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Tiffany Haddish’s glow-up story is nothing short of spectacular. I will never grow tired of hearing her talent-to-riches story. In 2021, after a particularly painful breakup with Common, she held a self-commitment ceremony that was featured in her docuseries, “Tiffany Haddish Goes Off”. Watch the clip above.

While she does seem open to an intimate relationship (with another person) in the future, as of 2025, she was committed only to herself. She is this week’s Single Icon.

P.S. Africa is not a country. Said with love and respect.

My dad gave me the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie when I graduated from High School. Only years later did I suspect a subtext in the gift.

Dad had a very particular vision of what what it meant to be ladylike. He came from a generation that was raised by people who were colonized in the Victorian age.

According to dad, women were supposed to be soft and delicate, supportive and encouraging, nurturing and wise (but not nagging). They were supposed to titter behind their fans or handkerchiefs and bat their eyelashes to seduce attract men.

Women’s role was to submit and facilitate. Caring for their husbands and children was to be their primary source of joy and pride. Finding a husband and having children was to be their singular obsession.

Women certainly were not to be strong or aggressive, loud or opinionated, stubborn or decisive, in other words, masculine. Women’s interests in education and advancement were to be for the purpose of making them better wives and mothers, rather than better professionals. Being a professional was masculine.

I was masculine. I had zero interest in being attractive to men. I was only interested in being myself and enjoying it. This is why I suspect that worry about my impending failure to secure a husband motivated his gift of the book. It is the only material gift I remember receiving from my dad. That’s how significant this was.

Let me hasten to say that my dad gave me many superior gifts in terms of his time, wisdom, encouragement, and interest in my wellbeing. Shopping, however, was absolutely not his thing. That was for women.

Donald Trump and my dad share a generation. I see many similarities between my dad’s idea of ideal womanhood and Donald Trump’s idea of ideal womanhood. They both are very comfortable with women being educated, having jobs, and being active in public life. They also both expect those achievements to be done in a way that is “feminine”: that is not loud or competitive but is indirect and certainly does not outshine or outdo any man.

According to their upbringing, no woman could beat a man. Women could manipulate or trick men. In fact, deception was their primary method for trying to undermine men. You know. Eve. But, ultimately, they could not win. The definition of a man was expressed in his domination and his dominion over women. You know. Patriarchy.

A woman’s place was beneath her husband. He was, as the Bible said, to be her head. A dominant woman upset the natural order of things.

This is what came up for me when I read that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado had presented Donald Trump with her Nobel prize.

In the context of being raised to believe that my virginity was my most precious and valuable possession (really my only possession) and source of power relative to men, Machado’s act seemed to me like the mousey girl giving the aloof and dangerous yet some how irresistible jock that one precious thing he would take from her in the hopes that her grand gesture would melt his heart and make him love her — even though he had only ever dismissed and ignored her.

The news was devastating.

In fact, Trump took the prize and then dismissed Machado once again. The humiliation is profound.

At its core is the organizing principle that structures abusive relationships in which a man is the abuser and a woman the abused. The principal says that women are essentially discredited and humiliated (again, Eve), cannot be rehabilitated, and so must submit to the will of men.

There is no potential for equivalent exchange between people who are unequal. Never would her gift, her concession, see equivalent reciprocation. As an inferior being, in his paradigm, she has nothing to give him that would compel him to give her what she values and wants in exchange.

In fact, very act of giving him her Nobel Prize diminished its value because it came from Machado who is, to him, without value.

Machado giving Trump her Nobel Prize also backfires spectacularly because it highlights his humiliation at being snubbed by the Nobel Committee. In essence, Machado says, “Oh, they wouldn’t give you a prize? Here, have mine.”

Only losers get consolation prizes. Trump loathes losers. And so, here is this woman, for whom he as no respect, turning the knife with a consolation prize.

Others have pointed out that Donald Trump’s relationships are primarily transactional. Getting his respect is based on his perception of your power, which is, to him, the measure of your value.

Appeasement is embarrassing to him. By attempting to appease him, Machado made her situation worse. She demonstrated to Trump precisely how weak (and thus, to him, valueless) she is.

This is a classical dynamic in many abusive relationships. Thinking to change the abuser’s behavior, to get the abuse to stop, the abused person gives whatever the abuser demands . . . and even more.

Here is the very subtle and nuanced problem with this: appeasement is as much an attempt to manipulate and control another person as violence is. It is just as toxic.

It can work temporarily, and it might be necessary in life and death situations. Perhaps Machado sees her’s as a life and death situation.

Even so, appeasement will never deliver the full concession you seek.

Your abuser has zero respect for you and, as with Trump, appeasement only reinforces that.

There’s more. At WallflowerLife we are champions of developing an internal locus of control. Having an internal locus of control means recognizing that you create your own reality by choosing how to respond to the issues you encounter. It means looking inward for both the origin of and the answer to your problems.

Placing blame on others for the way you respond to your problems means placing your locus of control outside of yourself. In essence, you make yourself the victim.

Since there is no victim without a villain, this also means making other people the villains in your story . . . which is of your own creation.

In no way is this intended to diminish the very real experiences and impact of abuse. It is, indeed, terrible and its greatest harm is that it diminishes your trust in your own power.

Instead, my point is that without the mindset shift that properly locates the locus of control internally, within you, there is no hope for escape.

Instead, if you identify yourself as a victim, you cannot exist without a villain, and so you must go looking for them.

If you find yourself stuck in or having the same toxic relationship over and over again, you just might be chasing villains.

The wisdom of How to Win Friends and Influence People is not about manipulation. Following what the book suggests will never make another person into something they would never be otherwise. The book is about influence not transformation.

The strategies the book encourages are intended to ensure that you don’t participate in creating circumstances that engender toxic responses. But these strategies are best understood in relation to another famous bit of wisdom from Dr. Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”

Appeasement will never bring an abuser to respect you. Respect is necessary to ending abuse. Appeasement will never end abuse.

Instead, go inside and ask yourself what, really, is keeping you in your abusive relationship? What benefits are you getting that override your inner wisdom that begs for you to leave? What toxic beliefs about your value in the universe allow you to excuse the violation?

In the answers to these powerful questions lay the keys to your own liberation. Break free! And leave the villains to the forest.

Live an elevated life on a single income. Explore strategies for beating the system.

There’s an episode of Sex and the City that resonated with me enough that I still remember it vividly. Miranda, the single, independent lawyer (I believe she had actually made partner by this time) decides to buy her own condo in New York City. What follows is a somewhat humiliating series of questions and answers with the morgtgage professional involved in her purchase.

“So it’s just you?”

"Yeah.”

“Check the ‘single woman’ box.”

The downpayment is coming from your father?”
“No. Just me.”

“Check the single woman box.”

Getting into real estate ownership is challenging enough - even with access to man money. Buying a house as a single woman in today’s market might seem impossible. But there are ways to improve your experience and your chances.

I will admit that I was lucky in many ways but do remember that luck happens when opportunity meets preparation. There were a few steps that I took before I bought a house that really helped.

After a year of waiting, the right renter came along and the first house is now paying for itself. Eventually, the second house will also become a source of revenue.

Everyone who has an amazing outcome has some measure of luck to thank for it. I got lucky by:

Yes, I had luck. But benefiting from it required commitment and diligence on the front end.

Take time to study your real estate landscape. Get out and visit properties. Be prepared for luck when it falls in your lap.

Have you had wins in the real estate game? Share your experience in the comments.

Check out the video below for some mind-set mentoring that can help you to increase your luck and set you on your own journey as a real estate investor.

My standards for what I expect in a romantic relationship were established by a number of movies that I now look back on as silly, foolish, and unfair.

I say unfair because the movies were marketed to impressionable young women and they unreasonably skewed our expectations of romantic relationships. These movies have contributed to the reason that I am perpetually single. I refuse to settle for less than the movies promised. So I stay single.

However, I also know that I have the power to treat myself as unreasonably well as I want to. That means encouraging myself, thanking myself, congratulating myself, comforting myself, educating myself, trusting myself, challenging myself, choosing fun and joy and adventure. I’ve been doing that for 18 years now.

How have you encouraged yourself this week? How have you congratulated yourself this week? How have you comforted, educated, trusted, and challenged yourself?

Envision the best, most fulfilling relationship you could ever desire and then . . . make it happen!

You have everything you need to be the man that you’ve been looking for.

Check out this video about practical steps to take to actively love yourself.

What inspires you to live un-partnered? We’d love to hear from you. Comment “What had happened was” below to get instructions for how to share your story.

Celebrating everything wonderful about being self-partnered and satisfied.

Romance is Tyranny!