You Deserve Better: What Life Has Taught Me About Love, Relationships, and Becoming Your Best Self

by Tyler Cameron

Overview

**The Instant National Bestseller** 

From the Bachelorette breakout heartthrob, You Deserve Better combines Tyler Cameron's life story with a guide for both men and women to building healthy relationships in the tricky world of modern dating, proving why he's the male feminist we never knew we needed.

Tyler Cameron impressed fans on The Bachelorette with his ability to discuss difficult topics with a level of emotional intelligence perhaps never seen on reality television. Things like consent and boundaries, respect for women and their decisions, the roots of toxic masculinity in insecurity, and more, he espoused with confidence and genuineness.

Tyler seems like a unicorn. He got the world's attention simply by demonstrating a full grasp of respect and no fear of vulnerability and honesty. But shouldn't this be the norm? In this book, Tyler shows that every person deserves a partner who understands and values them, with advice on how to seek out someone like this and how to behave like this for your own someone.

Part memoir, part how-to guide for anyone lost in the world of modern dating, and interspersed with practical tips on how to find and foster a meaningful relationship, You Deserve Better shows readers how Tyler C. became Tyler C., the story his fans are dying to know.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593183564
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/27/2021
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	621,313
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Tyler Cameron is a TV personality, actor, author, model, and philanthropist. Born and raised in Jupiter, Florida, Tyler played football at Wake Forest University and later at Florida Atlantic University, where he received his MBA. Tyler currently splits his time between New York and Florida where he recently started his own construction company. With a passion for building and home renovation, Tyler hosted the show Barkitecture for Quibi and Bravo Media. He is also a cofounder and ambassador for the charity organization ABC Food Tours, which focuses on enriching the lives of kids in underserved communities.

Read an Excerpt

1

 

Lessons from

My Parents

 

Where I Come From

 

 
For better or worse, the relationships we see as we’re growing up shape our ideas about love. Those early models can sometimes pave the way for the relationships we have (or don’t have) in the future. And I, like so many people, didn’t have a model relationship to learn from. My parents dedicated their lives to raising three great children, but when it came to their own marriage, they had a rocky, uneven partnership. When Shakespeare wrote, “The course of true love never did run smooth,” he might as well have been talking about them.

Growing up, I had a mom who loved me, a dad who loved me, and two parents who loved each other. But their ways of showing their love for each other were not always healthy—not for them, or for us kids, who witnessed it. They were oil and water, and they feuded constantly. Watching their relationship, which was both unhealthy and yet based in love, gave me a very confusing image of what a loving relationship should look like.

Perhaps the biggest reason I haven’t had many long‑term rela‑ tionships is because, for much of my young life, I didn’t see a relationship that I wanted for myself. When you don’t have any positive role models for what a healthy relationship looks like, it can be easy to fall into a bad one, to imitate patterns, or, what seemed like the easiest option for me, to avoid having relationships altogether. For a long time, I struggled—and sometimes still struggle—to un‑ derstand what a solid relationship should look like. Eventually, I found role models whose relationships I could look up to. But for a long time, in a lot of ways, I had to figure that one out on my own.
That’s not to say I didn’t learn from watching my parents. I did; in fact, I learned a lot. They taught me the power of hard work, helping others, and never giving up. But as far as relationships are concerned, they taught me everything I didn’t want to be.

My parents actually split up twice. The first time they separated, I was two years old. Even though I was a toddler, I have some mem‑ ories from that time. Mostly I remember them fighting about things I didn’t understand. Even though I was too young to fully grasp what was happening, that situation caused me stress. When I got older and thought about it, I knew I never wanted to put my own kids in a situation like that. My mom and I moved four streets away, and for a time, we lived apart from my dad.

Eventually, my dad bought this beautiful house on the water and said he would do whatever it took to get his family back. When I was around four years old, my parents got back together and had two more kids, my younger brothers, Austin and Ryan. We all lived in that house together, and for a while, it was paradise. Ours was the most happening, fun home there was. It was on a peninsula, with three‑quarters of the property surrounded by water. Every Thursday through Sunday, it was the party house. Friends would come over, and we would all be together, partying and cooking out. It was so family‑friendly. I remember how it felt—like we had nothing to worry about. We stayed there for nine happy years.

But then when the housing market crashed in 2008, my dad, who was a builder, lost the house, along with everything else he had. (For a long time, my dream was to buy it back someday. But sadly, it was recently torn down.) After that, things got really rough. The second time my parents split, I was fifteen or sixteen. That time, it would be for good.

Even when they were together, though, my parents weren’t mod‑ els for a healthy relationship. For starters, in the past, my dad suffered from alcoholism and depression. He’s now in recovery, but when I was a kid, he would sometimes turn to alcohol when times were hard. He always supported us financially, but he wasn’t there for emotional support, for us or for Mom. There are some things that, for everyone’s sake, I’d rather not discuss in detail. But may it suffice to say that I’ve lived and felt things that I hope my kids will never have to experience.

My parents put my brothers and me through some difficult stuff, but I know we’re not the only family to live this story. These can be challenging and consuming situations. Some people have to cut off contact with family members if this type of behavior goes on for too long; I can understand that choice. But for me, I’ll never stop being my dad’s son. I stand by his side because I also see his whole story. My dad had a hard life. He never had a father, he lost his mom at twenty‑one, and then he lost his brother at twenty‑five. Everything he did in life, from his school to his job to his family, was something he had to figure out on his own. It’s not an excuse for his actions, but I have a lot of sympathy for him. There were plenty of times when I wanted to say, “Fuck it,” and cut him out of my life. But in the end, he had an awakening and saw that he needed to get his shit together, and I’m glad that he did.

Thankfully for us, for our family, it turned out okay.

As I’ve gotten older, one thing that scares me is realizing how much our lives are all about perspective. So much of who we are and who we become boils down to how we look at things and what we take from any given situation. My perception of my parents’ relationship, and of our family as a whole, is so different from my brothers’ perceptions, because I’m the oldest and things happened at different stages of our development. Sometimes I fear they’ll fall into the same patterns my parents did or be afraid of relationships, even more than I have been. Being a role model for them is something I am constantly striving for.

My parents would both tell me negative stories about the other one to try to get me to take sides. In high school, I took my mom’s side. She was like my best friend, because at the time she was the one who was always there for me. I was the star quarterback, and she was the mom who brought a fresh foot‑long sub to my practice every day. But when I went to college, I started to side with my dad. I’d come home from school and see my brothers eating boxed mac ’n’ cheese while she was gone somewhere, and I would fault her for not giving them the same attention she had once given me. But I see now that wasn’t fair of me, and it wasn’t the whole picture. I didn’t see the struggles my mom went through. I didn’t understand that she just wanted love and support, too. She wanted to be treated the way she deserved to be treated. My dad worked hard to support everyone financially, but my mom wanted a partner who would share the responsibilities of raising a family, too. She always said, “He paid all the bills, but he never paid the attention bill.”


When we had the house on the water, my mom was the coolest girl on the block. She was a social butterfly, making tons of friends and getting the attention she always loved. Once we lost the house, she still craved that social interaction, but she needed to find it elsewhere. She started dating and had a few boyfriends once she and my dad were done. This new lifestyle choice was hard for me to accept at the time. I remember one time, when I was in college, I wanted to physically fight one of her boyfriends. He wasn’t my dad, and I didn’t get how she could be with anyone else. But it’s weird how sometimes little things can hit you and change your perspective. The first time I heard the lyrics to a Drake song, where he asks, “Who the fuck wants to be seventy and alone?” I was like, Oh shit. I got it. My mom was only after what we all want. She just wanted someone to care about her.

After that point, I eased into accepting her boyfriend, Pauly. Eventually, I came to love the guy. They were together for eight years, and that was one of the first times I saw a healthy relationship in action. They took care of each other, and their relationship was built on trust and respect. I had never seen my mom happier. That helped me start to understand that romantic love can function in a positive, healthy way.

Even after seeing what a healthy relationship looked like, I didn’t completely understand that my parents’ relationship was toxic until I was out of college. Before that, I just figured everyone had their problems. I thought arguing was how people communicated. But as I grew up and gained a greater perspective, I saw how unhealthy and damaging that was.

One night, a week before Christmas, I was getting ready to take my last exam to get my general contractor’s license. I called my dad to check in on him, and he told me his stomach felt like it was on fire. As a precaution, I told my brother to take him to the hospital, but I didn’t think too much of it. It’s not that I didn’t take him seriously; I’d just heard it a million times before.

The next morning, I called to let him know that I’d passed my exam and was going to be a general contractor, just like him. I discovered he was still in the hospital, and his condition had only gotten worse. “Something’s not right,” he said. I rushed there and stayed with him in the hospital for the next three days. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. That was enough for him. The doctors were trying to help, but he felt like they weren’t doing anything right. “Get me out of here,” he told me. So we did as he asked and brought him home.

I sat by his open bedroom door all night, just watching him. He was really out of it. He couldn’t eat; he would throw up everything. He couldn’t really sleep. The next morning, he was weak and pale and barely looked alive. I carried him to the car and rushed him back to the hospital. They immediately brought him to the ICU and ran a battery of tests on him.

The doctors discovered he had an infection that was starting to go septic. He was in so much pain that they put him in an induced coma. The next step was to undergo emergency surgery. When the doctors split his gut, they discovered that his small intestine had wrapped and knotted together, causing a blockage, and a portion of it had to be cut out. Because he was in the coma, I was the person who needed to sign off on his rights, which was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I did my best to stay strong for my brothers, but no matter how hard I tried to fight it, I couldn’t stop crying. My dad says he remembers being wheeled down the hallway and seeing the signs for hospice and emergency surgery. As they wheeled him closer to surgery, he saw a bright light and thought it was taking him to die. He says he tried to fight it off. He told it over and over that he wasn’t ready. Eventually, the light turned off. My dad remained in that coma for twelve days.

During the daytime, I took over his business, keeping his con‑ struction projects running. I was already working on two different housing projects of my own, and with the addition of my dad’s work, that number suddenly bumped up to ten. I spent my days acting like nothing was wrong and forging his signature to keep it all going. (Eventually, when he came to, we told everyone what was going on.) Before my dad got sick, my parents did not like each other. They still had love for each other, but after their second split, they couldn’t be in the same room together. They would immediately bicker; they didn’t get along at all. But during my dad’s health struggles, my parents got close again. My mom did so much to help out with my dad, and they became best friends again. It was the first time in my life, at least that I could remember, when everyone was fully there for one another. It was so nice to see my parents care for each other, and it made life so much better. We were finally able to do things as a family again.

After his time in the hospital, my dad didn’t drink anymore. He promised to make a change, and he committed to taking care of himself. At first there were a couple of times when he still drank here and there, but I sat him down and said, “Dad, you can’t.” Thankfully, he took me seriously. Of course, he still has struggles. He will always have to fight his alcoholism, and like many of us, he suffers from pe‑ riods of anxiety and depression. But I’m so proud of what he’s been able to achieve, the strength he’s shown to ultimately save his own life. When I was twenty‑six years old, for the first time since I was in eighth grade, we all spent Thanksgiving and Christmas together as a family. It was the most amazing thing, the realization of a dream I had always had for all of us to spend time together. That year we all had so much fun together. Pauly, my mom’s longtime boyfriend, was there, and everyone got along. We spent Thanksgiving in New York City, even going to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It felt like life had gotten to where it was supposed to be.
But life can be incredibly unexpected. For years, my biggest fear was speaking at my dad’s funeral, and for good reason. I never expected that I would need to speak at my mom’s.

Just a couple months after our holidays together, my mom unexpectedly passed away. It came as a huge blow to our entire family, something we’re  still learning to cope with. What I do know is that  I am so grateful for that last year, where we got to do everything together and enjoy one another’s company as a family. It was such a blessing that we were able to have that time together at the end. It felt like our relationships with one another had started to heal.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
For better or worse, the relationships we see as we’re growing up shape our ideas about love. Those early models can sometimes pave the way for the relationships we have (or don’t have) in the future. And I, like so many people, didn’t have a model relationship to learn from. My parents dedicated their lives to raising three great children, but when it came to their own marriage, they had a rocky, uneven part‑ nership. When Shakespeare wrote, “The course of true love never did run smooth,” he might as well have been talking about them.
Growing up, I had a mom who loved me, a dad who loved me, and two parents who loved each other. But their ways of showing their love for each other were not always healthy—not for them, or for us kids, who witnessed it. They were oil and water, and they feuded constantly. Watching their relationship, which was both un‑ healthy and yet based in love, gave me a very confusing image of what a loving relationship should look like.

 
Perhaps the biggest reason I haven’t had many long‑term rela‑ tionships is because, for much of my young life, I didn’t see a relationship that I wanted for myself. When you don’t have any pos‑ itive role models for what a healthy relationship looks like, it can be easy to fall into a bad one, to imitate patterns, or, what seemed like the easiest option for me, to avoid having relationships altogether. For a long time, I struggled—and sometimes still struggle—to un‑ derstand what a solid relationship should look like. Eventually, I found role models whose relationships I could look up to. But for a long time, in a lot of ways, I had to figure that one out on my own.
That’s not to say I didn’t learn from watching my parents. I did; in fact, I learned a lot. They taught me the power of hard work, help‑ ing others, and never giving up. But as far as relationships are con‑ cerned, they taught me everything I didn’t want to be.
My parents actually split up twice. The first time they separated, I was two years old. Even though I was a toddler, I have some mem‑ ories from that time. Mostly I remember them fighting about things I didn’t understand. Even though I was too young to fully grasp what was happening, that situation caused me stress. When I got older and thought about it, I knew I never wanted to put my own kids in a situ‑ ation like that. My mom and I moved four streets away, and for a time, we lived apart from my dad.
Eventually, my dad bought this beautiful house on the water and said he would do whatever it took to get his family back. When I was around four years old, my parents got back together and had two more kids, my younger brothers, Austin and Ryan. We all lived in that house together, and for a while, it was paradise. Ours was the most happening, fun home there was. It was on a peninsula, with three‑quarters of the property surrounded by water. Every Thursday 

through Sunday, it was the party house. Friends would come over, and we would all be together, partying and cooking out. It was so family‑friendly. I remember how it felt—like we had nothing to worry about. We stayed there for nine happy years.
But then when the housing market crashed in 2008, my dad, who was a builder, lost the house, along with everything else he had. (For a long time, my dream was to buy it back someday. But sadly, it was recently torn down.) After that, things got really rough. The second time my parents split, I was fifteen or sixteen. That time, it would be for good.
Even when they were together, though, my parents weren’t mod‑ els for a healthy relationship. For starters, in the past, my dad suf‑ fered from alcoholism and depression. He’s now in recovery, but when I was a kid, he would sometimes turn to alcohol when times were hard. He always supported us financially, but he wasn’t there for emotional support, for us or for Mom. There are some things that, for everyone’s sake, I’d rather not discuss in detail. But may it suffice to say that I’ve lived and felt things that I hope my kids will never have to experience.
My parents put my brothers and me through some difficult stuff, but I know we’re not the only family to live this story. These can be challenging and consuming situations. Some people have to cut off contact with family members if this type of behavior goes on for too long; I can understand that choice. But for me, I’ll never stop being my dad’s son. I stand by his side because I also see his whole story. My dad had a hard life. He never had a father, he lost his mom at twenty‑one, and then he lost his brother at twenty‑five. Everything he did in life, from his school to his job to his family, was something he had to figure out on his own. It’s not an excuse for his actions, but

 
I have a lot of sympathy for him. There were plenty of times when I wanted to say, “Fuck it,” and cut him out of my life. But in the end, he had an awakening and saw that he needed to get his shit together, and I’m glad that he did. Thankfully for us, for our family, it turned out okay.
As I’ve gotten older, one thing that scares me is realizing how much our lives are all about perspective. So much of who we are and who we become boils down to how we look at things and what we take from any given situation. My perception of my parents’ relation‑ ship, and of our family as a whole, is so different from my brothers’ perceptions, because I’m the oldest and things happened at different stages of our development. Sometimes I fear they’ll fall into the same patterns my parents did or be afraid of relationships, even more than I have been. Being a role model for them is something I am con‑ stantly striving for.
My parents would both tell me negative stories about the other one to try to get me to take sides. In high school, I took my mom’s side. She was like my best friend, because at the time she was the one who was always there for me. I was the star quarterback, and she was the mom who brought a fresh foot‑long sub to my practice every day. But when I went to college, I started to side with my dad. I’d come home from school and see my brothers eating boxed mac ’n’ cheese while she was gone somewhere, and I would fault her for not giving them the same attention she had once given me. But I see now that wasn’t fair of me, and it wasn’t the whole picture. I didn’t see the struggles my mom went through. I didn’t understand that she just wanted love and support, too. She wanted to be treated the way she deserved to be treated. My dad worked hard to support everyone financially, but my mom wanted a partner who would share the

 
responsibilities of raising a family, too. She always said, “He paid all the bills, but he never paid the attention bill.”
When we had the house on the water, my mom was the coolest girl on the block. She was a social butterfly, making tons of friends and getting the attention she always loved. Once we lost the house, she still craved that social interaction, but she needed to find it else‑ where. She started dating and had a few boyfriends once she and my dad were done. This new lifestyle choice was hard for me to accept at the time. I remember one time, when I was in college, I wanted to physically fight one of her boyfriends. He wasn’t my dad, and I didn’t get how she could be with anyone else. But it’s weird how sometimes little things can hit you and change your perspective. The first time I heard the lyrics to a Drake song, where he asks, “Who the fuck wants to be seventy and alone?” I was like, Oh shit. I got it. My mom was only after what we all want. She just wanted someone to care about her.
After that point, I eased into accepting her boyfriend, Pauly. Eventually, I came to love the guy. They were together for eight years, and that was one of the first times I saw a healthy relationship in action. They took care of each other, and their relationship was built on trust and respect. I had never seen my mom happier. That helped me start to understand that romantic love can function in a positive, healthy way.
Even after seeing what a healthy relationship looked like, I didn’t completely understand that my parents’ relationship was toxic until I was out of college. Before that, I just figured everyone had their problems. I thought arguing was how people communicated. But as I grew up and gained a greater perspective, I saw how unhealthy and damaging that was.

 
One night, a week before Christmas, I was getting ready to take my last exam to get my general contractor’s license. I called my dad to check in on him, and he told me his stomach felt like it was on fire. As a precaution, I told my brother to take him to the hospital, but I didn’t think too much of it. It’s not that I didn’t take him seriously; I’d just heard it a million times before.
The next morning, I called to let him know that I’d passed my exam and was going to be a general contractor, just like him. I dis‑ covered he was still in the hospital, and his condition had only gotten worse. “Something’s not right,” he said. I rushed there and stayed with him in the hospital for the next three days. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. That was enough for him. The doctors were trying to help, but he felt like they weren’t doing any‑ thing right. “Get me out of here,” he told me. So we did as he asked and brought him home.
I sat by his open bedroom door all night, just watching him. He was really out of it. He couldn’t eat; he would throw up everything. He couldn’t really sleep. The next morning, he was weak and pale and barely looked alive. I carried him to the car and rushed him back to the hospital. They immediately brought him to the ICU and ran a battery of tests on him.
The doctors discovered he had an infection that was starting to go septic. He was in so much pain that they put him in an induced coma. The next step was to undergo emergency surgery. When the doctors split his gut, they discovered that his small intestine had wrapped and knotted together, causing a blockage, and a portion of

 
it had to be cut out. Because he was in the coma, I was the person who needed to sign off on his rights, which was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I did my best to stay strong for my broth‑ ers, but no matter how hard I tried to fight it, I couldn’t stop crying. My dad says he remembers being wheeled down the hallway and seeing the signs for hospice and emergency surgery. As they wheeled him closer to surgery, he saw a bright light and thought it was taking him to die. He says he tried to fight it off. He told it over and over that he wasn’t ready. Eventually, the light turned off. My dad remained in that coma for twelve days.
During the daytime, I took over his business, keeping his con‑ struction projects running. I was already working on two different housing projects of my own, and with the addition of my dad’s work, that number suddenly bumped up to ten. I spent my days acting like nothing was wrong and forging his signature to keep it all going. (Eventually, when he came to, we told everyone what was going on.) Before my dad got sick, my parents did not like each other. They still had love for each other, but after their second split, they couldn’t be in the same room together. They would immediately bicker; they didn’t get along at all. But during my dad’s health struggles, my par‑ ents got close again. My mom did so much to help out with my dad, and they became best friends again. It was the first time in my life, at least that I could remember, when everyone was fully there for one another. It was so nice to see my parents care for each other, and it made life so much better. We were finally able to do things as a fam‑
ily again.
After his time in the hospital, my dad didn’t drink anymore. He promised to make a change, and he committed to taking care of
 
himself. At first there were a couple of times when he still drank here and there, but I sat him down and said, “Dad, you can’t.” Thankfully, he took me seriously. Of course, he still has struggles. He will always have to fight his alcoholism, and like many of us, he suffers from pe‑ riods of anxiety and depression. But I’m so proud of what he’s been able to achieve, the strength he’s shown to ultimately save his own life. When I was twenty‑six years old, for the first time since I was in eighth grade, we all spent Thanksgiving and Christmas together as a family. It was the most amazing thing, the realization of a dream I had always had for all of us to spend time together. That year we all had so much fun together. Pauly, my mom’s longtime boyfriend, was there, and everyone got along. We spent Thanksgiving in New York City, even going to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It felt like life had gotten to where it was supposed to be.

But life can be incredibly unexpected. For years, my biggest fear was speaking at my dad’s funeral, and for good reason. I never ex‑ pected that I would need to speak at my mom’s.

Just a couple months after our holidays together, my mom unex‑ pectedly passed away. It came as a huge blow to our entire family, something we’re  still learning to cope with. What I do know is that  I am so grateful for that last year, where we got to do everything together and enjoy one another’s company as a family. It was such a blessing that we were able to have that time together at the end. It felt like our relationships with one another had started to heal.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

1 Lessons From My Parents: Where I Come From 15

The Real Tyler: According to His Dad, Jeff 29

2 A Brief History Of My Past Relationships: Learning Accountability 33

The Real Tyler: According to His Friend Mollie 57

3 My First Love: What I Learned from Playing Sports 63

The Real Tyler: According to His High School Guidance Counselor, Mrs. P 83

4 Take A Chance: My Time on The Bachelorette 87

The Real Tyler: According to His Friend Matt 109

5 Be Respectful: How I Became an Accidental Feminist Icon 115

PSA For All Men 131

The Real Tyler: According to His Brother Ryan 135

6 Being Good, Doing Good, Feeling Good: How I Found Myself (and My Selflessness) 139

Build Your Team: Lessons from My Mentors 153

7 Dating Dos And Don'ts: Red Flags and Green Lights 169

A Word On Romance 193

8 Female Friends And Bromances: The Importance of Friendship 197

The Real Tyler: According to His Friend Katie 211

9 What I've Learned From Rejection: That Time I Got Broken Up with on National Television 217

The Real Tyler: According to His Friend and Mentor Robb 231

10 Always Be Yourself: What Fame Has Taught Me 235

The Real Tyler: According to His Brother Austin 251

11 A Letter To My Younger Brothers 255

Questions & Answers 261

Acknowledgments 273

Editorial Reviews

Praise for You Deserve Better

“Yes, Tyler Cameron wrote a book. Yes, it's about how to build meaningful relationships. Yes, you should order it right now.”—Marie Claire

From the Publisher