There’s always a but.
I love you, but…
What we had was special, but
I have a great time with you, but
I want to be with you, but…
I tried my best, but…
I’ll never love another guy, but…
I’m in one of those moods today, and some of you motherfuckers aren’t going to like what I have to say. So if you’re afraid to get your feelings hurt and aren’t in the mood for me to deliver some bad news, here’s your chance to press the “fuck you, Jack” button and bailout.
If you’re still hanging around, strap in, because this one is about to get weird. I told you, I’m in one of those moods. I promise it will all make sense by the end, though.
Still with me? Cool.
Let’s rewind the clock a bit, all the way back to 2008.
You see, 2008 was a bad year to be part of Lehman Brothers, a US-based multinational investment bank. For those of you who were too young to remember this shit, Lehman Brothers was a big, bad, investment bank filled with rich, evil bankers who make money off of your pain and suffering. You know, the same kind of bankers you hate if you bought $GME or $AMC any time recently.
But this story has a happy ending (sort of?) if you hate rich, evil bankers.
Because in 2008, Lehman Brothers was getting royally fucked by the 2007-2010 subprime mortgage crisis.
By the time July 2008 rolled around, Lehman Brothers had lost almost 75% of its share value. Too bad Robinhood wasn’t a thing back then, because I know quite a few degenerates who would have made a killing shorting the sweet, sweet tears of Richard Fuld.
So let’s talk about Richard Fuld for a minute. Fuld was the CEO of Lehman at the time, and had worked for the company for something like 40 years by 2008. According to those that worked with him at the time, he was venerated like a god amongst men in Lehman’s Manhattan office. People literally stood in silence when he was in the elevator with them.
So how did Richard Fuld get such an epic reputation among his employees?
He didn’t get it for being nice, like Warren Buffet or Ray Dalio (well, old Ray Dalio, anyway).
He didn’t get it for being the smartest manager, like Michael Burry.
No, Richard Fuld got his reputation because he was a complete, fucking, degenerate.
Fuld was an all-or-nothing guy, he wasn’t about to play it safe. He was so ballsy, he reportedly told his Head of Risk to leave the room during meetings. You know, the person meant to help keep things from getting out of hand.
And boy oh boy, did they get out of hand.
Fuld had a vision for the future – he saw Lehman competing with the likes of Goldman Sachs, and he had a plan to get there. True, it was a retarded plan, but it was a plan nonetheless.
Fuld knew that to get on the level of the Goldman Sachs’ of the world, he would need money. A lot of money.
So what did he do? Buy low and sell high?
Buy a shitload of 0-day expiry-OTM calls?
Nope.
Do you want to know the reason why Fuld didn’t want his Head Of Risk sitting in on key meetings? Because his plan was to get absolutely jacked to the tits with leverage.
So Fuld borrowed a shitload of money (42:1 leverage or so, when typical investment banks were around 23:1 at the time) and YOLO’d almost all of it into a risky subprime mortgage portfolio.
Does that sound like a smart, forward-thinking investment strategy to you?
So as the story goes, Fuld was told multiple times over several years that an economic crash was coming. When economic crashes happen a couple of things are true:
- Being highly leveraged is bad.
- Being highly leveraged AND having most of your cash in one bucket (like real estate) is even worse.
And as the subprime mortgage crisis worsened throughout 2008, Lehman Brothers learned these lessons firsthand. But good ol’ Fuld wasn’t ready to fold quite yet. By the late summer of 2008, the dark, shifting storm clouds of bankruptcy were circling the drain that Lehman’s stock price was going down. Lehman needed money badly. Without an injection of cash ASAP, it was doomed.
But good ol’ Fuld refused multiple offers, both for mergers and acquisitions during the summer of 2008. Even though he desperately needed the cash, he refused the offers. He essentially bet that those offers didn’t reflect the fair value of Lehman Brothers.
…and as the story goes, that massive bet didn’t work out so well for Lehman Brothers or the US economy.
Everyone else saw how fucked Lehman and Fuld were. Bank of America backed out from a last-minute acquisition. The Bank Of Korea backed out. Barclays had the UK government tell them to piss off.
They all saw the truth that Fuld and Lehman refused to see.
Lehman couldn’t be saved.
Fuld was defiant to the very end, and up until Lehman Brothers went tits up, he believed they would somehow, magically, be saved.
He was wrong of course, so wrong in fact, that he collapsed the entire US economy by inadvertently kicking off the Great Recession.
Fun times.
Turns out getting jacked to the tits with leverage and then losing it all was invented before we had Reddit. Neat.
This brings us to the moral of this story.
You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
When you ignore reality, either because of your own emotions or because you’re a degenerate like Richard Fuld, bad things happen.
Occasionally, they even crash the global economy.
When you ignore the reality that your ex-girlfriend doesn’t want to be together, even though she tells you she loves you, bad things happen.
You spend weeks or even months chasing after a girl that you have no chance with.
So let me ask you a question.
If she really loves you the way you are imagining it, why doesn’t she want to be with you?
Let me see if I can answer that question for you
“I Love You But I Don’t Want To Be With You”
Alright, it’s time for your first reality check. Ready?
Women dump men they love all the fucking time.
Why is that? Because just loving someone is not enough to make a relationship work.
I can’t tell you how often I’m asked in a coaching session “Jack, does she really mean it? Does she still love me?”
The answer to that question is yes, most of the time.
If your ex-girlfriend has told you she loves you, you can believe her. She probably does love you. Maybe she even really loves you. But I want to be totally fucking clear: what you think she means when she says she loves you is not what she actually means.
I know a lot of you think that her saying she loves you means that she’s on the fence about getting back together with you. A lot of you are fixated on this idea that if she loves you, she’ll come back to you.
Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.
Just Love Is Not Enough
Part of the reason I hate romantic movies, in general, is how they portray love. They portray love like love is the goal.
Folks, love is not the goal. The goal is long-term, consistent happiness. Romantic love is just a part of that.
I’ll use the notebook as an example because I know you were guilted into watching it at least once.
Don’t you think it’s a little bit ironic that the entire film focuses on this years-long, dramatically rain-soaked, emotional lovefest, only to immediately skip forward in time the exact second Ryan Gosling hooks the chick for the second time?
Suddenly, both of them are old wrinkly fucks. If you didn’t see that and immediately scratch your head, you’ve got blinders on man. All the romance and the dramatic, rain-soaked “I love yous” are all out in the open. That’s the fun part.
But what about the not-so-fun parts?
Things like:
- Sharing a closet and then biting your tongue when she takes up 85% of the space with shit she never wears?
- Choosing a place to eat when she’s on her period?
- Her bitching at you for not calling her enough
…and more serious stuff like:
- Open and honest communication?
- Setting respectful boundaries?
- Keeping your frame?
Why didn’t The Notebook show us any of that?
The reason they didn’t show that, is because we as a culture have an unrealistic idea of what love actually means, and what it actually means for a relationship.
The first girl I ever dated I loved to pieces. It felt like my head was spinning and my heart was melting every time I was with her. At 17, it was an incredible fucking feeling. I was on top of the world every time I was with her. She loved me too, in the same way.
But that was all we had. We had love but were missing a lot of other shit. We came from different financial backgrounds. We were both avoidants. I had self-confidence issues and wasn’t able to be honest with her. We both couldn’t communicate very well.
Oh, and that’s not to mention that we lived about 2 hours away from each other for most of the relationship, which as I’ve said before, is insanely stupid.
But we loved each other. So even though our problems never got fixed, we kept things going for 3.5 years.
Love, as it turns out, doesn’t fix your relationship problems. Love doesn’t make you compatible with someone. Love doesn’t make her a healthy partner.
Don’t get so focused on the idea of love – because there’s a whole hell of a lot more that goes into a healthy relationship. Just because she loves you, doesn’t mean she thinks you are the right choice for her.
You should also apply the same standard to yourself. I know that your interest level probably shot up since she dumped you. I know you love her.
Ask yourself: is love really enough? Were the other areas of your relationship on steady ground?
- Was she giving you space?
- Was she straightforward with you?
- Were you having enough sex?
You have to ask yourself these types of questions too, because if she has told you she loves you, but doesn’t want to be with you, you need to understand what she is really trying to do.
“I Love You, But…” Is Her Way Of Letting You Down Easy
Her saying “but” is her trying to soften the blow to your ego.
Think about it: how would you feel if she came up to you and said straight out that she’s not attracted to you, and doesn’t love you anymore?
She doesn’t want to hurt your feelings by telling you outright that she’s dumping your ass. Like I said before: she does love you, but love isn’t enough.
It’s easier to give you some fluffy window dressing to try to avoid confrontation, anger, or other painful emotions.
Chances are, you had a hand in getting to this point. You probably made one or more of the 6 major mistakes that cause women to leave men.
And if she’s trying to let you down easy, chances are that she’s already grieved the end of your relationship over the last few weeks or maybe even months. She knows her reasons why, and I guarantee that they don’t have anything to do with love.
Naturally, that invites the question: what should you do if she’s telling you she loves you but doesn’t want to be with you?
Don’t Be Like Richard Fuld – Accept The Reality And Make The Best Of It!
Richard Fuld got fucked because of his ego, and his refusal to accept reality.
Don’t make the same mistake! Get your ego in check before you crash and burn.
Your ego wants to latch on to the words “I love you”. It makes you feel good. It makes you feel special. It makes you feel like she still cares, and underneath it all, there’s still a chance.
Your ego is distracting you from the reality of the situation: even though she loves you, she’s not with you.
You can continue to ignore that reality and spends weeks, months, or years pining after a girl who (more likely than not) has already moved on. Or you can accept the reality that she’s no longer with you.
Accepting the reality doesn’t mean you won’t get back together. What it does mean is accepting that you are not together with her right now, and accepting the fact that you don’t know what the future will bring.
Obviously, you know my stance. I think you are better off finding the headspace to move on with your life, get non-monogamous and become outcome independent, so you can start dating higher-quality women.
But that’s your choice to make. Regardless, you still need to accept that it’s over. Then, and only then, can you create enough emotional separation from the relationship that you’ll be able to honestly assess what went wrong, where you are then able to fix your problems.
Accepting reality also means accepting that you can’t be her friend.
Read my article about why you should NEVER be her friend after getting dumped. It will help you.
Finally, accepting reality also requires the two-step process of going no-contact and then taking the time to break your ex-girlfriend addiction.
Finally, you absolutely MUST PROMISE ME is that you’ll ignore all the “ex-girlfriend recovery” websites out there. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones that promise you that you are only one or two techniques away from “re-igniting her attraction”.
They capitalize on your ego and lead you away from a path of long-term happiness. Don’t waste your time. The best way forward is to focus on your life and YOUR happiness, not getting her back.
Enough is enough my man.
She doesn’t want to be with you. Don’t let her words distract you from her actions. Women vote with their feet. If she’s not with you, she’s not with you.
It doesn’t matter how much she loves you or not.
So don’t ignore reality and waste months or even years of your life chasing a dream. Accept what is really happening and build your day-to-day life into something you love and look forward to, instead of making your happiness contingent on getting her back.
Talk soon my friend,
Coach Jack
PS: Need help processing the breakup so you can get back to feeling like yourself again? Click here to learn how I can help you.