I pride myself on being this genuine, authentic person who just tells it to you real, straight from the heart. And I'm grateful so many of you have been enjoying that on my vlogs channel. But I realized that with women, I've not been doing that — especially since I got divorced. I would do all this polite conversation with women, and I wonder if you can identify with this. I'd start all these conversations with women about superficial things. Oh, hey, how's the weather today? Or at yoga: oh, that was a hard class. Yeah, what do you do? Boring conversations. And I realized that was the biggest area where I've been dishonest talking to women: pretending to be this surface-level friendly person.
What I Actually Want to Know
If I'm honest, look — I'm talking to you because you're pretty. And what I want to know is, first, are you single? If you're not single, I don't need to talk to you anymore. Second, do you want to go out on a date with me? Again, if the answer's no — thanks, don't need to talk to you anymore. And if the answer's yes, great. Give me your number and we can keep talking now, or I can plan a date and see you out there.
Wow, what a relief this has been, to make this change. To stop going around like I'm just this friendly person. I'm not. I'm very direct. Don't waste my time. That's the attitude I take in my videos. That's how I am with everybody — except, for the last year since I got divorced, with women. And it has felt so good. I've wanted to be more direct for a long time, but I've been scared. I've been scared to just come out and be that honest, because I'm thinking: oh, well, a woman will think I'm harassing her. Or that I'm not a safe man. Or, well, that's not polite. But what's ridiculous is I go around taking on the matrix and being as loud as I can online, pissing people off in person — and my indirect approach often gets bad vibes anyway. And then I'm not willing to just go around and be honest?
A Short Conversation at Yoga That Showed Me the Difference
I had a great conversation — short — with this woman from yoga yesterday. And it was a perfect example of what I'm doing now and how great it feels versus what I was doing before. What I did yesterday: I saw this woman who was attractive. She put her mat down near me. After class, I walked out at the same time as her. You've got to have something to open the conversation and get their attention, so I say, wow, that class was pretty intense today. She says, yes, that was a great workout — I can't usually make that class. I say, why not? So, curiosity. I'm not trying to do small talk immediately. What I'm trying to get to is: is she single, and will she go out with me? I'm trying to go for the fastest path there. From my opener, I'm digging into curiosity. Why not? She says her kids are usually out of school in the summer, and therefore she couldn't make it, but since they're back in school, she can go.
Then I go directly for the approach. At this point, hardly any dialogue had been exchanged. We'd only walked maybe 10 or 20 feet together on the sidewalk. Now, in the past, I would have just kept the dumb friendly conversation going and been like, oh, well, my kids went back to school today too. No. There are other moms in the studio I could have talked to if I wanted a surface-level conversation about my kids. Because why would she care about my kids or what they're doing or any of that? No — I'm there to find out: is she single? So since she said she's a mom, I asked her, are you a single mom? Because she has no wedding ring on. And that's why I talked to her. If she had a wedding ring on, I wouldn't have talked to her — unless she started talking to me. And then I might have been friendly and polite, and I might have asked, oh, are you married? To confirm that the wedding ring is accurate, and to confirm I'm probably not going to spend much time talking here — unless there's some other context that makes sense where we can help each other, which often takes some time to find in a conversation. If that comes up, then that's fine. But let's be honest about why I'm having this conversation.
So I ask her, are you a single mom? She says, no, I've got a husband. He works. And then I say, well, why don't you have a wedding ring on? I'm finally just blurting out right off the top of my head what I'm thinking. I'm kind of annoyed. I'm like, why aren't you wearing your wedding ring? I wouldn't have wasted my time talking to you and bothered you. You could have just left the class, and it wouldn't have bothered you, if you'd had a wedding ring on. That's what I communicated. She says, oh, my finger was swollen up, and I just said no, I'm not wearing a wedding ring, I need to take it off. I'm like, cool. My kids went back to school today, too. See you later. And it just felt so honest. It felt refreshingly honest.
The Women I Annoyed by Never Asking
I've had so many conversations with so many women that just felt dishonest to me. Because, well, why am I only having these conversations with pretty women? I'm not having these conversations with women I don't find attractive. And there have been times when I could tell that women were annoyed that I didn't ask for their phone number. I talked with them all this time, I'd taken their time, and I later confirmed one way or another that they were single and that they were interested. But after I screwed around having pointless conversations with them and didn't ask for their number, they felt rejected. And then when they saw me in the future, they were just annoyed by me. They're thinking: this guy wasted my time talking to me about stupid stuff, got me all excited, then didn't ask for my number. How annoying. And I didn't realize it. I didn't realize that by having all these dumb superficial conversations and being indirect, I was also annoying myself — I was constantly leaving, wondering if there was something else.
And yes, I look back. There's this beautiful woman who started talking to me first at the yoga studio like a month ago, right before I met the queen. She put her hand out and said, great job, that was a hard workout. Then she started asking me questions. And then I had to ask dumb questions like, well, what do you do? Who cares what she does? If she's married, does it matter what she does? No. If she has a boyfriend, do you care what she does? No — not unless there's some obvious overlap. And she said she had some job where there's no obvious overlap. Sure, I could learn stuff there. But again, why are we having this conversation? Would I have this conversation if this was a dude? Probably not. Would I have this conversation if this woman wasn't attractive? Probably not. I'd have better things to do. Can we just be honest about that?
Friendly Conversations Even Cost Me When I Was Married
When I was married, that was different — it made sense to have more just regular friendly conversations. But even then, I should have kept my mouth shut instead of having those friendly conversations. Because soon enough, a time or two, that turned into having a crush and being distracted from my wife. So now that I'm single, I'm going to enjoy this time. And honestly, maybe I'm not going to go to yoga classes anymore after I get with my next woman, unless she's there — because it seems like if I have friendly conversation, I'm going to get a crush on somebody while I'm in a relationship. And I don't even like friendly conversation. It's annoying. I like to get straight to the point: what do we need to talk about? And yes, I realize it might take a little friendly conversation to get there.
So this woman I was talking to — she ends up waiting for me, and I talked to her again on the way to the car. She asked me a question like, do you come to this class often? Obviously a question. She's kind of fishing, hoping maybe I'll ask for her phone number. That's one potential scenario. And I'm like, no, I'm not usually here — and then I walk off, because at that point I had decided that I wasn't going to ask women for their numbers. You're like, what the hell are you thinking, man? But I tried that, and I know I don't want to do that. At the time, I was telling myself the story that men are so toxic, they're just out there hunting for women. There are a lot of women who would love for a man to be hunting for them.
The Power of Choice
Imagine this, all right. Imagine that it was the other way around — that I could take my sexy ass into a yoga class and women would just hit on me and ask me for my phone number. God, that sounds nice. I would love that. And if I'm not interested, I'd just say no, thanks. Or I'd say I'm talking to someone. I'd give some excuse to push the ones I wasn't interested in away. And I'd walk my sexy little ass around and hope that some woman noticed it so that she'd talk to me. Wouldn't that be easier? But I have the power of choice, and the way I see it, women generally don't. Women rarely initiate conversations with me first, although some have — and in those cases, it's funny, I wasn't even prepared. I get to choose. I feel so empowered being willing to cold approach women. Like, there was this woman I saw walking last night, and I looked at her and thought: nah, not interested. And it feels so empowering. This is so good. I can just choose who I want to talk to, and then I get straight to the point: are you single? Do you want to go out with me? Otherwise, I'm not going to waste your time. Your time's valuable. I shouldn't be wasting it — unless, what am I trying to do, sell you on watching my YouTube channel or something?
So it feels so good, and I just hope I can encourage some others. Look, directness — yes, occasionally it will be awkward. But directness these days can also be very refreshing. So many people are so used to having their time wasted all the time, and at least directness feels good. Because I was indirect with women for most of the time up until now, and I still had dumb things happen at yoga studios. Like, some woman at the studio complained that I was trying to pick her up because I gave her a book — a book I gave her for free with my phone number in it, which I gave out to everyone for free with my phone number in it. And she thought I was trying to pick her up. I would have rather she complained that I just asked her if she was single.
And then when she says yes, if she is single, then I'd ask for her phone number. I'd rather have her complain about that. Because at least then — were you trying to pick her up? Yes, I was. It's much stupider to have problems and annoyances because of being indirect, because then you're not even putting yourself in a position to get what you want.
I've had dates with at least 20 women at this point this year. And there are so many more women out there. I guarantee you I'd have had 30 or 40 dates with different women — I've had that many dates with all of them combined — but I would have had dates with 10, 20, maybe 30 more women if I had just been direct. So many times, so many stupid conversations, and I never asked: are you single? Do you want to go out with me?
It Was So Easy
I just did it at the yoga studio the other day. I literally said, oh, you're friendly and cute — what about you, are you single? She's like, "High." I'm like, great, I'd love to take you on a date. She's like, great — I'll email you, here's my phone number. It was so easy. I walked away dumbfounded. I'm like, wow.
And now what's funny is she's actually in a better position to like me and fantasize about me. Because what I also did wrong with so many women over the last year is I would tell them everything about me in these conversations before asking for their phone number. That would cut the mystery. Whereas with this last woman, I just got her phone number immediately. Now she's wondering about me. She's like, who is this guy that walks up to me at work and asks for my phone number while other customers are just standing there? This is a bold, masculine man. But she knows almost nothing about me. So between when I got her number a few days ago and the date, she has like a week to fantasize, to wonder, to have some mystery, to have curiosity about me. I've killed so many things by having all these conversations about other stuff. And all I need to do instead is just keep my mouth shut for everything except: are you single? Do you want a date? And then we can talk a bit more from there. But if not — wow.
Being Direct About Everything
So I hope somebody else can learn from my lessons here. Because I've come to believe life generally would be so much better if we were all direct about everything. Hey, I'm broke — can you give me some money? In my experience, so many of our problems in life come from our unwillingness to just say honestly what is going on with us and what we need help with.
So I'm grateful, and I'm super grateful for everybody. Somebody just bought the first product on jerrybanfield.com — a lifetime chat membership. If you want to talk with me, give me every piece of feedback, ask me every question you've got, and get shown off on a leaderboard, come join the Jerry Banfield Family — and you don't have to put yourself out there, you can be anonymous if you want to. I'm going to put courses on, I'm going to have so much stuff for you. Right now I've got the chat, and you can talk with me — see if I'm online, get a call with me almost instantly, or schedule one. I'm here to support you and to help you.
Based on all the stuff I'm saying, you might not know it, but I'm a good listener. I will listen to you. And you know that I'm leading from experience — you can see exactly how I'm thinking, and I can share that with you. I'll tell you how this whole direct approach keeps going, and you can follow along on my Dating playlist. Hope to see you at jerrybanfield.com on the leaderboard soon.