I Tried to Become Impossible to Leave

I remember one night I was lying there with a former partner after everything had calmed down. We were just staring at each other.

And honestly, at that moment, I remember thinking she had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. It was one of them proper still moments where everything just feels right.

Then she looked at me and went:

“God, you’re so fucking fit.”

And I remember thinking, Yeah, buzzing. Nice compliment that. I could feel the smile creeping across my face.

Then she followed it straight up with:

“You know what, Shane? If you was fat, I wouldn’t be with you.”

Fuck me.

My smile disappeared. It turned into this open-mouthed stare.

One minute I’m lying there thinking this is a beautiful moment with somebody I love. The next minute I’m thinking:

Hang on a minute.
What the fuck did you just say?

I laughed it off. Pretended it hadn’t bothered me.

She rolled over, closed her eyes and pretty much went straight to sleep.

Me?

Not a fucking chance.

I kid you not, I lay there staring at that ceiling for about four hours.

And I think that was probably one of the first times I realised just how much one little sentence can get stuck in your head.

Sometimes I’m Not Looking — I’m Checking

I’ve always had a problem with my weight anyway. I’ll pick a part of my body I don’t like and obsess over it.

Could be that last little bit of fluff on my lower back. Could be something around my waist. Could be something nobody else has even noticed.

But once I’ve noticed it, that’s it. My eyes go straight to it every time I look in a mirror.

If you saw me now, you’d probably think:

What a cocky bastard.

I’m always looking in mirrors. Looking at myself in car windows as I walk past. Tensing my triceps. Checking myself out.

And yeah, sometimes it probably is vanity.

But sometimes I’m not looking because I think I look amazing.

Sometimes I’m checking.

Do I look softer today?
Has my waist changed?
Can I still see that bit on my back?
Do I still look like the version of myself somebody once told me was worth being with?

When I actually think about it like that, it’s pretty fucked up.

Don’t Get Fat Again

I can’t even really remember what happened to my body after that comment. I don’t know how much weight I lost, how lean I got, or if anybody else even noticed a difference.

But I remember the fire.

Fuck me, I remember that.

I tried the one massive meal a day thing. That didn’t go particularly well.

I started training twice a day as well. And I don’t mean like I sometimes do now where I’ll split things up and one session might be lighter.

Nah.

Both sessions were fucking hard. Proper heavy sessions.

I remember sweat pouring off my face in a manner that can only be described as unholy.

And the funny thing is, I wasn’t thinking:

I want to be healthier.
I want to get stronger.
I want to look better.

All I could think was:

Don’t get fat again.

That comment had somehow buried itself in my head.

Then it became bigger than just my body.

It turned into this unwritten agreement I had with myself:

If I get fat, I lose my partner.

And if I lose my partner, I lose the family I desperately wanted.

That sounds dramatic when I actually write it down. But that was genuinely how my head worked.

It stopped being about wanting to look good.

It became about keeping what I loved.

And that comment almost became a condition in my head:

Stay like this and you get to keep it.
Change, and you might lose it.

Trying to Become Impossible to Leave

Then I started trying to become a version of myself that simply couldn’t lose.

More money. Better physique. More business opportunities. Better car. Better clothes. More meals out. More gifts. More everything.

I wasn’t just trying to prove I was physically worth being with anymore.

I was trying to prove I was worth staying for.

And when your whole identity starts becoming about providing, it gets a bit fucking mad.

A new car gets pushed back? Stress.

Jobs take longer than expected? More hours.

Meals out become £400 weekends.

You book holidays because you want to make memories, then spend weeks stressed trying to pay for the fucking holiday.

From the outside, that can look like ambition. And some of it was.

I do want more. I do want to build businesses. I do want to look good. I do want a better life.

But there’s a massive difference between building a better life because you genuinely want one...

...and desperately trying to build a life so good that somebody would never want to leave you.

That second one is exhausting.

Because there is no finish line.

If your worth comes from how you look, there is always another bit of fat you could lose.

If your worth comes from what you provide, there is always something else you could buy.

If your worth comes from success, there is always somebody doing better.

Eventually I realised I wasn’t just chasing success.

I was chasing security.

I was trying to build a version of myself that felt impossible to leave.

And After All of That?

We broke up anyway.

All the training. All the money. All the plans. All the trying to become better in every direction.

We still broke up.

And even then, that need to prove myself didn’t disappear.

If anything, it got worse.

I wanted to show her what I could become. Show her what she had walked away from. Show her why she should have stayed.

And Kravix actually started during that period.

If I’m being completely straight about it, part of Kravix started because I wanted to prove something.

Look what I can build.
Look what I can become.
Look what you gave up on.

Somewhere in my head I probably thought if I became successful enough, looked good enough and built enough things, somehow it would change something.

What Can I Actually Build Here?

But the strange thing is, the more I’ve built Kravix, the more that feeling has started to change.

I’ve got plans now that go so far ahead it’s actually ridiculous.

There’s a second writer I want to bring onboard with her own section dedicated to women. There are interviews starting. I want the technical lifting side properly built out.

There’s the mobile app idea. There’s clothing further down the line. There are products. More contributors. More ideas.

I want Kravix to become something substantial.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I stopped thinking quite so much about proving to somebody else what they lost.

I started thinking:

What can I actually build here?

That feels completely different.

Before, I was trying to prove why somebody should stay.

Now I’m trying to prove to myself that I can build something substantial.

And that might sound like a tiny difference.

To me, it feels fucking massive.

I still train hard. I still want a better physique. I still catch myself looking in car windows.

I still want more money, better opportunities and a better life.

I’m not going to pretend all them old thoughts disappeared overnight.

They didn’t.

But the question in my head is starting to change.

It used to be:

What do I need to become so somebody won’t leave me?

Now it’s becoming:

What can I become if I stop building my life around whether somebody stays?

And for the first time in a long time...

I’m actually excited to find out.

Related Kravix reads: Pain Into Progress, Being My Best Was Never Enough, and I Can Be Crying All the Way to the Gym. Then the Headphones Go In — and It’s Game Time.