Someone who goes by Juice Pew wrote to me and said: "I lost track of myself five years ago after having my heart broken. I know a lot of people who have explained they had theirs broken too, but the pain that resides in my chest still creeps up on me. She's married now and I'm stagnant. I'm trying to be well while I'm alone. It's difficult, and my mental state is manifesting itself physically. I feel stuck."
I have had a very similar experience myself, which I'll talk about to begin, and then we'll work more on getting unstuck. So if you can get anything out of this, I hope it's that you make a decision to get unstuck, that you'll do whatever it takes to be with a woman of your dreams so that you can build a really nice life together, whatever that looks like to you.
I remember wanting to end it all because the pain was so great, and I'm so glad I didn't, because just two years later I met a woman who was as attractive as I could imagine. Let me step back for a second.
How My First Heartbreak Started
In 2005 I had my first serious girlfriend in college, at about 21 years old, and we were planning to get married and have kids and make a life together. Well, we grew apart. By 2007 I had graduated college, I was in the police academy, and all I wanted to do was go to the police academy, drink, and have a girl to have sex with me. I kept telling myself I wasn't going to blow up my relationship, and I was thinking that my ex and I would get married and make this life together. But the truth is I didn't even like her that much. I didn't even have that much passion for her, but I didn't realize it, and I wasn't there when she needed me.
She was sick, and I said, "Hey, I can't be around you while you're sick. I'm at the police academy, and if I get sick I'll have to drop out, so I'm sorry you're sick but I can't be there this weekend." The first weekend I was at the police academy, she really wanted to hang out and spend the whole weekend with me, and I wasn't willing to do that because I wanted to go drinking with my boys. So I had her over, we had sex, and then I said, "All right, get out, I'm going to hang out with the boys the rest of the night."
Me and the boys had a great time that night. We were getting drunk and tearing the town up. We're lucky we didn't die from all the dumb stuff we were doing. Nobody had any permanent injuries, although my eye almost got gouged out that night, and I choked my friend out in the car because he was covering the driver's eyes with his feet while we were on the interstate.
Two weeks after that, my ex found somebody else at a party, cheated with him, and dumped me. I was destroyed. I was heartbroken. I couldn't see how I could live without her, and I had a week of just utter misery. Every single day my mind was messed up. For the first time in my life, I lost my appetite, which was too bad because at the police academy they had a buffet and you could get as much food as you wanted, and I couldn't even enjoy that anymore. I dropped 10 pounds in just a couple of weeks from losing my appetite.
Finding My Way Out the First Time
What helped me feel better was finding another woman. After a couple of weeks of being utterly miserable and nearly ending my own life, I then took the practical step of trying to find some other women to date. On Facebook I started randomly friending women back in 2007, just randomly friending all kinds of women. I met up with one at the bar, hooked up with her on the first date, and I was already over my ex. That went real well, I thought. And I continued to have trouble finding a woman I could have a relationship with going forward.
Then I ran into a girl at the police department I worked at who was incredibly attractive, like a perfect 10 body, but very volatile, perhaps an addict and alcoholic like me. We had a little one-night stand. My girlfriend from college was pretty, but this girl at the police department was like a perfect model. Nothing would change anything on that body. Right after our one-night stand, I was the happiest I'd ever been in my life. The day after, I was thinking, "Oh my God, I'm so happy."
Then the day after that, a horrible depression set in, and I realized, well, I'm still not happy, even though I got with her and she really likes me. Then I went into the darkest period of my life I've ever been in. I had always thought that if I got the job I wanted and the girl I wanted, then I'd be happy. But I found that not only was I not happy, I was facing a whole new level of hopelessness.
The Darkest Period of My Life
All I could think about, and my behavior went absolutely nuts, and I soon burnt my whole life to the ground again, nearly taking my own life. Luckily I did not, and nobody else got hurt either. I ended up quitting my job as a police officer after I brought our relationship in and we had all kinds of drama, before they encouraged me to quit. I moved back home with my parents, and that was the darkest phase of my life. My parents didn't think I was going to live through another night shift at the police department, and they encouraged me to quit the day before the next night shift was going to start.
That darkness was very painful. I missed that girl I had the hookup with at the police department. She wanted to have a relationship with me, but because I was still hurting from my ex in college, I couldn't even comprehend being in another relationship where I might get hurt and cheated on again.
It was so painful. I was so crazy that I was talking to this girl like she was there. I was pretending she was there, standing on the sidewalk having a conversation with her. I was way out there. My hair stands up admitting that, but I got really far out there. My heart was devastated. My parents said I couldn't talk about her anymore. They were sick of hearing about her, and it was agony.
How It Set Me Up for the Best Relationship of My Life
But that agony set me up to have the best relationship I ever had. Within a year and a half of that hookup with the girl at work, I met my wife. I've now been dating my wife for 12 and a half years, married for 10 and a half years, and I'm so grateful everything happened just the way it did. I'm grateful I let people support me, and I'm grateful I kept going out with new girls. That was what made things so much easier.
I even moved to a place where the odds would be in my favor. In certain places where you live, the odds are heavily stacked against you, and it'll be hard to find a new person there. But if you're a dude, come move down to St. Petersburg, Florida. There's an absolute abundance of beautiful women here. That's part of how I found my way.
I learned the odds matter. When I lived in Columbia, South Carolina, as a police officer, and when I went to college, the odds were stacked against me. There were all kinds of good-looking dudes, but a lot of the attractive girls went to Charlotte, North Carolina, or other places. Columbia attracted a bunch of good-looking dudes, and Charlotte attracted the good-looking girls, which I learned when I went to the bar up in Charlotte. In Columbia everybody was attracted to me but I wasn't attracted to the girls, and it was a sausage fest. I went up to Charlotte and there were girls hitting on me, because the odds were stacked in my favor there.
So I moved to Tampa, Florida, where the odds were something like two to four girls I would want to date for every guy they would want to date. Within a few months of moving here, I met an incredibly attractive woman with a beautiful personality who has been dedicated, and we've made an amazing life for each other. I'm so grateful we've found this life together.
What I couldn't comprehend when my ex cheated on me in college, and when things went south with the dispatcher, is how good life could get. I remember the day after a really bad weekend trip I went on with the dispatcher, when it all blew up. That was some of the most drama and suffering I'd ever experienced in my whole life. I remember feeling absolutely hopeless, like I couldn't possibly imagine any way that life could be good again. Today that seems ridiculous, because my life is wonderful. I have so much of a better relationship than I'd ever had before. I have a better relationship with my wife than I've ever seen anybody else have. It's so much smoother than my parents' relationship, and I'm really proud of my wife.
The Decision to Get Unstuck
I want you to know that if you feel stuck, all it takes is a decision to get unstuck. That's the beginning: the decision that I'll do anything it takes to get unstuck. And if you really want to build momentum, start thinking about exactly what you do want. If you think about what you don't want and what you've had before, you'll tend to keep manifesting it again, which is annoying. But the benefit of that is it can motivate you to think very clearly about what you do want. How do you want to feel when you're in the relationship of your dreams? What do you want the person to look like? And most importantly, what are you willing to do to make that happen?
Are you willing to change your diet and drop weight if you're overweight, or put on weight if you're underweight? Are you willing to go exercise and make your body more attractive? Are you willing to move to a place where the odds are stacked in your favor, like St. Pete, Florida, where all these hot girls need more dudes? What keeps us stuck is a choice to stay stuck, thinking on some deep-down level that we don't deserve to have a good life, that we don't deserve to be happy, feeling bad about what's happened before. If any of this resonates with you and you want to keep working through it with me and with others walking the same road, I'd love for you to join the Jerry Banfield Family community.
It all changes as soon as you start taking a break from your diet, and it works the same way in relationships. You have to take a hundred percent responsibility and say, hey, each decision I made got me where I'm at. And then the question becomes: where do I want to go? What kind of marriage would I like to have? I tell people the same stuff all the time because it works.
I remember right before I met my wife, I had gone out with another girl, and on the first date she gave me this line about how she just wanted to be friends. And I said, well, that's great, you just want to be friends, because friends split the bill. I was cheap. I'm talking, if I'm going to piss money away, it's going to be on me. So we split the bill, and it was a bad first date, and it was our last and only date. I tried to make another date with her, but she flaked out at the last minute. Then when she tried to follow up with me, I said, I'm not doing that. You said you were going to go out on this day and then I don't hear from you all day. You're done.
I remember the pain of that, sitting at home thinking, is this all it's ever going to be? Just misery? And then I remember thinking: no. I will keep trying again and again. I will keep saying no to what I don't want. And I will keep going after the woman I want until it happens.
I knew the relationship I wanted since I was a child
I had a very clear idea, since I was a child, of the relationship I wanted to have. I remember in first and second grade having certainty that my future was going to be different. I said, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to listen. And I decided that my future wife was out there somewhere and that I would know it when I ran into her. Dating was really annoying, because even with my ex in college, even with the dispatcher at work, I knew that was not my wife. I did not feel the way I felt when I met my wife. I felt like, I don't want to be lonely anymore, maybe this girl will have sex with me. But I didn't feel like, wow, I would be so proud to be with this girl.
So if you're feeling that stuck, it can be really inspiring to look around and hear other people's stories. The more I suffer, the more it motivates me to read new books, to ask other people what their experience has been. And I can tell you, there are tons of people out there. There's not one single person for each of us. There are tons of people we're compatible with, people who are very similar. If you really want to have the relationship of your dreams, it's as simple as saying, look, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to have the woman of my dreams, to have a beautiful family together, to have a home we love and enjoy, to do work that I love. I'll do anything to get there.
Then you say, all right, what's step number one? Picture clearly where you want to go. What kind of house do you want? And think deeply about why you want that kind of house. Do you just want to live in a big house, or do you want to live somewhere you love? I'm in a three bedroom, two bath house, and this is great. I don't need a bigger house. I love this house, I love the cars I've got, I love the studio I'm filming in, I love the life I've got. In the past, I decided that I wanted this exact life, and now I've got it. If you looked at my life fourteen years ago, this looked unlikely, it looked unimaginable. But what I've found is that when I make a decision and it feels out of reach, all I need to do is find people who have what I want and ask them for advice, just like you've done right here. If you want that kind of guidance from me and a community of people walking the same path, the best way to work with me today is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, where we share exactly this.
I'm so used to having an amazing wife that I take it for granted
I have a wife that I love and I don't want to be with any other woman. Now, my mind still thinks about what it'd be like to be with other women. I even got a crush on a girl at yoga, but I changed up my yoga classes and stopped seeing her. I still feel a little bit heartbroken over a girl at yoga that I did nothing more than do yoga next to and talk to a few times. And that's okay, because being human is complicated sometimes. That girl reminded me how much I love my wife. I'm so used to having an amazing wife that it gets easy to take her for granted.
Isn't that amazing? Just thirteen years ago I was wondering if I would ever find true love. I had consistently experienced pain. And today I take it so for granted that sometimes I forget. Sometimes it takes me mentally wandering a little bit and experiencing a little pain to bring me back to, wow, I'm really happy where I'm at. I'm really happy with the woman I've got. No, I don't want to leave my woman for a woman ten years younger and start another family. I'm good. I really like my woman. I appreciate her maturity, her dedication, her loyalty.
So I hope this shows you, if you're stuck now, that I've been stuck in my life too, and the decision to get unstuck, that's all it takes. And I hope everyone I've dated has a happy life. The dispatcher married the corporal who trained me to be a police officer, and I'm happy for them. I don't know if they're still together, it's been quite a while since I've heard from either of them, but I hope they've had a nice life. My ex, last I heard, was married to a guy she met a few months after leaving me. I even ran into him one night when I was a police officer, which was funny. I hope they're happy together. I have no desire to be back with them. I'm grateful for the lessons we learned together, I'm grateful for the experiences we had, and I'm excited to see what happens next. I dream of being married to my wife for fifty years and being an example of how to have a really long, healthy, supportive relationship.
You're never too old or too young
Now, some of you have gotten to the end of this and you're thinking, well, I'm too old, or I'm too young, or I'm too this, or I'm too that. I told my aunt, who was in her sixties, whose husband had fathered a kid with another woman and was living with that woman and the kid and had left her, and she went on one date online and was feeling hopeless. I said, do you know how many dates I went on online? It's unreasonable to go on one date and expect instant success. I went on tons of dates. I went out with probably fifty or a hundred women, maybe two hundred, between my ex in college who dumped me, where my first big heartbreak took place, and meeting my wife four years later. I tried hard. I was picking up girls all over the place. I was getting shot down all over the place. Awkward things were happening all over the place, like I think I'm getting with a girl and some other guy is taking her home from the bar that night.
I'm here to tell you, if you feel stuck, you're just a thought away from being unstuck. You're in a prison of your own making, and you've got the key right there in your cell, and you can walk out anytime you want to. If you can just take one step in the direction you want to go every day, you will arrive at a destination that today might look impossible. I don't care if you're in your sixties or your seventies, you can still find true love. You can still find a great relationship. I know a guy in his seventies who's constantly going out on first dates and second dates. He's been married and divorced multiple times, he's got kids, and he's still out there. And even when it doesn't work out, he's still out there, learning and growing and having experiences, and maybe he will meet another woman he can have a great relationship with. If you want more of my stories and thinking on all of this, I've put a lot of it together in my Dating playlist.
I have a lot of hope for you. Asking for advice and sharing your experience is a sign that you want to get unstuck, so you've already taken the next step today. The last key thing is to have people you're accountable to, people who know where you're going and will help you make sure you're on that journey. For me, I have my family. I had my mother and father and my brother before I had my wife. I have my Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I have my yoga classes. And I've got all of you online. It's important that everybody knows the direction you're trying to go in your life so they can support you. You can't go in the direction you want to go and complain and be a victim at the same time. I get so much support in my life because I'm always telling people exactly where I'm going.
Right now my business is my biggest recent pain point, and I'm clear about where I'm going with it. I want to stream on Twitch, do work I love every day that makes a difference in people's lives, and have enough money so that I don't have to do anything else for work, so that everything I do for work is joyful, just as satisfying as making this video. Knowing that's what I'm doing, everybody in my life supports me going where I want to go. So I hope this has been helpful for you. Thank you so much for this comment. You may have helped out a bunch of people today who are feeling the same way. You're not alone. So many people on earth are in this exact situation right now.