🩸A Year Through Hell

Let’s do a Live Autopsy on a Bad Relationship

I wrote this in 2022, when I was getting divorced.

I filed it away.

I didn’t want to be bitter.

Three years later, I don’t see bitterness.

You tell me.

I thought marriage would be a passport to a bigger life.

Instead, I got five years in solitary confinement.

I was her everything—

Her chauffeur.

Her scapegoat.

Her emotional punching bag.

A professional doormat.

Two hours of chit-chat before breakfast. Every day.

Miss one morning, and I was the villain who didn’t care.

Friends? Off-limits.

Family? Excommunicated.

The only “safe” place was inside her orbit—

which felt less like love and more like house arrest with pretty curtains.

I shudder to think of it.

By the time I woke up, I was fifty pounds heavier and flirting with a

.38-caliber exit.

I couldn’t see the truth staring back at me.

That this relationship was killing me.

I didn’t want to see it.

No — she was my ticket to America.

My one and only.

I wasn’t going to pass it up.

What saved me wasn’t therapy or prayer.

I ran like a gazelle.

Danced like there was no tomorrow.

Meditated for days nonstop.

Tony Robbins hired me.

I travelled all over the country.

And with every mile, every salsa spin, every meditation—

I felt the chains rattle… then drop.

It’s like I crawled out of the nine gates of hell into a land of milk and

honey.

Almost.

This isn’t a revenge story.

Or a pity party.

It’s a jailbreak manual for anyone sleeping beside their warden…

Dear Permission to be Powerful Reader,

This year, I’ve been through hell.

I’m not broken.

And I’m winning the war.

It’s been hell, all the same.

Many previous versions of me would have crumbled in so much

turmoil.

But I went the distance.

34-year-old Anton had the strength to win.

To not be a victim.

To figure out why he was broken.

To heal.

My relationship always felt oppressive.

I was unhappy for a long time.

The whole time?

Hard to tell when misery is your norm.

She had an insatiable need for attention.

It took me a few years to figure that out.

People hide their craziness.

Avoid it.

Deny it.

I thought I was the bad guy for not wanting to meet her constant

demands.

But then one day, I thought about it…

Most adults spend time with each other at the end of the day, after

the kids have been cared for, work has been done, and responsibilities

have been attended to.

Not us.

Read more

The Subtle Ways You Abandon Yourself

The Signs of Neglect You’re Overlooking—and How to Fix Them

Neglect isn’t always a big, obvious issue.

Sometimes, it’s the little things—those habits you fall into, those parts of

your life you ignore because you’re too busy, tired, or overwhelmed to face

them.

For years, I let things go unaddressed, and they became so normal to me

that I didn’t even realize I was neglecting my well-being.

Vertigo, for example, became just another part of my routine. Every

time I stood up, the world would spin, and my balance would falter. It

wasn’t a dramatic fall—most of the time. It would happen quietly, maybe in

a crowded room or meeting. I’d stumble slightly, trying to steady myself,

hoping no one noticed.

It wasn’t very comfortable, but I didn’t go to a doctor for help. I lived

with it. It took me years to realize that this was something fixable that

didn’t have to be a part of my daily life.

The cause was an old ear injury; all I had to do was ask for help. The

fix? Simple and free. I finally sought treatment, and the vertigo was gone,

but it took far too long for me to take action.

Read more

I THOUGHT THAT’S What Good People Did

I spent Christmas all alone. No friends. No family. Honestly, I’m

sincerely thrilled about it.

Dear Permission to be Powerful Reader,

I’ve never, in my whole life, done 100% me for Christmas.

It’s very illuminating what kind of person I am at my core. Just this alone is

worth trying sometimes. I think.

I always get sad around the holidays.

At this version of Mike Tyson, I realized I thought it was because I felt

lonely around the holidays. It’s actually because every holiday season, I

abandon myself.

I spend time with people who I don’t like. Who don’t value me?

Who can’t see me?

Who don’t deserve me?

They reinforce the idea that I have no worth. I will do my private

meditation marathon, which involves lots of running and writing.

I’m going full Chris McCandless.

I’m doing me 100%.

I’m going to shine more brightly than ever.

Just ONE year ago, I was still so heavily programmed to prioritize

others over myself that I spent THOUSANDS to go and spend almost a

month among a bunch of people I don’t particularly like being around.

I was around many people who would NEVER go out of their way to

come and see me.

I am still in a one-sided dynamic with my entire family. I’m single, have

no kids, and on a low-contact basis with my kin. I’ve never had Christmas

all to myself.

I Don’t Feel Sad at All.

I know this might have left me feeling depressed in past years. Not today. I

used to suffer from pathological loneliness. It caused me so much trouble.

Because I was neglected growing up, I have had a pronounced desire to

find a partner for my whole life.

This wasn’t just about connecting with somebody. It was also about

feeding a malnourished soul. It was about validation.

But today, I have permitted myself to enjoy being single. Even if my life

does not follow a conventional path. I’ve never been traditional. I was so

eager to find somebody to love, but that eagerness was unhealthy.

I think, on some level, it means not being able to walk away after seeing

red flags and staying in relationships WAY past their expiration date.

I am a big believer in the expiration date of relationships.

This is the point by which, if you were healthy, you would decide to

break up with someone. Knowing what I know now. Having changed my

standards completely…

My ex-wife wouldn’t have made it past the third week.

Generously, we should have broken up by year five. Why? There comes a

point in a relationship when staying means abandoning yourself.

If you wake up one day and your partner hits you, it is cruel, hurtful,

wild, entirely out of control…

If you realize they will not change.

If you know your non-negotiables and they don’t live up to that

standard… It’s time to go.

But I’d say most people can’t be so logical about romance. Most people

don’t even know what their non-negotiables are.

After you’ve bonded with someone, it can be easy to start getting ideas

about the relationship that do not serve you. Nothing lasts forever. Not one

thing.

People come and go.

Sooner or later, they WILL have to go. That part isn’t up to you. It’s the law

of the universe. Everything comes and goes.

But we can get invested in faulty ideas about love. You might struggle

with letting go.

I know I do. It took me a whole year to get over my last relationship. I

don’t think feeling so attached for so long is good.

But I certainly could have moved on more quickly. Sometimes, people

stay in relationships for unhealthy reasons.

I believe in letting go of people who do not value me, even if it’s my

blood, because experience has shown me that this is the better choice.

That can be hard advice to follow if you’ve spent your life around

people who invalidate you.

You are vulnerable if you have spent your whole life around people who

make you feel unseen. There’s a hole in your heart that needs filling.

So, when you finally find somebody who does make you feel heard,

seen, and valued…

it’s going to be hard to let go of your new drug. But sometimes you must. If

the relationship is on shaky ground, things can go sideways whether you

want them to.

But either way, I think it’s usually a mistake to stay in a relationship

past that expiration date.

You should not have to abandon yourself as a condition of meeting your

need for love and connection. I already talked about what constitutes a good

relationship.

There are some ingredients that a healthy relationship can’t exist

without. Honesty. In other words, if you wake up and find out you married a

pathological liar… you got the wrong one.

Respect. If you devalue your partner, you undermine the entire

relationship. Safety. If you introduce violence or some other destabilizing

force to the relationship, it will make things worse.

Moreover, recovering these non-negotiables is extremely difficult once

they are gone.

Read more

book.

Anton.

Tony.

The Chauffeur.

Mike Tyson.

They’re all me.

No, I don’t have multiple personalities.

At least, not officially.

Anton is my birth name.

Tony is the name I use now.

That isn’t some random reinvention I pulled out of my ass.

Look up nicknames for Anton.

Tony is one of the most popular.

It’s especially common in places like Germany.

And it makes perfect sense.

Andrea becomes Andy.

Anthony becomes Tony.

Anton becomes Tony.

Nobody calls an Anton “Anty.”

That sounds ridiculous.

You pull the middle out of the name, add a Y, and there it is: Tony.

Anthony is the English version.

Anton is the Russian and German version.

Antoine is French.

Antonio is Spanish and Italian.

They all trace back to Antonius.

And hiding inside every one of them is Tony.

So Tony and Anton are not entirely different names.

But they became two very different identities.

The name Tony had been hiding inside Anton the entire time.

The man had to be built.

A Better Name Was Hiding in Plain Sight

I didn’t suddenly wake up one morning, announce a new name, and demand

that everyone play along.

Tony had history.

It had been hiding inside my usernames and online accounts for more

than thirteen years.

Secretly, I had wanted to change my name for almost twenty.

I just never got around to it.

Like so many things, it belonged to the life I imagined living someday.

Then someday arrived.

When I started using Tony publicly, people accepted it.

Then they started calling me Tony without thinking about it.

The change stuck.

I had a friend who tried changing her name.

It bombed.

Nobody took the new name seriously.

Eventually, she gave up.

Tony was different.

It didn’t feel imposed.

It fit so naturally that people barely questioned it.

And yes, there was another reason I liked it.

Tony Robbins.

I once heard Tony Robbins say he didn’t believe he would have become

as big as he did if he had gone by Anthony Robbins.

He was probably right.

Anthony Robbins sounds like someone who prepares your taxes.

Tony Robbins sounds like someone who walks across fire.

Names matter.

I know that better than most because I spent fifteen years learning how

words influence what people think, feel, buy, and believe.

My Name Had a Marketing Problem

There was another problem with Anton.

It confused people.

And as a copywriter, that bothered the hell out of me.

I spent fifteen years eliminating confusion for a living.

If a headline confused people, I rewrote it.

If an offer required too much explanation, I simplified it.

If customers couldn’t remember the name, the name was wrong.

Clarity matters.

Friction kills.

And there I was walking around with a name nobody understood.

Anton.

People didn’t know how to pronounce it.

They didn’t know how to spell it.

They wondered where it came from.

They assumed I was Russian.

I’m not Russian.

I don’t speak Russian.

I grew up on a tropical island in the Caribbean.

The name communicated absolutely nothing useful about me.

You rarely meet an Anton.

You almost never see an Anton as the hero in a movie.

The most famous fictional Anton I can think of is Anton Chigurh, the

psychopath from No Country for Old Men.

Wonderful.

Meanwhile, everybody understands Tony.

You hear it once.

You know how to say it.

You know how to spell it.

You remember it.

Tony Robbins.

Tony Soprano.

Tony Montana.

Tony Stark.

The name is familiar without being invisible.

Simple without being boring.

It has personality.

It moves.

That matters to me.

Read more

“What’s the worst thing that can happen in this business?”🤔

Some said writing a promo that flops.

👉 “Zero conversions. Client pulls the plug.”

Others said pouring your soul into a campaign, only for the client to shelve it.

👉 “We love it—but we decided to go in another direction...”

Some said it was writing a promo that makes millions… but someone else gets all the credit.

👉 “Congrats to our Copy Chief for this record-breaking launch!”

But that’s not what I answered…

The worst thing that can happen in this business?

👉 Getting fired.

👉 Blackballed.

👉Your life’s work gone overnight.

This is a true story.

But except for my own, I’ve obscured all the names and identities for reasons that’ll become clear.

I’m Anton Volney, and I thought I’d never write again...

Read more