Dating Is Not Cooked
I'm Jerry Banfield. It's July 19th, 2026, and this is a day in my life as a full-time YouTuber, content creator, and inspirational thought leader for the future — an honest, authentic creator. I appreciate all your support on the last vlogs. The one big thing happening in my life in the last 24 hours is that the woman I met six days ago has been such an amazing influence on my life. She has opened my heart up so much, and I had an amazing third date with her yesterday morning, which I'll tell you about. Plus, I'm going to talk about my work and the world and all that stuff.
I hope this gives you all hope out there, because there are so many videos saying how horrible dating is — that relationships are cooked, dating's cooked. It's not true. If you just open your heart and try to love someone else, you may find that love. In my experience, now is actually easier than ever to have a relationship. It seems to me there are more single women than I've ever seen before, and so many of them are just waiting for a man to come along and really love them — a man who has some emotions, is honest, and communicates.
Yesterday when I got up, I filmed yesterday's vlog first thing in the morning. I try to film these in the morning if I can, when I get up early enough — like seven — so I usually just try to get up and film a video right away. Yesterday's video was titled "I Met Her Five Days Ago and She's Already the Center of My World," and the one before that was called "I Cried Walking Home from Our Date." I know some of this might sound crazy to some of you — "you just met" — but it's how I feel. I've met so many women that I'd known for much longer and felt nothing for them, and yet with this woman, I met her and I just felt everything right away. What was beautiful yesterday was all the conversation we had, the fun we had on our date, and that we seem to be having the same experience together, which is really magical. I realize sometimes one person can have one experience and the other person can hardly be sharing that at all.
Ten Minutes of Feeling Like a Crazy Person
To begin, though: I filmed the vlog yesterday, and I had planned on seeing her a little before 10. It was nine and I hadn't heard from her yet. I usually message first, but I'd messaged first the night before, so right after I filmed my vlog and my ICP video, I called her. She didn't answer. Then I sent her a text saying, hey, we're not going to be able to play tennis, it's raining — what do you want to do instead? — and I gave some ideas. Then there were about 10 minutes where I felt like a crazy person. My mind went: you just met this woman five days ago, you don't know her, why do you think she's going to want to see you? Maybe she decided she didn't like you last night. I had about 10 minutes of anxiety, my mind spinning up all these ideas — she's not going to call back, it's over, you're crazy.
Then she called back, and she's like, yes, I'd love to see you — let's do yoga and coffee instead of tennis. The amount of relief I felt was massive. And it's like, see, that part of my mind that's all crazy and fear-based — what happens when you're wrong most of the time, and almost everything you suggest is not true? Not only that, but it's counterproductive. She was getting ready — she was in the bathroom and needed a minute to get ready and call me back. I later talked to her about it, and she said, "you know, I wondered if you were thinking that." To me, that's a strong connection, where you both kind of know what the other is thinking.
Finally, Yoga Together
So I went and picked her up to go to yoga, and man, it just felt so good. She's so beautiful, and she knows lots of people there. I've wanted a woman who enjoyed doing yoga with me since 2021. My ex will go do yoga on her own now, but she was never into same-time-and-place yoga with me. I like to do a power flow — I do hot power flows now — I wanted a serious workout yoga, and my ex was just never interested in that, and I was frustrated. Now I meet this woman at yoga, and it turns out she likes going to hot power flows. So I walk in with her, feeling so much energy and excitement, a little nervousness, and at the same time so thankful. I'm like, yes — finally here at yoga with a woman on a date — so grateful.
We put our mats down next to each other, talked, laughed, and went through the whole yoga flow. I realized she'd never actually seen me do yoga before, because previously I was a few rows behind her. So I made sure to show off a little bit — I did a 20-plus-second crow pose at one point — and she showed off even more, doing handstands for 10-plus seconds. She fell towards me at one point, which we were laughing about.
Coffee, Tears, and the Same Experience
After the class, we went and had coffee and a fantastic conversation. We were laughing and making jokes, and then we sat down and had a really serious, heartfelt, sweet conversation. My goal with the conversation was to see: is she having the same experience as me? Am I just crazy, making all this up in my head, way too into her while she's not that into me? Or is she feeling the same kind of thing I'm feeling? The beautiful part of the conversation was seeing that she is having the same kind of experience as me. How the story plays out in her head is a little different than mine, but there are a lot of feelings that both of us have already.
I shared the moment I'd had that morning — that this is how it looks for me, thinking that I'm just crazy, my mind attacking my heart for being ridiculous. And she said that's where she was too: "I thought you might be thinking something like that, and I went to call you back as soon as I could." I'm like, oh, that's so sweet. Then I shared that I'd started reading the Bible so her and I could be on the same page, since Christianity is important to her. I was raised Christian — I holler out "Jesus" instinctively when anything good or bad happens. I told her about a passage I read in the Bible about the woman following her husband and the husband never being harsh with his wife, and I told her about crying and praying that I would never be harsh with her the way I'd been with women in the past. I cried a little bit sitting there, and it was really beautiful — she snuggled up to me and said, "finally, a man that actually has emotions." Then she was able to share at the same level with me. After I got home, she buzzed her friend and her mom, and I ended up talking to her mom on FaceTime, which was really cool — so I've met her mom already on FaceTime.
Why I Share My Dating Life with My Kids
Right after I dropped her off from our date, my kids arrived. I told the kids, "I just had a really awesome date, and I'm really excited about this woman." My daughter's about to go to middle school, and some people think I shouldn't share my dating experiences with my kids. I disagree. My daughter's about to start going through all this stuff. I remember having all these feelings and crushes on girls in elementary school — maybe if I go back to before elementary school I don't remember having crushes, but as soon as I went to elementary school, I remember having crushes and being nuts about girls. My daughter doesn't seem to have that yet, so I'm sharing this stuff and telling her: when you get feelings for somebody, it can be overwhelming, it can be challenging, it can really throw your world off. I'm describing the communication and how I'm processing all this with the hope that my daughter and my son are taking notes — that they'll have already heard some of this stuff, understood it, and have these seeds planted in their brains.
My parents didn't discuss this stuff with me. I don't know if they didn't think to, as much as that they'd been married a long time by the time I went to middle school — they'd been married something like 12 years before I went to middle school — so neither of them had dated in a long time, and this just wasn't top of mind for them to talk about. I'm thinking I want to help my daughter and son be prepared to navigate these things, because getting feelings for people, especially when it's brand new, just upends your whole world. If you remember when that first started happening for you, you can start feeling really crazy.
I also want the kids to know what I'm doing so that I don't suddenly surprise them and go from "dad's not dating anybody" to "I'm moving her in" or whatever. I want time to make the transition in their minds too — hey, I just met somebody I like; hey, we just had a really nice third date — so that the kids are slowly taking steps along with me. By the time they meet the woman, by the time our lives start getting more integrated, it's been a slow, gentle transition for them instead of an abrupt thing. I think a lot of parents go wrong by withholding stuff from their kids and then throwing these big changes at them all at once — and sometimes their kids don't respond very well to that.
Walking the Kids Through Every Step
When you've withheld all this information and then you dump a huge change on your kids all at once, it's hard on them. My kids have done really well because we walked them through it: they saw that mom and dad were struggling, then it was okay, mom and dad are going to get divorced, then slowly each change along the way — okay, dad's going to move out soon — and then two weeks later, dad did move out. We've just walked them through each step of the process and kept them in the process, and that's made everything easier for them. There's not as much to digest or process at once. The kids also played lots of video games while they were here.
An AI Top 50 Taking Off on Crypto Reviews
As soon as the kids left, I got back to doing my work, and I filmed an AI top 50 where I review every top 50 AI coin in 25 minutes. I'm really happy to see this morning that the video is doing awesome on my Crypto Reviews channel. It had 800 — well, 777 views last time I checked, 800 views now — all overnight, which is not the most popular time of day. That's way exceeding my usual videos: a 10% click-through rate, six percent average, with minutes watched that are awesome. I'm starting to see that if I position ICP as just better than everything else, without directly crapping on other stuff as much, I can probably promote ICP even more, so I'm really happy about that.
I had ChatGPT do some deep research for me based on a prompt I gave it, and then I used the research document it produced to go through and do the review. I can present all of that because I actually know so much of this stuff, and then it pulls in a lot of the technical facts and even more details about things I didn't know. What you can do with AI is just incredible — to produce this without AI would have taken so long. Now I know that with ChatGPT you need to give it some time, too: you need to give it a good hour to do this kind of research on the pro mode. As far as I can see, you can only do one prompt at once on it, so I fire it up when I know I'm not going to need it for a while, then I take the research and have it generate the thumbnail. Part of the recording got garbled in transcription here, but the gist of what I said is this: I'm going to keep working hard, and I don't worry about the end result. I just keep working hard until it comes through to the end.
Time for a New Sponsor
I told my sponsor how much I love this woman and how excited I am about life. He, meanwhile, has had a surgery, and he's been stuck in hospitals and then stuck in his condo by himself most of the day, barely able to move around. His world and my world are very different right now. He seems pretty miserable, struggling and lonely. He said, "I can't take hearing about your dating and your money anymore. I think you need to get a new sponsor." I was actually kind of relieved, because I'd been thinking the same thing. We're on different pages. When he was out there meeting people, talking to people, sharing all the time, and going to meetings, we were much more on the same page. Now it's like we're in different worlds. I have empathy — I understand that from the world he's in, in his 70s, isolated, alone, and in pain, hearing about me out here living life is just too hard for him right now, because it makes him wish he wasn't where he's at. I'd been thinking I need to get a new sponsor too, because he hasn't been available to talk to me much since May.
Nobody Is Going to Lead Me Again
I called another friend in AA who's been kind of like a sponsor to me, and I said, you're the first person I'm thinking to ask to be my sponsor. He said, "Well, Jerry, I'm happy to work with you as a friend, as a fellow man in the program, but I don't think I can sponsor you because you don't take direction." I said, if by "take direction" you mean do what you tell me to — yes. Nobody's ever going to lead me again. I will pray to God, I will follow the example of Jesus, and I'll be Christian in religion to be on the same page with the woman I'm dating. At the same time, no human is going to come around and tell me what to do and how to think. I was born in '84. I don't need somebody else to lead me. I don't need anyone else to tell me what to do, because you don't know as much as I know about my life. A sponsor, to me, is someone who's there to support me while I'm there to support them. We do that by sharing our lives with each other, leading by example, and giving suggestions and advice.
But this guy, I think, has certain rules for his sponsees. They can't watch porn — which, for me, is easy; that's not something I normally do anyway. I didn't watch any porn for a decade when I was married. Then when I got divorced, I tried a little bit here and there, but I just find that, especially if I'm dating someone, I have no desire to watch porn, and when I'm totally single, most of the time I'd rather not engage with it either. So that's something I could easily do, but he has other stuff, and I'm like, you're not going to come to me with terms and conditions. The porn's no big deal, but it sounds like there are several other things, and he already knows I'm not going to go along with that. You're not going to tell me what meetings to go to. With my own sponsee, I ask what's best for his schedule — I meet him when he's available, I go to the meeting that's best for him. My friend encouraged me: find a sponsor that will work with you on your terms, and it's okay if that search takes a little while. That sounds good to me. I haven't been without a sponsor since early sobriety, and I'm ready for it. It's like being single and dating, but in AA sponsorship — better no sponsor than a sponsor I'm not cooperating with, or one who's not really there for me.
Two Meetings in One Day
Looking around for a sponsor motivated me to go to two AA meetings yesterday. I was hoping to see the woman I'm dating again, but her schedule got filled up with all her friends, so I filled my schedule up with my meetings. I went to a men's meeting, which was really nice. I'm fine with finding that men's meetings are vibing with me the most these days — I feel most comfortable in a men's meeting, which is funny, because I was so critical of women's meetings before, and here I am going to men's meetings now. At the men's meeting, I caught up with a guy there, which was really nice.
Then there was another meeting about a 20-minute drive away that I was going to be late for, but there was one woman I really wanted to see there, and some other people I wanted to thank and share with, especially about meeting someone new. I just started driving there. I texted my friend — hey, are you going to be there tonight? — and right when I was at a stoplight, she messaged me: "Yep, I'm here." I'm like, awesome, I'm on the way. I got there about 10 minutes late. I saw her, I saw a guy there who's a big fan of mine, and a few other people. I cried on the way to that meeting, just feeling thankful for my life, thankful for the woman I'm dating, thankful for all my friends and family who have supported me when it's been difficult, and thankful to God for arranging all this — because I can pray and I can ask, but I can't arrange everything else.
Throwing My Heart All In
I also felt really vulnerable again yesterday, with fear and anxiety coming up, because so many people are like: you just met this woman, you've got to slow down, you can't be investing feelings yet, you're going to get hurt. I'm like, why is everyone so negative all the time? How few people say, "I'm going to be there for you" — especially some of the people that really care. My own mind is echoing these things too. So what am I going to do? I'm going to throw my heart all in, like it can't get hurt. I'm going to throw it all in like I have done with ICP. If it doesn't work out, I'll deal with it. I'm not going to approach life cautiously and carefully like a wounded animal. I'm going to go in like a kid — just have fun and trust. Have fun and trust that everything's going to be okay. I'm going to experience the maximum joy.
I've been unlocking higher levels of joy this week. I was crying in the meeting with joy and relief. I was so fired up and anxious when I got to the men's meeting, and I calmed down a lot. Then I had a good cry when I drove, and I calmed down even more. I hadn't been to a meeting in a week, and I went to two in one day. I drove home, talked to my mom, filmed more videos, got a nice voice memo from the woman I'm dating at night, and went to bed at about 11:30.
AI Video Editing Is Magical
I woke up this morning thinking about her. She has some video editing to do, and she's a little stressed about her work, as she was yesterday. I'm like, listen, I can use AI to do all your video editing. If you're not doing AI video editing yet — AI video editing is just magical. Absolutely magical. You literally just drop a video in a folder, it runs it through the GPU, uses a transcript, runs it through the GPU again to re-render it, and out comes the video. It's amazing. And you might be asking: oh, why don't you do that with your own videos?
Why I Don't Edit My Videos
I like that my videos are real, raw, and authentic. I've practiced — I've done tens of thousands of videos at this point and thousands of hours of live streaming. I've probably done four or five thousand hours of live streaming, and I've probably filmed at least 10,000 hours of unedited, off-the-top-of-my-head videos. At this point, to me, my uneditedness is part of my authenticity. If I start editing, it just ends up stripping out a lot of the authenticity — it strips out a lot of the humanity of it. I want all of that left in so you can have a real experience of me. Most of the people I watch have minimally edited or completely unedited videos, too. It's easier, it's faster, and for me, I don't see any reason to try to edit my videos. That said, if you want your videos edited, Adobe Premiere Pro with the text-based editing is incredible, and I have Claude, where I can just build a custom workflow with a prompt every time.
All In on Talk With Me
I sent her an audio message about 30 minutes ago, and I hope I can see her today. I also rebranded. I feel really good about sticking to the one-on-one call — I simplified my branding a little bit down to just "talk with me." If you want to talk with me directly, you can schedule a one-on-one call with me and bring whatever you're going through — dating, work, anything. I'm really excited to go all in on my business in terms of my thinking: all we need to do is get this business cranking out as much income as possible while helping as many people as possible.
I'm super grateful for you being here on the journey with me, and if stories like this one about opening my heart back up resonate with you, there's a lot more where this came from on my Dating playlist. Thank you for supporting this, and I will see you tomorrow.