Last Wednesday I told you I almost didn't get on the plane to Alabama. What I didn't tell you is who was holding the camera the whole weekend.
My ex-girlfriend.
We broke up about two years ago. And when I tell guys she's the one filming me talk to girls, they look at me like I said something insane. Like that's impossible. How could you be friends with an ex, let alone THAT kind of friends.
Honestly, it's not even new for us. When we were together she filmed my videos all the time. And I mean ALL of them — if you've been following me long enough, you know exactly what my old videos were. She stood behind the camera while I kissed other girls, while we were DATING, and she never flinched. She's good at it, and she knows exactly what I'm looking for.
At one point that weekend I'm interviewing girls about ghosting — why people disappear instead of just giving somebody closure. And from behind the camera she goes, "you should've taken your own advice."
She's not wrong. When we were together, I was bad at handling big emotions. The second things got heavy I'd shut down, go quiet, basically ghost her while we were still together. She lived with that version of me. And that weekend she stood there holding the camera while I taught other guys the exact thing I used to be the worst at.
Now here's the part worth thinking about. The reason most guys could never do this has nothing to do with their ex. It's what the breakup did to their ego. When it ends and your whole sense of worth was tied up in being her guy, you need a villain story to survive it. She's crazy, she's the problem, you dodged a bullet. You get the point.
And honestly, if anyone had the material for a villain story, it was her. She could've made me the bad guy to everyone we know, and half of it would've been true.
She didn't. It ended, it hurt, and neither of us turned it into a war. And when your self-respect survives the ending, the friendship gets to survive too.
That's the real flex. Not that my ex spent four days filming me talk to girls. It's that neither of us needed to hate the other one to move on.
The footage from that weekend is turning into some of the biggest videos I've ever made. More on that soon.
— Noah Danenhower
P.S. Reply and tell me — are you still cool with your ex, or was it scorched earth? One word is fine. I'm curious what this list looks like.