How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett - In 2026, Women Want You to Approach Them More Than Ever (Seriously!) Here’s Why

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

You want to meet women in the real world, but you you worry that it’s weird or socially creepy. In this episode of the “How to Get a Girlfriend” podcast, dating coach and bestselling author Connell Barrett explains why now is the best time ever to meet women “in the wild.” He shares how he and his clients are proving it every day. Listen now so you can stop overthinking and start approaching women in your day-to-day life.NOT SURE HOW TO APPROACH AND TALK TO WOMEN? BOOK A FREE CONSULTATION WITH DATING COACH CONNELL BARRETT: DatingTransformation.comGET A FREE COPY OF CONNELL’S BESTSELLING BOOK, “DATING SUCKS BUT YOU DON’T”: Email: [e-mail] (Write “Free Book” in Subject Line)

Oh man, it works so well. Women are dying to meet a guy this way. Welcome back to the How to Get a Girlfriend Podcast. I'm your host, dating coach, Connell Barrett. I help men flirt with confidence, create real genuine, authentic connections with women, and then get a great girlfriend. And we do it in lots of different ways. There's three primary ways I help men.

Meet women. Think of your dating life like a multi-channeled funnel, to use a business term, a business funnel. There's three primary ways to meet women in 2026. There is online dating, of course. There's social circle dating, meeting women through social connections, shared acquaintances, getting fixed up. And there's approaching slash meeting women out in the wild. These are the three primary ways people meet in 2026. And I've been posting about something on Instagram a lot. And I want to do a whole episode here about it. I think right now, 26 is quite literally the best time to ever be out meeting women in the wild and approaching, at least ever in my life. Here's why. Here's what I've

noticed with my clients. So I have a client named Kevin. Kevin's in Atlanta. And he's been sort of breaking my brain, blowing my mind in some really great ways. He's been approaching women and he's getting a crazy high percentage of excellent responses from women. I'm talking 80 to 90 percent of the women he approaches give him really positive feedback. Not everyone gives him a number or a date, but almost nine out of ten, women are responding and saying either, oh my God, Kevin, you made my day. Here's my number. I would love to go on a date with you. Or even women who aren't available, who are in relationships or who just aren't interested,

they're so flattered. He told me about how he approached a woman on this college campus where he's a graduate student. And she's seeing somebody and she said, look, I wish I was available to date you. I have a boyfriend, but keep doing this. She gave him literally two thumbs up. She gave him like a two thumbs up. She's like, thank you. And the reason why he's breaking my brain is because when I first started going out into the world to approach women, it was in 2009. And back then, when you approached a woman in a fairly direct way, direct meaning you made that romantic interest clear. You got a very polarizing response. You've got a big thumbs up. when women liked it, or a pretty big thumbs down, meaning, hey, no thanks, I'm not interested, bye.

You got a polarizing response when you went, it's called going direct. In the world of dating coach parlance, there's only two ways to approach a woman. Indirect and direct. Indirect is social, conversational, friendly, compliment, question, observation. Direct is, hey, excuse me, I just saw you in your gorgeous accent. to meet you or you're beautiful or hey I had to come talk to you because just you look stunning. Back in the day that was a very polarizing way to do it. What I'm noticing with Kevin and with several of my clients including a guy who came who flew here from Taiwan to work with me

is the positive responses that my clients are getting 80 to 90% positive. Maybe one in 10 women are kind of walking away like, no thanks, I'm not interested, kind of dismissive, quote-unquote bad reaction. That's a crazy high percentage for a direct approach. Direct approaches are supposed to be like one in two, one in three, one in four are really positive and a majority are not mean, but like cold or clinical and dismissive. And I'm noticing a big change in the recent couple, three years. I think that right now is the best time to approach women because back in 2009, when I first started learning how to do it from my coaches, there was a lot of like pickup boot camps. Approaching women was a big thing. The book, The Game, had been really popular, a huge bestseller. And so many men

were out there taking these approaching boot camps. Also in 2009, the late double zeros, at 2010. Tinder was new, but it hadn't changed the dating culture the way it has. And what I've seen really shift in recent years is we've got three real powerful factors have essentially kept 90-something percent of single men stopped them from approaching women. Here are the three factors. Number one is Tinder era truly became our new reality. A vast majority of people are now on the dating apps, meeting that way, or at least trying to. You've got something like 80% of single people are on or have been on the dating apps. So people meet online, they don't meet in real life anymore.

The second big factor I've noticed, it's not even I've noticed, it is. It's like noticing gravity. in gravity. Just it is what it is. The second factor is social media. Social media has never been bigger than it is right now. And it's only growing. And so now people are quote unquote socializing more on social media than actually meeting in real life more than ever before. And of course, the third element or the third factor that really changed things is, what was it around circa 2017, 2018, when the Me Too movement really took root. And the Me Too era has, mostly for the better, Me Too era is really important and powerful.

And I have a whole chapter in my book about the Me Too era and how great it is, I think, for culture and society. However, one of the drawbacks of the Me Too era, if you want to call it a drawback, not a drawback, one of the side effects of dating in the Me Too era or living in the Me Too era, or I should say the post Me Too era, is that. more men than ever are just so afraid of bothering women being labeled, you know, problematic, a harasser, creep, weirdo. And so we've got these three tendrils intertwining. In 2026, most men are not approaching 90-something percent of men, I believe, are not approaching women or meeting women out in the wild because of the Me Too era and fear of creeping or bothering a woman because social media is the new way we socialize. Also, so many men are terrified of getting in trouble in our Me Too era and being humiliated,

called out, ostracized on social media. Can't tell you how many guys have said, O'Connell, I never approach women. I say why. Oh, I don't want to get flamed on TikTok. I don't want to be labeled that guy who's out there bothering women. So got that force pushing back. The Tinder, hinge, Bumble, online dating era is still, for better or worse, going strong. And what you've got here in 2026 is a world where men just don't approach women anymore.

In fact, I don't have hard data on this, but I would say that the number of single men who on a semi-regular basis meet women out in the real world with the intention of flirting and dating and making some kind of romance happen would be less than 10%. I would say at most 5 or 6%, at most. And then most of those guys, again, this is anecdotal, but most of those men I would have. argue, need either liquid courage to do it. They're in the bars. They can approach a woman after two or three drinks, or they need some planned, canned pickup line, something they read on Reddit or read from some jackass, mediocre male dating, quote-unquote guru. And the number of men who actually approach women in an organic, natural gentlemanly.

way is less than 1%. That's my case. That's my theory of the case of where we are in 26. And you might think, oh, well, Connell, what you're telling me means I really shouldn't approach women because nobody does it. I don't want to do that weird, aberrant thing that nobody does anymore. And that's another thing I think is getting in men's heads. But what I've noticed is, remember women don't think the way men do women men and women frankly we're all still dating with the same minds the brains we had forget 10 20 50 years ago thousand years ago we're still basically the same people we were when we were homo sapiens 100,000 years ago that's not me being a scientist I am not a scientist, but I've interviewed a couple of evolutionary scientists who said,

oh, yeah, we're all basically the same as we were 100,000 years ago in terms of our brains. Society changes and we get culture. We get conditioned and societally conditioned, but we're all basically the same. I guess what I'm saying to you is men and women are still attracted to each other. men and women still want to date and procreate and hook up and nothing has really changed in terms of how women want men to come and talk to them however it's not happening anymore and now when when men like my client kevin walk up to women in atlanta and say hey excuse me oh and here's what by the way here's what kevin's doing that i here's how he's breaking my brain

brain. I was recently talking to him saying, hey, you're crushing it. What are you doing? How are you doing it? He said, well, I'm walking up to women. I'm being really genuine. He loves to compliment. He loves stylish women who are really put together, you know, beautiful pencil skirt or just dynamite skirt. He just loves women's style. I should say he loves a woman who's got good style. He doesn't love women's style, but he loves a woman with great style. And I said, so what are you doing? How are you doing? How are you getting this 80 to 90% success ratio? By success, I mean very good positive responses, even when they aren't able or interested in dating him. It's like, keep doing this. He's been told so many times, keep doing this. So he walks up and he says,

hey, excuse me, you have great style. I love your outfit. And you're just gorgeous. just beautiful. He's just saying it in such a genuine way and women's jaws are dropping. They're like, I mean, again, I haven't been with them physically, but, you know, they're like clutching their chest. Oh my God. Thank you. In fact, he recorded one of the things I do with my clients is they can record audio, do audio recordings with their approaches and I listen back to them. And even though I haven't been physically with Kevin in Atlanta, because I have never met him in person, I coach men with approaching anywhere, everywhere, remotely, and I listen to their audio of their approaches. And he sent me this audio and this woman, I could hear her voice. Oh, my God,

thank you. You think I'm beautiful? Oh, my God, thank you. They can feel how genuine it is. It's genuine. It's authentic. It's real. And it's direct. But it's G-Rae. direct. I think that's the real insight he's kind of stumbled on. When you're direct but in a G rated way, you're just sharing a real thought and feeling. Hey, excuse me, you're gorgeous. Your style is amazing and you're just gorgeous. Think about what incredibly, how powerful that is going to be to so many women because he's not saying you have an amazing body. You're tits and ass are fantastic. He might feel that way. I'm sure he does on some level. But that's not what he's saying. He's not being vulgar. He's just saying, hey, you're you look amazing and frankly,

wow, you're just gorgeous. And you're so put together beautifully. And women are loving it. Back in the day, 15 years ago, that would get a very polarizing response because women were approached a lot more often and frankly, very poorly by men who learned to do this from often, often well-intentioned, poorly trained pick up guys. So men just aren't approaching almost at all anymore. That's what I've noticed. And Kevin's not the only one. I've noticed it.

I do I do approaches when I'm out with my clients in New York City. I just do like demonstration approaches two or three per night just to get the ball rolling. I have a girlfriend. I'm not approaching women or dating them. But when I do it, women are like, hi, well-dressed, cool, normal guy. Thanks for talking to us. and I had a client who came in from, flew in from Taiwan and saw the same kind of success Kevin's been having. My client flew him from Taiwan and approached women all over New York City and in the NYU area with me a couple, about a month ago.

And he did amazing. And not every woman wanted to date him. Some did. Many did. But you should have seen the looks on their faces. They were like, many of them said this. Thank you. Nobody does this anymore.

Thank you. You made my day. So I really do believe this. Look, I'm biased. I'm a dating coach who gets paid to help men approach women. So I am absolutely acknowledging my total bias here. But I'm not just saying this as a guy who gets paid to help men approach women. Among other things, I really see it.

I just see it. It's so rare for men. to approach anymore and so few men do it well. So few men do it well. My girlfriend and I were out a year or two ago and I left her alone to go work with a client who was nearby at this rooftop bar in New York City. And this guy approached my girlfriend Jess and had some canned, goofy line planned. It was like, hey, I'm a pirate. I'm looking for my treasure. Can you help me find my pirate's treasure? it was just like so hokey and cheesy. It was just so non-genuine.

It was like, oh, well, this is the thing my coach told me to say or something he read on Reddit. It must have been what he read on Reddit. And I just had to share this with you. Maybe what's the biggest myth in dating? There's a handful that I try to take a sledgehammer to on social media. and talk about a lot, but I would say in the top three biggest myths, biggest things that guys get wrong, it's this perception that it's creepy and weird to approach women. In fact, nothing could be

more natural and normal and sort of societally approved if you do it in a very organic way, genuine way and a way where you're not just trying to pick her up and get what you want. Is it creepy to approach a woman and objectify her and make it all about sex and lie and try to say and do whatever you think needs to be said and done to get a result? That's creepy as fuck. That's the definition of creepy in my book. Wanting only what you want, not caring how she feels. Doing it just for you, doing it for your ego gratification, doing it just for the result. to approach a woman with good intentions, not being married to some outcome, doing it because it's an authentic expression and extension of how you feel or how looking at her makes you feel,

or simply wanting to walk, as I tell my clients when we go out and he's approaching weekends, I call them wingman weekends, we start off every night by, let's just do a quick round around bar. We'll do a couple drive-bys. Just walk around giving genuine, authentic compliments. Hey, excuse me, miss, those are really cool glasses. You have great style. Hey, awesome tattoo. I like your moves. Hey, you have great dance moves. Hey, what's the party going on over here? Who's the birthday girl? Happy birthday. Just giving genuine warm small little gifts, just small little gifts, the gifts of authentic expression, the gift of good intentions, the gift of not needing anything. Man, that's the way to approach.

And 2026 is the best time to do it I've ever seen. I've been approaching women, or at least learning how to do it. Sorry, I first did it in 2009. And here we are 17 years later, and I've really seen some big changes. It's paradoxical, but because so few men do it, because of some. social media, the Me Too post-Me2 era, and this general sense of fear that so many men feel, 90-something percent of men don't do it. And if you are among the few who do it with good intentions, with playful flirtatiousness, oh man, it works so well. Women are dying to meet a guy this way.

They just love it. I met one of my ex-examination. girlfriends this way many years ago. And every time somebody asked how we met, she got to sort of light up and smile and said, oh, well, well, I was in a coffee shop and I was working on some creative writing and this, this friendly ginger guy just started chatting with me, this cool guy with classes. And I kind of liked him. And then she tells the story. And so when you can't approach woman and do it with charm and and as being by being yourself oh man that's how it's done that's the best way to do it anyway so now is the best time to do it go out and approach women go out and meet them in the wild share compliments questions observations or try what kevin's doing in hotlanta

approaching hot women in hotlanta walking up and saying hey you have great style beautiful style you know what, you're gorgeous. And he's just making women drop their jaws. No, he's not some male model. He's not six foot of five with six pack abs. He's a regular dude. He's fit. He's a fit guy, but he's not some model, just a regular guy. Anyway, and if you would like my help to do this, you can go to datingtransformation.com and you can book a free call to talk with me about how you can meet women out in the real world. Anyway, all right, thank you so much for listening. Until next time.