Someone recently said that you're not even good at dating, bro, and I started thinking, well, what exactly qualifies as good at dating? What can I say, like, hey, here's how I define good at dating, and these are the four things that I would say make you good at dating.
Number one: are you adding value to someone's life?
A lot of dating focus tends to be extractive, like, how can I get what I want, and that is on both sides. We often are thinking, here's what I want, whether it's getting laid, getting paid, getting status. We think about how do we get that. My philosophy in dating, and I've certainly struggled with thinking that success is conversions, success is getting laid, or success is getting a wife and kids. But to me, these characteristics, you don't have to have specific outcomes.
Number one, with every woman I'm encountering: can I add value to her life? And that's what I'm thinking with my YouTube videos too. With every video I make, every blog post that turns up on my website, am I adding value to your life? If I'm giving you information that's truly making you a better person, or giving you an idea that's useful. To me, this is first and foremost with dating. Are you adding value? If someone goes out with you, if a woman goes out with me, did I add value to her life? And what does adding value mean? Did I give her some new ideas?
Number two: did we have fun?
Did we laugh? Did we make memories together? Did we enjoy our time together? Was going out with me better than sitting at home by oneself? And just by being honest, that's going to be pretty easy. Because when we're trying to perform, and a lot of dating is performative, we're not being honest. We're trying to get a certain end result.
A lot of what passes for dating advice and dating coaching is people telling you how to perform, how to get what you want, and not really considering how your actions impact the other person. How to make a lot of dating videos, how to make your profile better so you can get all kinds of girls to match you. Or men to go out with you, or whatever. Is that good if everybody does that? Isn't that teaching you just to try and get more for yourself regardless of what happens with everybody else?
If you're honest with your dating, you are good at dating
I say if you're able to be honest with your dating, you are good at dating. Like Mark Manson's Models — out of the dating books I've read, that one is the best, because I say I am fantastic at dating because I'm honest. I'm not out here trying to make every woman like me and sleep with me. That makes me fantastic at dating.
Now, for my objectives, which is to build a life — I'm dating to build a life with somebody, because having lives together is so much better than having them separately. I have an amazing 1,400 square foot house right now that I'm in all by myself. And I have space to invite a woman to build a life here in this house with me. That's why I'm dating. I'm not dating to increase my body count. I did enough of that in my 20s.
And I had one night stand after I got divorced, and it wasn't good. It didn't add value to her life. It wasn't fun. At least it was some fun while it was happening, but it was not fun afterwards to deal with her being all really into me and liking me when I wasn't honest with her. I was just trying to get laid.
What dating coaches call success
A lot of the dating coaches that you see out there would say that convincing a woman of 40 to come over to my house and to spend a night with me — a lot of the dating coaches would call that success, that I got this woman through sending a few text messages to come over, spend a night with me, and I got laid. I don't consider that being good at dating. That's good at performing. That's good at hooking up. That's good at getting short term gratification.
To me, being good at dating is that at some point you're not going to have to date anymore, because you're going to add so much value to somebody's life. You're going to have so much fun. And in being honest, you're going to push the wrong people away. And then by being honest, having fun and adding value, then, like I did with my ex for 15 years, we built a life together.
15 years building a life with my ex
We went all over the place, had so much fun together, had a home together, had kids together. And we still have a life together. We can't even properly break up, because we still have kids, so we're still together. Even though I have my own house and she's got her new boyfriend while I'm single, we still have a life together. We still have an emotional connection together. And any guy that dates her still has to deal with me being in her life also. That, to me, is dating. My ex and I added so much value to each other's lives. We had so much fun together. And I love that I could just be myself with her. I didn't have to perform.
Back in 2011, I was less concerned with being honest, although I still did a good job. I still would voluntarily show red flags and be like, hey, if you don't like this, you should leave, before women were sufficiently emotionally hooked. I think I am a role model for dating, because this is my mindset. And I know this conflicts with what a lot of other people are telling you, because a lot of what we see in the world is not adding value.
YouTube videos that only extract value
For example, I watched a few YouTube videos where they're promising this one setting will make you go viral. Or you do these 10 things on YouTube, you will blow up. I watched the videos, and I'm like, come on, I could have got this information out of Gemini, which is Google's AI, and Google owns YouTube. I could have got that information out of Gemini in 10 seconds. I could have said, give me 10 tips for YouTube, and it would have given me the same tips. And then they're selling me a course and an email list also. And I look at their video and I'm like, all you did is extract value from me. You did not give to me. You tricked me with a sensational title that you did not deliver on. And I'm never watching your channel again.
And you'll know dating is not going well if you have a bunch of people where you're like, I never want to see you again, because you weren't adding value.
Being honest is also being loving and considerate
Now, if you're honest, that's not going to be everyone's flavor. So to me, being honest is also being loving and considerate. And that means if I'm not attracted to a woman, or she's not attracted to me — this one woman told me she wasn't physically attracted to me, and I really appreciated her honesty, because I'm not going to take my time dating someone who's not physically attracted to me. I'd rather her find somebody she is physically attracted to. And I'll find somebody that is physically attracted to me.
If you're having fun, no matter where — even if you can't build a life together, if you're adding value, being honest, having fun, you've enriched people's lives. I went on a first date with a woman, and she told me about how she had made contact with extraterrestrials in person, sober, or mostly sober, like not messed up on anything. That added value to my life. I love that story, even though I don't think we're going to see each other again. I had fun going on a date with her. I was honest about what I was looking for, which is why we didn't go on a second date.
I'm looking for a woman to build a life with, to have more kids with, and I'll be the provider. And she can live at home and take care of the kids and do whatever else she feels like doing, outside, like yoga, massage, having her own business. I'm down for that. And I love knowing that, to me, this is what good at dating is. It's funny.
Someone celibate for 10 years told me I suck at dating
Somebody commented on one of my videos saying, bro, you suck at dating. Then they said they were celibate for 10 years. I'm like, you know, I've got to say, if you're celibate for 10 years, I'm not sure how much a person would know about dating in that situation.
Now I personally am choosing to not hook up, because what is not fun is just having sex with somebody once, and one person really liked it and another person didn't. It might be fun in the moment, but it's like drinking alcohol. You can have fun sometimes in a moment, but the consequences are not worth it, which is why I'm sober. And what a lot of people do to hook up is dishonest. Because if we're honest with each other, it's like, hey, I don't know you. If I really care about you and I want to add value to your life, I have to know you better to get to add value to your life. I can have fun. Let's be honest and see if we want to build a life.
The friend who thinks I'm terrible at dating
My friend was telling me that he was looking at me as terrible at dating, because I haven't had sex with a girl in six months, seven months. And I've been out with around 10 to 20 different women on first dates. And it's mostly just been first dates, because when I'm being honest, a lot of women aren't interested. And when they're being honest, I'm often not interested. And I've had fun. I've added value. I remember almost all the women I've went out with, but I didn't want to build a life with any of them. But my goal with everyone is to build a life.
His philosophy is that you should just jump in bed and have sex and see if you can build from there. I'm like, no, that's like trying to build a house without laying a foundation. To me, the adding value, the having fun, and being honest — sure, maybe if that works for you all, to just jump in having sex right away. That doesn't work for me. I need to see that, because sex is not going to be the main thing you're going to do with your partner. It's going to be being friends. It's going to be having a business. Essentially, if you're having a house together and money, it's seeing if you want to build a life together.
Dating is like gardening: seeds before the fruit
To me, sex is kind of the gift, or the fruit, of building a life together — of being honest, having fun, and adding value. And when you're gardening, you don't jump straight into the fruit. You need to have the seeds, and you plant, and then you grow. And then from there, you get to enjoy the fruit.
I think I'm an awesome role model for dating, that I'm out there hoping to make every woman's life better, hoping to have fun on every date. I'm going on a date in 45 minutes. This woman just asked me — I had thought she wasn't that interested. Maybe she wasn't at the time, but she just blew my phone up the last couple of days. She's inviting me. She invited me to do three things today. I'm like, all right, I'll come do the first one and see what happens. And my outlook is, let's have fun. Let me see if I can help this woman have a better life. I'm going to be honest about what I'm looking for. And if she's on board and all that's going well, let's build a life together.
If you appreciated this, you can watch more of how I think about dating, honesty, and building a life in my Dating playlist. My goal with creating these videos online is to help you build a life you don't need to escape — one that has love, that has money, that has free time, that has joy, that has health, and where you're on the cutting edge of the world in technology. If you want that outcome, you're welcome to join the Jerry Banfield Family at jerrybanfield.com, where you can direct message me any time and access an AI trained on my videos. I hope this added more value to your life than my ask to join the community.