do I have that qualifies me to teach this class? (February 15, 2017)
- 1) 3 tips I learned the hard way (February 15, 2017)
- 2) 1 simple way to attract (February 15, 2017)
- 3) Dating is like gambling where you mostly lose and you can win big (January 6, 2015)
- 4) Understand you are working for the single most important part of your life (December 29, 2014)
- 7) You get what you give (January 3, 2015)
0) Let's begin finding and building your happily ever after relationship!
From my video published February 15, 2017.
Welcome to successful dating, beautiful relationships, and everlasting love in 2017. I am grateful today to have a marriage that I love, that I'm living happily ever after in. We have a beautiful daughter who has been blessed to us as a part of our marriage, and I have now been with the same person for more than six years, after nine or so years of miserable frustration. It was failure after failure, being single and wondering if I just deserved to be unhappy. I want you to have an easier time dating than I did. I want you to make beautiful relationships faster than I did, and I want you to have a chance to experience everlasting love in 2017.
That's why I've made this class for you. I find there's nothing in my life more helpful than having a partner who loves me and whom I love, and the two of us keep each other accountable every day. I feel that we're here to learn how to love. That's why we're on earth, and it is my life's purpose. My partner, my wife, is the most helpful person in my life for learning how to love and for practicing unconditional love on a daily basis. I am so grateful for this that I want you to have it a little bit easier than I did, because dating pushed me to the edge. There were so many different times when I couldn't even stand to live and was ready to give up and quit.
Thank God I didn't give up on dating
Thank God I didn't give up on dating. Thank God I didn't just say, there are no great girls out there, and all that stuff. Thank God I went ahead and continued dating, met my wife, and have been motivated to be a better boyfriend, fiance, and husband for her throughout our relationship. That's way different from what I had in any other relationship. I wrote more about that kind of learning in Learn Love: How to Learn to Love and Find the Right Person.
I've made this class with the hope that it will be extremely helpful for you, whether you're single and don't think you're ever going to mingle again, or you're happily married already and just looking for a few tips to take it to the next level or to keep it the way it is. It's structured so that the beginning is for starting off single, going through it and building up how you are, and building a person worth dating who will attract the kind of person you want to date. Then it goes further and ends with things that relate to marriage and lifetime partnerships.
This class is for anyone
I think this class is relevant for any person on earth, because it's based on principles you can adapt to your situation. If you're dating at 60 or 70 years old, these same things still apply. It's just a little bit different in the actual execution. On your dating profile, you may not put that you want to have children when you're 80 years old, but my aunt used the same things I share with you here to find the first love of her life when she was 60 years old. I'm confident that no matter who you are and where you're at, you're going to love this class.
I wish someone had made this class for me when I was 18, 20, 25 and looking for something like this. Instead I found all the other things, which actually made me worse and sicker and made it harder to just honestly find someone I would love unconditionally. Thank you so much for getting started with this class. I'm so passionate about dating that I think it will come through to you over the rest of these videos. You can find the rest of the lessons in my Dating playlist.
0b) What experience do I have that qualifies me to teach this class?
From my video published February 15, 2017.
Thank you very much for getting started with this class. Would you like to hear a little bit about my experience with dating and relationships and love? As a student taking classes online and listening to books, I want to know what the instructor has to offer me in terms of their example. I have no interest in learning how to date successfully from someone who has not been able to do that in their own life. I want to learn from people who have already done what I want to do. For example, I look at people who have been happily married 20, 30, 40, 50 years. I look to them and I learn from them. What did you do? For people who have been through a spouse dying, what did you do? How did you learn? I learn from people who have what I want to have.
A relationship without the background of unease
I have a relationship today that is amazing, unimaginable, better than I have seen my mom and dad have. My mom and dad loved each other and did better than their parents, and yet I have a relationship today that I've never seen anywhere else, as good as the one I have with my wife. That doesn't mean we don't occasionally have a hard time. It means the background of unease is not there in our relationship. You may have never even experienced a relationship without the background of unease, without mistrust, without all of these little nasty things that go on frequently in relationships. Or you may have had a relationship that is not passionate, where you don't really care about that person and you simply care about their function in your life. You want them for filing joint taxes, or for their health insurance or their job, or just to use them for sex or as a means to some end.
Out of all the women I dated, I did not have a relationship where I was really in it to be a partner until I met my wife. With the others, the woman was a status symbol or content, or a partner in name only. Making a partnership together, being one whole instead of two separate parts, was not a part of my life. A lot of people who haven't experienced a relationship as one whole can only see two parts, as if there must be what my wife wants and what I want. There doesn't have to be that.
I've been married several years now, and I've been with my wife, counting our dating, for more than six years. This is the best relationship I've had, by far, so much better that I could hardly have imagined it for most of my life. There is hardly any fighting, drama or nastiness. There is just unconditional love on a daily basis, amazing gratitude, peace and serenity. Even when I get mad at my wife, I realize the problem is really in me, and even that helps me see ways I'm able to improve. My wife is the most effective person for helping me be a better person, because when I'm loving her unconditionally, she can do no wrong. Whatever she does is a reflection of what I'm doing, and I have responsibility for what I'm doing.
Ten miserable years of dating
I'm grateful today for the chance to have a happy relationship, because from the time I was 15 until I was 25 or 26, I was consistently miserable over dating. I met my wife when I was 26. For those 10 years, I went out with, I don't know how many, hundreds of girls, and with online dating I failed in almost every way you could. For example, a girl messaged me and it turned out to be a scam to try to get me to do, how do I put this nicely, an all-male adult movie. Those things happen all the time with online dating. Another time a girl said she was 18 to start with, but then it turned out she was 15. How can you not say that first thing in a conversation, instead of after I've been talking to you on the phone for a month? I've had so many challenging things with online dating. There were girls seeing other guys and not even mentioning it, girls I met who then just wanted to be friends, and girls trying to be friends with other guys, or trying to fix me up with their cousin who was a guy. It was failure after failure, getting excited about so many different girls and then over and over a complete failure that didn't work out.
The most characteristic failure was this. I would send so many passionate messages, whether emails or text messages, or we would have phone calls, and there would never even be a first date. There would be so much excitement and not even a first date. Out of the first dates, usually there wasn't a second date. Out of the second dates, there usually wasn't a third date. And out of the third dates, there usually wasn't a relationship.
Dating got me to the point several times where I couldn't stand to live anymore. Sometimes it was because a girl cheated on me and dumped me, since I wasn't really involved in the relationship anymore. I didn't have much passion for her to start with. I just wanted to get laid on a regular basis, and finally she figured that out and left. Other times it was girls I had a huge amount of passion for, but I was too sick to be with them. As an alcoholic, I was way too sick to be with another alcoholic, or whatever else they might have been. I feel like I failed in about every way you could. Among my friends, most of us figured I would be one of the last to be married, and that the odds weren't good for me ever being married. I wrote more about that mindset in Dating Is the Most Worthwhile Thing You Can Possibly Do.
And yet I had a better vision for myself. Since I was six years old, I had the idea that I had a wife who already existed and who was out there somewhere, and I just needed to find her. Looking for her was tough, and not only that, it was tough because I made it tough. I put a bunch of drama into all my dating.
Everything changed with my wife
Thankfully, as soon as I started dating my wife, it was better than any other relationship I had ever had. It was immediate, not a few months in. It was literally better than anything that had gone before, and from there we've continued to improve. We've had hard times. We've had challenges. We've had fights. We've had a child. We've moved. We've been through job changes. We've been through my dad dying, her grandma dying and my grandma dying. We've been through a whole lot in our lives together already, and I'm grateful that today our relationship is better than ever. We have an unbelievable understanding with each other. We feel and work as one whole, not as two separate units. This body is one unit of the whole of our partnership.
The connection with my wife has guided me into being connected with you and with all of mankind, and into seeing that I am one part of the whole of all mankind. You could say that loving my wife has brought me back to God, back to enlightenment, back to spiritual connection. I realized that I can't love my wife without loving that which made and created all of us, that which brought us together, and that which showed me the misery of being on my own and then gifted me with the chance to be a partner. Even today I'm willing to face things like, what if my wife dies? What if something awful happens? Well, I will go forward courageously with both of us in mind, and especially with our daughter in mind. Our daughter is fantastically happy and loving. She has a happy home today, and I'm grateful for the chance to serve in that.
That's my passion and my vision. If you would like what I have, in whatever fashion or form it takes, I would love for you to have it. There is no one in the world I would deny a happy marriage and family to. Having a happy marriage and family is one of the best things in life, and there are people all over the world who would love to have one. Even if you're 60 years old and you don't want any children, there are lots of ways to have a family. There's adopting. There's being an in-law. There's being a grandma or a grandpa. There are all kinds of beautiful ways to have a family, and it brings so much joy into my life and helps me to do better and to improve. I also explained what I am looking for in I'm Seeking a Wife.
Where to start in this class
So this is the life I have today and the experience I have: 10 years of experience doing it wrong in every way you could, and then six years of experience learning, growing and having an extremely happy relationship, a beautiful marriage and a wonderful family. I even have faith that I don't have to worry about the future taking this away from me, because I accept that someday I won't even remember this anymore. I work to make a world where this is possible for everyone. If I end up in another one of these bodies watching this class instead of teaching it, I hope you will be able to see exactly what to do. It works for me, and it works for so many other human beings on this planet.
Thank you for getting started with this. I hope this qualification, this look into my life, is useful for you to see what kind of class to expect. Wherever you're at in life, I trust your judgment as to where to go in the class. Many of the things that are good for being single are also good for being in a healthy relationship. For example, taking care of yourself: all these things you want to do in order to attract a happy relationship, you also want to do while you're in one. I've done more of the things you would think a person does while single to take care of himself and become a better person as a married guy than I've done at any other time in my life. So I encourage you to enjoy this class, and you can find all of it in my Dating playlist.
1) 3 tips I learned the hard way
From my video published February 15, 2017.
Would you like to hear three tips I learned the hard way that may be extremely helpful for you, whether you're in a relationship, want to be in one, aren't even sure you ever want to be in one, or are in one and aren't happy? These three tips help me a lot today and I hope they'll be helpful for you.
Tip one: this is your world, and what you give is what you get
Number one, this is your world. This is literally your universe. When you have the feeling that you want to play God and be the center of the universe, this whole universe, everything, is what you've created. If you see a world where there are no more men or women out there who are right for you, where every person you're looking to be with is really just a jerk underneath, or whatever else you believe, this is your universe. In other words, what you see is all there is. I see a world today filled with beautiful people. I see a world today filled with people to love and people looking for love. I see a world filled with great partners. This gives me great peace. I don't have to be afraid of what happens if I die or my wife dies, now or soon, because there's a world full of wonderful, loving people. I don't have to grab on with a death grip and say to my wife, you can never leave me because there's no one else. When you look at the world this way, it promotes great peace and it promotes service.
Everything that exists in my marriage is a function of what I've given. The happiness, the love, the joy and the trust we have are a function of what I've given. I talked to a friend recently who was talking about the things he doesn't like in his relationship, such as not trusting. Then he described his own behavior, which was controlling and manipulative. If you don't have what you want, it's because you're not giving what you want. Everything I receive is a function of what I've given. If I give you unconditional love, you give it back to me. If I give you conditional love, where I say I won't love you unless you do everything I want you to for the rest of my life, you'll give that back to me too. So the number one thing is that what you give is what you get. There are no exceptions. It doesn't matter what your partner said. It doesn't matter what they did. It doesn't matter what your history is. What you give is what you get. It's that simple, and all the mental complexities only seek to obscure that simple fact. If you give a potential date a hard time in a message, or you are lying and deceitful on a regular basis, you will get that back in return.
That's exactly why I got into so many bad situations dating. In all the situations I described, you'll notice there was a lot of lying and deceit that I received from the people I talked to online. Guess what? That's what I was doing. I was playing myself up to be better than I was and talking about all these great things. I was lying and deceiving, so no surprise, I got lying and deceit back. I was trying to date a whole bunch of girls at once, so no surprise, I got lots of girls who weren't interested and lots of girls who weren't very happy with my idea of dating. It's the programming term: garbage in, garbage out.
This is one of the most frustrating things to process, which is why I've spent three or four minutes on it. If you're used to living in a world where you blame everyone else for what they do, hearing this may make you really mad. But at the same time, it's really empowering. As soon as I realized that I really am the god of my own world when it comes to how I perceive things, I saw that if I want to see things a different way, I simply need to get to work on seeing them a different way. The same thing my wife says could be taken as proof she loves me or proof she hates me. It's up to me how I process things. I'm grateful, because that is one thing that has helped me have a happy marriage. It's what helped me stop giving the wrong things. I learned with my wife that what I give is what I get, so if I don't want crap, I don't give crap. It's amazing. I wrote about this idea in The Right Person Makes You Want to Give, Not Take.
Tip two: be comfortable with uncertainty
Then the number two tip. I'll be honest, I was uncertain about what the second tip was because I didn't write these down. And that's the point: in dating there's so much uncertainty. Even in relationships there's so much uncertainty lots of times, and it's supposed to be uncomfortable. If it's uncomfortable, in a sense that's good, because you love the person, you care about them, or you might love or care about them enough to let it be uncomfortable. Lots of dating is uncomfortable, and trying to force certainty in dating and relationships often brings a lot more discomfort.
For example, I like to have certainty. I like to have a label on a relationship, and that produced a lot of discomfort. Because I wanted a label, I wasn't comfortable going through the whole dating phase, and my discomfort was what I was giving, so it was what I received back. It seemed that no matter what the situation was, my discomfort and my demand for certainty all the time brought a lot of discomfort. So number two is to be comfortable with a little bit or a lot of uncertainty. You text a person and they don't call you back for a day or two: be comfortable with that. I'm not saying you should completely dedicate and give yourself to a person who doesn't pay attention. But be comfortable with a little uncertainty, give space when a person texts you and you're going back and forth about whether you're in a relationship or not, and don't demand.
Have you been in that spot before, where you've sent a text and they haven't responded, so you've sent another one, and they were doing something fairly harmless, and meanwhile you're just blowing up the whole time? Oh my God, what's happened? One day my wife got in a traffic jam, and it was uncomfortable. She was an hour late coming home and I didn't know why. I was literally crying with the pain of it, wondering what had happened to her and hoping she was okay, because I looked on the map and saw there was a bad accident on the way home that she was stuck in traffic on. At the same time, I didn't blow her up and bother her with a whole bunch of messages while she was driving. I trusted that if she needed to let me know something, she would. I'm comfortable now with a little bit of discomfort, and that makes a huge difference in dating and in relationships. The more you give people space to just be who they are, the more you get unconditional love from them. The more you try to wrap your arms around someone and demand they do what you want, the more pain and suffering you get in return. So number two is to practice being comfortable with uncertainty. It is a huge opportunity in dating and relationships that I missed out on and learned the hard way. I was so uncomfortable that I got a lot of pain from it. I wrote more about this in I'm Learning to Let Women Wonder If I Like Them.
Tip three: faith, trust and being trustworthy
And I don't even know the number three tip. You see, I'm uncomfortable. I don't know what I'm about to say for the third tip. How can you go and teach a course like that? I just do. I do it out of faith and out of trust. To me, the foundation of a healthy relationship, a healthy partnership, is faith and trust. There are lots of ways to work out the details of it. I'm not saying that you have to do your sex life, or how you raise your children, or your jobs in a certain way to promote faith and trust. What I am saying is that the principles of faith and trust are essential at all times. Not only does it make things so much easier, but to me all partnerships, whether romantic, family or friendship, are founded on trust and faith. The key to that is to be trustworthy. When you're not being trustworthy, all this other crap comes up. There's a tendency to manipulate, to control, and to want to know every move and detail of what the other person is doing. But if you are trustworthy, you don't need to do that. This also helps a lot with what you give is what you get, and it helps with number two.
I have absolute trust in my wife raising our daughter. That means I don't have to worry about what's going on when I'm not around. I trust her judgment no matter what, as if I were there. My wife trusts me with my business. She doesn't come in here and audit me or ask me a bunch of questions and try to condemn what I'm doing if she doesn't like it. She has trust. She has faith. My wife has shown me what trust and faith look like, because I had a hard time with that. I didn't understand what it took to be a trusting person of faith. Even with this class, I put it out and I don't know if anyone is going to watch it. I trust, since you're here with me, that you are watching it. I created this class out of trust and faith that you needed it, and based on my own passion and my own life experience.
Applying trust and faith relentlessly in every single situation produces absolute miracles in relationships. Even if you think your relationship is on the edge, going overboard, and you're just about done, applying these tips in the middle of the relationship is likely to produce a complete reversal. Either you fall in full love again, or you're able to separate in love and say, I'm grateful for the time we've had together and I'm grateful for the chance to move on. When you apply these three tips as I try to apply them in my life every single day, what's possible is a beautiful, happy, consistently amazing relationship. If you want to keep going, the rest of the course is in my Dating playlist.
2) 1 simple way to attract
From my video published February 15, 2017.
Thank you very much for continuing this class with me. I've made this class over a series of years. It's February 15th, 2017, the day after Valentine's Day, and I've gone through and remade the beginning of this class. After this, I will be turning you over to some of the original lectures I made. As I look back at what I've made before, I continue to keep the class updated based on your feedback. If you have something you want me to speak to, I'd love to hear it and make a specific video just for you.
Your health is essential for attraction
One thing I've realized was one of the most challenging things for me was attraction. When you are attractive, you attract what you want. To me, the biggest frustration I see with people in dating is almost a blindness to an honest look at themselves, where who they are doesn't match what they want to attract. I experienced this a lot in my life. I wanted to be with a beautiful, healthy, loving woman, and that was difficult when I was a fat, sick man. You attract what you are. A really simple way to attract applies whether you're single or in a relationship, wherever you're at, because if you're in a relationship, you want to be the very most attractive version of yourself. I've thought this so many times in my relationship: my wife deserves the best looks I've had to offer anyone. My wife deserves for this body to be as healthy as it's ever been. My wife deserves the very best.
That's the simple way to attract: realize that your health and vitality are absolutely essential for successful attraction. There's no shame in it. I was fat and sick and addicted for most of my adult life. I'm grateful I still found a wonderful woman who loved me and helped motivate me to become more like her, to become a healthy weight, to become a person with a balanced life, and to become a person for whom health is a top value instead of fun or entertainment.
What changed my body: a whole plant food diet
If you want to date but you've been having a lot of trouble, I know there are a lot of people who are overweight or have health problems. In my experience, one simple way to fix that is to change your diet. Change what you eat, and you change your entire body chemistry. You might be confused and think things are so difficult. You might say, Jerry, I can't just lose weight, I've tried diets. I've been through all those things too. I weighed 30 to 50 pounds more than a healthy weight, above the top of a healthy weight. I was either fat or obese, and for years of my adult life I was close to morbidly obese. What worked for me was really simple: eating a whole plant food based diet. What do I mean by that? I mean fruits and vegetables, half of what you eat raw fruits and vegetables, and then the rest beans, nuts and whole grains. That's what you eat. You mean no more steak, no more dairy, and no more ice cream? Yes, cut all that other stuff out. This is one of the most valuable things I've ever done for my health. I wrote more about it in Weight Loss Without Dieting: How I Lost 80 Pounds and Kept It Off.
If you want to attract someone you think is really attractive, it takes being attractive. Being overweight and unhealthy is one of the biggest barriers to dating, and it's something you can work on. No matter where you're at, and I don't care if you're 60 years old with a gut and all kinds of health problems, in my experience you can improve your health with help. You're probably not going to be able to live somewhere on your own and change. What I do is go to a support group every day. I read books every day. I work to stay healthy, and I look at and learn from people who are both healthy and unhealthy every day.
I ate meat. I ate dairy products. I ate all kinds of sweets and fats and oils and sugars and salts. I ate a ton of things that were bad for me for most of my adult life, and I got the results of being fat and unhealthy out of it. In fact, I hated other people who were fat because they were just like me. Now I love everyone. I want you to know that you're not stuck with your body. Your body is the main tool you have for dating. If your body is something you're ashamed of and annoyed at and hate, it's going to be extremely difficult, whether you're in a relationship or not, to have a great life with your partner.
Why my health is my number one priority
My dad died three years ago, and a lot of it was related to his diet and his behaviors. He ended up leaving my mom, as his dad did, and his dad did. The men in my family have a habit of dying way before their wives do. Even if you are able to attract someone, you're liable to die way before them if you're the less healthy of the two. That's not always the case in every situation. What I'm saying is that my health is my number one priority today, and my wife helped motivate me. I realized that if I didn't start eating better, exercising more and making my health a number one priority, then just like my dad and just like his dad, I was going to die 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years, maybe even 50 years, before my wife.
I was real mad about all of that, all the way down the generations: that my dad had left my mom all alone, that my grandpa left my grandma alone, and that my great grandpa died drunk driving and left my grandpa with a stepdad who beat the hell out of him. I realized I have an opportunity to learn from those examples and ask what I can do today to be the healthiest person possible. How can I take care of this body so well that it can function for 50 or 100 years at a similar level to today, so that my wife doesn't have to expect and plan, as many women do, that her husband will die way before her and she'll be on her own for the last 20 years? I can't control the whole universe, but I had better be able to control the food I put in my mouth. I also wrote about how I stay well in Mind-Body Health: Why I Stay Well and How I Heal.
Diet is usually one of the toughest things to give anyone help and advice with, because how I eat is how I live and who I am. Jerry's the kind of person who has hamburgers. Up until eight months ago, I was criticizing people who ate in ways much less restrictive than I eat now. So I'm grateful. If you want a simple way to attract, become a more attractive person and you will attract more. My daughter is ready to hang out with me today, so I will let you go on that note. Thank you very much for starting this class with me. I hope you enjoy the videos I made, in which you'll see I was 50 pounds heavier two years ago. You can find them all in my Dating playlist.
3) Dating is like gambling where you mostly lose and you can win big
From my video published January 6, 2015.
Dating is like gambling. If you want to win big, you've got to be willing to bet something, and that something is in the form of your heart, your time and your trust. It's more like playing the lottery. A lot of times you're going to have a lot of losses on the way to winning big. Surprisingly, the losses that hurt the most are not the ones where you just don't have any of the numbers. If you look at it in Powerball terms, the ones where you don't have any of the six numbers are like, okay, whatever, I just totally messed that up. The ones that really hurt are where you almost won, where you almost got it right. The ones that hurt the most, surprisingly, are where you got five out of six numbers.
Why a near miss excites a gambler
I say this because gambling is easier to understand for a gambler, but it's a little hard to get mentally for the rational, reasonable person. I tend to think most people are fairly rational most of the time, and I feel like I'm talking to you in a fairly rational state of mind. So here's the difference between gamblers and non-gamblers. With gamblers, a near miss is exciting. That perhaps saved me with dating. Every time I almost got there, I would get so excited, like, ooh, I almost won, even if everything went totally wrong.
I found in studies that there is a difference between gamblers' brains and non-gamblers' brains. Think of it on a slot machine. If you come up and you're a regular person and not a gambler, and two cherries come up but the third one misses, you don't win anything. A normal person looks at that and says, oh, that's a loss. There's no excitement. But for a gambler, for people who like gambling, and I don't gamble anymore because I had a problem with that, my brain is wired as a gambler. When I see those two cherries come up, I get so excited. Even if the third one doesn't come up, it's a near miss, and it's exciting.
The thing with dating is that if you're rational and normal in that respect, every time it doesn't work out is simply a loss. It's just frustrating, and there's no good out of it every time. If you can look at it more like a gambler, and see that every time you got close, that's a sign you can win, that's what's exciting to a gambler: seeing the possibility of being able to win. Getting four numbers right and winning a little on the lottery might seem pretty unsatisfying if you look at the big picture and think, well, I didn't win. But if you look at it as a sign that you could win, then there's a lot of hope and excitement around that.
I'm sharing this because I want to inspire you. Dating is supposed to be more like gambling. It's filled with losses all the time, consistently, but you're playing for a really big win. Ending up with my wife has been the biggest win of my life, and I'm not kidding. I lost more than I've ever lost at anything in order to get there. I can't tell you how many times I had things go wrong, and wrong at every stage. Wrong trying to even get to know a girl. Wrong trying to get her phone number. Wrong making the first call. Wrong making a second call and scheduling a date. Wrong on the first date. Wrong following up after the first date. Wrong following up before the second date. Wrong on the second date. Wrong following up. Every way you could, I swear it went wrong that way. But it's like gambling. All those near misses hurt, but I kept getting excited, like, okay, I can win. I wrote about that persistence in Dating Is the Most Worthwhile Thing You Can Possibly Do.
One of my wife's friends is dating, and she just had a near miss. She doesn't feel that excitement with it because she's not a gambler. She doesn't feel, oh, this is cool, there might be another guy out there it could work out with. She's just disappointed, like, again, of course, and she sees only loss. So my wife shared my gambling analogy with her, and that seemed to help her. So I'm putting it in my course: dating is like gambling.
Don't go all in before you've seen the cards
If you want to win big, you've got to play a lot. You've got to keep betting over and over again. And just like gambling, you don't want to go all in before you've seen the cards. You want to put a little bit more in steadily. If you throw all your chips in before you've seen the cards, and of course I've done this before, you're setting up for a big loss. I had several periods in my life where I tried to throw all the chips in all the time. I wanted to get straight to where we're married and we have a family and life is great, so I'd throw all my chips in, and we hadn't even gone out yet. How many times have you seen other people do that? You look at them like, man, you're crazy. It's one thing to see someone else do that, but to see yourself doing it is the real miracle.
What has proven to work best for me is slow and steady investment. With my wife, I was excited on our first date, and my excitement continued to grow a little at each step. Now it's grown into something amazing. With other girls, I often made the mistake of trying to throw all my chips in, and you know what? They frequently folded and got out and said, nope, I can't handle all that. That's a reasonable response. So understand you don't want to throw all your chips in all at once.
Keep playing all the time
You do want to keep playing. You want to be trying all the time. If you're single, it shouldn't be stressful. In other words, you don't have to find someone right away, but you do want to be trying all the time, because you never know. All it takes is one moment with one person to be right, and you're started on the path to having a happy relationship that lasts indefinitely. It's a beautiful thing, and it's worth playing the game for all the time.
I'm grateful for one thing that worked out really well for me. I was always single except for a couple of years. For most of my adult life, I was single when the time was right, so when I met a girl, I was at least single and available. With my wife, it finally worked out. Most of the girls I met were not single and available. But if you want it to work out, it's just like gambling. You want to keep playing. If you want to hit the jackpot on the slot machine, you're going to have to pull the lever a whole lot of times, over and over again. The only way you can keep going lots of times is to get excited when it almost happens.
I hope seeing dating more like gambling makes it easier to see how the game works, and that it's okay to lose all the time as long as you know you're taking a shot at winning the jackpot every time. You can find more lessons like this in my Dating playlist.
4) Understand you are working for the single most important part of your life
From my video published December 29, 2014.
When you want to date, understanding what you are working for is the key to having success. What you're working for is the single biggest factor that's likely to matter in your life in terms of happiness. Being a part of a fulfilling and mutually beneficial relationship is the most beautiful thing I've ever done in my life, and it was the most challenging to get set up and to continue to be a part of. That's where the miracle is. All kinds of amazing things have happened in my life since I found my wife.
I always knew what I was working for
It took me a long time to get there, and that's okay. I suffered the most because I always thought it had to be now. I wanted instant gratification, and every time a date didn't work out, I was frustrated. I knew the whole time what I was working for. Somehow I knew since I was a little kid that having a wife who worked well with me would be an incredible part of my life. I remember as early as first or second grade lying in bed at night wondering what my wife was doing. So I at least understood the potential value I had to gain from successfully dating.
If you are struggling to get motivated about dating, think of the value it offers. Not just for you, but think of the value you offer another person. Think of how much someone else could benefit from having you in their life. You might make a huge difference, even saving someone else's life, and being a great part of their life. That's where the miracle comes in, in breaking down the separation between you and the rest of the world. Marriage is an outstanding place to do that. It's been the key for me to breaking down my selfish, self-centered nature and being a part of the world. Through my wife, I have grown more and more in feeling a part of the world, and it's a miracle. I wrote about why this matters so much in Dating Is the Most Worthwhile Thing You Can Possibly Do.
High stakes, but no pressure except what you apply
The stakes are really high for dating. But at the same time, there's no pressure except what you apply to yourself to get it right immediately. You can get it right a year from now. You can get it right ten years from now. As long as you're working today towards that, it's worth it, even if that means just doing self-improvement: making yourself the most dateable, the most successful, the most worthy person to be with. That's a good thing to be doing today. It also helps to have some patience today. You're not likely to find or meet the person of your dreams today. But you can understand the huge value that someone else out there might have for you and that you might have for them, and figure out, okay, what can I do to build on that a little bit at a time today? If you know the value of what you're working for, it encourages motivation to do something today.
I know my marriage is the single biggest part of my life today, and I'm willing to spend a great majority of my day investing in that marriage. That means doing lots of little things every single day. The value of having a happy relationship, whether it's a marriage or a partnership, is huge. There's not one other thing in my life that's had comparable value to that.
It can be frustrating, if you've never had it before, to be willing to work so hard for something you don't know is even possible. The best thing I can say about my marriage is that I had faith. I had hope. I believed it was possible. But until I experienced it for myself, especially getting to know my wife and continuing our relationship together, absolutely nothing else even came close. It's a beautiful thing to get right, and it's worth working hard for. You can minimize your suffering by understanding that you're working for something invaluable. It's worth going through a little bit of pain today. It's worth not taking the easy ways out. It's worth not having a bad attitude about it. It's worth going through a lot of failures to get to that success.
A billion dollars in a marriage
Think of it like business, except the difference is you're going for a billion dollars in a marriage. The problem is you're not likely to see even a dollar of it until you meet the right person. But as soon as you meet the right person, it's worth it. In terms of money, the value of that relationship just flows in, and you'll be over a billion dollars before you know what happened, in terms of the value in your life. In fact, I would guarantee you a billion dollars would hardly make you happier at all. But meeting the right person will. It's incredible.
Keep in mind the value of it. Think back especially to when you were a kid and had idealistic visions of marriage and of having a great relationship, before anything from life got in the way. Before your mom and dad might have gotten divorced, or before you saw some horrible things happen, or before you even got divorced yourself, or before your experiences colored your idea of what was possible. If you can, remember the original idea you had, because that bliss, that peaceful thought of being with the right person, is where you can go, especially when you use the principles in this course to work on meeting the right person. It's incredibly valuable.
So know that this is a high-stakes game with a big reward, and that you only have to lose a little bit every day in order to work towards getting it right. It's worth it. All the pain and suffering I went through is worth it. There's nothing I've done in my life that has been a part of more pain and suffering than dating and relationships, and even getting married. Getting to know my wife was quite challenging, but it's continually gotten easier, to the point now where it's a daily, healthy, miraculous part of my life. That's what you are working for. That's what you can have. All you have to do is do your best today to work a little bit towards that, be patient, and always be aware that there's a huge value you're going after. It's supposed to be challenging. For more, see my Dating playlist.
7) You get what you give
From my video published January 3, 2015.
For dating, love and relationships, understanding that you get what you give is crucial for success. It's crucial because everything you give out comes back to you, and this was something I didn't get at all through most of my dating. For example, if I was mean to a girl, I would end up getting mean back. If I was rude and didn't call a girl back and things like that, I would get that back. It might not be immediately, but it would always happen at some point. If I had started out with the notion that I get what I give, it might have been a lot easier.
Give people what you want to get back
Here's the thing that makes it simple. There are all these specific questions about what to do if this happens or if that happens. What do I do if she doesn't text me back after a day? What do I do if he calls and asks for a date and wants me to go out with his friends? All these specific questions can be answered very simply with one thing: you get what you give. Give people what you want to get back. It's that simple. If you want someone to treat you nice, treat you with respect, text you or call you after a date, and treat you like a person who's deserving of love, then that's what you have to give out. Before you try to go out with anyone again, or the next time you're in a situation where you're trying to be a better person in a relationship, get in your mind that you get what you give. If you are nasty, rude, heartless and thoughtless, that's what you're going to get back. I wrote more about this in The Right Person Makes You Want to Give, Not Take.
The funny part is seeing both sides of that. Watching one person treat another person badly and then feel victimized when they get treated badly back, that was me. That was a whole lot of me. That was my M.O. I'd treat you badly. I would be heartless with girls, thoughtless. I'd be rude, pushy and overbearing. And then I was such a victim when that happened to me. Oh, I don't deserve to be treated like this. Without ever putting a thought into how I'd treated someone else, I would be sitting there wondering why this girl wasn't texting me back, and I had gone out with a girl the week before and never texted her back. I get what I give.
What it looks like in my marriage
That's been the miracle with my wife. At some point I understood that if I want to have a happy marriage, I have to treat my wife how I want her to treat me. If she's having a bad day, I have to love her and not make it worse, because when I'm having a bad day, that's what I want. When she's struggling with something, I don't nag and get on her case or get upset that I can't help her. I accept that she's going to have to work it out, and if she wants to talk to me about it, I'll make myself available. I don't want to try to force something out of her when she's working to deal with it herself.
I do nice things for my wife. I get her flowers consistently. I am thoughtful. I try to be thoughtful all day, from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed. I ask her if she wants a little drink of water in the morning or at night before bed. I try to always be thoughtful of her, and that's what I get back from her: her being thoughtful of me, and it makes things so nice.
When I dated before my wife, I was generally so thoughtless it was hard to imagine, and then I was always the victim. Oh, look what happened to poor little me. Why do I get treated like this? With the girl I went out with before my wife, I was not thoughtful and understanding at all, and that's what she gave back to me. She canceled the date at the last minute and I just said, okay. I didn't say anything else back. I didn't even call to ask why. I didn't do anything at all, and then I felt all upset that she'd canceled it. Really? I didn't even take the time to find out why or to ask more. Maybe I did the right thing, maybe I didn't, but the fact was I consistently did not give what I wanted to get.
I would put too many expectations on people. I'd go out with a girl and have all these expectations for what she should be like and who she should represent and what she should like and how she should look. When I was placing those expectations on her, she was doing that with me. When I'd be disappointed with her, she'd be disappointed with me. Often that was a good thing, in that we would just repel each other and wouldn't go out again. But I suffered a lot because I always gave out what I didn't want to get back.
Be honest and tell people early
You're not going to like a lot of the people you go out with, and that's okay. But it's at least polite to let them honestly know that. People often don't do that because it's hard. Oh, I don't want to be rude. How many times have you wished someone would have just told you, look, I'm not feeling this, and it's nothing to do with you, I'm just not feeling it, and I don't want to waste your time because I don't want to waste my time? I'm grateful for every time I did that. That was one of the things I did well. I wanted girls to tell me when they didn't have an interest in me so I could move on and try with another girl, and I got that back. Girls would tell me, look, I just don't want to go out with you again. Whenever I didn't take that very well, it always came back to me. I would tell a girl the next week that I didn't want to go out with her again and she'd be all upset about it. Well, that's funny, because the week before, a girl told me she didn't want to go out with me again and I was all upset about it.
It's so simple. Give what you want to get. Be loving and understanding of other people. If you want other people to be loving and understanding with you, then you've got to give that. And when you do good with other people, when you treat other people well, you feel good about yourself. It goes right back to what I said about loving yourself. I explored this further in Learn Love: How to Learn to Love and Find the Right Person.
That doesn't mean you need to be a pushover and go out with anyone and say, oh, I had a great time, all the time, and lie. No, you be honest. If you see someone and you're disappointed right away, say, look, I'm sorry, but I don't think this is going to work. I don't want to waste any of your time. It has nothing to do with you. It's just not going to work for me. If they ask why, just be honest. I'm sorry, I'm not attracted to you, and it's nothing against you. I just am not attracted to you and there's nothing I can do about that. I don't want to waste your time, and I'm sure someone else will be attracted to you. And if you're not attracted to me, I'm sorry. That's honest. Oh, my God, that's so uncomfortable, I can't do that. But that's the right thing to do. The right thing to do is be honest with people.
If someone is not attractive to you when you meet them, why go another second? If you see them and you're immediately repulsed, that's one of the biggest mistakes I've made: going out with a girl I was not immediately attracted to when I saw her. It was like getting punched in the stomach. I had talked with her a bunch online before, and it was like a punch in the stomach when I saw her. We're not talking about a little bit. And I just kept going. I didn't have the heart to tell her, I'm sorry, this isn't going to work, I'm not attracted to you. Whoops, I made a mistake, and I didn't want to admit I'd made a mistake. I did not give what I wanted to get. If I had just told her, I could have gone out with another girl the next week instead of wasting three months of both of our time. Her time is just as valuable as mine. If I wasn't attracted to her, she probably wasn't that attracted to me either. It's almost always mutual in one way or another.
You have to give what you want to get. Honesty hurts sometimes, but it's much better than all the other things. For example, if a guy or a girl you went out with has blown up your phone and you don't want to go out with them again, just send them a text: I don't want to go out with you again. I'm sorry that I feel that way. It has nothing to do with you. I just don't want to go out with you again, and I'm sure there's someone else out there for you. It may sound hollow to them, but if it's honest and you know it's how you feel, then share it. I am grateful for every girl who told me no early. The worst thing I did to someone was say yes when I should have said no, because then we had long, drawn-out relationships. And I say long: three months, a year and a half. Both of us wasted our time. We could have been dating other people. Sure, we learned things. But if you want to be happy, if you want to have successful dating and relationships, you've got to be honest, because the consequences are so high.
If you're not willing to tell someone, maybe I don't want to go out with you, I'm not attracted to you, how much pain and suffering are you willing to put up with because you won't do that? Are you willing to keep having them text you over and over again? Are you willing to keep stringing them along? Are you willing to keep feeling like a bad person because you won't do the right thing? Are you willing to go for weeks or months stringing someone along when you know the truth is you're not attracted to them? Are you willing to do all that instead of taking a moment to tell the truth?
I know lots of times I did things like that, and it cost me and it hurt, and I'm grateful I had the chance to do it right. It's okay to make some mistakes. But it's better to make mistakes quickly and make up for them. If you did online dating, or you walk up and see someone in person and you're not attracted to them, please say no right there and then, so that they can go do whatever they need to do and you can go on with your life.
Another thing I'm going to talk about is maximizing your own attractiveness, because if you're not attractive to people, it's more than likely a reflection of how you feel on the inside. This whole course is about getting yourself right on the inside and then using the practical things I've learned to interact with people on the outside. If you want to be happy, you've got to give what you want to get, and that's important to know before you do anything else with trying to date. I hope this has been helpful, and you can find more in my Dating playlist.