Dating is difficult, and dating is worth it. Both of those are true for me at the same time. I got divorced last year after a 15-year relationship, and this year I have gone out with 26 different women on something like 50 dates. It has been humiliating, confusing, and lonely. And I still say it is worth it, because the objective data says so and because most of my 15 years in a relationship were awesome. This page holds the full list of 100 reasons I put together to prove that to myself and to you, with the research behind each one.
I frame the whole thing around the three hardest areas of life: relationships, health, and money. A great relationship makes the other two easier. Where I live in Pinellas County, one adult needs about $50,000 in pre-tax income just to get by, while two adults living together need roughly $33,000 each. Only 22% of married adults report being lonely versus 39% of single adults, and 61% of married adults say they are thriving versus 45% of the never married. Those numbers are the executive summary; the other reasons fill in the picture.
The health data surprised me the most. A 2020 study of hundreds of thousands of adults estimated that at age 65, married men live two more years than unmarried men, and married women a year and a half more, with two extra years of being able to bathe, dress, eat, and walk on their own. Thirty-four prospective studies covering more than 2 million people found unmarried adults had 16% higher odds of heart disease and 55% higher odds of dying from a stroke. Married cancer patients had 17% lower odds of being diagnosed after the disease had spread, 53% higher odds of receiving definitive treatment, and a 20% lower hazard of dying from their cancer. Among older English couples, about half of smokers quit when their partner quit versus 8% when the partner kept smoking. On the mental side, unmarried adults carried 1.86 times the odds of depressive symptoms, and 78% of married adults named their spouse as the person they feel closest to. I have felt those numbers personally: my depression hit record levels this year, and my view of life has gotten darker than it ever was when I was married.
Then there is the everyday math. One housing bill shelters two people instead of two people each paying thousands a month. Groceries, internet, phones, cars, furniture, and travel all cost less per person. A second income is backup when a business has a rough year, which is exactly how my wife and I survived my worst stretches. Sex is on the list too, because 3% of partnered men went a year without sex versus 31% of men without a steady partner, and I am nearly in that 31% because I refuse to settle for hookups. The parenting reasons are the ones that hurt to write, because I hate being a single dad with no backup when I am sick and no one to share the nights with.
The later reasons are about who you become. A partner gives you honest feedback from someone invested in you, forces you to practice compromise and apology, gets you trying new things, and keeps you focused on what Bronnie Ware found the dying actually regret: authenticity, working less, emotional honesty, friendship, and happiness. Viktor Frankl wrote that suffering becomes bearable when it has meaning, and sharing a history with someone is how most of us find that meaning. I have seen in my own life, and in the single friends I know in their 70s, what happens when none of this gets built in time.
My honest position after 26 women is that I am going again. I am talking with a woman in South Africa, on the way to woman number 27, and I am willing to fly to another continent for what is on this list. I have written before that dating is the most worthwhile thing you can possibly do and about what I got wrong dating after divorce, and this page is the evidence behind both. If your own dating life feels as brutal as mine has, I am here to support you at jerrybanfield.com/call.
The list below runs in order from 1 to 100, grouped into bands of ten: happiness and emotional connection, longevity and health, healthy habits and physical comfort, sex, money, cooking and household work, parenting, community, personal growth, and finally the shared story and shared purpose that make ordinary days into a life. Every reason keeps the number I gave it, so you can follow along, skip to the band that matters most to you, or read straight through.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- Top 100 Reasons Dating (October 30, 2026)
Top 100 Reasons Dating
From my video published October 30, 2026.
You are about to experience a look at dating that will totally change how you look at things, because I am going to lay out a hundred reasons that dating is worth it, with a bunch of research in the background. The goal of this is to help you see that, yes, I recognize dating is difficult. It is brutal. I got divorced last year. It has been miserable. I have hated it. It has made my life agony. It has been humiliating. It has been confusing. But it is worth it. There are so many hard things we do in life, and we do them because we know they are worth it. A lot of people today think this is too hard. Dating is too miserable. My heart got crushed too many times. People have lied. People have betrayed me too many times. It is not worth it. But it is worth it. According to the objective data, it is worth it. And according to my subjective experience, being in a relationship for 15 years, most of it was awesome, and most of it was very worth it. Honestly, I am desperate for another relationship, because I know how worth it is. This whole article is to help you really get down into your mind that it is worth it, which is the same case I made in Dating Is the Most Worthwhile Thing You Can Possibly Do.
There are lots of hard things we do. Take becoming a doctor. Becoming a doctor is awful, according to a lot of the doctors I know who went through medical school and residency. It is lots of money. It is a big commitment of time. It is a lot of difficult classes. It is seeing a lot of gross stuff and hearing about a lot of diseases. And yet, once you get to be a doctor, you can make a great amount of money. You can help people. Dating can be much easier when you are a doctor on a dating app. We do things that are difficult because we know the reward is worth it. People go through medical school and all kinds of other difficult, awful things in life because they know where they are going is worth it. So by the end of this, I want you to be certain that dating is worth it, and that if it is difficult, you are not alone. I know how difficult it is. If you want to talk to me about how difficult your dating life is, I am here to support you at jerrybanfield.com/call. I have shirts, and if you want me to make a little video for you, all of that is up there too.
The most important numbers up front
Let's start with the most important numbers to feature up front. Three of the most difficult things in life are dating or relationships, health, and money. And dating, when you have a great relationship, makes the whole rest of your life easier. Right now, for example, I live in Pinellas County. The basic pre-tax income needed is $50,000 for one adult, and $30,000 per adult for two adults in a household without children. What this means is that by having a relationship and living with somebody, you can make less money. In other words, one of the easiest things you can do to make wealth easier is to have a relationship and live with somebody.
Then there is loneliness. One of the biggest problems we have today, one of the biggest reasons people end things and harm themselves and harm others, is being lonely. Compare people who are married to people who are single: only 22% of married people are going to be lonely versus 39% of single adults. And if you are trying to get laid, getting laid is one of the most enjoyable things I am able to do on this planet, and you are going to be getting laid a lot more in a relationship than being single. Just that alone, to me, if you can only focus on one thing: dating is horrible, and it is worth it because you get to have lots more sex, at least. Obviously, you do not want to have a horrible relationship. It is better to be single than to be in an awful relationship. But you want to go for that great relationship. It is possible. And in the big picture of your life, 61% of married adults say they are thriving versus 45% of the never married.
Those are the executive summary, some of the key data points. But you really want to hear every single thing, because a lot of life is just straight-up repetition. So I am going to roll through these as fast as I can, because dating sucks. It sucks. I am shocked how bad dating is. I probably would not have gotten divorced if I had not been so delusional about how easy it would be for me to find another woman. Boy, was I wrong about that. It was easy for my ex-wife to find another man, and unfortunately it was not as easy for me. I went through more of what I got wrong in Dating After Divorce: What I Got Wrong and Why I'm Taking It Slow. So, whatever. Let's get into it.
Reasons 1 through 10: happiness and emotional connection
Reason 1: a reliable partner provides recurring connection. If you want to be happy, if you want happiness, if you want emotional connection, this is where it starts. To me, the worst thing that sucks about being single is the loneliness. I have my own house and I have kids, and they are here three nights a week. But the four nights a week that I am here alone, I am lonely, man. I am tired of being in this house by myself. I want somebody here. I want somebody to talk to. I want somebody to have sex with. I want somebody I really care about, who cares about me. So this is one of the biggest things about being single that you are just not going to overcome. There are ways to fill in. You can have roommates and so on. But in my experience, the best way to not be lonely is to have somebody you are dating and that you live with. A reliable partner provides that recurring connection. It does not eliminate loneliness, but you have way more people who are lonely being single versus married. I laid out the whole single-versus-relationship comparison in Being Single vs. a Relationship: My Honest Take on Single Life.
Reason 2: emotional backup. Life is difficult. We need emotional backup. Right now, 17% of married people feel that they have insufficient social and emotional support versus 34% of never-married adults. We need emotional support. A relationship, ideally, is fantastic emotional support. It is worth the suffering to get that emotional support.
Reason 3: less frequent stress. So many people, especially women I know who are single, are so stressed out and overwhelmed all the time. Then they say, I do not have time to date. I tell them, you are in a negative feedback cycle where you are so stressed out that you do not have time to date, but because you are not dating, you are more stressed out. If you want less frequent stress, it is there. It is much less common in a relationship versus being single.
Reason 4: less frequent mental distress. If you want higher rates of mental health and lower rates of mental distress, again, you are in a negative feedback cycle when you are single. Frequent mental distress is way lower among married people or coupled adults versus 23% of never-married adults. And if you look at almost all the craziest stuff that happens in life, the people who do the most insane things are almost always people who are single, because when you are in a relationship, you are much less likely to be that crazy.
Reason 5: lower odds of depressive symptoms. I have seen this firsthand. I have hit record levels of depression for me in the last year being single, versus when I was in a relationship, when it was just so much harder to get that depressed. It is not that I did not have downsides, but it is so much easier to be depressed when you are single. And this is men and women. Lots of times we think, oh, it is just men, or it is just women. No. You have way lower observed odds of depressive symptoms in a relationship. This is a big study, hundreds of thousands of adults, and unmarried adults had 1.86 times the odds of depressive symptoms. To me, this does not establish that marriage is a treatment for depression. But if you want less depression, a healthy, happy relationship seems to be a great place for that to happen.
Reason 6: a more positive overall view of life. I certainly agree with this. In the last year I have been single, my view of life has gotten so negative, and unfortunately that has made it more difficult to date. When I was married, I had a much more positive view of life.
Reason 7: a deeply trusted confidant. 78% of married adults named their spouse as the adult they felt closest to, and 55% of cohabiting adults named their partner. In an age of AI and all this content and all this stuff online, a deeply trusted confidant is more precious than ever. And if you do not have one, go to jerrybanfield.com. You can schedule a call with me, and I will fill in until you can find someone better.
Reason 8: someone who makes good news feel better. Here is what sucks. A guy just paid $200 to buy a shirt from me, one where his name will be on everybody else's shirt plus his own, and I am in here by myself hollering and celebrating. You know what would be awesome? If I had a woman in the house with me who could celebrate with me. I just made $200 selling a shirt! That is what it means to have someone else to share your joy and your celebration. It is so good.
Reason 9: feeling understood as you grow. When you are single, it is often hard to tell when you are making progress. When I got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, I had everybody in AA helping me see how I grew. But my wife showed me so many things that I did not even realize I had changed, that I had grown, and then I could lock those things in.
Reason 10: someone who asks how your day went. It is nice that people care. Being single has been so brutal. The women I go out on dates with, none of them care about my day. But I have finally found one, and she cares how my day went, and that is so special.
Reasons 11 through 20: longevity and health
Now we are going to go to numbers 11 through 20. You should already be getting a picture that dating, and ideally being in a healthy relationship, is the goal, and a lot of what drags this data down is unhealthy relationships. If you look at healthy relationships versus unhealthy relationships, the data for healthy relationships is probably ridiculously good. To me, that is the goal: every day, aim for a healthy relationship, and when you get that, it is just the best place to be. I know, because I have had a lot of that. Most of my adult life has been in a healthy relationship. When it comes to longevity and health, large studies often find better outcomes among married adults, and the practical benefits show up in the best ways to support each other.
Reason 11: more expected years in later life. A 2020 study of hundreds of thousands of adults estimated that at age 65, married men had two more years of life expectancy versus unmarried men, and married women a year and a half more. People are literally expected to live longer being married versus being single. This is how powerful human connection is, and no amount of stupid videos talking about how great being single is will change the facts.
Reason 12: more expected years managing basic daily activities. The same study estimated two extra years for married men and two extra years for married women of being able to get through bathing, dressing, eating, and walking. These are very important things. Married people have not just longer years but more years being able to live as a human being who can wipe your own butt and get yourself dressed.
This is real important data. Reason 13: better observed coronary health, or heart health. Coronary means coronary heart disease. Thirty-four prospective studies involving more than 2 million people found unmarried adults had 16% higher odds of heart disease, and that is including all the dysfunctional relationships in there, where people do not even care about each other. If you were able to separate out the healthy and happy relationships, it would probably be even higher. Heart disease, better observed coronary health: it is nuts how much information there is showing how amazing a relationship is.
Reason 14: lower observed odds of death from a stroke. There are 55% higher odds of stroke death among unmarried adults. That is big.
Reason 15: cancer is found more often before it spreads. Married patients had 17% lower adjusted odds of a metastatic disease diagnosis. Why? Because somebody is looking at them and saying, hey, I think you have got a lump there, we should take a look at it. When you are sitting by yourself, you are not noticing this stuff.
Reason 16: more support getting through cancer treatment, with 53% higher odds of receiving definitive treatment. A partner who is there makes a huge difference. This is why dating when you are younger is so important to me, because you really need someone more and more as you get older, and it often gets more and more difficult to date as you get older. In your 20s, maybe you can play around. In your 30s, all right, maybe you should find someone. In your 40s, you had better get dead serious about finding someone. By your 50s it is your last chance, and once you get into your 60s and 70s, people just have so much baggage that it can be more and more difficult to date. It still happens. I have seen it happen. But find a partner before it is too late, and as I argued in You Can Be Terrible at Dating and Still Find Love, you do not have to be good at this to get there.
Reason 17: better observed cancer survival. Married patients had a 20% lower hazard of cancer-specific death. How many of these do you need to see?
Reason 18: someone nearby in an emergency. A partner can notice a fall, a collapse, or an unexpected problem, whereas I am by myself in my house. If I have a heart attack, it is game over. I eat whole-plant vegan, so that seems extremely unlikely, but what happens if I have a heart attack in my house? I am all alone. I am dead.
Reason 19: help following through with medical care. This is huge. I have seen some single people I know really struggle with having something like a surgery because they do not have anyone there who loves them and supports them all the time.
Reason 20: care while recovering at home. Some of this stuff seems far away, as I am 42 and really healthy, but I am thinking about this stuff now because I want a relationship set up now, so that in 30 years, when maybe this is an issue, it is there.
Reasons 21 through 30: healthy habits and physical comfort
Numbers 21 through 30 are about healthy habits and physical comfort. A supportive partner can help you have healthy routines that stick.
Reason 21: a teammate for quitting smoking. Among older English couples, 48% of men and 50% of women quit when their partner quit, versus 8% when their partner continued smoking. This is why I emphasize a healthy relationship. I have seen a couple locally who both committed to losing weight, and they both lost a bunch of weight, and it has been beautiful. Your partner is someone who helps you, and when you both do something together as a couple, it is extremely powerful.
Reason 22: a regular exercise companion. Two-thirds of men and women became active when their partner did, versus a quarter when their partner stayed inactive. This is why I highlight that dating is worth it if you can find a healthy relationship, because you are like a super person when you and another person want to have a great life together. It is so much easier. And yes, you can see how a relationship can drag you down here too. But this is why so many people fail at things like staying sober when they are just doing it by themselves. Teamwork. I have a guy I work with, and his wife quit drinking just to support him, and that has made a huge difference for him.
Reason 23: teamwork on a healthier weight. I was just mentioning this. If you want to lose weight and your partner loses weight with you, it is so much easier.
Reason 24: a possible buffer against daily physiological stress. If you read the book Mind Over Medicine, it goes into things like this further. A study of daily cortisol levels found lower cortisol among married adults. Of course it did. This goes right back to stress. Being with somebody, having a safe environment, helps you relax and helps you connect. I see so many of these single women who are so stressed out all the time, and then they are coping, and it is like: you need a man, and a man needs you. You do not need to do it all by yourself. Open your heart and find a man, and so much is going to change.
Reason 25: a reassuring hand during fear. When you get an electric shock, holding your partner's hand can help take the edge off. Absolutely. I was there when my kids were born, and it makes a huge difference to have somebody holding your hand when life is difficult. It is so much easier to spiral and go nuts when you are by yourself.
Reason 26: affection before stressful moments. Having someone there before you do something like public speaking, or before a court case you have coming up. These are the moments that matter so much. If you have a moment where you need to perform your best, you need a partner there to support you. You can do it without them, but it is going to be easier.
Reason 27: comfort that can soften a painful experience. In one experiment, just looking at a romantic partner's photograph reduced heat pain compared to looking at an acquaintance. I have seen this effect dramatically in my life, and I am thinking of Harry Potter right now, the Patronus and the boggart and the Dementors. Having someone you love, just seeing their face, can make you smile. This is not minor stuff. This is not a small little pay raise. This is big stuff.
Reason 28: potentially steadier REM sleep together, with fewer REM sleep interruptions. I certainly sleep better with somebody else. That is for sure.
Reason 29: someone who notices changes in your usual function. You need that accountability when suddenly something starts to be different: hearing changes, fatigue. It helps to have somebody say, hey, what is going on with you? Whereas that is how things spiral when you are by yourself.
Reason 30: a second listener before an important appointment. My mom was an officer in the military, and she talked over everything with my dad. My dad would go through all the worst-case scenarios with her, and my mom was ready all the time to go in, because she talked over everything with my dad. My mom was able to become a colonel in the military, and my dad was a big reason. He was there for her all the time for her work. She would go on and on about work, and my dad would bounce ideas back and forth. This was such a big deal. Yes, you can have girlfriends or guy friends, but the consistency is not there, and the depth of emotion and connection is not there the way it is with a partner. I went out with a woman who said, I do not want to give up my friends to have a boyfriend. Geez. You are overestimating how much your friends can give, and you are underestimating how much a man can give, because you have never had much of a relationship with a man.
Reasons 31 through 40: sex
Now, obviously, sex. Sex is one of the most fun, enjoyable things, if you are doing it properly. Sex should be very enjoyable, one of the greatest physical pleasure experiences you can enjoy. And obviously, people in relationships have way more sex than people who do not. If you need to simplify why dating is worth it: sex, health, and wealth are all so much better in a healthy, supportive relationship. I do need to reiterate the word healthy, because obviously being in something horrible where you two are abusing each other is miserable, and yes, that is something you should get out of, so you can have space for something that is awesome. Demand something awesome.
Reason 31: more regular sex. And not just more regular sex. I have not had sex in almost a year, because I do not just want to have hookups. Sex is something that can be very destructive if it is with the wrong person, and I want to have sex with my person. I do not want to just be out here having sex. I did that in my twenties. I had sex with all kinds of women, 19 or 20 different women in my twenties, and it was not great, to say the least. I wrote about what I actually want from a partner in The Right Person Makes You Want to Give, Not Take.
Reason 32: fewer long stretches without sex. Yep. No sex in the previous year is reported by 3% of partnered men versus 31% of men without a steady partner. And I am almost in that 31%.
Reason 33: a chance for more enjoyable sexual experiences. Absolutely. As I said, I have had sex with 19 women, and the best sex was with my wife, because we had time to get to know each other. We had time to explore, and we had time to really know each other. Often, having sex with someone you do not know is not that good, because you do not know them, and it is not that special. And certainly, out of all the women I have had sex with, my wife at least appeared to be the most satisfied, because she was able to go deeper and have better experiences, even towards the end of our relationship.
Reason 34: time to learn what each other enjoys. Imagine a new quarterback is hired for a football team. Do you think that quarterback is going to just go out there and start slinging the ball and know exactly how all the receivers run their routes, how the center snaps the ball, and how the running back takes the handoff? No. Great sex is generally going to happen by really getting to know what the other person enjoys.
Reason 35: that pleasure absolutely carries into the next day. After I have had sex, it lasts for at least a day, if not two days. To me, it is around 48 hours that you have that afterglow. I had a family member call me with the afterglow, and I said, damn, you sound like you just had sex. It is miserable people who cause all the problems in the world. If everybody was having lots of sex, I think this would be a much better world.
Reason 36: you do not even have to be having a lot of sex. Even just once a week is enough to have a worthwhile sexual relationship, and that is so much easier in a relationship.
Reason 37: more opportunities for affectionate touch. Especially if your love language is physical touch, having a relationship is just going to make it so much easier to have hugs, cuddling, and closeness. This is why you have people today literally paying for someone to cuddle them. It is ideal if you can find a relationship where that happens naturally.
Reason 38: less arranging of every intimate encounter. Yes, my God, it is so nice when the sex just happens. You do not have to try and plan out every last detail. In some countries it is legal to pay for it. It is so nice to just have that sex right there, where it can happen anytime.
Reasons 39 and 40: room to be seen, and to be physically vulnerable. This is one of the hardest things to do in our world today, where everybody is LARPing and trying to prove how great they are, showing you their best side, or going viral for being their most toxic. To be physically vulnerable, to just show your body and feel seen and feel known, is a very valuable part of a relationship that is going to be very difficult to get in any other context. Your friends are generally not going to be able to satisfy this, depending on what kind of friends you have. Maybe you have different kinds of friends than I do.
Reason 41: intimacy that adapts as life changes. It is really amazing to be able to have sex that is there whether you are a parent or not. A lot changes, especially for a woman when she becomes a mom, and it is really nice to have sex be something that continues. I know of women, both personally and through others, who found that getting back to sex after having a kid can be very difficult, especially if you are a single mom trying to then have sex with somebody new. You feel bad about your body, which is unnecessary from a guy's point of view. This is a big one. Somebody who knows you, who is going to have sex with you, who saw you through all the different parts of life: that is a big deal.
Reasons 42 through 50: money and financial resilience
Now, money and financial resilience. I probably should have put this at the front. Are you getting the picture? Money, health, sex. Guys, a relationship is so worth it. Let's look at the difference between being single versus not, financially. Where I am, you need to make about $50,000 in pre-tax income just to survive, versus if you are in a couple, you could each make $33,000. Do you see how much easier that is? You can make 34% less income and still have the same basic standard of living. That is because of so many things. I learned the cost of being single the hard way, which is why I half-joked about it in I'm Looking to Date a Healthy Woman Who Will Pay Off My Debt.
Reason 42: one housing bill can shelter two people. It is so stupid that I am dropping thousands of dollars a month, $2,700 a month alone, for rent. I should have somebody else living here. Instead, the woman I was dating for a while, who I called the queen, is spending thousands a month on her own place, and I am spending thousands a month on my own place. Then both of us are stressed financially, and she is so stressed that she does not have time to date. You are getting this backwards. If we were dating and you had moved in with me, you would be less stressed, you would have all these other benefits, and the finances would be easy, or at least way easier. The annual housing cost for one adult in the same spot is around $20,000. This is why our whole system of worshiping money wants you to be single. It is easier to survive financially when you are not single. Just that alone is so big.
Reason 43: groceries have economies of scale. The more you can buy in bulk, the more you can use everything up. Having a household where you buy groceries together is much more efficient than buying them by yourself. Put that into your budget and you are looking at roughly 8.5% lower grocery costs per person with meals prepared at home.
Reason 44: communication costs can be shared. Absolutely. If there is a single woman out there, she is paying for internet and I am paying for internet, whereas I could easily move five women in here and the internet I have would be enough for all five of us. Instead, we are all paying higher bills, and higher cell phone bills, instead of adding a woman onto my cell phone plan.
Reason 45: transport resources. My parents used to get by with me and my brother and one car. And yet today, when you are single, you have to have your own car. It is so much more expensive to be single.
Reason 46: fewer duplicate household purchases. Yeah. I have my own sofa, my own vacuum, my own cookware. The refrigerator is the landlord's. It is so much more expensive, guys.
Reason 47: a second income can provide backup. Yes, this was really nice. I had times where I made lots of money and paid for everything, and my wife was able to not work and just raise the kids. Then I had struggles in my business, and my wife cranked up her income, and we were able to survive. It was not that big of a deal, and we had each other to talk about everything with. I can tell you that when you are single and the finances are all on you, and it is all your house too, it is so much worse. I even spent a small fortune on dating itself, which I detailed in I Spent $10,000 on Dating to Help Build My Business.
Reason 48: shared preparation for household emergencies. Yes. I have a $2,000 backup battery, which became important when we had hurricanes knocking out power for five days. And yet now my ex does not have that battery, because I got the battery in the divorce. When you are single, you have so many more liabilities and so many fewer assets.
Reason 49: someone to work towards financial goals with. Remember how we talked about weight loss and quitting smoking? It is the same thing with finances. Now I am out here just trying to work towards my financial goals by myself. But imagine if things had worked out with the woman I dated before. Both of us would be working towards our financial goals together.
Reason 50: on top of all that, marriage can provide survivor income protection. Right now, if I am dating someone and one of us passes, the other one does not get anything. Whereas if you are married, like my mom, who retired from the military, if she had passed first, some of that retirement, I believe, would have still been there for my father. That is huge. If you want your money to be easier, you can do it. The single biggest thing most people can do to reduce expenses and increase income potential is to have a partner you support and who supports you. You are on a team. You are not just trying to take on the world by yourself financially.
Reasons 51 through 60: cooking and everyday household work
Now, cooking and everyday household work. I remember there was so much housework when my wife and I lived together, and then we got divorced, and there is way less housework for me, because I did most of the housework before. I try not to throw my ex under the bus, but often when I go over to her house, the dishes are a mess and the housework is way behind. Other times everything is cleaned up, but it is crazy how bad the dishes get at her house sometimes now, because I washed the dishes every single day. I made sure the sink was cleaned out. If she cooked, I did all the dishes. Now if she cooks, it can take days, until I have the kids, for her to have time to clean up.
Reason 51 is the perfect example: one cooking session can feed both people. Right now I am talking to a woman, and I guess we are dating at this point, and she asked, what do you cook? I told her, I am single. I do not bother cooking for myself. Most of the time it is just a waste of time. I eat mostly cold, raw food, because it is not just the cooking but the cleanup. When my kids are over, I will cook stuff for them. But for myself, cooking and cleanup is a waste of time, so I just eat mostly cold.
Reason 52: a better chance to finish perishable food. These people who are single, buying all this food, then going out to eat and throwing stuff away: it is crazy how wasteful it is.
Reason 53: one grocery trip takes care of the whole household. I used to do the grocery shopping most of the time. Now I still do the same amount of grocery shopping I used to, but my ex-wife also has to do the amount of grocery shopping that I used to do for her.
Reason 54: the planning can be divided. When I was married, my wife and I divided up all the stuff. She handled all kinds of things with the kids. I handled all kinds of things with the maintenance and the bills. We were a team. Now she has to pay all the bills, do all the maintenance herself, and plan all the kids' appointments too. I do my part, but she is still stuck with planning most of the kids' stuff, and now she also has to do all the bills and all the maintenance and everything with her house.
Reason 55: chores can be divided. For example, I was very happy to do the dishes. My ex did not like doing the dishes as much, so I did almost all the dishes. Then I go over to her house and the dishes are often piled to the top of the sink, and she does not even do them for a few days. Meanwhile, I was not as big on some of the other chores. My bathroom right now needs to be cleaned. My sink is always clean, but I am willing to let the bathroom slide a bit more. My ex would always jump in and clean the bathroom, because it would make her mad how dirty it was, so she would clean it up. So I had cleaner bathrooms before.
Reason 56: two pairs of hands. A lot of awkward jobs will necessitate hiring a professional, but if you have somebody there, you do not have to hire one.
Reason 57: flexibility for deliveries and home appointments. It is so much easier having two people, where one of you can just take the appointment.
Reason 58: backup for pets and plants. I do not have a dog right now because I do not want to be a single guy who also has a dog depending on him. I have enough dependencies with two kids already, who I have three days a week, plus I see them most other days of the week. I do not want to add a dog to my responsibilities, because I already have enough, on top of just maintaining a house by myself.
Reason 59: travel costs can be split. Yep. I went to a conference. The hotel room was $600. The rental car was several hundred dollars. I would have loved to have gone with a woman, because all she would have needed was a plane ticket, and all that other stuff could have been shared. One woman I went out with lately asked about traveling. I told her, I do not want to travel by myself. It is more expensive and it is more lonely.
Reason 60: someone to travel with. It is crazy. All these women I know go on all these trips by themselves. I am like, that is pathetic. Prioritize finding someone to travel with before you take all these trips. Then they work so much to pay for all these trips. You have your priorities totally backwards. The first priority should be to find someone, so you do not have to work so much and so you have someone to take trips with. Jeez.
Reasons 61 through 70: having children and sharing parenthood
Now, having children and sharing parenthood. Reason 61: a partner to parent with. I hate being a single dad. I love that I can parent exactly how I want to parent. I parent without discipline through fear and all that garbage and threats. My ex would not stop with the fear and the threats, and I hated that. You do not need to parent like that. Now I can parent the way I want. That is the one thing I like. Other than that, I hate being a single dad. Being a single dad sucks. I want a wife to parent my kids with, so that there is a man and a woman here and they have more of a whole household instead of just me. Usually when my kids are over, my mom comes over, which balances the house. I have a boy and a girl. My mom is here, and it is nice. Even if she is cranky, it is so nice to have my mom here. I do not usually have my mom over on other nights or go see her, because then I have other stuff I am doing: work, trying to go out and socialize and meet women, and going to AA meetings. Being a single parent sucks, because all those additional responsibilities and challenges of being single get thrown on top of a family. You really need a team at a minimum, if not grandparents and godparents too. It sucks being a single parent.
Now so many people are getting divorced these days. I did not fully appreciate how important my relationship was. My ex certainly did not consider a lot of these things either. I thought it would be easy to find someone. For me, it has been challenging, because I am a bit of an anomaly, something I explained in I'm Not an Average Guy. But I am talking to a woman now who has watched my YouTube videos and found me through them.
Reason 62: a shared family plan. To me, a lot of the most important things you will hear people say in their 60s and 70s is that they had their family, their spouse, and their children. To me, almost nothing else is important compared to a spouse and a family. Looking back, my mom was an officer in the military, but if you asked her what she did that was most important in her life, she would say marriage and family. That was what was most important. That is very hard to do without a partner.
Reason 63: support during pregnancy. That was huge. I was there for my wife so much when she was pregnant. If she had been single going through things like postpartum, that would have been way more difficult. I was there to support her every day.
Reason 64: the nighttime can be shared. This was huge: splitting time, putting kids to bed, going out with friends. Now, ironically, that is built in to my schedule, but I miss having my kids at home every night. I hate being here and not having my kids here. Some people have told me, well, you just need to man up and be there for your kids. My kids are not here for me half the week. I need someone who is here every night, because my kids are not here four nights a week. I want somebody here with me every night. Nighttimes are best shared.
Reason 65: you need backup. Right now, my ex and I are very cooperative, and I have not been sick in four years, but I have no backup. If I am sick or if I am injured, I have no backup. My ex would just have to take the kids, and I would be in the house by myself trying to heal. It is a good thing I take great care of myself, because I have no backup. And if my ex gets sick, she has to just drop the kids with her parents or with me. When we were together, it was not a big deal when one of us was sick. The other one would effortlessly pick up the slack.
Reason 66: school pickups and drop-offs. I moved into a place where I could help with school pickup. But if I end up going to South Africa to spend some time with this woman, my ex, at least for a time, is going to get stuck with doing the different drop-off and pickup times. She has her parents to help, but it was much easier when I was there to help.
Reason 67: parenting costs are high, and they are easier shared. The kids are like half my grocery bill, even though they are little. They eat a lot, and they like the more expensive foods, like acai bowls. It costs a lot to raise kids. It is nice right now that I am doing my part. But what happens if something happens to me? Whether I go overseas for a while to build a relationship, or something else, if I am not in the picture, my ex is stuck paying everything for the kids.
Reason 68: it is important to be able to have breaks. It is much easier when you are in a relationship to coordinate things like trips and breaks. Right now, I just say, look, I am going overseas, I have this thing I am going to do, and we have to figure the kids out. It is more difficult being divorced. A lot more difficult, in most places.
Reason 69: supportive co-parenting is linked to better child adjustment. Yeah. I told my wife I did not want to get divorced, that we should work things out. She was absolutely adamant that we did need to get divorced, and she was not willing to do anything else at all to stay married. So I have been as cooperative as I could. But it is challenging to have the same level of parenting I have had in my life while being divorced, even with cooperation.
Reason 70: parenting teamwork is something you can get better at. There is just a lot less room for error being divorced. You can work together, and my ex and I have gotten better and better at working together in a lot of ways, parenting the kids as they continue to grow up. When I get married again, I do not want to ever get divorced. I want my children to see people go through things and repair them, not destroy them. I made it clear to my kids: I did my part to make your mother feel this way, but it was your mother who decided there was absolutely no going back, no fixing things, and no repairing things. It was your mother who decided it had to be this way. And I would much rather be with a woman who is willing to work on things, not willing to just quit and give up.
Reasons 71 through 80: community and a wider support network
All right, now on to community and a wider support network. It is difficult when you are single, because you have just got yourself and your friends.
Reason 71: a partner introduces you to another circle. When you have a partner, you have someone who introduces you to a whole other circle of people: their friends, their relatives, their colleagues, their communities, which widens your own network.
Reason 72: you can team up when hosting. When you try to host something yourself, with a partner one person can welcome guests and get them their food while the other handles the rest. When my wife and I would host something, I would generally be the one doing a lot of the work, and she would be more the welcome, bringing everybody together and getting everything set up, and then she would be socializing while everybody was there. I would be cleaning up, trying to keep everything organized, doing the grunt work, while she did most of the socializing. Now that I am single, it kind of sucks, because I am still there to do the grunt work, but nobody is there to invite everybody, plan the event, and do the stuff I am not good at.
Reason 73: a companion for unfamiliar social events. I really miss this. When I went to VidSummit, it would have been so much better to go there with a woman who was interested and wanted to experience everything and go on the trip. I still got to meet people myself, but often people are talking in groups, and it is easier as a couple to go approach another group of people and start talking. You have always got each other as a backup. For me, I do not want to go to social events by myself. I went to a run club, and I do not like showing up like some tool who is just walking around, and then having to approach a group of people by myself. I am certainly capable of doing it, but it is not fun. It is not enjoyable. It just feels lonely and stressful. I might as well stay home and film videos and work on making money if that is my alternative. That is part of why I wrote I'll Never Ask a Woman Out Again, and why I have been more interested in How to Get a Woman to Approach You Without Saying a Word.
Reason 74: the social planning can be divided. I do not like planning social things. I like it when the woman enjoys planning social things, because I am not big on doing that. I am happy to help with the work, but for some reason, I can do a whole bunch of videos and film all day, and for some people that is really difficult. I can do a top 100 list and it is easy for me. But you tell me, all right, plan a social event and start inviting people over, and I am just tired. As soon as you start mentioning it, I am tired. Trying to plan and get a bunch of people together, I do not do anything for special occasions or birthdays or anything myself, because I do not like planning all this stuff. I do not like sending out all the invites and trying to figure out the right date for everybody. It is miserable. So without a partner, I do not go to hardly anything, and I do not host hardly anything myself. I have lived on my own for a year, and I have not hosted a single social gathering at my house once in that year. Then I am stuck with whatever I am invited to, and because it is just me, I am not invited to much. My wife used to get invited to lots of stuff, and I would go with her. Now I get invited to stuff and I do not even go half the time, because I would be going by myself. You really need to be in a partnership.
Reason 75: extended family. On a bigger picture, there is extended family too. When I was married, my wife and her family were a big part of my life. Getting divorced, in some cases, was good. But it has removed people like my wife's family, who I spent a lot of time with for 15 years.
I have lost all of them out of my own life too. It is crazy.
Reason 76: caring for older relatives. This comes into play when caring for older relatives. The one thing I am happy I am off the hook for is that if my wife's family needs care, I am off the hook for that. Her family spent a lot of time caring for relatives who were sick. But this is why you need a relationship. For example, if my mom needs help, I do not have time. I have got to make money. I have got to take care of my kids. I do not have time to help my mom much unless I totally sacrifice any dating life I might want to have, or totally sacrifice my health, or anything fun I am doing. I am not in a position to help my mom, because I do not have anybody. I do not have anybody to help me.
Reason 77: community participation. It is so important to have a community: volunteering, helping neighbors, participating in anything locally. Having a teammate to do that with, to go to these things with, to hear about what is going on and keep track of it, is really important. Even though I have lived in this neighborhood for about a year, and I walk around and hang out with people all the time, I am very much not involved in the community, because my lane mentally is working, playing sports, and raising kids. My lane mentally is not social stuff. I need a partner who enjoys social stuff and brings me to it, and who cares about this stuff herself.
Reason 78: shared rituals. On top of all these things, you end up with shared rituals, whether it is a religion or holiday gatherings. I personally have no energy to build a community. I have no energy to have a holiday gathering at my house. And I lose out on at least half the holiday gatherings I would have gotten invited to with my wife. For Halloween, I do not have a single invite from anybody to do anything. This gets lonely, man. It sucks that dating is so brutally difficult, and yet dating has so many rewards like this that are stuck behind the paywall, essentially.
Reason 79: another route to health-relevant social connection. If you read the book Mind Over Medicine, people with stronger social relationships had 50% higher odds of survival over a follow-up period. Yes, I realize that some of the stuff I have pointed out is not just about dating, but dating is one of the most powerful gateways to socialization. People who have strong social networks and communities do better, and dating can often double or quadruple your entire social network, because you have all their friends and all the people they know, and they know you. You are suddenly not just by yourself. It is you and them, multiplied by each other. Without it, it is tough.
Reason 80: settling into a new place. My idea of family is my mom, my dad, and my brother. So I feel like I am missing a huge part of my life being a single dad, because growing up with my mom, dad, and brother, it felt like we conquered the world together. My mom was in the military and we moved all over the world, but we always had each other whenever we settled into a new place. I did not enjoy the process of settling into two new places to live all by myself, with nobody to celebrate with. I know how much I am missing. For some of you who have never had a relationship, it is easier in some ways, because you do not know how much you are missing. You do not know all these things.
I just watched a video about how bad dating is. And yes, it is that bad. I have been on dates with 26 women this year. I am a good-looking guy. Sure, there are guys who are better looking than me, but I am better looking than average. I am much more intelligent than average. I am extremely healthy. I have a lot going for me, and I wrote down what I actually bring in Before a Matchmaker Date, I Wrote Down the 3 Things I Offer a Woman. Money Wasn't One. And it has just been brutal. The way women have treated me, especially, has been awful. Could I have some room for improvement? Absolutely. But the lack of follow-up, the lack of interest, the women disposing of me, taking a free dinner and just never following up, the acting out, that is a whole other story, the performing, acting like they are having fun and then ghosting me. I told one of those stories in I Expected Her to Reject Me. Then I Made It Happen. It is all worth it, though. I am talking to a woman now, and I know it is worth it. Even if she lives on the other side of the world, it is worth it, because this is all the stuff there is to get.
Reasons 81 through 90: personal growth
Reason 81: another informed perspective on the same problem. This is about personal growth. The idea that you are going to fix yourself, that you are just going to sit around and figure out how to do it all by yourself, is so crazy. It is nuts to think that you are going to sit in your house and figure it all out, when you really need somebody else to be there who really knows you, to help you figure it out. Sometimes I feel so hopeless about a problem, but then I talk to a bunch of people about it and it suddenly appears pretty easy and obvious. A partner is the ideal person to run stuff by.
Reason 82: honest feedback from someone who is invested in you. The challenge of being alone is that you often get a bunch of feedback from people that is either dishonest or comes from people who have nothing invested in you. As a content creator, I get feedback all the time from people who have nothing invested in me, just watching my videos and talking all kinds of random junk. Bro, you have nothing invested in me. Why should I listen to you? I have no reason to. There is a strange side to that, which I got into in My Dating Failures Make Me Money. That's a Problem. But when you are with somebody, you have a lot invested in them, and that feedback is more valuable.
Reason 83: it promotes tolerance of other people. What is nice with a partner is that no matter how great your relationship is, there are going to be 10% or 20% of things that are not going to be good about that person. You are not going to be on the same page about everything, whether it is their politics, certain idiosyncrasies of their behavior, their moods, or whatever it is. There are always going to be things about somebody else that you have to tolerate. I figure a great relationship means you can accept that there is 10% or 20% you do not like about another person and you are able to tolerate it. From there, it promotes tolerance of other people. I have noticed that by myself, I have gotten real intolerant of other people. And I see this happening with the women I am dating. They live by themselves. They make their own money. And they are almost universally intolerant of anything at all with men, until for some reason they think a guy has some certain combination of stuff they want, and then they will tolerate anything from this guy. After they break up with him, they complain endlessly about how abusive he was. You pushed away all the nice guys, then subjected yourself to that abuse and stuck around for it, and then complained to everybody else about it. I realize life is difficult, and sometimes it is the best you can do. But being in a relationship and having to understand your partner is great practice for the rest of humanity. Your partner's driving might not be your favorite. Okay, if your partner's driving is not your favorite, maybe you can tolerate other people's driving better too.
Reason 84: when you are with a partner, you have to negotiate all these compromises in life. Time, space, money, responsibilities. It is tough. The more you get used to negotiating and trying to make things fair, the healthier it is. When you are by yourself and always so selfish, out trying to get everything for you, it can be very easy to become a tyrant, and that makes you alone, because you are unwilling to compromise. I have seen the same thing with so many women in dating. They have been by themselves their whole life, and they will not compromise on anything. The guy has to check every single one of the 15 boxes she is looking for, and she will not compromise on absolutely anything. Being in a relationship, most of the time, if it is healthy, will stop you from being this kind of person, because you will have to practice compromise and negotiation or you are just not going to be happy. I have a friend who has been in a relationship for a long time, and he does a great job. He and his wife disagree on things, sometimes big things, like whether to have more kids or whether to buy or sell their house. They negotiate and compromise and find something they can do to be on the same page and still be in love with each other. This is where my ex-wife and I failed. She decided she could start just dictating the terms of the relationship: we are not having any more kids, I do not care at all how you feel about it, and that is what we are doing. That is when things started to seriously break down for us, especially when she took this no-compromise, no-discussion, no-negotiation stance: it is my way or you can get out, get divorced, and find another woman. Finally it got to the point where I was so unhappy, because I was tired of having someone just tell me what to do. If you are going to have a healthy relationship, you both cannot have this attitude with each other, and a relationship is great practice in this. I have also had to learn when to stop pushing, which I covered in Chasing a Woman Who Pulls Away: Why I Now Say Stop Sooner.
Reason 85: apologizing and repairing mistakes. This is essential in a relationship. Most of the time when I was married, we did pretty well with this. She had a much harder time apologizing, and I got much better at it through AA and things like that. This is a skill that is essential, because you are both going to make mistakes. Now when I am dating, I look for this, and it is a big green flag. If a woman can apologize or admit a mistake, that is a big deal to me, because I am never going to be with somebody again who has to be right all the time, who is willing to just fight and fight, and then even when they get their way, they are not even happy. When you can apologize and repair your relationship, then you can do that at work, with family members, and with friends. Your relationship ideally should be a place to practice these skills that may be harder with your in-laws, your parents, your siblings, and your children.
Reason 86: encouragement towards personal goals.
As I said before, almost any goal you have is going to be a lot easier when you have somebody at home encouraging you on it. If you are at home by yourself trying to do something and nobody is there to encourage you, it is very easy to just say, screw it, I am done, I am giving up on that.
Reason 87: help freeing up time for a goal. It is so much easier in a partnership to have the help you need to free time for a goal. When you have two people to clean one house, it is so much easier than having to clean the whole house yourself. When you can go to a class together, have a date, have fun together, and work out together, it is so much better than having to do all the same stuff by yourself. If you have goals, sometimes you are going to need to find time for them, and especially if you are a single parent, time is your scarcest resource. You do not have time to try and do anything new. In the spot I am in, I have all the stuff I have to do for my kids, I have my business, and then I do want to have hobbies and I need to get out and have fun. If I try to make time to date, I am cutting time with my friends and my work. Being on your own is incredibly inefficient.
Reason 88: trying new things and going new places. One thing that builds a great life is trying new things and going new places. If you want to go and try something new, it can often be a little scary to go do it by yourself, or it can feel lazy. I am not going to go take a pole dancing class by myself. But out of motivation to date, I have tried so many new things. A lot of people are not as motivated as I am, and you get into a rut where all you do is sit at home, do things by yourself, play video games, and do your remote online job. You are not going anywhere or doing anything. This is why a companion will get you out and get you trying new things, because they will have different things they want to do than you. They will want to see different movies. That really helps you grow and evolve as a person, and it is a big part of what I meant in Make Dating Fun Again.
Reason 89: the chance to notice and express gratitude. Perhaps out of all of these, this one stands out. It can be difficult at home by myself to say thank you, because I am thinking, I need more money and I need a woman. And you know what? It is hard to even be thankful for all the stuff I do have when I am so aware of what I am missing. When I was married, I found it was often very easy to express gratitude, very easy to express gratitude to my wife for all the ordinary kindness we gave and received from each other. It is much more difficult to do that single.
Reason 90: more responsible choices. When a man gets divorced, that is one of the most dangerous times in a man's life, and I have struggled personally. It is easier than ever for me to make irresponsible choices now, like going to the strip club and spending a couple thousand dollars in one night when I am lonely, because I have been out with 20 women and not one was a decent woman who was open and interested. Not one time did I have a decent experience that could turn into a relationship. So I am lonely, so I go to the strip club. This is how so many guys end up doing things by themselves: gambling, drinking, drugs. The problem is, the more you do that stuff, the more difficult it can make it to get into a relationship. I wrote about that double edge in Single Men Win Big, But Keep Your Eyes Open.
Reasons 91 through 100: a shared story, a shared purpose, a shared life
Finally, the last 10. Our lives often have a lot of suffering in them, and the difference, as Viktor Frankl laid out in Man's Search for Meaning, is whether your suffering has meaning. When you have someone you share history with, it is easier to have meaning in your life and to put it all together.
Reason 91: someone who remembers the story of your life. I wrote an entire book called Un F*ing Myself, which is the whole story of my life, because at this point I wanted to record my life. A partner is that record too. I really miss that with my ex-wife. She knows my story as well as only maybe a handful of other people on the planet.
Reason 92: shared memories. There goes so many of my memories. The places we went, the jokes, the meals, the trips, the movies we laughed at, our little inside jokes: it is gone. And now she is making memories with someone new, and I am out here trying and just getting destroyed, over and over, ghosted, not interested. It is crazy. But I have someone very interested right now, and I am very grateful for that.
Reason 93: support in grief. A big part of life is grief, losing people. My dad died. All my grandparents died. When people die, you really need someone to be there. I am glad I have not experienced a major death, no major deaths, since I have been divorced. I could very easily lie in bed in this house all day. I have so much freedom. I am surprised I do not do it. I could just play video games and beat them and do whatever in this house most of the week, except when I have my kids here three nights a week after school and in the morning. I have a shocking amount of freedom, and that freedom could go wrong. If I lost somebody and I was in a lot of grief about it, who am I going to sit and talk to? Thankfully, because of Alcoholics Anonymous especially, I have some very close friends. But what if I was not in AA? What if I just had some remote job? What if I did not get out and play tennis and get into the community?
Reason 94: a shared purpose during a hardship. You need someone to be there to have a shared purpose during a hardship. I am lucky. My finances have been a challenge, but other than that I have not had much hardship. And I can see how dangerous it is, especially for single guys who then get hit with a hardship or grief. It is so easy to circle the drain, get into an addiction, and just end everything.
Reason 95: the daily opportunity to give love. A lot of the single women I have talked to get so upset when a guy just takes himself out. They will be so upset and want to help everybody. But being closed off to the opportunity to give love, refusing to give love in an intimate relationship, is what is killing people. It is not that I needed a stranger to randomly be kind to me. It is you saying no to every single guy your entire life, or running away from every single guy, and then picking a couple of losers who treated you like crap, because for some reason all the decent guys got kept in the friend zone and the guys who were awful were the ones you got into relationships with. You do not have the daily opportunity to give love. Men especially seem to really thrive on this, but women also. I see so many women today who feel like they have lost their purpose, like their life does not have meaning. So they are doing plant medicine and all these journeys and travel and women's circles. If you just had a man at home to give love to every day, your life would be a lot more meaningful. This has turned into a bit of a rant, but it is because you sit there and scroll on Instagram and have these impossible standards, and the only time you drop them is when you feel something that is often more danger and fear than love. Then you do not feel like your life has any meaning, because you are not really doing anything that really matters for anyone.
Reason 96: long projects you can build together. You miss the chance, when you are single, to have long projects you build with someone. At my ex-wife's house, there is a brick patio that took me months of planning, buying all the materials, going to Home Depot a bunch of times with my son to buy all the bricks, loading all the bricks up in the car, and laying all the bricks out. It is a huge patio, and that was a long project. My wife would paint the house. We did all these projects. The hurricane came through and we fixed the house up. We worked together. It is so difficult when you are single, because you do not have these things you can build with other people.
Reason 97: a reminder to make time for what matters. When you are single, it is easy not to make time for what matters. And I have empathy. I have empathy for these women. So many of the women I see do not make time for what matters. They make time for work. They make time for all these things with their girlfriends. Then they are 40 and they say, where is my husband? Where are my children? You did not make time for a husband. You did not make time for children. You made time for your girlfriends. You made time to work. You made time to make money. You stressed about money, which was harder because you were single. Then there are the things that really matter. Bronnie Ware's top five regrets of the dying are about authenticity, not working so much, being emotionally honest, friendship, and happiness. A relationship will keep you focused on the fact that this stuff matters. How much money you make, your reputation, how many places you have traveled to: that stuff does not matter. Not when you are dying, it does not. When it comes to life and death, you care about: have I been authentic? Have I given what I really had to give while I was here? Have I shared? Have I had friends and happiness? Those are the things. And if you ever get into such misery that you consider not being here anymore, those are the things that will come up. It is not how much money I have. None of the superficial stuff matters at all when it is life and death. All that matters is who loves me, and who do I love? And not superficially, not a friendship or a casual acquaintance. Who do I love so much that I would suffer over them?
When you do not have anyone, it is rough. Reason 98: when you are in a relationship, you have a teammate for planning later in life. In case you have not noticed, life gets hard. I have friends in their 70s, and life is brutally difficult for them compared to where it is for me now. The health challenges they get hit with leave them stuck at home all day. It is tough, because some of them are single, and some of them have money, but their relationships did not work out, and their life is sitting at home in pain all day. You have to plan for that stuff a while in advance, because where they are at now, it is too late. Some of them had multiple marriages, but now it is too late. Now they do not have energy. Their health is so bad they can barely get through the day.
Reason 99: significant dates to mark together. When you have not had anyone to mark these dates with, it shows. When you are with someone, it is so nice, because you have so many more significant dates. You have their family and their birthdays and their friends, and you have so many things that are significant. I just feel like almost nothing matters in my life anymore. I am happy for my kids' birthdays, but I do not care about my own birthday. I do not care about most significant dates. Being single, every day is the same. No day is special. No day matters. Kind of grim, in some ways.
Reason 100 and why I am going again
And finally, reason 100: ordinary days become a life you share. Trying to do life on your own sucks, and it is unnatural. Doing life together with other people is natural, and dating someone is one of the best ways to do that. I want these things so bad that I am willing to fly to another continent if I need to in order to get them, which I thought through in Dating Overseas: Why I Tried It and Why I Won't Fly for a First Date. These hundred things matter a ton. This is the difference between a life that sucks, a meaningless life without these things, full of addiction and transactional relationships, a useless existence where you feel like you were here for no reason, versus being in a relationship and experiencing the joy of these hundred things. Okay, now my life mattered. Now I had the best life I could have.
I hope that at least one person will hear this message and say, okay, I am going to try. I am going to take the pain. I will be humiliated. Some people say, well, men can only handle losing so many times. I disagree. When you know what the rewards are, you can take a lot more. When you know all these hundred things, you can handle 10, 20, 50, 100 dates that do not go well. I have had 26 this year alone. Twenty-six different women, something like 50 dates, so much absolute misery, and heartbreaks that took me to the bottom of my emotions in a way I had not seen since early sobriety a decade ago. And yet I am going again. I am talking to a woman in South Africa, and I am on the way to woman number 27 this year. And you know what? If this one works out, I get all these hundred things. If you are starting from the beginning yourself, Learn Love: How to Learn to Love and Find the Right Person is where I would begin, and the rest of my thinking on this is in my Dating playlist.
If you found this transformative, I would love to talk to you at jerrybanfield.com. If you want me to film a video for you, you can grab a video there. I have t-shirts I just put up where you can be on the Founders Edition, and much more for you there. I have games and everything else, and I have other YouTube channels. If you read all the way to the end, that is the best way to let me know this made a difference in your life.