A Letter To My Ex-Girlfriend’s Future Boyfriend.
Lessons from my hard-won lessons in learning to love better.
“In any given moment, we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.” ― Abraham Maslow.
We don’t know each other but humor me.
I didn’t blame her.
Instead, I sought to understand her, her needs, and mine. .
At first, I was focused on her.
Her pattern and how she hurt me seemed the obvious place to start.
I was wrong.
Introspection was working its magic.
To hell with my pride, and any version of myself that sucked.
I didn’t know what to do, but I was determined.
For her. For me. For us.
She loves Brussels sprouts. Learn how to cook those little green turds. A little honey and balsamic. The trick is to get the inside tender and the outside crispy.
Know this and be wise.
Christmas was just a few days away.
It was another sleepless night. Three months had past. We hadn’t spoken or seen each other.
Around 7:00 am I got in my Jeep, and drove to her place.
She had no idea I was coming.
I was shaking and nervous.
I knocked on her door.
I didn’t know what to expect.
She opened the door.
She was sleepy, dreamy, waking and wearing just her robe.
Her glorious long hair was slightly kinked with a bit of bedhead. A vision of all I find beautiful.
She gasped then sighed with relief.
Shocked and delighted. Our eyes locked.
She held her arms open to signal it was okay to embrace. We melted into one another.
Her smell, my home. Her skin, my breath, her voice, my heart.
Immediately, aches turned to quiet contentment.
No, we weren’t standing in a field at sunrise like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet sauntering toward each other in cinematic bliss.
This was better. This was real.
We stood just inside her door, up the concrete steps to her apartment. We sat on the couch holding each other for five hours straight.
Me sweeping my fingers softly through her hair and caressing her face.
We just held each other.
Content.
There was not a cell or fiber in my body that wanted to do life without this woman.
She was the catalyst for the most significant shift in my life.
On December 23rd 2021 she was a Christmas miracle.
So, it seemed.
Today, it’s been over a year since I have seen her or heard her voice.
I have read well over 100 books just on relationships and psychology since she first left.
I was no longer spiritually bypassing on some new cleanse, diet, biohack, consciousness-expanding mind trip, new business idea or the hundreds of books I have read over the years past.
What I am going to share with you has changed my life.
Love often does.
Instead of dating in the past year. I have been spending my spare time learning about what an emotionally secure awakened monogamous relationship looks like, and how to build one.
If you care for her.
If you love her.
Please keep reading.
She takes a nibble of dark chocolate in the morning to start her day. Buy her a bar of 70% with sea salt. Don’t say anything. Just put it in her cupboard.
Know this and be wise.
Writing this isn’t easy as you can imagine.
I am giving away what I have worked very hard to understand.
You see, I made her a promise.
If I can’t keep my promise with the cool rings we found on Pinterest or by living our vows, then maybe I can redirect my promise in someway by helping you.
If I communicate even a scintilla of the gravity of how important learning the skills I am going to share for her happiness and yours, then you will know the weight of galaxies is in your hands.
That is this: Her emotional well-being.
We as men have used our bravado and brute strength to protect women and our families since the dawn of time.
However, we have also used our physical prowess to protect ourselves from the giant emotions women have by domineering, controlling, and using them as sexual objects. In order to avoid facing the emotions we fear in them and the emotions we fear in ourselves.
The truth is, men have been afraid of women since Eve, and Delilah of the old testament. We have been taught to believe women are the “weaker vessel” and will poison our perfect paradise or rob us of our might and strength.
What if we re-framed Eve and the apple or Delilah cutting Sampson’s hair into a useful metaphor revealing deeper truth requiring necessary transformation?
Men fear the seductive power women posses for good reason. Like men, if she uses her power to manipulate then men are robbed of their agency, autonomy and sovereignty.
However, men have been robbing women’s sovereignty for centuries. By shackling her core essence and emotional wisdom and often much worse.
What if Eve was not a foolish temptress by offering Adam the apple as we have been taught to believe?
If, for a moment, we suspend the literal interpretation and approach the story from a Jungian view we are then free to explore Eve through another lens. She listened to the voice of a lowly earthen creature. She was willing to see beyond the gardens perfect bubble.
She invited not tempted Adam. Maybe she was simply sharing her discovery. A bid for connection with her man. A felt invitation to see past his eternal and perfect state.
Her apple may have been an intuitive, instinctive urge to move out of fantasy and into the reality of pain and pleasure.
Eve helped Adam snap out of the garden paradise fantasy and his god like grandiosity. Eve helped to humanize Adam.
She didn’t dose and ghost him either.
She ate what she fed.
And Eve stayed by Adam’s side as they left their romantic fantasy paradise together.
In other words, she asserted herself and proactively shifted reality from paradise to practical.
What if they didn’t fall? What if they awakened? By transforming from the high of limerence, a narcissistic fantasy land into to the grounded work of an adult human in a mutual relationship.
By ingesting the apple, they internalized a new view of themselves — humbling and introspective.
Man’s callous and destructive domineering drives may have served a primal utility but at what cost. To take measure men often need to have our legs cut off and made to crawl on our belly’s to become a human capable of compassion.
Eve’s apple pulled back the veil clouding Adam’s ability to be a real man. Immortality and infinite pleasure without pain or death is every teenagers dream.
Aware of his nakedness, Adam could see his mortality and imperfections for the first time. Now, fully human Adam and Eve step out of the Eden and into the real world as human’s and helpmates.
Only by exposing our souls naked, frail, faulty, evilness can we face our fear and move from idealized relationships into human partnerships.
Like an initiation the former fantasy garden dies in order to craft a life in the real world with a real human partner.
Without Eve, Adam would have remained an immortal and stayed in Eden. Like Zeus and Mt. Olympus an unattainable myth for mere men.
Without Eve, we wouldn’t not be able to relate, or connect to our primordial parents because we are human and not perfect.
That’s what true love is, when two people bite the apple, realize they’re emotionally naked, evil and good yet chose to accept one another as they are, to be responsible, grow-up and suffer travail to bare the next generation.
To inhabit life not fantasy.
Without woman man tends to remain above the surface, grandiose and whose branches reach high. Like Eve, a woman has the power to bring us down to earth, into depth and whose roots reach low.
The deeper the roots the healthier the tree.
The secret to Sampson’s Herculean strength was tethered to the length of his long lox. By Delilah cutting Sampson’s hair she took his false-pride he kept masked.
She removed Sampson’s narcissistic defense — his dominance expressed through only physical power. Sampson didn’t posses depth or roots rather an external image of physical strength.
Delilah helped to transform Sampson from the god Hercules into a mortal. And through Sampson’s mortality he moved into his true destiny— Sampson’s mask represented by his hair was removed and his false person died so the man could give his life in order for others to live. A lesson in transformation, sacrifice and purpose. A purpose she helped him step into.
These dark aspects of Eve and Delilah is the Lilith-like forces who brake men, cause ruin and typify the image of loss men fear.
Forces seemingly malevolent can be treated as mythological symbols of fierce disruption. Disruptors to investigate, and not fear.
We have the knowledge of good and evil now and we must embrace a new hair cut, a new identity as men, or we will suffer Kali instead of laying with Aphrodite.
This requires the world of men to grow into emotional maturity and stop the meaningless pursuits of acquisition and external conquest. The only lands left to conquer is that of our inner emotional landscape.
“I have met the enemy, and he is us.” — Pogo
Know this and be wise.
Bro, this is the new frontier
As my letter progresses, I believe you will see profound insights into how we hurt people we love even when we don’t intend to.
As you read you will see how easy it is to inflict real damaging emotional pain on someone you love. You many not even know it but this is called emotional abuse .
Our psychology has a hard time allowing ourselves to see ourselves as wrong. Without real effort or Eve’s apple we don’t allow ourselves to see how we can be causing significant pain/evil and seriously wounding someone we love.
How?
By not meeting or denying her emotional needs. This isn’t trivial. This is vital.
Know this and be wise.
Break Up or Break the Cycle?
When we break up, we go through a split on many levels. A division in our psychology as a major level. Both parties go their separate ways and become the victim of the other person.
“He is an asshole.” Or in today’s terms, “He is a narcissist.”
“She is crazy.”
Off to find the next.
Both people project to save face. Typically, this is an ego defense to maintain our worldview, our ego identity, and our perception of ourselves. The ego resist change at all cost and will find a story to buttress it’s finger pointing position. “It’s not me, its you.”
The ex becomes the perpetrator, and you the victim— on both sides.
I took a different route. I spoke highly of her to everyone. I decided to view myself through her eyes, accept her reality as true, and see where that led.
Down the rabbit hole I went.
Buy catnip. Get her cat high. Laugh your asses off together.
Know this and be wise.
Heads up.
Before I go on, there is something you should know.
She may keep this a secret for a while.
She already has a man in her life.
It would be best to support this fact and not be insecure when you find out.
He is handsome and is totally in love with her.
(More on him later…)
What you do isn’t important. What she does isn’t important.
What matters most is how the other person feels when you ‘do’ or ‘don’t do’ something.
Once both partners understand the principles of identifying each other’s emotional needs by applying skills, the felt experience changes for both people.
Reality changes. Even toxic can transform into healthy. And that is what all the books teach no one wants to read.
Like running dirty water through a Britta filter we can make toxic pure.
For her sake, please read my letter and feel my words.
She likes PP&J’s with creamy peanut butter and grape jelly. Make one for her, and don’t say anything.
Know this and be wise.
She wants to experience the weight and lightness of the words; wife and husband.
A long white satin wedding dress. Elegant yet simple. Fluid yet substantial.
The simple fair. The witnesses. The formality. The music and mood.
To smudge cake on her groom’s face and to kiss off the icing in laughter.
To see her Dad’s face as he proudly gives away the bride.
To dance with reckless abandon yet safer and more content than she dreamed possible.
To feel the heavens part at the moment of vows when God’s love descends as thousands of angels perched upon the golden moment of “I do.”
If you listen and apply I can help get you to the alter but more importantly you will succeed where 1 out of every 2 people fail in the years to come.
She rides a road bike. Pump her tires before her ride. 75psi front and 85psi rear. Replace the spare tube in her saddle bag. It may be dry rot. (700x25c Presta valve) don’t say anything.
Know this and be wise.
We all respond differently to different people.
That doesn’t mean if she triggers you, she isn’t for you.
It means you are being asked to grow — the gift an awakened monogamous relationship can give if you do not give up.
You have to attune to her specific emotional needs, and you do this through the power of empathy.
That is hard to do if you are blinded by emotional unavailability, emotional immaturity, coping mechanisms, attachment styles, and triggers you are unaware of. Thing is, unless, you are Adam and Eve and God almighty is your parent then you probably have
How I responded to her not getting her needs met was a response to my needs not getting met and vice versa.
This starts the toxic cycle. Leading to triggers causing a host of defensive, critical, stonewalling and emotionally abusive encounters that leave us feeling anxious, abandoned, or wanting to run away to avoid feeling those feelings.
In other words, you start to interact with each other triggers because only in intimate relationships do we meet the fiercest protector parts in our psychology who’s job is to protect the wounded little kid behind the mask we wear for the rest of the world.
Until this fact is in your field of awareness as an adult, you are driving in circles or off a cliff with a different person doomed to repeat the same cycle.
You are not reacting to the person you love when triggered. You are reacting to an image from your internal movie projector. Your mind throws a picture onto them as your personal silver screen.
you co-opt their face into your drama in order to reenact unhealed wounds from your past.
A projection your mind overlays on your partner. You start interacting with your internal fears and childhood wounds wearing their face.
This projection is emotionally learned behavior from past traumas hard-wired into our nervous system and launched involuntarily onto our partner.
What mom and dad did or didn’t do that left you scared, neglected, dismissed, belittled, criticized and frightened as a child is a program that runs underneath our conscious mind.
When in intimate relationships this program is running and interpreting our emotional triggers and driving our unhealthy or even pathological behavior.
When triggered, we no longer see the person’s needs. We feel hurt and blame the other person for how we feel inside.
Couples reenact their childhood trauma’s experienced with their caregiver(s) in order to heal. When this happens people break-up because we think “it’s them, not me.”
But according to many psychologist this is the power struggle stage and it is at this defining point where two people can heal and begin the journey of real intimacy.
It’s psychology, not a mystery.
She sleeps with earplugs. The soft orange kind you can get in bulk at Lowe’s. Keep some on hand, stash extra in places she may need them, and don’t say anything.
Know this and be wise.
I was figuring out what that meant in action.
The way she needed.
Not the way I thought she needed.
Big difference.
It doesn’t matter if you are normal, neurotypical, or struggle with a mood or what some call personality disorders.
Our needs are much all the same. We are all human — at least most of us.
Each individual has nuance, and extremes we have to discover and attune to meet their emotional needs to keep in balance or in other words emotionally regulated.
When you can co-regulate is the point where no matter the conflict you both feel emotionally secure.
Instead of focusing on flaws, I moved to study how I could be a man who could meet a woman’s emotional needs.
Not based on hip-podcasts, guru types I have followed, movies, societal stories or family narratives.
She has a little thing for gummy bears. Buy a bag, and stick them in her purse where she’ll find them at work.
Know this and be wise.
Do not assume she is like “women.” Do not generalize, label, diagnose, or stereotype her.
Hopefully, she will return the favor.
Don’t distract her with teasing, morning sex, finishing your thoughts, or whatever might make her late for work causing anxiety.
Make her willingness to love you without adverse consequence or stress.
Date her values long before dating what’s between her legs.
Hold your tongue to hold her heart.
White lies are lies.
Lies are betrayals of the soul.
Small betrayals lead to big betrayals.
And betrayals kill.
Don’t micro cheat (look it up).
Do not criticize her.
Do not mansplain even when you think you are helping.
Do not fix her.
Do not stonewall her.
Do not argue.
Do not belittle her.
Do not love-bomb her.
Do not manipulate her.
Do not gaslight her.
Do not use her for sex.
Do not gossip about her.
Do not triangulate on her.
Do not posture. She can feel threatened.
Do not be a predator and prey on her vulnerabilities by exploiting her while acting as her savior or benefactor.
This keeps her in a victim mindset and robs her of her power and sovereignty.
If she asks for “candy” in bed right before turning the lights out. Know that this is code for gummy style melatonin.
Know this and be wise.
Do be 100% honest.
Do gratitude and not flattery.
Do let her influence you.
Do respect her, her input, and her counsel.
Do active listening.
Do non-violent communication.
Do assertiveness without aggression and allow her the same.
Do boundaries and not walls.
Do treat her as a best friend.
Do repair ruptures after conflict.
Do communicate with gentleness and kindness.
Do control your emotions.
Do take space when triggered and return when calm to repair.
Do empathy and validation as daily foreplay.
Do your emotional inner work, read a book, for gods sake read, and get on purpose.
Do man up, take f*cking responsibility, drop all excuses and be a healthy, emotionally mature adult.
*Now, throw that list out the window. If a list of do and donts worked we would all be living in a Utopia.
What I describe in the rest of my letter explains why.
Do buy her Paqui Salsa Verde chips, and don’t say anything.
Know this and be wise.
See yourself not as the creator of her peace.
Instead, see yourself as a partner in peace.
Ensure you don’t pressure her to spend too much time together. She needs you time, she needs her time, she needs her friend’s time.
Don’t flatter her. She will see right through you.
Instead, speak gratitude. Tell her specific things you are grateful for.
Don’t be lame and say, “I am thankful for you.”
Instead, notice her details.
Notice how she places her essential oils just so.
Notice how she organizes her dishes.
Notice her penmanship.
Notice how she makes lists and see how fluid, thoughtful, detailed, and evenly spaced her words are written on her college rule notepad.
Notice if she texts you in complete sentences. The way she organizes her clothes.
Find out why she wears that one necklace and that one pair of earrings more than the others.
Notice things that hold sentimental value to her and honor this.
Notice when she puts her hair up and which way she twists her hair into a bun.
Compliment the shape of her ears. The moles on her tummy. The length of her toes.
Always her eyes and especially her great ass.
Show gratitude anytime she does a thing you like or find cute or kind.
Don’t speak when she annoys you.
Instead, see the annoyance as something alive in you, investigate within, and grow.
If you give too many compliments, she will doubt your sincerity.
Too few, and she will doubt herself.
Life and death sit on the tip of your tongue.
Reality reflects what you put out.
Your words and thoughts are a boomerang.
She is modest but a model nonetheless. When she puts on make up and a dress get your camera out and take her to the symphony.
Know this and be wise.
Your friends are not a place to share private details.
That is gossip.
Gossip is wrong.
Gossip is the gateway to backbiting, which devolves into anti-social behavior, resentment, and contempt.
This is a perversion and will be death to a relationship.
If you are sharing with friends and family, remember you can’t get back the picture painted, and you may paint yourself into a corner and find yourself stuck later down the road.
Doubt only needs a crack to destroy a house. Keep the monkey mind in check.
Triangulation can be in your men’s group, trusted friends, or family members.
I have been guilty of triangulation, and after studying the Karpman Drama Triangle, I realized just how low rent and destructive this behavior is —no matter the forum or context.
You may not know, but you or she will feel the emotional void created by gossip, lies, and triangulation on an energetic level. Even if you don’t believe in that stuff you’re not going to avoid the subtle feelings that perverts the purity of a loving bond by mixing in bad juju.
Leading to more triggers and eventually destruction.
The means never justify the ends. Psychopaths use the same logic.
Make the bed with her as a habit and symbol of togetherness. The gesture of love will be with her all day and don’t say anything.
Know this and be wise.
Do what is best for growth, not comfort.
Stop buying into the socially sanctioned hedonic value system most of the world lives by.
Whereby how she makes you feel is the determining factor in whether to stay together or not.
Happiness is fleeting and comes and goes regardless of circumstances or partner. If you only stick around for good feelings, then know you are just using a body to validate your insecurity.
If you rely on her for happiness, you will mysteriously fall out of love after the high of limerence fades.
I am reluctant to share this secret, but this one thing means the world to her and helps her soothe and ground.
You can do this in the car, at a restaurant, or on the couch.
Turn her arm palm facing up across your lap. And lightly, yet firmly drag and scratch your fingers, stroking the length of her forearm repeatedly.
Know this and be wise.
Clean up your Instagram or internet life.
Look at the accounts you follow. Profile yourself based on the type of accounts you idolize, idealize, lust after, and fantasize about.
What type of coaches are you following? Do they objectify women, exploit, and triangulate? (Talking to you as they refer to the person who isn’t in the room).
Are they the savior, and you the victim?
Are they passive-aggressively misogynistic?
If you are following and scrolling fantasy bate, you are already cheating.
Females have a vagina and boobs and come in all shapes and sizes. Decide if the one you are with has values that are compatible with yours. Decide love is choice and not a feeling and begin the work.
Otherwise, if you are on the constant womanizing Ferris wheel, this reflects your heart-shaped hole no person with a different vagina and tits can fill.
Unfollow the garbage.
This is a reflection of your truth. A picture of who you are on the inside.
Drop your fantasy girl from your mind, IG, and anywhere else you will unfairly compare her to.
Hopefully, she will clean-up her social media life and return the honor, but you can’t require it.
Unfair, I know, but love has to be reciprocated by someones free will and autonomy or it is not love. Instead it’s little exits, escapes and immaturity.
You may inspire her.
No man or human is Superman or Superwoman — to fantasize like this is grandiose, narcissistic, foolish, and childish.
The grass is never greener under someone else’s skirt or tie.
Instead, buy her a turquoise studded necklace, and don’t make it a big deal.
Know this and be wise.
Come out of the cloud.
All relationships will hit toxic points as you grow.
Before you see her as the cause of the “toxic relationship,” consider what you contribute.
Triggers are not incompatibilities.
Shared values are compatibilities.
Your Triggers point to your work, not hers.
Before you break up with her because you believe she is unsuitable or “toxic.”
Consider getting tools and practicing relationship skills together. Seriously.
After learning relationship skills, don’t be surprised if you perceive she is a different person.
Reality is funny like that.
If you notice her cat box has been neglected, it’s not that she has forgotten. She is probably overwhelmed (could be you) which is stressing her out but she may not show it. Clean it, and don’t say anything.
Know this and be wise.
You have to want more than a movie script.
If your values are based on what makes you happy, then you will always be skin deep, and your experience of love will be superficial. A roller-coaster at best.
Life moves quickly.
You don’t have much time.
Better to be a boulder that drops into the depths of the sea than a skipping stone skimming across the surface of a bunch of ponds.
Idealizing (idealization) a new partner, then looking for and finding flaws (devalue), then breaking up once again (discard).
Floating on hot air in a fragile balloon.
Repeating fatalistic cycles. Eventually, you stop believing in love and use people for meaningless sex while becoming cynical, numb, and jaded.
Over time with repeated break ups and traumas, you will believe universal pejoratives about her and women.
To cope, you find shows and comedians masking sadness with humor. Sadly, many women have come to feel this way about men too.
Therefore, you treat them with defensive assumptions loaded with judgments.
You must help her overcome those assumptions and judgments by building trust by addressing your emotional deficits first.
Step into manhood and step out of your Peter Pan Never Never Land.
Do this and be wise.
The earlier you accept growth as the goal and not comfort, the sooner you will craft a meaningful life.
Authentic happiness can only come through the tenure of trial and error.
An abiding desire to meet her needs with her reciprocating the same is critical.
That starts with dating her potential, nuance, and novelty.
Yes, date Her Potential.
Throw the “don’t date someone’s potential” trendy pop-culture rhetoric out the window. yes, there is data that says people don’t change after 25 year old. However, there is more substantial data that points to the malleability of the brain via neuroplasticity.
Think about it?
Are you the same as you were 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago? Probably not.
It’s useless trash and complete fantasy. The best predictor of someones future is not their past. That dogma is best left to the atheists, and nihilists.
Date her potential, date your potential, and date your joint potential.
The only thing beyond this present moment is pure potentiality.
Better to date her potential than her fantasy. Or be the judgmental asshole casting the first stone based on her past.
Are you a perfect cosmic package ready for the universe to deliver you to her because she has ‘manifested’ or ‘attracted’ you?
No.
Neither is she.
No one is. To believe that would be narcissistic.
So, don’t buy into this pseudo-pop culture wishful thinking.
Think about it…
If she, on the other side, has been self-caring, self-healing, and self-loving while, doing women’s circles, red tents, and goddess retreats in hopes her self-work has ‘magnetized’ or ‘manifested’ you then consider you’re setting yourselves up for a shared fantasy.
Successful relationships are built, not found, magnetized, or manifested. (I am into the woo more than most but this is where I have had to mature and see through the veneer of feel good spirituality).
Changing your scene and resonating with someone who is more mature is not cracking a magical cosmic code.
Being the ‘manifested one’ is an ego trip headed for the train station.
Example: If you have been focusing purely on yourself to ‘attract’ or ‘manifest’ at the exclusion of learning nuts and bolts relationship skills to meet the emotional needs of your partner then you could be in a narcissistic fantasy bubble for two.
This leads to idealizing, and the devaluation has to follow.
No one can sustain a fantasy even if it’s spiritualized.
She has to mirror your fantasy and idealize you in return for participating.
You both create what is called a ‘shared fantasy’ in psychology.
As soon as mistakes are made, the fantasy bubble will suffer a rupture. She sees red flags instead of superman, and you see that IG bate you didn’t unfollow.
Since neither of you learned relationship skills to meet each other emotional needs, the narcissistic, co-dependent, toxic cycles of labels begins to spiral with spiritualized language.
Breaking up then is repackaged and becomes spiritual bypassing. They were just lessons we tell ourselves in order to make a meaningful narrative out of the pain.
What if you didn’t learn anything other than how to be more numb and proficient at breaking up? Unless, someone is learning skills to do relationship you’ll stay on repeat.
This self-care model is suitable to an extent, but it has its limitations.
Open the door for her. No, this gentlemanly gesture has not gone our of style. Only when you stop doing it does it go out of style.
Know this and be wise.
When choosing her, choose a eudaemonic value system.
Where happiness is the result of your conduct together and not the goal.
A joint vision and commitment to grow in love and build a secure attachment with her.
Anything else is just hormones, hook-ups, and break-ups masking as Peter Pan — a Never Never Land syndrome hiding behind sex lib, spiritual bypassing, and PC labels.
A Sisyphus-like life.
Be cautious not to conflate fantasy with needs.
Instead, please give her a shoulder rub with your thumbs. Use strong hands. She likes firm pressure. Dig in on her right side, just below her trapezius, just above the top of her shoulder blade. She holds a lot of tension there.
Know this and be wise.
See her as a flawed human; love her good and bad parts.
The only thing you need to ask is this:
Are you both on board and willing to grow?
Treat the relationship as a joint adventure. Like an investment that requires an exchange of value, and over time, you will accrue dividends.
Relieve her from the trendy pressure to be at some magical point where she’ll ‘manifest’ or ‘attract’ the perfect guy.
Otherwise, you risk dipping into the unhealthy side of the narcissistic tool bag.
Exhausting, stressful, and unrealistic.
You are a human, and no human can compete with another human’s fantasy.
You are not Superman, regardless of title, money, or position. She is not Superwoman because of beauty, youth, or status — no human is.
You are ensouled, embodied, and incarnate.
For now, you are in the realm of limitation.
Enjoy the gift of restraint, stop lusting after your eternal nature, and miss the point of the earth experience.
She likes Malbec but isn’t picky. Buy her a red and don’t say anything. Just put it in her wine spot.
Know this and be wise.
If you speak ill of her.
You speak ill of yourself.
You chose her.
To speak ill of your choice is to believe you chose poorly.
If you believe you chose poorly, then you perceive yourself as poor.
If you believe you are poor, you will perceive yourself as a victim.
If you are a victim, then you project responsibility for your poverty onto her.
If responsibility lies within her domain, then you will see yourself as powerless in your domain.
If you are powerless, you are not responsible for your impoverished soul and won’t labor or seek salvation or redemption under your own unction.
Instead, you will seek validation from others, coaches, gurus, rescuers, saviors, aka predators.
You will choose poorly again.
Because all you can see in her and the next person is what you chose to avoid in yourself - a fantasy.
Make her french toast with brioche and bitters on Saturday morning. Kiss the maple syrup from her lips.
Know this and be wise.
If you do not have a therapist, get one.
Not just any therapist. Research, interview, and qualify. Find one who challenges you while validating you. Someone who has moved past outdated labels and can help you integrate your whole person on the journey to self-actualization.
It would be best if you had a purpose. I don’t mean hobby or your corner office career.
If you do not have a purpose, you will inadvertently put too much pressure on her, causing her anxiety.
If you’re a workaholic, alcoholic, or addict, she will resent you and your self-hatred. Even if she is the same way she will hate you for hating yourself and hate herself more for you hating yourself leading to her hating herself even more.
She can’t fully respect you if you do not have a healthy work-life balance.
If she can’t respect you, then she can’t trust you.
If these things aren’t in alignment within yourself, and she is with you, then know she is not with you for love; you are being used for a lifestyle, temporary experiences, money, or vanity validation.
She loves foot rubs after work. She will return the gesture.
Know this and be wise.
Make love to her mind and heart before her body.
Take your time and require her to do the same.
Become friends before you become lovers.
If she sings in front of you when not in front of a group, then know she is complimenting you.
You must be a stable, empathetic anchor and rock.
Your tranquility and calm energy must come from a higher power than yourself.
You must have a strong core sense of self and an even stronger spiritual practice.
Let her be in process. Her process.
No matter what that looks like or feels like to you.
Do NOT try to change her emotions.
No matter how they may appear to you.
There is no such thing as bad and good emotions.
The difference is how we react to those emotions. Let them rise and recede.
Ebb and flow like clouds passing.
Remember, Clouds Passing.
Be okay with whatever is alive in her. Hold space and do nothing.
If you do something other than validate her, she will feel you are not listening to her.
Get that. Reread it.
For example. A woman’s emotional thought spiral may look like this: If you are not listening, that means, you don’t know her. Which means she sitting next to you but doesn’t know you because you don’t know her. Which means the relationship won’t work. Which means she needs to break up with you. Which means she is going to be devastated. Which means she may start feeling there is no point to go on living.
Invalidating her is like ripping the earth out from under her feet. Leaving her to tumble through space with no net to catch her.
The more you talk. The more you try to help. The more she tumbles through space, lost in a confusing maze of emotions.
Encouragement can be invalidating too.
Toxic positivity is telling someone something that feels untrue for that person at that moment.
That is invalidation.
Instead, feed her toasted sourdough bread from Whole Foods’ baked goods section. Not too much butter, and add a touch of coarse sea salt. Oh, remember to pre-slice the loaf at the store.
Know this and be wise.
It seems counterintuitive, but this is the secret to making her feel safe in her body and with you.
You have to fully see, hear, and hold her whole being — emotions and all.
As they are.
As she is.
She is okay and not wrong to have her feelings.
This will help create a hidden sanctuary for her and you — a sacred place of togetherness.
Build this for her so she can nest her weary heart and metamorphize from sad to happy or angry to peaceful on her terms, not yours.
Empathy connects you and helps you attune to her internal need, and validation helps to create the security and path to a thriving relationship.
You become an abode whose door is always open to receive her, whose candle is always lit to light her path, and whose love is welcoming, kind, gentle, firm, warm, and enduring.
Spin and dip her often. Look into her eyes to tell her you will never let her go without saying a word and mean it.
Know this and be wise.
If she approaches you.
Receive her.
Refrain from rebuffing her approach. Your work is less important — your whatever thing is less important. She is your top priority but not your purpose.
She must know she is always okay to feel what is alive in her and can come to you.
She needs to know she can feel the totality of her emotions without shame by you projecting anything onto her.
Over time you will help her heal her unseen guilt, shame and the deep emotional wounds she has worked so hard to overcome.
This is a requirement, and you must rise to the challenge for her.
She lets her hair gather up at the bottom of the shower drain. Clean it, and don’t say anything.
Know this and be wise.
Everything you give, give freely.
No expectations, or she will feel an unspoken obligation creating unnecessary anxiety.
If she trusts you, then she will give freely in return.
She will test you.
Do not take it personally.
Be direct, and be clear with no ambiguity.
In return, you will earn her respect, and devotion.
In time, your clarity and intention on her will allow her to soften, and she will admire your masculinity drawing out her deep femininity.
If you have no intention of a lifelong relationship with her or are still unsure what you want in a partner, get out.
If you see her as a sexual conquest, you act as an immature man-child.
She is not your experiment.
Know this, or I may hunt you down.
See the subtext in her context.
Look beyond words and actions to see her greater need.
If she pulls away or if she pushes into you.
Either way, it is a bid for connection.
Remember; subtext.
The art of reading between the lines.
She will need to regulate her emotions with you in her life. This may take time.
How long? However, long.
It’s a dance, and you are her new dancing partner.
Make this process easy for her.
Allow her to find a rhythm that meets her emotional needs with you.
Remain steady.
She may approach, and then she may avoid.
Remain steady.
This will change over time as trust builds.
Remain steady.
She may seem destabilized and unsure at times.
Remain steady.
When triggered, be a big boy, disengage, and give space.
Let her breathe.
Remain steady.
If you treat her like your enemy, she will treat you like you are her enemy.
Do not turn molehills into mountains because your emotions are dysregulated do to your insecurities you haven’t dealt with.
She enjoys horseback riding. Grab some wranglers, plan an outing, and saddle up, cowboy.
Know this and be wise.
Every moment is her reality.
What she feels in that moment is her felt reality.
Moments change; therefore, her reality changes.
This is her experience of life on earth.
Not yours.
Respect the qualities that make her different than you.
Let her have her reality by validating her experience at each moment.
If she accuses you of being a barbarian who has slaughtered all that is right, decent, and good in this world, be expansive, symbolical, and allegorical enough to accept this as a possibility.
And calmly let her know you see how she could feel this way. “Anyone could have felt that way in that situation.” And see that as true because it is true for her.
If you do anything other than validate her in her moment of distress, what she feels you are saying is that she is wrong for feeling her feelings.
Image that.
Feel that inside of you.
How awful would that feel? Feeling wrong for feeling a feeling hurts and wounds her. An internal beating. Bleeding where the eyes can not see.
This is emotional abuse.
To be wrong, evil, or sinful for having your emotions can feel like gaslighting and disorienting.
Even if you are not lying to manipulate her reality, she may interpret how her emotional need was rejected and feel like she was gaslighted or manipulated into feeling something that was not true for her.
She may not know what to believe. Even if your logic is correct, if her feeling is wrong, all she will sense is her world caving in and reality itself folding in on her.
It’s feeling the feeling our feelings are wrong as we were kids that make loving and being loved so hard as adults in a relationship and is the root of our triggers.
This is the root of [most] disordered behavior and past or present relationship dysfunction.
Orienting your feelings within yourself first, then with her, would be best.
She needs to feel her feelings are loved more than her external beauty or ability to perform duties and tasks.
Make her a bowl of vanilla yogurt with granola for breakfast and hand it to her with a kiss on the cheek and don’t say anything.
Know this and be wise.
She can get external validation from social media and random men on the prowl.
She can get accolades from her career.
She doesn’t need your money.
She can get emotional validation from her girlfriends if she can’t get it from you.
What, then, are you good for? Your penis and hypergamy.
If she is self-supported financially and you can’t hold her emotional well-being safe, then consider that all you have to offer is superficial attachment and a dick. That is not a relationship.
In other words, she is using you.
Don’t be a fool. She needs more from you to not recent herself or you.
She needs acceptance and a man to love her as she is, emotion and all.
Take her to a Celine Dion or Bon Iver concert. Buy tickets, and don’t make it a big deal.
Know this and be wise.
Deepen your ability to empathize with her:
To love her. You must be able to feel her feelings.
This ability is called empathy.
The ability to feel another person’s feelings.
Empathy is the most precious gift you can cultivate. The second most precious gift you can give her is validation.
Empathy + Validation = Trust and Safety.
By you feeling her feelings (empathy) without changing them but rather confirming them (validation) is your duty and honor in this relationship.
Love her as an unfolding mystery and forever remain curious about her inner world, dreams, and desires.
Build with her.
The moment you think you have the answer is the exact moment you have lost the answer.
Authentic humility is sexy.
Your money, title, stories, or lack thereof is not commensurate to competency in this relationship.
You will grow out of love if you are unwilling to grow in love.
Her cat loves goat’s milk. Buy her a bottle, and don’t say anything.
Know this and be wise.
Don’t assume what she likes.
Ask her questions. Lots of questions.
Take time to discover her.
Diligently seek to know what her values are and what her vision is for her future.
If you know and respect her values, she will not have to hold boundaries as a safety blanket. The purpose of boundaries is to protect our autonomy and values.
If you know and show respect for her as an individual with her values, she will feel safe, and boundaries become secondary to the trust you share.
She then feels power in her autonomy with you as a person, and she can feel you holding her boundaries without her having to stress about enforcing them.
This is an intuitive, emotionally intelligent, empathetic attunement practice.
Craft this skill as a legendary Japanese swordsmith would fashion a blade for the Emperor.
Just because you are in an intimate relationship with her doesn’t give you a right to cross unspoken boundaries and deliver unsolicited advice.
If she values your input, she will ask you for your advice.
You should know she does not authentically respect you if she does not ask for your input.
Do not conflate fear for respect or passivity for submission.
Know this and be wise.
Cultivating Empathy
To feel the other you must feel yourself. You must move past your robotic behaviors and sink into what you feel. How little or how much. Start the journey. Do you know the felt difference between guilt and shame or anger and aggression or sadness and depression?
You have to map out the territory of your internal emotions. Until, you become a cartographer of your emotional topography you are navigating blind with your hands off the wheel.
Not knowing what feeling corresponds with the emotion or knowing how to regulate those feelings is called emotional immaturity.
Once you have sketched out a crude map of your emotional life. You can be more perceptive and introspective. Open your eyes and ears to hear her beyond her words. Recognize the enormous mountains she has overcome to get to where she is.
This essential skill is key to growing up. Like the title of David Richo’s book this is, “How To Be an Adult in Relationship.”
To see her. To know her. It would be best if you intuited her as a little girl, a teenager, a young adult, and an adult. Her whole story, the pain, the challenges, the agony, the sadness, the defeats, the scar tissue, as well as her victories, pleasures, joys and pastimes.
Knowing and feeling this person as a whole human is the gateway to real connection.
When you hug her, hold all of her.
No matter how good of a job she does, she is always fighting with her inner critic.
She doesn’t need you to be her external critic.
Instead celebrate her.
Commiserate with her over small victories and small sorrows.
Know this and be wise.
Be different from every other horn dog.
Court her.
Wait to have sex with her or slow the frequency down to increase the polarity — that is to say, the sexual energy.
Even if she is willing and consenting.
If she is looking for lifetime love and you sexually pursue her regardless of consent, you take advantage of her need for validation or willingness to please. Ultimately, this is usury and predatory. Back off let her set the tempo or hold the tension.
If you reduce her to an object, then she will reduce you to an object.
Instead, you will show her that your interest and intention are on her value as a person, not on what is between her legs.
She will respect you. Her attraction for you will build and drive her wild.
She will puddle.
Keep her puddling.
Relish in her puddles like a little bird playing in a bird bath on a sunny day.
Show her an uncommon strength, and she will show you uncommon pleasure.
Know this and be wise.
You are a man.
If she is physically attracted to you, then you need to be responsible for the power you wield.
You may not be aware, but masculine men have a trance-like effect on many women just like she does on you.
Never take advantage of her inability to resist her desire to surrender to your masculine power.
If you do, you are nothing more than a sexual predator. The likes of which are easily missed in today’s hook-up culture.
She wants to believe there is more than this. Please give this to her.
Know this and be wise.
Please help her find her voice by validating and not challenging her.
You may find it easy to speak up.
She may not.
Please do not put words in her mouth.
Please respect her whispers and hear her emotions.
Please give her just enough space to breath and process without triggering her engulfment anxiety.
Please stay close enough to assure her of your devotion without triggering her abandonment anxiety.
It’s a dance; not too much and not too little.
Learn this dance as if your life depended on it, and take her to learn Bachata dancing.
You are building the love she needs and your investment will be rewarded. Trust this process.
Understand, she may project her father wound onto you.
Even if she starts to call you “Daddy” in the bedroom, be wise.
Kinks can be sexy. Healing is sexier.
Know this and be wise.
About that man I said earlier, you would need to make room for in bed.
The tuff part is squeezing a tall girl and a big guy into a queen size bed with another male — even if he is much smaller.
And when his furry silver-haired four-legged Garfield size body is tucked, snoring away the night between her legs, leave him be and wait your turn even if you want to spoon.
Ensure she gets the shower first after returning from a trip because she likes, “to wash the airplane off.”
She loves hiking.
Plan trips.
Make loving you simple,
easy,
attainable,
and rewarding.
Over time you will build trust and safety.
Again, Empathy + Validation = Trust and Safety.
That’s it, bro. That’s your logical formula. Your job. Your duty and your purpose in her life.
Have a clear vision and help her see the evidence of your devotion every day.
Do not learn on her. Learn with her.
Your values serve as a guiding compass and North Star.
Whether you believe love is or isn’t conditional matters not.
You give freely, not because of reward or to deny her to gain an advantage.
Love her as your highest honor.
A treasure above all riches or fleshly pleasures.
She is not a possession but a privilege.
Do not be idle for a second less you take her wonder and beauty for granted.
Like a Queen of the Night flower, she blossoms for but for a glance and then vanishes into the night.
Freeze every image of her in your mind.
Memorize her every freckle and wrinkle.
Feel how tender her skin is after a shower then oil her.
And consider the steps she has taken as a child to become the women you now hold.
Let her run and jump into your arms.
If you can’t handle her lightness of leaping into your arms, I suggest you get to the gym.
This is not a deal breaker for her, but she needs to have these romantic experiences as often as possible while you two are still young.
She likes Americanos with oat milk. Learn and remember what she likes and don’t say anything.
She is tall, poised, and elegant.
Nonetheless, she is a female and maybe tiny next to you.
She desires to feel your power and strength.
Pick her up, carry her to bed, and softly lay her down.
She needs to feel raptured by you, lost in you, intoxicated by you, but she needs complete confidence that you will set her feet firmly back down in alignment with her values and integrity.
Her moments of surrender are yours to safeguard, not exploit.
Invest in her pleasure first.
She will reward you in spades.
She will want to explore her shadow, but let her lead until she gives you the reins.
Help her discover greater depth inside herself. Allow her to feel accepted wherever pleasure takes her body.
Explore bliss and expand into the cosmic abyss together, where she can transcend her racing thoughts, to be 100% in the present moment, and connect with her divinity.
Be unafraid and invite her inside yourself where she can be curious to explore your inner world without judgment.
Make witnessing her erotic nature your holiest and most sacred act.
Make love like ravenous animals in the grove wood on a full moon and tender love on the couch by the chimney fire on a cold winter’s night with hot chocolate and an old book.
Allow your energy to inspire her kundalini to ascend from her deep well, roar, hiss, and bite in torturous delight — surge after surge, wave after wave, until satiated with unspeakable joy.
Celebrate her expansions and hold her contractions safe.
Thread her needle with your teardrops and hold her hair from the loom of life’s adversities.
Let her gather the pieces of yourselves at the altar of your love, and she will knit a clan cloth, a talisman charged with your shared passions, woven from fabric laced with fluid, flesh, and blood. A symbol of our broken threads made stronger together.
Walk through the labyrinth of time and disappear into her secret garden.
Follow her and discover new colors to hear, sounds to taste, and sights to feel.
Help her feel poetry coursing in her veins.
Help her remap pleasure until she feels full, whole, and holy.
Give her a salt bath while she reads and brush her hair every once in a while.
Know this and be wise.
Take care of each other.
Let her roll onto your bare chest if you wake up before her. Steal an extra moment of the night. Linger longer than you should.
Do not disturb the angel drooling on you.
Love her puddles — wherever they come from.
Pray for her.
Think not of nightly routines. Instead, drink in the sight of her luminous naked body as she walks from brushing her teeth to crawling into bed, for you are witnessing a miracle in motion.
Go shopping for lamps with her and read to her on Sunday afternoon when it rains until she dozes off.
Go with her to EDM shows and dance.
Learn how to be in your body with her.
Look out for her in public.
She has to think when alone, especially in public, constantly.
Your confident and tranquil presence can help her relax her mind.
Direct her movements from the small of her back.
This is a small, easy way to help remove stress from her life.
Hold her hand in the car.
Kiss her on her forehead. This signals that you are looking out for her.
Be willing to die for her and know this down to the marrow of your bones.
Loving her is one thing, but to adore her implies a sense of honor and duty.
Adore her by respecting that your solution is not always a woman’s prerogative.
Please take time to be with her when she puts her cat on a leash. Acting like walking cats like dogs is normal, and I love this about her.
If you feel this is a lot to take in, well then, buddy, this is just the start.
You got to unlearn to start learning and the journey is just beginning.
Treat it like an adventure of a lifetime and a meaningful life you will have.
Loving a woman is soul-craft.
Get over yourself, and she will help you become the best version of yourself.
If you feel overwhelmed by it all, I understand.
Growth is a tearing down and building up.
Men need to accept the promotion women have been trying to give us.
A new role. A new purpose.
Our purpose is to provide for and protect her emotional needs. No longer is providing or protecting her physical needs enough.
It never has been.
Turn a blind eye to the resentful feminist and self-styled experts passive-aggressively blame-shaming men and toxic masculinity while labeling us like stockyard cattle.
Men need to step out of the defense mindset even if we feel we are being attacked.
To do this we need to hear the subtext in their context and not take the attacks personally.
We need to hear their outcry for what it is; a masked unmet need. Buried emotional pain turned outward.
Know this and be wise.
Women are natural healers and nurturers.
The feminist who raises their fist to rally the crowd under a contemptuous banner and speak disparagingly against men may be identified with their resentments they have become identified with their pain-body.
They may have lost their innate sense of self in the process. For we need each other.
If men are armed with compassion, empathy, and the power of emotional intelligence, then we can be a healing salve to their collective wounds.
Metaphorically, this is the age of Aquarius, and Men can be the water bearers. To show strength though vulnerability and wisdom in humility. To wash the wounded, initiate the boys no matter the age, and cleanse the sins of our fathers.
In time, fathers will embody emotional wisdom, and sons will not hurt women but rather be vigilant protectors of their virtuous light.
Know this and be wise.
Chivalry is not dead. It’s being reborn.
You, loving her, in these ways, is the essential starting point.
Love the one you’re with. Go the distance with one.
Starting with you we can have a future where our counter-specie is proud of mankind, as she is proud of you.
Embracing the dignity of being a womb-man. Resolving our collective conflict and restoring our birthrights together as equals.
Our physical strength and progenerative force is big.
Women’s emotional strength and nutritive force is big.
Together, the bigness between us can be a benevolent force for good, the land will prosper and the people will rejoice.
Us men, have to stop being afraid their emotions by learning about our own. In time they too may see us in awe and affirm our lives with words of encouragement, affirmation, gratitude and not dismissal, disappear or contempt.
Whether they want to blame us, shame or help us does not change our task.
I need a woman, and I have zero shame in saying so.
The battle, we as men, face is internal.
The victory is overcoming our emotional complexities in our sometimes vacuous and monolithic bodies.
No longer seeking to wage world wars or fight fruitless external battles.
Once men have resolved their internal conflicts the illusory need to fight each other will end.
Women need men to win the war within themselves.
To become ally’s of their emotional safekeeping and friends.
Cooperative guardians of her holy grail.
Womb-men need Men.
She needs you.
I need you.
I am you.
PS. think! Brand brownie crunch is her favorite protein bar. Keep these on hand, and don’t say anything.
Know this and be wise.