Teaching what I've learned from the hood, the ring, and everything in between. Join 35k other readers to learn how to manage risk, build relationships, and confront reality.
8 Counterintuitive Strategies To Make A Relationship Last
Today's newsletter is about the experiences and insights I've made on what makes a strong, happy relationship.
My readers are a mix—some of you have 20-year+ marriages. Others are single. I don't claim to be an expert. I just know what's worked for over the past 11 years. No matter where you are, there's some value for you.
Before we get to that, a brief announcement in the form of today's "sponsor"
Write Your Way To 5k is a month-long online summit for people who want to learn how to make a living by writing on the internet. Whether you want to be a copywriter, ghostwriter, email marketer, or create a profitable Substack, Write Your Way To 5k has something for you.
For all of February, there will be live presentations from 21 different online writers who will show you how to make a profit from your words. You'll learn how to craft offers, find clients, build portfolios, and work with AI to speed up your content creation.
And if you can't make the seminar you want to see, you'll always have access to the recordings.
My seminar is about using AI to double your dollars and triple your income. I'll be teaching the AI techniques I've been using to aggressively grow on Linkedin and write my new book "Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business."
Although the seminar is during the entire month of February, enrollment is from today, Jan 24th, to midnight on Sunday, Jan 28th. And the price rises each day, with today being the cheapest you can sign up. Click below to learn more.
| Write Your Way To 5k |
8 Counterintuitive Strategies To Make A Relationship Last
A big reason relationships fail today is the assumption that healthy relationships are entirely subjective. While every couple has unique dynamics, the fundamentals of a strong partnership are largely universal. As Tolstoy wrote, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Every relationship is great when things are going well. Even two toxic, narcissistic drug addicts can look like the perfect image of love and happiness if you catch them at the right time. If you don't know the backstory of someone's relationship, the smiling photos on social media and public loving demeanor could be the eye of the storm in their dysfunctional relationship.
You can’t judge a relationship based on the good times. Accordingly, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is looking for a relationship based on how good it makes you feel.
Don’t take this to mean that you shouldn’t be with someone who treats you well and whose company you enjoy. But if you get into a relationship based only on the good times, then you are potentially setting yourself up for a heavy dose of dysfunction.
Your romantic relationship is second only to the relationship you will have with your children. If you decide not to have children, then this is the person you will spend most of your time with. For that reason alone, it’s important that you don’t mess this up. Notice that I didn’t say it’s important that you “get it right.”
No one gets it right. Even the happiest relationship has trying moments that inspire you to wonder if you’ve made a mistake. That’s to be expected when you take two people—with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives—and attempt to create a lasting union. The point isn’t for relationships to be perfect or even consistently pleasant, but the good should outweigh the bad by a significant margin.
This post blends my personal experience, general observations, and scientific research about what makes a relationship a fruitful, positive experience. I don’t know if these points will be new or groundbreaking, but they are useful and have served me and others well.
Whether you're single or 20 years into a relationship, there is value here.
| Read the rest on my website |
Social media round-up
- On YouTube, I warned people why they shouldn't date drug addicts. This seems obvious, but based on the responses, people got a lot out of it. Or they were just entertained.
- On Twitter, I explained how the following graph paints a dishonest picture of poor and rich people having more children than the middle class.
Cool content I've read
- A Personal Reflection On Social Media: Zac Small wrote a great essay on why he chose to heavily reduce his social media presence to focus on photography, family, and landscaping. Zac is one of the friends I've made since being heavily involved in the online space, so I thought this was an interesting read. This section of the essay really hits home:
- Perfection or routine: Zach Homol (I swear this isn't a theme. It's just a coincidence that both these guys are named Zach) has one of the hardest roads to success I know of. The guy worked in the coal mines of West Virginia, one of the poorest states in America, and clawed his way out to something better. This essay is a reflection on how he uses routines to reduce friction in his daily life. Reading this, I thought of how my wife insists everything stays clean and orderly, even when we have a lot of work. It feels like it takes away valuable time, but it makes everything easier.
Stoic Street Smarts
Teaching what I've learned from the hood, the ring, and everything in between. Join 35k other readers to learn how to manage risk, build relationships, and confront reality.
People always think I’m full of it when I tell them that learning how to box helped me get a degree in physics, learn enough Spanish to watch my favorite telenovelas *mostly* without peaking at the subtitles and get my chess rating into the 1800s, Everyone has this idea that boxing is a sport of brutal headbanging aggression that leaves you with less mental capacity than when you started. And to be fair, I have had some concussions that left me at a loss for how to do something as basic as...
Watch the essay here Today I'm 40. I started my life in the projects, didn't graduate high school, and became a stone-cold alcoholic making so little money I was stealing food to survive. Eventually, I went on to be a standout Golden Glove-winning and national champion boxer, got signed by Roc Nation Sports as a professional, served in the military, got a degree in physics, and met the woman of my dreams along the way—and now said woman and I—who have lived in Portugal because she's born and...
You are the worst person to assess your strengths and weaknesses because you have the worst perspective of your actions. Everything you do or say, you can only judge its impact by how others respond to it, and that response will be influenced by the recipient's current state of mind, relationship with you, and what they want—or don’t want—from you. It can be impossible to get honest feedback about yourself from people. Even when a person gives you a complete assessment without regard to your...