How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett - How to NEVER Run Out of Things to Say: The 7 Best Banter Topics to Instantly Attract Women

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Do you ever struggle with what to say to women—either in person or when trying to craft the perfect text? Dating coach Connell Barrett gives you the 7 Best Banter Topics so you can keep conversations flirty and free-flowing. Whether you’re talking to her in person or messaging on your phone, just reach for one of these foolproof topics for instant banter. And you don’t need to be naturally witty. These simple tips will work for any guy! Plus, you’ll learn the Playful Pivot, a powerful technique that takes your banter to a masterful level.Highlights of this Episode:03:20: The 7 Best Banter Topics to Never Run Out of Things to Say04:47: The Words She’s Dying to Hear from You09:17: The “Desert Island” Question that Ignites Instant Attraction11:44: The Storytelling Trick that Makes You Charismatic16:47: The Topic That Sparks Playful, Engaging Conversations17:35: The “What If” Question that Makes You Different from Other Guys19:45: The Playful Pivot—How to Master Flirty Banter and Become IrresistibleGet ready to attract women effortlessly with great banter. Listen now.WANT TO TAKE YOUR FLIRTY BANTER TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL? BOOK A FREECALL WITH CONNELL TO LEARN ABOUT 1-1 COACHING:www.DatingTransformation.com

If you want to get friend zoned, talk about Bitcoin. Guaranteed friend zone. Welcome back to the How to Get a Girlfriend podcast. I am your dating coach and host, Connell Barrett. I am the real life hitch. I'm here to help you flirt with confidence, get a great girlfriend, and do it by being authentic. No toxic nonsense, no pickup artist moves.

Basically being genuine, being real. Women want the real you, not some fake persona. And let me ask you a question. Do you ever run out of things to say with women? You're on a date and you're just not sure what to talk about. Or you approach and you don't know what to say. And there's a long awkward silence. Or maybe you're texting and you're like, what the heck do I write to this girl? What do I say? What do I do? And what can happen is if you don't know what to say if you don't know where to take a conversation. Then you end up losing her she loses interest she goes and tries to find a guy who is better at flirting better at banter better at talking well if you struggle with that.

I'm gonna help you with that today i to make sure that you never ever again run out of things to say with women. The way we're going to do this is I'm going to teach you the seven best banter topics. Seven best topics for bantering. What do I mean by banter? Just means light, fun, playful conversation. The kind of conversation that women are aching to have on dates or by text or when you chat her up at a party. So this is for all parts of dating and especially first dates. But it could be the approach. It could be a text exchange on a dating app. I'm going to give you seven really simple topics that are perfect for a light flirty

banter. And this allows you to emotionally connect authentically. You don't have to memorize anything. You don't have to plan scripted things. And this will help you never run out of things to say and always know what to say. All right, so let's get to it. Oh, and in the last five, seven, eight minutes

of today's episode, I'm also gonna teach you a technique that I call playful pivoting, which allows you to bounce back and forth between multiple topics in a way that makes a woman feel flirted with. It makes you a really compelling conversationalist and it just helps to bring those really good fun flirty feels to a date that a woman wants. So I'm gonna give you these seven great banter topics and then I'm gonna help you flirt with them and kind of weave back and forth between them

like Bob and Weave like a boxer basically. And this is gonna be great. I think you're really gonna enjoy this. So if you're good at conversation you're about to become great at conversation with women. If you're not good, if you're in your head, if you're shy, if you're introverted, if you're not sure what to say, you're about to become good, eventually great. So here we go. Let me talk to you about the seven best banter topics. I'll run through them really quick and then we'll go through each one step by step. Bantor topic number one, hobbies and interests. Bantor topic number two, food and drink. Topic

number three, travel and adventure. Bantor topic number four, pop culture, TV, movies, music. Bantor topic number five, funny stories from her youth and from your youth. Bantor topic number five, funny stories from her youth and from your youth. Bantor topic number six, pet peeves and hot takes. And banter topic number seven is, I call this fun what-ifs, fun hypotheticals. Basically think like would you rather. Okay those are the seven best banter topics for a first date on Text any conversation with women. Let me run through them take a couple minutes for each one I'll show you exactly how to use them and the best thing about knowing these seven best banter topics is you don't have to plan Anything you need to be spontaneous in the moment present and that is going to be your most attractive self to women.

So here we go. Let's take a little slightly deeper dive on each of these seven. Number one, hobbies and interests. People love talking about what they're into. So when talking to a woman, especially when you're just talking to her for the first time, ask her this question, what do you love to do for fun? What lights you up? She's going to love talking about her hobbies or interests.

You might ask this question, if you were going to go on America's Got Talent, what would your skill be? Now we're talking about secret talents. This is a fun light, bantery way of asking her what she's into. By the way, for any of these questions that I'm going to share with you to ask a woman, be ready to answer these questions yourself. Okay? Lead that dating dance. Go first.

You can say to her, oh, you know what? If I was going to be on America's Got Talent, I would definitely play guitar or I would show off my break dancing moves or my salsa moves. What about you? What would you do if you went on that show? So talking about hobbies and interests is a great bantery topic. And the nice thing about these topics, all seven of these, is you don't have to be super witty. You don't have to be the world's funniest, wittiest, cleverest guy. If you are, that's a great bonus. You don't have to be though. If you just stick

to these topics, the banter, the light, fun banter basically takes care of itself. Okay, banter topic number two, food and drink. Talk about food and drink. Ask her what her favorite food is. Ask her what her least favorite food is. On my first date with my now girlfriend Jess, we talked about how much she hates ketchup. We talked about how much I hate mushrooms. We also talked about baking, things she likes to bake and

cook. She's Italian, Italian heritage. She comes from an Italian family. We talked about Italian food, talked about the drinks we were drinking. So just talking about food. I dated a woman once for a while and I remember our text exchange for the first one or two days we were texting before we even met for our first date. Wonderful woman named Adriana. I remember we talked about bagels for 20 minutes by text, or 10 text messages or so.

So talking about food and drink, it's a very light topic. So one of my favorite questions to ask on a date or talking to a woman is, hey, what's your favorite go-to snack? You know, besides me. Right? And now you're talking about snacks, you're talking about food and drink. Very light topics.

Okay. Topic number three that's great for banter travel and adventure travel and adventure so absolutely be ready to ask a question like I'm curious. What was the single greatest Vacation you've ever had Don't ask too many logical

Boring questions like informational questions like oh, where did you go last year? Where have you traveled last? Where are you going next? That's okay. It's better than not talking about travel, but you want to infuse these topics with an emotion. So you might say, hey, what was the greatest trip you ever took? Or what trip would you love to take? Where are you aching and dying to go? If you want to get really flirtatious, you could say, hey I'm curious, if you and I were gonna transport, magically, teleport to any place in the world right now together, where would you have us go? Now you're asking her a fun what-if

question about travel that puts you and her together in her mind and that helps to have her see you as a partner of hers, not just asking her logical information about travel. So travel adventure, great topic. I love asking, you know, where do you most want to go? What's the craziest, most hilarious, weird story that ever happened to you while you were traveling? And have your own answer for this as well, assuming you've done some traveling. So if you have that crazy story about the night you

went to, the night you danced on the table, got drunk on sangria in Spain, whatever your version of that is, be ready to share your story, give her a window into you and your life. So that's another great topic, travel and adventure. By the way, let me pause as I count down or count up this list. You don't have to talk about all seven. You don't necessarily have to talk about all seven on a date, for example. I'm just giving you seven options here. You can actually talk about all seven, but you don't have to okay the best banter topic number four pop culture

TV movies music Ask her I can't tell you how many times on a first date. I asked a woman. Hey, what's your desert island TV show? Or what's your desert island TV show? Or what's your desert island movie? What movie could you could you re-watch over and over and over again? I had a first date with a woman named Raquel. Raquel I did improv with. Raquel's a big Beatles fan like I am. And for our first date all we did is talk about Beatles music and improv comedy. She and I belong to the same improv theater together. And all we did was banter about pop culture, Beatles, some literature, movies. And then I said, Hey, do you want to come

over to my apartment, hang out some more, play some Beatles tunes? She's like, Sure, let's go. And the night ended very well with myself and Raquel. I'm not bragging, I'm just saying, it can be that simple, just banter about music. And let me pull back here, why does this work? Why am I talking about banter? Why is this gonna be something that's gonna help you get a great girlfriend?

It's because, think about a woman and what she's used to experiencing with most other men or just in her day She's She finishes her day. She just finished a two-hour zoom call She was bored to death Her boss is a dick the last two or three guys she had dates with they were just weird They talked about themselves the whole time or they talked about Bitcoin. If you want to get friendzoned talk about Bitcoin. Guaranteed friendzone. So and then she meets you and you're this guy

who's having a light breezy fun authentic conversation about movies, about travel, about that fun thing that happened on your trip. You're asking her a light breezy fun authentic conversation about movies about travel about that fun thing that happened on your trip you're asking her good questions about her dude she's gonna love you that's why I'm talking about banter also women just like the feeling of hey let's get out of our logical stressed mind let's have some fun it's a date that's what flirting is about it's about play and fun okay best banter move number five. Funny stories from your youth or her youth. Ask every woman this question on every date going forward. Here it is. What were you

like as a kid? Tell me a little bit about young Jessica. What was she like? What were you like in grade school? Were you a dork? Were you a nerd? And of course share how you were in grade school too. Open up a little bit and share a fun funny story from your youth. I have a funny story that I've shared for Halloween one year in grade school. I dressed up for Halloween. You know that day of school where everybody dresses up as something and you go to school, Halloween dress up day? I got up dressed as a clown one day, big floppy shoes, big red nose, my big fake red afro over my real red afro. And I go to school and I have the wrong day.

I'm off by one day. Everybody's dressed normally and I am dressed like a clown, like Krusty the Clown. And I'm sitting in math class. I'm sitting there in history class and I'm in my big clown outfit with my horn. Honk honk. It was so funny. It was so embarrassing, but I'm laughing at it now. Anyway, whatever your version of that story might be.

Funny stories from your youth, great fun topics. You're being vulnerable, you're getting to know the real her and the real you this way. Bantor topic number six, pet peeves and hot takes. A really fun way to banter and click with a woman you just are talking to is to talk about pet peeves. It's a great way to bond. It's okay to be, don't be a negative person. Don't be a negative dark entity on the date, but you can have strong opinions about things that you don't like. On my first date with Jess, my girlfriend Jessamine, she went off on a hilarious rant about how much she hates ketchup. And

we both talked about how much we hate jogging and how all joggers should be imprisoned. Kiddingly, of course. And so, yeah, we had those, just cracked a lot of jokes about things. So a good question or a good topic to bring up is you could ask your date or ask a woman your texting. Or five or ten minutes into a conversation to party just shoot your just bantering. Hey what's your least favorite food what food do you hate. I told many women how much i hate mushrooms i hate mushrooms with a white hot passion i hate mushrooms just like my girlfriend Jessamyn hates ketchup. You could ask her, what little things annoy the fuck out of you? And here's a bonus kind of advanced banter tip, but this works so well if you really commit to it,

is have really fire-breathingly strong opinions about something trivial and stupid. And this becomes hilarious. You have to commit to it though. Here's what I mean. I, you know what I really hate? I'll do it for you right now. You know what I hate, dear listener? You know what I fucking hate? People who sit behind me on the plane, who grab my seat back when they stand up and they pull my seat back. I hate these people. These people are worse than Joseph Stalin. They should be thrown out of the plane. They're so awful. How dare they? The FAA should ban people like this from flying. So I go off on like a really overly heated rant and what makes it funny is that I'm ranting about something so stupid and trivial. It's just so dumb. I don't really hate these people. I'm just being absurd. And so that's a bonus tip. If you want to talk about a pet peeve, if

you really want to lean into it, it can be really funny to talk about how much it annoys you. And you're showing a real glimpse of yourself, right? Part of what gets guys stuck in the friend zone is just like everything's positive, everything's happy, everything's great. You're wearing this insincere Pollyanna mask. And don't get me wrong, that's better than being negative. But if you're just like, yay, everything is nice and happy, that can be kind of bland to women. And by bitching and moaning about small little things,

like the seat back guy, that shows a little glimpse of realness. It shows that you're not just saying things to try to impress her. You're being really real. And yeah, so my girlfriend and I, we talked about how much we both hate math on our first date. And we really connected about it too. And it was really fun. So, pet peeves and hot takes, that's a great topic. So you could just straight up ask her, what little things annoy you? What annoys the hell out of you? Jessica, I'm curious. And she might go off on a funny rant. You can banter about that. You struggle with dating, right? Sure, you have a good job and cool friends, but you

just aren't sure how to flirt, the apps don't work for you, and sometimes women put you in the friend zone. It's frustrating. Hey, I struggled with dating too. As an introvert and a total nerd, I didn't just live in the friend zone, I owned real estate there. But I escaped. Using the dating philosophy of radical authenticity, which I've used to help thousands of men in 17 countries find love. It's what I wrote about in my bestselling book, Dating Sucks But You Don't.

And radical authenticity is why psychology today called me the best dating coach in America. And now I want to personally help you attract your dream girlfriend. So go to datingtransformation.com and book a free call with me. On our call, I'll tell you how my one-on-one coaching will help you find your dream girlfriend and you'll be doing it by flirting with confidence and authenticity. No creepy pickup tricks needed. So go to datingtransformation.com, book a free call today and let my personalized

coaching help you get a great girlfriend. And number seven great banter topic is fun what ifs. You ask her fun hypotheticals. Here are three of my favorite. Well one obvious one, one simple one is would you rather. You can come to the date or the conversation with a couple of fun would you rather questions. There's a million of those online. You can Google those. Would you rather eat potatoes every day for the rest of your life or would you rather be a potato? I made that one up.

It's just so dumb. But here are two or three that I've used and I give my clients. You could ask her, what actress should play you in the movie of your life? That's a great question that speaks to her ego. I would be fascinated by her answer, whatever her answer is. If she chooses the most beautiful, glamorous woman in the world, we know a little bit about what she thinks about herself. It's a really interesting question. If you could ask her, if you could have dinner tonight with any famous dead person, who would you have dinner with? I'd be curious to know. And I like this question. Here's a little

bit of a brain teaser say to her okay hypothetical there's a fire at your home all pets and people are safe you can run into your home and save one thing not counting your computer not counting phones and computers but you can run in and save one thing from the fire what would you run in and save her answer to that is gonna first of all you're gonna ask her a question she's never been asked before. It's about her, her favorite topic, and her answer is going to be really revealing. And you can talk about her answer. Me, if that happened, I would run in. I have a teeny tiny little photo book. Like it's literally the size of a stamp. It's a

mini mini mini photo book that my girlfriend Jess gave me about us. I would look for that. That's the one thing I would grab because she's the most important person in the world to me. Okay those are the seven topics. Before I get to the fun little playful pivot technique I want to give you five topics to avoid like the plague on first dates. Here are five things not to talk about. Number one, politics or heavy social issues. Number two, exes slash bad breakups.

Not on first dates. Maybe second dates you could talk about it, but leave it alone for the first date. Number three, painful life struggles. Painful life struggles. Number four, don't do a deep complaint about work. If your job sucks, if your boss is a dick, I'm sorry, I feel bad for you, but don't bring it up on a date or at least don't delve into it. You could certainly complain about your dickish boss as a fun little pet peeve, but don't

complain. And the fifth one is don't talk about dating in a deep way. Not in a, don't talk about, you know, oh how's dating for you? Here's how dating is for me. Here's how isn't dating hard these days. Talking about dating, it's sort of like talking about why a joke is funny. Once you start analyzing it, it takes the humor out of the joke. Once you analyze a date, it's a little bit too meta, and it takes out the... it lowers the chance of a romantic connection. So don't talk about dating, at least not for very long. Okay, now I want to give you this new technique. It's not a new technique. I've been teaching this forever, but I've really been focusing on this a lot.

I call this... this is a banter technique. I call this the playful pivot. I also call this verbal bumper cars. What this means is you can bounce around from topic to topic on a date and take like hard right turns and hard left turns. And if you do this with a woman who really enjoys banter, it feels really good to her because she's, again, she's used to boring logical conversations with guys who talk about Bitcoin or their finance portfolio or they just pummel her with intellectual questions. And if you're going to be verbally bouncing from topic to topic, that can be really compelling to women. And I'm going gonna show you how this works right now

Now I'm gonna do a lot of them all together. I'm gonna Chunk these together you do not need to chunk these together the way I'm about to do you for this do it for this demonstration But you'll get the point. I think so here we go. Imagine that you are on let's let's say it's a first date okay, you're on a first date and she says, oh yeah, I just got back from Italy. And you might say, oh nice, what's the best thing you ate there? So the first topic is Italy and now we've moved to food. She might say, oh definitely the pasta. The pasta in Rome is incredible. You might say, oh so you you must be you must be a pasta snob now I'm curious. Do you judge people?

Who go to Olive Garden? So now we're getting into Italy adjacent topics restaurants for judging people She might laugh and say oh well, haha, you know, kinda. And then you would say, I respect that. And then you say, speaking of judging others, and this is the magic phrase you need to know to get good at playful pivoting. Basically what you do is you're grabbing a word that she said or that you said, it's in the ether, it's in the conversation.

And you say, speaking of judging others, what's a tiny thing that people do that annoys you? Yeah, what's your pet peeve? Now you've pivoted at the pet peeve topic. She might say, oh you know what I hate? People who chew loudly. I hate it. I hate loud chewers. And you might say, ah totally the same. I feel the same way so I guess dinner with a cow would be a personal hell for you right and she would be like oh no come on no cows are cute I would love that cows are adorable and then you might say well speaking of cows there's that pivot phrase, speaking of blank, speaking

of cows, I was just watching the movie Twister. By the way, the movie Twister has a flying cow and a cow is taken away by a tornado. So you might say, speaking of cows, I was literally just watching the movie Twister. Remember that flying cow scene? Oh man, I love that movie. Then you would ask her, I'm curious, what's your desert island movie? So you just went from cows to asking her what her favorite movie is. And you did it with a smooth or at least a graceful transition. Maybe she says,

oh, my favorite movie, Legally Blonde. You might say, oh, Legally Blonde might say legally blonde great choice Reese Witherspoon man Reese Witherspoon is such a brat in that movie at the start And then what you're doing in your mind is you're making a connection. Okay Reese Witherspoon She's a brat Oh Then you might say well speaking of brats. I'm curious Jessica my date What were you like as a kid? Were you a brat or were you really well-behaved? And then Jessica, your date might say,

oh, I was a dream child, I was so well-behaved. And then she'll share a personal story perhaps about herself from her youth. You might share that story from your youth as well. And then you might say, oh, okay, well, I was a total brat. You're a dream girl. I was, I was your dream child. I was a total brat.

I was my mom's favorite. Speaking of moms, boom, there's that transition. There's the pivot phrase. Speaking of moms, speaking of moms, I'm curious, who would you rather have as your mom? The mom from the Brady Bunch or Searcy from Game of Thrones? I think she was a mom. So you've just given her a very silly what if question. Okay, I'll stop there.

Did you see what I was doing? Does it all make sense? You're probably going to have to go back and listen to this episode, play it back. Feel free. Please. In fact, I recommend you do that. But I don't know if you realize it or not, but in that little hypothetical back and forth, I hit, or in this little role play, I hit all seven of these banter topics. We talked about her interest, food, travel, Italy. We talked about pulp culture, movies. She shared a story from her youth. We talked about pet peeves.

I ended with a fun what if. We hit all seven banter topics in just a six or seven line exchange, probably less than five minutes of conversation. It's that simple. And again, I can't state this enough. Please don't think you need to hit all seven. Please don't think you need to change the topic 14 times. I'm not saying that. I did, I wanted to cram all seven into a short demonstration just to show you how it's done. On a date itself, 15 minutes you might be, you might do the playful pivoting three or four times. Two or three. Doesn't have to be seven like I just did. I just wanted to show you, did you feel how playful that felt? How engaged our hypothetical Jessica was?

How natural and light it was. And it was personal, it was light, it was playful, it was certainly authentic and genuine. And this is going to make women who like to banter, they're going to love you. Because they're going to, she's going to go go home thinking, finally a guy who it's fun to chat with him, he didn't just bore me with Bitcoin or ask me lame questions, it was just something about him. You're gonna get those feelings of there's something about you, I don't know, I can't put my finger on it. And what's happening here using these seven topics and then being a playful pivoter, what you're doing is you're giving her brain something that she loves. All of our brains love this. It's not just about

women, it's about people. You're giving her psychology variety. You're letting her bounce around from different topic. Again, verbal bumper cars. You're letting her playfully... What's bumper cars? It's fun, it's playful, you're going left, you're going right, and it just makes women feel floaty and happy. My girlfriend Jess, early on she said to me at one point, by the way I really want you to know how much I love bantering with you. She really loved that. And anyway, so this is how you do it or this is one of the ways. Does this make sense? Did I leave any questions unanswered for you? If I did,

don't be a stranger. Shoot me an email. Ask me questions. It's totally fine to ask me a question. You can email me at connell at datingtransformation.com and I will answer every single email I get from every single person who listens to my podcast. I really appreciate you. Thank you for listening. I love my podcast and think of me as your podcast dating coach. And I hope this made sense. Practice this. Go apply it. Don't just make this a podcast episode you heard. Go out there. Playfully pivot. Keep these seven topics in your back pocket and you're never going to run out of things to say. And you're going to be good at banter and you're gonna get a girlfriend because women like you

for you already they just have to meet the real you okay until next time adios bye