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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
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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...
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Connell Baritz
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 Baritz. 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've struggled with that, I'm going to help you with that today. I want 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 going to 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 going to give you these seven great banter topics and then I'm going to 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 going to be great. I think you're really going to 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. Banter topic number one, hobbies and interests. Banter topic number two, food and drink Topic number three, travel and adventure. Banter topic number four, pop culture, tv, movies, music. Banter topic number five, funny stories from her youth and from your youth. Banter 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 get 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 could 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 breakdancing 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 picture 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, a wonderful woman named Adriana. I remember we talked about bagels for 20 minutes by text or, you know, 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 topics, these topics with an emotion. So you might be saying, 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 going to 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 movie? What movie could you rewatch 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's that 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 going to be something that's going to 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 friend zoned, talk about bitcoin. Guaranteed friend zone. 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 good questions about her. Oh, dude, she's gonna love you. So 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 Crusty 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. You're getting to know the real her and the real you this way. Banter 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 you're texting, or five or 10 minutes into a conversation at a party, just shoot, you're just bantering. You could say, hey, what. What's your least favorite food? What food do you hate? I've 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, 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 and 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 best selling book, Dating Sucks, but yout 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 for 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 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 going to. First of all, you're going to 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 would. 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, 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. Why? Once you analyze a date, it's a little bit too meta and it takes out the remove. 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 to show you how this works right now. Now I'm going to do a lot of them all together. I'm going to chunk these together. You do not need to chunk these together the way I'm about to do you for this do for this demonstration. But you'll get the point, I think. So here we go. Imagine that you are on, 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, ah, so 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, her judging people. She might laugh and say, oh, well, 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. You 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. And 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. Speaking of cows, I was just watching the movie Twister. And by the way, the movie Twister has a flying cow in it. 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. And 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. 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. 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. You were a 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 Circe 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 gonna 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 realized 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 pop 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 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 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 going to 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. Totally fine to ask me a question. You can email me at connelldatingtransformation.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 going to get a girlfriend, because women like you for you already. They just have to meet the real you. Okay, until next time. Adios. Bye.