this year I became a multi-millionare
so they started showing up.
girls who wouldn't look at me in college,
the same ones who used to call me
"that weird guy who smokes cigars at nineteen"
suddenly sliding into my dm’s or emails
with their tits out and their hearts closed.
"omg you look so good now"
I looked exactly the same, maybe worse,
same belly and same bad knee,
the bank account had a new haircut.
thats all.
I deleted them one by one
while Sam snored next to me
with drool on my pillow.
she was there when I ate canned tuna for a month,
visited me in jail everyfuckingday except mondays,
right beside me when the publisher said no,
and the second one said no,
then the third one said, "who?"
she held my head in her lap
in a room with no aircon while Im wailing then sobbing,
then she said, "fuck them, you'll win"
right there and then,
I knew I already won.
those girls at the top can go to hell.
the woman who sat in the dirt with me
gets every dollar, every kiss,
and the last cigar in the box
men.
you are at war.
find the woman who will crawl into the uncomfortable foxhole with you.
who will sweep the dirt and try her best to turn it into a home.
who will power you with love so you can fight at the best of your ability.
there's a bunch of girls outside the hole, waiting for you to win so they can tell you how great you did.
they’re scum.
you need the one who was in the hole with you.
and never let you down.
understand?
try this.
if you really want to find out whether a girl is the one,
take her on a trip.
a long one. a thousand-kilometer, sore-ass, gas-station-coffee kind of trip.
cover every bill.
stretch it long enough and you'll hit the wall where everything turns uncomfortable.
she's starving.
the tire is flat.
rain is hammering the windshield, the wipers squealing back and forth.
you're both miserable.
the boredom is crushing, minutes dragging.
there's no distraction to crawl into and pacify yourself.
that moment is where the magic lives.
it's the ultimate litmus test. watch how she reacts. then watch yourself.
you'll know. instantly.
picture two women on that same wet road.
one climbs out into the rain, holds the flashlight while you jack up the car, and cracks a joke about this being the worst vacation of her life. she's soaked to the bone, laughing, passing you the lug nuts one by one.
the other sits in the passenger seat with her arms crossed, sulking, sighing loud enough to fog the windows, making you feel like you personally ordered the storm.
one of those women is a teammate. the other is dead weight with a pretty face.
this is the moment of truth, the one that makes everything clear. crystal clear.
comfort is a mask. discomfort rips it off.
who you become when you're uncomfortable is who you are.
her triggers, her true nature, everything she keeps hidden comes bubbling to the surface, the way oil rises out of water.
you have to poke at her emotionally to see what she's really made of. press on the bruise.
how do you know she's the one?
take her on a long road trip.
push it until it's uncomfortable and you can barely stand each other.
far enough that you might even hate each other, until you catch yourself resenting her.
eventually you'll hate everything: the road, the rain, the radio, the sound of your own breathing.
and right there, when you hate everything, look over at her. if some part of you still wants her in that passenger seat, if she's still the one you'd choose to be stranded with, you have your answer.
but duhbid, why????
listen to me, brother.
because life is one long string of flat tires in the rain. a fifty-year marriage is a road trip with no exit ramp. you need to test her tolerance for the fire and see how gracefully she walks through it.
endless dopamine and happiness is a fairy tale they sell to kids.
what really counts is how well you endure the trials and tribulations waiting down the road. honeymoons end. flat tires keep coming.
unemotionality
up in Sagada, deep in the mountains of the Philippines, there's a tradition older than anyone can remember. they hang coffins off the faces of cliffs.
I went there last year and
an old man in Sagada,
ninety years old, no teeth,
a loincloth and a cigarette made of leaves (lomboy),
told me the secret of women
while we sat by a fire
next to coffins hanging off a cliff.
"they test you
the way the mountain tests the pine"
he spat in the fire.
"wind, rain, cold, lightning.
the pine that bends too much breaks.
a stiff one snaps in half.
the good pine sways and keeps its roots"
I asked him how many wives he'd had.
"four. buried three.
the fourth one is up the hill
cursing at my goats"
he grinned with his gums.
"she tests me still. every morning.
hides my tobacco
to see if I'll cry"
"do you?"
"I grow more tobacco"
then he laughed so hard he coughed up something green
and pointed at the hanging coffins.
"one day I'll hang there,
and she'll come and yell at the box
for leaving her with the goats.
that's love, boy.
yelling at a box on a cliff"
your woman is a form of the goddess, taunting you, testing you, seducing you, ready to chop your head off with her wrath if you are weak and ambiguous in your truth, and ready to surrender to the force of your loving if you are steady and brilliant in your loving consciousness.
your woman will test you. she'll do it constantly, in every area of your life, and most of the time she has no idea she's doing it.
the tests are subtle. a push here, a jab there. she'll offend you, push you away, then pull you right back in. every move asks one question: can this man control his emotions?
she is a mirror of the world
look at how the world treats you. it never announces its tests. a deal falls through the day you needed it. your tire goes flat in the rain. someone insults you in public. doors you spent years trying to open slam shut. the world keeps throwing pressure at you to see whether you'll break, quit or rage, and it rewards the man who stays steady through all of it.
your woman brings that same energy into your home. her moods change without warning, the way the weather does. one moment she's warm and pulling you close; the next she's cold and pushing you away. her requests can be fair one day and a trap the next. that unpredictability is the world in human form.
the rewards match too. the world gives money, respect and freedom to the man who keeps his composure under pressure. a woman gives that same man her trust, her devotion and her full surrender. weakness gets punished in both places. the world takes away your opportunities; she takes away her respect.
the storm makes the tree
nature tests a tree with wind and storms, always, in everything, and those storms are exactly what make it strong.
in the early 1990s, researchers built biosphere 2, a sealed glass ecosystem in the Arizona desert. inside, the trees had perfect conditions: water, sunlight and zero wind. they grew quickly. over time, though, their trunks and branches turned brittle and became prone to sudden, dangerous collapses. with no wind bending them every day, they never built the reinforced wood a tree needs to hold itself up.
stress from the wind pushes a tree to strengthen its trunk and branches from the inside so it can survive the forces around it.
picture the two trees side by side. sheltered from every storm, the first one shot up tall, thin and weak, and the first hard wind snaps it in half. the storm-tested one took hit after hit for years. its roots run deep, its trunk is thick, and it stands perfect and strong.
her tests work the same way. each one is a gust of wind. every time you bend without breaking, you root yourself deeper in your masculine core. a man who avoids every storm with his woman ends up as the biosphere tree: impressive from a distance, brittle when the real wind comes. so stop resenting the wind. it's training you.
your job: stay icecold
being icecold means feeling everything and letting none of it steer you. you still get hurt, angry and jealous, of course, you’re human. the difference is that your feelings ride in the passenger seat while your values drive.
act as a man. icecold. unfazed. be ready for failure, rejection and unlimited winning, and meet each one with the same calm face.
never every fucking lose your temper with her. the moment she gets a reaction out of you, she's learned that her emotions can move you, which means the world's chaos can move you too. that's how you lose.
test 1: "maybe we should just break up"
most men fold here. they beg, promise anything and grovel: "please just stay. ask me to do anything and I'll do it" thats a pussy move. it tells her your peace depends on her staying, and a man whose peace depends on her can never be her rock.
a real man accepts it calmly. "okay. thank you. I'll let you go. here's $3,000 so you can leave our year together comfortably" he skips the questions, the begging, the gaslighting and making her the villain. he walks her to the door as a gentleman would and wishes her real happiness. at the end of the day, you're both human, and you respect her choice.
if she was testing you, she just watched you pass, and her respect for you shoots up. should she mean it, you let her go with your dignity intact and your hands clean. either way, you win.
one more thing: never let a woman threaten to leave every time she's losing an argument. that's a red flag. it shows you she'll bail the moment things get hard, because she lacks the strength a real relationship demands.
warn her early: "never threaten to leave when things go sour. if you ever do, I'll take you at your word, and the door closes for good. so if you say it, you better mean it"
test 2: her or your mission
"if you had to choose between me or your ambitions, what would you choose?"
she might ask you straight out. more often, she'll ask in one of three disguises.
three diguises, one question: will you drop your purpose to keep her happy?
most men say yes every time. they cancel training, apologize for things they never did, and walk away from the work mid-sentence, all because of one fear: "if I let her down, she'll walk out that door"
the strong response starts with one question you ask yourself before you answer her: is this a real need, or a test?
real need: she's sick, something urgent happened, or she's right that you've been absent lately, say a week of nonstop work and zero attention for her. handle it. showing up for a real need is part of the mission, because she's part of the life you're building.
test: everything else. there's no emergency, it can wait, and the only thing at stake is whether you'll fold.
here's how that plays out in each
request: "skip training tonight. stay with me"
pull her in, kiss her and grin. "tempting. keep that thought warm for me. im home by 8, and then you're mine for the rest of the night" grab your gym bag and go. walk in at 8 sharp and give her the whole night.
guilt trip: "you stopped caring about me, you hate me"
put down what you're doing, walk over and pull her into your chest. grin. "hate you? come here, you dramatic woman" hold her there, kiss her forehead, and let her feel your calm for a few minutes. skip the explaining and the sorries. then go back to work.
interruption: you're 45 minutes into writing for Oplanlikha, and she wants your opinion on a dress.
look up, grin and pull her in for a quick kiss. "gorgeous. now get out of my office. one hour, then I want the full fashion show" then right back to the keyboard. one hour later, close the laptop and enjoy the show.
the pattern is the same every time: acknowledge her, give her a specific time, go back to the mission, then show up exactly when you said you would.
the specific time is what makes this work. a vague "later" is a brush off. "8 sharp" is a promise. when you keep that promise, she gets what she actually wanted, which is proof that she matters. she also watches you stay on course, which is proof that you're a man she can trust.
there are more things to say about women, I could write a whole book on them. maybe I will. Women and Cigars.
but listen to me brother, let me tell you something important
life tests everything that lives. thats the law. muscle tears under the barbell and grows back thicker. bone carries weight and gets denser.
pine trees on a Sagada cliff take wind every day of their lives, and they outlast the men who planted them. pressure is how existence asks one question of everything it creates: what are you made of?
your woman asks that same question. so do the market, the street, the ring and the blank page every morning.
one question, asked by a thousand voices.
once you see that, you stop taking her tests personally. she's the closest, most beautiful messenger of a force far older than either of you.
a man whose peace depends on her staying is a slave to her moods. tie your peace to money, and the market owns you. whoever needs the world to behave belongs to the world.
the icecold man has cut those strings. his peace lives in his roots: his mission, his discipline and his own word. that makes him free. and only a free man can love fully, because only a free man can lose everything and still stand.
thats why he can say "thank you, goodbye" and mean it. it's also why he can pull her close in the middle of a guilt trip with zero fear in his chest. his calm is love with the fear taken out.
so stop praying for the wind to die down. pray to become the pine.
sway. keep your roots. grow more tobacco. choose the woman who will crawl into the foxhole with you, love her through every storm, and stay on your mission while she tests you.
and when the rain hammers the windshield and the tire goes flat, light a cigar. look over at her. smile. the storm is just asking what you're made of.
show her.