I’m Struggling Financially & My Girlfriend Is Trolling Me About It

What it means & what you should do if you’re struggling financially & your girlfriend is trolling you.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a 32-year-old viewer who read 3% Man 10 times back in 2018 but hasn’t touched it since. Two years ago he had a bad accident and the medical bills have crushed him financially and he lost his job. He’s in debt and has been talking with his girlfriend about moving in together. However, she often gives him backhanded insults about his financial situation. Her dad is rich.

He wonders if he should break it off since she isn’t supportive and her constant trolling about his finances. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

Obviously that’s not good. If you’re a man and you’re going through a tough time, your girl is supposed to be your biggest fan and cheerleader. She’s supposed to be rooting for you. She’s supposed to bring you peace, not disturb your peace.

In this particular email this guy is 32, he read 3% Man all the way back in 2018 10 times, but it doesn’t look like he’s been back to it since to review it like good students do. Good students typically go back maybe once or twice a year just to keep it fresh in their minds because whatever you observe, you participate in. If you stop participating, observing and taking in good information like what’s in my book and all you do is consume TV and movies, whether you realize it or not, you’re being reprogrammed with dysfunctional archetypes. Over time, especially in this case, six years have gone by since this guy has read my book. He had a lot of success for many years, and then about two years ago, he got into an accident and he was almost paralyzed. He ended up losing his job because of it. He’s got a lot of money and over $100,000 in medical bills and rent that he had to pay without having an income. So he’s living off his savings and he wasn’t really looking for anybody.

He met a girl, I guess about a year ago. They started dating or so, and this was shortly after his accident. This girl is a few years younger, and I guess apparently her dad is rich, he has a lot of money. He’s finally got a job, he’s got a path forward to figure out how to get out of this financial mess he’s gotten into, but his girlfriend has been trolling him a lot, calling him broke boy and things of that nature. I would assume that there’s probably things he’s doing and saying that also are making him appear unattractive, because he hasn’t been back through the book in almost six years. That was before he got into this particular relationship. So I would assume probably his game is not very tight anymore as well. On top of that, his girlfriend is not being very supportive. I mean, the dude almost was paralyzed. Instead of being supportive, she’s trolling him. So now he’s like, “Maybe I should just be single, break it off with her because she’s not very supportive and then work myself out of this financial hole, and when I get back to a place where things are going really well, then I’ll start dating again.”

So he writes in his email describing his situation. It’s a good email because when you look at divorce statistics, why people split up, one of the biggest reasons, I think the number one reason as a matter of fact, is people split up because of financial reasons. In other words, money is tight or they’re having financial problems and the women decide to tap out. So this guy is just dating this girl and they have been talking about potentially moving in together, but as a man, if you’ve gone through a tough time and your girl is constantly trying to tweak your balls about it, the last thing you’re going to feel like doing is getting closer to her and cohabitating with her and sharing rent, especially when she’s trolling him this bad over money because things are difficult enough. I mean, the dude was almost paralyzed and she’s making a big joke out of it, like it’s supposed to be funny or something, and he takes it as just kind of like a backhanded insult.

Viewer Email:

Hey Coach,

Long time listener and follower of your content. I read the book well over 10x back in 2018 and it totally changed my “luck” with women. I found I was pretty much able to get whoever I wanted, and started to set my sights on finding a partner after enjoying the single life for a few years. 

I’m 32 years old now living in New York City. I moved here from far away about 10 years ago to build my life and have been extremely successful working in tech. I am a former athlete and have always been in great shape, above average height. All in all, I was loving life. 

However, two years ago (September 2022), I was injured in an accident that nearly severed my spinal cord which would have left me paralyzed from the waist down. Luckily, I was able to receive emergency surgery in enough time to prevent that, but the accident ultimately required three separate reconstructive surgeries to fix. This resulted in me losing my job for the first time in my career while I was recovering from surgery. 

Well, that was nice of them. “Oh hey, sorry you’re almost paralyzed. You’re fired.”

Shortly after my accident, I had met my now girlfriend who is a few years younger than me and also lives in New York City. At that time, she was truly my saving grace as she was by my side through a very difficult recovery. I felt so grateful for her and dreamed of marrying her every day. 

Fast forward to today, we have been dating 18 months…

So actually a year and a half. Not a year.

…And are planning to move in together soon. The problem is that the two year period after my injury set me back significantly financially. I lost about $100k cash dealing with medical bills, radiology appointments, physical therapy, monthly cobra premiums and paying rent in New York City for six months without income. 

While I’m working again with a good salary and commissions and have a path to make my money back, things are pretty tight at the moment and it’s putting stress on my relationship. 

My girlfriend has stated multiple times recently that she’s concerned about “her” future because of my situation. 

To be clear, this part isn’t a mystery to me. I know how this works and, as a man, when your ability to provide is called into question things start to get rocky. 

Well like I said, if you haven’t been back through the book in six years, it really would behoove you to get back into it and go through it at least one time, take your time to read it, or you can put the audio-book on two-speed while you follow along in a digital or physical copy. Then you can get through it in four hours, because I would imagine there will be some things that jump out at you that you’ve totally forgotten, and things you’ve probably been messing up on because you’re in the worst part of going through this almost paralyzation. Yet she not only dated you, but fell in love with you and stayed with you to the point where she was your saving grace. Now after you physically recovered, things are rocky because of your financial situation. So she was willing to support you when you were injured, but now after the injury, it looks like mostly it’s behind you now. You’ve got the financial issues to deal with and you are dealing with it and you’re moving in the right direction, but she’s giving you a hard time. She’s trolling you.

When women sense weakness in a man, they’re going to troll us. So maybe you’re insecure about it, you get upset about it. Maybe you’re not doing everything you could be doing about it, or maybe you just don’t seem to have the confidence and swagger that you once had. The bottom line is, if a woman is in love with you and she’s supportive or she was supportive in the past and now she’s kind of not really supportive, especially when she’s trolling you, that tells me she doesn’t respect you as much. If women don’t respect you, they can’t love you. If I was you, I would be looking at what are the reasons, what have you. What has changed? Because if she really was not a supportive person, she probably wouldn’t have been dating you and been with you through the worst part after your accident, but the fact that she stuck with you, and it’s only now after the fact when you’re better physically that she’s worried about the situation because of your finances, it’s OK for her to be worried, and it’s understandable, but as you’ll see later down in the email, she’s trolling about it and kind of giving them backhanded insults.

Again, the reason why women insult you is they don’t respect you. They think you’re weak. They think you’re soft. So there’s obviously things you’re doing and saying that have caused her to doubt your masculine core and not trust that you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do. Maybe you went through a period before you started working again where you were physically better, but you were playing video games, and maybe her perception was that you were kind of slacking off and not really trying too hard to get another job. Now that you finally found a job, she feels a little bit better, but maybe she’s disturbed by the fact that it took you so long to get a new job, I don’t know, because he doesn’t really elaborate on those things, but the fact that her behavior has changed from being supportive to now kind of being negative is usually indicative that his game has gotten sloppy and things are just not as tight in how he’s showing up as it was just a few years ago.

I’ve laid out a plan for me to make my money back and feel totally confident in my ability to do so. I’ve been a top performer my entire career and had it not been for my injury, none of this would have happened. 

Well, when you go through a difficult time, that’s when you find out the person you’re with, what they’re really like.

Lately, my girlfriend has seemed totally checked out and has even started ribbing me in a joking way about my finances, calling me “Broke boy” and things like that.

Well, if she’s checked out the mistakes that pretty much every guy makes that come to me that are having problems in their long term relationship is number one, they probably stopped dating and courting her properly. So you stop taking her out on dates, probably because you’re trying to save money. Number two, she no longer felt heard and understood. So women interpret this and take this as you don’t care for them, and when women start complaining, “Oh, we never do anything. We never go anywhere,” what guys tend to do is they use logic and reason. They’re like, “Baby, we got to save money. I got to get myself out of this hole. I’m down $100,000,” and you don’t have to go out and take her to an expensive meal. You could take her to the park. You could do something that’s inexpensive. The bottom line is you need to have fun dates together, because if you don’t date and court your girlfriend, well eventually some other guy will. Typically it’s both those things. The guy stops dating and courting her because he’s trying to save money, and then she starts to feel like he doesn’t care. She says, “We never do anything.” The guy reiterates, “I’m trying to save money.” In other words, all he does is tell her, “Hey, I’m not going to take you out on any dates until all these bills are paid off.”

Women want to be in a love story. They know that if you care, you’ll do something special, even if it’s making dinner at home together and playing Naked Twister or something like that and doing something fun together. The family that plays together tends to stay together, so I would re-examine that. Then the other thing is just not taking the time to make her feel heard and understood. If she’s totally checked out and it seems like her mind is somewhere else, you can say, “Babe, what’s going on? You seem like your mind is on something else. You’re kind of quiet. You’re kind of distant. What’s going on?”

I have developed thick skin over the years and while I feel nothing but confidence in myself, I’m starting to really question if this girl is the right partner for me. It almost feels like she’s trying to upset me the more it happens.

Well, if you’re not reacting to it and you’re not standing up for yourself, if you just kind of laugh it off, brush it off and ignore it, she’s trolling you because she senses weakness, or she’s full of fear or a combination of both. If she’s insulting you, you should say, “Honey, what you just said, that was not very loving. I mean, I almost got paralyzed two years ago, and now you’re ripping on me because of my finances. You want to move in together, and you’re supposed to be my biggest cheerleader and fan. I was almost paralyzed, and now you think it’s a big joke. That makes me feel as a man, you don’t really support me, and you’re not supportive. What really tests a couple is if we go through a hard time together, what happens? Do we do it together and remain teammates, or do you start trying to kick me when I’m down? If you’re going to kick me when I’m down, that’s going to make me feel like I don’t really want to go through trials and tribulations in life with you because it doesn’t feel like you’re a very loyal and supportive partner.”

“You should be building me up. You should be encouraging me. You should be helping to build up my confidence and telling me that I can do it, that you believe in me. Instead, you’re kicking me when I’m down. It’s not very loving that you’re being kind of abusive, and you need to apologize for that. Don’t talk to me like that ever again. You shouldn’t be making fun of me because of my situation, because of my accident. You were there with me through the whole time, and you were very loving and very supportive, and now I’m better physically. Now I’ve just got to deal with the debts and the consequences of it. Instead of being supportive now, it’s like you’re just disturbing my peace all the time. You shouldn’t be insulting me like this. It’s not loving at all. It’s abusive and it’s unkind and you need to apologize.” That’s how you need to react to it. If you just let her keep getting away with this insulting you, calling you broke boy, well you’re not standing up for yourself, and that’s probably part of it is because she senses weakness, she senses you’re a little squishy, that she can kind of push you around. So she’s not getting any push-back from you. It’s kind of like a kid. It’s like kids do that. Dogs do that as well. They push the boundaries, they see what they can get away with before you push back. So she keeps misbehaving and trolling you, and you’re not pushing back in a loving but forceful way.

On one hand, I wouldn’t blame her if she decided that this was too much for her and left. I would be OK and so would she. 

Well dude, she stuck with you through the worst part of the physical issues, so she obviously cared, but something has changed. Like I said, as a coach, when I look and see that you haven’t been through the book in six years, then there’s probably a lot of little things that you used to do that you no longer do. I would suspect because your financial situation, you probably haven’t been dating and courting her because you’re trying to save money, and that makes her feel like you don’t care, because even before when you were going through a difficult time and you guys first started dating, you were taking the time to date and court her even through the worst part of your injuries and your physical therapy. So if that stopped, she’s going to interpret that as, “Well, when you were really down and out, we were still dating. Now when you’re physically better and you’re working again, we’re no longer dating.” So what she feels like is you don’t care. Despite what you say.

Women look at what you do. The worst thing you can do is argue with her and tell her how you’re trying to save money. She wants to go out and wants to have fun with you. Again, it doesn’t have to be expensive dates. You can go on picnics, you can go on walks in the park, you can go hiking, you can go see cheap tourist spots. I mean, every city has extensive history, especially in New York, going back hundreds of years, there’s probably old houses, antiques, there’s cultural things that you can go do and check out that things are really inexpensive, like a ticket to those kinds of things is usually really cheap because it’s subsidized by the city. You got historical landmarks, whatever happens to be, $10 a person. It’s really cheap.

When I lived in downtown Orlando, I can’t remember the name of it, but there was a place downtown. It had a lot of history and stuff. I remember one time I was walking around downtown with my dad when he came up to visit me one time. I think the tickets were like $8 or $9 to go in and walk through this thing. It was really cool. It was down the street from where I lived, and I didn’t even know about it. We just happened to be walking by. I was like, “Oh, that’s kind of cool. Let’s go check this out.” So every city has something like that, whether it’s a science center, a cultural center, some historical house, some historical landmark or something like that. There are things that are inexpensive that you can do to take her out that’s fun, that’s interesting, that’s different.

The point being is she wants to go out and have fun with you. Maybe you haven’t been as much fun lately because you’re so focused on work and making money.

On the other hand, if she’s making the decision to stick it out with me while I figure it out, I find the backhanded insults about something that really sucks for me to be disrespectful in a way I’m not willing to tolerate any longer. 

Again, I would I would talk to her the same way I just explained a couple of minutes ago on how to handle it, because what it sounds like you’re probably not dating courtier anymore. You’re not making her feel heard and understood like you used to. You’re not taking the time that you used to to show that you care. And on top of that, you’re not giving her any pushback. You’re not standing up to her. So she probably doesn’t feel as safe with you because you seem a little weak, like you’ve been weakened by this event, which physically, I mean, what happened happened. But if you seem mentally weak, then she’s going to be afraid. She’s going to be fearful, and she’s going to troll you because she senses that there are chinks in your armor and she’s probing for weakness.This is just what women do. They want to see that you can handle it.

I feel that I was dealt a really difficult and unfair hand with my injury two years ago, and it’s something I have to face every single day. I choose daily to approach my situation with gratitude and stoic energy. I don’t panic, I just work hard every day and remain confident that I will be OK. 

That said, I would be lying to say this is easy and the last thing I need is negative energy in my corner. 

So Coach, what questions should I be asking myself right now? 

Well number one, you should be going through the book because that will really help illuminate anything that you stopped doing that you used to do.

Should I leave my relationship to put 100% of my energy into myself and building back my empire?

I wouldn’t do that. I would talk to her first, sit her down, tell her your concerns and tell her that you’re over it at this point. It’s cruel, it’s mean, it’s unloving, it’s verbally abusive, it’s emotionally abusive and it’s mentally abusive. If she wants to be your teammate, your partner and wants to move in with you in the future, this stuff has to stop because if it doesn’t stop, there is absolutely no way that you’re going to move in with her, because then it’ll just be worse. On top of that, not only will you not move in with her, if that doesn’t stop, eventually it’s going to lead to the end of the relationship because you need a supportive partner that brings peace into your life, not a partner who disturbs your peace.

Do I trust that my partner is truly willing to gut this out with me?

Well, you got to have a conversation that I would give it 90 days to see if she really respects you, because if she respects you, she won’t ever do that shit again. If she doesn’t, she’ll probably, maybe after a few weeks or a month, she’ll start trolling you again.

I worry she isn’t due to her upbringing. Her dad is worth tens of millions (Possibly $100 million, LOL) and she was raised seeing a man FULLY provide for a woman. 

This feels like a critical time in my life and I need to make sure I get my career back on track before I can take care of anyone else. 

Thanks in advance for the help! You’re the best.

Cheers,

Bob

Well, like I said, you got to sit her down and have a nice heart-to-heart with her and set some healthy boundaries. She needs to apologize and she needs to promise that she’s never, ever going to say an unloving, unkind thing. I mean, how would she feel if she was in the hospital and went through something like this and you’re constantly talking shit to her about it? She’s not going to like that at all. She’s going to feel attacked, she’s going to feel like you don’t love her, she’s going to feel like you don’t support her. So use that analogy when you’re talking to her. Then I would give it 90 days to see how she behaves. If she really cuts it out and you spend time with the book to figure out what you’re no longer doing that you used to do that made you really attractive and anything else maybe that you’ve gotten soft and squishy on, like I said, this tells me overall is she thinks you’re soft now, and that’s why she’s trolling you, because you’re probably just laughing it off or tolerating it and keeping your mouth shut and she knows it bothers you and she keeps doing it because deep down, she wants you to stand up to her, put her in her place and then pin her down in the bed and give her a proper seeing to after you guys have talked and worked things out.

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