This Is What Dating Modern Women Looks Like Now In 2026

Sometimes you just need to laugh. Today we are staring down the prospect of five dollar gas because of an unnecessary war that we started to cover up a cabal of billionaires behaving badly with children, and we're looking at an AI bubble that's trying to deliver us with a technology that no one even asked for. I figure it's time to sit back, enjoy a little humor, as our ritual mating processes have broken down to the point where we can't reproduce enough people to replace the ones that are already here. Yes, we are declining into the abyss. So let's all sit back and chuckle for a minute. Today we're going to get into the disasters of modern dating. This is Life 2.0. Let's talk about it. Back in the olden days, if you wanted to meet a woman, well you went to a party, or you went to a club, or a bar, or you joined some kind of club, you know, but you did it face to face. These days, technology, which has saved our lives so many times, has offered us this panacea, this perfect solution to the dating problem. You don't even need to leave your house. You can sit there and stare at your phone and swipe left or right on the pictures of people that you may or may not be interested in. It is as dehumanizing as any activity can be in the modern age. But these profiles are hilarious because they are written by what I would guess are budding Hollywood screenwriters. There's a lot of fiction here. I remember one where this woman said she was adventurous, she enjoyed hiking, and she liked quiet nights at home. I thought, okay, that sounds like a pretty good deal. I'm down with all that. Well, when I met her, I found out that her idea of adventure was trying out a new flavor of Ben and Jerry's. Her idea of hiking was the walk between her couch and the refrigerator. And a quiet night at home was frequently spent staring into her phone, tweeting back at people in an angry ideological argument over who was right and wrong about any number of things. This is not what I would call a perfect match. Then you get into the photographs. Oh my god, the pictures are the best. I didn't even know that you could have so many filters. Like, modern technology can literally reverse your age by like 20 years. You can take a picture of yourself, run it through an app, and you can see what yourself looks like 20 years ago or 20 years from now. You can regress or progress your aging. Women are really good at getting angles of themselves. I've never seen so many odd angles. A geometry teacher would be very proud. They can get themselves looking up so many different ways just so that you capture their bosom exactly right. And you can see right down their shirt. They are definitely trying to push the wares out in front on these dating apps. They want you to see what they've got or not, in whichever case may be. The tight spandex on the butt, you know, where you get to see the butt cheeks in perfect relief. The tattoos, the nose rings, the adventures to all the different places they've been and they've taken their picture and posted it on Instagram or something. It is a mind-numbing tour of a stranger's life that is suddenly on a dating app. And what's interesting is so much of the language they use sounds exactly like everyone else. It's very uncommon you come across someone who is unique in their approach to the dating situation. And don't even get me started on the group photos. Those are the worst. So how many profiles do you look at and you see groups of three to five women and you're never really sure which one it is. And then the one shot you get of the girl that's supposed to be in the profile, she's like so far away you need a telescope to figure out which one she is. So now it's just Russian roulette with a dating profile. You have no idea which one of these women is actually the one that you're going to end up with. You're thinking to yourself, I hope it's the blonde and not the one who looks like she could lift a You know what I mean? And until you make that call and then ask her, which one are you in the profile, which can be a little awkward, you know, because she thinks she's built a wonderful profile. Yeah, it's just a disaster. There's just so many different chaotic moments that you come across on these dating profiles that it really helps if you have somebody who can guide you through the process. And that's why I'm really happy to have Marnie, your personal wing girl, and the Wing Girl Method as today's sponsor. Marnie, as you know, is a fellow YouTuber and she has about 1.4 million subscribers. And she has helped thousands of men over the years, perhaps more than that, perhaps millions of men, deal with the chaos of modern dating. Marnie has been featured on CNN, on Dr. Drew, on Just Ask Men, a whole bunch of TV shows. And whenever they're looking for someone to be a resource and an expert on dating, they frequently call on Marnie because she really knows what she's talking about. Now, Marnie's F Method is an excellent coaching program designed to help men learn to flirt appropriately. Flirting is the first step in creating a relationship with a woman. And creating a sexual tension with a woman correctly through an effective flirting process can really save you a ton of time and help you cut through the BS to find out whether or not this woman is exactly the kind of person you're looking for, or at least in the ballpark. Because Marnie is the sponsor of today's video, if you click the link in my description, and I'll try to put it here on the screen, my viewers will get a special deal. I believe that she's giving a huge discount, so give it a try. I think you're going to be really impressed with Marnie and the coaching services that she provides. Back in the old days, identifying a crazy woman was relatively easy. Today, crazy has become the new normal. I think in the old days, you knew a red flag was if she's married, you got to stay away. I mean, you don't want to be messing around with somebody's wife. If she colored her hair in some unnatural color, that was usually an indication that she was nuts, and so you stayed away from her. But today, you never know what you're going to get. Crazy comes in all kinds of colors, and not just hair colors. A whole parade of red flags are going to come at you. Red flag number one, she's not like other girls. She only likes hanging out with guys. Red flag number two, she has more than three cats. Red flag number three, all of her exes are narcissists. You can see how easy it is to fall into a trap because you don't really know these things until you start hanging out with her, and that's where the danger really happens. Because if you've already hung out, hung out, well, you may be in too deep. You may have already crossed some kind of magic threshold, and now she thinks she owns you. That's the worst thing you want a crazy person to think. If she thinks she owns you, she may think she owes you some punishment for not behaving correctly, and then you never know what's going to happen. I had a crazy woman let all the air out of my tires once, and thank God she didn't slash him. She wasn't completely crazy, but she was crazy enough. One of my buddies told me about a woman that he dated who told him on the first date that she keyed the car of her ex-boyfriend because he was following some woman on Instagram and liking her pictures. Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Social media has engaged us in a level of investigative reporting that probably the New York Times or Life magazine would have been really impressed with because you suddenly have more information at your fingertips than you could have possibly imagined. So if you meet some woman online and you think, well, let me just check her Facebook page. Next thing you know, you find yourself going down this rabbit hole of all of her ex-boyfriends and all the crazy ---- she's ever posted on Instagram. You look at her Instagram stories and you're thinking, oh my God, what was she wearing? Why did she do that? Where is she going? Like, who is she with? You start creating all these questions about this person's past that probably would be better for you not to know, you know? And ironically, if she likes you, you better believe she's checking out your social media profile. So now I hope you've gone through and cleaned out all your old exes because if your old exes are on there, you're going to have some explaining to do. It's not good. Then there's the politics. If you like her on social media, like you get a friend request or something like that, now every time she posts something on social media, it's your job to comment on it, heart emoji it, give it a thumbs up, do something. Actually, don't give the thumbs up. I found out that the thumbs up is not an appropriate reaction to a woman's post that you're interested in. It's the heart emoji or it's an actual comment. You can't give thumbs up to women that you're interested in. They think it's a slight, like you're a buddy, like that's what you do to a friend, you know? You give them the thumbs up. But to a girl that you're going to be sleeping with, you better give that heart emoji. Otherwise, yeah, you're going to catch ---- for it later. I always thought of texting as a way of communicating short messages, like with my ex-wife, she would send me a note, pick up milk. Plain, simple, direct, no emotional baggage associated with that comment at all. As time has progressed over the last, say, five years or so, six years ago, texting has turned into a primary form of communication in a relationship. And this is completely whacked out. I hate it. I hate it. And women rely on it more than anything else, because you can't interpret any tone. There's no tonality in a text. So when she sends you a text, you can't tell, is she being sarcastic? Is she being funny? Is she serious? Is she sad? I mean, what the hell was that? You know what I mean? Let's say she sends you a text message and you respond, and then you get nothing back. And you're thinking there should be a response back. Like there should be some kind of a response. But, oh, you get a red receipt. She read it. And now she's not returning your text. For like five or six hours, she's not returning your text. You're thinking, what the **** is going on here? Now this new technology has contributed to your own neuroses. Now you're starting to wonder, does she even like me? Is this relationship falling apart? Did I say something wrong? Did I come on too strong? Was I being too aggressive by responding to her text within a short period of time? Should I have waited? Should I wait for the next text? If she sends me a text, should I now play the non-texting game? Give her the red receipt and let her sit on that for four or five hours while I think about it. Or better yet, when you get those little dots. I don't know if you have the Apple. I don't know if it does this on the Google platform. But when you're on Apple texting, you can see if they start writing. They're starting to fill in the text box. And then it stops. And then it goes away. And then it comes back. It's like you're watching someone defuse a bomb. You're waiting for the text to come through. And then it never does. Because you can see that she was thinking about sending you something. She started to write it. And then she erased it. And then she started to write something else. And then she never sent it. What on earth is that? What kind of weird torture? Who thought this up? Who thought any of that would be a good idea? I mean, really? Really? The problem with dating young women in particular is texting is so critical to their communication. And I ******* hate it. Oh my God. Lack of communication is probably my biggest pet peeve when it comes to women. Because women are so anxious and neurotic, they're afraid to say what's on their mind. So they play games with you for months and months and months at a time. And if they had just told you what was on their mind initially, it would have saved you so much time, you know? But they're thinking that they don't want to hurt your feelings. Or they don't want to upset you. Or they want to keep this for another time. They want to have a special conversation. Whatever. You know, just tell me. But instead of having conversations, we had these text communications that are cryptic and laced with all kinds of innuendo that are misinterpreted so quickly and easily. Texting is the worst. Back in the old days, there were basically three relationship statuses. You were either married, you were dating someone, or you were single. That was it. That was all there was. Now there are an infinite number of dating statuses. You can be in a talking relationship. You can be in a situationship. You can be hanging in there, but planning our future together. You can have all these different relationship statuses that vaguely represent some status of a relationship, but they don't necessarily declare anything serious. And then there's something called the DTR, which is the defining the relationship talk. And this DTR, and I didn't even know this was an abbreviation until I heard it on YouTube a couple of months ago, is when usually a woman approaches a man and says, we need to have our DTR talk. Like it's an official negotiation. Like we're going to get Israel and the Palestinians together and we're going to work out this negotiation and we're going to figure out what the relationship actually means. Oh my God. And I think it's all just so that we can update our social media profiles with the right status to find the relationship. Like we're in a situationship. Is that a good one? Can we go with situationship? Can we go with we're just *******? Can that be a relationship status? Can we just have that one? Friends with Benefits basically says that. Would that be okay? No, no. Once you get the request for a DTR, it's really about a committed relationship. And anyway, the way we define relationships these days is ridiculous. It reminds me of being in middle school, you know, when you would get a note from a girl and it would say, can you be my boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, or you can be my boyfriend. And if you wrote her back a note saying yes, then you would tell people that you were going out. Now you're in the eighth grade. You're not going out anywhere. You know what I mean? It has no meaning. The term, yeah, we're going together. That was it. We're going together. What does we're going together even mean? It's the same thing as all these crazy relationship statuses that you'll find on Facebook or on Instagram or whatever. They're ridiculous. Ghosting has become an acceptable form of communication on dating platforms. It's hilarious. It's hilarious. I have been ghosted so much lately because what I oftentimes will do is I will send them a link to my channel. This is the ultimate test, you know, and they can hear me talking about dating and women and all that stuff. If they call me back after that, then I know I've got a chance here. I know there's an opportunity for a real relationship. But yeah, so I'll be texting back and forth to some women for a while. And it gets to a point where she starts asking me questions about my job and what I do. And I tell her, I'm trying to be a little coy about it. I'm self-employed. I'm in advertising. Do a lot of social media advertising. And she says, well, really? What kind of stuff do you do? So I say, well, here, let me show you just some of my work. And I'll just send her like one of my recent videos to start with. And I'll send her one that's usually pretty good, you know, that's not really going down hard on relationships or feminism or any of that stuff. I'll send her something that's kind of mild. But I'm sure if they get in there, you know, the way women are, they're going to start watching all of them. They're going to start watching everything that has anything that might be hyperbolic in the title. And of course, hyperbolic titles is how you get people to watch. So she's watching all this crap. And then I'll never hear from her again. And I've had that happen three times in the last six months. So, yeah, I stopped. Actually, it's a really good way of filtering them out, because if they can go through that and have a sense of humor about it and see it for what it is, then you know, you've got someone who's got a healthy self-image. But if you've got a woman who would look at one of my videos and just completely shut down, well, she's one of those. Actually, I've changed the definition here. It's a western, urban, liberal, feminist, extremist. This is a wolf. Western, urban, liberal, feminist, extremist. Yeah, you don't want any wolves in your bed. Now, if you're on a dating app and you're texting back and forth with a woman, and she's taking a long time to respond to your messages, like way longer than it should be, like to the point where you're setting your phone down and then you get buzzed 15 minutes later that she replied, oftentimes that means that she's texting with other guys at the same time. But it can also mean that she's a scammer. So, you've got to really, really be careful. In either case, it's not a good sign. So, if a woman is interested in you, she should be communicating directly back and forth with you. You should have a pretty straightforward kind of communication and it should happen in a relatively short period of time without any big breaks unless there's some kind of an explanation, like, oh, my dog ran away or whatever. I had to go chase him down. Sorry. That kind of thing you can get. But when she's only sending you a text every 15 minutes or every 20 minutes, or even she blows you off at the end of the night without saying goodnight or anything like that, these are all enormous red flags. These are indications that she's got way too much going on in the dating world or she's actually some guy in Russia trying to set you up for an off-platform conversation where he's going to tell you a sad story about how his grandma needs a re-operation and how you're the only one who can save her. Yeah, that's what's coming next. This is very similar to a technique called breadcrumbing. Breadcrumbing is when a woman will feed you just enough attention to keep you interested. And I've had this happen to me recently and it's very, very confusing because there'll be times when you feel like, oh, she's really, really into me. And then there are times when she's like completely ignores you and there's no explanation as to what changed, what's going on there. And I have come to the conclusion that these kinds of behaviors are an indication of someone who has severe mental illness that you just can't see yet. They're hiding something from you or there's something really screwy going on in their lives that they are distracted by and it's so screwy that it distracts them from day-to-day operations. So there's a lot of potential when you start seeing breadcrumbing as to what's happening there. Now, it may be that she just wants to keep you interested enough so that if plan A falls through, you can be plan B and nobody wants to be plan B. Now, my favorite kind of relationship is a situationship because in a situationship, you look like a couple, you act like a couple, you may plan vacations together, but you're really not going anywhere. It's more of a, it's like being stuck in traffic. You know, you're burning a lot of fuel, you may be inching along a little bit, but nothing really major is happening anytime soon. The best thing about a situationship from a man's perspective is that you can really start to see the panorama of what's going on in this woman's life before you get too caught up in the momentum of a relationship that might drive you off a cliff, you know. So going slow in a situationship is actually not a bad thing to do. It becomes problematic when she's dictating the terms of the situationship. So you can never let that happen because if a woman is dictating the terms of a situationship, you better believe there's somebody else. There's another horse in the barn, so to speak. You know what I mean? There's something else going on there and you're being kept around again, maybe just for plan B. Now, the thing about being plan B as a man, that is the worst possible scenario. You never want a woman to settle for you. If she's settling for you, you better believe you're going to be miserable in your life. You want her to think you are the best thing that ever happened. I remember many, many years ago, before I got married, I was dating this woman and she actually had moved in with me for a very short period of time. And we were driving down to visit her family somewhere like in Arkansas or someplace. And I mean, she was okay. You know, she was smart. She was pretty. She wasn't the prettiest thing in the world, but she was okay. She was very sexy and she liked having sex. So those were all good things. But I found myself deeper in this relationship than I had wanted to be. And she started questioning me about how I felt about her and what I thought about her. And the truth of the matter was, and I did tell her this, that I was attracted to her, but I didn't think she was the most beautiful woman in the world. And she looked at me and she said, well, if you don't think I'm the most beautiful woman in the world, then I don't think I want to be with you anymore. And three days later, she moved out. Anyway, that's the way you need to feel. And at the time when that happened, I was both relieved and pissed off because I thought, how dare she just get up and leave like that? What the hell? And it was like, thank God she's gone. You know, you have that dichotomy of thought, like you can have both of those thoughts at the same time. Like who the hell does she think she is leaving me? And then at the same time, you're thinking, thank God she left. I could have gotten into a lot of trouble, you know? But in the moment after that passed, after those thoughts passed, I thought she was right. You know, she wasn't the most beautiful woman in the world to me. And you need to feel the same way. A woman who's with you has got to think you're the best guy in the world. Like you are the ----. You are the one that they are after. When you have that going for you, man, everything kind of falls into place. Everything falls into place. Modern dating also means dealing with baggage. Oh, my God. That is the worst part of it, I think. And the older you get, the more baggage there is. So I'm 60 years old. If I had to date a 60-year-old woman, and I can't imagine doing that, but if I did, I can only imagine how much time and energy it would take to unpack all that ******* baggage. Now, I'm not talking about her clothes or her stuff or her moving in. No, I'm talking about all the emotional, psychological bullshit that's going to come out. Because quite frankly, everybody has it. Let's not dig it all out, you know? Every woman I've ever dated, they tell me about their exes. And you have basically two types of exes. Either they were an evil psychopath who was manipulative and narcissistic and all these evil, terrible things, or they were a complete loser, lived in their mom's basement and collected action figures. Now, part of me is thinking, well, what the hell were you doing with these guys? How did you end up there? And what does that say about me being with you? You know what I mean? So when they start telling you about all this crappy stuff that happened to them in the past, you start to think, well, do I really want to be with a woman who attracts that into their life? I don't think they think about it that way. I don't think they understand. But the baggage thing with relationships is just overwhelming sometimes. It does give you a lot of insights into who they are, because obviously, a normal, healthy woman would not have all these crazy people in their lives. I would like to just go out with a woman one time who said, you know, he was a good guy, but we just weren't a good fit. You know, that's the way I feel about my ex-wife. She was fine. We just weren't a good fit. We got caught up in the momentum of having a relationship and babies and all that stuff. And before we knew it, we realized we didn't like each other that much. And that's okay. You know, that's okay. If your dating life is successful with a particular woman, there's going to come a time when you're going to have to meet the family. Yes. There is nothing quite like meeting a woman's family for the first time. You know, the father's going to try to intimidate you. The mother's going to interrogate you. Her siblings are going to try to embarrass her with stories about her past. It's just an uncomfortable, ritualistic thing. And, you know, thankfully, at my age, most of my potential dating partners, like if they're in their 50s or older, most of their parents probably have passed on or they're too dumb to ask any really important questions. Too demented, I should say. But yeah, meeting the family is a tough one. And then if you want to have her meet your family, it's even worse, you know, because now once the meeting occurs, you're going to get the interrogation after the fact in terms of what this means and what's happening here and what are you going to do with her and I don't like this about her and this concerns me. And now you're like, ah, now I've got a committee being formed to determine whether or not this girl or this woman is right for me. And for me, it's really bad because I have two daughters, you know, who are in their early 20s and they are very protective of me and they see things in women that I don't see, which probably is a good thing, but it definitely screws up a lot of relationships. Like my daughter, Julia, she's the harshest of them all. She is so critical. I don't think I have met a woman yet in the last six years that she had any approval of whatsoever. There was one woman that she kind of liked and she turned out to be a nut job. I remember having a conversation with her and I said, let's just be friends. Next thing I know, I was blocked just for saying, let's be friends. Isn't that insane? I've talked to lots and lots of guys who have been cohabitating. They started up cohabitating with their girlfriend and that's how they got married. And the cohabitation was never something that was planned out. It was always the result of some set of circumstances that were out of anyone's control. That seems to be the case. And it seems like this is almost like a playbook where she finds herself in a situation where the rent has gone up or her roommate has moved out or something has happened that leaves her in a state of temporary homelessness. And you, being a good guy the way you are, open your door and say, please come and live with me. Thinking to yourself, this just means 24-7 sex. I've got 24-7 access to her equipment. Yeah, that's not going to happen. You're going to learn a lot about your woman when you start cohabitating with her. Now, you're going to still get plenty of the good stuff, but you're also going to start to see what a slob she really is. You're going to see all that hair getting trapped in your sink and in your shower. She may be a mess in the kitchen. She may be really, really nasty first thing in the morning on weekdays. You've only been sleeping with her on the weekends. Now, you're getting her Monday morning face. That may not be a good one for you. That may not be a good look. So, yeah, cohabitation is a trap. You've got to be very, very cautious at this stage in the game because this little trap can very quickly turn into marriage. Because it's very funny, not funny, it's very tragic how oftentimes cohabitation turns into an unwanted pregnancy or an unexpected pregnancy. That's what we'll call it, an unexpected pregnancy. I thought you were taking care of it. You said you were taking care of it. Yeah, I've had that conversation. Next thing you know, yeah, you're standing at the altar. You're shopping for engagement rings. You're down at the mall at Zales trying to save some money on a cheap engagement ring. No, really, honey, it's just like a real diamond. No one will know the difference. Yeah. Oh, God. Sometimes you wonder how we get into these things and it just happens so insidiously. You don't even realize what's happening because you're caught in the momentum of it and you're so distracted by the good stuff that you almost intentionally ignore all the negative side effects, all the negative potential associated with this relationship. One of the problems I think we have when we're in this state is we lack the ability to see into the future. Most men can take a look at where they are in the moment and their behaviors, their activities, and what they're doing and they can project into the future if they continue doing what they're doing what things are going to look like, say, in five or ten years. But when we have a woman with us, we seem to lose that talent because somehow we think that having her there is going to add an X factor that is going to provide an exponential opportunity for positive things to happen. That generally isn't true. Of course, the alternative is you've got the breakup battlefield and in modern technology and all the stuff that goes with it in the modern relationships, it's a ---- show from the very beginning. So you go through the phase of being angry and then maybe making up and then having conversations and then eventually get to a phase where you don't want to pretend that person or you pretend that person doesn't exist anymore. If you have left stuff at her house or she's left stuff at your house, there's this whole exchange of personal property that is a little bit like a prisoner exchange at the front line. And then there is the conversations that occur in social media. People start asking what happened and all these stories start coming out. And then you're wondering whether you need to get a libel attorney to go after her. She's talking so much ---- about you. There is nothing quite like a modern breakup. Back in the old days, it was pretty straightforward. You could just break up with a girl and if you still liked her, you could still hang out. I remember breaking up with girls and still having sex with them afterwards. Do you know what I mean? Going back two or three weeks later and saying, hey, what are you doing tonight? What do you say we get together and talk? And next thing you know, you're having sex. That's the way things should be. But for some reason in our hyper crazy culture where everything is at an extreme and the anxiety and the depression and the neuroses and the mental illness that occurs almost widespread in our culture results in a breakup being some kind of a personal affront. Like you've attacked this person and now you have to defend yourself. And in this defense, you've got to paint this other person as if they're the worst person in the world. And yeah, it's not pretty. It's just not pretty at all. And then finally, after the breakup, we all do it. It's called rebound roulette. Now you're back on the apps. You know, and it's amazing how your standards have dropped at this stage in the game. You know, your relationship is gone. Maybe you've been together for six months, maybe a year. You used to getting regular stuff, used to having someone to go hang out with. And so you're just wanting to replace that person, that thing in your life, that role now needs to be replaced. It's like you've got to rehire. You've got to go back out on the employment market and you've got to find somebody else to fill that position in your life. And so we go back to the very beginning, start looking at the profiles. We start trying to make decisions as to whether or not this person is pretty enough because we want to make sure that whoever we choose, they've got to be prettier than the girl we were with before. You know, she might be crazier, probably will be, because that's the way that stuff goes. We know, you know, the pretty crazy thing, you know, matrix. It always works out that way. The prettier are, the crazier they are. So there it is in a nutshell, the entire modern dating landscape in a hopefully less than 30 minute video. And there is no question that if you're going to go out there, and I don't think there's anything wrong with going out there, I think you just have to be aware of what you're up against. And you've got to know yourself well enough that you don't allow the craziest stuff to happen because it can happen to anyone. And you have to constantly check in with yourself and ask, is this right? The biggest mistake that men make, and I will say this in every single video, the biggest mistake that men make when it comes to dating is having that idea that there is a shortage of women in the world. You know, they have this concept that if they don't take advantage of the one that likes them right now, that they're never going to find another one. And that is just not the case. In fact, I have noticed in my own life that frequently after I compromise and I go out with a woman that I'm really not that into, another woman that I would have been much more into comes after me. This has happened several times in my life. And so from now on, I have told myself that I am not going to compromise on the qualities that I'm looking for in a woman. And if you guys want to know how to do that, I'll put another video together in terms of how to determine what it is you're looking for. But you've got to have an avatar of what the qualities you're looking for are and then what the qualities are that you absolutely will not put up with under any circumstances. And then you've got to hold yourself to that standard no matter what. Anyway, you guys, I hope you've enjoyed this video. I hope you found it educational, a little bit funny, informative. All right, you guys, that's all I got for you today. If you enjoyed the video, please like and subscribe. If you know someone who might enjoy it, please share it with them. In the meantime, please remember, stay healthy and if you can, stay single.