The ultimate self-sabotage of extreme lifestyle design is mistaking absolute control for true freedom.
A woman I'd been seeing for three weeks asked if she could leave a toothbrush at my place. I said sure. Then I moved it to a drawer where I wouldn't have to see it.
Not because I didn't like her. I did. She was smart. She laughed at the right things. She didn't need me to be impressive.
The toothbrush was the problem. It was someone else's thing in my space. And my space had become the only thing I could control completely.
That's the trap. You build a life with no friction, no compromise, no one else's schedule to work around. And then you realize you've made something so perfectly shaped around you that another person can't fit inside it without breaking something.
I didn't plan this. Nobody sits down and designs a life that excludes love. But every decision I made for three years pointed in the same direction. I picked apartments with one chair. I built routines that only worked solo. I traveled on 48 hours’ notice because I could. I ate when I was hungry, slept when I was tired, surfed when the waves were good. Every single hour belonged to me.
That sounds like the dream. It is the dream. And the dream has a cost nobody mentions.
When you haven't compromised on anything in years, compromise starts to feel like loss. Someone wants to eat at 7 and you usually eat at 9. Someone wants the window open and you want it closed. Someone's alarm goes off at 6 and you don't use alarms. These are tiny things. Nothing things. But when your whole life is built around your own preferences, every small adjustment feels like something's being taken.
You know this if you've been on your own long enough. Maybe you tried dating someone and felt suffocated within a week. Not because they were clingy. Because they existed in your space at all. Maybe someone asked what you were doing Saturday, and you felt a flash of resentment at having to account for your time. Maybe you caught yourself hoping they'd cancel so you could have your night back.
That's not independence. That's a wall you built and called a window.
I think about my parents sometimes. Nine kids. Tiny apartment. Zero autonomy. Zero personal space. Zero hours that belonged to just them. They've been married 43 years. They finish each other's sentences. Not in a cute way. In a way where two people stopped being separate a long time ago, and neither one seems to mind.
I used to think that sounded suffocating. Now I'm not sure they're the ones who should be pitied.
The woman with the toothbrush didn't last. Not because anything went wrong. Because I let the gap grow until she got the message. That's what I do now. I don't end things. I just stay exactly who I am and let that be enough distance.
It works every time. And every time it works, I feel a little less like a person and a little more like a room no one's allowed to rearrange.
I'm trying to change it. And by that I mean I'm trying to leave a drawer open. Not just the physical one. The willingness to let something be out of place. To let someone else's preference win on a Tuesday night for no reason other than they're there and they matter.
It's harder than building a company. It's harder than selling one. It's harder than starting over at 35 with nothing. All of that just took effort. This takes the one thing I never practiced.
Letting go of the controls when the life I built fits perfectly and only seats one.
— Best, Jose
