Jamie and I were talking about his friend who broke up with his girlfriend to focus on his business. Said he needed fewer distractions, more time to build. We both nodded—but something about it sat wrong with me.
That moment summed up everything that’s wrong with entrepreneur culture. This idea that real men walk alone. That cutting off your relationships is a sign of focus. That solitude is strength. It’s all bullshit—sold by the same people who profit when you're isolated, insecure, and dependent on their frameworks.
It’s a scam dressed as self-mastery.
We’re told to “eliminate distractions,” and that human connection is one of them. But relationships aren’t distractions. They’re pressure cookers. Labs. Training grounds. You want to lead a team, resolve conflict, manage people? Try maintaining intimacy with someone who actually calls you on your shit.
You don’t grow in a vacuum. You just get comfortable. You’re not healed. You’re unbothered. That’s not the same thing.
The longer you stay disconnected, the more your social instincts start to die off. You become the guy who knows his CAC from his LTV but has no idea how to navigate a conversation that doesn’t end in a CTA. You lose subtlety. You lose timing. You lose emotional range—the exact thing that makes people want to work with you, buy from you, follow you.
Cut relationship from your personal life, it leaks into your professional one. There’s no wall between them. The same habits carry over. The same blind spots scale.
The feminine, especially, keeps you honest. My dad hears I closed a deal—“Fuck yeah, legend.” My mum? She asks if I’ve been sleeping. That tension is real. And necessary. Achievement without presence is a dead end. It’s hoarding. It’s motion sickness.
And let’s be honest—most men don’t turn to business out of calling. They turn to it the same way they turn to sex, porn, or dopamine loops. To avoid discomfort. To silence the ache. They think it’s purpose. It’s just avoidance in disguise.
The work is integration. Not choosing business instead of relationship—but learning how to show up fully in both. How to stop running. How to stop needing validation from outcomes. How to be seen by someone and not flinch.
Because what we actually want—beneath the noise—isn’t money or wins. It’s to be known. To come home to someone who notices your silence and sits with it anyway. To not have to earn love by performing. That’s not weakness. That’s what makes the rest matter.
You can’t automate this. You can’t scale it. But without it, none of the other wins feel like anything.