You are about to read a book written directly to my future wife. I do not know who you are yet, but I am writing to you anyway, clearly and intentionally. I am single. I am sober. I am seeking marriage, a deeply loving relationship, and a family with at least two children. I am writing this because clarity has always worked for me in every area of my life. I believe clarity is kindness. This book exists so that any time I meet a woman in person that I genuinely like and who seems even a little interested, I can hand her this book and say, honestly and directly, here is what I am looking for. I am seeking my wife. Read this and see if it resonates with you.
I would love for this book to become part of my next love story, where you read it and that reading is part of how our relationship begins. I imagine how powerful it would be if we dated more deeply, if we actually got to know each other before meeting or moving forward physically or emotionally. If you have dated at all, you already know how repetitive first dates can be. You tell the same stories, answer the same questions, and cover the same surface-level ground over and over again. What frustrates me about modern dating is how often people spend weeks, months, or even years together without ever clearly stating fundamental desires like wanting marriage, wanting children, wanting a certain lifestyle, or wanting to live in a particular place. Those things could have been addressed upfront, yet instead they emerge later and end relationships that never needed to continue that long in the first place.
I imagine a world where we write books and letters like this and pass them around our towns and cities. A world where we discover people we might love through depth and honesty rather than small talk. I imagine you reading this book and thinking, wow, this man is amazing, I would love to meet him. I also imagine how rich my own world would be if I had hundreds of books like this written by women who were single and wanted children, books I could read carefully and thoughtfully before ever reaching out. We would already know there was deep compatibility before we met. Dating would be slower, kinder, clearer, and far more intentional.
I use the phrase my next wife intentionally because I have been married before. I know how beautiful and fulfilling a marriage can be. I have also experienced a kind, loving, and supportive divorce. My ex-wife genuinely wants me to find someone who makes me happy, just as I want that for her. We divorced because we cared enough about each other to want the best possible lives moving forward. She does not want more children, and I do. I already have two children, whom I love deeply. I live in St. Petersburg, Florida, and I see my kids most days. They are a central part of my life, and at the same time, I have plenty of space to be a devoted husband and father again.
I am an author. I write books like this full-time. I spent over a decade as a full-time content creator before transitioning away from being an influencer and focusing on writing. I chose books because they last. I want this book to be an artifact of my life, something I can look back on ten, twenty, or thirty years from now. I imagine having grown children and pointing to this book and saying, this is how I met your mother. I wrote this book, someone passed it along to her, she read it, she loved it, and then she wrote me a letter so I could get to know her. That exchange became the foundation of our love. That is the future I am holding in my heart as I write this.
In this book, I will tell you who I am today so you can truly know me. I have tried to cover the basics, including practical details. I am five-foot-eleven, about 170 pounds, with roughly nineteen percent body fat. I am athletic and active. I play tennis. I practice yoga. Movement is an important part of my daily life. Beyond that, I will share my values, my routines, the exact kind of relationship I want, the kind of woman I hope to share my life with, the marriage I envision, and the family and home life I want to build together. I aim to be respectful of your time and intentional with my words.
Thank you for beginning this journey with me. I am genuinely excited to continue it with you. I share this way of living — sober, off-screens, building a life you don't need to escape from — every day with people doing the same inside the Jerry Banfield Family.
Who I Am Today
My name is Jerry Banfield. I was born in 1984, and I am writing this book in February 2026, which means I am forty-one years old. I am at a stage of life where I divorced last year and feel genuinely excited about the possibility of marrying another amazing woman and building another family, or more accurately, expanding the family I already have. This idea is not foreign to me. My father was married twice. He had two children with his first wife and two children with my mother, his second wife. That family structure undoubtedly shaped how I see relationships, marriage, and continuity across different chapters of life. My mother was also married twice, first to a man with whom she had a difficult relationship, and then to my father as her second marriage.
I live in St. Petersburg, Florida, which is also where my ex-wife and our children live. For the foreseeable future, at least until my kids graduate from high school, I would strongly prefer to stay here. I am somewhat negotiable on location if everything were absolutely perfect somewhere else, but being far away from my children would be very hard for me. I know how important priorities are, and I have seen firsthand how complicated distance can become. My father eventually moved away from Michigan when my mother went into the military, and his daughters from his first marriage were about the same age my children are now. I want to be present. At the same time, I do have some openness if you have a deeply loving, stable situation somewhere else where I could truly fit and belong.
I grew up in a military family. I was not in the military myself, but my mother was, and as a result I lived all over the world. I lived in Japan, Germany, Michigan as a baby, Texas, New Mexico, Alabama, Virginia, South Carolina, Mississippi, and now Florida. Because of this, moving and starting fresh in a new place feels natural to me. Every few years, there is a part of me that loves the idea of beginning again somewhere new. I have lived in St. Petersburg for ten years now, and I genuinely love it here, while also feeling that familiar pull toward reinvention that has followed me my whole life.
Health is the central pillar of my life, and sobriety is the foundation of that health. I have been sober since 2014, and being with a woman who understands and supports the necessity of my sobriety is non-negotiable for me. If I am sabotaging myself with alcohol, everything else in my life collapses. My father was an alcoholic as well. He got sober when I was six years old. I started drinking at eighteen in college and eventually got sober myself at twenty-nine through Alcoholics Anonymous. I have stayed sober ever since. I now have over eleven years of continuous sobriety. I attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings most days, at least five days a week, because I never want to forget where I came from. My alcoholism was ugly and frightening, and I do not ever want to repeat that chapter of my life.
One of the greatest gifts of my sobriety is that I have been sober for the entire lives of my children. My daughter was conceived the same year I got sober in 2014, and my son was born in 2018. My daughter is ten and my son is seven, and I have deeply loving relationships with both of them. I am incredibly proud of how they have handled the divorce. They have been flexible, emotionally expressive, and resilient. They have beds at my place, everything is fully set up for them, and I live about five minutes from my ex-wife. We co-parent exceptionally well and take excellent care of our children together.
I truly believe my children are living rich and full lives. They experienced parents who were happy together for most of their childhood, who functioned as a team in a shared household. They have also experienced parents who lovingly chose to separate into two households rather than stay together unhappily. They now have two homes, two neighborhoods, and an abundance of love in both places. My mother lives next door to my ex-wife, and my ex-wife’s parents and sister live just down the street from her. My children are surrounded by family, welcomed everywhere they go, and supported emotionally. They are learning that it is possible to be okay and happy in a two-parent household, and also okay and happy with parents who are divorced. That understanding gives them compassion for other children and makes their world larger.
When we first told our children that we were going to go through a divorce together, we framed it very intentionally. We told them that their lives were about to get bigger and richer. Instead of living in one house with both of us, their world would expand into two homes, two bedrooms, and two neighborhoods. That framing has proven true in ways I did not fully anticipate at the time. My kids have made new friends in my neighborhood, friends they absolutely love spending time with. They come over and often disappear almost immediately, heading next door to play for hours. Sometimes I hardly see them at all, and I genuinely love that. In the neighborhood they lived in their entire lives with their mother, there simply were not many children their age, largely because of the demographic. Where I live now, there are more kids, more activity, and more opportunity for spontaneous friendships, and that has been a gift for them.
My sobriety and commitment to my health have been essential to navigating all of this. I am continuously working on myself through Alcoholics Anonymous. I take regular inventory of my thoughts and actions, try to be the best person I can be, and when I am wrong, I admit it promptly. Sobriety is the lens through which I have handled some of the most challenging moments of my life, including divorce. The day after my ex-wife and I decided to separate, I spent hours on the phone with people from Alcoholics Anonymous, including my sponsor and another man who has played a mentor-like role in my life. They talked with me at length, helping me make sense of everything that had just happened. Instead of waking up overwhelmed with sadness, I woke up feeling reborn, much like I did in early sobriety. I felt excitement and possibility. I thought, my life is opening again. I am going to have a new life. I am going to have another wife. I am going to have more children.
A central reason my ex-wife and I divorced is that she did not want any more children, and I have never been able to let go of the desire to have more. I tried to convince myself that two children were enough. I told myself that I already had two healthy, happy, beautiful kids, one girl and one boy, and that I did not need anything more than that. But the desire has remained constant. It has not faded with time. I feel very strongly that there are a couple more souls who are meant to come into the world through me. I am deeply grateful that I now have the opportunity to build a life where that is possible.
Another major part of my sobriety has been learning how to care for my body. When I first got sober, my body was deeply uncomfortable. It hurt constantly and carried a lot of stored trauma. I was overweight, weighing about 250 pounds at five-foot-eleven, and it was not because I was particularly muscular. I have always had more of a lean, athletic build, closer to a tennis player than a bodybuilder, and at that point I was carrying over thirty percent body fat. I have lived through the full journey of changing that. I lost weight steadily, eventually reaching a low point around 160 pounds, which turned out to be too little for me and left me without enough muscle. For a few years, my primary exercise was simply walking the dogs. Since then, I have rebuilt muscle intentionally. I lift weights, practice hot power yoga flows most days, play tennis as often as I can, and stay active playing with my kids. Taking care of my body is now inseparable from taking care of my mind, my sobriety, and the life I am building.
I love that I parent my children without screens, and I imagine you will deeply appreciate that I am a man who does not play video games, does not watch television, and does not use social media. I made an intentional choice to remove screens from my life completely. I deleted millions of followers online, walked away from thousands of dollars a month in passive income, and gave up the ability to easily make tens of thousands of dollars a month by uploading videos and taking coaching calls. I did all of that because I no longer wanted to live my life through screens. My children were the ones who showed me the truth of how addictive screens are, and they inspired me to step away from them myself. In many ways, my kids led by example.
I encouraged them, though they like to say I told them. The way I remember it, back in 2024 I asked them if they would voluntarily give up their tablets and video games. I promised them that if they did, they would have a better real life in exchange. I told them we would focus on things that were actually fun, like going to the park. I said we would give them money so they could buy toys they truly wanted, things like Legos, footballs, RC cars, and drones. They would earn that money by helping around the house, washing dishes, picking up dog poop, and contributing to our home. I told them that if they gave up screens, we would build a richer, more engaged life together. That is exactly what we have done.
I live right next to Crescent Lake Park in St. Petersburg, Florida. We go to the park almost every day. When my kids are with their friends, they are on the playground, going down slides, making up imaginative games, coloring, drawing, and playing in ways that feel timeless and alive. I genuinely love the life my children have today, and I know I have that life to offer to someone else as well. I know there is a woman out there who treasures this kind of life.
I say this as someone who played video games for most of my life. I first attempted to quit playing video games back in 2016, but I soon went back to it and even became a professional gamer for a couple years before trying to quit several more times. What I eventually realized was that I could not truly stop playing video games as long as I stayed on social media. Social media constantly showed me people playing games and talking about games, which reignited the urge. I tried unfollowing people, muting content, and managing it in smaller ways, but nothing worked. The only thing that worked was getting off social media entirely. Once I did that, the desire to play video games finally disappeared, and I have stayed unplugged.
Today, I am a full-time author. This is how I make my living. My basic business system is simple. I write books like this, usually shorter books aimed at helping people by offering a raw, honest perspective and something genuinely new to think about. I have ideas for fiction, but most of my work has been nonfiction, memoir, and self-help style books because I have a deep passion for helping people build lives filled with love and joy. Books feel like the most natural and lasting way for me to communicate that.
I monetize this work primarily through my books and through direct connection with people. Readers can go to jerrybanfield.com to schedule time with me. This allows me to work from home on a flexible schedule and structure my days around my values and my family. It is the same basic model I used for years with videos, where I would publish content and people would schedule calls through my website. The difference is that books last. With videos, I had to constantly grind, creating endless new content just to stay relevant. With books, all I need is a handful that consistently generate calls, and they can keep doing that for years without me constantly reinventing myself.
I can still write as many books as I want, but I no longer have to rely on nonstop output to sustain my life. Books endure. I also advertise my books on Amazon to help them reach people who need them. I only switched fully to books a few months ago, so I am still early in this process, but it already feels deeply aligned with the life I want to live and the family I want to build.
What I truly excel at is writing and finishing books quickly. This entire book is being dictated, transcribed, and shaped into a Kindle manuscript in real time. From the moment I started it, I expect the entire book to be complete within a day or two. I wrote an earlier version of this book that was more raw and unrefined. This is the second version, created with clearer intention. This book exists to lead by example and to help invite the love of my life into my home and into my heart. I am writing it to offer love openly and honestly to the woman I hope to share my life with.
I am very physically active and deeply healthy, as I have already described. I generally experience no physical symptoms in my body. I currently take no medications and am not under ongoing medical care. In addition to not drinking, I do not smoke, I do not use marijuana, and I do not use any mind-altering substances. I do not participate in plant medicine. When I want to listen to what the earth has to say, all I need to do is get quiet and take a walk around Crescent Lake. In that clear and grounded state, I hear whatever needs to be heard. That clarity is the result of more than a decade of sobriety and intentional healing.
One of the most healing practices in my life has been massage. I get a massage every week. Massage has helped release stored trauma from my body and has taught me how to love all parts of myself physically and emotionally. I receive professional massages from licensed therapists who help relax my muscles and support my body in integrating as a whole. Massage played a meaningful role in helping me see that sobriety could actually feel wonderful. In the early months of my sobriety, I was desperate to feel better. I was anxious, afraid, unable to slow down, and my mind was obsessing over drinking. A woman who had been sober for a couple of decades suggested I try getting a massage. I did, and the effect was profound. I relaxed. I could think clearly again. In that moment, I realized something important. What I had been seeking through alcohol was not the substance itself, but the effect.
The effect I wanted from drinking was joy, focus, presence, and the ability to love myself. I had been trying to escape myself because I did not like who I was. Today, I love who I am. I am proud of myself. I see this most clearly in the way I treat my son. I love him deeply. I snuggle with him. I play with him. I speak to him with kindness and encouragement, and I have learned to treat myself the same way. I often call my son my little buddy, and over time I started using the same language with myself. I tell myself, I love you, little buddy. Good job. You are doing great.
A few days ago while playing tennis, I was losing and missing shots against someone better than me. Instead of criticizing myself, I spoke to myself gently. I told myself that showing up was enough. That playing the best I could was enough. That I was doing great just by being there and taking care of myself. Tennis has taught me to stop pushing so hard. I play now at sixty to seventy percent of my maximum effort. I am not playing in the US Open. There is nothing at stake beyond enjoyment, movement, and presence.
When I first started playing tennis, I dealt with minor injuries in my wrist, shoulder, and knee. I did not seek medical treatment at that time and chose to rest and adjust my activity instead. When my shoulder did not improve after weeks of playing and lifting weights, I listened to my body and took a couple of weeks off. It improved and soon resolved. This way of relating to my body, with attentiveness, patience, and respect, reflects how I live my life today and how I approach love, health, and growth. Naturally, everything in this book is limited to my experience and is not intended as medical advice.
I take care of my body carefully, and whenever I experience a symptom, I pause and ask what it might be trying to communicate. I will give you an example of the first time this perspective became profoundly real for me. In 2019, I had pursued a bold business idea after years of making millions of dollars online, having large credit lines, and experiencing significant success selling courses. I decided to build my own platform to sell online courses, and I borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it. The project failed, and I ended up blowing up my finances while I was still the primary income provider for my family.
By that point, I was living in a constant state of financial stress. I was anxious, struggling to sleep, and carrying the weight of it every single day. Because I was sober and not numbing myself with anything, I had to face that stress fully. I even quit playing video games again in 2019 for a year so I could confront my business situation head-on and stop escaping. Around the same time, I developed persistent coughing fits that would not go away.
I was raised by a mother who is a veterinarian, a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, deeply trained in the conventional medical system. My upbringing was rooted in germ theory and traditional medical thinking. At the same time, I had just read You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, which offered me an entirely different framework. In her book, she describes physical symptoms as messages from the body, reflections of our beliefs, emotions, and the environment we place ourselves in. Symptoms, in this view, are a form of communication meant to draw our attention to something we are not seeing or acknowledging.
In that exact context, Louise Hay wrote that a cough can signal an unwillingness to change, difficulty with self-expression, and a need to shift direction. She suggested affirmations such as, I am changing and I am willing to change, as a way of addressing the underlying cause. Her premise was simple: if you address the cause, the symptom can resolve. I decided to try it while driving. I started coughing again and immediately felt frustrated. I thought, I am tired of coughing. But I was desperate enough to try something different.
I began saying the affirmations out loud, over and over. I am changing. I am willing to change. I repeated them dozens of times. I am changing. I am willing to change. Almost immediately, the coughing quickly faded. I was stunned. I remember thinking, wow. That actually worked. Oh my God, what else might work? Then a deeper realization followed. If I was willing to change, what exactly did I need to change?
The answer came quickly and painfully. I realized I needed to tell my then wife the truth about our finances. I had not been transparent with her. I had made small mentions here and there, just enough to convince myself I was not hiding anything, but I had never fully disclosed how much money I had borrowed. I had not told her that I was taking cash advances on credit cards and using them to make minimum payments and pay our mortgage. As that realization hit, I started sobbing in the car. I felt like a complete failure as a man, as a husband, and as a father. The thought of telling her that I had destroyed our finances filled me with shame and fear. I imagined saying the words out loud, admitting that I needed her help, that I had put us in an almost hopeless situation, and that I was profoundly sorry.
From that moment on, I could see the entire process clearly. I had been poisoning my body with fear-based thoughts and chronic stress, and my body had finally sent me a signal saying, we are tired of this. Maybe you should change. The cough was the signal. When I honored it and adjusted my thinking, my body, having successfully delivered the message and received a response, stopped sending the signal. Since then, I have rarely coughed over the last seven years. Any time I feel even the beginning of a cough, I say to myself, I am changing, I am willing to change, and it rapidly resolves. Most of the time there is not even anything dramatic I need to change. What matters is that I am always willing. I stay flexible.
That flexibility is also why I practice yoga. I had a similar realization with my knees. They were stiff and painful, and at one point I pulled a calf muscle. I began to see that the rigidity in my body mirrored rigidity in my mind. I did not know how to make my mind more flexible directly, but I realized I could work on my body. If I made my body more flexible, my mind would follow. Yoga became a way to practice that. As my body softened and opened, so did my thinking.
That mental flexibility is exactly what allowed me to handle my divorce the way I did. The day after my ex and I decided to get divorced, my mind immediately adjusted to a new reality. This is what is happening now. This is the truth of my life. Let’s figure it out. I started thinking practically and calmly. Where am I going to live? How am I going to structure my work? How are we going to co-parent? What does dating look like now? Instead of being trapped in misery, resentment, or hatred, I felt reborn. I felt excitement. I embraced the joy of the adventure ahead rather than wallowing in pain.
I have noticed that most pain and suffering comes when my mind becomes rigid, when it refuses to shift into a new reality and deal with life as it actually is. When I resist what is happening instead of adapting, suffering multiplies. Most of the time, I do quite well accepting things as they are and adjusting accordingly. Another experience made this lesson even clearer.
In 2024, we had back-to-back hurricanes, the way some football teams have back-to-back Super Bowls. One of those hurricanes flooded the house my ex-wife still lives in today, the house I later signed over to her in exchange for some cash to help me get started after the divorce. While we were still together in that house, it flooded. I remember feeling angry and horrified, not so much that it flooded, but that I had done nothing to prepare. I am an optimist by nature, and sometimes that optimism makes it difficult for me to take potential problems seriously. When there is a lot of fear in the air, like there is around hurricanes, I often swing in the opposite direction. I tell myself it will be fine, that it will not be a big deal, and I do not prepare.
I did not get sandbags. I did not take any preventative steps. The house flooded about three inches, something that could have been easily prevented with a few hours of preparation, even though flooding had never happened in that neighborhood in nearly eighty years. When it happened, my first reaction was anger. I scrambled to lift things and manage the damage. I felt sad and frustrated with myself for not having taken action to stop it.
Within an hour of the house flooding, my mind shifted. Something in me flipped and said, thank you. I started genuinely thanking the situation. Thank you for this. This is an adventure. This is interesting. This is fun. This is going to create all kinds of unknown changes. This is exciting. I am going to have experiences tomorrow that I would never normally have. The flooding finally stopped rising around one in the morning. I remember lying in bed with my hand hanging off the side, resting in a couple inches of water. As I drifted off to sleep, with my house flooded, I was still saying thank you. Thank you, this is going to be fun. Tomorrow is going to be a completely different kind of day.
At that point, the most important thing I could do was take care of myself. The kids were asleep. My ex was going to sleep. There was nothing more to be done in that moment. It was time to rest so I would be ready to face the situation the next day. So I went to sleep with water covering the floors of the house and gratitude in my mind.
I woke up the next morning feeling ready to take on the world. The power was out, which meant there were no machines to rely on. I grabbed a broom and a dustpan and started sweeping water out of the house. I spent sixteen hours cleaning. I dragged couches outside. I hauled soaked furniture. The worst part by far was the rugs. Flooded rugs are brutally heavy and awkward to carry. Every single item in each room had to be moved so the rugs could be dragged out. It was exhausting, full-body physical labor.
Throughout the entire day, I kept saying thank you. Thank you for a body healthy enough to work sixteen hours straight, moving continuously, with only short breaks here and there. Thank you for strength. Thank you for endurance. Thank you for a wife who could help and stay positive through the entire process. Thank you for a great teammate. Thank you for children who stepped up. We gave the kids one hundred dollars each for helping. We did not tell them ahead of time what they would get. They simply grabbed brooms and started sweeping water out of the house. They worked for hours and were incredibly helpful.
By the end of the day, we went to a hotel because the power still hadn’t come back on at the house. My ex’s sister had gotten a hotel room, and the kids stayed with her to enjoy the air conditioning at night. We sat at the hotel by the swimming pool, eating a warm meal. I remember sitting there and realizing something that surprised me. This day was better than a normal day. A full day spent cleaning hurricane damage had been better than an average, comfortable day. It was fun. It was an adventure. I felt euphoric. I thought, wow, that was incredible that I could even do that.
That is the mindset I live with. That is how I experience life. And that is what I am excited to share with a new teammate, with a woman who genuinely appreciates that way of thinking. What I am seeking now is a woman who wants to build a family and experience life through this lens together, meeting challenges with gratitude, curiosity, and joy. This is how I live. This is how I think. This is what my life feels like most days. I am deeply positive, and when I feel emotions, I feel them honestly rather than suppressing them.
That does not mean I never struggle. I will give you a recent example. Just last week, on Monday and Tuesday, I felt down about my work. I found myself wondering what I was going to do, questioning how to monetize books in 2026, and feeling uncertain about the path forward. In the two months leading up to that low point, I experimented hard with an idea my mind kept presenting to me. The thought was that instead of asking people to read full books right away, I could gently introduce them to my writing through letters and offer book writing services directly. I acted on that idea with real effort. I sent about three hundred and fifty letters to neighbors, letters I personally addressed, stamped, and mailed. In those letters, I explained that I could help people write a book and why preserving their story and legacy mattered. I did not get a single response. After that, I tried again, this time passing out roughly five hundred letters with different messages. That effort resulted in exactly one response. At that point, I had to be honest with myself. Leaving letters on doorsteps and sending them through the mail was not going to work for me.
That realization sent me into a couple of rough nights. I would wake up in the middle of the night doing mental math. I have about five months of cash in the bank. I do not have to make money immediately, but what am I going to do after that. I felt afraid. I live in a beautiful house now. The rent is twenty-seven hundred dollars a month, and I am paying that out of savings. Everything is set up perfectly for my life and my kids. My mind started spiraling. What if you lose this house. What are you going to do. Where will you live. What happens if you cannot afford anything else. Are you going to live in your car. The thoughts kept getting darker and more extreme.
At the same time, I stayed emotionally honest. I shared with my kids that I was feeling afraid. I cried with them. I let them see my feelings rather than hiding them. I prayed for better ideas. I finally spoke directly to my own mind. I said, you are very good at showing me everything that could go wrong and imagining the worst possible outcomes. You have made that very clear. Now I need something else from you. I need ideas. I want to know how this can work. I really want to stay in this house. I really want to keep making a full-time living as a creator. I do not want a job. I want to write books, coach people, get paid to speak, and build my life that way. Please tell me how that could work. If your own mind does this to you about money or direction, you can book a 30-minute Zoom call with me and we'll work through it together.
After a couple of days of feeling low, something shifted. I had a burst of ideas. When I am feeling down, I do not pretend everything is fine. I do not fake positivity. I acknowledge that I am suffering and that my mind is attacking me with fear and worst case scenarios. From that honest place, three clear ideas emerged.
The first was that I needed to write books that help people with problems they are actively suffering with. Acute pain points. Dating immediately came to mind. So many people like me want to date today, and dating without apps feels unreasonably challenging. I knew immediately that I wanted to write a book called Dating Without Apps right after this one. Beyond that, I saw a whole series of short books I genuinely wanted to write, books about sobriety, health, and the lessons I have learned in different areas of life. Books that are direct, practical, and rooted in lived experience. I felt excited about that. I knew I could write those books, and I wanted to write them.
The second idea followed naturally. If I am going to write these books, how do I get them into people’s hands. That is when I remembered Amazon ads. Amazon is where people go looking for books. People are already there, already buying, already searching for solutions. Amazon allows you to advertise directly in that environment. I had tested Amazon ads before, but they had not sold my books in a meaningful way. I realized what had been missing. My books needed a clear invitation to connect with me directly. They needed a link to my website, jerrybanfield.com, where readers could schedule time to talk with me on the phone, on Zoom, or even meet in person.
I set that up immediately. This was a system I had used before when I was on YouTube. Back then, people would watch my videos and then schedule calls with me. Almost right away, an existing customer scheduled a two hundred and twenty-two dollar Zoom call to talk with me about crypto. In that single hour, I helped them find thousands of dollars they had forgotten they even had. I helped them get their wallet authorized and set up properly across their devices. They were incredibly grateful. When the call ended, I felt alive. I had just made two hundred and twenty-two dollars in one hour doing something I genuinely enjoy, helping someone directly.
That surge of inspiration left me feeling euphoric for almost a full week. I was genuinely high on the clarity of this new business system and the ideas that came with it. Almost all of them arrived within just a few hours of each other, one flowing naturally into the next. The third idea came directly out of that same creative burst, and it was this book.
The question formed very simply in my mind. What if your books were how you met your wife? What if that was how you found your marriage, your family, and the children you wanted to have? What if that was the path? What if you wrote a book where you clearly and honestly described what you were looking for in your next wife, laid it all out without games or ambiguity, and then put that book into an Amazon ad?
I started imagining how that might actually play out in the real world. I pictured a woman’s mom somewhere across the country, scrolling through Amazon after finishing everything in her Kindle library. She is looking for something new to read. She sees a title pop up that says I’m Seeking a Wife. She pauses and thinks, what is this? She clicks on it. She reads the description. She thinks, maybe I’ll check this out for my daughter. So she buys the book and reads it herself. She finishes it and thinks, oh my God, my daughter needs to meet this man.
She sees a man who is sober, who is clear about wanting marriage and a family. A man who is not living his life online across endless media platforms. A man who wants a relationship that lasts. A man who thinks positively, who is loving, gentle, and kind, most of the time. I imagine her handing the book to her daughter and saying, here is someone I think you would really like. Try reading this. I picture the daughter saying, yeah, Mom, I would actually love to meet this guy. I picture the daughter getting on Zoom with me and us having a great conversation. Then we talk a few more times. She shares her life with me. She tells me who she is, what she wants, what she has lived through. I listen. I get to know her deeply. I really like her. Then we meet in person. And that turns into a marriage, a family, and an incredible story we get to tell for the rest of our lives.
What I am most proud of in my life is that I live in a way that allows ideas like this to arrive. I take care of my mind, my body, and my spirit in a way that keeps me open, creative, and receptive. What is challenging for me is walking into places like yoga classes or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and figuring out how to communicate this part of me. How do I convey how my brain works, how I think, how I integrate my soul and my body, how I engage with life itself? How do I share what is actually special about the way I live?
I know there are plenty of women who might read this and think nothing remarkable just happened. And I am fine with that. I also know there is at least one woman reading this who feels something very different. Someone who thinks, oh my God, I have to have this man as my husband.
I also want to be very clear that I am not presenting myself as someone who has it all figured out or who lives in a constant state of euphoria. One of the things I have been actively struggling with is criticism, judgment, impatience, and a tendency to act like I am better than other people. That is actually why this is the second time I have written this book. Reading the first version, which I wrote just yesterday, was humbling. I read it and felt a genuine sense of discomfort. I thought, what kind of person talks like this? What kind of person thinks this way? The tone was too sharp. Too judgmental. I felt bad afterward because I saw how much time I spent putting other people down for how they live instead of clearly and honestly presenting who I am and how I live.
That realization matters to me, because one place where I know I could use real support is in cultivating deeper compassion. This naturally connects to what I am seeking in a partner. I would love to be with a woman who is strong in compassion, loving, and nonjudgmental toward other people. That does not mean being a doormat or letting others walk all over you. It means having an open heart. It means not being drawn into gossip, not tearing people down, not needing to feel superior in order to feel secure. I could genuinely use help with that.
The downside of the growth and changes I have made in my life is that it has become too easy for me to look around and think, why don’t you just do what I did? Why don’t you get sober? Why don’t you delete social media? Why don’t you stop wasting your life on video games? Why don’t you quit the job you hate? Why don’t you stop dating someone you complain about being unhappy with? That mindset has fueled my success, but it also has a shadow. I have often been judgmental, impatient, and critical. I have been quick to put people down in my thoughts and words, to label people as hopeless or beneath me. That is the number one thing I am consciously working on right now, shifting from judgment into compassion and understanding.
I was reminded of this very clearly at an AA meeting yesterday. There was a man there who appeared to be in an altered state. I do not know whether it was alcohol, drugs, or something else. At one point during the meeting, he was talking to himself out loud. After the meeting, he went outside and threw up. I know what that is like. I have not thrown up outside an AA meeting, but I have been drunk many times and I have thrown up from alcohol plenty of times. I know that experience. I know what it is like to be addicted to distraction, to be scrolling endlessly, disconnected from yourself and from the people around you.
I just finished listening to Calling In “The One” by Catherine Woodward Thomas, a seven-week program designed to help bring the love of your life into being. The timing could not have been more aligned. The very day I finished listening to that book, after weeks of sitting with it, reflecting on it, and letting it work on me, I started writing this book. That felt meaningful. It felt intentional. It felt like a clear signal that this was the next right step.
Someone suggested I didn’t need to rewrite this book, just soften the edges. That didn’t feel right to me. I do not write that way. I dictate my books in raw audio first and then transcribe them into written form. I wanted this version to begin in that raw, embodied place. I did not want an AI-generated narration layered over a cleaned-up manuscript. I wanted to show up fully and dictate this book directly, with as much presence and sincerity as I could bring to it, and then shape the writing from there.
Before I began dictating, I set a very clear intention. I intend this book to be a gift to the world. I intend it to attract the woman I will build the next decade and beyond of my life with, including the children we will raise together. I am writing this book with the explicit intention of helping bring that woman into my life. Ideally, I would love to spend the rest of my life married, and I see this book as a meaningful support in calling that future forward.
That could happen in many ways. It could be as simple as meeting a woman in person and handing her this book instead of asking her out on a traditional date. Or it could happen the way I imagined earlier, through someone discovering this book, reading it, and then choosing to meet me because of what they felt in these pages. If and when I do end up married, which I fully expect to, I will update the written version of this book. The audio version will remain a snapshot in time, but the written version can evolve. I imagine updating the opening and the Amazon description to reflect that next chapter when it arrives.
To balance all that I’ve built myself up in this book, I’ll share a bit more about how we got here. One of the factors in my divorce was that for years I was so distracted that I could barely be present in my marriage. My mind was consumed by my online work. My ex-wife listened endlessly as I talked about follower counts, money, future plans, fears, frustrations, and complaints about the internet. I was addicted to video games, social media, and work. I was often physically present but mentally elsewhere. I am grateful that the health practices I had in place kept me functional through that period, but I can see now how unavailable I was. Because of that, I have real compassion for people who scroll on their phones every day or feel stuck in habits they do not like. In most cases, what they are experiencing is not as extreme as what I was living through, but it is still real. I understand it from the inside.
I am currently listening to The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav, and if it is not already obvious, I am a deeply committed reader. I read constantly. I go through multiple books every week, sometimes finishing an entire book in a single day. I usually listen at double speed. I started The Seat of the Soul yesterday, and after a few more hours of listening I will be finished, likely by tomorrow. Over the last decade, I have listened to hundreds of books, probably close to a thousand. Most of the major titles people commonly reference, including The Power of Now, I have read or listened to. I consume books because I genuinely want to be better. I am always learning, always refining, and always working to become more loving, more patient, and more compassionate than I was before. Becoming a more loving, patient version of yourself is so much easier in good company, which is what I'm building in the Jerry Banfield Family.
What I’m Seeking
By now it is probably obvious that I want a marriage and that I want at least two children, but I want to be much more specific about what that actually means to me. I want a relationship that lasts. I was married to my first wife for thirteen years, and I am deeply grateful for the life we shared and the family we built together. At the same time, I feel real sadness that our marriage did not turn into the rest of our lives. That experience has only strengthened my desire for my next marriage to truly go the distance and to be for the rest of my life.
What I want is a marriage where we grow together over time. I know that is not automatic. Growth requires ongoing effort, attention, and humility. People change, and it can be challenging to grow in ways that remain supportive of each other rather than pulling apart. One of my intentions with this book is to make that easier by ensuring that we are aligned on the things that matter most from the very beginning. When you start on the same page, growing together becomes far more natural.
One thing I can offer now is consistency. My personality is far more stable than it was earlier in my life. I have enormous respect for my ex-wife for navigating the massive shift that happened when I got sober. The person she first dated and the person I became afterward were very different. My brother once told me that I completely changed who I had been since childhood, and that he believed it was a change I truly needed to make. Even when a change is positive, going through something that drastic inside a relationship is incredibly challenging. I want my next marriage to be my last marriage, and I want it to be something that genuinely feels like a happily ever after.
At the same time, I want a relationship that feels like a choice every day. I do not want either of us to feel stuck, trapped, or together only for the sake of children. In Alcoholics Anonymous, we sometimes talk about “taking hostages” in relationships, and I can see how I did that in my first marriage. I did not fully disclose the extent of my alcoholism early on. I waited until we were emotionally bonded, sexually connected, and committed before the full reality emerged. Then my drinking, followed by early sobriety, became part of her life in a way she never truly signed up for. She has told me that my early sobriety was just as difficult as my drinking. I understand that now.
What excites me about a future relationship is that I have already done that work. I am sober. I am stable. I am not hiding anything foundational. I am offering a version of myself that is already repaired and integrated, which makes it far easier to build something that can last.
For me, the core of a lasting relationship is communication, guided by both honesty and kindness. Honesty means you can tell me anything. Any history, any trauma, any painful or embarrassing experience you have been through, I can handle it. I have heard some of the most difficult stories imaginable through Alcoholics Anonymous. I have listened to people share experiences of profound suffering and loss. I have also read extensively about the worst things people can do to each other. At this point in my life, I do not need to be shielded from truth. Inside a marriage, I am someone it is genuinely safe to be honest with.
I am seeking a relationship where we can both show our feelings openly. I am a very empathic person, and that does shape what works and does not work for me. If you were raised in an environment where emotions were hidden, where you were taught to keep a straight face and pretend everything was fine, that will be difficult in a relationship with me. I can feel when something is off, and it bothers me when emotions are suppressed or denied. If you get your feelings hurt and you cry, that works very well with me. If you break down and need comfort, I am present for that. What does not work well for me is irritation, defensiveness, and attacking when emotions are underneath but not being acknowledged. I am looking for a marriage built on openness, emotional honesty, and mutual care, where both of us feel chosen, supported, and safe to grow into who we are becoming together.
I am seeking a relationship that is gentle and loving, with absolutely no violence of any kind. That is a complete non-negotiable for me. There is never, ever a reason to hit, slap, punch, threaten violence, or intimidate physically, no matter what has happened. I grew up in a household where violence was present. My brother and I were hit, spanked, and threatened regularly, and there was also a great deal of verbal abuse and name-calling. I am intentionally building a life that has none of that in it. I want a marriage where we face our feelings honestly instead of acting them out through harm or cruelty.
What that looks like for me is emotional honesty. I am in a place now where if you say something that hurts my feelings, I want to be able to feel that immediately. Ideally, I would cry right away and let the hurt move through me instead of suppressing it. To me, that is one of the healthiest things we can do in a relationship. We will inevitably hurt each other’s feelings at times. The question is not whether that happens, but how we process it when it does. I would rather we simply acknowledge it. That hurt me. I felt that. Then we can look together at what was said, what the energy behind it was, and what might actually be going on underneath.
What has not worked well for me in the past is pretending everything is fine. I used to do that a lot. I would feel hurt, cover it up, act like nothing happened, and tell myself it was fine. Meanwhile, the unexpressed hurt would build. I would become more irritable, more tense, and eventually I would say something sharp or cruel. Then the conflict would finally come out sideways. I do not want that pattern anymore. I want directness, softness, and truth instead of buildup and explosion.
I would love to be in a relationship with no yelling or shouting. I am capable of maintaining that myself. I am also very aware that I can say extremely hurtful things without ever raising my voice, which in some ways is even more disturbing. I do not want a relationship where we say nasty things to each other, quietly or loudly. I’m also not interested in suffering through silent treatments. My vision is a relationship that is overwhelmingly loving and joyful. I am not naive enough to think there will never be challenges. There will always be moments that build character and require growth. But I want love and joy to make up the vast majority of our shared life, not conflict.
When challenges arise, I want them faced honestly and gently. If I say something out of line and it hurts you, I would much rather see you cry than argue back at me. When someone cries in response to something I said, it immediately turns my attention inward. I start asking myself what I did, why I said it, what was happening inside me, and what I need to change. Defensiveness and counter-attacking make it much harder for me to reflect and soften. Vulnerability invites me into responsibility.
This is one of the reasons I have such a strong relationship with my children. If I say something unkind to them, they often cry. That response teaches me very quickly. I hate causing them pain. It helps me adjust my words, slow down, and take better care of myself so I can show up more lovingly. That same dynamic matters deeply to me in an adult relationship as well.
Because of my sobriety, I place enormous value on a substance-free home. You do not have to be perfectly sober yourself, but I want a home where there is no alcohol, no recreational substances, and nothing intoxicating in my home. I want a home where I feel completely safe, where there is nothing within arm’s reach that I would have to resist on a hard day. I do not want temptation living in my environment. To me, the environment of my home is one of the most important influences in my life. An alcohol-free, substance-free home makes sobriety easy rather than something that requires constant effort. I want my children to grow up in that kind of environment as well. I am building a life that is grounded in safety, honesty, gentleness, and love, and that is the kind of relationship I am seeking to share.
I would strongly prefer a home environment built around healthy food. I want a household where whole plant foods are the default and where anything in the kitchen can be eaten freely, in whatever quantity someone wants. In my house right now, there are no ultra-processed foods at all. Nothing stripped of nutrition. I do not even have things like tofu at the moment. There are no cookies, cakes, crackers, candy, or packaged snack foods. What we have instead are bananas, avocados, big salads, hummus, beans, bean-based noodles, fruits, vegetables, and simple whole foods. I love that kind of environment because I love how my kids eat in it. They can listen to their bodies. They can eat when they are hungry without restriction or shame. I would love to share a home like that with a partner and continue raising children in that way.
I also love having a family and living in a house with people. I enjoy being around others most of the time. I am often fairly extroverted, so if you are a bit more introverted, that actually balances well with me. I am comfortable with both quiet presence and lots of conversation. I enjoy being chatty, expressive, and engaged, and I also respect the need for space and calm. That balance matters to me.
I am very physically affectionate. Physical touch is my primary love language, which is probably one reason massage has been so healing for me over the years. I love touch, closeness, and affection throughout the day. I am comfortable with public displays of affection. I enjoy being touched and giving touch, and physical closeness is a major way I experience love. I also have a healthy sex drive. I love sex, and I would ideally love to have sex every day for as long as possible. The last time I went to a doctor, in 2019, they told me I was unusually healthy compared to most of their patients. I asked what I would need to do to reach ninety-nine percent. At one point we talked about sex, and the doctor said that if you are healthy, you can easily have sex daily well into your seventies. That is genuinely my vision. That is the kind of marriage I want.
I am not looking for anything extreme or elaborate. I have been told before that I am fairly vanilla, and that is accurate. I enjoy playfulness and exploration, and I am open to having fun together, but I am not chasing novelty for its own sake. What matters most to me is consistent physical affection and intimacy over time. It does not have to be every single day without exception, but on average, especially in the early stages of a relationship and continuing into family life, that closeness matters deeply to me. Even when we are raising two, three, or four kids, physical affection for me is still essential. It is the primary way I feel loved.
For me, physical affection is the foundation. When that part of a relationship is alive and healthy, everything else tends to feel workable. When it is missing, the rest of the relationship does not function for me, no matter how good other aspects might be. If you are familiar with The Five Love Languages, this will probably make perfect sense. I would genuinely love to know what your love language is as well. If gifts or words of affirmation matter to you, I am very good with words of affirmation. I enjoy expressing appreciation, attraction, and love verbally.
If you are someone who looks in the mirror and focuses on flaws, picking yourself apart even though others find you attractive, being with me will likely help soften that over time. You would begin to see yourself through my eyes as well as your own. I do not fixate on isolated details. I see the whole person. What is beautiful to me is how everything fits together, the energy of a body, the way someone moves, smiles, laughs, and exists as a complete human being. That wholeness is what I am drawn to, and that is what I value most in intimacy and partnership.
For me, physical affection is the gateway into experiencing the wholeness of love and joy. It is the most sacred part of a marriage. A marriage involves many things that can, in some form, exist elsewhere. You can share emotions with friends. You can build businesses or manage finances with other people. You can communicate, talk, problem-solve, and collaborate outside of a romantic partnership. What makes marriage unique to me is the intimacy. The physical closeness, the affection, the sex, and the tenderness are what belong specifically to the marriage. That is why they matter so much to me.
I am not interested in an open marriage. I am not absolutely opposed to the concept in some abstract sense, but I deeply value the simplicity of monogamy. I love knowing that I have one woman who is my number one, and that I am her number one. I love the clarity of choosing each other, prioritizing each other, and taking care of each other. Whatever your primary love language is, I would make it a priority to meet it. If it is physical touch or words of affirmation, that aligns beautifully with who I already am. If both of our primary love languages were physical affection, I think we would do exceptionally well together. Words of affirmation also come very naturally to me.
Gifts, on the other hand, have never meant much to me personally. I do not place much emotional weight on receiving things. When someone gives me a gift, I am grateful, but it does not register very deeply. Maybe I was never given gifts in a way that truly resonated, or maybe it simply is not how I experience love. I loved Christmas as a kid and I have received meaningful gifts before, but as an adult, gifts do not move me the way affection or words do. If gifts are your primary love language, that is something we would need to talk about honestly, because while I can give gifts, they are not instinctive for me in the way touch and affirmation are.
When physical affection is flowing, I see it as a sign that the rest of the relationship is healthy. It reflects joy, friendship, safety, and connection. That does not mean physical affection is the only thing I want. I want friendship. I want laughter. I want shared meaning. I want a real marriage. The good news is that I have already experienced much of that, which means I know it is possible again. If you have never had a marriage where your spouse was also your best friend, I am genuinely excited by the idea of sharing that with you. I love the idea of a marriage where ninety-nine percent of our time together feels joyful, playful, connected, and memory-making.
Shared time matters deeply to me. I want to be with someone I can spend two weeks straight with and not get tired of. Someone where we keep talking, touching, laughing, and discovering things together. That could be traveling somewhere new or staying close to home, exploring the beaches and neighborhoods of St. Petersburg, Florida, or simply being together in everyday life. I have time. One of the greatest gifts of my work is that I am not rushed. I am available for shared experiences, for presence, and for building a life together at a human pace.
I would love to do hot power yoga flows with my wife, to share the things I already love doing. If you are sober and involved in Alcoholics Anonymous, I would love to attend meetings together. If you are not, I would still love for you to have some kind of personal growth or recovery framework in your life, whether that is Al-Anon, Adult Children of Alcoholics, or something similar that helps you stay grounded and emotionally balanced. That kind of shared commitment to self-awareness and growth matters to me. If that is not your path, that is okay, but I value a relationship where both people are consciously working on themselves. What I am ultimately seeking is a marriage built on affection, friendship, shared time, emotional honesty, and mutual care. A relationship where love feels alive, embodied, and chosen every day.
I would really love to have something we do together regularly, like yoga, tennis, or even Alcoholics Anonymous. I go to a yoga studio where there are a lot of attractive women, and if I have a wife, I want to bring my wife there. It is not a major issue, but I would much rather be clearly partnered and sharing that space with you than navigating attention on my own. Tennis is another big one for me. I love playing tennis, and sharing that would mean a lot.
If I imagine my ideal first date, it actually starts before we ever meet. I would love to have read your book or letter first so I already know I genuinely want to meet you and that it is worth showing up fully. Then, the ideal first date for me would be meeting up to play tennis together, maybe a couple of sets of singles. After that, we would go out for lunch and eat really healthy whole plant foods. Then I would love to do a yin yoga class together to stretch and wind down. After that, we could take a walk around Crescent Lake or go to the beach and watch the sunset. I could happily do all of that in one day. Those are the things I love most, and that is the kind of life I enjoy living. I share more of this life, and how dating is going for me, in my Dating playlist.
What I do not love is sitting around watching television. If Netflix and chill is your idea of quality time, that is not something I want. I do not have the desire or the patience to spend any more of my life on screens. I remember when I was on dating apps, which I do not use and hope never to use again, how many women said they just wanted to curl up on the couch and watch Netflix. That does not work for me. I have too many things I want to do with my life to spend my evenings watching TV.
That said, I would happily go to a movie with you once a week. If I am going to watch something, I would much rather go to a theater, sit in the dark, eat popcorn, and have it be a full experience. Most of our time together, though, I want to be off screens. I would love to play board games, talk, walk, explore, and actually be present with each other.
If I picture what life might look like six months into dating, I imagine us enthusiastically waking up together around 7, followed by a nice breakfast which could be fruit, oatmeal, a breakfast burrito, or we could go out for an eggs benedict. Then we would go to a hot power flow class together and sweat it out. After that, we would come home, shower, and clean up. Then we might split off for a bit. I would go to an AA meeting, and you would do whatever you need to do for your work, friends, school, or self-care. I would spend some time writing, working on books, maybe doing a coaching call, and helping someone. Later in the afternoon, we would come back together. If I did not have my kids that day, we might play a board game, take a walk, go to the beach, talk, and share another good meal together. If I had my kids, we could play with them, take them to the park, and get them ready for school the next day. If it was a weekend, I love seeing live shows, standup comedy, performances, etc. Then we would end the day with more intimacy and go to bed feeling connected around ten.
One thing that matters a lot to me is that you are genuinely interested in my work. If you love my books, if you love my writing, if you inspire me and support what I do, I am confident I will make plenty of money to support our life together. I do my best work when I feel loved, encouraged, and believed in, and I want to build a partnership where we are both rooting for each other and growing together.
I want you to have complete freedom when it comes to work and how you structure your life. If you want a career and would prefer that I take on more responsibility at home, including caring for the kids, I am genuinely happy to do that. If you would rather be a stay-at-home mom and focus primarily on raising the children, I would love to support that as well. I am very open. I have lived both sides of that dynamic. My mother was the career woman in our family, and my father stayed home to raise the children. Later, when my daughter was born, I was the primary income provider while my ex stayed home with the kids for about four years. After I destroyed the finances, the roles shifted. My ex returned to working full-time, and I took on much more of the day-to-day household and childcare responsibilities. Because of that lived experience, I am extremely flexible about how roles are shared in a marriage.
What matters to me far more than roles is clarity around non-negotiables. I believe deeply in laying those out honestly. My non-negotiables are a healthy life together, joy, love, honesty, trust, and sobriety. Sobriety is not something I am flexible on. I value being present and clear. A sober lifestyle matters to me because being with someone that’s not is the easiest way for me to lose my sobriety too. If you are someone who occasionally wants a glass of wine or to find yourself on a plant medicine retreat, that will not work for me. I want a home that is substance-free and I have no interest in being with someone that needs to escape themselves, even if only occasionally. Being healthy together is non-negotiable. Wanting children is non-negotiable. Wanting marriage, in some form, is also important to me.
That said, I am flexible about the timing and the structure of marriage. If you would prefer to get pregnant before getting married, I can fully support that. I am open to different paths. On one end of the spectrum, some people prefer not to have sex until marriage. That would be challenging for me, but not impossible. I would need to understand how that could still feel joyful and fulfilling for both of us, and I would be open to that conversation. On the other end of the spectrum, some people do not want to get married at all or prefer to wait until children arrive. I could support that too. I could even imagine never getting married again if you did not want marriage but did want children. My preference, though, is marriage with children. To me, that creates a clear unit, a family, a team, something we have consciously and publicly committed to.
What I am not interested in is casual dating or hookups. I have already done that, briefly after my divorce and extensively in my twenties, and I know it is not good for me. I am deeply emotional, empathic, and kind, and casual relationships are not safe for me. I do not attach lightly. I cannot sleep with someone casually and then walk away without attachment forming on one side or the other. I no longer want to create suffering that way, either for myself or for someone else. I do not want someone getting hung up on me when I am not fully invested, and I do not want to be hung up on someone who is not equally aligned. I am seeking something intentional, loving, and real. I want depth. I want clarity. I want a relationship built with care, honesty, and mutual choice, not one that drifts forward through convenience or physical chemistry alone. If you want help getting clear about what you're really looking for in a relationship, you can book a Zoom call with me.
I want there to be real joy in friendship before things become sexual. That does not have to take a long time if we are intentional about actually getting to know each other. Depth can happen quickly when two people are willing to show up honestly. Reading each other’s books, exchanging letters, or even doing something like an hour-long video where you share your story and who you are could build that foundation fast. When I feel that alignment, I am very willing to open my heart and get involved quickly.
With my ex-wife, we went on six dates before we committed to each other, and we started being physically affectionate early on. By the second date, there was already that connection, and it felt right to me. Because physical affection and touch are my primary love language, I generally want to explore that within the first few dates. I want to know if that chemistry is there. If the physical chemistry is not there, then there is nothing for me to build on. I know what strong physical chemistry feels like, and I want that intensity.
To me, that physical chemistry is not separate from the rest of the relationship. It is the tip of the iceberg. It points to joy, friendship, shared time, emotional safety, communication, growing together, and deep compatibility between our bodies, minds, and souls. Physical affection is an indicator of all of that. When there are problems in the sexual or physical part of a relationship, I usually see that as a signal that something else is off underneath, even if it is harder to name directly. That is why physical affection is such an important barometer for me. It tells me how the relationship is really doing.
I am not unrealistic about relationships. I know there will be conflict. What matters to me is consistency. I want a relationship where we come back to each other. We might need space at times, but we know we are coming back, talking it through, and working on it. What I cannot tolerate is ghosting, flakiness, disappearing and reappearing with intensity, or emotional unpredictability. What I want is the deep knowing that we are sticking together unless we both consciously decide that it is best for us to move on.
Ideally, I would love for this book to bring me directly to the woman I spend the rest of my life with. At the same time, I also believe that any meaningful relationship should at least result in lasting friendship. If for some reason a relationship did not work out long-term or did not lead to having children together, I would want us to still be friends. I would want you to know me well enough that we could remain part of each other’s lives in a healthy way, the way I still have close friends from college twenty years later. At a minimum, I want that lifelong friend energy with anyone I date. Ideally, though, I want much more than that.
What I have seen in my life is that when two people know themselves, are honest from the beginning, and choose each other consciously, continuing to build and maintain that relationship is usually the best path forward. I am deeply grateful for the relationships I have had, because they have shown me both what works and what does not. I know what a loving marriage feels like. I know what it is like when two people choose each other every day. It is beautiful. That is what I am interested in building again, and this time, maintaining for the rest of our lives together. Building a life like this is something I love doing alongside other people who want it too, inside the Jerry Banfield Family.
A Vision for Us
Here is the life I am imagining for us. I have hinted at it and shared pieces of it already, but I want to be very clear. To me, love is creative and explorative. I want a life where we truly know each other, where we are hungry to hear each other’s stories and to keep going deeper. I want us to value conversation, curiosity, and asking real questions. I want to know your mind even more than your body. I want to know who you have dated before, what shaped you, what ideas you hold about the world, what stories matter most to you. I want to know everything there is to know about you, and I want to share all of myself with you as well.
I want that depth of knowing to become the foundation of an incredible friendship, which then becomes our engagement, our marriage, and our life together. I would love to have a wedding that feels beautiful and meaningful to you. It could be simple. It could be elaborate. It could be just the two of us, or it could include your family, my family, and everyone we love. What matters to me is that it feels right to you and that we have memories of our wedding that feel joyful and aligned.
I would love to support you through pregnancy, to be present for the changes in your body, and to walk through that experience together. I want to be there for the birth. A home birth could be beautiful, and a hospital birth is perfectly fine too. What matters to me is that we are in it together. I love the newborn stage. I have a lot of experience with it, and if this is new for you, I know how much easier it can be when you have support. We can sleep. We can take shifts. I can wear the baby in a carrier while you rest for hours. We can swaddle, soothe, and help our baby feel safe and loved. Then we get to do it all again. A toddler. Another baby. Watching them eat their first foods, crawl, walk, and learn to talk. I love all of it. I love holding babies, changing diapers, feeding them, and being fully present for those early years. To me, it is pure joy.
I imagine our path through parenthood being relatively stress free, where we are not constantly anxious about timelines or doing things perfectly. I want us to enjoy creating our family together. I want us to trust the process and call in the souls that are meant to join us, rather than forcing, tracking, or worrying. I want that experience to feel sacred and playful rather than heavy.
I will share a story from my previous marriage to show you what I mean. Both times we were trying to have children, there was stress around timing and uncertainty, even though there were no actual physical fertility issues. It was mental stress more than anything. The last time this happened was around August 2017. My ex was feeling frustrated that she had not gotten pregnant again. I suggested we do something different. I said, what if we imagine this is already happening? What if we connect with our future child? What is their name going to be? What if we speak of them as if they already exist and open our hearts to that reality?
I asked her what our first son’s name would be. I said I would love for him to carry on my family name, which had always been my vision for a first son, even though I eventually let that go. Then I asked her about a daughter. If we have another daughter, what would her name be? She paused and then said, June. I love the name June. I said, our June baby.
The moment we said that, something shifted. It felt like our next child was suddenly present with us. When we said our June baby, it was as if he was in the room. We could feel him. My ex became pregnant immediately after that. The moment we spoke of him as if he already existed, it was as if he chose us. I remember how magical that moment felt, the instant we said our June baby. It was like he arrived the moment we opened the door and were truly ready.
I actually remember choosing my parents in the same way. I remember choosing to incarnate with my mother and my father. Because of that, I want that same sense of magic and intention in our lives together. I want us to consciously invite our children to come through us, to know that we are calling them in and welcoming them. That is how I believe it happens. And the details still amaze me. My son was born in June, on the exact same day I was born thirty-four years earlier. That kind of synchronicity is the magic I want in our life together.
I want us to move through the process of building a family with joy. I see so many couples struggle, stress, and suffer through what could be a beautiful journey, and I am not interested in that. I want to love the journey itself. To me, the journey is everything. Sometimes the destination feels almost beside the point. I am profoundly grateful for the thirteen-year marriage I had. The journey of that relationship was the most beautiful part. Now I want a journey with you that is even longer, deeper, and more aligned.
I know what it takes to build stable, healthy relationships. I am very accepting of differences in many areas of life outside my non-negotiables. Politics is one example. You may have noticed I have not mentioned it much. I am fairly neutral. I believe deeply in being the change you want to see in the world. That is where my energy goes. I can accept wherever you fall on the political spectrum, as long as you are thoughtful and kind.
I care deeply about service. One of the main reasons I continue going to Alcoholics Anonymous is because I want to help others stay sober. I love my life. I am sober. I am healthy. And I try to give that away every day. I am heading to an AA meeting shortly after writing this, not because I need it to stay sober, but because when I was new, I needed people who showed me that life could be joyful and meaningful without alcohol. I want to be that person for others now.
I would love for you to be passionate about giving and serving in your own way. I would love for you to express yourself creatively. And if creativity feels blocked for you, if you have ideas for books, art, projects, or expressions that have been waiting to come out, I am an excellent partner for that. I am deeply creative, and I love supporting creativity in others. I would love to co-write books together, share ideas, and build something meaningful side by side. When I imagine our life, what excites me most is not just marriage or children in isolation, but the experience of building a family together while creating, serving, and contributing to life. That combination of love, creativity, service, and joy is what I want our marriage to be rooted in.
When it comes to spirituality, I am deeply curious and very open. I hold two perspectives that might sound contradictory on the surface, but they coexist comfortably inside me. In a practical sense, I can support almost any faith you have. I am grounded enough in myself that I do not need you to believe exactly what I believe. At the deepest level of my own experience, though, my sense of God or ultimate reality is that we are all God. That is how life feels to me. Like Jesus said, you are all gods. Even the least among you can do all that I have done and greater things. I experience life as something we are actively creating. Each of us is a creator of our own reality.
What I am doing right now is creating a very specific reality. I am creating a life where I have an amazing second marriage, where I have more children whom I deeply love, where I experience another long, joyful journey of love, aiming this time for a happily ever after. I imagine us decades from now, lying in bed together at a hundred years old, holding hands, and consciously transitioning into whatever comes next. That is the vision I am holding. I love being a father. I love creating life. To me, we are creating our lives in real time every day. Every word I choose, every action I take with my body, every thought I cultivate in my mind is actively shaping reality. I want to co-create reality with you. I want us to build something beautiful together and show people love, joy, and possibility simply by how we live.
At the same time, I do not walk around thinking this human body is God in a way that should dominate others. I see it more as an expression of the principle, as above, so below. Each of us, as a human being, is essentially the God of the trillions of microorganisms living inside our body. The bacteria, the cells, the organs, the viruses, all the forms of life we do not even have names for. Every decision we make about what to eat, what to say, and what to think has godlike power over the body we inhabit. When the cells of my body are praying, they are praying to me. They are praying to us as humans.
I like to imagine that every cell in my body knows it is part of a whole. That my arm cells, brain cells, liver cells, blood cells, gut bacteria, all know they are part of Jerry Banfield. I want them to consciously serve the whole, just as I want to consciously serve something larger than myself. I try to nourish my body with that awareness. I mostly eat whole plant foods, inspired in part by reading How Not to Die. At the same time, if my body signals that it wants something different, I listen. If my cells are asking for a little meat, I pay attention. When I feel that enough has been given, I stop. When I eat, I try to honor the fact that I am feeding trillions of living beings that depend on my choices.
I also experience this same pattern on a larger scale. I see each of us as a cell in the body of Earth. We live on this enormous planet, and each human being is just one small cell within it. The felt experience of God, for me, is often the felt experience of being part of Earth. I depend entirely on this planet for my survival and nourishment. Everything I need comes from here. Even when people talk about other planets or cosmic origins, which I am open to, I come back to the simplicity of Mother Earth. Earth sustains us completely.
My daily prayer is not a request, but a question. How may I serve you today? Mother Earth, how may I serve you? What is my role right now? And today, the answer that came was very clear. Write this book. Serve your fellow human beings. Write this book so you can connect with a woman who resonates with your wavelength. Build a loving partnership. Create a beautiful family. Help sustain the future of this planet through love and joy. That is the work assigned to this cell today.
Just as my liver cells have a job, just as my brain cells and my throat cells are doing their work right now by speaking this into existence, I see my life the same way. Each day, I simply look for what my role is on behalf of Earth and do my best to fulfill it with love.
Most of my work in the world will naturally involve other human beings, just as most ants work for the good of the anthill rather than for humans. And yet, everything is interconnected. I love seeing my life that way now. The marriage and family I want are not separate from the world. They exist inside this larger context of being part of a living planet. The question I ask myself each day is simple. What is my part to contribute today?
This is my life. This is how I think. These are my values. And I would love for you to share in them. I would love for you to be curious about life, curious about me, curious about how I came to believe what I believe, what books shaped me, what experiences opened me. I am endlessly curious about you. I know that writing a book like this means I am doing all the talking, but as I am writing, I am imagining you. I am wondering what you are like. What you look like. What you sound like. What you smell like. What your presence feels like.
To me, the greatest area of exploration is your mind. What do you think about? What do you read? What do you care about? What moves you? What hurts you? What lights you up? I want to know all of it. I want to know you deeply. Writing this book has helped me clarify myself, and that feels like my responsibility right now. I am loving this vision of a future where each of us knows our role, knows our job, and steps into it with intention.
Right now, I am single. Completely single. I do not have anyone in my life that I am interested in being with who is also interested in being with me. And yet, I know I am speaking directly to you, to the soul and spirit of my future wife. I am speaking to you right now. How this message reaches you physically, I do not know yet, and that mystery excites me. My job right now is not to control the outcome. My job is clarity.
Since my divorce, I have struggled at times to be clear about what I truly have to offer, what I want to create, and how I can best serve. When I strip it all down, the clearest and most meaningful offering I have is marriage and family. I could choose a relationship without marriage. I could choose a life without more children. But when I ask myself what I have to offer that could mean the most to another woman, what feels like my highest contribution, the answer is clear. Marriage and family. A real partnership. A life built together with love, intention, and joy.
This book is not about finding just anyone and hoping it works out. This is about being intentional. This is about calling in something that feels magical, because I know life itself is magical. Everything I have experienced tells me that we are living in a kind of everyday magic. We do not need wands. We create reality with our words, with our thoughts, with our attention, and with our choices.
I imagine a future where I look back on this book and say, do you want to know how I found an amazing wife who loves me and whom I love deeply? Do you want to know how we built this beautiful life together? It started here. It started with this book, written when I was single, written to make concrete a vision that lived in my mind and my heart long before it appeared in the world.
There were moments when I almost gave up on this vision entirely. I thought, I am never going to find a woman who wants to have children with me again. What kind of woman would want a divorced dad? What kind of woman would want a forty-one-year-old man who already spent thirteen years married to someone else? What kind of woman would want a man who writes books for a living, who is not huge and muscular, who is sober, who does not want to sit on the couch watching Netflix and eating all night? I had moments where I questioned everything. Moments where I thought maybe life is not magical, maybe I am wrong about all of this, maybe I do not know anything at all.
This book is me choosing to stand up anyway. This is what I believe in. This is what I want. This is what I have to offer. From here, my job is not to force anything. My job is to stay open, to pay attention, and to be prepared to receive. This book is my prayer. This is the life I would love to have. Going forward, my meditation is to listen. To listen to life. To listen to people. To listen to opportunities. And practically, to share this book. If I meet someone I like, I do not need to convince her to date me. I can simply say, here, read this. If you read this and it resonates, then we can go forward from there.
This book is my vehicle and my intention. I am deeply grateful that I rewrote it. The first version showed me places where I needed to be better, kinder, more compassionate. The second version feels much more accurate to who I am and where I am going. Even if this book never reaches the woman it was written for, it has already done its job by helping me live with greater clarity. That alone makes it worthwhile.
If there is an example I hope this sets, it is this. When you get very clear about who you are, what you have to offer, and what you want to build, life tends to support that clarity. Since my divorce, I struggled to say plainly, this is exactly what I want. The ideas were there. I talked about them. I thought about them. But this is a different level of clarity. Writing it all down like this changes something.
Looking back, I am grateful for the dates that never happened, for the messages that were never returned. I say thank you. We were not right for each other. It is almost impossible to know who is right for you until you are deeply clear about what you are offering and what kind of life you want to build. Now I am clear.
If this resonates with you, you can find me at jerrybanfield.com. I am so curious who you are as a reader. Are you reading this because you are looking for a man like me? Are you a man trying to set a clear intention in your own life? Are you a parent hoping to help your child find love? However you arrived here, I would love to know your story. I would love to read your book.
Thank you for the time you spent with me here. It truly means a lot that you gave me this chance to share myself with you. I am trusting the timing. One of my friends once said something that stayed with me. I was feeling despair one day, and I looked at his life. He was seventy-eight, divorced three times, living alone. I asked him how he kept going. He said, Jerry, it is curiosity. I am just so curious about what is going to happen next.
That is how I feel now. I am curious. I am curious what will happen because of this book. I am curious what kind of woman will come into my life. I am curious what value I will offer her. I am curious what my next story will be. Most of all, I am curious to get to know you and your life. Thank you for reading this, and I hope we have a chance to meet.
Love,
Jerry Banfield