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The rules are different when you’re in a relationship with a narcissist. You may walk on eggshells, question yourself, or feel like you can never do anything right in their eyes. And if they break up with you? It only leaves you with more confusion.

So what’s the right move in this situation? Should we stand up to them? Try to convince them with facts?

In today’s new video, I give you 7 reasons why you can never expect to get true closure from a narcissist . . . and what you can do to give closure to yourself.

Matthew Hussey

What are the seven reasons why you will never get closure from a narcissist?

Hello, I’m Matthew Hussey. If you’re new to the channel, welcome. Today, I want to talk about the subject of narcissism and why dealing with a narcissist can be so unbelievably unrewarding. Why when we deal with people like this, there is a complete and utter lack of closure, and how, in feeling that lack of closure, in feeling that there is no sense of completion in any of the things that we deal with with them, it can be maddening.

The reason I wanted to make this video is because I want us to get out of the cycle of going back to these people and hoping for a different result, hoping that we are this time, going to go back and finally get the closure that we’ve always wanted from them. I hope that I can make this video in some ways so dismal, so bleak in its outlook when it comes to the outcomes of these situations that you will simply resolve to get out of them instead of trying to fix them.

There’s a moment in Oliver Berkman’s book. I wish I could figure out who said it, but he was talking about someone who said, “My job is not to get people to lighten the load. It’s to make the load so heavy that they simply put it down.” And that’s what I’d like to do with this video.

Why can you never expect to get closure from a narcissist?

Number one: They will never take accountability.

This is one of the most maddening things about dealing with a person like this, is that the idea of getting a genuine “I’m sorry. I did that. That was my fault,” is a fantasy. We will tell them everything they have done wrong, we will tell them everything they’ve done that has affected us tremendously. We can literally point out the chaos that they have caused, or we can point out how black and white, how wrong they are about something, but they’re not interested in that reality. They’re only interested in the reality where they are right.

Bringing themselves to admit fault doesn’t fall within the normal laws of how they operate. And even if you manage to drag an apology out of someone like this, it will be an incredibly unsatisfying apology.

It’s the kind of apology where you have been begging and pleading with them to see your point of view, where you have been spelling it out, where you simply won’t let them off the hook, and through saying all of this, you maybe get them to the point of such exhaustion of finally throwing their hands up and saying something like, “All right, I’m sorry. Okay. Is that what you want to hear? Like, what do you want me to do?”

That’s the kind of apology you get, and you tell me whether that feels like a satisfying apology that gives you closure.

The second reason you’ll never get closure is because they will never truly empathize with your situation, because it’s not about you, it’s always about them.

So when you’re talking about how something has affected you, it’s not just that you won’t get an apology, or if you do, you’ll get an unsatisfactory apology. It’s that you won’t even feel like they’re remotely connecting with your experience.

When you talk to them about what you’ve been through, they’ll deflect. They might put it back on you. They might say that you’re being overly sensitive. They might say that you’re being dramatic and blowing things out of proportion. They might start talking about their own pain and, well, you don’t know what this has done to me, because it’s not about you. It’s about them.

One of the greatest gifts in human connection is empathy. Empathy is a miracle.

It’s like that moment in Inside Out, where, you know, Joy goes over to Bing Bong, the imaginary friend, the elephant, and doesn’t really show any empathy. She just tries to get him back on his feet and say, you know, “It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be fine.” And Bing Bong doesn’t feel good hearing that, because there’s no empathy. But then Sadness comes over, and sadness says, “That really sucks, that must really hurt,” and all of a sudden Bing Bong starts to feel better, because Sadness actually sees him.

The narcissist will never see you. They will never be able to grant you the miracle of human connection that is empathy, and empathy is the root out of loneliness.

The thing that makes empathy a miracle is that it transmutes pain into connection. It turns it into community. It makes us feel like we’re no longer alone, which exactly explains why being with the narcissist in any kind of an intimate relationship leaves you feeling so alone.

You will never get closure, because they will never give you empathy.

Now, the third reason that you’ll never get closure particularly applies to the more malignant types, the more antagonistic narcissists, but that is that by standing up to them, we’re just giving them more of what they want.

We might have this fantasy of one day standing up to someone and finally telling them how we feel, and that that’s going to be so rewarding and that maybe we’ll stop them in their tracks when we finally stand up to them. But the truth is, in many cases, by standing up to them, we’re just giving them the thing that they want, which is our engagement.

They want you to engage. They’re hoping that you will engage. That’s why people like this will often say anything they can to bait you. They will try to push your buttons. What’s the one thing they know they can say to get under your skin?

You giving them that energy isn’t received as a standard. It’s received as energy. And I want you to connect to that point that what you may be speaking as a standard, what they’re experiencing is energy, and they’re going to do whatever they can to get more of your energy, because as long as they’ve got your energy, they’ve still got you. As long as they can get a reaction out of you, it’s like they’re still controlling you, right? This is about control. If I know I can say something and that’s going to get under your skin and that’s going to make you shout, I own you. I’ve got you.

So we have to be very careful about what we think of as standing up to them, because standing up to them doesn’t work. It only gives them more of what they want.

If you follow my dear friend Dr. Ramani’s work, you will hear her say over and over again, “Do not engage.” Very powerful phrase: “Do not engage,” because when we engage, we give them the power they are looking for, because that’s what they’re looking for—control and power.

If I can get a reaction out of you, I’ve got power over you. If I can say something mean and get a rise out of you, I own you. I control you. We cannot give them that power.

What do they say about colds and fevers? Feed a cold, starve a fever. Feed a friend, starve a narcissist.

The fourth reason you’ll never get closure is because you will never teach them a lesson. “I have to stand up to this person. Someone’s got to teach them a lesson.” There is no teaching a person like this a lesson. They’re not operating in a world where they’re trying to learn a lesson like we’re applying our set of laws about how we live to someone who does not operate by those laws.

We might think to ourselves, I like going through life learning lessons, or maybe I don’t like it, but when I learn a lesson, well, there it is, a lesson. I did something wrong. Someone called me out on it. I think, wow, I really learned my lesson. I gossiped about someone. It got back to them, and it hurt their feelings or and I’m like, “Oh God, I don’t want to do that again.” Oh, a lesson. I don’t want to do that again.

We learn lessons because we’re the kinds of people who learn lessons, but with a narcissist, you’re dealing with someone who’s not trying to learn lessons. One of the signature features of many narcissists is incompetence. Why? Because it’s really hard to become competent when you can’t learn. When you think you’re right all the time.

This is a person who’s not trying to learn like you or I are trying to learn. They are trying to do what’s best for them at all times. They are trying to do what’s going to give them supply at all times, whether it’s in the form of attention, money, adoration, success. This is what is driving them. What is not driving them is learning lessons.

The fifth reason you’ll never get closure is because it will often appear when you finally leave someone or they leave you that they are then giving to the next person what they never gave to you. Many people have had that experience of going on Instagram, looking on Facebook, or hearing through the grapevine that they are now in this blissfully happy relationship with somebody else.

Now first, let’s not forget that social media is never a good place to judge the inside of someone’s relationship, any more than it was a good place for other people to judge the inside of our relationship with this person.

But let’s grant them that they actually are doing all of these lovely things right now for this new person. That doesn’t mean it’s sustainable. When a narcissist is in pursuit of something, they are a very different individual than they are when they have something.

So let’s be clear, they may be showing a different side of themselves right now, but that does not mean that they won’t revert to type at some point and begin the cycle all over again. Remember, the greatest predictor of the future is the past, and that is especially true of these individuals.

The sixth reason why you will never get closure from someone like this is because you will never win. If you do stand up for yourself, if you do take away their power in some way, if you suddenly feel in charge instead of feeling like you won, they will simply shape-shift. Narcissists are often master shape-shifters. When they’re in power, they’re a tyrant, they’re a dictator. When they’re not in power, they’re a victim, and they know how to switch like that, so they’re just playing a different strategy now.

And what they know, because remember, these people want your energy, they know that they can simply convert energy. So they can take your anger at them being in control or being a menace in your life, and they can turn it into guilt by suddenly playing the victim when they’re not a powerful person anymore, or when they’re no longer in control. And weaponizing your guilt and your pity is narcissism 101.

You have no business being a narcissist if you’re not weaponizing people’s guilt. You shouldn’t be in the narcissism business. What happens is someone knows that I can play on your ability to very easily feel like you’re a bad person. And why do you feel like a bad person? Because you have a really high standard for being a good person.

So if you’ve in any way said something that could be hurtful to them, if you’ve in any way been cold or callous or merciless with them, in the way that you’ve parted ways, or in the way that you’ve put your foot down, they will find an in to turn that into you being a bad person. You being someone who should feel guilt, you being someone who should now feel sorry for them.

And even if you don’t feel all of those things, even if you feel absolutely righteous in what you’re doing, when they become a victim, at the very least, they can become a kind of pitiful and sad figure. And that’s what happens to a lot of people who have aging parents who are narcissists. Is that over time, once those people almost become a bit defanged, when they’re no longer capable of quite the damage they used to do, they can end up representing quite sad and sorry figures, and that is why these relationships are so unsatisfying, even when we feel like we finally got to a point in our life where we took our power back.

The seventh reason you’ll never get closure with a person like this is because they will never make sense to you. This is always going to be one of those maddening situations where the more you try to understand it, the more you’re applying the wrong kind of thinking to the problem in the first place.

This person is a different animal to you. This person does not operate the way that you do. It’s like trying to use a ruler to measure sound. It doesn’t work. We will never fully understand these people. They will never fully make sense to us, because they do not operate the way that we do.

And the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can give ourselves the freedom to not have to understand it, to simply accept that they operate in the way that they do. And that is not the kind of person that we can engage with in our life. And by the way, when we disengage from people like this, when we walk away from people like this, and I know you can’t always walk away, there are situations where we have to continue to engage on some level, but when we do, we will still feel a sense of injustice.

That after all the pain someone has caused us, after all the damage they’ve done, after the utter lack of acknowledgement of all of those things, we’re the one that has to be the bigger person. We’re the one that has to radically accept the situation. We’re the one who has to grow. We’re the one who has to be higher frequency and not fight with them, but simply disengage or walk away or make peace with it.

That can feel like the ultimate kick in the teeth. Is that “My reward for all of your bad behavior is that I have to grow? I have to be the bigger person, and that you get to never grow?” That can feel so unjust and unsatisfying. But the real closure is not any of the things that we might hope for if they weren’t all of these ways that I’ve just suggested.

The real closure is the peace we have found or will find by disengaging with this person, the peace we find in the space between us and them, the peace we find in finally, no longer having expectations that this person will never fulfill, and if we’re lucky enough, the peace that we will find in walking away from someone like this so that we never have to deal with them again.

Remember, peace is closure.

I hope you enjoyed this video. If you want to continue the conversation with me, if you want to ask me a question about what you’ve learned today, there is a place that you can do that right now. Go on over to AskMH.com and try Matthew AI. You’ll literally be able to text or call me. You’ll hear my voice answering your question, and you can try it out completely free.

And if you enjoy it, take advantage of our Black Friday offering, where it is 50% off your first month of unlimited Matthew AI. So make sure you take advantage of that while it’s available, you can literally have me coaching you any time you want as much as you want.

The link again is AskMH.com.

Thank you so much for watching, and I’ll see you soon.

The post 7 Reasons You’ll Never Get Closure From a Narcissist appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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How do you stop obsessing over someone you’ve recently started dating?

When someone seems to tick all our boxes, it can be hard to NOT become flooded with thoughts of a possible future together. We anxiously wait for their text. We put them on a pedestal . . . and as a result, potentially push them away.

In this week’s video, I share 5 things you can do to stop falling for someone too quickly. By following these steps, you’ll be able to keep your value and actually enjoy dating instead of getting stuck in anxiety.

Matthew Hussey

If you’ve clicked on this video, it probably means that you’ve met someone you like, and that person has taken over your brain.

We all know this feeling. You meet someone, you’re excited about what could be. They fulfill a lot of qualities that you want in a person, and you get that immediate excitement of, “What if this is it? What if this is the person I’ve been looking for? What if the key to my happiness and my future lies with this person?” We feel disappointed any time we get a text from someone who’s not them, secretly praying every second of the day that they are about to reach out to us. Anything that doesn’t involve them suddenly feels dull and gray, even if it mattered deeply to us yesterday.

And then we try to distract ourselves. We try to go to friends, family, work, anything that can get us out of this mindset. But I know the feeling. It can feel like you’re sitting with friends, trying to happily go about your day, and all you can think about is this person. It is maddening. It makes dating unenjoyable, because we live in that anxious state, and it can feel like if we don’t make this work, we’ll never be happy again. All of this leads to obsessive rumination, which at best makes it impossible to enjoy the process of getting to know someone and, at worst, risks pushing something good away.

For those of you that don’t know me, welcome to my YouTube channel. I am Matthew Hussey, a coach specializing in confidence and relational intelligence, who for the last 17 years has been helping people find love. I’m also the author of the brand new book Love Life, a New York Times best seller, and today I want to talk about five things that you can do if you are struggling with this obsessive rumination about someone you like.

By the way, the third point I’m going to make on this might be one of the most practical things you hear on this subject anywhere. Don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to this channel. And if you haven’t already, I have a brand new private weekly email that I am sending out to people who are on my mailing list, where every single Friday, I send you my own personal writings. If you enjoy these free YouTube videos, that is something you should also be subscribed to, because every week, you’ll get something from me that you will really look forward to. Go to The3Relationships.com to sign up to that for free, and I will see you in your inbox this Friday.

First, let’s explore one of the key psychological phenomenons that is responsible for us getting too obsessed and too anxious about someone early on in the dating process. It is known as the halo effect. And Britannica defines the halo effect as follows: “The halo effect: the cognitive bias in which an impression formed from a single trait or characteristic is allowed to influence multiple judgments or ratings of unrelated factors.” What this essentially means is when we see a couple of things that create a positive impression about a person, we are far more likely to deduce, rightly or wrongly, other positive things about them from those initial impressions.

Now this is extremely dangerous. It can mean that we attribute all sorts of wonderful qualities to a person that they haven’t yet earned and have nothing to do with the original qualities that we were impressed by.

The halo effect is extremely prominent in our love lives, where we meet someone who is charismatic or good looking or super successful, and immediately we take these qualities and use them to build out a 360-degree picture of a person that may be completely false. So let’s talk about the five things we can do to negate this effect so that we can bring a much more powerful version of ourselves to our love lives.

Number one, don’t optimize for looks, money, or lifestyle. There has been a TikTok trend going around of late about this idea of people wanting “Trust Fund, six-foot-five, blue eyes” as their description of the partner they want. I fail most of those tests? I’ve slightly blue eyes. That’s it. But most people, 99.9% of people, fail that test. That, to me, is an example of taking things that some people put a premium on, like looks, money, and lifestyle, and trying to maximize those things, instead of creating a baseline for what they want in those areas.

This is the difference, by the way, between maximizing and satisficing. Satisficing is when you have enough of something. Maximizing is when you try to get the very most you can possibly get of something. But this misunderstands the way human beings work, that we’re never getting a quality in a person. We’re getting an entire suite of qualities in a person—a package. So if we’re trying to maximize in one to three narrow areas, we are almost certainly going to ignore some major deficits in other really important areas.

The trick, in other words, is to know how much we need of a thing. Do I need someone who’s rich enough to buy a boat, or someone who’s made enough money that they don’t need mine? What’s the level that we need in those areas? I’m not a fan of advice that talks about these things being completely unimportant, because we have to work with ourselves the way we actually are as human beings, not the way we’d like ourselves to be. We all want chemistry on some level. We all want a feeling of security on some level. How much of these things we want is personal, and we have agency in it. We can decide when enough is enough.

If we don’t, we will always find ourselves over-indexing for certain things that actually drop in their importance past a certain point, because someone being the best-looking person in every room or the tallest person we can find is not going to determine your quality of life 5, 10, 20 years from now in a relationship with that person. But if we don’t think about that, we will end up chasing someone relentlessly who makes us very unhappy, someone whose character along the way we have completely ignored.

There’s a great moment in Catch Me If You Can, that movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, where Leonardo DiCaprio, playing Frank Abagnale, talks about why the Yankees always win. He says it’s because the other team can’t stop staring at their damn pinstripes. And we act like that in dating as well. It feels like, in some ways, the people who are extraordinarily gifted with their looks or their bodies or with their finances can win because people are always looking at their pinstripes. They’re always looking at the surface. They’re never exploring the deeper character and values that would make that person either a wonderful partner or a terrible partner.

The second important way that we can lower our temperature and get less obsessed about someone in early dating is to lose the urgency. Urgency can quickly become our enemy. This is true in all walks of life. Advertisers can come along and try to make you urgently buy something. When we go on a date with someone, we can have our own internal sense of urgency that says, “I have to move fast with this person, because otherwise, they might get taken off the market.” We see this when we think, “I have to go on a date with this person tomorrow, because otherwise someone else might snap them up.”

We get taken out of the mindset of actually assessing this person, learning this person, and into the mindset of simply trying to get this person because we’ve already made our minds up. Another great example of this is when we go to rent a property or buy a house. If we walk in and we fall in love and we imagine a life in that house because it’s all so perfect, we stop paying attention to the house. We forget that, for all we know, there’s mold that’s going to create headaches for us for a long time to come trying to fix. It could be that there are expensive fixes or structural problems that the inspection is going to bring up when it happens in three weeks.

All sorts of things could still go wrong with this. But instead, we’ve made up our mind, and when we make up our mind, we suddenly get ourselves into all sorts of trouble because we think “I want it now,” and it doesn’t matter what comes up in the inspection weeks from now. We may even convince ourselves that even if something does come up in the inspection, we’ll fix it. It’s fine. The house is amazing.

Have you ever done that in a relationship? Have you ever done that in a dating scenario? “We’ll fix that part. This person’s amazing.” We stop paying attention because the urgency is something that often gets us into trouble, pain, heartbreak and suffering by giving time and attention to the wrong people, people we don’t even know we really want yet.

This idea brings me on to point number three, which is one of the most practical things you can do when you’re trying to stop anxiously obsessing over someone: be less impressed.

In that urgency I was talking about, we very quickly form a story of how amazing someone is. But if we actually stop to pay attention, to become mindful and present with what’s going on in this person’s behavior, the way they show up in different moments—not just on that one amazing date we had with them, or in that amazing moment of love making—if we actually start to look at how they are holistically in their life, we will inevitably see things that make them human, and those things can make them less impressive.

And I actually don’t mean this in a negative way. I mean it in a very positive way. It’s not like we’re looking for all these faults with people so that we can tell ourselves that they’re awful. It’s that we need to take them off of the angelic pedestal and put them back on the level of human, because when they’re back on that level, we no longer have the same sense of fear in dealing with them. We no longer think that it would be the end of the world if we lost them, and we stop over-respecting this person like they’re perfect and we’re awful.

So start paying more attention to the moments where they say or do something that gives you pause, where they spoke to someone in a way that you go, “Oh, I don’t really like that.” Or they reacted to something in a way where you went, “That was a little strange,” or “I don’t like that side of them as much.” Start actually paying attention to those details, because it allows you to just bring the scales to a more level place. Even if they’re awesome, it allows you to bring the scales to a slightly more level place, where you can actually start interacting with this person as yourself again, not as someone trying to impress this incredible being.

And that ability to see them as they are, to distinguish yourself from the other people that they may have had in their lives that just have the halo effect where they see them as perfect, and instead be someone who sees them as they are—that actually makes you special to them. That makes you a more unique person, someone who sees them as they are. And that’s one of the things that makes relationships so beautiful, is being seen by someone and accepted for who we really are. You can’t give someone that gift if you’ve put them on an impossible pedestal.

It’s worth noting that when you do start realizing that people aren’t perfect, you’ll inevitably see that there are things that you might want to speak with them about, things that they did that you don’t like, ways that you’re being treated right now that you would like to remind them of your standard on. And a lot of people are intensely uncomfortable with the kind of awkward tensions and mini confrontations that can come from just speaking up about things that you don’t like in the dating process.

I haven’t got time in this video because this is already long enough without it, but this is where it’s crucial to learn how to have standards and boundaries and communicate them. So I’ve put together a free guide for anyone who has something they want to say right now but doesn’t know how to say it at BoldStandards.com. It’s free. Go check it out. It makes a great partner with everything I’m talking about here.

The fourth way we can eliminate our obsessing about someone is to stop burying the lead. In the last point, we talked about being less impressed, allowing someone’s imperfections to be as visible to you as the things that we think make them perfect, thus creating a more rounded human. In this case, I’m talking about imperfections that are actually things that disqualify this person or this thing from being capable of making you happy. For example, someone says to you, “I don’t want a relationship. I’m not at that place in my life right now.” Or they say they never want kids when that’s something that’s massively important to you, or they say, after their third date and having an incredible time with you, “I’m moving to Thailand tomorrow for the next two years.”

When you hear these things, it’s incredibly tempting to bury the lead. I have coached people for 17 years, and most of the time when people come to me, they will say, “Matt, I’ve met this amazing person. They’re incredible. We have amazing sex. We can’t stop talking to each other. The chemistry is unbelievable. I’ve never felt this way before.” And they’ll talk about all of these amazing things. I in the back of my mind, am always waiting for the but, because I know there’s a but coming or they wouldn’t even be asking the question. So they’ll say all of those things, and then after saying all of the things that make this person perfect, they’ll say, “but he’s moving to Thailand tomorrow.” That is burying the lead, because the headline of this story is person is moving to Thailand tomorrow, not worth having a relationship with them. But instead, someone has made the headline how they feel about this person, often because of the very qualities that create the halo effect.

I think this person is amazing in these ways. So the halo effect makes me think that they would be amazing for a relationship, but anyone who’s not available for a relationship can’t be amazing for a relationship. So we have to start asking ourselves, what is the lead that I’ve been burying that might make this person not worth stressing about at all? And by the way, and this is a video for another time, it’s worth noting that for some people, the reason they obsess in the first place is because someone isn’t available, which is an instinct that has nothing to do with valuing someone because of how inherently valuable they are, but instead valuing them simply because they are unavailable.

All right, you’ve made it this far to point number five in how to reduce your anxiety and the obsessive rumination when you like someone. I want to talk to you about the goose and the golden eggs. Most people have heard the fable at some point or another. The goose is laying golden eggs, and the farmer thinks that this is amazing. You know, I’m getting rich off of these eggs. But at a certain point starts making the mistake of thinking that the value is in the eggs, not the goose who’s laying the eggs.

We often make that mistake in our lives. We think that our value is in the eggs that we’ve laid. Now there are all sorts of golden eggs that we lay in our lives. Sometimes it’s a career opportunity that we went out and fought for and finally got that interview for that amazing job. Sometimes it’s money we’ve made, other times it’s a love interest. You know, we went out one night and we put on our nice clothes, and we made ourselves look good, and we have the courage to go and speak to someone. And because of that, we now find ourselves texting with someone, or we find ourselves on a date, and if God forbid we decide we like that person, we start seeing them as the golden egg.

But our focus of what’s most valuable shifts in a really dangerous way. We stop looking in the mirror at the golden goose, the one who actually laid the egg, the one who made it happen, the one who created the opportunity. Instead, we start looking at that name that’s in our phone of that person we’ve just texted, thinking that’s where the value really is. That’s what’s really important. In other words, we transfer our value from ourselves to something on the outside. But when we do that, our perception of what is most valuable starts to drift in a really dangerous way.

When we start telling ourselves that the most valuable thing about me is on the outside of me, we transfer the locus of our power from here to here. To a person, a thing, an opportunity. When we do that in dating, we have suddenly made our entire emotional ecosystem beholden to how this person treats us, whether they text us back, whether they decide they want to be with us. Now to correct this, there’s two ways of looking at it, and both of them can be valid.

The first one is to realize that if you laid one golden egg, you can lay other golden eggs, to realize that you’re powerful, that it’s not the case, that every great thing in your life you got through luck. You got it because you’re you, because you make things happen, because you’re wonderful, you’re awesome. There are wonderful things about you that attract other wonderful things in life. So you don’t need to freak out and worry that you’ll never be able to do this again, because you did it so you can do it again.

But even if you can’t quite do that exact same thing again, it still makes sense to see the value as being in the goose because the goose, us, is all we ever own. That’s what we take with us, no matter what happens in life, no matter what changes or who we lose or what we lose, we always take us with us to the next thing. So I like to be a little ruthless about this and say to myself, the real source of my value is me. And if I know that, I know that I can manage anything else in life that changes, anything that happens? Will I be hurt? Will I be heartbroken? But the source of my value and my power is still with me, because I’m the only thing I ever truly own while I’m still here.

There’s a wonderful story of Margaret Atwood at a certain stage in her life, walking around her house and realizing that it wasn’t her house—that this place that she had called her own for so long didn’t really belong to her, that one day she wouldn’t be here anymore, and it wouldn’t be thought of as her house anymore. Someone else would be in that house.

There’s something humbling about that, and many people may even see there being something intensely melancholic about that. But I also see it as a pressure valve—that when we realize that everything is transient, everything is borrowed or rented, we can stop gripping onto it so tightly.

And even while we’re here, these things and people we acquire will come and go, but we are the thing that will always remain. So never, ever transfer your power and your value to the golden eggs. Always keep it with the goose.

Thank you so much for watching, everybody. Don’t forget to leave me a comment before you go. Let me know what meant something to you, what moved you from this video, and I look forward to seeing you next time.

For everyone who is signed up to my private emails, I will be sending you one this Friday, so watch your inbox. I have a good one coming this Friday, and I’m excited for you to read it. That link again, I’ll put at the bottom for anyone who does want to join us in that. For everyone else and all of you, I will see you again in next week’s video. Be well, my friends, and love life.

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THIS is one of the top reasons why a breakup can feel so raw . . .

You may have only recently let your guard down and shown your real feelings, only to have the other person end things. This can feel especially painful because it’s like they’ve rejected you for who you truly are at your core.

But it doesn’t have to feel that way, because it’s not actually true. And in today’s new video, I explore 5 different mindsets that can ease heartbreak and restore confidence so you can find the right person faster.

Matthew Hussey

I think one of the most painful things about breakups is that they often happen at the very time that we feel we were letting our guard down and being more of ourselves, revealing more of who we are, or revealing more of our life. And when we get broken up with in those moments, it is a particular kind of painful, because it feels like we are being rejected at our core.

A lot of us, when we date in the first few weeks and sometimes even months, it can feel like we’re sending out our representative on our behalf, to look as good as possible, sound as good as possible, be as easy as possible to be around, not bring any of the complications of our lives, our personalities, to the table. And of course, all of this is a time when we feel quite insecure because deep down, we know there’s more of me you don’t know, there’s more of my life and the reality of my life that you’re not experiencing. And we’re terrified that when they get to know all of that, that’s going to be the point where they decide that we’re not for them. So, in that moment where we finally reveal more, where we finally get comfortable enough, relaxed enough, feel safe enough to say, “This is me. This is my life.” And that person says, “Hmm, I don’t— I suddenly don’t want this.” It is like our worst fear coming true.

So, I wanted to talk about this idea, and if you’ve experienced anything like this, give you five things that I think can make a huge difference, that can not only ease your heartbreak, but restore a sense of confidence that might feel like it was taken from you by someone leaving.

If you don’t know me, I’m Matthew Hussey. I have been coaching people in their love lives for 17 years, helping them with both confidence and relational intelligence. While you’re here, I would really appreciate you liking this video, subscribing to this channel and hitting the notification bell so that the next time I release a video, you are among the first to find out.

Okay, on to the video. I have five things that I want to say about this situation that I think are both going to alleviate some of the heartache you may feel and also help restore some of the confidence that you feel you may have lost.

The first thing I want to say is that it’s all data. When someone sees a part of your life or a part of your personality and decides that based on that they don’t want to be around anymore, that’s data, and it’s data that this person either doesn’t really see you or sees you, but doesn’t accept you. And the ultimate that all of us should be aspiring to in a healthy relationship is that someone gets us, someone sees us in our life and says, “I want that.” Not that we have to constantly hide things from someone for them to continue wanting us.

So, rather than thinking “This person was the right person, and I blew it that weekend, you know, when I took them home to my family, or where we spent time together, and I actually let them in on the way that my disability makes me tired or the way my chronic pain affects me, or I finally let them stay over for the weekend, and they saw me caring for a sick relative that is the reality of my life,” whatever it may be. If someone at that point says, “I can’t do this,” then that’s data that they are not the right person for you.

I think that we spend so much of our dating lives worrying about the parts of us that are going to scare someone away, instead of realizing that all of these different parts of us that get revealed over time are really an opportunity for us to gather data about how right for us someone is. If we show a part of our lives, if we invite someone home for the weekend and they meet the family and they go, “I can’t do this. I’m out,” then that’s a crucial piece of data, especially if your family is really, really important to you. If they can’t even stick around for that or at least respect that relationship and say, “You know what, God, you have a crazy family, but we’ll figure it out,” if they can’t deal with that part of you—and it doesn’t have to just be something external, it could be something internal, you revealing more about yourself—then that’s a great data point that this person doesn’t really see you and doesn’t really accept you. That’s really, really important to know.

So many of us look at these moments that feel like it all went wrong after that moment, after I revealed that thing, after I spoke that insecurity, after I introduced them to this part of my life. My reality of the fact that I am a single parent, the reality of the fact that I have a disability that can make life difficult for me sometimes and that I have to manage, or the reality that I’m looking after a sick relative. When we introduced people to a part of our lives like that, and then, as a result, it looks like they bolted—that was the moment they broke up with us—we pinpoint that as the exact moment where somehow we screwed up, where, if I’d have just not introduced them to that, if I hadn’t said that thing, then they would still be with me. I screwed up, or my situation is bad. Instead, we have to start flipping it and saying “That was a chance for me to see if this person really accepted me in my life.” And if the answer is they didn’t, then this isn’t the right person for us. You didn’t screw it up by introducing them to your life. You got the piece of data you needed to discover they weren’t right for you.

Number two. In order to get that data on whether someone is right for us, we have to actually introduce someone to our real life. We should ask ourselves the question, “Why is it sometimes it’s so long before I realize that someone doesn’t actually want to sign up for my real life or my real personality?” and the answer much of the time is because we took so long to close the gap between what I think of as our dating life and our real life.

There’s a big difference between the representative of ourselves and our life that we often send out on the first few dates or weeks, or even sometimes months of dating, whose job it is to show us at our best all the time, to be as low maintenance as possible, to not bring any of the dramas of our life into the picture with a person, to keep them away from every crazy aunt and uncle and difficult challenge we have in our life, and just keep them in this bubble of romance where they can keep seeing us as this wonderful person to be around. But at a certain point, someone—if we’re to determine whether they’re really right for us—has to be brought into our real life and our real selves.

I think of this as being epitomized by the difference between what we want and what we need. When we’re only acting out of what we want—which is a shiny, charismatic, exciting, sexy person with lots of great stuff going on in their lives—we try to be what we think we need to be to attract that person. But when we’re coming from what we need, we do something very different, because what we need is to feel loved and accepted, and you can only feel loved and accepted if you show who you really are. So in order to follow what we need, we actually need to show people our real life.

So, in summary so far, when someone breaks up with us because they learned something about us and they decided that wasn’t for them, that’s crucial data, that they’re the wrong person for us. And if we want that data six months in, not three years in, then we need to start exposing more of our real life to someone earlier in the process.

Okay, but what if you revealed more about yourself, and as a result, it ended the relationship, or so you think, and you’re still blaming yourself for that? You’re saying, “I got the data, and I’m heartbroken. I hate the data.” Well, firstly, let me say, if you felt safe enough to reveal more about yourself, to show more of your life to somebody. That is a beautiful thing. There’s something lovely about that. And you should celebrate that moment in yourself that I felt, I felt safe enough, I felt relaxed enough in that moment to really be myself, or to invite someone into my world, that it backfired in this instance, doesn’t change the fact that that’s a very beautiful thing.

But the other thing I want to say about this leads on to point number three, which is that when we diagnose this moment where we caused the breakup as being the reason why we broke up, we are often not viewing the relationship in a large enough context. Imagine that if they were ever going to have a problem with that part of your life or that part of your personality, or just you being you, that was always the case. Since day one. You might be finding out about it now, but that was always the case. It may even be that along the way, they felt this on some level before, but they never communicated it to you. I’ve dealt with that with many, many people that I’ve coached through breakups who, on the day of the breakup are like, “I just discovered this thing that, you know, they said they can’t do. They can’t do it. They met my kids, and they hung out or whatever, and all of a sudden they’re like, ‘I can’t do this. It’s too much.’” But that may not be the first time they’ve been feeling that, they may have felt it before, and in many of these cases, they’re just not communicating that they felt that before.

So, often, what we blame on ourselves at the time of breakup, we could just as easily blame, perhaps even more so, on their inability to communicate those feelings that they were having way earlier in the process. So the result, by the way, is that it feels at the time of breakup like we’re just learning this information that they can’t handle us or our life, and they’re not even really giving us a say in the matter. They’re just saying, “I can’t do this,” and then they leave and we’re like, “But I didn’t even get a chance to do anything about that again. I didn’t get a chance to improve on it. I didn’t get a chance to show up differently or to alleviate your concerns.” And that can feel like a really awful lack of closure. I could have supported this person differently through this if I’d have known, but they didn’t even give me the benefit of knowing. They didn’t give me the benefit of supporting them.

So, how do you view the breakup in a wider context than the moment it seemed to occur in? You ask yourself, “What am I blaming on myself that is really about someone else’s inability to communicate their fears or their concerns at an earlier stage, a stage where maybe I could have been a genuine teammate in helping alleviate those fears and concerns?” And the second is to stop seeing it like we were wrong for that person on the day that they broke up with us because of something we did, but that they have been wrong for us all along. We’re just learning about it now.

Hey guys, I’m interrupting my own video. How annoying. Except what I’m interrupting it with is really, really good for you. If you have a question for me that you want to ask me right now, go to AskMH.com and you could either speak your question to me and hear me answering your question in my voice with my content, or text the question and get a text response. It is called Matthew AI. It is brand new, it is revolutionary, and it is blowing people’s minds. So go check it out. AskMH.com is the link. Go ask your exact question right now, instead of waiting for me to make a video about your specific situation, which might not happen for another seven years. All right, back to the video.

Now, the fourth thing I want to say is a little bit more of a an idea for you to play with for the future, as opposed to something to do right now. We may be asking at this stage, “Well, what can I do about it if someone isn’t communicating with me along the way? How do I account for the fact that someone might never speak about the things that they have a problem with or are not sure about, and then on the day that they break up with me is the first time I’m hearing about it?”

Well, we can’t take responsibility for other people’s inability to voice their fears or to express unmet needs that they have along the way, but what we can do is we can encourage conversation from our side about things that they may be living with as fears and anxieties about the relationship in their head. That might look like saying to someone, you know, I’ve worked with many, many single parents, it might be saying to someone:

“Hey, look, I know that I am not someone who comes on my own, I come as a package deal with a big life already. And I want to just say that if you ever want to talk about that, if you ever have thoughts, or you find it a bit overwhelming, or you just want to express something that’s on your mind in relation to that, please know that you always can. You’re not gonna upset me. I have broad shoulders about it. I would rather we just talk about it if any part of you has that on your mind. And, as much as I come with a life, I also respect that you come with a life, and I want you to be happy, and I want you to be able to get your needs met, always. And I want to be a teammate to you in that, but I can’t be if you keep it in and vice versa, you can’t be a great teammate to me if I keep things in. So just please know that you can always talk to me about that stuff.”

And sometimes you can be more direct about things. You can ask people along the way, “Is there anything about our relationship that you’d like to change, or is there anything that you feel you want more of? Is there any need that you feel like you don’t get met enough in our relationship?” That allows someone to come in and say, “Well, you know, in truth, I’m a bit worried that I’m not getting enough time with my friends, or I am trying to work on this big project right now, and I feel like I’m letting things slip because we’re spending so much time together,” whatever it may be. It allows someone to voice that, and that allows you to come in and say, “You know what? I respect that, and I really appreciate you telling me. I really want to support you in that. So, let’s figure that out. Let’s make sure you get enough time for that.”

It allows you to be a teammate with someone, and that allows someone else to see you as a very, very rare bird, because they’re like, “No one’s ever given me the space to say these things before. I’ve always felt like I’m just going to be hurting someone’s feelings, or it’s going to turn into an argument, but this person’s actually made space for this, and I voiced these needs, and they’re now supportive of them, and they’re trying to help me meet those needs.”

So while you can’t turn someone else into a good communicator, and that’s not your responsibility, you can encourage the kind of conversations that allow you to ward off certain issues before they turn into these demons inside someone’s head that, in some cases, make them end things because they’ve made them too big in their mind, and the result is them just saying, “I just have to go.”

It’s like the person who has the fear or the challenge in their head sees the other person in the relationship as the opposition. Like “I have this challenge, and you’re the cause of this challenge, and the only way to eliminate that challenge is to lose you.” But instead, we want to create a team with someone where it’s us and them against the challenge. Whatever the challenge may be. The challenge might be, “I can’t get enough time with my kids.” The challenge might be, “We’re spending too much time with your kids.” The challenge might be, “I’m not getting enough time on a project.” The challenge might be that, “I’m not getting enough intimacy in this relationship.” But if two people can look at the challenge together and say it’s—if we can talk about it and be a team in solving it, then the two of us are looking at the challenge problem solving together, instead of me seeing you and the challenge as being the same thing. And encouraging conversation in the way that I’ve been saying is exactly how to do this.

And the fifth and final thing I want to say is that we often see our situation as the obstacle to us finding love, but your situation is not the obstacle. It is your filter. It’s not going to prevent you from finding the right person. It’s actually going to be the thing that leads you to the right person. It’s going to reveal the right person. Because the right person, the person you need, the one that’s going to love and accept you is going to see your life and they are going to be the one that opts in for that life. If your life and where you are today is something that pushes someone away, then that person is not right for where you are today. We have to lose the insecurity about our lives and start seeing that our life and living it more authentically with someone is actually going to be the thing that reveals who the right person is.

And remember, the person who saw more of you when you started to feel safe and let your guard down and let them into your world and left has given you the data to show they are the wrong person for you. The right person for you is still coming. And when you feel the kind of love and acceptance of being who you are, and feeling someone decide that they want that, that will blow that situation out of the water, and you’ll be able to look back on it with a smile and maybe even a laugh at the idea that that thing, that person, was the real love you were looking for.

Thank you so much for watching the video, as always. If you’re finishing this video with more questions, which is often the case, you know, you may be thinking of a very specific scenario that you’re in right now that you really feel like you want me to weigh in on. I have a way that you can do that right now, literally, where you can get my answer in the next 60 seconds. Go over to AskMH.com because we have a brand new tool called Matthew AI where you can speak your question, and you can take as long as you want and give as many details and as much context as you want, and you will hear my voice answering your question.

It is extraordinary how sophisticated this is. It’s trained on 17 years of my content. So you’re not just getting any answer, you’re getting my answer to your specific challenge. If you’re in pain, especially right now, I promise you that by the end of your conversation with Matthew AI, you are going to feel a lot better than you do right now. So go to AskMH.com and you can try it out. You can try it out for free, by the way, so there’s no cost just to trying it. And let me know how you get on. I’ll see you in the next video. Be well and love life.

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Tired of dating the wrong people?

When we really want to find a relationship, saying “no” to the people who don’t align with our core values can feel scary . . . especially when we’re not meeting a lot of people we connect with. We may even start to loosen our standards and become attached to someone who’s only giving us crumbs.

In today’s video, I dive into the subtle-but-profound difference between those who successfully find love, and those who continue to remain in limbo. You’ll also learn how to cultivate the right culture in your life to attract a lasting, fulfilling relationship (plus I share a story from my younger days as a DJ). Let me know your thoughts!

MATTHEW HUSSEY

I want to talk about a subtle-but-profound thing that people who successfully find love do that other people don’t. And by doing this, it allows them to find the right kind of person far earlier, where other people keep running into the wrong kinds of people.

If you’re new to the channel, welcome. I’m Matthew Hussey. I’ve been doing this for 17 years—helping people find love through increased confidence and relational intelligence. I’m the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Love Life, and for anyone who wants to join me for one of my events, you’ve just missed one. But there’s good news. We have a replay of it. It happened on the 22nd of October. It was all about how to go from casual to committed in a relationship. So, if you want a long-term relationship, check this out. The replay is only available for a few more days. Go to lovelifereplay.com to watch it right now.

So the subject of today’s video came out of a live I did on social media this week where someone asked me this question:

“An acquaintance of a few years has been texting me every day for weeks. And when I tried to ask him out a week ago, he said ‘no’ and said that he’s dating someone. He continues texting every day. What to do?”

Have you ever been in a situation like this that you find confusing, where you’re wondering what to do? Why is someone behaving like this? How can I get their attention? How do I get them to actually go out with me if it seems to be stalling in this way? Do you have a situation right now in your life that you’re finding confusing and are trying to work out what to do next?

All of those questions are the wrong question. What I know about the woman asking this question is that she is ignoring something fundamental. There’s an implicit, “Why is he doing this?” in her question. There’s an implicit, “What do I do now? What do I text him back?” And there’s also kind of an implicit, “How do I get him to actually go on a date with me?”

But while her focus is clearly being monopolized by all of these things, there is something she is not focused on, and it’s the most important thing there is when it comes to choosing a partner for our love life: his character. And his lack of character is being revealed in the way that he is dealing with her.

This is a man who was texting her when he was dating someone—clearly seriously enough to say “no” to a date—and then when she asked him on a date because she was reading his signals as him being interested, he said, “No, because I’m dating someone.” And then even after being very clear that he’s dating someone, and therefore, can’t go out with her, he continues to text her every day.

How does this add up to the character of a person who is good to date? It clearly doesn’t make him good to date for the person he’s dating—a person who I can almost guarantee doesn’t know that he is texting his acquaintance every day despite the fact that that acquaintance clearly asked him out and has romantic feelings for him.

If she was connected to the ways that his character wasn’t living up to the character of the person she’d want to share her life with, she wouldn’t be asking me a question about this man in the first place. But she is by no means on her own in asking this kind of question. In fact, it’s incredibly common for me to field questions like this. Why is that?

It’s because, for so many of us, we are not taking “culture” seriously. What do I mean by culture? The culture we create in our lives is really an external representation of an internal value system. We develop and cultivate a culture in life by the choices we make and the people we let close to us and surround ourselves with. And creating the right culture takes discipline precisely because we have to make hard choices that may involve saying “no” to people who feel attractive, interesting, or like they’re giving us some kind of short-term seductive reward, but don’t actually live up to the values that we hold dear.

When I was a teenager—many people don’t know this about me, but I used to be a DJ, and deejayed for about 10 years. So, I was playing out one night and there was a group of older guys. I was a kid, albeit a kid that was sort of dressed up in gold chains and whatnot. I was doing the whole look with a hat and everything. I was a late bloomer, so I was also quite small at that time.

So this group of guys came over to me, and was sort of hovering around me, close to the DJ stand. At first, it was intimidating, because I was like, what’s this group of guys all doing standing beside me the whole time I’m deejaying? But then one of them, a sort of—I feel like we can throw out some sort of Jason Statham-esque image, you know, that kind of character—leant over and said, “You’re all right, boy. Got some skills there, ain’t ya? Good DJ, yeah? Listen, we’ve got a pirate radio station and I’d love to get you on there. Big opportunity.”

And when I said to him, “I mean, that sounds really exciting . . . like, wow. That sounds fun,” I was just giddy as a teenager.

He was like, “See? I knew you’d love the opportunity. You’re sharp as a tack, aren’t you?”

This was someone, by the way, who simultaneously, I felt so excited to say “yes” to and felt it would be a bad idea to say “no” to. But I skipped home. I remember going back and talking to my dad about it: “A group of guys came over to me. They’ve invited me to go and have my own slot on this pirate radio station. It’s a really big deal.” I knew the station and was already a fan of it.

But the further away I got from that conversation with “Jason Statham,” the more I came to realize that this wasn’t a crowd that I necessarily wanted to be around—that there was something about the value system of this group that my intuition picked up on that wouldn’t be good for me.

James Hollis has a question—a question I was turned on to by Oliver Burkeman, who wrote the new book, Meditation for Mortals. (Great episode with him coming out on the podcast, by the way.) He has a question that goes like this:

“Will this opportunity diminish or enlarge me?”

And obviously, as a teenager, I wasn’t asking myself that specific question. But on a visceral intuitive level, I had this sense of “this isn’t going to be good for me. This isn’t going to bring me into contact with the kinds of people who will enlarge me—that this has the potential to diminish me, or even immerse me in a culture that I don’t want to exist in.”

My point in all of this is that throughout our lives, culture is actually one of the hardest things to cultivate. It takes real effort, it takes real energy, and it often requires us to say “no” to things that our ego wants to grab.

The way I see culture is that if we keep feeding the right culture, if we keep paying attention to that intuition, if we keep paying attention to people’s character, to people whose values reflect our highest values, and people who don’t seem to have those values, and we make decisions on that basis, our life will get better and better over time.

Sometimes it feels like in the short term, we’re taking a step backward. In the case of this person whose question I answered on the live, I know that my answer to her meant that in the short term, she would stop texting someone she had come to enjoy texting. Even though it wasn’t ultimately satisfying to her, there was some kind of reward it was giving her on a daily basis. So it doesn’t feel good to stand behind the culture we want to create.

But long term, our entire world becomes a real, tangible reflection of the values we hold dear and the people in our lives—from the person we choose to spend our life with romantically, to our friends, our colleagues, or the people we hire if we have a business—everyone will end up being a reflection of your culture . . . a culture that your life is evidence of you taking seriously.

Have you ever had a friend or someone you know who has introduced you to different people, and every new person they introduce you to makes you realize more and more that this person just surrounds themselves with amazing people, kind people, interesting people, lovely, compassionate, warm people? Have you ever felt that? I know I have.

What you know is that that person takes the culture of their life seriously. And then from the outside, you end up going, “Man, how is it that everyone you know is so lovely?”

It’s because they’ve cultivated that over time.

The people in life who not only find love, but find it with people who make them happy in relationships that last, take culture seriously. They are disciplined and willing to be ruthless and do the hard things when it comes to saying “no” to people who may feel sexy and exciting or rewarding in the short term in favor of waiting for someone or proactively searching for someone who actually represents the values they care about.

And that doesn’t just take effort and discipline. It takes guts. It takes guts to say “no” to the opportunity that’s in front of you, resting only on some kind of faith that at some point, someone better, someone with more character, someone more in line with the way you are, will come along. But I believe that if we can create space in our lives, that faith gets rewarded, but the right person can never come in if we never create that space. Love needs space.

To this day, one of the greatest compliments I ever received about my relationship, my marriage to Audrey, is that along the way, the people who knew me the best and the people who cared about me the most, when they met Audrey, said, “That makes sense. It makes so much sense why you chose Audrey and why you two are together.”

Even to the extent, by the way, that the people who know me best in my audience . . . one of the loveliest things is how many of you listened to Audrey on the podcast and then emailed us and said, “Oh, my God, it just makes complete sense.”

That’s because Audrey and I have the same culture. And sometimes you have to wait a little longer to find that person who fits with your culture. And you have to say “no” a little more. And when nothing’s happening in your love life in the short term, that can feel like a thankless task. It can feel like a thankless thing to have to do to keep saying “no” when it doesn’t feel like there are any other opportunities around. That’s what makes it brave. But the rewards for being brave are profound.

For those of you who want to be brave in your love life and want to find not just a relationship, but a relationship that lasts, because the person you find fits with your culture, go over to lovelifereplay.com, because the entire session that I did on October 22 live with thousands of people was really at its deepest level about finding someone whose character fits with the culture of your character, your life. And when you find someone like that, those are the relationships that go the distance.

So, come join me if you’re sick and tired of coming up against the wrong culture in dating and the wrong people, but you want to find the right one and know how to bring an energy that creates more commitment, come join us. I look forward to seeing you there. And thank you as always for watching this video. I look forward to reading your comments.

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Why is it that we seem to be attracted to certain people who only give us scraps of attention? It often happens when we tell ourselves that someone is so rare and desirable that they’re worth holding on to even if they don’t want the same things as us.

In today’s video, I’ll show you the trap that many people end up falling into, plus one key quality that results in more commitment. Whether you’re sick of superficial situationships or want to learn how to grow closer in your relationship, this is for you!

MATTHEW HUSSEY

There is a quality that if we adopt it can change our lives when it comes to the willingness of other people to commit to us for a real relationship. There’s also a trap that so many of us are falling into that is consistently leading us towards casual relationships or flings or being used in situations that never go anywhere.

In this video, I’m going to start with the trap and then I’m going to talk to you about the quality that you can adopt today that will begin to change everything. If you want a long-term relationship, this video might be one of the most important videos of mine that you have ever watched.

Now, before we get into it, I just want to say hello to anyone who’s new to the channel. I am Matthew Hussey. For the last 17 years of my life, I’ve been helping people find love through relational intelligence and confidence. I just wrote a brand-new book called Love Life, and if you want to do a live training with me, I have one coming up in two days on October the 22nd, all about getting into a real relationship. So, if one of your big goals right now is finding a committed, long-term relationship, this should be essential watching for you. And it is only happening live this once. You can join this event for free by signing up at LoveLifeTraining.com. It would take you seconds to do that, and then come back, and then watch the rest of this video. LoveLifeTraining.com is the link. Go there now and I’ll see you in a second.

Okay, on with this video. Why is it so many of us are struggling to find commitment?

Well, let’s start with where many of us are beginning—wanting a relationship, maybe wanting it more than anything else in the world right now. But also, feeling like a relationship is really hard to find. Maybe even more than that, that attraction is really hard to find.

So, now, what happens is, when we find some attraction or when we find even the slightest hope of something that could lead to a relationship, we cling onto it. Why? Because when a deep desire for a relationship meets a scarcity mindset around the possibility of getting one, that leads to a sense of panic, desperation, and lowering our standards.

Now, what happens is we meet people who are only willing to give scraps. And those people, when they see someone who’s willing to lower their standards, realize that this is a match because they can continue to give little with all the things they want to get—sex, intimacy, in many cases, true emotional connection, emotional support, companionship. But they never need to give real commitment. They never need to make the sacrifices or the compromises or the true investment necessary to have a real relationship.

So, this ends up creating this worldview for people who want commitment, that no one wants commitment because their fear makes them lower their standards and lowering their standards makes them attract the very people who only want to give scraps, and then by investing in people who only want to give scraps, they start being convinced that the only people around are people who give scraps.

Now, people who give little have a vested interest in convincing you that you should accept little or that you’re not worth more than that. And that starts to feed into our own insecurities that maybe we’re not worth more than that. Maybe I’ve never quite felt enough. Maybe I’ve started to convince myself I’m not attractive anymore now that I’m older. Maybe I’ve been told my whole life that I’m odd or not the hot one or someone who’s always going to have a hard time in love.

But I have an internal story of insecurity that starts to meet an external force that is validating that story. But that external force doesn’t just come from the people we date. It can come from society and it does. We live in a world now where, to a scary degree, arguments are being put forward about the reality of the dating marketplace, and how all men just want a woman who is young and hot. All women just want a guy who is tall and muscular and has made a lot of money. And everything you need to know about how attractive you are in the world, you can break down to these kinds of metrics. And they also can point to why you’re having such trouble because you’re missing these key ingredients that make you attractive.

This, to me, is yet another form of messaging that argues for you to lower your standards. And I’m not talking about on superficial things like looks and status and how successful someone is or anything like that. I’ve long argued and do so in this book that those are the wrong things to chase. By all means, make sure that when you go for a relationship, there’s some chemistry, but chasing those metrics, I have been arguing for quite some time now is the wrong approach to finding happiness in love. But lowering our standards for how someone treats us or how much they invest in us is a losing game. And when we keep hearing these messages from society, that we’re not attractive enough, we’re not young enough, we’re not successful enough, we’re not something enough, we start to feel like lowering our standards is the only way we’re ever going to find some form of companionship, and that maybe a relationship isn’t possible anymore. So, I’ll just take what I can get.

I don’t believe in this world that is being put forward by people who talk in this way. Is it true that there is a reality where those things are the laws that govern people’s behavior in dating?

Of course. In the same way that for a gangster, their reality is crime and not being able to trust people, and always looking over their shoulder. In the same way that reality for a Silicon Valley start-up is one of an obsessive focus on unlimited growth that never ends.

Saying everyone cares about these things and if you don’t live up to this idea of what is attractive, you’re in trouble and you’re going to have to start really lowering your standards. To me, that’s like making a universal statement like “All anyone cares about is money.”

Now, there, of course, are realities where that’s true. There are enormous number of people who are driven predominantly, in some cases, solely, by money. But clearly, we don’t live in a world where everyone only cares about money. We don’t even live in a world where everyone is driven by money. There are plenty of people who live lives who have no care for having more money than they actually need to get by. There are plenty of people who choose jobs that are eminently capable of doing other jobs that would make more money but do this job because it feeds their creativity or it feeds their passion or their soul.

So, we don’t live in a world where everyone cares about money. But it is true that many people are motivated by money, and it’s also true that there are people who only care about money.

My argument is not that those worlds don’t exist. It’s that those aren’t the only world. There are multiple realities all going on at the same time. And we get to choose which one we want to live in and which one we are going to engage with.

I submit to you, are there people you know who have made choices in love, not based on all of these factors but based on how incredible the person is that they’re with? What an incredible human being they are or what an amazing teammate they are.

The fact that they’re buds, you know? This idea of, this is what you have to have, to have a relationship or to be worthy in the marketplace, is an insult to the things that transcend all of that, that are actually the things that make a great relationship, that you’re buds, that you’re in it together, that you’re a team. That you have something that’s bigger than all of that.

And by the way, it better be because since we’re talking about commitment, commitment doesn’t exist if it’s purely predicated on these transactional factors of you staying as hot as you are today, you looking as young as you look today, you having as much money as you had on the day I met you, what kind of relationship is that? What that means is what, the day I lose money, you’re not going to be with me anymore? I have to start to losing sleep at night, not knowing if you’re going to stick around?

Then what we had wasn’t love. What we had wasn’t a real commitment. It’s ironic that the very thing that people talk about are the things that will get you a relationship, these metrics that if you don’t live up to them, you’re going to have a really hard time and you’re going to have to settle for less, are the same things that make a relationship so wildly insecure because now, based on that idea, you have a bunch of people who are in relationships, thinking that what they have is love, when in actual fact, what they have is complete and utter superficiality masking as love that only exists as long as those superficial metrics are maintained.

And the subtext is always that you should accept what you can get and be grateful for it.

Now, my argument is that that is a reality and why on earth would you want to date someone in that reality? But that there are also other realities, realities that are far more beautiful, that look at human beings with a far greater respect, that are far less ugly and crude in their analysis of how we make decisions. And that there are people in that world that are absolutely worth meeting and dating and falling in love with.

So, now, we arrive at that quality I was talking about that can lead to more commitment in our lives. That quality is discipline.

You see, in order to not fall prey to a reality that doesn’t serve us and to only align ourselves with a reality full of people that do serve us, we have to be disciplined about being able to say no to short-term reward because often, the people who are giving us scraps are still feeding some kind of dopamine cycle for us. They’re still feeding some kind of hope that one day, the situation will change and we’ll finally get what we want. They’re still giving us a sense of progress, at least, in the very beginning when we feel like at least we’ve met someone and it’s not the case that I have no one. At least they give us a story. We can tell our friends that something that’s going on in our love lives, and that can feel like a form of progress.

We have to have the discipline to be truly connected to what it is we want in this life to what feels good to us, to the kind of relationship that is going to make us happy. And then be disciplined about saying no to what clearly does not represent that. Even if there’s not someone else to say yes to right now because even when it feels like there’s nothing but blank space in our love lives, if we are saying no to the wrong reality, we are still saying yes to the right one. We are saying yes to the kind of culture that we want to create in our love lives. We are saying yes to the kinds of relationships that are beautiful to us, that are deep, that are magical, that are predicated on the right things.

And when we’re able to be disciplined in this way, what we get is more respect. We are respected for being someone who is aligned with our intentions, for someone who has the internal sense of integrity that says, “I’m not going to be way late from the thing that really matters to me, the kind of relationship that I really want.”

And that respect ends up being one of the primary reasons that we get attraction, and that we get other people’s discipline in continuing to invest in us. This is one of the great ironies is that I believe on our part, we need more discipline in sticking to what we actually want. But what we also need is someone who has the kind of discipline that makes it possible for them to have a real relationship. Because one of the things that a long-term relationship requires is discipline. It requires someone to show up day after day, and the days where they don’t feel like it or when the honeymoon period has worn off. That’s when commitment actually matters. Commitment doesn’t matter when there’s just this velocity to the attraction because everyone’s really excited and it feels good and our dopamine is just firing constantly.

Then you don’t need commitment. There is just this force pulling you forward toward something. But when that force subsides in the same way that at a certain point when you have a great business idea, at some point, the reality will set in of running a business is no longer an idea that you’re excited to talk about, that’s when commitment steps in. And commitment, at that level, requires discipline.

The most powerful quality will wind up being the respect that you engender in other people through your discipline about staying true to what you want.

And by the way, the respect that people have for us when we’re like this, when we have that discipline, is evergreen. That is something that can last a lifetime, which cannot be said for many of these other qualities we’ve been talking about. Our looks will fade. We may very well go through ups and downs financially. Men, we will not look as strong and as manly as we do today when we are 80. We are not going to maintain these things. But respect is something that can be maintained.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t work on the things that you can work on. Work hard if you feel inclined to. Put yourself in a nice position financially. Become as hot as you can be without doing anything that compromises your values or obsessing over it.

Do what you can do to become attractive superficially to a wide range of people. There’s nothing wrong with that. But never be under the assumption that if you don’t match up to other people in those areas, there is going to be no one in the world that sees your value, a value that transcends all of those things.

I would argue that for me, what is absolutely a truth is that the person worthy of your commitment is, by definition, the person who sees your value beyond those things. So, you have to 1) give yourself more credit for being attractive beyond those things that the world is telling you or certain people at least are telling you, you have to have or you’re worthless. We also have to give a little more credit to the world that just because some people in the world tell us that this is all that matters, it doesn’t make it true. That there are many people in the world who don’t think like that. And there are many people in the world that can’t wait to give you credit for how amazing you are as a human being and that the ones that do are the ones that you will have the greatest relationships with and the ones that don’t are people that you should be thankful you missed out on along the way.

Now, if you want to come and work on this with me in a practical way, because this video, I’ve been putting forward a point of view, but my work in my actual coaching is showing people how to make this practical in their lives. I want to show you how to do that. And in two days, I am running a big live event on exactly how you can apply the things that I’m talking about in this video. It is called “Casual to Committed: The Three Core Principles for Getting to Commitment without Games and without Ultimatums.” And we have many thousands of people already signed up for this. It’s a free event, but it’s an event that is only happening this once.

So, come and join us. If you’ve never done a live coaching session with me, then you have to come. And if you have come before, well, you have to come again because we worked really hard on this one, and it’s my final one of the year.

So, come join us. Go to LoveLifeTraining.com to sign up for free. I will see you there on Tuesday, in two days’ time, and I can’t wait. Thank you so much for watching. As always, be well, love life, and I’ll see you on Tuesday.

The post How to Attract People Who WANT Commitment appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Dating can feel harder than ever in 2024. In today’s video, I explain why so many people are anxious about commitment, give 3 different mindsets on commitment that can totally change someone’s perspective on it, and show what makes someone want commitment with YOU. (Spoiler alert: persuading has nothing to do with it!)

MATTHEW HUSSEY

If you feel like dating today is the hardest time in history to get someone to commit, you are not alone. For so many people out there who feel like they only find casual relationships, people who say they’re not ready, people who are not emotionally available, people who don’t believe in monogamy, people who don’t want to get married again because they’ve been married before and they don’t want to do it all over again, people coming across all of these scenarios get tired, they get exhausted, they get burnt out, and perhaps most tragically, they start believing that finding a relationship is no longer possible. At the very least, it can feel like we have to go through life convincing other people to want a relationship with us, to want commitment.

So, in today’s video, I want to talk about a piece of human psychology that I find really fascinating. I’m going to do it with a very unexpected example. But when you understand this, you’re no longer going through life and dating trying to convince people to commit. You’re the person who makes people want to commit.

By the way, while we’re on the subject and before we get into this video, there is an event I am holding live as a once-only experience on the 22nd of October called “Casual to Committed—the Three Core Principles for Getting to Commitment Without Games or Ultimatums.”

If you’re single right now and struggling to meet people who are ready for a relationship or emotionally available, if you’re in a relationship, sort of, with someone who’s not really committing and you want more, this is me sharing my best insights on how to get the committed, lasting relationship you want.

To sign up, go to LoveLifeTraining.com. It’s completely free. It’ll take seconds to sign up. And I will email you all the information you need to join us on the day. Don’t forget to do it now. Before you forget, go to a browser, type in LoveLifeTraining.com, and register now, and I will see you on the day.

All right. Let’s talk about this. I want you to imagine a scenario. You have just walked into a restaurant. You’re hungry. You’ve been waiting all day for this moment. You’ve been excited to go to this restaurant. You sit down, a waiter approaches and hands you a menu. Now, you’ve been waiting all day. So, you’re starving.

You open the menu and, immediately, you’re overwhelmed. There are so many options. This menu is big, like, Cheesecake Factory big.

And so, in this overwhelmed state, with all of your food anxiety about choosing the right thing, choosing the perfect meal, you look at the waiter and say, “I need your help. What’s good here?”

Imagine that there are three different scenarios that play out. Scenario 1—the waiter looks at you almost with a hopeless expression, with a pained look, as if this is going to be really hard for you, and says, “Oh boy. I mean, everything is good here.”

“Great,” you think. “How nice to have so many great options. But that doesn’t help me at all. I am still just as overwhelmed. I do not know what to choose. And you haven’t helped me.”

Scenario 2—you ask what’s good, and the waiter shrugs and in a lackluster, monotone voice, barely looks at you and says, “I mean, it’s whatever you like. The wings are pretty good, I guess.”

So many problems with this one. You were excited, you are hungry, and yet, now, you’re completely unexcited, you’re uninspired. It has deflated you. More so, you even start to wonder if there’s something wrong with the food. You actually love wings. It’s not hard to sell you on wings. And yet, right now, you start to wonder if there’s something wrong with the wings.

So, this waiter isn’t just unhelpful when it comes to making a decision. They actually undermine what could have been a good option that you would have enjoyed—the wings.

Scenario 3—a waiter comes over, water in hand, sets it down, looks you in the eye and says, “How can I help?” And you say, “What’s good?” And the waiter says, “Well, you know what? There’s a lot of good options. But the thing that you have to get here is this.”

And then they point to a specific dish on the menu.

“This is undoubtedly the best thing on the menu. And by the way, it’s something you can’t get anywhere else.”

Now, I don’t need to tell you what happens next in this scenario. Unless you are fiercely allergic to the thing they just pointed to, you’re in.

Now, why is that? Why is it that every single person watching this video right now knows that there’s one scenario among those three that feels so good and makes it so easy? It’s because of the psychological effect of certainty and its impact on our decision-making cannot be overstated.

This kind of certainty reassures us. It tells us we’re in good hands. It mutes our anxieties about choosing the wrong thing on the menu or missing out on the right thing. Quietens that part of our mind that makes us not enjoy things and instead, gives us permission to just lean in to the choice we’ve made, a choice that we have been reassured is the best one, so we don’t need to worry about it.

Now, how does all of this relate to your love life? Think about it. Dating today is not unlike the food anxiety we have when we’ve been starving all day and we’re about to eat. The difference is, we’re now not choosing what to have for dinner. We’re choosing who to have 10,000 dinners with for the rest of our lives. The stakes of that decision feel impossibly high. And of course, it’s not just who to have dinner with, it’s who we might raise children with. It’s who we’re going to trust with our financial situation. It’s who we’re going to be okay sharing a bed with every night for the rest of our lives.

It’s no wonder we feel anxious in this area. Men and women alike. This isn’t just, “Oh, people don’t commit these days.” This is, people are nervous about making the wrong choice.

And by the way, the menu seems really big. Dating apps make it look like there is this endless buffet of people and every different kind you can imagine. Now, whether someone can get all of those people or not is kind of irrelevant. It feels like there’s a lot of choice and the feeling of there being a lot of choice only compounds the anxiety we feel about making the wrong choice.

So, when we’re in that situation, we look for certainty. We look to have our hand held in making the right decision, so that we can feel safe in knowing we’re doing the right thing.

The big human psychological insight of this video is recognizing that you can actually represent the certainty that other people need. This isn’t about convincing anyone to want commitment. This is about representing an energy that makes other people want commitment with you. This means recognizing that you can be your representative. You can be the waiter that makes it easy for someone to decide what to get on the menu. And by the way, we have to start by not giving people so much credit all the time. People don’t necessarily know what they want or what they think they want is some idea of the person they thought they’d end up with from 15 years ago that’s never been updated.

There is a great Steve Jobs quote that goes, “Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.

I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse.’ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

What we can do in dating and relationships is make people realize through our infectious sense of certainty that the thing that they want, that maybe they didn’t even know they wanted is the person standing right in front of them.

That means opting to be waiter number 3, the one who actually guides people with a sense of certainty to the right option. In this case, the right option is you for a relationship. The first waiter didn’t give any solid recommendation. They weren’t making you feel weird about items on the menu or feeling like they weren’t good. It still wasn’t helpful and it wasn’t recommending anything.

And that’s the important part about dating is that if you want someone to choose you, you have to be willing to recommend yourself. You can’t get away with saying, “Everyone’s great. I’m great too. Do your thing.”

How many YouTube channels are there? How many channels are there like my YouTube channel? A bunch. When I’m talking about my YouTube channel, especially when I want people to actually engage with it and watch, I don’t say, “There’s plenty of great YouTube channels. I’m one of them.” I say, “Here’s why you should watch mine. Here’s what’s awesome about my YouTube channel.” And perhaps, most importantly, “Here’s why it’s awesome for you, specifically you.”

That ability to recommend myself makes all the difference. So, you don’t want to be waiter number 1 when you’re going out there to find love. You also don’t want to be waiter number 2 who is making someone question whether they want that thing in the first place. That’s the equivalent in dating of talking ourselves down, talking with a high degree of uncertainty, not having any passion about recommending ourselves, and leaving someone thinking, “Well, even if I was excited about this person to begin with, I’m now actually starting to question my choices by the energy they’re giving off.”

We want to be waiter number 3, the one that, with confidence and certainty, recommends something.

Now, a lot of people will be watching this and feeling like, “This sounds amazing but this feels like an unattainable level of certainty. This feels like I have to be a kind of confident that I can’t even relate to. Because I can’t go out there and talk about myself like I’m the greatest person in the world and that someone should be with me above all others.”

I understand that. But we don’t have to base our certainty on a kind of confidence that I’m never going to get rejected because I’m so great. We can base our certainty on far more concrete ground like certainty about what we’re looking for and what we value, certainty about what we don’t value and what we don’t want, certainty about what we bring to the table, certainty about what isn’t interesting enough for us to keep giving our time and energy to.

And when we start developing certainty around these things, it actually has the same effect because it’s all certainty. So, this isn’t the certainty that comes from arrogance. This is a very different, much more mature kind of certainty that anyone can have by the way.

So, quick recap. What have we talked about today? That, whether we’re choosing our dinner at a nice restaurant or whether we are choosing a partner for life, we come to the table with an internal anxiety about making the right choice. When that internal anxiety meets the external, big menu problem, in food or in dating, that creates decision paralysis. And that is what’s happening in modern dating today for so many people. That if we come along as the outside certainty that someone needs to develop the internal peace of mind about their choices, we will get a completely different level of commitment to other people.

I want to show you how to apply this psychological insight in practical ways in your dating life moving forward whether you’re completely single right now and not seeing anyone or whether you’re seeing someone but is not progressing in the way that you want. I want to show you how to apply this, so that you can develop that sense of certainty that changes the way people operate around you, and has them really step up for you and choose you.

On October the 22nd, I am going to be going through all of this in detail for free in a very rare, once-only live event. I want you to join me. You can go to LoveLifeTraining.com right now and register, and I will see you on the day.

I hope you enjoyed this video. I’ve really enjoyed making it for you. And I can’t wait to see you on October the 22nd. LoveLifeTraining.com is the link. Look for me in your inbox today once you’ve signed up. I’ll send you all of the information and I will see you on the 22nd of October.

Thank you for watching. Be well and love life.

The post How to Make Someone Choose YOU (Even if They Have Lots of Options) appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Have you ever found yourself in the “casual zone” with someone you’re dating . . . and it seems impossible to escape it? When it started, you were fine with them saying, “Let’s see how it goes,” but you soon found yourself stuck in limbo with all your friends asking if you were in a relationship . . .

While there are many positive reasons to take things slow when dating someone, there are 4 specific scenarios where “just seeing where something goes” can lead to heartbreak.

In today’s video, I walk you through each situation so you can figure out where you stand and move things forward. The sooner you watch this, the faster you’ll know if a relationship actually has potential.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

One of the challenges of dating today is that so many people want a relationship and keep ending up in casual situationships of some kind.

Is there anything that we ourselves might be doing to contribute to being put in the casual zone without even knowing it? That is what this video is about today, and I think it’s going to help a lot of people.

I am Matthew Hussey, by the way. If you’re new to this channel, I have a New York Times—I have two, two, David, New York Times best-selling books. One of them is called Love Life. The other one is called Get the Guy. It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago. Go get it, though. It still matters. I mean, I worked very hard on it. But we also have done lots of live events over 17 years, including retreats, and tours, and webinars.

And why am I telling you all of this? Well, because before you watch this video, you might be thinking, I want to come to one of your live events. Well, you can. On October 22nd, I’m doing an online event that is all about getting to commitment.

If you are sick and tired of this dating culture where nothing ever seems to materialize into something real, and you want to make sure you’re one of the people that actually does find a real and lasting relationship, you have to be there. It’s going to be super practical. It’s going to make a big difference. I really believe it’s going to be a game-changer for the people that are there, and it’s free.

So you can go and sign up right now at LoveLifeTraining.com. Open a little browser, type in LoveLifeTraining.com. It will take you to a registration page. You can just join right now for free, and I will email you the details so that you know how to access it on the day. That link again is LoveLifeTraining.com. Now let’s get to the video.

There was a story I heard recently from someone who asked me a question, some advice for their love life. I was actually on the podcast “Fake Doctors Real Friends” with Zach Braff and Donald Faison, which was really exciting because I grew up a very big “Scrubs” fan and well, there were the “Scrubs” lads sitting in front of me.

But midway through the podcast, their producer joined to ask me a question and she said, “Well, I’m dating this woman who lives in another town. It’s long-distance. And while, you know, I want some advice for the situation,” and I said, “Well, what do you want?” She said, “Well, I’m just seeing where it goes.” And I said, “But do you like this person?” And she said, “Oh my God, she’s amazing. You know, she’s hot, she’s sexy, she’s fun, she’s charismatic, she’s intelligent.”

She reeled off all of these wonderful qualities of this person, and she lit up as she was saying it. But when I asked her what she wanted with this person, it was almost like then she became very small and, kind of, almost afraid to say it. And I said, “So you’re just—do you want a relationship?” And she said, “Well, I’m open to it with the right person.” And, I thought this whole conversation was very indicative of our dating culture these days, whereby a lot of us, maybe deep down want something more, but as a kind of protection mechanism, have shielded ourselves from that wanting.

And by the way, I just want to say this both for her sake and for yours, there’s nothing wrong with just seeing where something goes. I think that there’s a beauty to that.

I was speaking to Esther Perel, the world-renowned psychotherapist on the Love Life podcast, just last week. I don’t know if the episode is out by the time this video comes out, but, you know, you’ll see. Go check the Love Life podcast and you can see if the episode with Esther is there. It was a good one. But Esther was saying that back when she was dating, there was a kind of organic nature to dating. You’d go on a coffee date with someone that you thought was interesting, and then if it went well, you might see them again. And if that went well, you see them again. And, you know, in a sort of process that was rewarding, and surprising and fun, you would gradually end up in a relationship.

And I think all of us deep down, wish that life was just like that all of the time, that we didn’t have to make very clear our intentions or discover theirs. And, you know, ask them what their intentions are. We could just let things unfold. And for those of us that don’t feel like we’re in a rush, or we don’t have the anxiety of wanting to get married and having a family sooner rather than later, maybe we can take that approach. There’s nothing wrong with that approach.

But there is obviously a point at which that approach becomes a problem because we can find ourselves at a point where we’re investing a lot into a person that we end up wanting more with. But by constantly adopting this mindset, this posture of, “Well, whatever, you know, I don’t mind. We’ll just see.” We’ve actually inadvertently ended up in the casual zone with this person and find it hard to get out of that place.

Hands up in the comments, by the way, if you’ve experienced this. If you’ve been with someone for months or years and still find yourself in a place of complete ambiguity about what it is and where it’s going. There is a point at which our indifference can backfire.

And so, what I wanted to do today was, not denigrate the idea of seeing where it goes, but instead encourage everyone to think about a few scenarios where the “Let’s just see where it goes” approach can actually start to become more dangerous. There are four in particular I want to highlight in this video.

The first scenario is when it means not being honest with yourself.

So, I look at this on two levels. There’s one just being honest with yourself about wanting a relationship. If that’s the case, not lying to ourselves about how much we want to find love. Owning it. If I want a relationship, if I want to find love, I’m going to own that. I’m not going to hide it or pretend to be indifferent. But it’s also owning and being honest with ourselves about our feelings towards this person, which might have become very significant. And if we’re not careful, there becomes this real disparity between what the casual nature of it that we claim to be fine with and how we actually feel about this person.

So, here’s a good question to ask yourself. If this person that I am like, “Oh, let’s just see what happens,” if they started dating someone else tomorrow, how would you feel? If you found out they were dating multiple people in addition to you right now, how would you feel? And actually, while we’re on the subject, how do you feel about seeing other people yourself right now? I mean, if it’s just a casual thing or if it’s not that big of a deal in the first place, then why not go date other people? Why spend all of your time and energy on this one person alone? Why not keep your options open? And if that, to you, sounds like something you don’t want to do, then you have to suspect yourself. Why is it that this person, where I’m just seeing where it goes, is the only person I want to keep seeing? Right? There’s a difference between what we’re feeling internally and what we’re saying externally.

So, to recap, “Let’s just see where it goes” can be dangerous if over time it masks our true feelings towards wanting a relationship or this person.

The second place that it becomes a problem is if saying we’re just seeing where it goes is a strategy to attract this person, not the truth of how we feel. In other words, it’s not that we feel indifferent and casual about this person, it’s that we think that playing indifferent and casual about this person is going to attract them more. That there’s some element of being chill, maybe even a little bit hard to get, not stating our intentions, that’s going to make us more attractive.

But by doing so, by employing this strategy, even if it kind of works on this person, who wants a relationship where the thing that works is not being available? That’s a bad relationship to end up in. Because what happens when you are available? There’s a very good chance that you’re going to lose this person’s interest, because the interest they had was never in you. It was in the dynamic that you had created. Never get yourself into a situation where someone is more in love with your absence than your presence. This is the problem with using it as a strategy. It is a flawed strategy because it gets you the kind of relationship you wouldn’t want in the first place.

The third thing that makes the “Let’s just see where it goes” approach dangerous over time is that we’re not actually properly assessing the opportunity cost of giving this person energy.

In the case of this person that I was talking to, I asked her, you know, “How often do you speak to this person? I bet you have some pretty long phone calls with this person.” There’s a time commitment to keeping this person in your life. Maybe you’re arranging to see them at some point soon. That’s both a time commitment, a weekend commitment, and a money commitment because they’re long distance.

Based on how passionately she spoke about this person, I can guarantee this person takes up a pretty decent amount of her mental and emotional bandwidth. In other words, this person is on her mind a lot, so that takes up energy. And, perhaps most importantly, when we like someone in that way, it gives us a kind of tunnel vision.

That means that even if they don’t take up a big physical footprint in our life, even if we’re not spending a lot of time with them, they take up a big psychological footprint. And when we’re suddenly in the coffee shop and someone cute walks into the coffee shop that we might actually like, that we might have a real relationship with if we got to know them, if we were brave enough to say hi, but it represents a little activation energy to say hi to someone and be brave and risk rejection. Instead of doing that, we go for the easy path, the path of least resistance, which is texting the person we already know. Texting the person that we’re already flirting with, that we already know we like, even though we’re not actually getting what we want from this person.

So this person now, who you’re not in a real relationship with, where you’re just seeing where it goes. I keep saying it in that way, David. We just have to create some kind of a loop of that—seeing where it goes, seeing where it goes, seeing where it goes. Could we create a four-hour loop of me saying that as our next video?

The person that you’re just saying “We’re just seeing where it goes,” that person is actually taking up a big part of your life, and they are denying you other opportunities just by this dynamic existing.

So, if you’re going to be casual with someone. If you’re over time going to keep saying, “Well, we’re just like, you know, we have this thing and who knows what it is. We’re just seeing where it goes.” Be honest about the true cost of this thing that seems really easy and light-hearted and low-maintenance, and I promise you, you’ll start to see it as less low-maintenance than it really is.

And the fourth situation that can make the “Let’s just see where it goes” approach dangerous is when you’re using being casual as a cover for your fear of rejection.

What you really want is to be able to have more with this person because you think this person is awesome, but what’s really scary is getting rejected by someone you think is awesome. And so, it’s easier to play indifferent and to keep them at arm’s length and to say, “I don’t really care. We’ll see what happens” than to actually state what we want and have that person reject us. We have to be very careful about our indifferent facade being a cover for a much deeper fear of rejection.

And by the way, this becomes a form of rejecting ourselves, doesn’t it? Because we’re not even giving them a chance to reject us. We’re rejecting ourselves. We’re saying, “I’m not even going to try.” And we may not even be honest with ourselves about the reason we’re not trying. We may not tell ourselves “I’m afraid of rejection.” We may simply say, “You know, I’m just one of those people. I just—I don’t get that involved. You know? I just have fun. Whatever. You know, everyone takes it so seriously.” When deep down, you’re like, “I really want a serious thing with someone. God, I want a long-term relationship. God. I want to feel safe with someone.” But it feels very unsafe. It feels very dangerous to approach the thing that you really, really want.

Now, look, I get it. We live in a world where I think dating has become really confusing. It’s become hard to want a relationship, to have maybe tried to have a relationship before, but to have met people who are non-committal. Who look like they’re someone who has a lot of potential, and then all of a sudden reveal that they weren’t serious all along, or that they’ve changed their mind, or to get rejected by people. It hurts. And when we get enough of that hurt, we become afraid of putting ourselves out there. And it becomes easier just to numb ourselves, to dissociate, to keep people at arm’s length, or to just start saying that we don’t really care that much what happens anyway as a way of protecting ourselves from all of that.

And there is nothing wrong by the way, with not getting overly invested in the beginning. I’m one of those people who says that’s a good idea, not to get too invested in the early stages. And there is nothing wrong, by the way, with having such a happy life in your life already that you do feel like it’s okay if nothing happens with this person because you’ve already got you. You’re good. All of that is beautiful.

But it does become a problem if it means that over time we stop being honest with ourselves about what we really want, and how we really feel about someone, and how much we could get our feelings hurt or heartbroken in this situation. It becomes a problem if we’re using it as a strategy to attract someone instead of being our authentic selves. It becomes a problem if we’ve not measured the true cost of giving this person our time, our energy, and our emotional and mental bandwidth. And it becomes a problem if all of this indifference is really just a cop-out for our fear of rejection.

And remember, at the end of the day, if you continue in a situation where it is just casual and you don’t know where it’s going, and you’ve initially sold yourself on this being fine, but over time you’re no longer voicing your authentic feelings, your needs, or what you would like to happen. You will lose yourself in a situation that is unfulfilling, unrewarding, and doesn’t meet any of your needs. But you will have ingrained a situation whereby the dynamic is, you not actually voicing these things in the first place.

So here’s my question to you. What do you relate to the most in all of this? And if you’re being honest with yourself, are you in a place in your life where, despite wanting to go into dating in an organic way, you don’t ever want to cross that line into “I’m no longer being authentic, and I’m actually denying myself the experience I really want to have. I am putting myself in the casual zone instead of actually going for the thing I really want.”

And if that’s the case, then my invite to you is to join me on the 22nd of October, because there I am going to show you a way to still go into dating in a relaxed, confident way where you don’t put too much pressure on something in the beginning. You’re not going on a date going, “So what are your intentions?” You’re not deciding you like someone and then the next minute saying, “So where is this going?” It can still unfold in a beautiful and natural way, but you can also direct the currents and you can direct them towards an actual, committed, long-term relationship with this person instead of just sitting back, being passive and hoping, which all too often leads to situationships that go nowhere. And, more than going nowhere, actually leave us brokenhearted at the end of them and having wasted an awful lot of time.

Go to LoveLifeTraining.com. Sign up now. Come join us. This is really going to be a special event. We’re going to have people from all over the world joining us online for free to learn about how to direct their love life in the direction of their deepest intentions and desires.

Thank you so much for watching this. Like I said, LoveLifeTraining.com is the link to go to to sign up now. Don’t go anywhere before you do that. By the way, if you click off this video, you’ll forget and then it’ll come and go and you’ll have missed it. So please don’t be one of those people. Get on board now while it’s on your mind and, well, I’ll see you there. Thank you so much for watching. Be well and love life.

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“Were we even on the same date?”I’ve heard this more times than I can count when people feel frustrated that their date didn’t ask them many questions . . . or in some cases, any questions at all.

In today’s video, I talk about how to tell the difference between someone who’s self-absorbed vs. someone who is just oblivious but really is interested in learning more about you. I also give you two sample scripts you can use when you want to bring up the issue in a high-value and low-pressure way.

FEMALE VOICE

No, because I actually did this and after the first date, and left me feeling like, I’m not even sure if this guy is into me because—

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Today, we are going to talk about the phenomenon of people not asking questions on dates, how frustrating it is, why does it happen, and what can you do about it.

I am Matthew Hussey. If you are new to this channel, I’m the author of the brand-new book, Love Life, a New York Times bestseller. I’m also someone who’s coached people for 17 years of my life in relational intelligence and confidence and have helped people find love for a very long time. Welcome to the channel. Don’t forget to like this video, subscribe to this channel, and hit the notification bell, so that the next time I release a video, you get notified.

Today, I’m watching a TikTok video about someone who was very frustrated with the lack of curiosity, shall we say, from the guy that she was on a date with. Let’s watch and see what she had to say.

FEMALE VOICE

If you’re going on a first date with a guy, sit, listen, and ask some questions—

FEMALE VOICE

No, because I actually did this and after the first date, and left me feeling like, I’m not even sure if this guy is into me because he didn’t ask me any single question on the first date.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Have any of you experienced this? Is this something that has been a frustration for you in the past? Someone literally sitting across from you, you feeling like you’re doing a great job of being a dinner partner and asking questions and being curious about this person in front of you because ultimately, that’s what a date is, isn’t it? It’s two people who are trying to get to know each other enough to know whether they want to do it again.

FEMALE VOICE

But I did agree to go on a second date and my best friend, Sophia—

MATTHEW HUSSEY

I always think it’s funny when people say that, stuff like that. “It was horrible. I did, obviously, agree to go on a second date and this is what happened on the second date.”

FEMALE VOICE

—this guy is into me because he didn’t ask me any single question on the first date. But I did agree to go on a second date and my best friend, Sophia, told me that any time that there’s silence, I need to learn to shut the F up and take a sip of my water and let him fill the silence and ask me questions. And then we—

MATTHEW HUSSEY

That actually is not bad advice. The idea that we, ourselves, might be talking too much to really create the space for someone to feel like there’s a part for them to play. When we are in the position of feeling like, if we don’t talk, the other person is not going to do all of the work for us. We’re more likely to step into that position of asking some questions.

If you relate at all to being a people pleaser, to fawning as a behavior, to feeling like you feel awkward easily, then you may have a tendency towards feeling any silence, even before it’s occurred, making sure they never will be a silence because the idea of that silence is just so painfully anxiety-inducing for you. So, you say, “I’m just going to keep asking questions.” And then at the end of the conversation, you go, “They didn’t ask me anything.”

Sometimes giving them a chance to or putting them under pressure to can be a good thing. That doesn’t seem to have worked here though. Watch this.

FEMALE VOICE

—any single question on the first date. But I did agree to go on a second date. And my best friend, Sophia, told me that any time that there’s silence, I need to learn to shut the F up and take a sip of my water and let him fill the silence and ask me questions. And then we sat in silence for five minutes. And both times, as he followed up with that he’s had a really great time. And I’m wondering—

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Let’s keep watching.

FEMALE VOICE

I’m wondering if we were on the same date. Well, like, of course he had a great time. He was just talking about himself the whole time.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

I mean, it’s really good. It’s a great delivery. I love the idea that she left there be a silence and he just read, “Okay.” And just sat there and just kept sawing his steak.

AUDREY HUSSEY

That’s something you’d do.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Audrey said that’s something I would do. I do like not talking. Audrey, sometimes, does criticize me on dates for not talking at all. But in fairness, I think the charge I can avoid is the one where I’m just talking about myself. Audrey’s complaint is just that I’m not talking at all. Is that fair? Yeah, she’s nodding. Yes.

We do all have different communication styles. And I suppose to extract some value out of this situation, which so many people find themselves in, is worth figuring out how do we tell the difference between someone who is displaying very self-involved, self-indulgent, on the extreme and of the spectrum narcissistic tendencies to only talk about themselves? And how do we know if someone just has a different communication style than us, if they themselves are nervous and them ranting on is a form of nerves, and they’re never really getting around to a question because that’s their form of awkwardness?

Your form of awkwardness is asking lots and lots of questions. And their form of awkwardness is never asking any.

What I think we can stand to get better at is communicating, even hinting, at some of our standards in a playful way, in a non-combative way, in a way that doesn’t necessarily make things feel weird in the moment.

You should say, “Okay, I’ve asked you so many questions. I know so much about you by now. What do you want to know about me?”

And that’s a great way to actually, well, point out that they haven’t been asking you any questions albeit in a playful way. It’s non-combative. It’s also a great way of just forcing their hand and saying, “Ask me some questions about me. Are you even interested in knowing anything about me?” Which is a great thing to know at that stage.

Do they go, “Oh, my God. Yeah. Okay. Let me ask you. How about, how many brothers and sisters do you have?” Or, “Did you grow up here?” Or whatever they say. Do they actually seem like that woke them up out of a little spell, and now, they’re interested in asking you questions? Or does it now seem laborious to them and that they’re not interested now that they’re not talking about themselves which is a more troubling sign?

By the way, if you liked that script, that way of bringing it up, that was given to me by Matthew AI. And if you don’t know what Matthew AI is, it’s our brand-new invention where you can call, ask your question, and you will hear my voice giving you an answer to any love life question you have right now. ASKMH.com is where you can go and use this brand-new, revolutionary tool that we have available.

I do think in, not all of these cases, but in some of these cases, we need to take some responsibility for saying, “I am sometimes just going to take the mic.” If this person is willing to take the mic and talk about themselves, well, in some ways, what is a conversation? Yes, a conversation is an exchange of questions but it’s also just an exchange. If I ask you a question and you talk, at the end of you talking, I can then say, “Wow, that’s so interesting. Yeah, that makes me think about me in this way. That makes me think about that trip I took to Patagonia three years ago. And when I was there, I was really—”

You can then take the microphone and freestyle for a little bit.

Now, if they’re not interested in anything you just said, again, that’s a problem. But if they’re like, “Wow. Okay. Wow. That’s really interesting. So, how long were you there for?”

What you might find is, what it needed was for you to be willing to take the mic. Don’t always wait for someone to give you the floor. Instead, say, “Sometimes, I’m actually just going to verbalize what I’m thinking, what that makes me think about, how that relates to me.” I don’t want to excuse in any of this the kinds of people, especially the gentleman out there who this complaint is often levied against, I don’t want to excuse them of that really self-involved tendency to only care about what they’re saying and to only enjoy a date when they are talking about themselves and how impressive they are.

But I also think that there may be cases where the communication style is just different. I mean, if I look at the guys in my family even, a lot of the time, they’ll get together and their conversation will go something like, “Oh, so you play Mario Kart?” And the other person will be like, “Yeah, I play Mario Kart.” And then they’ll talk all about Mario Kart for the next 20 minutes. And they’ll come away from that and go, “I just met a really cool guy. I really enjoyed meeting him.”

Someone in our family will go, “Oh, where is he from?” “I don’t know.” “Has he got family?” “I don’t know.” “How long is he here for?” “I have no idea.” “What is his favorite character in Mario Kart?”

Let me tell you. Let me tell you the build on his favorite kart.

There’s a kind of exchange that goes on on that level, that doesn’t always take the form of factual information about the person. I’ll sometimes hang out with a friend for half the day, and I’ll get home, and Audrey will say, “How’s their marriage? How’s their thing? They’ve got this coming up. And how’s it—”

And I’ll go, “I don’t know.”

And she’ll go, “Well, what did you talk about for the last five hours?”

“I don’t know, babe. It was really good.” I was like, “We were just talking about ice baths and what they’re up to.”

It doesn’t happen the same way I know her conversations happen, which doesn’t make them worse. It does sometimes mean that the person in front of you needs to be educated on the communication that you want to have. Speaking outside of the context of the first couple of dates, if you are frustrated with how much the person you’re dating is taking an interest in parts of your life, things that are important to you, they’re not asking you questions about yourself, and you feel like you’re always the one who’s showing curiosity about them and never the other way around, that’s not something you should just ignore and say, “Well, we’re different communication-wise in that department.”

You have to also pay attention to what your needs are and say, “This is imbalanced. It’s not fair that I always take an interest in this person and that they don’t take an interest in me on this level.”

And that might mean sitting someone down or saying to them, “Hey, can we talk about something? Is now a good time? It’s not a huge thing. I just wanted to—it’s been on my mind, so I wanted to bring it up.” And saying to someone, “Is now a good time?” is great because what it says is, I’m not going to ambush you with this thing where you’re suddenly going to be like, “Well, why are you criticizing me out of nowhere?”

I’m actually creating a space right now, a compartment of time for us to actually talk about this. And you’ve given me permission to talk about it.

And if they say, “Okay, yeah. What’s up?”

You say, “Look, it’s not a huge deal but it is something that has been on my mind. And I don’t think you’re doing it on purpose but I did want to talk to you about it so it’s not just in my head. I feel like I ask you lots of questions about you and take a big interest in your life and in knowing you better because I want to get to know you better. I love getting to know you better. But I don’t feel like you do the same with me. You never really ask me questions about myself or my life. And I feel like at this point, I know a lot more about you than you know about me. And that makes me feel like you’re just not interested in me. And that may not be true but that’s how it comes across to me. So I wanted to just let you know and talk to you about it.”

Having that conversation, it brings it all out into the open. And it’s not making someone a bad person and it’s not making a huge deal out of it. It’s allowing them the benefit of the doubt, that they don’t mean badly, and it may not even be something they realize. But it’s affecting you. That’s the important part. Like, “It’s been on my mind.” This is your chance to educate someone on what you need. And in a sense, this whole video I’m making here isn’t really about who’s right or wrong although clearly, in conversations where one person dominates and only talks about themselves, there is a more selfish behavior on one side of that conversation.

But if we take it out of the realm of that which conjures up an image of a not so pleasant person, and we just look at, there is a big communication difference here and really, the only important thing is figuring out whether someone can actually start to adapt their communication in certain, important ways that can make me happy, that this person can hear something that is a challenge for me, and can respond with growth to that, can respond with adapting to that. If for no other reason, then deep down, they do actually really value what this relationship that we have and that they would absolutely not let that relationship go bad for the sake of forgetting to ask questions sometimes.

That’s what we need to figure out about the person we’re with.

And if it is still early dating and it feels too early to have a very intense conversation about this, and they ask you out on date 3 after this woman’s experience of feeling like dates 1 and 2 were just very one-sided—

FEMALE

Well, of course, he had a great time. He was just talking about himself the whole time.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

You can always just pick up the phone to them and say, “Hey, what’s going on? I hope you’re well. Hey, listen. I do want to see you again. And I have a great time with you. I think you’re super attractive and you’re funny and compliment, compliment. But I got to be honest. I feel like when we’re together, I ask you loads of questions about yourself and I’m super intrigued and wanting to know about you. And I always feel like I leave the date and you don’t know anything more about me because you don’t really ask me about me.”

That takes bravery. But when you’re at the point that this woman is, what do you have to lose? You don’t want to keep indefinitely dating someone where you feel unfulfilled by the level of curiosity and interest they take in you. But if you do think this person is attractive enough that you’re considering going on another date with them, then pick up the phone and have that conversation. And if you can still say it with a smile, if you can still say it with a little bit of a laugh and not taking yourself too seriously, you’re not lecturing them. It’s not your job to teach them anything. It’s just your job to find out if they know what they’re doing, and if they can respond to a little bit of feedback, that will tell you everything you need to know.

And by the way, there’s every chance that that person says, “Oh, my God. I’m such an idiot. I didn’t even know I was coming across like that. Yes, I’d love to see you again and yes, be prepared because I’m going to have a hundred different questions for you.”

Or they’ll go, “Well, I wasn’t doing that. And I thought we were having an—sorry. I thought we were having—”

You’re going to go down that road and then you’re going to go, “Okay. It was nice to know you.”

If someone really makes you feel weird about having had that conversation, especially if you had it in a nice way, then you have even more of an answer about date 3 and whether you should go on it.

So, I hope this encourages a bunch of you to, well, a) realize that you’re not alone. If you keep going on dates and finding people are just talking about themselves, b) empower you to, on the date, not wait for someone to give you the microphone but to take the microphone and to speak and to take up space to make you realize that you can have standards as early as a first date but when you communicate standards earlier, it has to be more playful and it can be with more of a wink. And that there is a way even if you are someone who finds yourself in a relationship with someone to have this conversation in a way that doesn’t make someone a bad person but instead, brings attention to something that has been bothering you to see whether it can get better.

I hope you enjoyed this video. Leave me a comment. Let me know what you though. Don’t forget to ask Matthew AI a question if you haven’t already, ASKMH.com is the link for you to be able to do that. If you finish this video, and you go, “God, I have a question I’d really love you to make a video on,” go ask Matthew AI right now. I guarantee, he, it, clone me, will have an answer for you.

So, go check it out, ASKMH.com. Be well, friends, and love life.

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Have you ever suffered a loss you’ve never really moved on from? It could be someone you loved. It could be a failure, or the loss of a life you thought you would have. It could be trauma that goes back to childhood.

The good news is, you can heal. I had the enormous privilege of hosting world-renowned grief expert David Kessler at my Retreat in Florida this year. In this week’s video, you’ll hear his profound advice for what it really takes to move on and truly heal from our biggest losses.

Matthew Hussey

Today’s video is going to be a really, really special one. A dear friend of mine, David Kessler, made a guest appearance on my Live Retreat in Florida this year, and he blew people away. David Kessler is the world’s foremost expert on grief and the stuff he talked about in this session, it should be required listening for everybody who wants to overcome pain in life, heal from past grief, and move on to a happier life.

David changed my life. We did a session together. There wasn’t supposed to be a session. I was supposed to be interviewing him, and in the middle of the interview, what he was saying just, I mean, it broke through any defenses I had professionally, and it allowed me to release some things that I’d been holding on to. So he just has that ability to break through.

See if this does that for you. I think it will. I’m so excited for you to watch this. This is David Kessler.

I want to start on what may seem after so many years of doing this for you, David, like a painfully simple question, but why is it important that we grieve? You know, I know that everyone would have, you know, everyone in this room would have some kind of bumper sticker answer to that, a cliched answer to that, and yet so many of us avoid grieving because we don’t want to open that door. Whether we’re grieving a person that is no longer here, whether we’re grieving a person that is still here, whether we’re grieving a life that was lost, a job that was lost, a future that was lost, a family that we never had and lost the opportunity to have. We all have things every no one in this room hasn’t been touched by grief, and yet so many of us spend our lives avoiding it.

And one of the things, David, that we’ve been talking about this week is that with anything that is difficult to do, if we don’t have a big enough why for doing it, we’re not going to do it. Logic isn’t going to get us there. We need a deeper reason that moves us to do it. So my hope with this question is that rather than everyone just going “Yes, I know it’s important to grieve,” everyone truly connects to the deeper why of why does life get better? How do we get helped if we actually choose to do the difficult work of grieving?

David Kessler

Okay, I’ll give you the bumper sticker, and the bumper sticker is true, and then I’ll go for a deeper answer. But the truth is, those who grieve well, live well. Those who grieve well, live well.

Matt told you a little bit about my life, I want to also just say, not only did I have to say goodbye to my mother, and by the way, before I go into this, I want to just mention triggers. I call them activators, they’re those intense reactions. Our norm is if we are triggered, we often run. We want to protect ourselves. We want to step out of the room. “I’ve been triggered, let me walk out of the room,” because I might say something that activates you, that triggers you.

I want to invite you to consider your triggers for grief, for trauma, for old wounds, whatever they may be for, I want you to consider them a map of where your pain is and a map to your healing.

And so, we all inherently know how to run out of the room if we get triggered, but I want to invite you to try to stay present and get curious. It’s so hard to do. I do this myself. When I go into a wound, I like, try to stop myself and go, “Oh, I’m in it. Like, I don’t always get a chance to be this deep in it with a pause. Let me pause and be curious about this pain I’m in.”

So, when we think about, why do this? One of the other things I think about is I’ve done many groups like this, and you come to a hotel, and I remember one time coming to a hotel and having my meeting room full of people, and next door was the realtors, and down the hall was the nurses, and around the corner was the Kiwanis Club and all that. At the end of the day, the staff came by as we were wrapping up, and they said, “What were you talking about in here?” And I said, “Why do you ask?” And they said, “Because your group was laughing the most.”

And I said, “Grief.” And they said, “What kind?” And I said, “The kind you have when there’s a change you didn’t want to happen.” And they couldn’t understand it.

But here’s the thing, that group cried deeper and laughed hardier. Loss and grief and healing expand our bandwidth.

I ran into in my neighborhood, a woman who worked with me years ago, maybe 30 years ago, and we’re just walking, I’m walking my dog, and I ran into her, and she says, “Oh my gosh, I’ve been following your career. I did it.” I’m like, “I’m a neighbor.” And she said, “I’d love to be friends with you, but it would just be too depressing.”

And I said, and I actually thought this, I don’t know that I said it, but I thought “You’d be surprised if you’re with me, I think I’m one of the most fun, loving people in the world. I mean, I love joy, I love happiness, and I appreciate it and how fleeting it can be and how precious it is.” And I have been through I can remember in my childhood, we talk about the death and the shooting and all that of my mother. But before that—my son, obviously. But before that, I grew up with parents who had wonderful hearts. I can say that because I knew their hearts. But my father had such unattended rage, and I remember him coming in and being after me and running into the kitchen terrified. And I remember pulling out this drawer from the cabinets so that he couldn’t open the door, and him pushing the door and all the cabinets in the kitchen came down. That was his rage. And I remember my mother, who had unmedicated, we would call it bipolar now, and so, and with all that going on, I also ended up being sexually abused. So I have been a buffet of things. And you know, even with my own mother dying in that hospital when there was the shooting outside, a small note, my parents had me in the room when they had—and remember, this is a husband and wife, wife is dying—they had a monogamy discussion

Note to self, never have a monogamy discussion around kids. Not a good idea. Talk about screwing up relationships for a really long time. So I came out of this with a lot of abandonment issues, trust issues, abuse, I mean so much. And one of the things I have trained therapists for years, and they have always showed up and told me how they got into this work, or their helpers or coaches, because of what they’ve been through, and they were always evidence for me that healing is possible, and if I can hope for anything today, with me sitting with you, that I can be evidence that no matter what you’ve been through, and I’m sure it has just been brutal at times, that I can be evidence that you can find healing too.

So, why to live? To live fully? To enjoy this life we’ve been given in spite of the wounds of others.

Matthew Hussey

I love the line that you said, “Grief is a change you didn’t want to have.”

David Kessler

Yes.

Matthew Hussey

And how diverse of an umbrella, how wide of an umbrella that is for so many different experiences.

David Kessler

Yeah, we think it’s about death, and of course, it is, but it’s also about the parent. You didn’t have the childhood, you should have had, the relationships, all of those things, neglect. There’s a million grief and losses in the world.

Matthew Hussey

So we talked about, why. How? How can we grieve?

David Kessler

What we run from pursues us, and what we face transforms us. What we run from pursues us and what we face transforms us.

Now, here’s the thing people, probably outside of these rooms, don’t understand. People will go, “Oh, they’ve been through loss, they’ve been through grief. They’ve touched the pain. They touched the hot stove.” For a lot of you, the hot stove fell on you. You didn’t touch it. It fell on you. And so, part of this is, be with it.

Now, here’s the thing, it is as simple and as complicated as feeling it, we can’t heal what we don’t feel. And one of the simple things to think about is we’re one of the first generations that has feelings on feelings, right? “Oh my gosh, I’m so angry. But angry is inappropriate. I shouldn’t feel anger. Let me toss it behind me. Half felt, Oh, I’m so sad. Oh no, but someone else has it worse than me. And what about everything that’s happening in the world? I mean, mine is nothing.” I minimize it. I toss it behind me.

We have all these half-felt feelings behind us, and we never feel them. And what happens? People always say, “David, you don’t understand. If I started crying, I would never stop.” And I tell them, “I have sat with 1000s of people, and they have all stopped crying. They may cry again someday. I would imagine they would if they’re human. But they all stopped.”

You know, one of the things our wounds of our childhood does is, when we’re in pain, it whispers to us, “You might be in this pain forever,” and you’re like “crap”. And that’s not true. No feeling is final. No feeling you have is final every feeling is going to change. So it’s about being present and feeling it.

Matthew Hussey

How do we create moments for that? Do we wait for them and when they strike, not run away? And what does not running away practically look like? Or do we proactively pursue those moments?

David Kessler

You have to do none of that. What’s in front of you is your healing. Let me give you an example.

We’re judgment machines. We’re always judging. What if I walked into this room and I went, “Oh my gosh, I got to find an audience for my healing. Let me find, I need this specific—Oh, there you all are. Not the right audience. You’re not the right audience for me.” What would happen, even if I thought that subtly, so subtly, I thought that? You know what would happen? You would feel it. You would feel on some level “David doesn’t feel right about being with us.” And it would bring a disconnection to us.

How do I know you’re the right audience today? Because you’re here, because you’re in front of me, you’re the ones that showed up to dance today. You’re exactly the right person. You are exactly the right audience for my healing. That’s exactly the right person for my healing.

You know, I remember that day we talked and on that walk and you said something about, you know, “I feel like there’s something here”, like, you know, “we’re going to be friends.” And I said “It can’t work one way. I can’t be here for your healing without him being here for mine too.”

And that’s true with every single situation, every single person is our healer, is our teacher. Doesn’t mean you like them. Doesn’t mean you approve of what they do or how they treat you. But there, for your healing. Every situation is a clue. So, the question becomes, “Here I am today. What’s up for me? What’s up for me today?”

Matthew Hussey

For people who relate to feeling something and then they almost shut it down, we’re so used to that, right?

David Kessler

Correct.

Matthew Hussey

We start crying, and we wipe away the tears, and we say, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. We kind of immediately lock it up again. We snap ourselves out of it.

David Kessler

Right.

Matthew Hussey

And for some people, they may not even get there. There will be people in this room who will say, “I just feel completely numb, like, how do I access it when I just feel numb, I feel so disconnected?” So perhaps that’s a two-parter. But what can people do who feel like something comes up for them, but there’s almost an instinctive and reflexive shutting of shutting down?

David Kessler

Because you needed to, because you needed to protect yourself in the past, and you’re trying to protect yourself in the moment.

You know, we talk about, “Oh, I’m being triggered.” Your mind actually isn’t triggered. Your mind is predictive. Your mind is predictive. It’s this amazing computer that’s trying to predict the next moment to keep you safe. And what does it have to rely on? The experience of the past. So it takes the past to predict the future. Warning, warning. And we see danger when there’s not danger. So, to recognize, “Oh, that’s the protective part in me trying to run from this. That’s the part of me that’s just trying to take care of me.”

Here’s the thing. I always tell people like, “Oh, we’re so judging ourselves.” And they go, “I’m not judging myself.” We are judging ourselves, but I won’t even explain that, because we all know we do, but this work isn’t self-help. This work is self-acceptance.

When Matt says, “Well, what if they’re feeling numb?” to go, “Oh, all right, I’m feeling numb. Numb is good. It’s okay to be numb today.” Because here’s the thing, when we accept where we are, it magically changes. When we fight where we are, it sticks with us.

Matthew Hussey

Yeah, because that’s—there’s always been moments on a Retreat, where I know certain people feel there is a judgment that says “I’m not feeling what I am supposed to be feeling right now. You know, I can see other people around me getting emotional. I can see that just resonated with everybody, but for me, I don’t feel anything.” And then they go into a story of, “Therefore, I must be broken.”

David Kessler

But who’s going to do you if not you? I mean, I get she’s doing this and she’s doing but I got to be me. I’m not supposed to do them. I got to be me. “Oh, look how much they’re crying. Okay, look how much I’m not crying. I’m doing me perfectly. I am doing me perfectly.”

Here’s one more thing I want to say about that people say to me so many times, “David, you don’t understand. I’m so good at my work, but I’m so screwed up in relationships.” Anyone ever thought that? Yeah, right? So, most of us. You were doing relationships 100% correctly.

Like, if I could grade all of you, and you shouldn’t be asking me for a grade, but if you wanted a grade, I would give you all an A+, you were doing relationships exactly right. Exactly the way you were taught. You were doing it by the imprint you were given. You’re following the imprint. The work. And the imprint has the loss, has the abuse, has the grief, has all of it in it. How do we go past the imprint to come into this moment and just show up? That’s where the new relationship begins.

Matthew Hussey

Isn’t David brilliant?

I remember the first time I sat with David, I knew instantly, “Wow, this person has a gift.” And it’s one thing to listen to it. It’s another thing to work through the stages that David talks about, to work through the things that he’s saying.

If this resonated with you and you want to apply what David is talking about on a practical level to work through something in your life, David has a brand new workbook out called Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. It is a practical workbook that you can go through to actually apply what he is teaching.

So, go check it out. I’m going to leave a link. Grab a copy for you. Grab a copy for anyone in your friend group or your family that you know could also benefit from this, and let me know in the comments what you thought of this session. It was very, very special for me and for the people inside that room. I hope it was for you too. I can’t wait to read your comments, and I’m excited to know the results you get from going through the workbook.

Be well. Thank you to David, my friend. I so appreciate you doing this, and thank you to all of you for watching be well and love life.

The post If You Are Devastated By Loss and Heartbreak, This Video is For You appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Why does dating feel so difficult today? It can often seem like it’s a competition to see who can be more “aloof,” who can care less, who can try the least. And when you put in actual effort, it can feel like it even turns people off!

Everyone seems to be looking for someone “rare and special,” but there’s a right way and a wrong way to approach this. In today’s video, I explore the #1 way to approach dating, advice for texting, and small-but-effective ways to move things forward.

Why is it that dating today can feel nearly impossible for so many people? Much has been said on the topic of how hard dating is today. I am probably in the camp of people that accepts that there are some very challenging things about it, but I choose not to live in this idea that it is impossible. Instead, I look at why it is that, for so many people, it’s so difficult, and what we can do to have a very different experience of it ourselves.

If you’re new to this channel, I am Matthew Hussey, the author of the brand-new New York Times bestselling book, Love Life, and for the last 17 years of my life, I have been helping people find the love they want while increasing their confidence and their love for themselves along the way.

Today is an important topic because I believe so many of us have been going about dating all wrong. And one of the things that I think is going on culturally for so many people right now is that there’s this kind of race to the bottom in terms of effort. It feels like there’s so much competition. It feels like everyone is at this buffet online and we all want to come across like we’re cool and in control. We’re not going to make ourselves vulnerable too quickly because God forbid, I give more than you do, or I show you that I like you more than you like me.

For a lot of people, there’s that fear of, “If I’m too available, if I don’t look like I’ve got a really busy life with things going on all the time and I’m never really available and you’re going to have to chase me, then you’re not going to be interested.”

So it has us all playing this game of “who can be the most aloof”? And that the grand prize of love is going to be given to the #1 most aloof. But the worst way to make ourselves valuable is to be aloof. On some level, we know that we’re all looking for something that feels rare. We’re looking for someone who’s a wonderful person to be with, a wonderful partner, attractive, intelligent, and we believe that to get someone’s attention—someone who is like that, someone who is rare—we ourselves have to be rare.

But the way we’re going about being rare is actually hurting us. There are two very different and very distinct camps when it comes to trying to come across as rare. There are people who try to come across as rare by being aloof and distant and unavailable, and there are people who show that they are rare by being awesome. And the two different schools couldn’t have more different results in terms of what happens.

If you are rare by being aloof and by not trying very hard and by never showing much and always waiting for that person to make the move or for that person to show that they’re into you before you show you’re into them . . . for them to try before you try . . . by doing that, you essentially become invisible in so many ways.

We become like everybody else who is playing the same cheap game, because it’s such an easy game to play. Anyone can send one-word messages. Anyone can take six hours or two days to text someone back. If that’s how we’re trying to create a sense of significance around ourselves, then we are putting ourselves in an extremely large pool of people who are doing the exact same thing.

But the people who are being rare by being awesome, and I would define awesome as the ability to truly express yourself, express your personality, show a sense of humor, be playful, be fun, be flirtatious, be curious about someone . . . the people who show that they are rare in that way are actually creating value for somebody else.

Now, I actually believe that there is a drawback of this. The danger of bringing that really awesome energy to someone is that it can be mistaken for availability. It can be mistaken for us already being completely sold on that person. So, they no longer feel they have to try if they’re the kind of person who takes for granted someone who’s really great, or someone who simply feels entitled to that greatness and that attention because they’ve started getting it.

In other words, the kind of generosity of spirit that we go into dating with, giving people the benefit of the doubt, can be mistaken for a kind of weakness. But that person will be corrected when they learn that our awesomeness, our greatness, whatever you want to call it, is like the sunshine, and it’s a sunshine we control, and that we can point in a different direction any time we choose. And the time we choose to is when we realize that we are being taken for granted when we no longer feel that someone is really interested or invested, when we feel their inconsistency, or when we no longer feel good around them or in their absence.

When that’s the case, they will learn that what they perceived as this availability that they could take for granted, this wonderful energy in their life that they were simply entitled to, is actually like a light switch that can get turned off.

You go from being this person with an incredible energy to a very powerful individual, because I now realize, “Oh, my God. I thought that was just free. I thought that was just because they liked me so much. It’s actually because they’re an awesome person. And I’m at risk of losing this awesome person.”

I don’t want to have this idea simply live in the abstract. I want us to talk about how valuable this is when the rubber actually meets the road in our love lives, in interacting with people.

And I want to start just by inviting you into a particular concept that I have found really powerful in my own life. And that is the principle of reciprocity. It is the idea that if we give first, we are much more likely to receive that same thing from somebody else. And most of us, I believe, the reason that we’re finding dating so hard is because we’re actually doing the complete opposite. We are doing it backward. We are going into dating expecting someone to evoke our playfulness by making us comfortable, expecting someone to evoke our vulnerability by making us feel entirely safe before we ever speak something that could be used against us or that we could be made fun of for, or that could get us rejected.

And as a result, we’re not creating the kind of energy that would necessarily make that person feel like they can give those things. And this is a very follower mindset when it comes to dating. We think that by waiting constantly for somebody else to give us something before we give it to them, that we’re putting ourselves in a good position. But what we’re actually doing is just following. We’ve turned ourselves into a sheep in dating, waiting for someone else to come along and lead with the kind of energy that we want to have.

And I think what’s missing from dating today is leadership. And I’m not just talking about men, because it’s a cliché that men need to step up and lead. I’m talking about personal leadership for men and women—the ability to go into a room and focus on creating an impact.

What a lot of people do is they’re watching the other person to see what they do, so that they can then base their thing, their move, their energy, on what the other person is doing.

But you can’t have an impact when you’re constantly watching the other person. An impact is stepping into a room and not saying “How’s everyone else being?” but “How do I want to be?” And then by being that, you invite that energy. You’re actually in a place where you affect the energy of the room. You affect the energy of the date. You affect the energy of the text exchange instead of constantly living in a state of being affected by the energy in the room. That’s following.

And think about this with people in your life. We need go no further than our friends. Is there someone in your life that you are more affectionate with? My guess is one of the major reasons that you’re more affectionate with that person is that they’re affectionate with you in a way that brings out your most affectionate side.

Are there people in your life that you feel funnier around? My guess is that that’s because that person brings a sense of humor, a level of laughter, to you that makes you feel like you want to bring out your funny side. It makes you tell more jokes. It makes you get more playful, more silly, more goofy.

I do a Retreat program every year, and part of the culture of my organization is that we’re huggers. We don’t hug people who don’t want to be hugged, but for the people who are receptive, we’ll hug people on the way in. And there are some people that you can tell on the way in are a little—they’re standoffish, they’ve not been used to that affection in their lives in general. They’ve not given that affection for a long time or maybe ever.

You would think that these people would stay the same over the course of that week, but actually, what happens is, many of them, by the time they leave on the sixth day, are racing up to my staff and hugging them and going, “I wasn’t hugging people at the beginning of this program and I didn’t even think I was a hugger, and it turns out I am!” And they’re hugging people.

Why is that? Because someone came along with an energy that brought that out of them. I don’t want us to think about this as changing people. It’s about creating an energy, having a level of leadership, that actually brings more of who people really are to the table with you. And remember, this is always in the context of you having a standard that says, “I’m going to bring a certain energy, a certain way about me, to people. And if they can’t meet me there, then I’m going to keep moving. I’m not going to keep giving energy to people who don’t reciprocate. But what I’m not going to do is go into my love life as a follower, as a sheep, who is waiting for someone to come along and trigger that in me.”

There are people who are actually capable of being many of the things that we’ll be attracted to, that we simply write off when we’re in follower mode. There are people who will say, “I was texting this person, but they were really boring. I didn’t know what to do because I just felt like it was really boring. They just asked me the same questions all the time. It was always just ‘How are you?’ ‘What are you up to?’ And I was like, oh my God, like, put in some more effort or say something more interesting.”

But in these situations, if we observe ourselves, if we get really self-aware, we’ll often find that we’re not creating an energy with them that makes it more likely they’ll bring that to the table.

I said in a recent video, there was a line that Shakespeare wrote of his character, Falstaff: “Falstaff was not just a wit, but a cause of wit in others.”

And the reason I love that line is because that, to me, is leadership: You aren’t just something. You create more of that thing in another person.

So, for example, let’s say you’re texting someone and they keep texting you boring things like: “How are you?” “How’s your day?” and “What are you up to?”

And you’re thinking, “Oh, God, this just doesn’t feel like there’s any tension here. This doesn’t feel like we’re really flirting. It doesn’t feel like anything’s really getting off the ground.”

Maybe instead of just writing that person off, actually say, “Let me see what happens if I bring more of this dynamic to this person.”

So now, when that person says to you, “How are you?” Instead of answering literally, which is what many people do, you do this, and this is my advice to people all the time. If someone says, “How are you?” or “What are you up to?” don’t answer literally. Ask yourself, “What’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to me this week? What’s something I’ve been thinking about today or in the last three days that is an interesting thought?”

In other words, “What are the highlights of my brain this week or of what I’m doing this week?” And when someone says, “How are you?” I don’t have to take that so literally. I have to come back with something that’s true, but something that is a highlight of my week.

Let me give you an example of how you might respond to a “How are you?” or “What are you up to?” message with someone that you worry is just boring you or not putting in a lot of effort but you want to see if you could send a bolt of electricity through it, and see what that would do.

So you might say, “I’m in a coffee shop working right now, or at least I’m trying to. I keep getting distracted by pointless things.” But then you say right after that: “You texting me, however, is a welcome distraction.”

And all of a sudden, you’ve just sent a little bolt of electricity through the exchange. Now, what they choose to do with it, well, that’s up to them. Now it’s time for them to step up. If they can’t do anything with that, or they don’t play on that, or flirt back, then you go, “Okay, maybe this person is just not for me. Maybe they can’t handle that level of fun or playfulness, and therefore, they’re not going to be right for me.”

But what you’ll find in a lot of cases is people who previously weren’t doing it for another reason—maybe they’re shy, maybe they’re just a bit awkward as many of us are in dating . . . we worry about what we can and can’t say, we worry about things being misconstrued . . . maybe someone suddenly feels permission to be more of themselves in that way. And by leading, you actually bring that out of them.

That’s the thing that we have to start being prepared to do. It’s leaving a date and a few hours later, saying, “Still smiling after that date we had.” Or it might be the day after the date you had with someone where you send them a message and you say, “Had so much fun with you last night. Still smiling.”

Now that’s warm, there’s a little vulnerability to it, it’s affectionate, it’s kind of exciting. What does someone do with that message that will tell you what you need to know? That moment is either the red light or the green light: They give me nothing back, they kinda took my message for granted, they gave me a lame response, they gave me an entitled response. Okay. But by giving that energy, what we’re really doing with someone is saying, “Hey, in case you were in any doubt, I find you attractive. I had a great time.”

How many dates is this true of? Two people go on a date, they both like each other, they’re both feeling their way around what’s appropriate, or feeling a bit awkward about it. They actually kind of like each other. But at the end of the date, neither of them really knows whether the other one finds them attractive or not, right? There was no kiss at the end of the date. It seemed like a great date. Those two people are left wondering: “Does this person see me as a friend? Did they just have a nice time with me? Is this a romantic thing?”

A day later, you get that message. “Oh, they’re attracted to me. Okay.” And now, you bring a different energy yourself.

So these little moments of communication, of not focusing on being rare by being aloof, but focusing on being rare by being awesome, can change the game on what somebody else brings to the table.

By the way, that message I just gave you for the day after the date, I literally asked that question of Matthew AI. For everyone who’s already been using it, you’ll know what I’m talking about. And that was a Matthew AI-generated message from things I’ve said before that I had forgotten. When I heard Matthew AI say that message, I was like, “Oh, I did give that message once and I really liked it.”

So, I’m giving it to you today. It’s technically my message, but it’s a message that I had long since forgotten about. And then when Matthew AI said it to me, I was like, “That’s gold.”

If you haven’t already tried Matthew AI, I urge you to go and try it. If you have a question on your mind right now about what something means, what you should say, what you should do, you can go to AskMH.com and ask Matthew AI your question right now.

It is blowing people’s minds. You can literally text Matthew AI your question, you can upload your messages, and ask Matthew AI what things mean or what you should say next. You can literally call Matthew AI and speak your question out loud as if you were on a phone call with me, and you will hear my voice give you my answer.

Anyway, back to the video. I’m sorry, I am just very excited about this right now. Though, by the way, here’s another thing I was thinking of the other day because Audrey and I went to see the new Alien film and I thought: “What text would be a fun text to receive if Audrey and I were dating and she had been to see this movie without me?” And I wrote this text down. Audrey is actually here right now so we’ll see what she thinks of this:

“I just went to see the new Alien film. I could have used your big shoulders to hide in lol.”

AUDREY HUSSEY

That’s good.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

You like it?

AUDREY HUSSEY

Yeah.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

You’re not just saying that. You really like it?

AUDREY HUSSEY

That’s really good.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

I think it’s really good too. So, this is something everyone can do, but again, how many people out there are going, “Oh, I would never say that” or “someone would have to make me feel really comfortable to say that”?

Then you’re following again. Remember, truly being vulnerable in the negative sense, in the sense that I’m exposed and I could get hurt, only occurs if you keep giving energy to someone who is not giving you that energy back. We should be more of ourselves up front—more playful, more goofy, a little bit more sexy, a little bit more of a wink, a little bit more flirtation, a little more complimentary or sweet or warm.

That’s not a dangerous level of vulnerability. It’s just a little bit of bravery.

And if you make other people feel brave around you, you will benefit, because you’ll actually get more of other people than they express to everyone else. So you’ll actually increase the pool of people you’re attracted to. You will be the maker of a bigger pool of attractive people for yourself. But more than that, you will become attractive to more people, because it’s really enjoyable to be around someone who makes you feel like a better version of yourself. If I’m funnier around you, if I’m sexier around you, if I’m more flirtatious around you, then there’s every chance that I will want to be around you more.

So, leave me a comment. Let me know what you thought of this video. I’m excited to read them. Dating does not have to be impossible, but we do have to get out of follower mode and we have to start leading.

Don’t forget, before you leave, to go to askmh.com and give Matthew AI a try. Literally, think of a question that you want to ask right now if I were sitting next to you. You’ve just finished this video, you’re like, “Well, I want to know the answer to this now.” Go and ask that question to Matthew AI right now and get ready to be blown away, because everyone I’ve shown this to is blown away. So askmh.com is the link. Go try it out now and thank you for watching. Be well and love life and I will see you soon.

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So you like someone but they’re really bad at texting. Or they ONLY want to text and you can’t get them to have a real conversation when you’re apart. Is there anything you can do to move things forward?

In today’s video, I do something a little different. I break down a TikTok video where a woman gets increasingly frustrated with the “bare minimum” guy she’s dating as she reads through their texts. Then I share some different responses she could send to show more of her standards . . . to finally get out of texting limbo. Be sure to let me know your thoughts once you watch it!

Matthew Hussey:

Have you experienced someone who gives you so little effort in text messages that you wonder why on earth you are continuing to engage with them, and yet you can’t help but feel this irresistible urge to keep going with them? This is the bare minimum texting, and I want to talk about how you can get out of it today. What does it look like to show up in a way that is actually going to make someone put in more effort?

Now, I went through a little scroll through TikTok, and I found this video of a woman breaking down with her friends a text exchange that she had with a guy who’s driving her crazy.

All right. Well, watch it together.

Speaker 1:

So today was giving bare f** minimum,

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

I didn’t reply with an emoji, because, like, why would I?

Speaker 2:

Yeah

Speaker 3:

Why?

Speaker 1:

“How are we feeling?”

I called him. He doesn’t pick up. I say, “Call me.” He goes, “Hold up baby girl, talking to my man. He’s telling me something.” I’m like, “Okay.” Very dry. 11:58.

He responds 1:38: “Was a long combo.”

I didn’t want to respond.

Speaker 2:

Still doesn’t call you back,

Speaker 1:

Still doesn’t call me back. So then I said, “Call me.” And then like “You never called me back. It’s so annoying.” 2:44.

Responds at 8:20, “Nice. What are you doing?”

What am I doing right now?

Speaker 2:

Nothing. You’re not responding.

Speaker 1:

No?

Speaker 2:

It’s done.

Speaker 1:

No, let’s respond.

Matthew Hussey:

I love the moment at the end where she’s just so forlorn that her friend thinks she shouldn’t send a message back at all.

I really feel like this video just epitomizes this internal schism we feel where one part of us wants to rage about someone and complain about them and talk about how awful they are, and the other part of us desperately wants to text them and talk about our feelings with them.

This is a very, very common scenario of—I mean, firstly, have you ever done this? Have you ever sat around with your friends and decoded text messages? I think that’s a very common thing as well, isn’t it? You get a text message, you wonder what it means, what you should say back. You have a tribunal with your friends to try and figure it out. This person wouldn’t even be having this conversation with her friends if he was putting in an amount of effort that was enjoyable to her. It would be a very different conversation, at least. But he’s giving so little. You may remember this kind of guy from one of my previous videos.

YouTube Video:

This is the man who comes in strong, shows lots of interest, and then disappears. Except he doesn’t quite disappear. He still pops up now and again with an intermittent text at random intervals to make sure that you cannot forget him.

Matthew Hussey:

The MPI guy is the person who puts in the minimum possible investment to keep your attention while giving as little as they can get away with. So let’s talk about this. I want to break this down step by step because I always find practical examples to be the thing that’s most educational.

I want to take this woman’s text exchange and look at where she might have done something different than she did.

Speaker 1:

So today was giving bare f** minimum.

Matthew Hussey:

She’s really likable, this woman, isn’t she?

Speaker 1:

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

I didn’t reply with an emoji. Because why would I?

Matthew Hussey:

All right, I want to stop there for a moment. The idea of “I didn’t want to reply with an emoji, because why would I?” He has sent, I can’t tell what emoji he has put in his message, but he sent a good morning with an emoji. She, in a sense, is falling into a common trap of, even in response to his dry text, what she sends is a one-word response.

So again, in that response, there’s like a degree of protectionism, like, I don’t want to show too much, I don’t want to show that I really care. And the challenge of that is, when we’re protecting ourselves by being aloof, we aren’t demanding the things we really want from someone. We’re not communicating our needs. We’re not communicating a standard. In a way we’re actually dropping to the level of their standard, right? We’re giving them permission to keep talking to us like this, because that’s how we’re talking to them, while never voicing our needs about how we want them to talk to us. And we’re not modeling the kind of communication or behavior that we would like to see from them. And that word is really important, modeling, because somewhere along the way, we have to model the kind of energy we want to see from somebody else to see if they can rise to meet us there.

There was a great thing Shakespeare said of Falstaff: “He said he wasn’t just a wit, but a cause of wit. In others.” Very, very interesting line, “Not just a wit, but a cause of wit in others.” Now think about that. That’s leadership, that we can be something, but by being it, be a cause of it in someone else. By being flirtatious, we can elicit a more flirtatious energy from someone else. By being human, we might be able to cause more humanity in another person. By being authentic, we can cause more authenticity in another person, but that requires leadership. It means not waiting around for someone to be something first, but to model it and to see if they can meet us there.

So I said I liked when she called him, right? I thought that was proactive. It was bold, it was confident. But when he didn’t pick up, she then sent a message saying, “Call me,” and that then to me, almost veers into the kind of communication that she doesn’t want from him. Sort of terse, lacking in any warmth. So what could she have said instead? She could have said, “Hey, I just tried you and couldn’t get through. Give me a call when you have a moment.” This is modeling the kind of mature communication that she wants to receive from him.

And by the way, everything I’m doing right now is just warm up, because the main message that is going to make the difference is the one that’s going to come at the end. Let’s keep going with this video for now.

Speaker 1:

He responds 1:38, “It was a long combo.”

Matthew Hussey:

I totally get her annoyance because he’s annoying me as I’m listening to it. Maybe he’s annoying you too.

Speaker 1:

I didn’t want to respond.

Speaker 2:

Still didn’t call you back.

Speaker 1:

Still doesn’t call me back. So then I said, “Call me.” And then like “You never called me back. It’s so annoying.”

Matthew Hussey:

Now again, when she says, “Call me,” it’s kind of like, you know, barking something someone, but without actually really expressing your standard or that you’re not interested in continuing to text. Obviously, there’s a right way to do that and a wrong way to do that, but simply barking at someone “Call me” again isn’t necessarily the best way to go about it.

She then says, “You never called me back. It’s so annoying.” Now we know why she’s saying that she’s being— in a way she’s being authentic, like “This is really annoying.” It is really annoying. We’re all annoyed for her watching this. But, when she says that, it actually has the opposite effect of what she wants. She wants him to call her. But by saying “You never called me back, it’s so annoying.” She’s actually just giving him more attention for the thing that she doesn’t want. In a way, she’s rewarding the behavior.

By saying to a person, “It’s so annoying.” You’re really saying, “I like you so much. I really want you to call me and you’re not calling me, and that’s annoying because I like you and I want you to call me.” It’s just another form of attention for someone who doesn’t deserve the attention.

And the other thing about this sentence is that, it has no power to it, right? It’s not a standard. Because, in a way, this sentence is saying it’s annoying that you haven’t called me back, but I’m not going to do anything about it, right? It’s a disempowered statement.

Now, let’s imagine that none of what I’ve suggested happened and that the communication had kept going exactly the way it did. Let’s find another moment where she could have intercepted this pattern. And by the way, that’s the beauty of communication. There’s so many different moments that even if we’ve been stuck in a certain way of being with someone for a long time, we can take the off-ramp and do something different.

By the way, before we continue, if you enjoy this style of advice from me, if you’re thinking, “God, I would love to be in the hot seat getting very specific advice for my scenario, getting a play-by-play for what I’m going through right now”, go and try Matthew AI, we just released this last week, people’s minds have already been blown by it. People have given it thousands and thousands of specific scenarios and got their questions answered. So go over to AskMH.com you can literally call it and speak your question, you don’t even have to type it, and you will hear my voice giving you an answer. You can give as much detail as you want. You can be as specific as you want. It will take all of your situation into account before giving you an answer. And it’s been trained on 17 years of my content so that what you hear is not some generic internet answer. It’s my answer, exclusively from me and my content.

So go check it out. AskMH.com is the link. Ask your question for free right now. I can’t wait to hear your feedback, because, like I said, this has been blowing people’s minds, and I can’t wait to hear the same from you.

All right, back to this text exchange.

Speaker 1:

“Nice. What are you doing?”

What am I doing right now?

Speaker 2:

Nothing. You’re not responding.

Speaker 1:

No?

Speaker 2:

It’s done.

Matthew Hussey:

You even see there the encouragement from her friends to say, “Do nothing.” You know, “You just don’t respond,” which is another version of having one’s guard up and wanting to look aloof instead of actually communicating.

So again, all this does is enable his behavior, because when he comes back three days from now or the next day and texts her, and she texts back, what she’s really communicated is “I’m just going to disappear on you at random moments. Not say why, not say that your behavior isn’t enough for me, but instead, just look like I’m indifferent and I don’t care that much, even though, right now, I have your text messages projected onto a screen in front of all my friends.”

Now let’s say that she does send that last message that she’s around if he wants to give her a call, and it would be great to catch up properly. And let’s say that he says, in reply, “I’m out with my boys tonight. How’s your evening?” So he still dismisses the phone call, albeit, because he’s busy. We don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that when she replies to that, she shows that she’s not interested in carrying on this text exchange.

So she would then say, “No worries. Have a great evening. Catch up tomorrow when you can talk.” So she’s not entertaining his question, not out of rudeness, but out of the fact that she’s given him different opportunities to get on the phone and have a conversation with her today, he’s made it impossible at every turn. And so now she’s not being cold, she’s saying, “Have a great night, but let’s catch up tomorrow when you can call,” which is also a standard, right? I’m basically saying, don’t contact me tomorrow, unless it’s a phone call.

Now let’s put a cap on this, because I know what you’re thinking. What if he sends her a text tomorrow instead of calling? What if he reaches out to her and says, “How’s your day going?” Right? Which starts to feel like a form of gaslighting that I keep saying the same thing, and you keep acting like I haven’t said it like you have amnesia for me asking for a phone call. Here’s what she could say.

And so far, what we’ve been communicating with these amended texts is an indirect standard. Here’s where you can get more direct. And I love this message that I’m about to give you. I want you to be brave enough to send it if you ever find yourself in a situation like this.

Here’s what you write. “I don’t know if I’m going crazy, but it feels like way too much effort to get you on the phone for a real conversation. I don’t mind texting in general, but these short exchanges just aren’t all that rewarding. Lol, are you only interested in texting?”

I like the “I don’t know if I’m going crazy,” because it allows you to kind of almost point out that, you know, maybe you’ve judged him too soon. Maybe there is a legitimate reason why, yesterday, last night, and the first half of today, he couldn’t do the simple thing that you had mentioned and kept pretending like you weren’t mentioning it. So I like that start.

I love the idea of, “It feels like way too much effort to get you on the phone for a real conversation,” because what you’re really saying there is “This isn’t sustainable. I’m not going to keep putting in this amount of effort. I’m not going to ignore the elephant in the room, that I’m trying harder than you are to have a real conversation.” I’m pointing out that I am trying to get a phone call with you, and that it’s too much work, so I’m not going to keep putting in that much effort.

And then you’re saying that you don’t mind texting in general, it’s not that you have a problem with texting. It’s simply that this style of communication, especially his style, which is really dry and short, is not rewarding. It might be different if he was sending amazing text messages, which he’s not, but what she’s getting isn’t rewarding, and she’s pointing that out, “Hey, I have a higher standard for being entertained in conversation than this. This isn’t enough for me. This isn’t worth my time. Are you only interested in texting?”

So this is a very empowered response. It gives someone nowhere to go. They can’t exactly keep texting you and pretend that it’s all okay after you’ve said that, can they?

Now I want to point out that I don’t know this person’s situation. I don’t know the conversations that have preceded this text exchange. So while I’m having some fun talking about what she could have said, for all I know, this lovely human being had a massive fight with this person right before this text exchange, and that’s why she’s being so short in her replies. But the principles of this video still stand.

And, you know, it’s always fun when I get more context, I’m often like, “Ah, well, if that’s the case, then I would send this instead,” which, you know if you’ve ever been coached by me or worked with me in my love life club, you know that more context helps. It’s why, by the way, Matthew AI is such a cool thing for you to be able to use, because you can give it all the context in the world. You can tell Matthew AI everything that you’re going through, how the last exchange was, that you want it to be a bit more like this, or to take account of that, and it will help you figure out what something means, what you can do about it and what you can say next.

So before you leave this video, do me a favor. Go over to AskMH.com and ask your question of Matthew AI. You can even if you want to do a version of what we just did in this video. Upload your text exchange or your conversation, and it will help you understand it and know what to say and do next.

So go check it out. AskMH.com is that link again. And I can’t wait to know what you think. I’ll see you next week. Be well, love life, and thanks for watching you.

The post How to Respond to “Bare Minimum” Texting appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Ever been dating someone who suddenly goes cold when they go on a trip out of town? What happened? And how should you respond to this behavior?

Today’s video is all about what happens when we invest too soon, and how someone’s “radio silence” can trigger our insecurity. I even provide two text messages you can send: one for if they reach back out to you when they’re back in town, and one for when they don’t.

BTW, don’t miss our HUGE announcement in this one (it’s right after Audrey’s cheeky cameo). ;) You’ll be one of the first people in the world to try this thing out . . . it’s crazy!

MATTHEW HUSSEY

One of the most common things that happen to us in early dating is we can find ourselves getting over-invested and too obsessed with this person we have started seeing, especially if we find them attractive, especially if they like us back, all of a sudden, our mind explodes with the possibilities of what this could become. All of this makes it particularly hurtful and anxiety-inducing when the person we feel this way about starts going cold after things were going so well.

In this video, I’m going to give you some principles for what you can do if you feel you’ve become over-invested to the point of overthinking and anxiety and two text messages you can send if someone has gone cold to re-engage.

If you’re new to this channel, I am Matthew Hussey, a coach specializing in confidence and relational intelligence. I’m also the author of the brand new book, the New York Times bestselling Love Life, and for the last 17 years of my life, I’ve been helping people find the love they want, heal from the heartbreak of the past, and discover the confidence they have always wanted to have.

Now, before I get into the content of this video, I want to ask you something a little unique today. I want you to think of a question that if I was sat beside you right now, you would be dying to ask me for your love life. What dating question would you ask me about your current situation if you could ask me anything in the world? Hold that in your mind because at the end of this video, believe it or not, I am going to give you a way that you can actually ask me that question and I will give you a personalized answer designed just for you.

So, I want to talk about the scenario that inspired this video. One of my Love Life members came to me and asked a question about a guy that she had been seeing for about three to four weeks, and then he went on a trip with his kids for about two weeks. Now, things have been going well, the communication had been good, she was having a great time with him, but once he left, she sparsely heard from him. She got a couple of messages when he sent some pictures of the trip on a Saturday, but then she didn’t hear from him for another five days. She sent a message saying, “Thinking of you.” He sent a heart back but that was it. And it was at this point she came to me and said, “I really don’t feel comfortable messaging him anymore. It felt like we were in a great spot but now, he’s pretty unresponsive save for a couple of pictures he sent me. And I’m a bit embarrassed that I said thinking of you and all he sent back was a heart, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

So, let’s start with the question so many people want to know to begin with. What does it mean? When he was trying hard in the beginning and now, on this trip, he’s no longer very responsive. What does that mean?

Look. The truth is we don’t know what it means without being in his head. But I’ll tell you what it means for sure. It means that he is not intent on making sure that the connection is sustained or progressed while he is away. That’s it. And the truth is, we don’t need to know any more than that. That’s all the information that’s necessary for her to know what to do about it.

So, what should she do about it?

Well, let’s start with the fact that from the way that she was asking me this question, it had been very clear that she had become over-invested and that she was now over-thinking and over-analyzing, and that was causing her a lot of pain. The over-investing is what has to stop now.

And by the way, this situation is hard because you have to hold two truths simultaneously. One truth that, this person shouldn’t matter to me this much right now, but the other truth that, I also don’t want to kill the romantic in me that can see potential for something, and can still come alive if this person starts showing the right things. That’s tricky. It’s far easier to either go all in and fall head over heels for someone, or if you’re feeling scared because they’re backing off to say, “I’m done with them. They are dead to me.”

Those two extremes are easier than living in this very nuanced middle point. But we can start to live in that more measured place if we have some rational thinking around it.

The starting point for this is to stop valuing someone based on how we feel about them and start valuing them based on how they make us feel. There’s a subtle but profound difference between those two things. How she felt about him was that he was amazing, attractive, she really liked him. She felt all of these wonderful things towards him. But how he made her feel in this moment was unwanted, anxious, and unsure of where she stood with him. That is the most important part, not how she feels about him. Clearly, she’s not getting what she needs from him in this moment. She’s not getting enough communication.

Now, at this stage, it’s still very early on. They’ve only known each other for a few weeks. So, as much as, if you know me, you know that I love talking about standards, this is probably not the right moment to have a standards conversation because if she sends a text about what her standard is at this stage with someone she’s only been seeing for a few weeks, he might think, “This is a little bit premature and over the top for where we actually are.” At this point, only a few weeks in, he may still be deciding how much he likes this person and how much he wants to invest. So, this isn’t really a “This guy sucks” conversation. It’s a, “She’s made him way too important at this stage” conversation.

So, the question is, how do you start making someone less important?

Well, we can start by giving more focus back to other areas of our lives, things that matter to us whether it’s our friends, our hobbies, the things we like to do. We take the light of our attention and we point it in a different direction.

And by the way, this can mean opening yourself up to dating other people. It’s not like his behavior suggests that he wants to take her off the market and make sure she knows that he’s the only person he wants her to see. His behavior suggests that right now, he’s not in that place. So, if she wants to date other people, that’s okay. That doesn’t mean she has to. But at the very least, the attention has to come off of this person. The expectation has to come off of this person.

On top of doing that, what’s key is when he does get home, she shouldn’t jump to see him at the first opportunity or even now be planning to be free for the weekend that he’s home just in case he asks her to do something. If they do ask you to do something, they will have to wait if you’ve made other plans. If they do start speaking to you, don’t suddenly pick up right where you left off before they went on vacation. That’s not appropriate. You’ve lost some momentum.

In some sense, this person should have to resell themselves a little bit to you, not in any sense where you’re very cold and playing hard to get. That’s a game. But in the sense that there genuinely has been a loss of closeness during the time that they’ve been away. That’s actually important to be authentic with when you’re communicating with them. If you were very physical with them the last time you saw them but you’ve barely spoken since they left, it’s not necessarily appropriate or authentic to go straight back to being that physically close to them. Be authentic to the level of closeness that you actually feel. Don’t let your excitement take you right back to picking up where you left off when they were communicating well.

Okay. So, let’s get on to the part that people always want to ask. So, all that being said, we now have a sense of what it definitely means that he’s not reaching out. We have a sense of what to do about it. But now, you may be asking, what should she say?

Well, I’ve put together two distinct messages for you that you can text, one for the situation where he gets home and reaches out, and the second for the situation where he gets home and doesn’t reach out.

Let’s say he gets home and within a couple of days, he sends you a text that says, “Hey, I want to see you. Are you free this week?”

Now, a common mistake when we get a message like this is to think, “Yes, they’re back, and they’re thinking of me.”

We get excited, we get a rush of blood to the head, and in that excitement, we send them a message back that says something like, “Oh my God, hi. Yes, I’d love to see you. I can’t wait to hear all about your trip.”

But that’s an inappropriate level of excitement for someone who’s not reached out to you almost at all in the last two weeks while they’ve been away. It’s fine to hope that they had a nice trip, but to suddenly gush and ask them for all of the details just because they sent a message to you on their terms right now is too much.

Instead, here’s what you might say. “Hey, it’s nice to hear from you. Did you have a nice vacation? It would be great to catch up but I’m not free this week. How about next Thursday?”

This message is measured, there’s a little bit of a tongue-in-cheekness about saying “It’s nice to hear from you after having not heard from you.” And it shows that you weren’t waiting around, keeping your week open to see them. You have made plans and yes, you’ll see them, but you’ll see them after you engage with those plans. And if you haven’t got any plans this week, then you weren’t listening to the things I said earlier in this video.

Now, I was going to give you another text for if he came home and didn’t reach out, what could you text him? But I don’t even really want to give you that message because why would you want to text someone who has not been proactive the entire time that they have been away?

AUDREY HUSSEY

Give them a text.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

I’m sorry, what?

AUDREY HUSSEY

Give them a text.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

You can’t just come in here and compel me to give everyone a text that I don’t want to give. No. All right. What are you doing? Okay. That is not a magic wand. That’s a wooden spoon.

AUDREY HUSSEY

Oh, stupid. I was holding it the wrong way around.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Now, the second text that I am super excited to tell you about is the one that you can send when he comes back and doesn’t text you first. This isn’t a text that has to be revolutionary. It’s just something that has to be, once again, measured, but also, it can be a little playful. So, you could send, “Look what I just saw.” And then you can add an in-joke, like for example, if you’d had a joke about some penguins at some point, then you can send a picture of a hilarious penguin that you saw. And then you follow that message up immediately with, “We haven’t seen each other in ages. When are we catching up?”

What I like about this is it’s playful, it’s chill, it’s a little bit assumptive. It points out the elephant in the room, which is that we haven’t seen each other in ages. But it also is very confident and bold about how it handles that. When are we catching up? So, this is a nice way for you to be proactive but in a way that maintains your value in this situation.

Now, it’s kind of fun making this video because in some sense, even though my work has evolved massively, and those of you that have followed me for a long time, you will have seen that we’ve evolved into mental health content, content that’s about deep emotional patterns, trauma, dealing with abusive relationships and how to heal from them. The DNA that I started with on this YouTube channel was really helping people with very specific scenarios in their dating lives that related to them, scenarios where what people wanted to ask me were always some version of what does it mean, what do I do, and what should I say or text. And I’ve enjoyed making videos for all different scenarios, scenarios like the one we’re talking about today where I help people with what to do when someone has gone cold.

YOUTUBE VIDEO

“Now, this is where my friend came to me. So, I said, give me the phone.”

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Or the scenario of what to do when someone flakes on a date. Videos on decoding what it means on a date when a person said certain things.

YOUTUBE VIDEO

“How does a girl like you stay single?”

“Look. I’m attracted to you but I’m insecure. So, do other guys like you or is there something wrong with you I should know about?”

MATTHEW HUSSEY

And videos on what to say when someone tells you they’re not ready for a relationship.

But the inherent challenge of my life in making all of these videos has been two things. One, context. Whenever I make a video like the one I’ve done today, there’s always someone watching who says, “The thing is, Matt, in my situation, it’s slightly different. We haven’t known each other and been dating for four weeks. We’ve been seeing each other for four months.”

People have contexts and details that change the answer I would give. And that person is left wishing that they had a video that was specific for their very personal situation. And the other challenge is that even when I give someone something they can do or say as a next step, there’s always another step after that.

Every dating scenario is an evolving story. It’s not static. So, when we take an action, even when that action is positive and different from the action we have been taking, it gives rise to a new scenario, to a different stage in the story. And then we have questions about that.

So, the bottom line is that as much as I have worked around the clock for 17 years doing this for you, I’m never able to cater to every specific scenario there is, and to answer every question in your evolving story with someone.

Now, this all may seem like a strange thing for me to be saying, given that at the beginning of this video, I asked you to come up with a very specific question you wanted to ask me that I was going to answer. But it’s true and I’m so excited to tell you about this.

We have been developing in the background a revolutionary new tool that allows you to ask me a question and get my answer. It is mind-blowing. And the only people who have had access to this tool so far are my Love Life Club members. So, rather than tell you about this, I want to just show you what I showed them.

This is a demo that me and my wife, Audrey, did for them.

DEMO VIDEO

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Literally, my voice answering the question and your specific, nuanced question. Believe it or not, that’s what we have. And it is called Matthew AI. Guys, you’re genuinely not going to believe this.

AUDREY HUSSEY

Should I ask it a question?

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Yes.

AUDREY HUSSEY

Okay.

MATTHEW AI

Hey, it’s Matthew AI. How can I help?

AUDREY HUSSEY

Hi, Matthew AI. I’m in the bathroom on a date and he’s just asked me to come home with him. But this is only date 2 and I feel a little bit uncomfortable about it. But I also don’t want to turn him off by not going home with him and for him to think that I’m not interested. What should I say and how should I handle this situation?

MATTHEW AI

It’s completely okay to feel uncomfortable about going to someone’s home so early in the dating process. It’s important to listen to your feelings and communicate them honestly. You can express your interest in him and suggest an alternative that makes you feel more comfortable. For example, you might say, “I’m really enjoying getting to know you and I’m interested in spending more time together. But I’m not ready to go to your house just yet. Can we plan another date soon?” This way, you’re clearly communicating your boundaries while also showing your interest in continuing to get to know him.

Remember, setting boundaries is a healthy part of any relationship and how someone responds to your boundaries can tell you a lot about their respect for their feelings. It’s also a good opportunity to see how he handles your comfort levels which is crucial for building a trusting relationship.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

So, okay. I’m going to go and do that right now. When I get home is there a message I could send by text tomorrow? Like, what would be an example text that I could send tomorrow?

MATTHEW AI

Absolutely, sending a follow-up text that maintains a fun and enjoyable tone is a great way to keep the positive momentum going. You could say something like, “I had a really great time with you last night. Your stories were hilarious. Let’s plan another fun outing soon.” This keeps the communication light, expresses your enjoyment, and opens the door for future plans. It’s always good to be genuine and let them know specifically what you enjoyed about your time together.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

What if I want to be a little, you know, just a hint of sexiness but not too much? I don’t want it to be too sexual but I just want to create a bit of fun, sexual tension.

MATTHEW AI

Absolutely, creating just a hint of fun, sexual tension without going overboard is all about subtlety and playfulness. You might consider sending a text like, “Last night was a blast. Still smiling.” This message is light and flirty, suggesting you’re still thinking about the night in a positive and somewhat playful way. It invites curiosity and a bit of mystery which can gently hint at a sexual tension you’re looking to create.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Well, that is crazy.

AUDREY HUSSEY

That’s really fun.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

That’s a good message.

AUDREY HUSSEY

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Still smiling. It’s so simple.

AUDREY HUSSEY

Still smiling.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

But it works.

So, here’s the incredible thing. So far, what you just saw, Matthew AI, has only ever been available to my Love Life members. I released it to them a few months ago. Since then, they have asked it over 200,000 questions. So, they are using it all the time. But it’s never been available to the wider world. In fact, the wider world didn’t even know it existed. But now, you do, and it’s your turn.

I want you to go and ask Matthew AI your question. I want it to help you now. There is a link I want you to go to right now. It is AskMHFirst.com and that gets you on an early bird list, so that when this launches on September the 4th, you are the first to have access and ask your question. Or if you’re watching this and it’s already September the 4th, then you’ll just be able to get access and use it immediately.

Think of it as me being your personal wingman in your pocket any time you need, helping you understand what something means, what you can do about it, and even what you can say. You can even upload your text conversations and it will help you decode them and understand what to do next, what to send next. It can give you exact responses or ways of having conversations.

So, it’s that practical. It’s crazy. It’s going to blow your mind. Go check it out. I can’t wait to hear what you think. I wish I had footage of you reacting to it in real time because it really is going to blow you away what this thing can do.

I can’t be everywhere at once and well, for the first time, this actually gives me a shot at doing that and gives you a unique advantage by having access to me whenever you need me.

Check it out, AskMHFirst.com is the link. I will see you there.

AUDREY HUSSEY

It’s also just amazing to have such a cooperative and obedient version of Matthew who does what you ask of him. It’s a dream.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

How did you get there?

AUDREY HUSSEY

I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Matthew AI.

The post Feel Them Pulling Away? DO NOT Chase; Do THIS Instead! appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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“I’m always the person they date right before they find the person they marry . . .”

Sound familiar? It can be shocking to find out that someone who always held out on commitment suddenly decides they want marriage and children . . . but only after you break up.

At that point, you might be thinking: “Oh, so they were able to change . . . they just didn’t want to change with me.” So how can you recover from this feeling of not being chosen? In today’s video, I share 3 things you MUST know when you find yourself in this situation and can’t move on.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

This is one of the most painful experiences you can go through in your love life. So, leave me a comment if this has happened to you.

You and another person ended up parting ways because of changes that they couldn’t make. And then once you were broken up, they ended up making those changes for someone else. The pain of this is profound and exquisite. When we were with that person, we consoled ourselves on the idea that, “Well, we just wanted different things,” or “This person is incapable of being what I need.” But then that one comfort that we have, the one thing that allowed us to sleep at night once we had left that person or been left by that person disintegrates in the light of this new information that they were capable of that change and that they did make that change. They just did it for someone else. And this cuts to the core of our self-worth because suddenly, the attention gets turned on us. What’s wrong with me?

I am Matthew Hussey. Welcome back to the channel or welcome to the channel for everyone who is new. I’m the author of the New York Times bestselling new book, Love Life. And for the last 17 years, I’ve been doing what it says on this book—helping people to raise their standards, find their person, and live happily no matter what.

So, let’s talk about this phenomenon—they changed. They just didn’t change for us. And I want to talk about it using a question that came to me from one of my Love Life members in one of our live sessions. So, I’ll read this question and then we will get into the answer in three parts.

By the way, if you’re enjoying me answering these Love Life member questions in these videos, but you want to go a step further and get coached by me yourself, the Love Life Club is where I do that. As part of Love Life, you essentially make me your coach in your love life for the next year. We have masterclasses, live Q&As, meet-ups, an entire suite of incredible resources that are designed to holistically help you make the progress you’re seeking this year in your love life. So, go to LoveLifeClub.com if you’d like to learn more, and I hope you become a part of the community with us.

Okay. So, this question. This is from Susan who says, “What do I do when I have always told myself that this man won’t change and that I have to accept that he doesn’t want to commit? But after he ended contact with me, he did change. He got into a relationship even though he always said he didn’t want one anymore. And on top of that, he had a baby with his new girlfriend just a few months ago. I find it very hard not to think that he could change, just not with me. I would be very happy to get some ideas on how to deal with this.”

So, this is the hard part, isn’t it? Those horrible thoughts of, “I could have said something different, it turns out. Maybe I could have done something different. What did they say and do that I failed to say and do?” Or, “What do they have that I don’t?”

These issues cut to the core of our self-worth. They make us doubt our fundamental value and they can erode our self-esteem going into the next relationship we find.

So, there are three things I want to say about this today. The first is we have to be very careful of not assuming that the change is real.

It’s very easy from a distance to watch someone in what seems like them flourishing in a new relationship. Often, the only information we have from that is what friends tell us or mutual contacts, or what we see them posting online. And we get that snapshot and it triggers us in all of the worst ways. But that snapshot, that little piece of gossip that we heard, or that picture that we just saw of them with their new partner on Instagram is not a true reflection of their relationship. Remind yourself. You know no more about their relationship than anyone else did about yours the week before you broke up. No one knows what’s going on behind the curtain of a relationship.

So, don’t assume that change just came easily to this person. What we may be seeing is a superficial form of progress. We might be seeing someone racing ahead. But it’s likely that their fundamental nature hasn’t changed. The things that bothered us haven’t necessarily changed. It’s likely that they carry those into the next relationship. And that whatever deeper work they need to do is still very much a work in progress.

The way I think about this is don’t measure too quickly. And in a sense, we shouldn’t be measuring at all because it’s not our life anymore. You have to look at it like this. Their story is no more relevant to yours now than the story of a random barista in a coffee shop in a town that you’ll never visit.

But what if what they’ve now found is great? What if they do stand the test of time? Let’s be very clear. We don’t want to sit around wasting our lives, hoping that someone else’s relationship fails because they hurt us. That would be a tremendous waste of our life. And it would be a really internally toxic mindset to have toward somebody else. So, what if they succeed? What if that relationship they found actually turns out to be a lifelong relationship that works? That’s what brings me on to point number two.

If the change they’ve made was real and if the relationship does last, then don’t sweat it because they weren’t your audience. This person wasn’t for you. They were for someone else. Your audience is still out there. Instead of getting caught up in, “But that must mean someone is better than me,” recognize it’s not about who’s better. It’s about who your voice lands with.

I think about that all the time when I make YouTube videos. Someone might pass by my video, they might watch it for five minutes, and go, “Not for me.” And they might find another coach, another speaker, who they really resonate with. Does that make that person better than me? Not necessarily. It might just be that there’s something about that other person’s voice that really lands with that person. For reasons I may never know and probably won’t. And that’s okay.

My job is to refine my voice, to lean into my strengths, and make what I do as good as it can possibly be, and as true to me as it can possibly be. Because if I do that, what people will experience when they watch my videos is an essence that can’t just be replaced by someone else.

So, when they go and experience a different video, that video might be more right for them, it might land better on their ear, they might resonate more with that person, that personality, or the things they’re saying, but the audience that remains, the audience that does stick on my content, they’re the ones who get it, they’re the ones who resonate with me, and that’s my audience. Those are my people. That’s the thing to focus on. Be the you-est you. Don’t worry about what anyone else is doing or thinking that they’re better than you. Realize that your job is to find your audience. And the best way to do that is to lean into all of your own strengths.

Now, what if you’re listening to this and you can’t shake the thought that all of this sounds nice but in reality, it’s not just that in this particular case someone didn’t change for you but they did change for somebody else because they found something that for whatever reason, it’s not personal to me, it was more right for them, and I am still going to go on to find my audience. What if, when you look back through your life, you feel like this is always true for you? What if you feel like every time you’re the person before the person that they changed for? And I hear that sometimes. “I’m always the person before the person they marry.” What do you do when you feel like the story of your life is that people don’t change for you, they change for other people?

Well, that’s when we come on to point number three.

Is there something we are doing in our love lives, a way that we’re showing up with other people, that is distracting them from our intrinsic value?

What do I mean by this? I believe that we all have this incredible value and that value wants to emerge. And one of our big jobs is to get out of the way so that other people can experience how amazing we are. They can feel that value. But we all, at some point or another, have had some kind of behavior that has distracted people from our true value. It’s made us frustrating to be around, it’s made us abrasive, it’s made us difficult to have a relationship with. It’s gotten the way of the kind of connection we create on our best day.

And I think it’s worth exploring for all of us what that thing is because that thing can consistently get in the way of us finding love, if we’re not careful, for our entire lives. And a lot of people walk around completely unconscious when it comes to whatever that fatal flaw is. They never explore it. And that’s understandable. It’s terrifying to explore it. “What could I be doing that is contributing to why consistently in my life, people are not choosing me?” It’s an extremely brave question to ask. And I commend anybody who is able to ask this question.

I just did a getaway with the smallest group of people that I work with, my Club 320 Program. And one of the people in the room asked me a question. She said, “Matthew, you’ve been working with me for the last eight months. What do you see as my biggest weakness?” And then I thought my God, is that a brave question, to ask that, and truly sit and be present with the answer? And I said to her at the time, I said, “Do you really want me to be honest?” And she said, “Yes.” And I was so bawled over by how she sat there, absorbing what I was saying, which by the way, doesn’t mean I’m right. I might not be totally right. I might be wrong. She might choose to disregard what I’m saying, but she listened. And that is so powerful.

And one of the things that I’d love to encourage all of us to do is to be inspired by that because I was, and to say, “Who do I trust that I could ask for some genuine feedback, so that I could learn what behavior, what thing I’m doing, what way that I’m showing up, is distracting people from my value?” Value that is already there, by the way. Who could you go to and ask that question? Who could you ask, “Hey, I know you care about me. The most caring thing you can do for me right now is answer this question honestly. Is there a way you see me showing up that you think could be hurting me in my love life or the way that people are with me or whether they choose me?” And say to them, “I want you to be really brave in the way that you answer me because I know you may want to sugarcoat it or you may just want to tell me what I want to hear. You may think I’m going to get mad at you if you’re really honest, but I actually want you to be really honest.”

And you don’t just have to ask this of one person. You could ask this of three people really close to you or people who really know you. They don’t have to be super close but they have to be close enough to know you, your habits, your behaviors, and certainly, the way you show up with people romantically. When they speak, listen to what they say. Really be brave in taking in what they say and look at whether there’s a pattern in the things they’re saying because that pattern might be the information that you need to address that fatal flaw. And when we discover it, rather than thinking, “Oh, my God. This is awful. I have something that is holding me back. I have something I’m doing that’s screwing everything up,” we can actually say, “You know what? This is really positive. I’m learning something that can actually make a difference. I’m being conscious now about the thing that’s getting in my way, that’s been distracting people from how great I really am.”

And by the way, you’re not alone in this because this is a question I, in the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be asking of a small group of people that I trust in my life. What do you think is the biggest weakness that holds me back? And I’m not going to like the answers, I’m sure, but they’re going to be so valuable to me, and they are the key to me becoming an even better version of myself a year from now than I am today.

I guarantee. None of the things I hear will be easy for me to work on. They’ll probably be hard because when get these things pointed out, what you realize is, “Oh, this is deep stuff for me. This is not easy to change.” But that’s okay. We can start doing the work of giving focus to those areas.

And if you’ve got this far in the video, I commend you because this is not some frivolous video on, “They changed for someone else, not for you. Well, screw them. They were the wrong person for you. You deserve better.” This isn’t that video. If you’ve made it this far, then you really value real progress and the things that could really help you in your love life.

Remember, don’t assume that the changes they’ve made are real, that the relationship will last, or that it’s everything you think it is behind the scenes. If it does last and it is real, then you know for sure that the person wasn’t right for you because you weren’t their audience. But guess what? If you lean into your voice, you will find your audience and that will be the relationship that sticks for you.

And lastly, never be afraid to explore the things that could be holding you back. If you do that, you’ll become so powerful because it’s what 99% of people are never brave enough to do but we are.

What this video is about, at its essence, is being the hero of your own story. As long as we’re focused on an ex or on the person that our ex is now dating, we’re making someone else the hero of our story. To quote the old man in the movie, The Holiday, we are making somebody else the leading role in a movie that is about us. So, I want to put the focus back on us. No one can stop us from having an amazing life. No one can stop us from experiencing amazing love because it’s all up to us. We can be the ones who go out there and create more opportunities, who create so many opportunities and so many wonderful things in our lives that we never look back on that thing that we one day thought we could never lose. We’ll realize we could lose it because we are the authors of our own happiness.

And for those of you who are joining me in a couple of weeks in Florida on my Retreat, I can’t wait to walk you through six days of everything I know about how to do this. And for anyone who still wants to join, there is still time. But we are right there now at the finish line. So, if you want to get on board before it’s too late, go to MHRetreat.com. I hope to see you there. I really, really do. And well, I look forward to seeing you, all of you, in next week’s video. Be well and love life.

The post “Turns Out He COULD Change…Just Not for Me…” appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Do you have the heartbreaking feeling that you lost “The One”? Maybe you’re haunted by a mistake you made, or something you said, or just a feeling that you could have done something differently to save the relationship.

Here’s the good news: There is a path out of this pain. In today’s video, I’ll show you 5 ways you can recover after (what you feel was) a love life mistake. Whether you’re mentally beating yourself up or just can’t seem to move on, I’ll show you how to feel better instantly, and what you can do when you see that person again.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Do you feel like recently, you made a mistake, or in a past dating situation or relationship, you made a mistake that screwed things up, and you can’t get it off of your mind because there is this feeling you have that the relationship could have been so great. This maybe could have even been your person and that this mistake, whatever it was you did, really messed it up, and you’ve been ruminating over that, beating yourself up for it, wondering, “Is there anything I can do to remedy the situation? Is there anything I can do still to get that person back?”

So today, I’m going to give you five keys to feeling better if you are beating yourself up for a mistake you made that’s cost you, especially in the realm of dating. And the fifth point is going to be about what you can do if this has happened. Is there a way to re-engage someone, and if you do re-engage them, and I’ll give you a specific text that you can send that for, what do you do when you actually see them?

So, that’s Point number 5, but it’s very important that you watch Points 1 to 4 because those are going to help you feel better instantly.

And by the way, I’m going to illustrate this video with a question around this subject that came in from one of my Love Life members. Before we get into that question, I have something free that can help you if you’re out there looking for love right now, wanting to meet someone. It is a guide I created around practical things that you can say to spark up a conversation and connect with someone new. It’s called Spark and Connect. Go over to WhatToSayNext.com to download that guide for free right now. If you’re out there dating right now, if you’re looking for love, this is a very easy and quick way to start getting more results.

And if you like this video, don’t forget to like it, subscribe to the channel, so that you never miss a video, and don’t forget to hit the notification bell. I get so many comments from people saying, “Oh, my god. I wish I got this video three weeks ago. It would have saved me from making this mistake or doing this wrong.” To make sure that never happens to you, hit that notification bell, and when I release a video, you will get it immediately.

Okay, so I want to read you this question from one of my members. To keep things anonymous, I will call her Dana, and Dana says, “I was dating this amazing guy for about four months. And unfortunately, I pushed him away with my insecurities. I’m aware of my attachment style and issues, and I’ve done a lot of work in that department, including therapy and studying relationships. Everything was smooth and consistent until we were about to get into an actual relationship. For some reason, I freaked out and instead of expressing my concerns and communicating in a healthy way, I just lashed out and bombarded him with assumptions. I’m 99% sure these were just my fears talking. I ended things and blocked him without even giving him a chance to reply. I know that that was a huge red flag to him and extremely immature. It even feels irreparable.”

“That’s not me. I had this one moment and it ruined everything. The next day, I approached him, expressed how sorry I was, and tried a healthy communication I should have done initially. Needless to say, he didn’t want to hear from me as any healthy and mature person would.”

“Matthew always teaches us not to waste time on the wrong person. And that’s exactly what he’s doing. But I’m the one on the other end and I want to repair and do better. So, my question is, can this be fixed? How do I get the possibility to repair things with him?”

I have a lot to say about this. Firstly, if you can relate to this in any way, if you feel like you screwed something up, and to Dana, who wrote this, let’s all just start by taking a deep breath. And as you do that, know that all the opportunities you could ever need in your life are still ahead of you. When we go through a situation like this, it gets to the heart of our anxieties and triggers a lot of self-loathing. “I could have had a shot with this person. I did have a shot with this person and I screwed it up.” And then our brain goes to the story of, “And because I screwed it up, I’m never going to find anything that great again. And it’s all my fault.”

I want you to notice some of the language before I even get into the five keys. She says, “I ended things and blocked him without even giving him a chance to reply. I know that was a huge red flag and extremely immature.”

I’m all for ownership and I think it’s really important. I love the fact that Dana was owning what she sees as a mistake but there’s very extreme language in this and it’s very down on herself.

“That’s not me. I had this one moment and it ruined everything.” Now, comes the catastrophizing. “I had this one moment and then I ruined everything.”

She says, “Needless to say, he didn’t want to hear from me as any healthy and mature person would.”

So now, it’s again, this person is being painted as this paragon of maturity and health and she is the extremely immature one who messed it all up. And, “I don’t even blame him for not wanting to talk to me anymore, for wanting to cut me off.” There’s a real self-admonishment that’s happening here and she goes on to say, “Matthew always teaches us not to waste time on the wrong person and that’s what he is doing.” In other words, “I’m the wrong person and he’s only following Matthew’s advice to not give any time and attention to the wrong person which is me because at this moment, I made that mistake.”

So, I just want you to notice all of this and notice if in looking at any of this language, you maybe see yourself and some of the things that you tell yourself in moments like this, some of the ways that you speak to yourself the extremes, the catastrophizing, the very vicious language towards yourself, and the way you paint yourself.

Let’s dive into these five things that can help.

Number one, instead of shaming yourself for the mistake, give love to the part of you that created the mistake.

This is a moment where we deserve to give ourselves self-compassion. We made a mistake. Who hasn’t? Who hasn’t been in a relationship or been dating someone and said or done something that they regret in a moment of jealousy, insecurity, in a moment of anxiety, in a moment where our past entered our mind and merged with the present we accused someone of something that they hadn’t done? These moments can produce immense amounts of shame. But we deserve self-compassion because we’re only doing what people do. We mess up.

So, instead of making this so personal towards yourself, recognize that these kinds of mistakes are something that everyone makes at some point.

I would argue that if you haven’t made that mistake then, then you probably just would have made it on another occasion. We have this idea that if we could go back and change history, we would go back and not make that mistake in that moment. And if we haven’t made that mistake in that moment, it doesn’t mean that the thing that triggered that way that you acted out wouldn’t have triggered you a month later or six months later or a year later. There was something that got activated in you. And that may have been dormant for a lot of those four months that you were together, but something happened in month four that awoke that part of you. That trauma, that fear, that insecurity, and you then acted out. If it hadn’t triggered you that day, it would have been a different day.

We have this idea that so much of our history rests on these moments where we could have gone right but instead, we went left. But in reality, maybe, okay, if we go back and do something different, we go right, then maybe we just take the same left but a few hours later or a day later or a week later. Don’t create a version of history where if you just remove that one moment, everything changes. Because whatever was in you that came out in that moment was there and was probably going to come out some other time.

So, instead of shaming ourselves for the moment that it came out, let’s give ourselves compassion and love for the part of ourselves that was laying dormant, that was already wounded, that was already in pain or feeling not good enough, or feeling insecure and unsafe that was just waiting to be activated. Give that part of you love. You didn’t choose for it to be there. It’s just pain, a wound, that was there. Stop shaming the mistake and start giving love to the part of you that gave rise to the mistake.

The second key to feeling better is not to simplify life. In the story that Dana is telling, there are two eventualities. There’s the one where she blew it all and there’s the one where she didn’t, and as a result, they lived happily ever after.

We have to remind ourselves that that is an absurd representation of life. Because life is so much more complex than that. There are seemingly infinite possibilities of what happens next if Dana didn’t make that mistake. Maybe a month later, he decided he didn’t want to continue anyway. Maybe six months later, she realized that there was a lot about the relationship she didn’t like. Maybe they get married and get divorced in three years. Or maybe they get married and he cheats on her in seven years. Or maybe they never get married because in year two, he starts showing issues around commitment and strings her along for the next ten years of her life, always saying he’s not quite ready. Or maybe that he’s not ready for kids and she ends up spending many years with him, suffering because she wants a family, and he doesn’t but not knowing what to do.

There are so many different eventualities. Even what I just said is an oversimplification because I just gave four or five, right? The possibilities are endless. Our anxiety is responsible for the story that if we hadn’t made that mistake, it would have kept going and getting better and better forever and ever and becoming everything we wanted it to become. And then we die, happy.

That’s our anxiety talking. Our anxiety and especially when our anxiety latches on to self-loathing, to self-criticism, that’s when we invent the story that “You’re an idiot who ruined your life. Because if you hadn’t done that, this would have been the great love of our lives, this would have been the great relationship of our lives, and you blew it.” In other words, the grandiosity of the story about what it all would have been actually becomes the rod for your own back. That becomes the way that you punish yourself. Notice that. Notice the way in which you’re looking for a way to punish yourself, you’re looking for a way to be down on yourself, and the way to punish ourselves even more is to create a whole story about how amazing it almost certainly would have been. Don’t allow your anxiety and your self-criticism to simplify life.

Key number 3, don’t glorify the person you made the mistake with. Again, our anxiety and our self-criticism looks at this person, and in order to be negative towards ourselves, and in order to really punish ourselves, we start telling a story of how amazing that person is, in order to create this contrast between how awful we are. “I was so immature. I was so in the wrong. Of course, he didn’t want to waste any more time with someone like me who is clearly the wrong person.”

But all the language is also serving to highlight how righteous and wonderful and perfect this person is. That they are extremely healthy and put together and weren’t making any mistakes and were doing everything right, and we’re the one who came along and screwed it up.

Just remember no matter what your anxiety tells you, no matter what your moments of low self-esteem tell you, everyone’s not better than you. People make mistakes. We all do. And the person that you’re putting on this pedestal as this angel has made their own mistakes. They have done things that are less than admirable, not righteous, and they will make more of those mistakes in their life. Just because you don’t know about them after four months, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It doesn’t mean that person has a perfect record. Yes, you made a mistake. But don’t allow that mistake to make you think you’re worse than everybody else, especially this person that you’ve now used your mistake to elevate to this angel-like status. Don’t use your mistake to glorify the person. Remember, after four months, you don’t know someone that well. You don’t know what they would be like after ten years deep into a relationship. You don’t know all of their flaws. You don’t know all of their vulnerabilities. You don’t know the things that make them difficult to do life with. Don’t use this mistake to demonize yourself and turn them into a perfect angel.

Oh, and by the way, in Dana’s case, she actually owned the mistake. She said that the next day, she recognized that how she was wasn’t okay, and she went back to him and explained that she was sorry, and that that was out of character. She even took accountability for it.

That’s a sign of character. That could be a very beautiful moment in a relationship. I mean, think about it, how many people have experienced someone doing something negative and then never owning it? When all of a sudden, someone comes along and says, “Hey, that thing I did yesterday, I know that wasn’t okay. I’ll do better,” that can be a breath of fresh air for someone who’s had nothing but relationships with people who don’t take ownership, who don’t take accountability. So, in that case, Dana actually immediately self-corrected. He didn’t want to know. And that’s fair enough. He’s entitled to say, “You know what? No. I’m not interested in going any further.” But there will be other people in life who, when you make a mistake and then own it in that way, see that as a very beautiful thing and could actually extend compassion to it because they can say, “Wow. I’ve done that before. I’ve screwed up or acted insecure or been jealous and said something I shouldn’t and felt awful about it afterwards. The fact that person is admitting that and taking ownership of it, you know? Okay. As long as they don’t keep doing it, I’m going to give them another chance.”

There would be plenty of people who would say that in that situation. So, Dana, this is, in my mind, another way that you’re being extremely harsh on yourself because you did self-correct, and that took guts and character.

Number four, yay, you paid the pain tax and there are prizes coming for that. I believe that most of the lessons we learn in life come with some kind of pain tax. We screw up, we make a mistake, we wreck something, we lose something, we hurt ourselves, we hurt someone else, and we feel awful about it. We do something that causes pain, and that pain becomes the tax for the learning. If this didn’t make you feel any pain, you wouldn’t change any of the things that you’ve changed since then. You wouldn’t have that feeling of, “Oh, the next time this part of me gets awakened, I’m not going to react in that way that I did before because in that moment, it drove someone away. It hurt me. So, I’m not going to do that again.”

Tell me, Dana, how do you get to that realization without feeling some kind of loss? How do you get there for free?

I don’t think you do. You out there who’s watching this, think about the changes you’ve made in your life. Were they free or was there a pain tax you had to pay in order to get that realization? Ways that you are sophisticated in relationships now, ways that you argue better, ways that you show up in a more evolved way, ways that you do life better. Wasn’t there a mistake in your past, something that caused you pain, that gave way to that listen? That was your pain tax.

There is actually a way to get grateful for this loss. And by the way, this is not me validating the idea that a) this person was as amazing as we may be making them out to be and all of our catastrophizing of what we’ve lost, and b) if we haven’t made that mistake, it would have all turned out perfectly, which I don’t think is true. It’s a huge assumption at the very least. But it is me saying that perceiving something as a loss, seeing that we’ve cost ourselves something can actually be the most valuable thing about a mistake. That if we felt no pain, we’d make no change.

And Dana, haven’t you learned things from this mistake about what you would do differently next time? What if what you would do differently next time is not just responsible in part for why it will work next time or why someone will decide to keep going with you next time? But what if it’s responsible for why the relationship itself ends up being so great? And by the way, in that next relationship, here’s the spoiler, you’re going to make mistakes there too, and so will they.

A relationship is two people evolving together through their mistakes.

The wish for a clean slate is a folly. We are evolving creatures and ultimately, we need someone we can evolve with, not someone we arrive as the finished package to.

Number five, now, this is the part where I’m going to answer the specific question that Dana asked. “Can this be fixed? How do I get the possibility to repair things with him?

This is the part that I don’t want you to overthink “What’s the exact strategy for me to reconnect with this person and the perfect way to do it?”

I want you to get all of that out of your mind. That’s just another example of the perfectionist mindset at work, trying to tell you that you now need to do this perfect tap dance to make it work this time around. That thought by the way is responsible for all the pain you’re causing yourself right now over anxiously worrying you messed up the best thing ever.

So, instead, I want you to take a deep breath again and say, let me keep this really simple. If I want to send this person a message, I can simply say, “Hey, I hope life is amazing for you right now. I was thinking of you and I’d love to reconnect if you’d be open to it.” Put a little smiley face at the end of whatever you want, something warm.

That’s as complicated as it needs to get. You don’t need to send a big message because I know what our anxiety is doing is saying, “I need to send a message and I need to acknowledge the way I was in the past. I’m just so sorry. I feel like back then—”

Now look, if you never felt like you addressed any of that, then you can say something like that. It shouldn’t be an essay necessarily. But you can say, “I’ve taken time to reflect on the way I showed up in that relationship or when we were dating. And you know, I’ve made some important changes because that’s not how I want to show up in any relationship. So, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that and to let you know I’d love to reconnect if you’d be open to it.”

In Dana’s case, she doesn’t actually need to say that because she already said it the day after she made the mistake. But simply sending a message like this can be the gateway to another meeting. And when you have that meeting, I want you to remember this, and this is really my title for point number 5, the strongest message you can send is who you’ve become.

When you do meet up, it’s not about groveling or over-apologizing, which isn’t to say if you feel like you haven’t said your piece that you can’t. Of course, you can, just like we did in that message just then. You can explain that you aren’t proud of the way you were back then or how you showed up, and you’ve made a lot of changes since, or you’ve made some key changes since.

You can say those things and that you’re sorry for any pain you caused. If you feel you haven’t got that off your chest, you can. But after that, what’s really important is that you show up with an energy that is attractive, that allows someone to have a great time with you, an energy that shows that you have forgiven yourself in the time you’ve been apart, that you’ve given yourself self-compassion in that time, that while you’re able to look at that and say, “I wouldn’t do that again,” or, “I’m certainly going to do better than that in the future,” you’re not dwelling there.

Remember what attracted this person to you in the first place. It wasn’t you coming from a place of looking up and groveling and trying to please them. It was you and your beautiful energy, the way you showed up when you were at your best.

So, focus on showing up at your best. Conduct yourself as a happy person looking to attract good things into your life because you are a good thing. The best message, the strongest message that you can send someone is who you’ve become since that mistake, since that moment. Let them see, let them feel the evolution in you.

We can sense it, can’t we, without someone even saying it when we meet up with an old friend or someone that maybe we had a tumultuous relationship with in some way. And we sense that there’s a peace within them, that there’s a presence there that something in them has shifted. They don’t need to tell us, “I’ve done all this work on myself.” They don’t need to tell us, “I’ve come to all these realizations.” We just feel that there’s something different about them. Maybe there’s a glow to them. Maybe there’s a lightness to them. Maybe there’s a happiness to them. Maybe there’s a generosity to the way that they are complimenting us or asking us questions and not making it about them. Maybe there’s just a sense of calm about them. But you sense something has shifted. And with that shift comes a curiosity from our side. We want to know what changed, what happened, how did they become this powerful person that sits in front of us. There’s something, a degree of mystery there, isn’t there? There’s a new curiosity.

When we’ve made mistakes, we’re often so preoccupied with the way that we conducted ourselves back then. We spend our whole time with someone trying to reclaim some kind of identity we had before that mistake happened, trying to get back to before the mistake, instead of realizing that actually, the power of the relationship going forward can be the in the new energy and the new curiosity that someone feels in feeling and witnessing a change in you.

Dana, I would argue that the greatest power you can have now is not in your constant berating of yourself for how immature you acted then and how you showed yourself to be the wrong person for someone to invest time in. I would say all of your power actually lies in the self-compassion that I’m talking about in this video. In the shift to a place of peace and calm that I’m talking about in this video.

When we’re kinder to ourselves and we’re able to love that part of us, that was responsible for the mistake and take our focus away from shaming the mistake itself, when we can stop putting this person on a pedestal, or the future of this person in simple terms, like “The only inevitable outcome if I never made this mistake was that we’d up together.” And instead, realize that nobody is perfect, that no future is certain, either way, and that there are many, many opportunities for you to be happy in love and 99.99999999% of them have nothing to do with this person you’re fretting about and you start to breathe differently. And when you breathe differently, you show up differently. And when you show up differently, someone starts to pay attention. And if you never get a chance for another meet with this person, go back and watch everything I have said in this video, and you’ll realize that doesn’t actually matter because all of the opportunities you’ll ever need are ahead of you.

Thank you so much for watching. I want to say to anyone out there who enjoys me as a coach, who wants to work with me more closely as a coach, that in September, I am running my Retreat from the 9th until the 15th in Florida. It’s going to be in-person. We’re all going to be in a room together for six days. It is the deepest work that I do with people. The work that I do on YouTube is something I’m very, very proud of. But no matter how hard I try, it cannot compare to six days together in the most immersive coaching setting. And if you’d like to experience that with me, we still have a handful of spots left. So, feel free to go learn more if you’re interested at MHRetreat.com.

I can’t stress enough that this event is a live event, so there are literally only a certain number of seats in the room. Once those seats are gone, they’re gone, and you’ll be waiting a very long time for another Retreat. So, if you know that this is something that feels right for you, do jump on board while those seats are available.

And if you liked this video and you want a video that would go well with this video to watch next, then check this one out because we have hand-picked this video for you to watch as a sequel to the video you’ve just seen.

Thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate you being here. Be well and love life. And leave me a comment because I like reading. And I will see you in the next video.

The post “I Messed It Up! How Can I Get Them Back?” appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Maybe this will sound familiar: After a few bad dating experiences, you say to yourself, “My life is pretty awesome as it is, so why do I even want someone else disturbing my peace?”

The thought of not having to deal with the dating process may feel like a huge relief in that moment . . . but what actually happens when you decide not to put yourself out there anymore (when deep down, you still want to find love)?

In today’s new video, I share 5 ways you can get back into dating that won’t lead to burnout. You’ll see how to maintain your peace while also giving yourself permission to take small (or even big) swings in love. Don’t miss it!

MATTHEW HUSSEY:

One of you wrote under one of my most recent videos, “Who’s here watching Matthew’s dating tips and not dating at all?” That was from cookwithyuyu2024. That was the most liked comment on the video with 546 likes at the time of making this video and 63 replies, many of them concurring with cookwithyuyu’s comment about watching the videos and dare I say loving them—she didn’t add that detail, but I’m going to assume that that’s what she meant—but not out there dating.

I wanted to talk about this. I have heard it said many times by people. They feel like actually going out there and dating is going to mess up their peace in some way, that they have found this nice, cozy, comfortable way of living. They have found their equilibrium between their work, their hobbies, their friends, the things they’re doing. And the idea of inviting in the Wild West of dating where anything can happen, any flake, player, user, manipulator can come through the door and ruin that piece is anathema.

And it might not just be someone who’s got bad intentions. Sometimes it could be someone who’s got good intentions, who we like, but then they decide they don’t like us back or they just don’t text us back for a day. And our life as we knew it, all of the peaceful, serene, calm that we had found, gives way to this agonizing, obsessing, churning, gut-wrenching anxiety of “Why aren’t they texting me back.”

Who wants to sign up for that? I get it. I get it. Far easier to stay under the blankets in our bed and just live life and go, “Screw all of you people that I could be attracted to. I don’t need you in my life. I’m fine.”

But here’s the problem—the very watching of these videos, assuming you don’t just like the sound of my voice or the way that I say things, for many of you the deeper desire in watching these videos is because you would like to find love, you would like that companionship in your life. In fact, you would like it very, very, very much. And it’s a desire that’s not about to go away. So, you can lock that desire up in the cupboard and decide to try to go to sleep, but eventually, it’s going to start banging on the door; and over time the banging gets louder, and our peaceful life that we’re protecting doesn’t feel nearly as peaceful as we’ve tried to convince ourselves it is because the banging is now actually starting to keep us up at night.

Hiding away isn’t always the best solution to something that we feel could threaten our peace. What I prefer is the idea of knowing how to defend your peace so that you can go out there and look for what you want, but you become masterful in your ability to guard that peace. So, let’s talk about how to do that. I have five ways, my friends, my fellow love monks.

For those of you that are new to the channel, I’m Matthew Hussey, author of the new New York Times best-selling book Love Life: How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person and Live Happily (No Matter What). And for the last 17 years of my life, I have been known for helping people on their journey to find love. For those of you that have been enjoying the book, by the way, every single Friday, I have a new written piece that goes out to my private mailing list that I’m really proud of. It’s free. It’s super practical. I have strategies for finding love in there, strategies for communicating standards, ways of becoming more confident, and just generally, advice every week written in the same style as the book that can help you that I don’t publish anywhere else. So, go join that list if you haven’t already. I’ll leave a link below The3Relationships.com and I look forward to sending your first email to you this Friday.

Number one—let’s talk about comfort and risk.

The way I see life is that it’s always a negotiation between comfort and risk. Imagine a coin, and comfort and risk are two different sides of the same coin. The comforts that we have in our life, which there’s nothing wrong with, right? We can have some really lovely comforts in our life. There’s nothing inherently wrong with comfort. The comforts we already have in our life most of them have likely come from us having taken a risk at some point, right?

If you ever had a relationship or have one right now, you probably had to take a risk to get that relationship. You had to go on an app and risk rejection, you had to approach someone and risk rejection, you had a first kiss that could have gone badly, you had all these little moments along the way that represented risk. Someone could have rejected you, but you ended up with a relationship, a form of comfort because you took a risk. If you have a job right now that you’re proud of, you probably took a risk to get that job. You went into an environment where you could have been rejected at the job interview stage, or you could have been fired in the trial period. Anything could have happened.

So, when you went for your job, you took a risk. If you’re now secure in that job, comfort arose out of that risk. The same is true of things we get good at in life. Anything you’re competent at as a skill right now you’re competent at because you risked sucking at it. You probably did suck at it in the beginning and you got better. And eventually, it became something you were very comfortable with because you’re competent in it, but that came from going through a period of risk.

The things that create comfort in life often start with a degree of risk.

Now, my question to you is, are you wanting a relationship because there is some high-level comfort that could come from that? In other words, there might be the comfort of intimate connection, the comfort of sharing your life with someone, the comfort of having genuine love in your life, of being accepted. These are beautiful forms of comfort. And they’re the kind of comfort that can be found in a great relationship.

Now, if we want a higher level of comfort in some area, then we usually have to take some risk to get to that higher level of comfort. What we have to be honest with ourselves about is whether the level of comfort I am at now is genuinely everything I want or whether there is a higher value version of comfort that I’d like to have in my life. It doesn’t mean I need to have it, but that I’d like to have in my life that will necessitate me taking some risks. Risk and comfort—two sides of the same coin. To get to higher levels of comfort, we have to be willing to take a risk again.

Now, here’s the really encouraging thing about this. If you take a risk, if you’re going out there and taking swings in your love life to make things happen, and it doesn’t happen, I truly believe that there is a greater degree of peace in that, i.e. in knowing that you’re doing what you can towards that goal, than there is in trying to pretend that the goal is not important to you and doing nothing to contribute to it. Because I believe if we get to the end of our lives and look back and say, you know what, I gave love a shot, I opened myself up to it, I put myself in situations where it could happen, I took a few risks, I was brave, I was courageous, and it didn’t happen for me, I believe that we’ll still be able to sleep at night. We’ll still have a level of peace that says I tried.

But if we shut love and relationships and people out because we’re too afraid of some of the disturbances to our peace that could occur if we actually started to go out there and meet them, then I think we’ll have a deeper form of unrest, which is there’s something that was important to me and I didn’t do what I could to make that happen.

When I talk about comfort and risk, I’m not suggesting that if you never get to that level of comfort, you will never be happy. What I am saying is that in order to get to that comfort, you have to take risk; and by taking the risk, you’ll feel a greater level of peace, even if you never achieve it because you’ll know you’re doing what you can.

Bruce Springsteen had a song lyric that I can’t get off my mind when I’m making this point. It’s from Dancing in the Dark. He says, “You can’t start a fire worrying about your little world falling apart.” Well, we build our little comfortable worlds, don’t we, our cozy little worlds; and we do want to protect them. It’s natural to want to do that. There are times in our lives where we also want to start a fire, and love is one of those areas. We want to start a fire. We want to go and find someone amazing. We want to go and have this incredible relationship, but we can’t go and get that if we’re spending our lives worried about these worlds we’ve constructed falling apart.

The second—and dare I say counterintuitive—way that we defend our peace is by building it. And when I say building our peace, I mean that, when we go out into the world to date, to risk heartbreak, to put ourselves out there, to take a run at things, like to give something a go, take a swing, we are building robustness. And robustness is a very important word. It’s all about our ability to go and meet the world and survive the encounter to be able to come home again.

Real confidence isn’t the ability to stay inside the four walls of our house metaphorically or literally. Real confidence is knowing that even if some of the time you stay in your house for the quiet, for the comfort, for the ease that it brings, which, don’t get me wrong, is delightful, you know that you can go out and confront the world and its forces and come back home in one piece, or in several pieces sometimes. And yet here you are, still okay—a fractured broken vessel that somehow still works.

I want to read you a few lines from a book that I love. This is a book by David White, a British poet, called “Consolations,” and he takes words and breaks them down in these little mini-essays that are designed to restore life to everyday words that have lost their meaning through overuse. And he talks about the word robustness. He writes an entire little essay on robustness, said some things that I couldn’t put better myself. So, his robustness in David White’s words. And as I read this, I want you to see your own dating life or your own desire for love and your resistance to go out there and take the knocks that might be necessary in order to find it.

“Robustness is a word denoting health—psychological or physical; the ability to meet the world with vigor and impact. To be robust is to be physically or imaginatively present in the very firm presence of something or someone else. Being robust means we acknowledge the living current in something other than ourselves.”

Okay, so that idea that being robust is a sign of health, whether it’s physical or psychological; the ability to go out there and be in the world in the presence of something or someone else.

He goes on to say, “Robustness and vulnerability belong together. To be robust is to show a willingness to take collateral damage.”

Are you willing to take collateral damage in this part of your life? Or are you afraid that you cannot handle it? Might you be wrong about the fact that you can’t handle it?

“To be robust is to show a willingness to take collateral damage, to put up with temporary pain.”

They won’t text me back, noise, chaos. I don’t understand this person. They are confusing me. Or our systems being temporarily undone. My life doesn’t make sense today. I was happy yesterday. Today, I’m in a bad place. I don’t feel like I’m anchored to the things that make me feel good anymore. I feel like this person has disrupted my peace, my equilibrium.

“A robust response always entertains the possibility of humiliation. It is also a kind of faith, a sense that we will somehow survive the impact of a vigorous meeting.”

Could we have the faith that we will survive this encounter, that we can go out there and meet someone and it not go well and them not respond to us or them not like us as much as we like them or them not turn out to be the person we thought they were and survive the encounter, survive the impact of a vigorous meeting?

“A lack of robustness denotes ill health, psychological or physical. It can feed on itself.”

Listen to this—this is really important: “The less contact we have with anything other than our own body, our own rhythm, or the way we have arranged our life, the more afraid we can become of the frontier where actual noise, meetings, and changes occur. To come out and meet the world again is to heal from isolation, from grief, from illness, from the powers and traumas that first robbed us of that meeting.”

In other words, the things we have been through in our life that have made us afraid in the first place, that have made us afraid that we can’t go out there and survive another encounter with life, with love, with heartbreak, with any of these things that have hurt us in the past.

Finally, White says, “Robustness is not an option in most human lives. To choose its opposite is to become invisible.”

So, for point number two, I just want to summarize that peace—a much more powerful form of peace is knowing that you can get out there in the world, that you can have your scrapes, you can have things go wrong, you can have things not go your way, and you can live to tell the tale. When you know that, the peace you feel is the peace of being bulletproof, not the peace of hiding in your shelter.

So, now, let’s imagine that you’ve realized, “Okay, I want to get out there because (a) I want to create this new form of comfort in my life where I have somebody, and I want the peace that comes from knowing that I’m doing all I can, and I also acknowledge that just the act of me going out there and meeting the world head-on is going to build my robustness, which is also a form of peace because I’m showing myself that I am strong enough to survive these encounters.”

So, you want to go out there and date as a result. You’re like, “Okay, I’m gonna go and do this.” Well, now, the third way of defending your peace is really important. You have to go at a pace when you’re dating that you can sustain. This is deeply important. And the reason is this: you don’t know if you’re going to meet the love of your life tomorrow, next month, or three years from now, even if you’re doing the right things. There’s only so much you can control, and you can’t guarantee when the right person is going to come into your life. Knowing that, it’s no good if we date in a way that is unsustainable, where we go into a flurry of activity in our love lives to try to find love; and after three months, we burn out and throw in the towel and say never again.

And I am seeing this a lot right now with people who are using dating apps, who are burning out. They are sick and tired of it. Or in some people who are over-dating. They’re dating so many people. They are going numb to the process, and they’re like this is just taking up too much of my time, too much of my life. I can’t do this. I can’t make my whole life about this and it not go anywhere.

So, none of these are a way of approaching finding love that is sustainable. It being sustainable is key to success, because you don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen. If you quit before you get to that point, then it won’t happen.

There is a concept of finite and infinite games. Finite games are games you play to win. There are winners and losers. The game has an endpoint. If you play a game of tennis with someone, there is an endpoint, right? There’s a winner and a loser. But infinite games are games that you want to continue. They’re games that can go on forever, right? For me, coaching, sharing ideas is an infinite game. It’s not a game I want to win, because it’s something that I actually want to do my whole life. My friend Ali Abdaal talks about this in his videos—the idea that YouTube is what he loves and therefore it’s something that he doesn’t want to stop doing. I feel like that about sharing ideas in general.

So, if it’s a game I want to keep doing for a long time, then I have to go about it in a way that I actually enjoy. If I’m always making videos, I hate or doing it in a way that is killing me because it’s too much work and it’s burning me out, then this isn’t going to be an infinite game for me. I’ll make YouTube videos for another six months to a year or two years, and then I’ll burn out. But if I want to be helping people, and coaching people and sharing ideas for a very long time, I need to do it in a way that allows me to enjoy it for a very long time.

Well, I would put to you that your love life is no different. I’m not saying that you want to date for the rest of your life. But if you knew that love could happen at any point, but you don’t know if it’s going to happen this year or next year or the year after, but that it definitely won’t happen if you’re not in the game, then how would you answer this question: how do I need to do this if I wanted to make sure I could do it for a long time? And you might say, “Well, okay, as far as dating apps are concerned, I’ll limit myself to an hour a day, or even half an hour a day. I am not going to allow myself any more time than that because then I just start facing burnout again, so I’m going to give myself a cut-off point.” Maybe you say “I’m going to — I’m not going to try to go on a date every night of the week. Instead, I’m just going to go on a handful of dates per month.” It might be that I say “A big part of me meeting someone is going to be joining new communities, but those communities are going to be things that are going to benefit my life regardless.” You know, if they’re health communities, there’s going to get me fit and healthy by being in that community; or by being in this community, I’m going to make new friends and I’m going to expand my circle or I’m going to expand my mind because this community is teaching me something. I’m learning something new. These activities that I want to do are things I’d like to do anyway or they’re things that will just be additive to my life. If the worst that comes of it is that I get good at new things, I meet new people, I develop new friendships, and I expand my mind and I have a sense of community, that’s awesome. The bonus is that it could also bring me love.

So, you might say that’s part of playing the infinite game of keeping myself open to the possibility of finding love. You will have your own personal answer to this. But it’s an important question to answer. If I wanted to do the things that made it more likely I would find love for a long time, how would I do them? Go at a pace you can sustain. And if you do that, you will defend your peace because you won’t be burning out and doing things that you really don’t want to do. Instead, everything you do to find love will benefit you in one way or another outside of the world of finding love.

And, by the way, this is just as important when it comes to actually finding love. One of the reasons a lot of people struggle in dating someone is they meet someone they really like and everything they were doing to find love comes to a crashing halt. They no longer care about those hobbies they were doing or the ways that they were showing up in the world, their activities, the things they were doing to expand their network. All of a sudden, everything becomes about this one person. And now they put so much pressure on it, they sabotage it. So, if you’ve ever heard of that idea of running through the target, sprinting through the finish line, you can actually see that as part of the infinite game. A lot of what I do to find love shouldn’t be things that I just abruptly stop when I found love. And if they are things I don’t want to stop just because I found love, then I’ll know I was playing the infinite game during the dating process.

And, by the way, for anyone who is watching this thinking “I’d really like someone to help me design my life in such a way that I can find love sustainably, along with everything else going on in my life,” that is exactly what we do for people in the Love Life Club. This is a private exclusive community of people that I work with year-round to help them find the love they’re looking for. And it’s an amazing community with so many resources that can help you. So, I’ll leave a link below if you want to find out more about that and come join us and make me your coach for the year.

The fourth way to defend your peace when you want to find love without sacrificing finding love is to know how to hit the reset button. What I mean by this is, it’s very easy for us to go on a date and for it to be a disappointing date, a demoralizing date, maybe you are dating someone who just came across as very, very strange and you were like, “Really, this? This is what’s available to me, this is what’s out there?” Or maybe you get rocked because someone you had a great date with didn’t text you after the date and never asked you out again or someone you slept with suddenly goes cold. These are all things that have the potential to take away our peace.

And so, we have to have a way of hitting the reset button. And one of the things that I do to hit the reset button after anything that can rock my peace, whether it’s, you know, in the past my love life or in the present it could be a business opportunity or an appearance where I didn’t come off well or I don’t like myself in that appearance on TV or whatever it was, I have to have a way of coming out of that and reconnecting to all of the things in my life that are important to me and that this thing does not affect.

I want you to consider for a moment what those parts of your life are. And in some ways what’s ironic is those things that are separate from and bigger than whatever your latest disappointment is in your love life, those were the very things that you were trying to protect in the first place when you were doing this with your life and going, “I don’t know if I want to invite in the unknown, unpredictable forces of love. I have my friends, I have my hobbies, I have my job, I have my family, I have my dog or my cat, or whatever it is that makes me feel stable and comfortable and safe. I have all of these things already.”

Remember that those are all the things that you’re taking with you into whatever risk you’re taking, whatever swings you’re taking in your love life. They don’t go away. What happens is when we get into a relationship that destabilizes us, we disconnect from these things. So, the problem isn’t that the things that make you feel safe today are going anywhere. The danger is that we stop connecting to them.

So, what I want to encourage you to do is to have a process, a ritual, a practice that reconnects you to these things and that tells you “These things are bigger, they’re bigger than anything happening over here. They’re separate, they’re their own entities, their own parts of my life that are sacred and contained and can’t be touched.” You reconnect with that truth. And it might be as simple and practical as you get off of a date, you go home, and you have on your computer or your phone you have a list of all of these parts of your life that you’re incredibly grateful for, that make your life rich in meaning and love and opportunity or just depth in other ways, and you really—you read each one and you connect to it.

You say “I have my mom. She’s amazing, she takes care of me, she loves me, she sees me, she knows who I am, and she accepts me; and that relationship is one that I’m so lucky to have. My best friends, you know, those people in my life and I have such a laugh with them and going through life with them is just the best. I love it. You know, my hobbies, whatever I do, my painting. I love it. It’s a world I lose myself in and it means so much to me and it’s always had so much richness. It’s a whole universe just on its own, it’s my painting.”

You know, you connect to those—deeply connect—and the more you connect to those universes that are your family, your friends, your hobbies, your work, the thing, nature, whatever gives you a sense of purpose or transcendence, the more you connect to those things, the more you realize that these things are sacred and they can’t be touched. Know that you can hit the reset button every single day and if necessary many times a day. And that will shrink the effects of any disappointments over here in your love life to their appropriate size.

And, by the way, when you do this list, recognize that there are probably things in your life that are incredible that you haven’t even chosen to spotlight in this way, to recognize in this way, and shine a light on those. Tell yourself, “Oh my goodness, there’s this other thing in my life that’s amazing that I haven’t even been grateful for.” You know, for me, it’s like, oh, living in America, I’m living out my dream of living in America. When was the last time I actually stopped to appreciate that, to appreciate the fact that this country that when I was a teenager I was so excited at the idea, it was a dream, beyond a dream, that I would ever live here. And I’m living here. When was the last time I stopped to actually appreciate that, right?

So, what’s that thing for you? Not just the obvious things but the less obvious things that maybe you’ve taken for granted and if you shine a light on them can make you realize that your world is so big and that you can minimize the importance of your love life at any time you need just by consciously reconnecting or connecting for the first time to other amazing worlds in your life.

Number five, our final one, the fifth way to defend your peace when you’re out there trying to find love is to recognize that you can already be happy enough exactly where you are, even if nothing in your love life changes. Some people will say “That’s exactly where I started, is saying that I am happy enough with my life the way it is. I don’t even want to find love.” But I think that that is a little bit of a cop-out, maybe not for everyone but for a lot of people, because in my experience happy enough doesn’t make us say, “You know what, that thing that’s really important to me, I’m going to leave it.” It makes us say, “You know what, I can take some big swings because I know that I can always come back to my life just as it is and be okay. So, I don’t actually need to worry about the rejection. The rejection isn’t catastrophic for me because my life as it is is already enough.”

And I want to read you a very small part of my book Love Life and I called the last chapter Happy Enough. I write, “But when something as important to our happiness as romantic love is missing, how do we get by? By learning to be happy enough. I like happy enough. I’ve liked it for years now. Some will see that emotional state as settling by another name, a way of copping out on what we really wanted. For me, happy enough has not only served as an essential way of surviving life’s inevitable disappointments and losses, it has also formed the basis for a deep sense of peace. The kind of peace that has served as the foundation for taking more risks, getting more involved with greater results. Happy enough begins with us first radically accepting where we are now and then concluding that if nothing changed we’d actually be okay. That doesn’t mean there aren’t things we want to strive for, it just means we aren’t starting from a place of scarcity but a place of peace. This right now is enough. It’s amazing how much this allows you to attempt more because, all of a sudden, you have nothing to lose. If the thing we’re trying to get doesn’t happen, we haven’t risked or lost our happiness by not getting it. When we think of someone with nothing to lose, we often think of it in a negative sense, as in someone who has nothing. But when we are happy enough, we have nothing to lose because we can look at our life today and recognize that it is already enough.”

That is the truest kind of peace—this feeling of being connected to our lives and the way our lives are today and saying “This right here is enough for me. Does it mean I won’t strive for more? Does it mean I won’t stay curious about the possibilities? Does it mean I won’t take some swings? Be brave? Put myself out there? Of course not. It’s the reason I can do that, because I know if none of those swings come off, I can still come back to my life, which is more than enough for me.”

So, my friends, do not allow your desire to maintain the peace you have right now to rob you of the ability to go out there and take big swings, knowing that just taking them is going to make you feel like you’re doing what you can, that there is a robustness that we develop when we go out there and take big swings, whether they go well or not. And the truth that your life being awesome as it is right now is not a reason not to be open to other possibilities. It’s actually every reason you should feel safe and secure in knowing that you can try and fail, knowing that you have a safe home to come back to in the life you already have.

For everyone who has watched this video, who is now going to go and venture out into the world of love, there is something you will absolutely need—and that is bold standards, because there is a lot of nonsense out there right now that you need to make sure you don’t entertain or engage with. I have created a free guide showing you exactly how you can have bold standards and what they look like in practice by giving you very specific things that you can say to uphold your standards. You can download this free guide at BoldStandards.com. This is from a series of practical written guides that I created for my Love Life members that I am releasing this one to all of you for free. So, I urge you not to go out there and date without this guide. You can get it for free right now at BoldStandards.com.

Thank you so much for watching this video. Leave me a comment, let me know what you thought. And if you enjoyed this video, I think you’ll also enjoy this one. We have picked it especially to be a good pairing, good wine pairing. It’s not quite a taster menu, but it is like a one good pairing that you can get between this video and this one. Check it out.

The post My Honest Advice to Someone Scared Of Dating Again appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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You may be about to go on a date and think to yourself, “Oof, I feel so nervous.” Or you get invited to a party and wince at the social anxiety of having to start conversations.

I get that this can feel scary—I’ve been there.

But it wasn’t until I was able to step out of my old mindset that I realized how much my shyness was holding me back. In today’s video, I share the #1 thing that helped me overcome my shyness . . . something that continues to give me confidence, and allows me to make a big impact in any room despite any nervousness. (Plus it’s something you can start doing today!)

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Whether it’s shyness or social anxiety or some combination of the two that is affecting you, I know how painful it can be to find that you don’t get excited about events or times when you’re going to be in a room with other people especially when there’s going to be a lot of people—how it can make you unable to be present and actually enjoy whatever situation you’re in because you’re spending too much time in your head, feeling uneasy, not feeling present at all, having no sense of calm. I know how it can ruin dates, how it can ruin parties, how it can just make everything feel like a really big deal.

So, my aim with this video is to give you something practical that you can use that helped me overcome my shyness and my sense of social anxiety that once I had it worked every single time I stepped into a situation that made me feel anxious. And when you’re able to do that, we start to make a bigger impact on the world and the results we get in the world start to change. That might mean more dates, it might mean attracting love, it might mean being more powerful at work, in a meeting, in a presentation, or it might mean that you’re much more fluid and confident working the room in a social engagement.

So, I’m excited to share this with you. Have a pen and paper ready. If anything speaks to you in this video, make notes.

So, I was a shy kid. And I have also, for much of my life, identified with having some form of social anxiety. That is surprising to a lot of people who see me as a very extroverted and confident person, at least on the surface. But anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not a natural life-of-the-party kind of person. I identify with Stephen Fry’s notion that there is nothing he hates more than a party. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had some amazing parties. I’ve had an amazing time at some parties. But if you ask me to come to a party tonight, my initial reaction is, “Ugh.” And there’s a good chance, over the course of my life, that on my way there, I will feel uneasy or even anxious.

In fact, when I was a kid, and I used to go to birthday parties of other kids, they used to give out party bags to all of the kids at the end of the parties—slime you could throw at a wall or something, which was always the thing I wanted. If there was ever a party bag, the only thing I really cared about was something I could eat and some slime that I could throw at a wall.

But I was too shy at the end of the party to go and collect my bag. The kids would all run to the area where all the—there was a scrum of kids who are fighting over party bags, and my cousin, Kasey, who is my same age, who is my best friend in the world, she would go and get her party bag and mine, amidst the scrum, and bring them back because she was a lot more confident in those days than I was. I’ve played a little catch-up since, but she was much more outgoing and confident than me.

I remember growing up being at New Year’s Eve parties. That was always the memory in my head. It’s like going to a New Year’s Eve party with family, seeing everyone dancing, and people in my family coming over to me and telling me to go dance, like, “Come on, dance.”

It was like, you know when it turns into like almost an aggressive thing. Like, “What are you doing standing over there? What are you doing? Lighten up. Dance.”

And, it took my shyness and it kicked it into overdrive because now I felt like there was a spotlight on me. I resented the way I was being cajoled into doing something that I already felt apprehensive about and felt self-conscious about. And so, all it did was make me retreat more into my shell.

The only time I do remember dancing with utter abandon was in front of the TV screen as a kid, watching Mary Poppins, the original, when all the Chimney Sweeps do Step in Time, which was either my cockney roots coming out and just, sort of, there was something in my blood that reacted to a bunch of chimney sweeps or dancing to Step in Time with Dick Van Dyke, or it was maybe my grandma who was sat with me who loved my moves. I mean, she really thought they were incredible. So, maybe it was a willing audience that I really wanted.

But there’s something in that, isn’t there? Because it’s not that I didn’t like dancing. I did like dancing. But the idea of dancing with my nana on the sofa and just having a crazy time in front of the TV screen was a different thing than being at a New Year’s party with lots of people and being told I should go and dance in order to be normal like everybody else.

By the way, if this video is resonating with you already and you have felt plagued by social anxiety or shyness in your life but you really do want to get out there and meet new people whether it’s to find love or to find new friendships and expand your social circle, I have a brand new free guide that shows you some very specific things you can say to connect and spark up a conversation with a new person. When you’re feeling shy or socially anxious, it can help to go on autopilot instead of having to think too hard and question everything that comes out of your mouth. This guide helps you with that. You can use them as they are or you can make them your own. Either way, they are free, they are super practical, and they’re there at your disposal anytime you need them. It is called Spark and Connect, our new free guide, and it’s available at WhatToSayNext.com.

Shyness is often portrayed as something— it could almost be cute or endearing. And sometimes those labels—although I’m a huge proponent of giving love to the parts of ourselves that are responsible for us being shy, responsible for us being socially anxious. I think that’s a very, very important approach, is to find a way to love those parts of ourselves. But I think sometimes we frame it in too much of a noble way that actually can have us clinging to that identity as a shy or socially anxious person.

I’m not going as far as to say that it feels like there’s something noble in it. But sometimes we can almost start to wear it as part of our identity, like “I am just an incredibly shy person,” like it’s an endearing thing about us, or it’s, sort of, almost some kind of affliction that we have that we struggle with. And I actually think that one of the really powerful things we can do, and bear with me as I say this because this is—for some people, this is like almost an idea that can make them recoil at first, but like I said, this has made a huge impact on my life, is recognizing that shyness or social anxiety is inherently inward-looking.

When we are shy, when we’re socially anxious, we are thinking of ourselves. We’re thinking of how to protect ourselves, how to keep ourselves safe in some way. Like I said, we should give love to the part of ourselves that is trying to keep us safe and thinks the best way of doing that is to avoid social situations or not to speak too loudly, not to say anything stupid or embarrassing. We should give love to the part of us that’s behind that.

This is actually a part of me that’s just trying to keep me safe. But it may be misguided in how it’s trying to keep me safe. And it might be especially misguided in what it perceives as danger. Because the things that it thinks are danger are actually not real danger. But maybe there was a time in our life where it felt like those things were real danger, or maybe it’s just part of our personality that we’ve taken with us from a very young age.

Either way, giving love to those parts of ourselves is important. But what if we started to see that the effect of that, which is, okay, let’s call it shyness and social anxiety. But what’s the effect of those two things? We stay quiet. We hold back. We censor ourselves. We’re extremely cautious about talking to people or putting ourselves out there or bringing our authentic vulnerable selves to the table. And it can often be, from the outside, seen as a real lack of warmth because people can’t read our minds. People only know what we tell them.

So, people can’t necessarily look at us and ascertain that, “Oh, that person is incredibly shy. That person is incredibly socially anxious.”

People don’t necessarily register that. What they register is a standoffishness, a coldness, and unapproachability.

And so, what I started to realize is that there is something very inward-looking about this fear that I have, and because it’s inward-looking, it can ironically amount to a kind of selfishness, or to put it another way, a lack of generosity.

Now, allow me to explain this. Every single person wants to exist and operate in environments that make them feel safe however they achieve that. People achieve that in very different ways. But everyone wants to achieve a feeling of safety. Anytime we go into a room, there are other people like us who are trying to achieve that feeling of safety, of feeling at home in an environment that feels strange, feels different, sometimes feels alien to them.

Our shyness actually contributes to the opposite kind of environment for those people. Through our shyness and through our lack of willingness to go out and connect and put ourselves out there authentically and warmly, we are sending a quiet message to other people in the room that it’s not safe for them to do that either.

Now, we all know that there are some people who come in very loudly and brashly no matter what, right? Because that’s their nature or that’s their style or it’s what they’ve learned as a way to feel safe. But there are other people in that room who are just like you and me, who are looking for a way to feel accepted and at home in this environment. And in our shyness, in our inward-looking, our fear of rejection is preventing us from making someone else feel less alone.

In a sense, that should be comforting because it also says to us that our shyness, our social anxiety is, in a sense, not special or unique. It’s not our badge of honor to wear on our own. We are not the sole victim of these kinds of thoughts and feelings, that they are actually extremely common. And that by recognizing that they are extremely common, we stop personalizing these feelings as there’s something wrong with me, and we can start looking at it as there is just something about being human that can make these kinds of situations scary or difficult or feel threatening, especially if certain things in my past have helped to create that association for me that’s also happened for many, many, many other people.

So, in a sense, that’s a leveler. I don’t have to see myself as beneath everyone else. I can see myself as like everyone else, in that these are extremely common feelings.

So, if there is there is this kind of communal feeling of, “It’s not easy,” then we have a choice to make—do I, in my shyness or in my anxiety, make it the responsibility of everyone else to do all of the work or do I step into a kind of generous leadership where I go and make other people feel the things that I know I would love to feel in this situation?

Quick news update for everybody out there who wants to come and join me for six days this year in September from the 9th to the 15th, my Live Retreat is happening once and once only this year. So, if you want to come and be with me on the beach and do six days of immersive coaching, this is where we do it together, and we will work through the deepest issues that are holding you back whether it’s holding you back from finding the love you want or whether it’s holding you back from loving the life you have.

It’s going to be an amazing event. Go to MHRetreat.com to apply. We have very limited spaces at this point. So, if some part of this speaks to your soul, if you are like, “I love this content, I love following this channel, and I want to take it to a new level,” this is where you can do it—MHRetreat.com.

Now, I know none of these ideas of I’m being selfish or I’m not being generous, I’m letting everyone else do all of the work, consciously go through our mind when we’re being shy, when we’re being socially anxious, but that’s actually my point, is that if we do consciously bring those ideas to the forefront of our mind, instead of saying, “I feel really shy right now,” we might say to ourselves, “Wow, I’m really lacking in generosity right now. Wow. There’s something almost selfish about what I’m doing right now. There are other people who feel this too, and I’m making it all about me, and in doing that, I’m actually depriving someone of the kind of warmth and love and authenticity of the feeling of being at home in a room with other people that I myself am craving.”

This requires a transition away from this idea that my kindness, my warmth, my authenticity, is something that someone has to come along and unlock within me, which is kind of a transactional relationship, in a sense, right? “You have to come and unlock these things, and when you do, I will give them to you.”

But if we take ourselves away from the transaction of that and simply say, “No, I am warm. I am kind. I am authentic,” notice I’m not saying, “I am confident. I am bold. I am outgoing.”

You don’t need to be any of those things. You don’t need to be anything you’re not. But if you are kind, if you are warm, if you are authentic, if you are caring, then these are things that we should offer out more freely without this constant regard for ourselves that says, “I have to get mine first.”

So, remember, number 1—other people want to feel just as at home as you do. And number 2—you actually have the power to make them feel at home by the way that you approach or treat or engage with them.

What I’m trying to say in all of this is, when you go into a room and you’re anxious, and you’re afraid, and you feel shy, and you go into self-protection mode, if you feel like, “Oh, my god. I need saving,” allow that to become a new trigger to go and save somebody else. Any time you go into a situation—and this takes seconds. Remember, this isn’t years of therapy or psychoanalyst. This is seconds. Where you go into a room and you say, “I feel like I need saving right now. Great. Then let me go save somebody else.”

And it puts us in such a generous state. It puts us in such a state of leadership where we say, “Oh, I’m the one that can make other people feel better and I am perfectly placed to do that because I, in my own shyness and in my own social anxiety, understand exactly how this feels. I have this mainline to empathy of how people feel in this situation because of what I have experienced my whole life. Let me use that, let me make it my superpower, let me make it this artery of generosity any time I’m in a situation where other people are present.”

Turn shyness into generosity and let your generosity be this strange backdoor to confidence.

Now, I don’t say that as some kind of a one-size-fits-all truth about shyness or about social anxiety. Of course, I know that there are many times where we’re crippled and certain people, on an ongoing basis, are crippled by social anxiety and the idea that I’m constantly hoarding my generosity or I’m being a selfish person any time I’m being socially anxious, for some people, would be an offensive one.

So, I understand that. What I’m offering is a frame of reference that can actually be incredibly helpful as a way to take us from a very disempowered state to an empowered one.

One of the greatest ways to get ourselves out of inward-thinking where we’re constantly thinking about how to protect ourselves and keep ourselves safe is to think about what someone else needs or how we can show up for somebody else who is in need, somebody else who might be having a hard time, or how we can take all of the pain we felt and help someone else not feel it. And the great irony, the thing I’m talking about here in this video, is that by doing that, we actually take our anxiety and our shyness and we convert it into its opposite, which is a very, very powerful thing.

While we’re at it, how can we make other people feel comfortable from this state of empowered leadership and generosity that I’m talking about here?

I want to tell you a quick story in contrast to that idea of me being a kid on New Year’s Eve, being dragged to the dance floor, and feeling like I would do anything to get out of it because I felt dragged and shamed for being shy and being the way I was.

I remember a school disco. It’s a funny word, isn’t it? Disco. I must have been around 13 at the time, 12, 13. There was a friend of mine who I looked up to, and I thought he was quite cool, and I remember him saying to me, “Shall we go dance?” And it wasn’t like “I’m dragging you to go dance.” He just said, “Shall we go dance?”

And without even really thinking about it, I went, “Yeah, okay.”

I remember us laughing and being a bit silly. I remember I did a little spin. And he looked at me and he went, “That was really good.” He’s like, “Let me try.”

And then he tried to do it. And we were laughing, and he looked at me, and he went, “You’re fun, you.”

And I remember having this moment when he said that, where I went, “I’m fun. I’m fun.” And it felt so good and it felt so non-judgmental. It wasn’t like anyone was trying to look cool. It was just this idea that we were both having a good time together and someone had suddenly given me this label, this identity, that I hadn’t thought of myself as previously. It’s a very powerful thing when someone gives you an identity like that. And all of a sudden, you stop questioning what you know about yourself and how you think about yourself.

I tell you this story to illustrate that when you see someone else who’s maybe standing on the sidelines, who’s shy, who maybe would like to be more involved, or someone who just wants to feel more at home, one of the great ways to do it is just to bring them a non-judgmental loving energy that invites them into the room or ask them to teach you something, “How do you do that? You have to teach me that.” Because that puts them in a position of leadership and empowerment. All of a sudden, you’re not saying, “You should be doing this.” You’re saying, “That was really cool what you just did. How do you do that? Teach me how to do that.”

Now, you’ve made them braver by putting them in a role where they’re teaching you something. And when they do, do something that maybe is a little out of character for them, at least publicly, but probably isn’t out of character for them, they’re just finally doing something publicly that they normally do privately in the shower or in the car, when they do that, let’s not make the mistake of pointing at the thing they’re doing and being like, “You’re doing it. Look. You’re doing it. You’re dancing. You’re singing. You’re being brave.”

That is the thing that all of a sudden, makes someone focus on themselves again. And that’s the root cause anyway. Now, what you’ve done is you made me aware of myself. And in making me aware of myself, I start going inward-looking again. And when we go inward-looking, we start to close down because I start to go into protection mode.

So, when someone is engaging, when someone is coming to life, instead of pointing it out in a way that shines a light on them, just be in the energy with them. Be the energy that they are. Be beside them, with them in that energy. When in doubt, go back in a loving way to that childhood version of yourself. When you were scared, when you were shy, when you were anxious, when you were in your own head, when you were inward-looking, and find out what does that you need? What did they need back then? What kind of support or love or encouragement or teammate could they have used back then that would have helped them to feel comfortable expressing themselves more?

Once you know what that is, ask yourself who could I go out and give that to today?

And as a last point, one of the most beautiful things you can ever do that can take away your own shyness, your social anxiety, or not even take them away, just make you realize that you can still go and express yourself in spite of them, is when you recognize what they child needed, you can actually give it to yourself today. You can give yourself the very warmth and love and encouragement and the teammate, the dance partner that you’re craving on the outside because you can actually be that friend to yourself in any room. And when you do that, you will realize that you never went to any party alone. You never went to any event alone. You are always taking this incredible ally, this incredible teammate and cheerleader. And that is you.

Key takeaways from this video—number one, shyness is inward-looking. Focusing on our own fear of rejection prevents us from making someone else feel less alone in a room. Focusing outward is the cure. Generosity of spirit is the antidote to shyness. Two, our kindness shouldn’t be a transaction that depends on someone else unlocking it within us. And number three, we will worry less about our own image and our own self-preservation if instead, we think about being an expression of the love, compassion, and vulnerability that somebody else needs. And we know they need it because it’s something we ourselves are wishing for.

I know that so many people who watch this channel are simultaneously on a journey to find love, to build stronger relationships in their life in general, and to build a better relationship with themselves. And I have a place you can do all of that over the next few months and year. It is the Love Life Club where we have an incredible community of people. I answer your questions live every month, along with my wife, Audrey, my brother, Stephen Hussey. You share your experiences with other members in the community and connect with this global network of amazing people who are on the same path. And we even have some brand new live events coming up, they’re exclusive for members, this year in different parts of the world.

So, if you want to come and join this thriving and beautiful, loving community of people who are all on this path to becoming more confident, loving life more, and finding the love of their life, then come join us in that experience. And I will see you in the next video.

By the way, if you liked this video, I think you will also really enjoy this one right here. So, if you’re in need of something else to do for the next few minutes, go check this one out.

The post If I Wanted to Overcome My Shyness in Dating, I’d Do This appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Do you attract emotionally unavailable people? Or maybe you have a pattern of meeting good people and pushing them away because “something doesn’t feel right.”

If this sounds familiar, you may struggle to trust your own decisions when it comes to love. This often leads to us looking to others to validate our choices and tell us we’re doing the right thing (which can be dangerous for many reasons).

So how can you get out of this cycle? In today’s new video, I share 7 simple steps you can take to make better decisions in love and start building self-trust again.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

What weird reason could be responsible for us continuing in our lives to attract emotionally unavailable people? And what does going out to dinner and asking everyone else what they want from the menu before deciding ourselves what to get have in common with the phenomenon of attracting emotionally unavailable people? In this video, we’re going to find out.

Before I go any further, have you liked this video yet? Have you subscribed to this channel? Have you hit the notification bell? The one that means that the next time I release a video, you get notified first. If you haven’t, well, I would very much appreciate you doing all three of those things right now.

I am Matthew Hussey, a coach specializing in confidence and relational intelligence. For the last 17 years of my life, I’ve been helping people all over the world find love. I am the author of this, The New York Times best-selling book, Love Life. If you haven’t got a copy, go to LoveLifeBook.com and grab yours either on hardback or audio narrated by the author.

Today, we are talking about emotional unavailability, specifically the weird reason why a lot of us might be continuing to attract emotionally unavailable people in our lives. So, I got a question recently from one of my members saying that she was struggling to trust herself, that her whole life she had struggled with indecision over small things like what to order for dinner. She said she would literally have to go around the table and find out what her friends would get first before she ordered her own dinner. She talked about how all her life she had picked men who were wrong for her, men who were players, men who were time-wasters, men who had no intention of ever taking anything through to a long-term relationship; and that this pattern of attracting emotionally unavailable people is something she had had for a very long time.

In fact, when she dated someone she described as a good guy, she said her friends would point out that she always found a way to sabotage it. Like, anytime there was a guy actually treating her well, there was something about it that felt inherently uncomfortable or unsafe, she said she would always find something wrong with these guys. So, she came to me and said that she wanted to disrupt this pattern once and for all, because she felt like if she didn’t, she would never, ever find happiness, not just in her love life but in any part of her life where this lack of self-trust plagued her.

So, I said at the beginning of the video that there was a real link between not knowing what to order for dinner and needing everyone else’s opinions first and our propensity to keep attracting emotionally unavailable people. What is that link?

Well, it all stems from a lack of self-trust. If we don’t trust our own decisions, then we look for other external sources to decide for us what is valuable. If someone is deemed to be popular by everyone else, it feels like, “Oh, everyone’s decided that this person is popular so I don’t have to think about it. I just have to go for this person because their value has been pre-determined by their popularity.”

Another way we feel this is if a friend is telling us this person is amazing, this guy is amazing, or we hear people at work talking about how attractive someone is. We then feel like we have a green light to find them attractive because other people have said they are so. The same phenomenon takes place when someone is hard to get, because even if no one else in our world knows this person that is being hard to get with us, our brain makes a connection that if they are hard to get, they must be valuable. In other words, they’re not choosing me, they’re off somewhere else doing something else. They are rare, they are valuable, they have a status, and that’s why they’re hard to get.

Very dangerous connection to make, by the way, that someone being hard to get is an indicator of their value.

But when we’re not trusting ourselves, when we’re only looking for external validation for our decisions when someone is hard to get, we instantly think they must be valuable and we start chasing them. Meanwhile, someone who is actually choosing us is scary because we’re not choosing ourselves. So, what is wrong with you that you’re choosing me? I’m not a thing to be chosen. I don’t have an inherent value. I attach myself to the value of things on the outside. I am a gray, amorphous matter that chameleonizes itself to everything else. Why are you choosing me? I’m nothing.

If you choose someone who chooses you, you have to trust your own opinion, not who the world tells you is valuable. And that is the biggest struggle for those of us who don’t trust our own opinions, who have learned not to trust our own intuition or not even to trust our own needs.

Now, look, many of us suffer from this indecision, from this lack of self-trust. And I think a lot of us feel almost ashamed or find this difficult to speak about, because if you don’t necessarily know where that comes from, especially if you associate it with having been loved in your life, then you don’t really know where does this lack of self-esteem even comes from. And it could have come from anywhere. It doesn’t have to have come from abuse. It could come from someone constantly invalidating your decisions or someone bringing you up to think that they were always the smartest person in the room and that you had to go to them for their help, you couldn’t just trust your own judgment. Maybe you weren’t empowered enough growing up. It’s not essential that you go and do an excavation of your past to learn where these things come from for you. What’s important is to know that progress can be made by training a new muscle–the self-trust muscle. So, how do you do that?

I’m going to show you how to do this in seven specific ways.

Number one: Stop giving everyone else so much credit. When we have struggled to trust ourselves—and I know this because I’ve fallen into this trap many times in my life—we start to put everyone else and their opinions on a pedestal as if they are all-knowing about what is right and wrong instead of realizing that everyone else is kind of just making it up as they go along as well. Some of them may appear to be more sure of themselves than others, but ultimately, we are all just pioneering in our own lives. None of us have all the answers. None of us have all the answers for our own lives, let alone for somebody else’s. So, be very wary anytime you think greater wisdom lies outside of yourself than inside yourself for what you should do next in your life, especially when it’s in an area as personal as your love life. The core belief here that we have to dismantle is that everyone else knows what they’re doing but me. Instead, we have to replace it with, we’re all just trying to figure it out. So, how do I train the muscle that makes me better at making decisions for myself, especially if my decisions for myself aren’t going to be inherently worse than anyone else’s choices for me.

To follow on from that point, number two, do not let a committee of your friends tell you what to think about someone you are dating. Look, I’m an advocate in situations that are potentially abusive or disrespectful—one where you really don’t feel like you’re being treated right or you’re experiencing really negative emotions because of someone. I’m all for in that situation going to your friends and family and people you trust for an objective opinion. But if you are just experiencing good feelings with a person and you’re seeing where it goes, you do not need to go to your friends and look at every text they have sent, every conversation you have had, allowing them to break it down and project their stuff on to it. You know, he texted back a little quickly there. That’s a little bit much. Is it? Is that too much? Or is that just, he likes you so he sent a message back faster than someone who doesn’t care?

Don’t let everybody else project their stuff onto your situation. Only you need to like this person. And the way that you know whether you like this person is to connect with how this person actually makes you feel. Do they make you feel safe? Do they make you feel peaceful? Do they make you feel more like yourself? Do you laugh around them? Do you feel you could be more vulnerable around them? Do you like the version of yourself that you are when you’re in their company or speaking to this person? You don’t need everyone else’s opinion on that, so do not allow your love life to be decided by committee.

Now, obviously, if you feel like someone is behaving in an abusive or disrespectful way, that’s a different thing. And sometimes the objective opinions of friends and family can matter in those situations when we’re too close to it. But if someone is making you feel good, if someone’s making you feel safe or more peaceful and you’re having a great time, don’t feel that you need everyone around you to also think that this person is hot and sexy and awesome in order for you to continue liking them.

Number three: Know what you’re optimizing for. What is actually important to you? You know, we just talked about some of these things, whether it’s peace, safety, feeling that you’re really understood by someone, feeling that you have this very deep connection with the person, feeling like you can be everything you truly are around someone or feeling like you’re growing around someone. What is it you need in order to be happy? If we’re not careful, we just follow what everyone else on the outside thinks is valuable, which are often the most superficial qualities—charisma, charm, how much someone lights up every room they walk into, can dazzle a crowd, can tell a great story at a dinner table, how they dress, what their job is, how well-regarded they are in the world. We look to these things instead of the things that are actually going to make us happy. We must not allow our ego to drive because our ego often wants to impress other people or to go after and get what other people find impressive. Our soul is going to be driven by what actually makes us happy. So, connect to what you, you, you are optimizing for in your love life.

Now, look, I’m not saying that some of these things aren’t important to us or that we don’t need a baseline level of attraction with someone. I’m not denying chemistry as a crucial factor. But how you end up feeling chemistry or the way someone looks that might turn you on or the sexual connection between you may not come in the form that will naturally impress the people around you. That may be something that’s very unique to you.

Everyone has been attracted at some point in their life to someone that wasn’t their type or someone that on paper they feel like they shouldn’t be or wouldn’t be attracted to, and yet here I am feeling this incredible chemistry or sexual connection with someone I never would have thought. People have that experience all the time, but then they get thrown off because their friend says something like, “Have you seen the trousers they’re wearing? Have you seen the shoes? I mean, their hair is a little bit crazy, isn’t it?” We start hearing these things going, “Oh, maybe I don’t find them as attractive as I thought I did, maybe I don’t have the sexual chemistry that I’ve been feeling.” We start second-guessing ourselves.

So, those things are important, but it matters that they’re derived from within, not from without.

Number four: Give yourself permission to make wrong decisions because we do that all the time. Anytime you’re out there aggressively making things happen in life, making decisions, you have to make peace with the fact that you’re going to make some wrong decisions. Now, people who have a story that says “I can’t trust myself” will, anytime they make a wrong decision, attribute that to their own poor decision-making. They will say, “Here I go again, I never get it right. I can’t trust myself.” Whereas people who don’t have that story will make a wrong decision and they’ll say, “Well, that’s just one of the hazards of living a life of action. That’s one of the hazards of making progress in life, of being aggressive about living is you’re going to make bad decisions or you’re going to make decisions that are wrong.”

What people with that more empowering story do is just self-correct. They realize that the price of success in any area, including our love life, is being able to make decisions and then correct course along the way if we’re wrong. Now, that might mean that we commit another two weeks to seeing someone; and if it ends up not making us feel the way we want to feel, if it doesn’t feel right, if it doesn’t progress in the ways that we want, then we correct course and put our energy into someone else or being single again. We don’t stay the course indefinitely if it’s wrong.

But we recognize that good leadership is not making the right decisions all the time. Good leadership is the ability to make a decision, and that’s no less true in our own love lives. Good personal leadership in our love lives is making decisions knowing that we’re not always going to get it right but also knowing that we reserve the right to correct course and change direction any time.

And, by the way, know that since you’re gonna make some wrong decisions, it’s important not to bet the house, metaphorically speaking, with every decision. That’s why we don’t quit our jobs, sell our house, and move across the country for someone we met a month ago. We make decisions, but because we know we’re going to make some wrong decisions, we make calculated bets where the losses or losses we can afford.

Number five: If you want to build self-trust in big ways, like, who you decide as your life partner, start building the muscle in small ways like deciding what you’re going to eat on the menu for dinner. So, if you go out with your friends, maybe you’re the one who picks the restaurant tonight instead of asking everyone else what they want to eat. When the menu comes, you decide what you want to order without having to ask everyone else what they’re ordering. Or maybe you’re planning a vacation this year, decide where is piquing your interest and book the tickets instead of having to get the validation from everybody else about where you’re deciding to go. If we train ourselves to make empowered decisions, knowing that our decision is not inherently more wrong or worse than anybody else’s, then we’re starting to send a very clear message to our brain that we can make good decisions, and, maybe most importantly, that there is no such thing as an ultimate right decision, which brings me on to point number six.

Leaning into something or someone is very often the thing that makes it great. When we actually start to apply our energy to something instead of being divided by indecision, we start to see what the potential for that thing really is. It’s, like I said, if you pick a vacation spot for this year, and then between now and leaving, you spend the entire six months deliberating about whether that was the right place to go on vacation, you’re not going to have a good vacation, you’re not going to bring great energy to it. But if instead you say that’s where I’m going, now, let me just make the best of this vacation, then it can be as good as any vacation you have ever been on.

What we have to recognize is that something being revealed to be a good decision is something we actually have agency over. We are empowered to make something a good decision by how much we throw ourselves into it with a beautiful energy, with an aggressive attitude of I’m going to make the best of this.

Now, the same is true of our love lives. Have you ever known anyone who spends their whole time debating whether the person that they’re dating is the right person or not, instead of actually being really present with that situation, going 100% in, and allowing that situation to either become great or reveal itself to not be capable of that greatness. I know that there are times in my life where I never even knew how good something could be because I spent my whole time living in this state of paralysis about whether it was right or not. And, as a result, I never even threw myself into it. I never even tried. Can you relate to that? Standing on the sidelines and just questioning it instead of actually going all in and seeing what it could become?

The best relationships are actually co-created. They are the result of two people giving their best energy to the relationship and seeing what it becomes when they do that. That’s the true one plus one equals three of any relationship. Best relationships don’t just come ready-made, they come from two people actually leaning into them and giving them their all.

And sometimes we’re afraid to lean into something because we think, “Well, I don’t want to give more to something if it’s not right.” But very often we find out more by leaning into something than we do by standing on the sidelines deliberating. Have you ever had a relationship where it felt like you wasted months and years, with half of you in, half of you out, never really getting any answers? Well, when we lean into something, we do get answers, right? They either succeed, in which case the argument is put to bed and we go, “Oh my god, this is amazing;” or they fail faster. They reveal themselves by us throwing ourselves into them.

That’s true of relationships, it’s true of business decisions. How many times do businesses go, well, should we do this? Should we not do this? Should we try this new product? Should we try this new service? Will the customers like it? And we learn more by just getting it out there in some way and getting the information so that we can then make another decision. This is just as true in our love lives. This doesn’t mean that leaning in is about going all in for the next year, right? We haven’t got that amount of time to waste. But it might mean I’m gonna give this my all for the next 30 days and see what it could be. And at the end of that, I might have more clarity either way than constantly debating within myself whether this is right.

You’re not going to get all the answers about someone right away, you’re not going to know exactly how you feel on every level in the very beginning. This idea of love at first sight and when you just know, you know I think can be quite a destructive one. I think what’s more true, for most people, is that you have to give an amount of energy and investment and curiosity to a situation to get to the next stage, at which point you can decide whether to continue or not. But if you never get to that next stage because you never invest appropriately, you never actually lean into something, then you’ll just spend your life in deliberation, waiting for a feeling of certainty that is actually earned through investment and trying and two people co-creating not from the sidelines.

And, by the way, remember, you reserve the right to change your mind at any time. If you lean into something and it doesn’t become great by leaning into it, you can leave. That’s also data. But I think we learn more by investing in something and seeing if it can become great. And, by the way, seeing if it just reveals itself to not be able to be that, because that’s information too, then we do by standing on the sidelines, debating it with no information.

Lastly, number seven, remember that people take their cues from us. When you are dating someone, if you have decided someone is amazing and awesome and you go and communicate with that energy to the people in your life, that is going to be infectious. That’s going to do more to determine what they feel about this person than any casual observation they make of this person in watching how they are around you or what they’re like in their life. Because, remember, they don’t really know this person, but you do. So, they are looking to you to tell them how great this person is.

Think about it when someone comes to us and does the reverse and keeps complaining about their partner and keeps saying that, “Oh, I’m dating this person and I’m not really sure because they keep texting me and they’re suffocating me or they’re being really annoying and they did this thing the other night that I didn’t like.” Eventually, your friends don’t know this person at all, but they’ll hate them. They’ll be like, I can’t stand this person. They’re so annoying. But really all they’re feeding off of is your energy about the person.

I know couples who everyone thinks are the greatest couple in the world. But the reason they think they’re the greatest couple in the world is because of how that couple speaks about each other. They’re constantly singing each other’s praises; they’re constantly talking about how the other one is the best person in the world. And so, everyone on the outside of that relationship. Of course, no one knows what that relationship is like on the inside behind closed doors, but everyone on the outside is like they’re the greatest couple because of how they speak about each other. People take their cues from us.

When you lean into something, you make that thing the best it can be and you communicate to the outside world that that thing is right now the best thing you could be choosing. And when we do that, it has the effect of making more things great. It has the effect of colouring positively the perception of everyone else for what we have chosen so we have agency.

And we have to get out of this mindset that is the disease of lacking self-trust. That is that, there is one true right answer in life, whether it’s for what to have to eat tonight, where to go on vacation this year, or what partner to choose to spend our lives with and that other people have more information on what that right answer is than we do and instead realize the truth that there is no one answer, that there are many great vacation spots in the world, that there is no one right cuisine to eat tonight, and that there is no one partner that could make us happy, and that we have the best information to make these decisions, because we know what we need and value for our own happiness, and that once we’ve chosen if we lean into the decision and if we give it all we’ve got and if we talk about it with excitement, that that decision will be the one that people look at and go, “Wow, you chose really, really well.”

But we will have orchestrated the success of our decision. It won’t be that we objectively made the best decision in the world and know that, at any time, if you make what is clearly the wrong decision, which you and I will many more times in our life, we can correct course. And the ultimate self-trust is not built in having a perfect record of making great decisions, it’s in the knowledge that you make decisions and when you get them wrong, you’re able to correct course any time you need. And guess what? When you remove all of this power from everybody else about knowing what’s right for you, or even in determining objectively what is valuable in the world, you will stop valuing people simply because they’re the most popular person in the room, because other people tell you that they’re eligible, or because they are hard to get when you try to reach them. You’ll start to see that those are at best subjective markers of value and at worse than more dangerously fake markers of value, and that the real value is in what’s going to make you happy. You will no longer choose someone because they’re unavailable, you’ll choose the person you feel the best around. And I can tell you who that will never be—the person who is not available to you.

Before you go anywhere, I have a brand-new free guide called Spark and Connect that shows you nine effortless ways to start up a conversation and connect with someone new. It is at WhatToSayNext.com. It’s easy, it’s practical, and you can use it today to go out there and meet someone new. So, go create some great options for yourself—WhatToSayNext.com is the link. And if you want to continue your video journey with me, right here, right now, then go check out this video because we have picked a recommended video for you to watch after this one. So, check this one out and enjoy. I’ll see you soon. Don’t forget to leave me a comment on this one as well. I will be reading them. And I’ll see you next week. Thank you so much. Be well, my friends, and love life.

The post The WEIRD Reason You’re Attracting Emotionally Unavailable People appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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What is a relationship with a narcissist really like?

If you’re an empathetic person, it can make you feel crazy: You doubt yourself constantly. You’re always second-guessing. Your boundaries and sense of self are slowly broken down by emotional manipulation and gaslighting.

Whether you’re still feeling the wounds from a past narcissistic relationship, or are trying to figure out if you’re in a relationship with a narcissist right now, today’s video is your next step. I walk you through the 7 signs you’re dating a narcissist, and show you how to spot these traits faster in your next relationship.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

What are the signs that you are with, are dating, or have fallen for, or been married to a narcissist?

There are certain types of people in this world that will never make sense to the rest of us. Those are the narcissists. And I don’t mean that word in the kind of generic way that it gets thrown around a lot these days, where anyone seems to be able to be construed a narcissist based on one or two things that they’ve done. I am talking about someone who truly fits the bill. And you know one, if you have been with one because they don’t just tick the box on one count, they tick the box in almost every diagnosable criteria of a narcissist.

If you have been with one in the past, I think this is going to be a very cathartic and healing video. It’s going to help a lot of people feel a lot more sane. If you are with one right now, it’s going to help instruct how much information you have about the person you are with. If you have just come out of a situation like this and you’re still in the devastation of it, I think it’s going to help you understand a lot about what’s just happened to you.

Thank you, by the way, for watching my YouTube channel. I am Matthew Hussey, a coach specializing in confidence and relational intelligence, and for the last 17 years of my life, I’ve been helping people all over the world find love. Don’t forget to like this video, subscribe to this channel, and hit the notification bell, so that the next time I release a video, you are the first to be notified.

All right, let’s do this.

Number one, they can be great sometimes.

Despite all of your suffering, despite all of the ways that they cause you pain, all of the betrayals, all of the ways that they invalidate your feelings or gaslight you, one evening, they come home and they’re amazing. They’re kind. They’re sweet. They have great conversations with you. They’re playful, they are loving. They are everything that you always hope that they would be. And when this happens, it’s so maddening, because we think “This is it. They are capable of being this. It’s not that they’re never capable of being what I want. They are being exactly what I always want, right now.” And we then start playing the game of, “If I can just keep this going, this is the relationship I always wanted with this person.”

What we have to remember is that a narcissist might actually come across as a delightful person once all their needs have been met. That’s not always the case, but for some, if all of their needs have been met, if they have their supply, as it’s known. If they feel validated and adored and there’s nothing they want for, then they might see you in the evening, they might see you at some point, and be wonderful to be around. But what you’re really experiencing is them being great because every box is being ticked for them right now. The danger is who they are when they’re trying to get their needs met.

I like to think about it like a broken watch. A broken watch is right twice a day. It’s wrong most of the time, but for two brief moments a day, a broken clock is correct. Don’t mistake a relationship that works a couple of moments a day, a week, or a month, with a working relationship, you have every right to be loved, considered, and seen in every other minute of the day too.

Number two, your empathy for them gets you worse treatment, not better treatment.

The very quality that can make us so special, our empathy, our compassion with people, our ability to truly see behind what’s going on with the person, or to understand, to see them at their core, not to just blame or judge on the surface, can actually be the thing that gets weaponized against us.

Think about in a relationship like this how often you end up forgiving someone, or empathy is often the horse that forgiveness rides in on. Right? Empathy is the thing that ushers in forgiveness. When we understand someone. When we know their story. When we are able to see the hardships that they’ve endured in their life, the things that they’ve been through, that maybe it feels like uniquely predisposed them to this bad behavior, to treating us this way. It breeds a kind of sympathy, maybe even a kind of pity. “They’ve had it hard. They’ve been through a lot, they can’t help themselves.” And that empathy is what allows us to keep forgiving someone, to keep making allowances for their terrible behavior in the present.

And of course, when we finally say enough is enough, that person will often shame us. Shame the part of us that wants to feel compassionate by saying, “How could you? How could you leave me? How could you judge me? How could you not forgive me? You know me. You know what I’ve been through. You, of all people I thought would understand.” In those moments, their story, and all of the reasons that we should see them as sympathetic can get weaponized against us using our empathy, which is something we pride ourselves on. So we have to be extremely careful of that.

But the real insidious part of this is that one would think that the person who lives on this island with the narcissist who gives them the most sacrifice, the most compassion, the most empathy, would be the person that they treat the best. Sadly, the person living on that island with them is usually the person they treat the worst.

For a narcissist, our empathy isn’t seen as some beautiful quality that signifies our value. Our empathy is seen as their ticket to doing whatever they want. It is seen as their perpetual Get Out of Jail Free card anytime they want to get their needs met in any disrespectful or terrible way, and they know at the end of any terrible behavior they can always rely on and—because of their entitlement—expect forgiveness.

Number three, they are able to move on impossibly quickly after something terrible they have done to hurt someone they love, which may mean you.

I want you to think about the things that this person has done to hurt you. And as a thought experiment, I want you to now imagine that you had done any of those things to them. That you had caused that kind of hurt to someone you love. How long would it take you to move on from that? You, not them. How long would it take you to move on from that? How hard would it be? How much work would it take for you to forgive yourself, for you to let go of any shame that you felt? Any guilt that you felt at having done that? Any anxiety that you felt at having been what you might think of as a bad person. How long would it take you? How hard would it be for you to move on from that? Then consider how easy it was for them to move on from that.

Many narcissists will never apologize and expect you to move on. But even the ones that can apologize will often expect that once the apology has been issued, the situation is over. And if you continue to have any feelings about the betrayal that you’ve been through, the pain they’ve put you through, the hurt they’ve caused, they will start to become incredibly impatient or even angry at the fact that you are still making a big deal out of it. “Why are we still talking about this? I thought it was over.” Their response is devoid of compassion.

And by the way, that doesn’t mean that they won’t grovel in the beginning or perform grandiose gestures in order to win back your good graces, in order to prevent from losing you. They’re only doing that in order to get back to the status quo so that they can get back to getting their needs met. So that they can get their supply again.

They’re not doing it because they fundamentally feel bad, because what they have done has gone against some fundamental moral compass that they have that they now are finding it challenging to reconcile or forgive themselves for. What they want is for you to move on as quickly as possible, because they moved on the moment they did it. In fact, for them, there was nothing to move on from.

By the way, never let someone else’s ease of moving on gaslight you into believing that what they did wasn’t so bad after all in a situation like this. Their ease of moving on has nothing to do with the scale of what they did. It has everything to do with the absence of empathy and compassion that they feel when they do bad things.

What’s up, everybody? Sorry. To interrupt my own video. I just wanted to let you know that we only have 35 spaces left for my Live Retreat in Florida this September from the 9th to the 15th. If you want to spend six days with me, getting to know more about your story, helping you through some of the deepest things that you want to work on. This is the place we do it. It’s only happening once this year, and this is your chance to get on board. So, go to MHRetreat.com, grab one of those 35 places before they’re gone, and I hope I will get to see you there.

Back to the video.

The fourth sign that you’re with a narcissist. When caught red-handed, they will make excuses that are almost unbelievable. Which, by the way, we might still believe.

You might have clear as-day proof that someone is cheating on you. “I literally found the messages on your phone,” and they will say something like, “What are you doing on my phone?” And come to think of it, “That’s my private life, and has nothing to do with you.” Inside you’re thinking, “But we’re in a relationship.” Before you know it, you are on a different planet to the one you thought you were on, having to defend yourself for not being a good partner to this person who, three minutes ago, you found out was cheating on you.

You ever heard the law Occam’s Razor? Occam’s Razor is essentially the idea that the simplest explanation is the most likely one. “I found evidence of you cheating. That’s the most likely thing that has happened, is that you have cheated.” What they are telling you is the complete opposite of Occam’s Razor. It is the most complex, ridiculous, insane version of events that somehow leads to them being innocent or being the victim. And, ideally, you being the perpetrator. Though you just found that part out.

It’s almost like the excuses version of Murphy’s Law. David, what’s Murphy’s Law is kind of anything that can go wrong will go wrong, right? Or anything that can happen will happen. In this case it’s any excuse that can be made will be made, and even the ones that you think couldn’t be made will be made. Remember, if the excuse sounds wild, then it’s more likely an indicator of the person you are dealing with than just how fantastical the reality really is.

You didn’t think I’d be able to fit Occam’s Razor and Murphy’s Law into one point? Did you?

If they’re deeply uncomfortable with the contents of this video, they’re a narcissist. And that, my friends, is Matthew’s Law.

The fifth sign you’re with a narcissist, even when you are at your worst, in a moment when you are sinking and you think they wouldn’t let you drown. They do.

This, I think, is one of the most earth-shattering, reality-bending realizations that people come to when dealing with true narcissism. They may have seen bad behavior over time. They may have seen it consistently, reliably, predictably. But, there’s something in the back of their mind that tells them, “Yes, but if I was truly in trouble if I was really on my worst day, this person would be there for me. Of course they would. We’ve been together all this time. We have history. I’ve sacrificed so much for them. I’ve always been there for them. We are lovers. We love each other. At the end of the day, we are like this. Despite all of the chaos on the surface and all of the friction in our relationship and all of the challenges we’ve had, at the end of the day, we are there for each other.”

And in a sense, it may feel like we never truly put that to the ultimate test, until something dreadful happens in our life, until something goes truly wrong. It might be a point of financial devastation. It might be at the point of a health diagnosis. It might be a time when your life falls apart in some very real way with your family or your mental health. You believe that in that moment when the chips are down, they’ll throw you a life raft, they’ll be there for you. And in that moment, you watch as you’re going underwater, and they’re not there. They stand by, either with indifference or with excuses.

In short, you cannot know the extent to which a person like this will abandon you in the key moments until those devastating moments actually happen. And for a lot of people, that moment is a moment of true realization. It’s almost for a lot of people, a moment that they can never go back from. They will never forget that in that moment when they were drowning, the other person did not save them. And you can’t unknow that.

It’s almost like we can’t bring ourselves to believe that we’re in a relationship or married to an alien. And some people are watching this, and it applies for them with a family member or a parent. But it’s hard to believe that this person that you have been wed to in one way or another, is actually an alien to you who does not operate by the same set of laws in life.

So we still identify with them, and we say “No, no. When it really goes wrong, they’ll behave like I would behave.” And that’s the mistake. Is that right up until total devastation, we still believe that they will behave like us, but they will never behave like us because they don’t operate according to the same set of laws.

By the way, don’t ever shame yourself for feeling like a fool when it comes to this. It is one of the most mind-blowing, reality-shattering realizations that you will have about a person, and long after it’s happened, you can still fail to understand how the hell that person was happy to let you drown.

Don’t shame yourself for finding it hard to wrap your head around that reality. The fact that you can’t really wrap your head around that reality is a sign of who you are and your character and just how different you are from them.

Sign number six, they show emotion, but their emotion doesn’t come from the same place as our emotion comes from.

So it’s very tempting when we threaten to leave someone to see their tears, to see them cry, to see them get upset. And to think, “Oh, they do have the same emotional register as me. Look, I keep talking about them like they’re this cold, calculated, unemotional narcissist. But, look how much pain they’re feeling right now. Look how many tears they’re shedding. Maybe they are like me after all.”

Now it’s not that their tears aren’t real, it’s not that their tears are an act. That’s just another falsehood. Their tears may well be real, but their tears aren’t for you. Their tears are for them. They are feeling a loss, and that is what they’re upset about.

In other words, when someone hurts you and they risk losing you, they’re not hurting because you’re hurting. They’re hurting because they’re hurting, and their pain is the most important thing in the world to them. So they are capable of feeling immense pain, but we mustn’t mistake it as having the underlying foundation that our pain has.

When we feel pain, it’s often from a place of having caused someone else pain. Our pain is our guilt, our pain is our self-loathing. Our pain is our self-admonishment that we could have done something like that to someone. Their pain is that whatever has happened has cost them something. And that’s where their sadness or their hurt is coming from. Don’t confuse tears that are over you for tears that are for you.

The seventh sign that you are with or have been with a narcissist, is how quickly and seemingly easily they can discard you once it’s over.

It is another shocking realization. I feel like every narcissistic relationship is sort of a series of shocking realizations to wrap your head around. And, in many ways, the final shocking realization that people have is that this person that they thought once they finally left the narcissist, or once they finally stopped giving in to them, would continue to hurt, or would in some way, continue to do the right thing afterwards, or continue some strand of connection, how easily that person severs all connection with you. How they can seemingly just move on, as if you never existed. And any communication with them from that point is tantamount to an inconvenience to them. Unless it still represents some kind of supply. Right?

If the narcissists can continue to get supply from you, in some way, then there may still be some passing interest. In other words, if they can still get validation from you, adoration from you, if they can still get their needs met in some way, then maybe they’ll hang on to that connection. But the moment you refuse to be their supply anymore, which means having boundaries, having standards for yourself, going forward, the moment you are no longer supply they discard you as if you never existed.

And for people who have so much history with someone, in many cases, have built a life with someone, or been raised by someone, or raised someone the idea that that person could just cut them off and move on to another life at lightning speed is the most disorienting, bewildering thing. But that’s exactly the experience so many people have when it comes to narcissism.

This can have the effect of being almost this kind of “exit gaslighting” that happens on the way out. This feeling that this situation that has gaslit us all along, on one level or another, this is like the final gaslighting. Is that “I made the whole thing up. I thought we were soulmates. I thought we were this couple that looked out for each other. I thought we had a marriage that meant something at the end of the day, after years or decades of being together. And, seemingly, it counted for nothing. It is like it was all just a hallucination of my own.”

Whatever they thought of the relationship, or how different it was in their mind to how it was in yours, your love was real. The relationship may not have been in the way that you thought, but the way you loved, and the ability you had to love them, your feelings for them, were real. And the beautiful thing is you can now take all of that that you still have, because it’s yours, no one can take that from you, and you can point it in a direction that deserves it this time around. And I don’t care how late in the day, you have told yourself it is for you in life. I don’t care what season you are in, it is never too late, while you are still breathing, to take all of that love that you have and to point it in a direction where it will do good and blossom into something beautiful for you and for somebody else.

If you enjoyed this video, leave me a comment, let me know what it meant to you. The feedback on these videos means a lot to me and helps me direct future videos. It also is encouraging to me to know that people are out there and that you heard it and that it made a difference to you.

I wanted to give you something as a gift from me today. I have created a free and very practical guide for communicating bold standards. In many cases, standards you may have never communicated before, and when we’ve never communicated them before, we need to learn the language of them. What does it actually look like to communicate these new standards that I want to have in my life? And this guide is designed to help you do exactly that.

Remember, if you have gone a long time without communicating standards, or you’ve never had them, and you’ve never known how to set boundaries, then it’s like learning to walk for the first time, and that’s okay. When we’re starting out learning a language, we need to know the basics.

So I put together a guide for you to be able to create bold new standards going forward. And it’s really going to show you what they look like, literal sentences that you can say to people to have the kinds of standards that are going to create a better life, a better relationship for you in the future, and protect you from the kinds of relationships you may have had in the past.

Go to BoldStandards.com and you can download that guide for free right now, and let me know what you think. I think you’re really gonna love it.

And thank you for watching this video. I’m so happy to have you here and let’s keep working on our standards together.

I’ll see you next week. Be well, my friends, and love life.

The post 7 Things Narcissists Do That’ll Never Make Sense to You appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Have you felt the heartbreak of losing the “love of your life,” and now you want them back? Or perhaps you feel trapped in sadness after a breakup and don’t know how to move on.

Either way, this is the first aid you need right now.

In today’s video, I explain the #1 thing that defines our reality during a breakup, and show how the obsession we might feel during a breakup can have its roots in the early days of dating someone. And if you’re on the fence about getting back with your ex, the 3 steps I share today can help you make that decision.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

If you’re in pain right now because the love of your life ended things with you, and you want them back, this video is for you. Because in this video, I am going to talk about what it might take to get someone back and how we can use this advice to also move on from a person.

For those of you that don’t know, I am Matthew Hussey, a coach specializing in confidence and relational intelligence. And for the last 17 years of my life, I have been helping people find love.

So, welcome back to the channel, friends. Don’t forget to like this video, subscribe to this channel if you haven’t already, and hit the notification bell, so that the next time I release a video, you get notified.

Now, I don’t normally talk about this subject for obvious reasons. It’s an extremely sticky subject and questionable as to whether we should ever want someone back especially if that person didn’t treat us right. But there are relationships where someone didn’t treat us badly and the relationship ended for reasons that perhaps could shift. But the beautiful thing about it is everything I’m going to tell you is also going to be the thing that actually helps you get over them.

I have divided this video into three separate parts. Before I get into these three parts, allow me to tell you a quick story. A person that I coached, a man, had someone that he broke up with, that he had been with for many years, but no longer felt was right for him. He had a couple of big issues with the relationship that weren’t anything to do with this person’s character. But just things that he was really struggling with. And he got to the point where he felt like he needed to make a clean break and go back out into the world to see what else was out there.

In the wake of this break-up, both of them suffered. She suffered from feeling like she lost the love of her life. He suffered from losing someone that he had broken up with and was feeling the pain of missing constantly. But despite them missing each other and despite him being in pain, he never went back to re-initiate the relationship.

That is, until one day, ten months later, when the two of them met up, and he saw something that made him reconsider everything.

Part 1, what happens in a break-up?

Okay. So, someone breaks up with us. It is devastating when we loved that person. It feels like we have lost the one thing in the world that we need for our happiness. It feels like we can’t breathe, we can’t eat, we can’t sleep. Our world is falling apart. And in that state of obsession, which in some ways is not entirely unlike the obsession that we can feel in early dating when we like someone, that obsession that we feel when we go on a few dates with someone and we’ve decided, “Oh, my god. I think this is it. I think this is my person. I see the potential. I see where this can go. I see everything that this could be.” And then they don’t call us back. That obsession that we feel in a break-up is actually very connected to that early dating obsession because it has its roots in the same thing.

“This person holds the keys to my happiness and my future.”

When someone breaks up with us, we had pictured a future with that person. We had pictured a life with them, a reality where both of us existed together. And now, that reality is shattered. The only difference in early dating is that we have a lot less evidence for that reality. There’s far more projection involved than is involved in a multi-month or multi-year relationship where we’ve had a lot more evidence for the fact that this is going to be a big part of my life or this is going to be my whole life.

So, there’s a kind of obsession that takes over. And that’s what turns into that obsessive rumination that we feel in a break-up. For many of you, you’re there right now in that obsessive rumination. And for those of you that are there, I am sorry. It is the absolute worst. It is a terrible place to be. And it does feel when you’re in that place like nothing is going to make us feel better. And part of the reason that it feels like nothing is going to make us feel better, part of the reason that it feels like this is catastrophic for us, is to do with our focus and what we are connected to right now.

In a breakup, we become connected to one thing and one thing only—the loss that we have experienced.

Imagine that you have this giant spotlight and where you shine this spotlight determines your reality, the story you’re telling yourself, and how you feel.

And so, this giant spotlight that you have, which is the most powerful thing, imagine that this spotlight is the bringer of all emotions. It’s the most powerful thing you have. And you take this, the most powerful thing you have, and you shine it on this area of your life where you have experienced this loss, this person who no longer wants to be with you. And as long as you’re shining the spotlight on that loss, which isn’t just a present-day loss, it’s also you’re shining it on what feels like the loss of your entire future. So, there’s the story there. The reality is I’ve lost this person. The story is I’ve lost my whole future. And all the emotions that come with that are the pain, the desperation, the obsession, the grief. All of that is coming from shining a spotlight on this break-up.

Now, that may not even be a new thing. It might be that you’ve been shining that spotlight on the relationship for the entire time you were in the relationship, saying, “My reality is this relationship. And that the story is that this relationship is the best, maybe the only really good thing in my life, but it’s certainly the best thing in my life.” And all of your emotions are coming from that relationship which, by the way, might have been good at times. “I’m elated. I’m excited. I feel fulfilled. I feel loved.” But it also might have been the reason why in the relationship, you felt terrible a lot of the time because any time that relationship wasn’t perfect, any time you didn’t get a text back, any time you didn’t feel loved, you felt desperate with anxiety. You couldn’t get through the day. You felt like you couldn’t focus on anything else until you had resolved that argument with that person, until you had got their confirmation for the third time that day or that week that they really love you.

That spotlight was on the relationship then. So, it might be that now, this is just a graduation of where the spotlight already was.

Why am I saying all of this? Why such emphasis on this spotlight?

Well, because where that spotlight goes determines our reality, our story, our emotions. So, what happens in a break-up is the spotlight gets shone on one place when, in fact, our life is much bigger than that. Our life is made up of many things, many components. We have our friends. We have our family. We have ourselves and our inner world and our inner growth that is just ours. It doesn’t belong to anyone else or isn’t in relation to anyone else’s. It’s just ours. And it’s very common to become disconnected from everything else in our world. And the key to starting to feel better is to get connected to other things in our world, to really lose ourselves in the friendships we have, in the family that we hold dear, in something we’re learning about right now that we’re curious about that we have a powerful curiosity about.

Every single one of these things is a universe of its own. There is so much depth to all of them. You could lose yourself in all of them. And all of them tell their own story and have their own emotions attached.

We can take that spotlight and shine it on any other part of our world we want at any time. And it feels like the most unnatural thing to do when we are obsessively ruminating over this one area that we have lit up right now. But it’s actually the answer. We have to get connected to everything else in our world.

And I say this to people not just in a break-up, but in the beginning of dating. In the beginning of dating, it’s really important when we like someone that we get connected to everything else in our world that’s important to us, and that we stay connected to it. Because what happens is, we’re experiencing a lot of joy from different parts of our life and things that gave us meaning. And then we meet someone that knocks us over with their charisma, the way they light up a room or how big their life is. And we suddenly forget everything that’s important to us in our lives, everything that makes our lives special, everything we love, everything that gives us a deep sense of meaning. We lose connection with those things. And this person becomes the only thing that matters.

The moment we decide we like someone is the most dangerous moment in attraction because we lose focus on all those other things. Whether it’s in a break-up or in early dating, never ever let anyone make you feel like your world is small without them. That your world doesn’t matter. Stay connected to what’s rich in your world.

And by the way, if someone comes along in your life, and it feels like, “Oh, they’re big, and they’re exciting, and they’re shiny, and they have such an amazing life, and they’re so impressive,” don’t ever let that person distract you from what’s magical and what’s important in your world. You might be a nurse who works with five dementia patients. And outside of that very difficult and long days, you go and see your friends who you love. And you have a hobby on the side that you really enjoy and that gives you a lot of meaning. And between those three things, you have a big life. Just because someone comes along and it looks like they have a bigger life or somewhat something that’s outwardly splashier and more impressive. Don’t ever let that distract you from the rich meaning that is in your own life. But you have to connect to how big and rich your life is. Okay?

And that’s something that we often lose in a break-up. It’s often something we lose while we’re in a relationship especially when we’re spending so much of our time pleasing someone else, trying to be what we think they want us to be, trying to show up for them and their needs, and never tending to our own garden, never looking at our own life and the richness in it and connecting to it. So, we can be forgiven in a break-up for forgetting just how big and rich and important our own life is.

There is a wonderful quote in the movie, A Man for All Seasons, that I included in my book, Love Life, for anyone who doesn’t know. It’s a moment where Sir Thomas More is giving advice to an ambitious Richard Rich who feels that he won’t be worth anything unless he achieves his grand ambitions. More wants him to know that there are more profound ways to achieve a sense of significance than the kind of superficial goals that Richard Rich is trying to attain.

More says to him, “Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher. Perhaps a great one.” Richard Rich, “If I was, who would know it?” Thomas More, “You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public that.”

That is a beautiful exchange that shows one person who thinks that the richness of his life is going to come from this big thing, this big achievement, or in some cases, in our love lives, we think it’s going to come from this person that we date and what they add to our lives. And another person who sees that the richness of this man’s life could come in far more subtle ways if he really connected to it.

Now, in the story I told you about, the danger for the woman in that scenario is that she would now spend months and months, maybe even years, shining the spotlight on him and how he was her world, and she had lost her world.

Did she do that? We’ll find out.

Part 2, the Matrix.

Those of you who have read my book know that there is a chapter called The Identity Matrix. And in this chapter, I described a certain kind of confidence that comes from having multiple sources of validation and significance in your life. I draw a square, and inside that square, I draw smaller squares that represent these different sources of significance, and validation, and identity in your life.

Now, for some of us, our matrix, I call it the identity matrix, is dominated by one very large square that makes up the majority of our sense of significance and our identity where we get our validation. And for a lot of people, that’s their relationship. Not for everyone, for some people who don’t have a relationship, it’s their career. For other people, it’s their kids. For other people, it’s their looks.

People can have a very dominant square in their matrix and the danger of a very dominant square in your matrix is that it’s responsible for too much of our identity, our significance, what we think makes us attractive, or worthy. That means that when that square goes away, we don’t just feel like we lost that thing—that career, that relationship, our looks as we age. We feel like we have lost our entire identity and sense of worth.

And in a way, what I’m talking about with the spotlight is that over time, when we spotlight one area of our matrix, that thing can grow and grow and grow. But it often grows to the detriment of the other parts of our life.

So, if our relationship ends up being how we identify ourselves, we put so much pressure on that relationship working and never going away, that we start to suffocate that relationship or we start to become too anxious in that relationship or we start to contort ourselves to whatever we think someone else wants us to be in order to keep that relationship going, and we lose ourselves in the process, maybe we even lose the respect of the person we’re with.

Ironically, in our identity matrix, the key to keeping a square strong is knowing that we have other squares that can support us if that square were to ever go away.

I think about this matrix like a tabletop. And the tabletop is our confidence. And underneath it are the legs that support that tabletop. Well, if you only have one leg supporting your confidence, and that’s in the case of this particular video, your relationship, the relationship you’ve just lost, then when that relationship goes away, it feels like your entire confidence is shattered.

But if we build up other squares in our matrix, we’re putting other sturdy legs under the table. So now, that one thing is no longer a crutch supporting the table. It’s just one of several strong and sturdy legs. That means that when we lose it, it can still hurt. We can still grieve. It can still be a tremendous loss and a tremendous disappointment. But it’s no longer catastrophic to our confidence or our sense of self.

So, what we need to do with this matrix is have a very honest look at how much of our pain right now is coming from simply the grief of losing someone important to us and how much of it is not just that grief but a whole other level of suffering that is coming from the fact that our entire identity and worth was built around this relationship, their desire for us, and our ability to retain it.

So, the important takeaway for all of this is that our identity matrix is a huge part of what is making us so unhappy in a break-up and what prolongs heartbreak for so long. But that we, actually, have full control over our identity matrix. It is malleable. We can change it.

And the woman in the story I’ve been telling you about changed her identity matrix in crucial ways that made a huge impact.

What’s up, everybody? Sorry to interrupt my own video. I just wanted to let you know that we only have 35 spaces left for my Live Retreat in Florida this September from the 9th to the 15th. If you want to spend six days with me, getting to know more about your story, helping you through some of the deepest things that you want to work on, this is the place we do it. It’s only happening once this year and this is your chance to get on board.

So go to MHRetreat.com, grab one of those 35 places before they’re gone, and I hope I will get to see you there. Back to the video.

Part 3, My Challenge to You.

So, we have talked about the fact that during a break-up, losing someone that was really important to us, one of the things that makes it so hard is we take this powerful spotlight we have and we shine it only on that, and we lose connection with all of the other sources of richness and beauty and confidence and meaning in our world. And the identity matrix is a very visual illustration of how we may have done that over time both inside the relationship and now, in losing it.

So, if we want to start to feel better, it stands to reason that we should find a way to diversify our identity matrix away from that one square, so that there are other areas of our life that can bring us a new reality, a different story, and better emotions when we shine the spotlight on them.

My challenge to you is to do this in one of three ways, if not all three. The first way is to take a square that already exists in your matrix but has started to shrivel and atrophy over time because this other giant square that perhaps was the relationship got so much of your focus. What in your life has withered that if you started to invest more time and energy into it would start to grow and blossom and flourish again into a deep source of meaning and richness in your life?

We value what we invest in. So, if you’re thinking right now, “I don’t want to do that. I don’t really value that part of my life,” know that there’s a very strong chance that’s because you haven’t been investing in it. When we start investing in something again, we start to value it more. And when we value it more, we can find that, magically, this other thing that held so much value for us starts to feel a little less important because other areas become more important.

So, one part of this challenge is to diversify your squares in your identity matrix by focusing more time, energy, and investment in one that already exists but has atrophied over time.

The second way is to create a brand-new square in your matrix, one that never existed before. As a thought experiment, just think of something that you’ve always said you wanted to do, maybe it’s dancing and taking a dance class, maybe it’s a new skillset or qualification that you wanted to get, something that you wanted to go back to school for, or it could be something that you wanted to do for the first time.

It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that this didn’t exist before in your matrix but could begin to exist as a new source of validation, significance, meaning, identity.

By the way, it doesn’t make sense for all of your self-worth to come from any of these things. But it can help us to add something that starts to allow there to be more sources of confidence in our life because having too few makes us vulnerable. So, adding a new square. What could that be for you? Maybe leave a comment and let me know. What’s a new square that you would like to add to your matrix? Something that you think could be a new source of confidence for you if you actually started to do it.

And by the way, that doesn’t mean you have to get good at that thing. It doesn’t need to be something you get good at to become a source of confidence. It just has to be a new interest, something that you derive richness from, something that you derive meaning from, something you enjoy that takes focus away from certain other things that you thought were your world.

The third part of this challenge is to take something that is already something you have in your life that you could be grateful for if you shone that spotlight on it but maybe until now or for a very long time, you have taken for granted. Because our identity matrix is only made up of things that we actually put focus on. That doesn’t mean it’s made up of everything that exists in our life.

So, I’m going to give you an example from my life. For a long time, I have been speaking, focusing on my ability to public speak, to make videos, and I’ve also been writing. I wrote my first book over ten years ago. I’ve written many articles. I just wrote a new book. But my writing and my speaking were things that for a long time, I kind of took for granted. These days, I don’t do that. I remind myself that if I lost everything, if I no longer had a cent to my name, if for whatever reason, my whole life imploded, what I would still have is my ability to speak well, to have a facility with language, and to write well, hopefully.

My ability in those two areas is something I am now intensely grateful for. I appreciate it. I’m shining the spotlight on it. And in doing that, even though I’ve been doing them for a long time, they weren’t necessarily part of my matrix. But now, they are because I am shining a spotlight on those things.

So now, they are powerful sources of confidence and security for me. I know that everything else in my matrix could go away, and I’d still have those skills, and those skills would give me a sense of courage and security in knowing that I’ll be okay because I’ve got these skills.

What could those things be for you? It doesn’t have to be skills. It could be the love of certain people in your life whether they’re family or friends. Maybe you’ve taken for granted the love that you have around you and actually, that’s one of the greatest forms of security there is.

George Bailey, at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, he gets called the richest man in town not because he has the most money but because he has the most friends and support, the most people who are willing to show up for him. Are you already the richest man or woman in town because of the love you have? Have you taken that for granted? If you started to actually shine a spotlight on that, could that become a whole new giant square in your identity matrix? That doesn’t even need more effort, just more recognition. And that by recognizing it, you’d realize that this story you’re telling yourself that everything in your life is bad, that your life is over because you lost this one square, is actually not true at all.

So, those are my three challenges to you. You could do one of them or you could do all of them. Put more effort and investment into a square that has atrophied to make it bigger and stronger again, create a new square out of something you’ve wanted to do for a while, and lastly, put focus, shine a spotlight on something you already have but maybe has gone underappreciated and undervalued.

Now, earlier in this video, I told you a story of a guy I coached who broke up with someone he had been in a long-term relationship with because he no longer felt it was right.

What happened the day those two met up again ten months later?

He noticed something profoundly different in what he was seeing.

Now, what I didn’t tell you earlier is that in those ten months, she had changed her identity matrix. In the relationship, he had often felt like she didn’t have her own sense of purpose outside of him. In those ten months, she went and got a job. Not just any job, but a job that made her really happy, a job that gave her meaning, a job that made her feel fulfilled, a job that allowed her to feel like she was getting better at something. And that made her proud.

What the job also did was it gave her a brand new circle of friends, an entire new community that she was starting to connect with, and get closer to, that was becoming a source of connection in her life, outside of anything she had previously.

And that just so happened to be another one of the challenges he felt back when they were in a relationship. That he was her only source of connection. That she didn’t have friendships of her own. That she didn’t have her own world socially outside of him.

When the two of them met back up again, as she began to talk about her life, the things that were going on in her life, the things she was excited about, the things she was proud of, as her phone lit up from messages, from people that were excited to see her this weekend, as she talked about what she’d been doing this week in her new job, he started to see a very different picture of the person she was and her identity matrix.

That began a brand new relationship between them. In the weeks that followed, they started talking, reconnecting, and became exclusive again, in a brand new relationship.

And new is the important word there. It wasn’t the same relationship. They didn’t restart their relationship. They began a new one on new terms, on new attraction, on a new way of looking at each other.

What’s so important about all of this is that she didn’t do these things for him. She did them for her. They were an authentic indication of her intention to move on with her life and strengthen her own identity matrix. But when he saw that new identity matrix, he found it incredibly compelling, so compelling, in fact, that it took his spotlight and shone it on her. And in doing so, he saw a new reality with her, a new story of what the two of them could be, appeared, and he experienced new and powerful emotions towards her.

And let me issue you a warning. When you do these things for yourself, there is a very good chance the side effect will be that these things that draw this person back to you will be the very same things that make you no longer need them. And when you no longer need them, if they’re wanting you back, you’ll be able to now objectively assess whether you want them. Now, instead of needing them back, you’ll no longer need them back and you’ll be able to assess whether you want them back.

And for many people that I do this work with and get to this point, they find that they no longer want the person. They needed them before because of the way that their identity matrix was set up. But now that their identity matrix is structured differently, they’re able to see that, “Now that I no longer need them, do I want them? Actually, I’m not sure I do. They’re not nearly as impressive as I was telling myself. This isn’t a good partner. This isn’t someone I want in my future.”

So, be prepared for that. If you actually take this advice in this video, six months from now, you may find yourself in a place where the thing, the person, you thought you needed to breathe, now that you’ve learned to breathe on your own, is someone you realize you don’t actually want.

And if you realize that’s true, and you want to go out and meet someone new, I have something really cool for you.

I have just created a brand-new, free guide. So many of you have been asking for this for a very long time because it’s been years since I created a new free guide in this kind of a practical, written format. I’ve just created a new free guide called Spark and Connect where I give you nine things that you can say to spark up a connection with a brand new person.

So, if you want to go out there and create more opportunities with new people, and why wouldn’t you? Why limit yourself to the possibility of someone from your past coming back to you? Even if there’s some part of you that would like that, don’t ever limit yourself to that. This is a way that you can go out and expand your options, and dare I say, find someone even better for you.

To download this guide for free, go to WhatToSayNext.com and it would take you ten seconds. And like I said, this literally spells out nine different ways that you can connect with new people in life.

Thank you so much for watching this video. I have really enjoyed making it for you. And I look forward to reading your comments. Don’t forget to go to WhatToSayNext.com and download the guide before you forget. And I will see you next week. Be well and love life.

The post My Best Advice on How to Get Over Someone… (Or Get Them Back!) appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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“How and when should I have the conversation that I want marriage and kids?”Good question! And definitely a tricky subject for most people. We are told to be honest about what we want, but we also worry about scaring someone off if we bring it up too soon.

I get so many questions on this exact topic every week, because getting clear on this can save you a lot of time and prevent unnecessary heartache down the road.

In today’s video, I give you 6 practical steps to help you determine if someone shares your goals and timeline, figure out exactly what you want (and come up with a plan for each possibility), and approach these conversations in a natural and confident way.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the channel. I’m Matthew Hussey, a coach specializing in confidence and relational intelligence who, for the last 17 years, has been helping people find love. I’m the author of the New York Times bestseller, Love Life. Check it out.

And in today’s video, I give my honest advice for the very real challenge that is faced by so many single women who feel that they are running out of time for one of their major life goals—to have a family.

The way that I want to talk about this topic is in a series of six practical steps that I outlined today. And these steps were actually a response to a real question that I got from one of my Love Life Club members, Maryam, who asked me a question about the tension she felt in dating, knowing that she wants a family and she wants one soon, but not wanting to make bad choices. So, I gave her six practical steps that I know are going to relate to you too if you’re in her position or one like it. Also, stay until the end of this video because I have something very exciting and free to share with you. All right. Onto Maryam’s question.

“I wanted to share my Love Life story to get a different perspective from the stories I have created in my head.”

Smart. We all do that, don’t we? Create stories in our head.

“I am a 38-year-old woman who has never been married and has no kids. I have dedicated the last 15 years to working on getting established in the U.S., learning the language, completing college, getting positioned in a good job after coming from Malaysia. All of that is done and I’m proud of my accomplishments. But I shut down my love life for several years. My thought was, that will eventually happen. It will come. And here I am now thinking, it should have come already. I want a family but the biological clock is messing up my brain and I don’t want to make the mistake of choosing the wrong person because I am close to being 40.”

“For some reason, I’m starting to be attracted to younger men. I’m talking about five to six years younger. And I have never dated someone that young. Help.”

So, I’m going to take this in steps. The first step is to be clear with yourself about what your path is.

Now, it sounds like Maryam, to a large extent, has already done that. She has communicated that what she wants is to have a serious relationship and to start a family. But it’s really important to be clear with ourselves about the level of priority that’s apt for us. Because if we don’t, then we suddenly could come across someone we’re very attracted to. The fact that we’re very attracted to them and we have a great connection with them can make us forget all about these goals we have, and figuring out whether that person has any of the same intentions we do.

I always am quick to point out when someone in Maryam’s situation, let’s say, goes even younger. Let’s say, someone in Maryam’s situation finds that she’s out one evening and meets a 24-year-old. And that 24-year-old is fun, and charming, and sexy, and they hit it off, and they start dating. I’m always quick to point out that that is a very, very dangerous game that Maryam or someone in her position would be playing in getting swept up in how she feels about someone and ignoring this goal that she has had for a very long time that in a much calmer, more objective moment, had surfaced as a priority at this stage of her life.

So, for anyone out there in Maryam’s position, be clear with yourself right now. What is my priority? Not just what do I want but what’s the order of importance? I might want attraction with someone today, then I can have a great weekend this weekend, seeing someone I like. But a bigger priority, it could be, and I’m assuming for Maryam this is true, is finding someone who has the same goals as I do in the area of having a serious relationship and starting a family.

That doesn’t automatically mean that if Maryam gets attracted to someone five years younger, that’s a problem, right? That’s not the biggest age gap in the world. But it does mean that she has to pay attention to the very real challenges that can come from even a five-year age gap when someone is a few years behind her, even if they want children, is a few years behind her in wanting the same thing. Because for her, those few years matter.

Step 2, know your options. Of course, one option is that you go out, you meet the love of your life, and you have a family with them. But is there an Option B? Have you been clear about whether you’re prepared to not only make peace with Option B but be aggressive about making Option B happen if your life calls for it?

In Maryam’s case, she’s 38. At what point does she decide, you know, what? Having a family is so important to me that I actually might consider doing this by myself. Now, it may be the case that Maryam never wants to do that. And that’s fine too. None of this is prescriptive. It’s all personal. These are intensely necessarily personal choices. But it’s important for Maryam to actually come to terms with whether that is an option for her. And the reason I say that is because those options create a sense of power, a sense of autonomy, a sense of confidence, and they are a pressure valve. What it allows Maryam to do is date, always knowing in the back of her mind that if someone isn’t right, she has a Plan B that she can go to at any time if she really wants to, or that there is an age by which she says, “Enough is enough. I haven’t met my person yet. I’m going to do this because I really want to do this.”

So, getting clear about what your options are can create a true sense of empowerment. And part of that conversation for so many women, though not all, because it’s not available or possible for all, is egg-freezing. So, I’d encourage Maryam, if you haven’t already, to at least have that conversation with a fertility doctor, to look into whether it’s something that’s possible for you. I say that knowing full well that it is cost-prohibitive for many people, not available for some in the part of the world that they’re in. And for many people, it’s simply too complex and too invasive a procedure for them to want to go through with, not to mention that egg freezing is by no means a guarantee when the time actually comes to use those eggs.

So, the calculation on whether to do egg freezing is for many people, razor thin, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a conversation worth having for someone in Maryam’s position or for you, even if you’re a few years behind Maryam in your position. Those are not conversations that I am an expert in but they are conversations that your fertility doctor is an expert in. And I encourage those conversations because those conversations are power. And like we’ve been talking about, they remind us of our options, and options are power over your own circumstances.

Now, you’ll notice that Step 1 and Step 2 are both steps that you take before you’ve even met someone that you like. Now, let’s talk about what you do when you do meet someone you like. And of course, for many people, especially those who are running out of time to biologically have their own children, who really have this as a major life goal, maybe the major life goal at this stage in their lives, meeting someone they like can feel incredibly disempowering because instead of just being able to organically get to know someone, they feel like they’re bringing this baggage, not that it really is baggage, but it feels for so many like baggage, of, “I have this big thing that I want and you hold the keys to it, and I have to somehow go through this fun, playful, attraction that’s carefree and nonchalant and enjoyable, at the same time as having this deep, desperate urge to move quickly on something that’s window is rapidly closing.

That leaves many in what feels like an impossible situation.

Now, the whole point of Steps 1 and 2 is to actually start to take some pressure off of that, that if we know what our choices are, that if we get clear about our goal, and you create the options for yourself ahead of time, then you no longer do feel like you are solely relying on this person to make that dream come true.

So, let’s talk about from, hopefully, a slightly more relaxed place, what to do when you meet someone you like.

Step 3, communicate to that person where you are in your life. That means we have to be brave enough to actually communicate our goals to someone. The big question is when, right? Because it feels like if I do that too soon, I’m going to scare someone away. If I do it too late, I run the risk of wasting tons of my time when I don’t have that time to waste.

But I like to think of this, not in terms of when is the right time to say it because I actually think that’s a red herring. What it does is it suggests that this goal that we have is baggage like we’re revealing something dark and scary, and ominous instead of just talking about a goal that we’re excited about.

I’d like to think of the example of if you had a dream to start a flower shop in the next three to four years. You wouldn’t feel embarrassed or shameful or scared to bring up the fact that you’re really excited to start a flower shop, and you have very clear intention to do so. It would just be one of the goals in your life that you’re excited about.

I want to challenge you to put getting married or having children in the same category as the flower shop. Now, I know it feels different in that situation because it feels like, well, yeah, but with the flower shop, I’m not asking them to co-sign on the flower shop and dedicate their time and resources and life savings to doing it. And it’s the fact that when it comes to marriage and children, I am asking them to co-sign on these really big things that makes me feel like I have the potential to scare them off with this conversation.

I get that.

But what if we reconnected with that optionality that we talked about in Step 2, knowing what your options are, and that allowed you to talk about the fact that you want to get married or you want to have kids in a much more similar way to the flower shop?

In other words, you told yourself, a) this is not a bad thing. Let me remind myself of that. This is a beautiful thing that I want to do. And right now, the fact that I want to do it actually has nothing to do with this person, especially on date 1 or 2 or 3. It has everything to do with me and my future. And by the way, I know in my mind that I would not do this with the wrong person. You have to know that in your mind. Because if you know that in your mind, it will come across when you speak to that person, and that will be power. I’ll show you how in just a moment. But that you wouldn’t do it with the wrong person. And that at the end of the day, if this is true, I’m only speaking to the people this is true for. By the end of the day, if you’ve decided that at some point, you’re going to call time on doing this with another person and be prepared to do it on your own, then that’s yet another source of power when you speak to someone about the flower shop, that I’m doing this with or without a person. So, this really genuinely has nothing to do with you in front of me right now.

So, what I encourage you to do is instead of trying to think of the perfect moment to say all of this, think of it like the right moment to say these things is when we’re just talking about what we’re excited about in life. So, you could ask me what I’m excited about or, you know, what’s on the horizon for me. And I say, “You know, I’ve spent many years of my life now, 15 years of my life, securing my place here in the United States, which was a dream of mine, and working to learn the language, and getting myself to a very secure place financially, where I feel like I have a good job, and my life is settled. That didn’t allow a lot of time for me to think about a relationship, let alone a very serious relationship. And it didn’t allow me a lot of time to think about my ultimate goal of having a family, which is something that really excites me. So, I’m now at a place in my life where alongside some of the other things that I’m excited about in life, I am really excited for the next chapter of my life, which for me is about taking the next steps in the next few years to having that family and to, hopefully, finding an amazing person to do it with. But, you know, I also know for me, doing it with the wrong person is something I would never do. It’s something I’m excited about and it’s a beautiful vision I have. But I would never do it with the wrong person. It would have to be the right person. And if it wasn’t, I’ll do it on my own because it’s something that’s just really important to me.”

And when you’re saying all of that, you’re talking about it in a very positive way. You’re not talking about it as this big, heavy thing. I actually think that Maryam’s story that she told, when I was reading her question about how she moved to America, and learned the language, and worked really hard to get where she is, and hasn’t had the time or the bandwidth to think about having a family, I found all of that really endearing when I read it. I don’t know about you. When I read it, I was like, wow. That’s really endearing. She was having to do other things. And now, she’s in a place where she is ready for this. There’s something very beautiful about that.

So, she shouldn’t be ashamed of that. I actually think her story is part of the way she should frame it and talk about it when she’s speaking to someone on a date.

Now, once you’ve talked about the flower shop, your goal of getting married or having children as an exciting next chapter of your life, there’s something you can do in Step 4, which is really, really powerful.

Step 4 is demonstrate non-dependence. And the way that you do that is by taking the optionality that you had created in Step 2, and finding a way to casually communicate that optionality in the way that you talk about this goal.

So, for example, after you’ve talked about the fact that you’re excited about that chapter of your life, you can say, “But one thing I know about myself is that I would never do that, any of that, marriage or kids, with the wrong person.”

You can even frame that up by talking about other people you know. “I know people. I have friends who, I know, have rushed into things because they really wanted it to happen. But they did it with the wrong person. And that’s something I could never do. I made the decision a long time ago that if I didn’t meet the right person, I either wouldn’t do it, if that’s true, or I would do it on my own, if that’s true.”

When you say all of this you take away that effect that a lot of people are worried about, that they’re giving up their power when they state this goal, as if they’re saying to someone, “You can now do no wrong because I really need you for this thing.” Instead, what you’re saying to someone is, “I don’t need you for this thing. I may want or even need this thing in my future but I don’t need you for that thing because if you turn out to be the wrong person, I’ll find someone who’s right or I won’t need someone at all. I’ll do it by myself.”

What you’re, in essence, saying to someone is, “You can’t mess this up because I don’t need you. You still have to win me over, in the same way that I have to win you over.” This is still just two people on the same level dating. It is not that now that I’ve stated this goal, I have handed you all of the cards.

Now, in this stage, where you’re just enjoyably sharing goals, you don’t need to know for sure if they’re exactly on the same page as you. And bear in mind, being on the same page as you doesn’t mean that a) they have the same goals, that b) they have the same goals and the same timeline. It’s entirely possible that Maryam meets someone who’s six years younger than her, wants kids one day, but doesn’t want them in the next four years in the way that she does. So, it’s not just about whether they have the same goals. It’s, do they have the same goals on the same timeline?

So, Step 5 is when it starts to get serious, then we have to get clear about whether they have the same goals on the same timeline.

So, even if in the first few dates they danced around the subject of what they were looking for in the next few years, and you let that slide because you were like, “Hey, we’re in the fun, get to know each other stage. I don’t need to know everything about this person’s timeline right now.” At the point of spending lots and lots of time together, at the point of, I’m now seeing this person to the exclusion of everyone else, at the point of agreeing on exclusivity, you and I are in a committed, serious relationship, I do need to know whether this person is on the same page as me.

And that conversation can go something like, “Hey, I know that you and I have a really good thing going. I am so enjoying what’s developing between us. I’m excited about the prospect of giving it a real try with each other. But I also don’t know whether my goals and my timeline for those goals is something that you see for yourself. And I’m not suggesting that this is a tomorrow thing for me. But it is a, in the next two or three years thing for me because that’s the timeline that I’m on. And that doesn’t mean by the way you couldn’t turn out to be wrong for me a year from now or I couldn’t turn out to be wrong for you a year from now. That’s just normal. That’s relationships. We’re still getting to know each other. But if it works, then I know that that’s going to be something that’s important to me in that time frame. And I know that no matter how much I like you, I wouldn’t be getting into anything serious if you weren’t on the same page as me in that department.”

So, what you’re allowing for in this conversation is a) complete and utter transparency but b) you’re still not putting that pressure on. This isn’t that traditional kind of pressure of, “I like you and I want children with you. And you’re going to want them because I want them with you,” which makes someone go, “Ah. We’re just getting started and I’m already feeling like I have to make a decision about having kids with you.”

This isn’t that. This is the, “I am on a certain timeline for when I want these things. You and I are still getting to know each other and there’s still room for us to decide that we’re not right for each other. But if it continues, and if it works, I would need to know that you could see that for yourself on the same timeline.”

So, you’re removing the forced pressure of you and I are going to do this together. But you are introducing a standard that you have for who you choose to have a relationship with, which is that if someone’s not on the same page as me, I just wouldn’t bother having a relationship with them no matter how wonderful and sexy and attractive they were or how much fun I had with them, all of which is true for you, by the way. I cannot stress enough how important this is as a standard. Not a wish that they want the same things as me but a standard.

So many women have a standard for how attracted they want to be to someone, for how much of a connection they want to feel, for the chemistry that they want to experience. But they don’t have a standard for having aligned goals and intentions.

So, we have to start to raise our standards in this area. I can still have a standard for attraction but I better couple it with a standard for someone who has the same goals and intentions as me. Or all I am doing is acting as a co-conspirator in the theft of my own future.

Step 6, our final step for this video, be honest with yourself about whether there is the appropriate level of progress within the relationship as time goes on.

If you’re two years into dating this person who you’re only dating because in the beginning, they made clear when it was becoming serious and exclusive that they did have the same intentions as you on the same timeline. If you’re finding that that person cannot, will not, have the conversation about the progression, about when you might start thinking or looking at those things, if they can’t have those conversations, something is going wrong. There is a level of squeamishness from their side that might be able to be tolerated in a relationship where two people have all the time in the world but can’t be tolerated by you in a situation that is predicated for you on the two of you being on the same page.

So, don’t have the conversation once at the beginning of the relationship, and then bury it because you’re afraid to have it again in case it sabotages the relationship.

That’s a good reason to sabotage the relationship. And that doesn’t mean it has to be brought up every single day, but if after a year, you start talking about those things, and maybe that person says, “You know, I’m really excited about it. I just need a little bit more time but I am. I’m with you. I want the same things.” If you talk about it six months after that, and nothing is shifting for them, they just keep acting afraid to have the conversation, and make you feel like you’re treading on eggshells, then that is a sure sign as any that you are not on the same page. Because anyone who has a natural intentionality on the same timeline as you, doesn’t make you feel afraid to have a conversation about something. The conversation is easy. It’s fluid. It’s transparent. It’s more of a planning conversation than a, “Oh, you’re bringing up the war conversation.”

You have to be willing to have the conversation and then be honest with yourself about whether there is a sense of progression. If there’s not, never be afraid to stop the relationship. Never be afraid to walk away while there’s still time. Okay?

There’s a great—what’s that Mr. Rogers quote where he says, “I can stop.” I really want to find that quote. We can maybe—let me see if I can find this right now. So, this is what Mr. Rogers said. There was actually a song but he said, “It’s great to be able to stop when you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong and be able to do something else instead and think this song. I can stop when I want to, can stop when I wish. I can stop, stop, stop any time. And what a good feeling to feel like this and know that the feeling is really mine. Know that there’s something deep inside that helps us become what we can. For a girl can be someday a woman and a boy can be someday a man.”

Know that there’s a feeling deep inside you that is not going away, that is an expression of who you are and what you want in your life. And if the person you’re in a relationship with isn’t having the same feeling, you can stop. You can change direction. You do not need to stay in a relationship that you’ve sunk time and energy into just because of the so-called sunk cost fallacy that I need to make good the investment that I’ve already made. If you know it’s wrong, if you feel in your gut that this person is not going to get there with you, you can take that feeling that you have and leave that relationship, and use that feeling to express your full self to self-actualize and achieve and create everything that you always wanted.

Let me know what this video meant to you. Leave me a comment. And please pass this video on. Is there someone you know this could help? It would mean the world to me for you to help me reach more people with these messages. I think they’re messages we don’t hear nearly enough. I think many people have no idea where to go with these feelings that they have with the anxieties that they feel, with the panic that never leaves them. Please help me spread the word about this. Send this to your community, if you have one. Post about it. Send it, email it to friends and family. Help me spread the word and help more people.

Also, before you leave, I have something very exciting to share with you. Drum roll, please, Audrey and David. I’m not sure you can even hear that drum roll. But we have created a brand new, free guide for anybody who wants to get out there and start meeting better-quality people. Maybe you’re a little tired of the apps, you can’t stand this messaging random strangers online and hoping for that lightning-in-a-bottle feeling that you might get with someone. But you want to actually go and meet people in real life.

I can relate to that. I met Audrey, my now wife, at an engagement party of my friend. Didn’t know her before that party. I’m an advocate for the old-fashioned ways. Not to say dating apps are a problem. But, you know, we get tired of them. They can burn us out.

If you want to go out and meet someone in the real world, this guide is called Spark and Connect. It’s free and it gives you nine conversation starters that you can use with anybody you see today that you want to connect with. It’s super practical. It gives you very specific things you can use. And I know that you love my advice for that, for giving you very practical things that you can use just like this video has. So, if you like this video, you’re going to love this guide. Go to WhatToSayNext.com to download it for free right now.

By the way, if you haven’t already, like this video, subscribe to this channel, and don’t forget to hit the notification bell, so that the next time I do a video, you get notified. Thank you for watching this video. I will see you in the next one. Be well, my friends, and love life.

The post My Honest Advice to Single Women Who Want a Family appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Do you get obsessed too quickly in the early days of dating? This is often dangerous because it places WAY too much of our happiness in trying to attract and keep someone (even when we don’t really know them yet).

Thankfully, this kind of “anxious dating” is something you can actually solve. In today’s video, I dive into where this obsession comes from, and give you 5 things you can do to stop falling for someone too quickly and self-sabotaging in early dating.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Hello, everyone. I am Matthew Hussey, the author of the brand new book, Love Life, which became the New York Times’ best seller a few weeks ago. I’m also a coach, specializing in confidence and relational intelligence, who, for the last 17 years has been helping people find the healthy love that they want.

So, today’s video is based on a question I got from one of my Love Life members. And if you don’t know, I have a year-round program where I coach people who want to find love. If you want to make me your coach, officially, then I’ll leave a link below for you to check that out. It is LoveLifeClub.com.

But this particular Love Life member asked me about obsession in early dating. What can you do if, whenever you meet someone you like, you immediately become obsessed, get too carried away, and then risk ruining the whole thing, either the enjoyment of it because you just feel anxious all the time or actually sabotaging it by being the person that we become when we get obsessed?

So let’s talk about this. Why do we get obsessed in early dating and what are the five things that you can know today that will help you the next time you find yourself in this situation?

By the way, it would mean a lot to me if you would like this video, subscribe to this channel, and hit the notification bell, so that the next time I make a video, you get notified, and you don’t discover it three months later, and think to yourself, “I really could have used this video back then.”

So, let’s talk about this idea of obsession in early dating. What are the five things that you need to know?

Number one, identify the feeling that you have. When we are out there meeting someone, falling for them very quickly, and then very quickly becoming anxious about the fact that they’re not texting us or worried that they might not like us as much as we like them, it’s very tempting to think of this as being a sign of how important this person is, a sign of how much our happiness resides with this person and the possibility that they end up choosing us as their partner.

What this feeling actually is, is anxiety. And it’s important that we label it as anxiety. This is a form of anxious rumination.

“I really like them. They don’t like me as much as I like them. And if they don’t like me as much as I like them, my whole life is going to get worse. I’m going to be heartbroken. I’m never going to get over it.”

“They’re not texting me right now. Oh, no. This person that holds the keys to my happiness doesn’t want me back. I’m about to lose someone who is right for me.”

We have these thoughts and they are not an indication of how valuable this person is. They are an indication of the intensity of an anxiety that likely long predated this person.

And you can do a test on that. Is this the first person you’ve ever felt this anxiety with, or is the anxiety a constant in your life? If it is, good news, it’s not that this person is the most important person in the world. It’s that you are coming to the table with a pre-existing level of anxious attachment.

Now that we’ve identified that feeling as anxiety, let’s get to point number two. That anxiety will follow you anywhere you go. It will follow you to a different person in the future. So, if you move on from this person and feel good again afterwards, after weeks or months of feeling of heartbroken that this didn’t work out, that anxiety won’t have gone away. It will just be dormant, lying in wait for the next person. When the next person comes along, if you decide you like that person, the anxiety re-appears.

And it’s not just true that the anxiety will transfer to the next person. It’s also true that that anxiety will follow you into every stage of the relationship with this person if it actually works out.

Think about it this way. When we’re single, the anxiety is, “I’m never going to meet anyone.” When we meet someone, the anxiety is, “They don’t like me as much as I like them,” or, “They’re not texting me right now and that’s bad news.”

If it turns into an actual relationship, our anxiety is now around losing this person. “That they’re going to find someone else. That the next time they walk into a coffee shop and see someone who’s objectively more attractive than me, they’re going to leave me for that person.”

And even if you feel completely safe with this person, like, “They’re never going to leave me for another person.” Even if they manage to get you to trust on that level, the anxiety transfers to, “What if they die?”

So, the anxiety never really goes away. It just keeps finding a new home, a new target. Now that can feel quite defeating, in a sense, to feel like, “Oh, my god. I’m never going to be rid of this anxiety.” We can, of course, start to mitigate that anxiety. We can turn it around. And we’ll talk about that in a moment.

But far from being this horrible conclusion, that the anxiety is going to follow me everywhere, it can actually start to be this wonderful way of getting perspective. In other words, any time our anxiety finds a target, knowing the anxiety is the constant, not the target, we realize that the target of our anxiety, the thing we’re convincing ourselves in the moment, is the root cause of our anxiety, is not nearly as important as we’re making it, and may not be important at all.

Once you realize that when this target goes away, my anxiety will just find a new one, there’s no target that feels that important anymore. It just feels like this long and almost farcical cycle of hopping from one thing to the next, and every time, telling ourselves a story that the thing I’m focused on now is the most important thing in the world to be worried about. And when there’s no longer that thing to be worried about, we try to convince ourselves or anyone who will listen, “Oh, no, no. You don’t understand. This one is the most important thing in the world to be worried about.”

And I want you to hear yourself telling yourself that story each time, to become aware of that story, and almost to start to laugh at it. Like, how can everything be the most important thing in the world to be worried about? How can everything be this worthy of my anxiety? How can I keep convincing myself every time, “No, no, no. This time, it’s really important. This time it’s really scary.”

Realize that if your anxiety is the constant, then the targets become a farce.

Number three, we have to recognize that behind the anxiety that we feel, when we get obsessed with someone in early dating, is a need. The anxious obsession feels objectively like a bad thing. But embedded within it is just an unmet need. There’s a, kind of, cry for help that, you know, we get obsessed with someone because we like them. And liking someone isn’t a problem. But when liking someone, when being on a date, and realizing, “Oh, this person’s great. I really like them or I admire them or I respect them. I’d like to spend more time with them if they’re open to that.” When that crosses over into, “I’ll die if they don’t text me back,” something’s happened there. It’s no longer just an admiration for them as a person or a, kind of, excitement about the possibility of another date with them. It’s turned into a sense of danger that if they don’t reply, if they don’t like me, if this doesn’t progress, I won’t be okay.

Beneath all of that, there’s this need that’s being expressed. It can be a need for safety, a need for consistency, a need to feel wanted or acknowledged or seen or worthy, that there is a need there. And the need is trying to express itself. But what happens with our anxiety is the need gets transferred to something — or in this case, someone on the outside.

There’s nothing wrong with the need by the way. We all have these needs, and especially when we have been through a lot in our life—we have certain traumas from childhood or relationships. We can come out of those situations really needing a sense of safety, really needing a sense of peace or consistency. There’s nothing wrong with that. But where we get ourselves into trouble is that that internal need transfers itself to an external target. We suddenly nominate someone that we have known for five minutes or three dates, as the sole provider of this need that we have.

“Your job, person that I’ve decided I like, is to make me feel safe. And the way you’re going to make me feel safe is to communicate as often as I want you to communicate, to tell me all of the things as often as I need to and as intensely as I need you to say them, to reassure me and to demonstrate that you like me as much as I like you, preferably a bit more, because that will really make me feel safe.”

And if this person does not provide these things in precisely the way that that voice inside of us needs, then our anxiety goes through the roof. And then a version of us, of course, comes out that has the ability to sabotage situations.

Here’s the really tricky part. We start saying and doing things that push away healthy, secure people because secure people feel that something is going very wrong if they are suddenly being made responsible for too much of our happiness, too soon. But it has a very insidious effect with people who are not well-intentioned or people we might think of as toxic who realize the amount of power that they can have over us by saying and doing the right things.

So, if our anxiety demonstrates an extreme need, and they can fulfill that need by showing up in very grandiose ways early on, by saying exactly what we want to hear, we feel a false sense of safety with this person who is saying things that really, they have no business saying right now, in the same way that our need that has nothing really to do with this person, has no business being quenched by this person.

So, an out-of-proportion need is being met by a totally false sense of security from the outside, and that’s how we find ourselves getting our hearts broken by the love bombers, the manipulators, the narcissists, the sociopaths, the people that are looking for precisely the right intensity of pain, anxiety, and need to come along and be the answer for.

So, bottom line, we have to stop nominating people on the outside as the answer to that anxiety we feel on the inside because the obsession that we have for this person in dating is nothing more than the expression of our internal anxiety and that need that wants to be met.

Now, like I said, it’s okay to like someone. We don’t have to become indifferent to protect ourselves. We can openly like someone. We can even openly want more with someone. But any time it strays into a feeling of pain, that’s out-of-proportion with how well we know this person or how long it’s been going on for, we have to go back to that reminder. “Ah, this is anxiety and that anxiety is coming from a need.”

How, in this moment, instead of asking for validation, reassurance, and intensity from the outside, do I start to create a home within myself?

So, I want you to write this down if you’ve got something you can write on right now. Number four, create a safe home within yourself. I want you to tell yourself, “If I want to make someone else a part of my home, that feeling of home, I first have to create a home within myself.”

So, number four, we have to create a safe home within ourselves.

I want you to take a scenario where maybe you feel a little nervous or a bit anxious, take a party that you find yourself at on your own. Imagine the feelings that you get being at that party—not knowing anyone, wondering what everyone’s thinking about you, feeling embarrassed or awkwardly shuffling around, and trying to look like you’ve got something to do, like checking your phone as a way of looking cool at the party when, in fact, you’re not really checking anything. You’re just trying to look like you’re not that strange person standing on the sidelines.

Feel that feeling, that lack of safety, that desire to be comforted. That desire, that very quickly gets transferred onto the room, and that thought of, “I wish someone would come over and make me feel good right now. I wish someone would come over and welcome me into this party, that they would reassure me, that they would find me interesting, that they would save me from the sidelines.”

Now, notice that that is us trying to find a home outside of ourselves in this party. When, in fact, we don’t need to go anywhere or talk to anyone to create a home within ourselves. The feelings that we are seeking on the outside, we can create on the inside.

Now, how do we do that?

Well, let’s recap for a moment. We’ve understood so far in this video that the desire for someone to come over, the desire for people to come and make friends with you, that is anxiety. We’ve understood so far in this video that in this situation, that kind of obsessive thinking of, “I need someone to come and make me feel better. I need people to be friends with me. I need to raise my status in this party and not look like the sad, weird person on my own.”

That is anxiety. It’s not representative of something that’s truly important. You’re not going to die. You may not care about any of these people or even see any of them again. None of this right now is actually important.

So, the thoughts aren’t real. It’s all anxiety. So, we label it that. We recognize that beneath that anxiety is a need, a need to feel safe, a need to feel accepted, a need to feel loved. That part of you isn’t you as a whole. It’s just a voice within you. One of many. What it’s doing is it’s looking for reassurance on the outside. What we have to do is give ourselves the reassurance that we seek. We have to be the safety we’re looking for.

The temptation is to identify with it and to think that, “Me and this voice are the same thing.” But actually, this voice is the part of us that is scared. You could think of it as the inner child. You can even think of it as like a screaming toddler that is anxious or afraid or just trying to get a need met.

But it’s not the adult in the room. And if you think about a child screaming in the back of the car, you wouldn’t turn to that child and say, “Hey, here’s the keys to the car. You drive then.”

You acknowledge that, “Oh, there’s a scared child here. How do I turn to meet them in a way that is effective, productive, compassionate, loving? How do I give that child what that child needs?” Which is different, by the way, to what that child wants. We’ll come on to that in a second.

So, let’s move on to point number five. What does the child need? What does that voice inside need?

It’s looking for safety on the outside. But what if could give it a feeling of safety on the inside? What if we could talk to that part of ourselves in a loving voice? First, acknowledging them and connecting with what they feel, “Hey, you met someone you like. It feels scary all of a sudden. I get it. You really want to find love and I know you’ve been burned in the past. And this brings up so much for you. And I understand. I understand why you’re feeling what you’re feeling.”

And of course, by the way, by being us, we are the ones uniquely placed to know everything we’ve ever been through that’s made us this way. That gives us this amazing vantage point from which to give ourselves compassion, to view ourselves holistically and contextually and say, “I get you. I know why you feel this way. I know why you feel so obsessed right now and so anxious right now. You’ve been through a lot.”

You’re looking for safety because you never had any. You know what that story is. So, you can reassure yourself that that part of you isn’t crazy. It’s just reacting to its history. But that part of you also isn’t you.

So, you can speak to it in a loving, compassionate voice.

“You’re going to be okay. And even if this person doesn’t text back, we’re still going to be okay. Why? Because we’ve been okay in the past. We’ve successfully survived this life so far, we will survive it again, and this person isn’t the most important person in the world. We’re just afraid. It’s okay ”

You give yourself that love, that affection, that presence. But what we also do is we’re firm with that part of ourselves. That’s what being the adult in the room is. That’s what being the parent is. Remember, it’s not about just giving that voice what it wants. It’s giving that voice what it needs. And what that voice might need right now is a firm hand, is us saying, “I know you want to turn this into something really important but we’re not going to do that. I know that you want to keep thinking about this person over and over but you know what? We’re going to go do something else. We’re going to go work out. We’re going to go hang with our friends who have been around much longer than this person we’ve known for five minutes.”

“We’re going to do something we love, engage in one of our passions. We’re not going to sit here and ruminate about this person. And no, we’re not going to go and call all of our friends and tell them how amazing this person is and oh my god, this could be the one.”

“We’re not going to do that either. We’re not going to entertain these things. We’re going to accept it for what it is—someone that I had a great time with, someone that maybe I have an admiration or respect for, based on how well I know them right now. But also, someone that I don’t really know. But who I’m looking for to get to know more, providing they feel the same way. I’m not going to allow the thoughts to go any further than that.”

We have to know when to cut ourselves off and say, “This is no longer productive. This is just anxious rumination by another name. Namely, that this person is the one for me.”

“No, no, no. I don’t know that yet.”

The next time you hear that voice go, “This person is the one,” go, “You’re anxiously ruminating. That’s what this is.”

All right? So, we have to be firm with that voice at the same time as being compassionate and affectionate with that voice.

So, let me know what you thought of this. Leave me a comment. I’m excited to read them. What spoke to you most about this video? Are you someone who obsessively ruminates about someone when you first start dating them? Do you get carried away too quickly? How does that affect you? And how has this video helped? I’m excited to read your comments.

And by the way, thank you to everyone who shares these videos. It means so much to me. I can’t do this work on my own. I want to get these messages to as many people as I can, people that may not know that there are tools out there to feel better. There are messages that can soothe the pain that they’re feeling right now. For everyone who shares this video, with your platform or just with your friends and family, thank you. And I promise to keep delivering videos like this that can help you going forward.

And for anyone who wants to share more time with me, in September of this year I’m running my Live Retreat, for six days, from the 9th of September until the 15th, in Florida. We’re going to be together, all in one resort. Is going to be an amazing experience.

If you want to continue your growth work with me in a very immersive way– live, in person– then I encourage you to apply. The link is MHRetreat.com. Go check it out. We’re down to a small number of spaces now. There’s only so much space in the room, and it’s not a very big room, is an intimate program. So, come join us, and I hope I’ll get to see you there.

Thank you so much for watching this video, as always. I look forward to reading your comments. And I will see you next week.

Be well my friends, and love life.

The post If You Get Too Obsessed Too Quickly When You Like Someone… WATCH THIS appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Do you sometimes feel like you’re still carrying trauma from a narcissistic relationship? Perhaps you’re haunted by regret over the fact that you didn’t leave earlier. Or you’ve been through so much in recent years that you’re not even sure you know who you are anymore . . . and have no idea how to start the healing process.

In today’s video, an incredible member of my Club 320 inner circle asked 3 beautifully vulnerable questions (and gave me permission to share them with you). From a painful childhood to a 10-year relationship with a narcissist, she wanted to figure out how to release shame, heal, and find her true self.

No matter what your story is, you don’t have to carry this baggage forever. I think that after listening to Cara’s story, you might start to look at your life, your history, and your future differently.

MATTHEW
So I just got back from a weekend in Zion National Park with a very special group of people as part of my Club 320 program. And there was a moment during the weekend that I thought would speak to a lot of people out there. Cara, one of my Club 320 members, talked about the self-esteem issues she had that led to a 10-year narcissistic, abusive relationship that she is still struggling to heal from.

We talked about her healing and how she could learn to forgive herself for the time she spent in that relationship, which is something she has been struggling to do. Cara kindly and bravely offered for us to release this video. Thank you, Cara, for being vulnerable enough to share your story, and I think you’re going to get a lot out of it. And without further ado, I present to you, Cara from Club 320.

CARA

Can we sit together on the floor across from each other in the middle of the circle?

MATTHEW

I’m quite happy to sit on the floor.

CARA
You’ve already helped me with the first thing, which is just knowing that I could ask for something from a man, and have him care enough about me to give that, so thank you for that.

The story that I have about myself is that I’m not lovable and that I’m not likable just as I am—that I’m only lovable for what I can do for other people. I’m still trying to figure out who I am, and trying to figure out who’s the real me, right? So not the former college athlete me, not the mom me, not the hard worker me, and not the trauma survivor me. So my question to you is: How do I release the shame that I feel, find my true self, and step authentically into that in front of others and show up in a fearless way with my real self?

MATTHEW

What is the shame you feel?

CARA

I felt shame, I think, ever since I was a kid. So my brother committed suicide when I was six, in our house. My family basically fell apart, and no one was there for me—to deal with my pain as I was dealing with that. My brother was my best best friend, and then I felt like I had to perform for love, for my dad, and that was the only way I really got his attention. And then I ended up in a 10-year relationship with a narcissist who I have two kids with. I feel proud of myself for leaving, but I feel shame for having stayed for as long as I did.

MATTHEW

Thank you. So, you were a child who had nowhere to take that emotion—had no guidance. You realize a child needs . . . in order for that situation to not be something that they spend many years trying to process and deal with in unproductive ways, needs amazing guidance. You didn’t just not get amazing guidance. You had really bad support—completely absent support. More than that, this invalidation: “I’m not allowed to process this. I can’t deal with this.”

But you were a child, so let’s keep that part really simple. You were a child. Since then, you have been doing the best you could every step of the way.

That shame you feel . . . there are accidents that happen all the time that people can’t predict—that they look back on: “If I’d have only just not left the door open to the house,” “If I’d have only just not left my kids for five minutes in that situation,” etc.

There are situations like that every single day, and it’s just we’re lucky it wasn’t us that day. Should they all feel shame? No, we’re human beings. We do shit. You got into a relationship, and every step of the way in that relationship, you did the best you could in that relationship, and the best you could do for a long time wasn’t being strong enough to leave, because you didn’t have the tools, you didn’t have the resources, you didn’t have the DNA, you didn’t have the childhood, you didn’t have a whole cocktail of things that would have made it possible for you to leave five years sooner.

For you, something really drastic had to happen, and that was a wakeup call. That doesn’t deserve shame. It requires compassion. You have done the best you could. And guess what? Today’s best is better than yesterday’s best, and that’s exciting.

There’s a story you’re telling yourself, and that story is actually getting in the way of your true nature. It’s getting in the way of who you can really be. And honestly, the whole “Who am I?” thing, I don’t know how productive that is. Because who are any of us? What are we? Just a kind of composite of things we’ve gotten good at, books we’ve read, memories, stuff we’ve done in our lives?

We could have been a completely different composite if we’d just read a different book or been called a different name or grown up somewhere different.

I don’t know that that’s as interesting to me as what you can do and the peace that you can feel if you actually let go of this attachment to this identity you formed to yourself, and to your story, because you’ve been beating yourself up for a long time. I know that. I’ve spent my lifetime beating myself up. So has my mom, we’re fucking pros at it, and my journey has been the same as yours. What do I do to stop doing that?

Well, firstly, I realized that so much of me beating myself up is just another story. I can wake up today and I can be whoever I want to be. I can show up however I want to show up.

What if I let go of that baggage, and maybe instead of trying to discover who I am, what if I just made it my mission this year to find peace within myself? I’m just going to find peace within myself, and then I’m going to see what I feel like creating from that place of peace. I’m going to see what I feel like doing from that place of peace. I’m going to see which kinds of relationships I’m interested in from that place of peace, because what you’ll find is what you choose to do and create, who you choose to spend time with, will be completely different from that place of peace than they are from a place of shame. A completely different life comes from that.

CARA

Will that make me feel like I could be more myself and feel more lovable and feel more like I can show up in relationships authentically?

MATTHEW

What does it mean to show up authentically?

CARA
To not be second-guessing what I need to be for everybody else. To just be like, “This is who I am. Take it or leave it.”

MATTHEW
Yes, but who are you? Like, I wake up every day and I know that I want to try to be the best person I can be, right? I mess up all the time. I get agitated too easily, or I get anxious and I make a mistake, or all of those things happen.

But every day, I wake up and I try to just connect to: What does the most loving Matthew want? How does he want to show up? How does he want to treat people? And every day I’m looking for: Is this thing coming from ego and insecurity and greed and fear, or is it just coming from love? How would I show up right now if I were just coming from a place of love—love for myself and love for other people? How would I show up from that state?

And I don’t think you need to worry about discovering who you are. I think you need to worry about losing the shame and reconnecting to: How does Cara show up when she’s actually just coming from a place of love? That’s going to be the difference—not from insecurity, not from “I’m trying to feel whole by getting somebody else,” or “I’m trying to get validated by having someone want me.”

How do I show up if I’m just coming from a place of peace and love? It’s a very different thing, and I don’t want you to be preoccupied with this discovery, because I do think it’s kind of a red herring.

I think the issue is that right now, you’re identifying too much with all of this. You are not your mistakes. Your mistakes arose out of parts of you that were trying to get their needs met. You’re not those mistakes, right? The parts of us that are trying to get their needs met can create a lot of problems in our life, right? But what was behind those things wasn’t bad. It wasn’t evil. It was just something that was trying to be okay. Something was trying to be heard—a need was trying to get met—and you were doing your best in that moment with the tools you had. That’s it. We don’t have to think any more about it than that.

Now what we have to do is for you to start giving yourself the things that all along you’ve been trying to get from everybody else.

I personally don’t want to be defined by who I am now, in this room—a speaker, a coach, or whatever. I don’t want to be defined by those things, because what I’m doing is . . . is that who I am, really? If I do that, then I’m just defining myself by what you will think of me at the end of the day. That’s my worth now.

Well, what if I have a bad day? My worth plummets because you will think less of me today? That can’t be it. What you do isn’t who you are. So you don’t need to figure out: What do I do in life that’s who I am? Right now, it’s about losing the shame and going into the next day of your life from a much more peaceful place. You can’t keep looking backward. We’ve got too much to do now, right? We’ve actually got stuff to do.

And one last thing. Why are we sitting on the floor?

CARA
(laughs) Partly because I wanted to be closer to you and have like, better eye contact, and partly because I felt like, if I was on the floor, I felt more safe, and I would not, like, pass out or something.

MATTHEW
But there was also another element you said: If you could ask for something and it be given to you. So that thing that you wanted given to you, that had to be you giving it to you, right? What if I’d said “no”?

CARA
I would have had a hard time.

MATTHEW

So then I own you.

CARA

I understand what you’re saying.

MATTHEW

Then I own you. Because what you’re saying is that I have complete power over you. I don’t even need to fucking move. In fact, I can sit exactly where I am in that chair and have complete power over you and your emotions.

I don’t want to have that power over you. I don’t want you to give me that kind of power. I don’t want you to give anyone that kind of power. Because if that’s the case, you’ll go to the next relationship seeing if he’ll do the thing that you need him to do, so that you can feel okay.

CARA
And that’s what I’ve done in all my relationships all my life.

MATTHEW

“I just need you to text me back in the next hour so that I know that I’m okay,” right? Whatever that was that you wanted from me, that’s the thing you have to give to yourself.

“I needed to know that if you sat here with me, that that would make me feel safe, because it would make me feel like I could get someone to do something.”

That cannot be where your safety comes from. It has to come from you saying, “What’s the safety I’m looking for outside of myself in the first place? What’s the validation I’m looking for outside of myself in the first place? How do I start giving that to myself?”

And you’ll have examples of it, because you’ll know that there are people in this room who have made huge mistakes in their life, and you don’t think that discounts them from a life where they receive love.

You don’t think they should forever live in shame for their mistakes, right? So what makes you so special that you should just be a shame ball for the rest of your life? Where’s the exceptionalism for you? Does it make sense? You’re a human in this room. We’re all just humans in this room. You’re another one.

Why does it make sense you would treat you worse? And I don’t know if you’ve read my new book, but the whole point is, we’re all just humans, but the only difference is, your job isn’t to look after these humans for the rest of your life, or to make them happy for the rest of your life. Your job is to do that for you.

The only thing that’s really different about you is that you’re the one who has that job, so time to start doing that job. Cara, thank you. I really enjoyed this interaction.

CARA
Thank you. I really appreciate it.

MATTHEW

I think community is this ingredient that we get to foster in our lives. And if we build a strong community with like-minded people—if we find our people, and we form real, authentic bonds with those people, then it becomes this great ingredient in our life. What I love about this is that Club 320, no matter what, they have these connections they’re formed with each other.

Thank you so much for watching. Leave me a comment and let me know what part of Cara’s story resonated most with you. Also, every Friday now, I write a personal advice email to my community on my mailing list. It is, I think, one of the best things I do every week. It’s free. You can join at The3Relationships.com.

It will take you 10 seconds to join, and then you can look forward to my private email this Friday. Every week, I give advice on finding love, getting over heartbreak, managing our emotions, improving our confidence. It’s really practical. It’s filled with free, valuable information. And I also write things in this email that are quite personal to me that I don’t write anywhere else, and this is the only place to access it. So if you want to get this email from me straight into your inbox every Friday, all you need to do is sign up. It’ll take you 10 seconds at The3Relationships.com, and I’ll see you in your inbox this Friday. Be well and love life.

The post How to Heal From a Narcissistic Relationship appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Have you ever wondered how you can move on from someone you never dated? Perhaps you’ve been pining for them for months (or even years) . . . hoping they’ll finally notice you and see your value.

This great question is one of 7 I answer in today’s new video, based on the comments you left me last week. I also dig into topics like:

• What’s the best way to start a long-distance relationship?
• What’s your dating advice for people over 40?
• Why did they change their mind about being ready for a relationship?

Don’t miss these, and once you’re done, be sure to leave a comment with a question you’d like me to answer next time!

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the channel. I am Matthew Hussey, a coach specializing in confidence and relational intelligence, and I’m widely known for helping people find love. Last week, I answered a whole bunch of questions that you had sent in and left in the comments, and we thought we’d do a Part 2 of that video by having me do the same thing this week.

Before we get into the video, I would really appreciate if you would like this video, subscribe to the channel, and hit the notification bell, so that you do not miss the next video when it comes out.

Also, I made a commitment a long time ago to deliver free content for everybody on an ongoing basis. And one of the places I do that, in addition to this YouTube channel, is my ongoing newsletter where I am sending out a free newsletter full of advice, practical wisdom, and ideas that could help you find love or heal from lost love every Friday. And many of you have already signed up. It’s completely free. So, if you haven’t already, it’s at The3Relationships.com.

Kelly says, “What are your top tips to starting a long-distance relationship?”

Firstly, be very careful about when you start calling it a relationship. There’s nothing wrong with meeting someone online, through the apps, someone long distance, and having this fun, flirtatious connection that starts to build. But in that time period, it probably isn’t the right thing to call it a relationship unless you’ve explicitly had that conversation. But it would be strange if you had it too soon. It could even be a red flag if someone is saying that to you too soon. But after a certain period, when you have that desire to start calling it a relationship, don’t let the desire turn into a reality in your mind that you’re now in a relationship when the two of you have never actually had that conversation.

Over the years, I’ve watched many, many hundreds of people give to this situation like it’s a relationship—be exclusive, give time, give energy, give effort, make trips—when the other person is not behaving like they’re in a relationship at all. And they never really had that conversation. It just became this assumption.

If you feel you’re in a relationship, I would start by having the conversation, so that you’re both on the same terms: “Hey, do we both feel the same way? For me to continue giving to this, it would have to be on the basis that we’re really giving this a try as a relationship, and that it’s an exclusive one.”

And once you’ve set the ground rules for that—okay, both of you have said yes to that. Now, you’re in a long-distance relationship. And at that point, it becomes: How do we navigate the difficulty of something that feels wholly unnatural, which is, we’re trying to have an intimate relationship at a geographical distance?

Well, firstly, there has to be a time on the horizon where you know you’re going to see each other. You’ve got to have something to look forward to. And as the relationship progresses, I would argue that there needs to be some kind of a vision for how you’re going to solve that issue in a sustainable way. What does this look like in a year, in two years? Are we actually going to be in the same place?

That doesn’t have to happen on Day 1, but there does gradually start to have to be a vision for: How does this problem get solved? Otherwise, we’re in a relationship where neither of us are actually taking on the reality that we haven’t solved it, and maybe we haven’t solved it because neither one of us is actually willing to do what it takes to permanently solve this situation.

In the meantime, when you’re trying to navigate it, I would say mixing up the energy that we bring to the table. It’s very easy for us to say, “I am long distance, so the kind of energy I give when I’m in the same room as someone, especially romantically, is off the table. Instead, I’m just going to do what I can do, which is to have very long in-depth conversations.”

But if you think of any relationship where all it is, is one note of very long, in-depth conversations, eventually, it’s going to get boring. It’s going to get stale. It’s going to feel staid.

So, we have to mix up our energy. Are you being flirtatious? Are you still bringing your sexuality to the table, obviously, in ways that feel safe to you? Sending nudes and things like that represent real challenges and risks when it comes to potentially breaking up with someone or someone you can’t trust. That’s a whole different subject. But we’re talking about still bringing your sexual energy to the table, still bringing your playful energy to the table.

Can you have a 60-second funny voice note or call AND three hours spending the evening together, talking for that long? Can you be both?

The last thing I’ll say about this is: there’s being together in conversation and there’s being together in company. When you think about a relationship, sometimes you’re having conversation, and that’s quality time. Other times, you’re just in company with someone. You’re sitting next to each other on a sofa, reading books or watching a movie. It would be hard work if quality time always meant being in conversation.

If someone learns that the only way to connect with you is to have conversations with you, they’re going to start to feel the stakes are really high any time they want to be with you or around you, because it’s going to involve trying to have a conversation, and at a certain point, you will run out of things to talk about. That’s just natural.

So it might be time to be in company with them. That might mean hitting play on a movie at the same time from a long distance and watching a movie together. And then talking about the movie afterward. Don’t just be in conversation. Pick times to be in company, and that will lower the stakes for the time that you spend together. It also means that time spent together doesn’t always have to mean time away from other obligations and responsibilities that both of you have.

Glori says, “Do you see a connection between the physical pain you endured and the newfound level of love and vulnerability you orient from?”

Well, firstly, that’s a lovely compliment. Thank you. For those of you who don’t know, I write in my new book, Love Life, about my own journey with physical chronic pain, and how it lasted for many years. Part of that I still have, so it hasn’t completely gone away. It certainly did kind of crack me open. I think every challenge we have, every challenge I’ve ever had in life, has been an invitation to a greater degree of compassion, not just for myself, but for other people. I think every time we go through a challenge, we get more connected to what other people go through in life if we can widen our lens and not just see it as our pain. Because of course, none of our pain is original. Other people have experienced it—are experiencing it.

I always find that any challenge gives me a window into the challenges that other people have faced or are facing. That’s made me a more compassionate, loving, humble person every single time. My chronic pain was, I suppose, in some ways, my first encounter with something that truly made me miserable that I didn’t know how to change. I didn’t know how to make it go away. And I had to change my relationship with it. That was one of the most humbling experiences of my entire life. It was also, in many ways—and I’m not someone who throws this word around lightly—it was a spiritual experience to come to a place of acceptance with that.

So, yes. I don’t think it’s the only thing that’s made me loving and vulnerable, but I do think it gave me access to a depth that I hadn’t had access to before when I felt like I could always fix my problems. In this case, I couldn’t fix it. I had to change the impact it was having on me by changing my relationship with the challenge itself.

Marie says, “Why am I so obsessed with looking for things wrong in my relationships? Things that will hurt my heart, like looking at their exes on social media and then overanalyzing everything.”

So, on one hand, it might be that there’s a familiarity for you in looking for those kinds of things—that simply sitting back and enjoying the peace you might feel right now is deeply uncomfortable and unfamiliar, which is why it’s uncomfortable. Instead, going and looking for something that creates drama gives you something to feel jealous about, gives you something to feel insecure about. It’s much more familiar. And we’re drawn to what’s familiar—not necessarily to what makes us happy.

I want you to imagine that so far in life, your behavior in dating has been like an old vinyl record. And the groove in that vinyl that plays the song a certain way has been long since established.

So when you go on another date or when you start seeing someone you like, what happens is you put the needle on that record, and that record starts to play, because it’s the groove you established a long time ago.

You don’t necessarily have access to a different record to play right now, because you haven’t established those grooves. But you can. It requires conscious practice. It requires an awareness of, “Oh, I’m going to look at this person’s profile right now and dig deep into who they’ve been with before, or what their exes are like, or what they have that I don’t” as a kind of compulsion, because that’s the record I’ve been used to playing. I’m used to feeling these feelings of jealousy, of anxiety, of tension. I’m not used to not doing that and feeling a sense of peace.

But if I become aware as I’m about to do it—that that’s a behavior I feel drawn to not because they’re doing anything underhanded or behaving badly or giving me reasons to be suspicious, but because that’s the way the record plays for me. That’s the groove I’ve worn in over time.

When we get conscious of that, we become able to take a different path. And it may be that that path in the past served a need, maybe the need to feel safe, and as a result, that hypervigilance that’s had you looking for problems so you can go and meet them (instead of them surprising you) is something that’s made you feel safe. It’s felt like a form of control. But maybe these days, you’re ready to accomplish a feeling of safety in a new and more productive way—for example, in just having trust in yourself, that if anything were to come to light that would reveal this person wasn’t a good partner, you would be able to walk away, which means you don’t need to anticipate every problem.

You just need to show up as the best version of you and pay attention to the present and to what you’re actually seeing from this person, not trying to anticipate everything they could be or do in the future.

Grizle says, “I would love to hear more tips and advice for dating in our 40s and 50s. Everything seems to be targeted toward the younger generation. Why is it so hard to find love again, and what can we do to become our best self to attract a partner?”

Look, I have always maintained that the things I say are applicable at every age. I don’t think that, even when I’m talking about things like flirting, often people think, “Oh, you’re talking to younger people there.”

But of course, what makes us attractive at any age is the ability to both be sincere, but also be playful—the ability to be flirtatious, to not lose that energy.

I would challenge you to ask yourself: “What is the part of what Matthew is saying that I don’t think applies beyond a certain age?” Because I think the fundamentals apply at any age. If you’re in your 50s and you have come out of a long-term relationship or a divorce, or perhaps you’ve just struggled to meet someone in your life, the fundamentals are the same: How active is our life? Is it the kind of life that brings us into contact with other people?

A lot of the time, the older we get, the more our life contracts. We get into these routines and rhythms that can become quite staid. They’re very comfortable to us, but they may not be the kinds of routines that actually engage us socially with people we don’t already know.

Do our lives include communities, environments, events that bring us into contact with new people? Are we being brave in those areas? Because it does require some bravery. It’s hard.

The last thing I would ever tell you is that it’s easy, because the reality is, many people do experience feeling more invisible, feeling like they don’t have nearly the same amount of attention they had at a different stage of their life.

I think for that reason, we have to find ways of enjoying the process, because otherwise, we’ll never do the things that bring us into contact with opportunity. What are the activities that I might like to do regardless of whether I meet someone . . . but by doing those activities, I might actually meet someone? What other ways I could engineer my life to build myself into more new communities where I could meet new single friends? Where I could meet different types of people than maybe I’ve encountered in the past by not over-relying on only one thing, like a dating app?

You know, it’s very tempting to get into the comfort of a dating app. But then it can be very demoralizing when we find we’re not getting matches, or the kinds of people that are matching with us are sleazy or they’re not our type of person or they’re scamming us, which is very common these days. It can be extremely demoralizing, which is why I say you can do those things, but don’t make it your only source of new people in your life. That’s what we do, again, from a place of comfort and not actually putting ourselves out there in the real world.

I do empathize with what you’re feeling and what you’re going through. It’s hard when we’re not where we want to be at a certain stage in our life, and we feel like it’s gotten harder in the process. But I also want you to entertain the idea that at least a part of that is—not all of it, because some of that difficulty is real—but at least a part of it may be a story we’re telling ourselves about how it’s impossible, it’s never going to happen, or no one is ever going to want us. Instead, consider the idea that if you just woke up into your body right now at the age you are, and you felt the desire to meet someone without any of the baggage of the past, you might take a different approach and have a different energy toward going out there and meeting someone. And that energy might be the reason you do meet someone.

Min says, “How to move on from someone you have never dated? Feelings for him are so strong that it feels like something is dying inside.”

I’ve spoken about this at length in my book, Love Life. For anyone who hasn’t got a copy, I strongly advise that you read Chapter 2: “How to Tell Love Stories.” Because in it, I talk about the value we’re often placing on the wrong things—that a real relationship is so much more than the story we invent about how important a person is.

I have a much more backward-looking approach for relationships than forward-looking. In other words, a forward-looking approach is: Look at all the potential for this person. Look at all the potential for how happy they would make me. Look at what we could be together. And that is, by definition, a projection of a future that does not exist. So we could be right, I guess, but we’re only right if that future that we’ve anticipated actually happens. If it doesn’t happen, then we were wrong about how important this person was.

Whereas a backward-looking approach is saying: “Look at how extraordinary this person is who is in my life—all the ways they have shown up for me. Look at what we’ve built together. Wow, this is an important relationship. Wow, this is an important person in my life.”

And you don’t need your imagination for that exercise. You’re saying it because it’s true, because those are the facts, and I would argue that in order for you to feel like something is dying inside right now, you need a lot of imagination, because there’s an imagined idea of how important this person is in your life when they’re not living up to that idea at all, or the two of you would actually be in a thoroughly-fulfilling relationship with each other.

Once you realize that your pain is not actually coming from the importance of this person, but from the importance of the story in your mind, you can start to see that story for what it is—a story—and separate from it and observe it, the same way we do with our thoughts and mindfulness practices. And start to realize that the story is making it painful, not the reality.

Ana says, “Why was a guy telling me from the beginning that he wants something serious with me, and after two and a half months, all of a sudden, he said he is not ready for a relationship?”

Well, there could be many reasons for that. Maybe he got overexcited in the beginning and couldn’t back it up. It might be that he himself got excited about the possibility of a relationship, but the reality of a relationship was something he wasn’t really ready for. In which case, after two and a half months, he did you a giant favor, because it’s better that you learn that fact two and a half months in rather than a year in.

That’s the case for a lot of people: They get excited in the beginning—and it’s a sign of real immaturity. It can also be a sign of manipulation. Of course, their perspective is: “I tell you I want something serious even when I don’t, because I just want to get something from you.” But like I said, it can also be a sign of immaturity: “I feel so strongly. I’ve never felt like this. I haven’t felt like this in such a long time. You make me feel amazing. I want something serious with you.”

Especially if he felt like you would only be into him if he wanted something serious, and maybe felt you’d pull away a little bit. And he was like, “No, no, no. I want something serious with you. I can’t lose you.”

There’s an immaturity to that if the reality is he’s not available for a real relationship when it comes down to it. He starts noticing that a real relationship means that he actually has to get to know you, not just your projection. He has to be known. He has to actually share more about himself instead of just being the heroic version of himself.

When someone is immature about love and isn’t ready for an actual relationship, just a feeling of a relationship . . . they may initially get excited and then when those things start presenting themselves, when having a relationship actually requires a few calories, all of a sudden, they get completely overwhelmed by the reality of a relationship. And it sounds like two and a half months in, either he had been in manipulation mode or he had been very immature about his version of love or his idea of love. And he couldn’t then back that up when the reality of a relationship presented itself.

The other alternative is that during those two and a half months, he discovered that it wasn’t right for him, for whatever reason. That doesn’t mean it has anything to do with you. There can be many, many reasons why something isn’t right for someone that aren’t to do with you. And it was easier to tell you that it turns out, he wasn’t ready for a relationship, and to tell you he didn’t want a relationship with you.

The important thing for you to realize is that someone has made their intentions clear. All you need to do is look at the situation and go, “Is there anything I would like to do differently next time? Did I bring my best self to the table?” And if the answer is, “No, I didn’t. I’d like to do some things differently next time,” then this was a gift in giving you that insight. And if the answer is, “No, I brought my best to the table. This person just misled me about their intentions for a relationship or decided I wasn’t right for that relationship,” then you need to grieve the disappointment and keep moving forward, because the right person for you will last longer than two and a half months.

And Ana, if you haven’t already, I would suggest that you go and check out Dating With Results. It’s a free training that I put together to help you seek out healthy, mature people who are ready for a real relationship, avoid the people who are not, see the early warning signs that someone is not, and have the conversations along the way that actually lead to something real.

For anyone out there dating right now, if you want to date productively, if you don’t want to waste your time, if you want to find the kind of love you’ve always been looking for instead of just more casual dating or something that presents as very exciting but then disappears as quickly as it came, this will be one of the most valuable hours you could spend for your love life. And it’s free.

All right. There seems to be one more question. This one is from Audrey Hussey, who asks: “Who is more tidy, you or me?”

It’s definitely me. I don’t—she thinks that she’s more—she has a strange perception of herself as a more tidy person. What makes you think you’re more tidy?

AUDREY HUSSEY

I tidy up more than you do.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

No, you don’t.

AUDREY HUSSEY

I do.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

I’m way more—I do way more to—do I? I don’t want to say anything that isn’t true. I’m always tidying up after you. In our bathroom, your makeup is always everywhere. And I always put it back in the bag and put it there because every time we have a nice, clean bathroom, and your makeup is just—you just leave it out. Do you think it just magically goes back in the bag? Do you think you have a magic makeup bag?

AUDREY HUSSEY

You’re my magic makeup bag.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

You’re right. I’m your magic makeup bag. There you have it, folks. She’s not untidy. But I do more to tidy up after you than you do to tidy up after me. And that is a fact. And you could ask anyone, literally, anyone.

JEREMY

Yeah, but there’s a difference between who tidies up as they go, versus letting it all pile up . . .

AUDREY HUSSEY

You may do the makeup; I do everything else.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Whose side are you on, Jeremy? Why are you defending this? (laughs)

Well, join us sometime in the future when we do this again, and Audrey uses this very public forum to air out her own personal grievances with me.

Leave us a comment, so that I can read them, because I like reading your comments on our videos. And I will see you soon.

The post Long Distance Relationship? AVOID This Mistake appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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“How can you tell the difference between love bombing and genuine interest?”

This is just one question out of 10 that I answer in today’s rapid-fire Q&A video, which also includes answers to:

• “What Dating Advice Would You Give to Your 16-Year-Old Self?”
• “When Did You Last Cry?”
• “How Can I Get Over the Shame of Having Stayed Too Long in a Relationship?”
• “Is It Worth Reaching Back Out to an Ex Who May Have Changed?”

. . . and much more.

It was super fun to read and answer all your questions. Be sure to leave me a comment with any questions you might have for part 2!

Well, well, well. Here we go again. Another YouTube video after 17 years of making YouTube videos, and I’m still going. But every now and again, we need to mix things up and do something a little different. So today, we are going to answer some questions. I put the word out on my Instagram at @TheMatthewHussey and said, “What do you want to ask me? Love life-related, confidence-related, life-related? What do you want to ask me about me?” And so, we picked some questions. I haven’t actually seen most of these questions. So, we’ll see how I do on the fly. I’ll get through as many as possible in the time that we have.

And also, if you haven’t already, join my newsletter, because if you like free stuff like this video you’re watching right now, every Friday, I’m releasing a new newsletter, a written open letter from me to you with ideas, philosophies, strategies—general wisdom that I think could actually help you in the Three Relationships in your life that matter the most—your relationship with yourself, your relationship with life, and your relationship with other people. It’s at The3Relationships.com. It’s free. And I’ll see you in your inbox this Friday.

On to the questions. Our first question is from Jenny, who says, “Hi, what are three things you would say to your 16-year-old self about relationships?”

Three things that I would say to my 16-year-old self. Let me think of one thing first. I probably would have said to myself: “Relationships will happen. You’ll have them. When someone comes along, it’s not your last opportunity at a relationship. So if someone comes along and they seem to represent a few things that you like, it doesn’t mean that you have to jump into a relationship with that person immediately because no one else will ever come along. You can take your time. You can pay attention to the things that actually aren’t right about that relationship, maybe even grounds to not have that relationship. You don’t have to come from a place of scarcity that everyone you moderately like, you need to jump into a relationship with because you may never get another one.”

I also sort of think that those relationships were important for me to have because I learned a lot from being in relationships at a time in my life where I was just getting experience. Didn’t you learn a lot from that time in your life too, having some relationships that weren’t right for you? And we don’t maybe think of them like this at the time, but they’re sorta practice relationships, aren’t they, for later on? So, I don’t even know if I want my 16-year-old self to follow that advice.

Let’s move on to the next question. “When did you last cry?”

I almost cried yesterday because Audrey brought up a film that we watched together when we were on our honeymoon in Japan. The film is called A Silent Voice. And it’s a film about a teenage boy who hates himself because he bullied a deaf girl. And he hates who he was and he hates what he did to her. And the movie is about how he evolves as a person, but even though he’s evolved to be a better person, he still can’t stop hating himself. The movie follows that journey as well as this young girl’s journey. And it is just—Audrey was telling me about it. And then as she started telling me about it, I started to get teary. And so, that was that.

So, that was probably the last time I almost cried. I was on the verge of crying. If you haven’t seen it, A Silent Voice is a Japanese anime movie that is just beautiful.

Sven says, “I have heard so many sayings along the lines of ‘don’t read the same chapter twice, as the ending will still be the same.’ But people change. So, I’m wondering if it’s worth reaching back out to someone who I briefly dated and had an amazing connection/chemistry with who just ‘wasn’t ready for a relationship’ . . . after, let’s say, a year or so has passed. I’m aware that it’s crucial for an individual to have moved on way before reaching back out to allow themselves clarity in making this decision, but I’m wondering what you’d suggest.”

So they had an amazing connection with this person who said they weren’t ready for a relationship. Now, a year or so has passed.

I worry about this one because, look, is it possible that someone has changed? Yes. Maybe they didn’t want a relationship and now, they do want a relationship, and you reaching out at this moment is suddenly going to put you back on their mind in a way where they go, “Yes, I remember this person from a year ago. Now, that I want a relationship, they could be right for me.”

But I also know that so many people say they’re not ready for a relationship as an excuse because they just don’t want more with a person. And we shouldn’t necessarily take that personally, because there are all sorts of reasons why someone doesn’t want more with us that have nothing to do with us or aren’t related to things we need to worry about changing or any of that. We’re not right for a lot of people and that’s fine. That’s the natural order of things is that we’re not right for a lot of people. We shouldn’t be. We’re a unique individual. We are right for a certain group of people, and that’s a small percentage, most likely, especially if we’re being ourselves.

So don’t take it personally if someone doesn’t want you. But remember, when someone says they’re not ready for a relationship, it might be code for: “I just don’t see it with you, and this is the best thing I can come up with right now for allowing me to part ways with you.”

So we have to be a bit careful a year later of looking at that, taking it at face value, and saying, “Maybe they’ve shifted and the only reason, the only barrier that was getting in the way a year ago, was that they didn’t want a relationship, and maybe they do want a relationship now, and they’re going to want it with me.”

I have to assume that if they felt that you were perfect for them back then, but they just didn’t want a relationship, and that was the only thing standing in the way of you and them and your perfect life together . . . and now, they want a relationship, you would be the first person to come to mind, and they would already be calling you. If they haven’t, then it feels much more likely to me that what you’re doing is constructing a story that allows you to reach back out to someone that you still hold a candle for because you’re telling yourself a story of potential instead of there actually being potential.

My vote would be, don’t reach out to this person. Move on and find someone where the reality is that they like you, and they’re ready for a relationship. Not that you have to come up with this entire narrative that has to make sense for you to reach back out to them. I worry that reaching back out to them just sets you up for another disappointment that you’ve already experienced with this person.

Linny says, “What is the difference between love bombing and genuine interest?”

Love bombing and genuine interest. I think, actually, your question gets at the heart of what can be really challenging: When someone in the beginning of the dating phase starts really showing a lot of interest in us, how reliable is that as an indicator of whether their interest is going to hold, whether they have real potential, whether they really like us for us? Or is what they’re experiencing some kind of projection that they’ve put on us? Have they idealized us in really unhealthy ways? Are they trying to manipulate us in ways that are more insidious to try to get us to give more than we reasonably should at this stage?

It’s quite possible, for example, that someone says to us, “I like you so much,” and it’s coming from a place of genuine feeling of, “I like you so much.” It’s also possible that someone might say that because they really want to egg you on to give them a lot more, they’re trying to manipulate the situation.

I think the truth is, we only really know someone’s intentions over time, which is why instead of playing detective on whether someone is love bombing you or not, you dictate the pace yourself, take it slower, and see if their interest is consistent or if it comes in fits and starts.

I will say this, though, if someone is being incredibly grandiose and telling you things like, “I love you: I’ve heard from people I coach that people have said things to them like, “I love you” after just a few hours of talking in their first conversation. “I really want to come and see you.” “I feel like you’re the right person for me.”

When people say things like that in the beginning, either they have this wildly immature version of love that they adhere to, which is a major red flag, or they are someone who is scamming you or is trying to manipulate you into giving way more than you should.

Joy says, “How do I forgive myself and stop feeling shame for having stayed too long in an unhealthy marriage?” I mean, welcome to the club of people who felt like they stayed in something, in any area of life, for too long. Hands up if you felt like you stayed in a job longer than you should have. So many people. Leave a comment if that’s you.

How many of us have stayed in a relationship for too long knowing it wasn’t the right relationship, but we were too frightened to leave because we were worried we wouldn’t be okay if we were on our own—that we would never meet anyone else? And of course, that’s compounded when you’re in a marriage, and you have that extra level of commitment that you’ve made. It makes it even harder to leave a situation like that, to admit that, “This is the wrong relationship. I shouldn’t be here anymore.”

That’s an intensely human thing. What I see in you, Joy, is a human being, a person who has lived, a person who has gone out there, taken a swing, tried for something. You could have just stayed in your bedroom and met no one. Instead, you went out there, you took a swing. You met someone, you took a swing at a lifelong relationship, and it didn’t work out. And you didn’t leave the moment you realized that it wasn’t working out.

Well, welcome to the club. It takes a long time to get up the courage for many people, for most of us, to do something that hard. And guess what? It wouldn’t take you as long the next time around, right? I would bet that you wouldn’t walk straight into a marriage with someone like that again, and I would also bet that if you were dating someone like that again, you’d see the signs quicker, and you’d act faster. But those are only things you’d be able to do because of the experience you’ve already had. You don’t get to be the person you are today with the wisdom you have today without having been the person you were then.

To wish that you were who you are today then, it’s science fiction. You don’t get to be who you are today without having taken as much time as you did then. And is there something frustrating about the time that we lost? Is there sometimes something tragic about how long it takes us to come to these conclusions?

Of course there is. If only we could come to them faster. But guess what? We didn’t, because that’s life, and you know what? You’ll do it again. There will be an area of your life where you’ll do it again. It might not even be your love life. It might be a different area. But there’ll be an area where you sit on a decision too long, where you take too long to figure something out, where you lose something as a result, whether it’s time or finances or anything that you value. It will happen again. And that’s okay too, because that’s part of living. We make these mistakes. Give yourself a break. You’re in good company.

Mlle. Francophile says, “What’s your take on rumors? I was told about rumors from different people that didn’t know about [my partner and me], and I confronted him. We all make mistakes, and I’m of the opinion that if I wasn’t there to see it for myself, why would I trust what anyone else says? I care about honesty and I asked him to let me know if these rumors are true or not. And he said no, they’re not. On the other hand, rumors don’t really come out of nowhere. I’m a little torn here. If he knows that, for me, something like this would be considered in the past, would he still deny it, so that I don’t think any worse of him?”

This is a tricky one. I’m inclined to say, do you trust the source? There’s real merit to what you’re saying that in these social settings, rumors often don’t come from nowhere. And they might, but do you want to stake your time, your energy, your emotions on the idea that they have just come out of nowhere?

If I were in your shoes, I think it would be a kind of red flag for me. It might not be a red flag that makes us completely turn and run the other way. But it’s almost the kind of red flag that if we’re going to continue, we need to put a pin in that information and go, “I’m going to let this play out with you and be very honest with myself about how you’re coming across, about how you’re showing up, about whether your actions align with your words, whether you seem to be a person of integrity, whether you are reliable, whether you’re consistent, and I’m going to be really real. I’m not going to let my emotions color what I think about you and your behavior. I’m going to pay real attention to who you really are and see whether that aligns with what I’ve heard.”

But I do think that if you’re going to proceed, you have to go in in a very sober way, understanding that there may be truth to these things, and that while you don’t need to play detective, you do need to be honest with yourself about whether what you’re seeing actually aligns with those rumors.

Penny says, “Being a love expert yourself, do you still face challenges in your own relationship?”

I hate the idea of being a love expert. What does an expert in love even mean? I don’t know. I don’t feel like a love expert, but I’ve been doing this for a long time and I like the idea that what I’ve learned is helpful to people. Of course I still have challenges in my relationship. I always say that even in healthy relationships, and I consider myself to be in a really healthy relationship, when people post things on Instagram, you’re still not seeing everything in that relationship.

When we look at people’s relationships online, we’re not just seeing relationships that are incredibly unhealthy posing as really happy relationships. We’re also seeing really healthy relationships that are only showing you the healthy parts of the relationship. They’re not showing you the argument they had last night, because why would they? That would be oversharing.

So, yeah, Audrey and I have arguments. We have our frictions. We have our tensions. I think that what has been our saving grace, both of us, is that we’re really, really good communicators. We’re able to be honest with each other. We’re able to talk vulnerably with each other without just freezing each other out.

We have a really good recovery time on arguments. I think of recovery time a lot. What’s your recovery time? What’s the half-life of an argument you have? Does it take three days to get over it, or is it something that you can get over in 30 minutes? And if you have more tools, you are able to get over these things quicker together. You can navigate—I think the better you are at communicating, the more you can see the landmines in the argument before you step on them, and decide not to step on them.

“I know if I say that thing, it is going to make this 10 times worse.”

“I know that my ego here is going to get in the way of me resolving this conversation with this person I love.”

That’s another landmine, is ego. So, over time, I’ve gotten better at seeing those landmines and being like, “I’m not going to step there. That’s going to make things worse. And I am going to step here because that’s going to make things better?”

“Mythundr” says, “Why does an ex almost always return with the crystal-clear assumption that we’d be thrilled to have him back in our lives? Let’s just say, I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, and he’s got a lot of gall to think that I would welcome him back with open arms.”

I mean, I don’t know. Maybe he does always think that he’s going to be able to waltz back into your life because the partners he’s picked in the past have always allowed him to do that. Maybe there’s an element of narcissism in him that says, “I’m always wanted back and you’ll want me back too.” So the idea of you saying “no” to him is just not even a reality for him.

While I don’t know specifically why he seems to assume so boldly that you will absolutely take him back, it’s very common for people to come back. I get asked all the time, “Why do men always come back?”

I think the answer is because it’s easier. People take the path of least resistance. And when they go out there into the world, looking for someone else, who knows what they’re looking for? They think they’re looking for this thing, or this thing that’s different from you, or they just think that they’re going to be happier if they’re single, and if they’re able to play the field, or whatever is the reason.

Very quickly, when people hit any kind of a roadblock of loneliness or fear that they’re not going to find someone . . . such as a difficult weekend where someone else isn’t texting them back . . . whatever it may be, the path of least resistance becomes: This person over here who I already know, who accepted me once, who wanted me, who didn’t want to break up with me even though I broke up with them, it feels like a pretty good chance that if I reach out to them, I’m going to get attention again.

And by the way, they’re often right. They do get attention again from that person. They do get welcomed with open arms by that person.

So a lot of people learn that it’s not just the path of least resistance in their mind, but in reality, their exes are often the path of least resistance because their exes, if they haven’t gone on to meet someone else, if they’re having a lonely time, if they’re struggling with it, will not view them coming back as weak or selfish, but instead, will view it romantically, and that’s, in a sense, what they’re relying on, that you will view them coming back romantically instead of cynically.

Piece of advice for everyone out there: Remember, if an ex comes back, they better be offering something different than when you knew them before.

Butterfly & Rose says, “What happened to the daily newsletter that you promised in one of your live sessions?”

I did not promise a daily newsletter. I promised a weekly newsletter every Friday. I said I am going to do a new thing where every Friday, I release, I send to you, a brand-new newsletter, handwritten by me on a laptop that I send to you.

I don’t think I ever mentioned a daily newsletter, did I? Jeremy, have I ever said daily? That’s madness. You wouldn’t have time to read a daily newsletter from me anyway. Let’s face it: Weekly is enough.

Shanie says, “When are you coming to Australia?”

Well, I am not coming to Australia anytime soon. Where I am going is Florida in September for my Retreat. For anyone who wants to join me there, go to mhretreat.com. We actually don’t have nearly as many spaces as we normally do. By this point, there’s only 50 left, my team tells me. So, if you want to come and join us, go to mhretreat.com. Come from Australia to Florida, and we’ll be together for six days.

Thank you so much for watching this video, everyone. I’m going to make this a two-parter because I have a lot more questions I want to get to. So if you didn’t get your question answered, ask it in the comments below, and I’ll pick a new batch to do in the next video. Let me know if you enjoyed this format. And don’t forget to like this video, subscribe to the channel, and hit the notification bell so that you’ll get notified the next time the video comes out. And leave me a comment. I’m going to read them.

Thank you so much, everyone. Be well and love life.

The post Why They ALWAYS Come Back + How to Reach Out After It Ends appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Is love enough to keep a relationship going?

You may have asked yourself this question when you’ve faced a difficult breakup. In today’s video, I go deep on this question, and talk about 7 compatibility tests that can help determine whether your relationship will last.

These are some of the most underrated qualities in a partner, and after watching, you’ll never look at compatibility the same way again . . .

Why isn’t love enough when it comes to finding a long-term relationship? In my new book, Love Life, I talk about how compatibility is an essential ingredient of a long-term relationship, and how many of us love someone we do not have compatibility with.

In this video, I wanted to talk about what compatibility actually looks like by going into seven key areas of compatibility. As I go through each of these areas, I want you to think to yourself: “Are we compatible in these ways, or am I just in love with them?”

Number one—are your goals compatible? In other words, do you want the same things as this person? Do they want the same things as you? Do you want marriage and they also want marriage in their future? Do you want kids and they also want kids in their future? Do both of you want to continue living where you live now, or do you want to move to a different city?

Wanting the same things is highly underrated when it comes to the dating process. So many of us focus on attraction, how great we feel in someone’s company, but we don’t actually focus on the fact that someone is telling us that they want very different things than we do. And if that’s the case, there is a real danger that over time, this person is going to make us incredibly unhappy.

Number two—the timing of our goals. In other words, if we want the same things, do we want the same things on the same timeline?

Now, people aren’t exactly aligned all the time. There are times where you might say, “I would like to get married in the next year,” and this person says, “I’d like to be married in the next two years.”

It might be the case that one person wants a family now and another person wants a family a little way into the future. And in some of these cases, these timings can be resolved, because ultimately, neither one is going to have to truly sacrifice their ultimate vision. You’re going to be able to both achieve this thing that you want, and maybe you meet in the middle somewhere on your timelines. There’s a little sacrifice here or there. Or maybe just one person makes a sacrifice, but it’s not that big of a deal because you end up in the same place anyway.

But sometimes, our timings with someone are so different that being with this person risks too big of a gap in waiting for what you really want in life—too much delaying of your happiness, of the things that are important to you, or in some cases, it might mean that you miss your window altogether.

I mean, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where you’re 10 years older than someone and you have this incredible attraction, and you really love each other, and you want to be together, but you want children in the next couple of years because your biology dictates that you’re going to have to if you want to have a good chance at that happening, and this person wants children in seven years. And if that’s the case, you might both want the same things, but on completely incompatible timelines.

So it’s not that what you want is incompatible. It’s when you want it that is incompatible. And again, we have to be very honest with ourselves. If what I want is something that’s fundamental to my happiness, then no matter how much I love this person, if their timeline robs me of something that for me is a non-negotiable for my happiness, then we are still ultimately not right for each other.

Number three—are our lifestyles compatible? Am I a giant introvert and they are a giant extrovert and it means that the lives we want to live on a daily basis are completely different?

Of course, there are many relationships that work where one person is more extroverted or introverted, but if you are with an extrovert who wants to go out all the time and has no understanding of the fact that you want to stay in sometimes and you don’t want to go out as much as they do, then you’re going to have an area of constant conflict.

Are you extraordinarily messy and they are extraordinarily tidy? Can you negotiate the differences that you both experience there, or is it a constant source of stress and resentment? Are they a workaholic and you’re someone who works to live? And the hours they work and their commitment to their job or their business is something that you’ll never be able to truly understand or get on board with?

Now, not all of these differences on the surface are a reflection of fundamental incompatibility. We can see someone else living a certain way and be inspired by it. The introvert can realize there’s a real value to getting out of the house and being around people. The extrovert can learn that there’s a value to silence and being in their own company. It can be the case that the tidy person realizes they take everything a little too seriously, or the messy person realizes there’s a value to being more organized. The workaholic realizes it’s good to have a life outside of work, and their partner helps them do that. Or the person who doesn’t care about work at all realizes the value in having some goals and starts to push themselves in new ways.

Sometimes differences on the surface can reveal that we’re inspired by our differences, and we can even find ourselves beginning to talk more of the same language. Or our differences reveal fundamental deeper incompatibility because when those differences and the tensions that arise from those differences come about, what they show us is that we do not speak the same language at all. We don’t understand each other, we don’t have any desire or any ability to make progress in these areas, and these areas will always be a source of frustration, resentment, and even contempt long into the future.

Number four—do you make a great team when it comes to hard times in life or arguments between the two of you?

Often, people have such different styles when it comes to these things that it makes them incompatible. When the shit hits the fan in life, one person goes into a very resilient and proactive place, and tries to see the best of it, and the other person is unresourceful or doesn’t show up in the same way, or has a very, very negative attitude about it. And those two styles clash anytime things get hard in life.

When things get hard, we see whether we’re a great team with someone, and being a great team is at the heart of compatibility. Of course, this highlights the importance of not deciding on a first date that someone is “the love of your life” when you haven’t even been through any hard times with them. So, this is actually one way to stop yourself from getting too obsessed with someone being the right person, especially if you’ve never been through anything together.

But the other part is arguments. In an argument, do we have styles that really clash? Do I want to resolve this thing and you want to freeze me out for the next four days because you’re hurt?

And it’s not just about style. It’s about standards. Someone can have a really low standard for the way they argue, and you can have a really high standard. You might have a high standard for the things you say in an argument. In other words, you don’t say really spiteful things or things you can’t take back, and they may have a very low standard for the things they say where they’re willing to say absolutely anything to get one over on you in an argument, including things that are going to deeply wound you or are deeply spiteful.

So our style and our standards matter when it comes to compatibility in either hard times in life, where we need to be a team, or arguments, where we need to find a way to come together and resolve things. And when we’re incompatible in those two areas, we’re going to find that in hard times, we’re incredibly lonely, or in arguments, we are incredibly frustrated or wounded by the differences.

Number five—and this is an interesting question—would you be happy with this person raising your children if you weren’t around anymore?

I find this to be an interesting thought experiment even if you’re never intending to have children with someone, or if for any reason in life, you’re unable to have children with someone. “If we did have children, would I be okay with this person, with their values, their outlook, their behaviors, their habits, their way of living, raising my children if I were no longer around to participate?”

The reason I find this to be an interesting question is because it really highlights areas of incompatibility. All those things that make us frightened of that prospect, all those things that make us feel deeply uneasy with the idea of that happening, away from our view, are signs of incompatibility today with us.

The difference is, we’ll often ignore these incompatibilities when we’re on the receiving end of them. We just don’t ignore them when we think of innocent children on the receiving end of them. And isn’t that interesting? If the person you’re with has values, behaviors, or habits that you wouldn’t want to subject someone you love to, then why would you subject yourself to them today?

Now, let me be clear. This question has nothing to do with whether or not you want kids. You may never want kids. It’s a thought experiment designed to explore incompatibility in a relationship where there aren’t kids.

Number six—are they capable of loving you in the way you need to be loved? And are you capable of loving them in the way they need to be loved?

Now, the words “capable” and “need” are really important here. If you need a lot of physical affection, it’s not something you want. It’s something you need, like a flower needs water and sunlight. Your emotional or psychological survival requires physical affection. It’s a need for you.

Well, let’s say that that need meets someone who is incapable of meeting that need, either because they are completely unwilling or they don’t have the tools to be able to do that. They don’t know how to be physically affectionate. They never learned. They’re a very cold person physically, or maybe they’ve been through things that have made it extremely difficult to give physical affection. Whether they can or can’t at some point is a different story. But if your experience of them is that they are incapable of giving that to you, then you are met with someone who is fundamentally going to make you unhappy.

If someone has a need to be told what they mean to you, and you are incapable of communicating in that way, then they are going to experience a very lonely and difficult existence in this relationship.

We all have our ways that we need to be loved in order to be happy. Is the person opposite you capable of loving you in that way? If they’re not, no matter how much you love them, you’re never going to be loved in a way that makes you happy.

Number seven—do you have the same vision of what commitment is?

Now, firstly, I want to say that it is an obvious but often unacknowledged area of incompatibility when one person wants a commitment, wants a relationship, and the other person doesn’t. There are so many situations where two people say they’re in love and one of them is saying, “Despite being in love with you, I just don’t know if I want to be in a relationship with you. I don’t know if I want a relationship at all. But I love you.”

This is a prime example of how love isn’t enough.

So, if one of you wants a committed relationship and the other one doesn’t, that is a fundamental area of incompatibility. That is not some kind of detail—that’s incompatibility. But even if two people want commitment, do they have the same vision for what commitment actually is? Do they have the same idea of what monogamy entails, or does one person want a very different kind of relationship? Do you have the same vision for what loyalty is or for what freedom looks like?

One person’s version of loyalty might be: “I can message as many people as I want online as long as I don’t sleep with them.” Meanwhile, the other person’s version of loyalty is that “I don’t emotionally betray you in the things I say to people or the way that I acknowledge people online.” Or one person’s version of freedom might be that “we trust each other to not only exist together but also have our independent lives and friends and go on trips and be able to do all of those things and be happy for each other,” and another person’s version of freedom might be, “You’re allowed to leave the house looking hot, but only as long as I’m standing next to you.”

At the essence of this point is: Does being with them make you feel safe in the ways that you want to feel safe, and free in the ways you want to feel free? And, of course, the same is true for them.

What this video is really about is widening our lens for how we assess compatibility. Too many of us think of compatibility simply as, “I feel very strongly for them and they feel very strongly for me. We have a great time when we’re together. We have some shared values. We can talk for hours on end.”

We feel like these things mean compatibility. And they do, by the way, in a sense. But they’re only talking about compatibility on one or two frontiers. And the truth is, the kind of compatibility that makes a relationship work over a lifetime is compatibility on many different frontiers. It’s a much more holistic view of compatibility.

If someone doesn’t want the same things as us in life, that’s not like, “I’m so great with this person, we’re so compatible, but for these pesky circumstances that they don’t want a relationship and I do.” Or “I want children and they don’t want them for another 20 years.”

Those aren’t simply circumstances or details that get in the way of a compatible relationship. They are compatibility by another name. We have to start seeing it as such. There’s no such thing, for example, as “right person, wrong time.” Because the wrong time makes them the wrong person, at least through the lens of compatibility, because timing is part of compatibility.

So we have to start recognizing that it’s possible to love someone and simultaneously accept that loving someone isn’t enough. And there may be many times in our lives where we have to walk away from someone we love because we don’t have the compatibility that will allow us to be happy.

None of the things I’ve talked about today in these seven areas of compatibility should be seen as something intimidating or unachievable. Instead, they should be seen as a great qualifier for the extreme desires and attractions that we feel—for the obsession that we can feel in dating or with someone who never chooses us but we’ve been really attracted to or we’re really smitten with. These areas of compatibility are actually a great pressure valve for those feelings in lowering the temperature and realizing that someone might not be as right for us as we originally thought after all.

If you haven’t yet, sign up for my free newsletter that I release every Friday, The Three Relationships. If you enjoy my writing, I promise you will enjoy this newsletter. It’s something that hundreds of thousands of people are looking forward to every single week now, and it’s free. So come join us at thethreerelationships.com.

Thank you so much, everyone. Be well and love life.

The post Why Love Is NOT Enough! (And the 3 Things You Need as Well) appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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When we’re stuck in a situationship with someone who doesn’t know what they want, it’s incredibly frustrating. As soon as we like someone and hear the words “I’m not ready for a relationship right now,” it feels like we’re suddenly back to square one!

If you’re tired of not knowing where you stand, you’ve come to the right place. In this video, I share 5 signs that can reveal if someone is ready for a relationship, plus a key question you can ask yourself and use anytime you feel stuck or confused.

When someone tells us they’re not ready, or that they’re not looking for a serious relationship right now, it puts us in a really challenging predicament, especially if we really like the person.

When we’re attracted, we feel connected to this person; we feel like they are the kind of person we have been looking for. The one snag is that they’re not in the same place as us.

In this video, I want to talk about the five mindset shifts that can help you in dealing with exactly this situation, because the reality is, no matter what anyone tells you about how ill-informed it is to continue down the road with someone who says they don’t want a relationship, in reality, it’s really difficult to take that advice.

We tell ourselves things like, “Maybe they’ll change. Maybe in a month, they’ll feel differently.”

I know there have been times in my life where I didn’t want a relationship, and then I did when I met someone I really liked. So, maybe that will happen. Maybe it’s just that right now, they’re still getting over their relationship, but they need help getting over that relationship.

This logic that we feed ourselves can be very, very compelling. That’s why these five mindsets I’m going to give you today are so important, because I know how hard it is, and you shouldn’t feel shame for finding it difficult to walk away. But I really believe these mindsets are going to help.

By the way, before I get into these, don’t forget to like this video, subscribe to this channel so that you never miss a video, and hit the notification bell so you get notified the next time a new video of mine comes out.

The first mindset shift is asking yourself: “Is the situation between this person and me really equal?”

And what do I mean by that?

When this woman came to me, she said, “I’m dating other people as well. So, we’re kind of doing the same thing.”

But then I asked her, “Is it really equal? Yes, you’re dating other people still. So, on the surface, you’re not hanging around waiting for this person. But the reality is, you don’t want to be dating other people. If you had it your way, you would only be with him. But in his case, he’s dating other people because he wants to date other people. Because he has expressly said that he doesn’t want a serious relationship right now and he wants to date around.”

So this is not a situation where two people are on an even playing field. One of them has no intentions for their love life right now other than to have fun. The other one has full intentions of having a real relationship, is hoping that this person will want one at some point, and is only dating other people right now because he doesn’t want to date her and only her.

We have to be honest with ourselves if we’re truly in a position of equal footing, or whether there is a real power imbalance here, and we’re just telling ourselves a story that it’s all okay because we’re doing the same thing.

In this case, she was essentially settling for something she didn’t want—dating multiple people—hoping that he would eventually want the same thing as her. But he was doing exactly what he wanted to do. There was no risk to him. All the risk lay with her in the possibility of wasting her time, of continuing to date him under a misapprehension that one day, he would want the same thing.

The second mindset shift comes from being honest about the risk.

What is the real risk to us if we’re waiting around, hoping that one day, they are going to want a relationship with us?

Well, there’s a risk of lost time. What if you date this person for another year, hoping that they’ll change, and they don’t? What if they, a year from now, are exactly the same person with exactly the same lack of intentions that they have today? How will you feel about having spent a year of your time hoping that it would go somewhere?

One of the things that this person said to me that was interesting was, “If I decide to cut this person off and say goodbye and not see them anymore, I’m still going to be thinking about him. This person is still going to be on my mind. So is there really any risk to staying? If I stay, they’re going to be on my mind. If I leave, they’re going to be on my mind. But at least if I stay, there’s a chance that something will happen.”

You can see the way we contort logic to continue to do the thing that feels comfortable to us, which is to stay in something, hoping it will get better instead of letting it go.

The problem with that logic is that in reality, if she left this person, yes, she would still think about him for a time, but eventually, if she kept moving forward in life and if she healed from that, she would move on. But if she stayed dating this person, then there’s no end in sight to that pain. She’ll keep thinking of him because she’ll keep bringing him back into her life. Both involve pain, both involve thinking about the person, but one leaves the possibility of moving on and finding someone better, finding someone who actually wants the same things. The other possibility just leads to perpetual pain.

On top of the risk of continuing to date this person and wasting time because they never want a relationship, there’s a different possibility that you keep dating this person, and they do want a relationship six months from now or a year from now, but they want it with somebody else.

How many of us have been a part of a story or heard of a story where we waited around for someone, thinking that all the time and energy and effort we’ve spent on that person will eventually pay off in the form of them realizing our value, realizing what we’re worth, and what the relationship could be, only to find that someone who waltzed into their life three weeks ago is the person they’re now getting serious about?

In her situation, it wasn’t just the risk that he never wants a relationship. It’s the “How will I feel if I invest all of this time—hoping that in this person’s rotation, I’m the one they’ll choose—and they end up choosing somebody else?” How will we feel about the resentment, the bitterness, the regret, and the anger that we’ll feel toward someone else and maybe ourselves if we go down that path and that happens?

Here’s the third mindset shift, and this is a big one. It’s one that a lot of people never think about: If someone you are dating isn’t being intentional, and they are dating other people at the same time, it will be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for them to truly see your worth.

Why? Because someone seeing your worth requires their presence. They have to actually sit with who we are, connect with what we’re giving them, with what we represent, our values, the connection that we’re building together. They have to be connected and conscious and experiencing that.

But when someone is dating without any intentionality, they’re just dating for fun, they’re not looking for a relationship, and they’re dating multiple people at the same time, they’re most likely never getting that connected to any one of the people they’re dating.

Let’s do an experiment. Imagine that I came to your house and I set up five separate TVs in your living room. And I played—on each one of them—a great movie. So you have five great movies playing at the same time. And then in two-and-a-half hours, or by the time those movies had finished, I came back into the room and said, “Which one was your favorite and why?”

Chances are, you wouldn’t have a favorite. And even if you did, it wouldn’t be a true connection to the value and the beauty and the art of that movie, because you never really experienced it. You didn’t watch it the way the director intended. You had your attention spread across all these different screens, so you couldn’t truly engross yourself in that movie.

None of the creators of those movies should be insulted if you didn’t come away choosing that movie as your favorite, or truly understanding how great that movie was, because you never really watched any of those movies.

That’s what it’s like when someone is constantly dating multiple people. They can’t truly appreciate your movie, the character, the protagonist that is you.

Now, there is always a time in the very beginning of dating where there’s the possibility that someone is dating other people. I don’t want to oversimplify the dating process, because the truth is, the day you go on a date with someone, there’s nothing wrong with the fact that they might have another date lined up for next week. They don’t owe us anything at that stage.

Some people will say, “If I date one person, I’m not going to date anyone else while I do that.” That’s okay. No judgment. But I also think we have to be careful of judging a situation where someone is dating multiple people in the very beginning.

We just have to measure our own investment very carefully and go, “Do I want to sleep with someone who’s dating multiple people? How far do I want to go? How much time do I want to give to someone who’s still dating other people?” That’s a personal choice. It shouldn’t be a judgment on them.

But it may be in the very beginning that someone is dating around, and that doesn’t mean they’re not being intentional. It might just mean they’re dating around. They’re being very intentional.

So, whether someone is dating multiple people or not doesn’t necessarily give away how serious they are. It certainly gives away how serious they are if someone says, “I’m not in the market for a serious relationship right now. The woman who came to me during our Love Life Club coaching session said he literally said he wasn’t in the market for a serious relationship. That’s a pretty big sign that someone isn’t looking for anything. They’re not being intentional.

I’m not someone who thinks it’s a giant sin for someone to date other people when they first meet you, because I’m of the belief that we don’t necessarily owe each other exclusivity from the first moment we go on a date together.

Someone is entitled to still shop around. You’re still entitled to shop around. We just have to measure our own investment and make sure we don’t give away more than we feel comfortable giving away while someone else is still dating other people. That’s a personal decision. I don’t think it’s something we should judge other people for.

Normally, when we judge other people for that, it’s because we feel like we gave more than we should have, or we’re upset with how much we gave to someone who never gave us any assurances in the first place.

But what I will say is this: Even when we’ve given someone the benefit of the doubt that “we barely know each other,” and “if you’re still going on dates, that’s okay . . .” I’m not saying you have to be okay with that, by the way. But I’m inviting the possibility that both are okay. Even if you give someone a window of time, at some point, that window has to end.

If you are in the position that this person I was coaching was, of saying, it’s now four or five months into me dating this person and they’re still wanting to date other people, then their window for choosing you has kind of elapsed, in my opinion. They should know enough, maybe not to know that they want to be with you for years to come, but they should know enough from the time they’ve spent with you to know that “I’m ready to say ‘no’ to other people and give this a real chance to see how it might progress.”

If they’re not doing that, we should never convince ourselves that giving them more time and more of ourselves is going to be the thing that convinces them.

The fourth mindset shift is realizing that all of the risk is with staying, and that not only is none of the risk with you leaving and saying goodbye to this person, but all of the potential, all of the opportunity, lies with leaving.

That’s for two reasons. Firstly, if you leave, you open yourself up to a world of people who are actually potentially ready for a real relationship—a world of people who haven’t told you they’re not looking for anything serious.

In a sense, when someone tells you they’re not looking for anything serious, they’ve immediately put a period at the end of the sentence. It’s kind of like they’ve told you the ending of this book for now. That this isn’t what they’re looking for. But everybody else in life still represents a question mark.

The moment someone tells you they don’t want something serious, that should tell you, “Ah, right now, this situation offers no possibility.”

All of the risk comes from staying with someone who may not change their mind, and even if they do change their mind, they may not change it in the direction you want. They might choose someone else, like I said before.

But if you leave, you open yourself up to every other possible eligible person on earth who is ready for something, who might entertain the possibility of something going somewhere.

But even if I was just speaking to the part of you that really does want it to work with this person, I would be telling you that the best chance you have at them seeing your value and turning around to meet you for a real relationship . . . is you leaving.

When you leave, that person has a shot at seeing your value 1) by missing it and losing it, as well as 2) by seeing you as someone who has standards that they are willing to uphold regardless of how attractive or mesmerizing or charismatic or sexy someone is.

If I could help you snap your fingers and not care about wanting this person anymore, I would. What I’m trying to say is that leaving is not only your best shot at finding something better and finding the happiness you’re looking for in your love life, it also just so happens to be the best chance you have at this person realizing that they do want a relationship with you.

For anyone out there who wants to know how to have these conversations with someone, where you actually speak your standards, I have a free training called Dating With Results that’s essentially a one-hour free training from me that shows you how to do not only that, but so much more. It’s going to make you more confident. It’s also going to show you how to uphold your standards and how to speak them. So that’s at datingwithresults.com for anyone who wants to take that training.

The fifth and final mindset shift for this video, when someone is telling you they’re not ready and you’re wondering whether to stick around anyway, is to ask yourself: “Is this what I held out for?”

My guess is that you have been through some difficult times in your love life—that you’ve been through some pain. This person that I was talking to, the person who inspired this video with her vulnerability, was living in a major city, and had felt for a long time like things were just really hard. She had held out for the right thing, for the right person, but had experienced a lot of pain along the way. A lot of pain of being in a big city, of feeling like no one wants anything real, of feeling like everyone is just trying to get theirs, being short-term-ist, being messed around a lot, feeling invisible sometimes.

Anyone who’s gone through anything like that knows it can breed a kind of scarcity mindset. This feeling of: “I get to the point where I just think I need to take whatever I can get, because nothing’s been happening.”

And then, of course, when someone comes along, when you have attraction with them, and you share some values, and you feel like you get this person, or they get you, and you have an amazing time with them, you get to a point where you go, “Well, maybe I should hang around even though they’re not ready, or they say they don’t want a relationship, because this is the best I’ve got and this is the most connection I’ve felt in a long time. Am I really just going to throw that away?”

But I think we can help train ourselves out of the scarcity mindset when we realize that we have taken our time with our love lives, not suddenly jumping into anything with anyone. Why? Because we have a standard about who we end up with, and the kind of love that we want in our lives. We haven’t lost all of the romance. We haven’t lost hope. We haven’t lost the possibility—the excitement of finding the love we really want to find.

If you’ve been holding out for that kind of love, then you have to ask yourself: “Am I really now, after all that pain, after all that loneliness, after all those different people I’ve said ‘no’ to, or all of the heartbreak I’ve been through in my life, am I really going to settle for this? Is this going to be what I held out for? Someone who tells me that they’re not ready and puts me on rotation with a bunch of other people? This is what I held out for?”

I know the pain that so many of you are in right now—the kind of pain that comes from feeling lonely, or comes from feeling heartbroken, or comes from starting to feel like it’s never going to happen, and how that leads people to make decisions about what to settle for . . . that they should never settle for.

But this last mindset is a crucial reframe. It’s a different way of looking at it, that after all of that pain, after all of that loneliness, after everything you’ve been through, after the heartbreak you’ve endured or all of the lessons you’ve learned up until this point in your life, all of the things you’ve experienced and been through, this is going to be what arrests your attention? This is going to be the thing you held out for?

No. We can’t do that. Absolutely not.

If that last mindset—or if any of these mindsets—resonated with you, leave me a comment. What did it make you think about today? What did it make you think about a situation you’re faced with right now? Let me know what most spoke to you.

If you’re enjoying my content but you’re also a reader, not just someone who likes to watch videos, I have a free newsletter that I’m writing every week now called The Three Relationships, which you can find at the3relationships.com. Check it out. It’s free. You can sign up right now and I’ll send you my latest edition this Friday.

Thank you so much for watching. I’ll see you next time.

The post Should You Wait If They’re Not Ready for a Relationship? appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Most people want to avoid players in dating . . . yet why do so many end up in relationships (or situationships) with them?

Sadly, it’s all too common to get seduced into a roller coaster romance where we feel amazing chemistry but never know where we stand with someone.

Today I’m giving you the best advice I’ve given on this topic through 7 clips that will help you avoid players and find the right person. If you’re ready to rewire your brain and start attracting someone who says “yes” to a relationship, this is for you.

1

MATTHEW HUSSEY

You have to decide what’s important to you and what’s valuable to you, because otherwise, you’ll do anything. You’ll say “yes” just because something feels exciting, regardless of whether it’s off-brand for your company, or whether you’ve got the time for it, whether it fits into your top 3 priorities for the year. Something comes along and it just feels sexy. It feels shiny. But when you really step back from it, you go, “This doesn’t fit with our company’s values, or this isn’t in line with our goals. This is going to be a distraction.”

The dating equivalent to that could be someone who wants children and they’re 38 years old. And they end up flirting at a party with a 23-year-old. And they hit it off, and there’s this chemistry, and it feels fun, and it feels exciting.

It’s now month two, and you’re still seeing this person. And at no point are you really acknowledging the fact that you’ve got a window if you want to have children biologically. And that’s really important to you. Maybe you haven’t even admitted how important it is to yourself because you’re so wrapped up in the feelings you have and the chemistry you have with this person, and how exciting it is. You’re not acknowledging that this person is absolutely not on the same trajectory as you—that this isn’t in their sights for another five or ten years. Even if they’re telling you: “Well, I’m not sure what I want yet,” you can’t be with someone—if that’s really important to you and your time is starting to slip away, you can’t be with someone who isn’t sure what they want in that department yet, because you’re making too big of a bet.

Ultimately, it’s not for me to say whether or not someone should do that. But I get passionate about this because I’m almost speaking on behalf of that person themselves. I’m being an advocate for what I know they really want. Because they’re not being an advocate for it themselves right now. They have sort of silenced the part of themselves that five years from now is going to be going: “Why?”

STEPHEN HUSSEY

There’s like a misranking of priorities going on.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Yeah, because when we feel something, when we find mutual attraction, it feels like the most important thing in the world. We talk in the book about the Four Levels of Importance in any situation—admiration being the first one. That’s when you just think someone’s hot, sexy, impressive, charismatic, or they have great qualities, or you think they’re super eligible. But admiration is level 1 of importance, which is to say, it’s not very important at all. Because in admiration, that person doesn’t like you back. They may not even know you exist. You could feel that way about someone who works in your building who doesn’t know who you are.

So, the second level is more important, which is level 2, that’s mutual attraction. That’s where you have chemistry, some connection. There’s something drawing the two of you to each other. And that feels really important. It actually feels way more important than it is, because most people, especially as they get older, start to feel like maybe their social life isn’t as expansive as it once was. It feels a little harder to meet people. When we meet someone we’re attracted to, and then they like us back, it feels like the holy grail. It feels like the most important thing in the world. But it’s still only level 2. Because level 3 is commitment.

If you want a relationship and you’re willing to say “yes” to a relationship, is that person willing to say “yes” to a relationship? “Are you saying ‘yes’?” is a wildly underrated phase when it comes to the level of importance.

It’s amazing how many people have made someone the most important thing in the world to them even though that person is not saying “yes” to a relationship.

They’re saying they’re not ready, they’re confused, they don’t know what they want . . . they want to travel the world—whatever reason they give for why they can’t go all-in, what it amounts to is that that person doesn’t want a relationship with you even though you want one with them.

So, there are a lot of people who are overvaluing level 2, mutual attraction, and wildly undervaluing level 3, commitment.

2

ALI ABDAAL

What I usually say is lower the bar for who you’re going to match with on a dating app. Don’t feel like you need to be immediately attracted to them. Because the people you’re going to feel immediately attracted to are . . . if you haven’t had a lot of success up to this point, let’s lower the bar. Let’s give other guys a chance, because you never know what might happen if you’re on a date with someone. But you’re the expert here. What would you say?

MATTHEW HUSSEY

I think there’s so much truth to what you’re saying because really, you’re not talking about lowering the bar in general. You’re talking about, in a way, lowering the bar in very narrow areas. Like, how someone comes across in a profile or in the first five minutes of meeting them. There are people who are just incredible salespeople, and they come across really well in the first five minutes. They’re very compelling people. There are people who have a great elevator pitch.

Not all the best books have the best elevator pitches for that book.

ALI ABDAAL

The best titles and covers, yeah.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Exactly.

ALI ABDAAL

There are some really good books that have really terrible titles.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Yeah. And it’s really hard . . . if someone said to you, “What’s the book about?” you’d probably give a terrible elevator pitch for it even though you’re a fan of that book. Not everything is the most easily marketable thing, but it doesn’t mean it’s not the best thing or it’s not an amazing thing. I think we constantly, in the world of dating, reward the best marketers, not necessarily the best partners. And that is where, when you say “lower the bar,” what I hear is, it’s not lowering the bar regarding the quality of the person. It’s lowering the bar on the very narrow attributes we use to decide whether someone should get through the door.

A lot of those attributes we have traditionally used to determine whether someone should get through the door are very egoically-driven attributes that we want. Often, I think it’s hard sometimes to distinguish between what it is we want or—I’m not usually a fan of this kind of language, but it’s like what our soul wants, what would make us happy to be with, and what qualities we’re looking for because we think they’ll make us look good.

“Oh, my friends would think this person is hot. My family would think this person is awesome because of who they are or their status or how much they’ve achieved or because of how they walk into a room and dazzle everybody.”

There’s a very egoic element to dating that plays a part, I think, in a bigger way than we give it credit for. It’s like, instead of dating the person who will make us the happiest, we date the person we think will make us look the most impressive to our peers, to our network, in our world. That is where I think people get in a lot of trouble, when they keep dating for the wrong things over and over again.

#3

JAMESON JORDAN

Did you watch the show Pam & Tommy?

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Yes.

JAMESON JORDAN

It’s just interesting because Pamela Anderson really knew she had a thing for bad boys. And then Tommy Lee comes in like the ultimate bad boy and still sweeps her off her feet. She knowingly falls into it. But it’s just so perfect that it happened in a celebrity-type situation, because celebrities get into these kinds of situations because there’s no one in their life to just check them. So, it’s a very isolating kind of thing. You can see why that toxicity happens in that circumstance. But yeah, if you have that, if you have more of those compasses, I think that’s a really beautiful framework.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

And that’s an interesting example, because in that situation, I think if I remember right, the first scene of them meeting is him being—

AUDREY HUSSEY

A disaster.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Yeah, this really obnoxious person in a club and coming over to her with absolutely no regard for her friends, very obnoxiously direct. There’s no conscientiousness at all involved in anything he does. It’s all about how what he wants is the most important thing in the room.

She finds it exciting because he’s bold, and he’s direct, and it feels sexy, but she’s ignoring the absence of all of these things that would make someone a kind, conscientious, good human being in that situation.

Now, you can have someone who’s direct, and bold, and all of those things, but those other qualities better show up. And if you’re ignoring them, that’s where the disaster begins. It’s because all you’re doing is looking at the things you find attractive. You’re not looking at the fundamental qualities that are missing in this person, and you’re hoping that one day those things will arrive. And they won’t, of course.

4

MATTHEW HUSSEY

This is where first dates can get really dangerous, because a date is a measure of someone’s impact more than anything else. You can feel a great connection with someone who, in actual fact, is just really, really good at creating the right impact. They know which questions to ask. They look in your eyes and listen intently as you give your answers. They know how to connect with your answers and be relatable, and say, “Oh, my God. That’s just like me! I find that too.”

There’s just this rapport they’re incredible at creating. And of course, I’m talking on the slightly more, not manipulative end of the spectrum, although it could be, but just with people who are really, really good with people. People who want to impress you. And what’s one way I know how to impress? Make an amazing connection with you.

So some people are just really good at that. And in their presence, we feel so special, and we feel so heard, we feel so seen. But if it was just on one date, then that wasn’t so much a measure of your connection with that person as it was a measure of their impact on you in the time you had.

Then, of course, there’s the more innocent end of the spectrum. There are people who are just huge people-pleasers who are also really good at making you feel heard and seen and connected because they’re going out of their way to validate everything you’re saying. They don’t disagree with you, they connect with everything, they go along with everything. You think, “Wow. This person and I just have so much in common.”

But really, what it is, is someone who’s just eager to please you with the things they say.

Have you ever met someone where you thought you had an amazing connection with them, but the more time went on, the more you thought to yourself, “Oh, you were actually just saying what you thought I wanted to hear. This wasn’t really you.”

It’s also true that if we go back to that person who is just really good with people, or even narcissistic at the more insidious end of the spectrum, these people can make us feel incredible for a short time, and then they get distracted and their attention goes somewhere else. When their attention is on us, it’s like a laser beam that feels so good, but then they move on.

I’ve had that with people before where I’ve been so charmed by them. I’ve thought we’ve had the most amazing connection. And then I realize they’re just charming.

It’s sobers me up because I realize, “Oh, we weren’t going to be best friends forever. They just were really, really good at connecting with me in that moment.”

So we have to stop telling ourselves the story about someone who is an amazing first date being someone who has huge potential for our love lives. One of the things I talk about in this new book . . . let’s see what chapter it is. This is so new that I don’t even know what chapter it is. Ah, Chapter 2: “How to Tell Love Stories.”

This entire chapter of the book—for those of you who have ordered it, circle that chapter now—is about the false love stories we tell ourselves about situations that don’t actually represent any real potential. Of course, someone who just disappears after a date shows no potential whatsoever by definition. But because of the connection we felt, we now tell ourselves an incredible love story about what that situation should materialize into.

Remember, for a true love story to occur, you need not just connection, you need intention. You need investment. You need someone who’s actually committed to making the story go somewhere. Connection is not intention.

5

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Do you need to be attracted? Yes. On some level, of course. This isn’t a video about going for people you’re not attracted to. But it is me saying that attraction is just a box to be checked. It’s not a sport that someone has to win. They don’t have to be the most attractive person you’ve ever dated. They don’t have to match up to that person you once dated who you felt an insane attraction for or this incredible spark with that you’d never felt before that. It’s not a competition between them and the chemistry you’ve had in the past or how good-looking someone was in the past.

Because a relationship that’s extraordinary is built, and it’s built by two people who check a lot of boxes for each other. So, attraction is a box that needs to be checked. Once you’ve checked it, now it’s time to actually see what other things they have that, long-term, are going to be much more important than that one box.

6

MARIE FORLEO

I remember in my own history from New Jersey, was dating basically the same guy in different bodies again and again and again and again. I was attracted to the guys who had a lot of muscles, definitely went to a tanning salon, definitely had some gold chains.

So, I had that same type of boyfriend over and over and over and over. And it never quite worked out. And I remember when I first saw Josh, he was not that. He was very different than that. He’s Jewish; I’m Italian. He’s a filmmaker and an actor. All these different things—we’re 17 years apart. None of who he was on paper was “my blueprint” at all. It was almost like the opposite.

And yet, and yet, Matthew, I felt more myself around him than anyone I had ever dated. I felt more me.

So the qualities in me that felt like they were getting amplified were the best qualities in me—my sense of humor, my heart, my desire to be expressive.

I noticed in myself that blueprint just melting away because of who I started showing up as. And then I started thinking back and I was like, “Wow, when I was dating all those same guys over and over again, the most insecure parts of me were showing up where I felt needy or grabby, or just like I wasn’t enough and everything about me wasn’t enough.”

I was so floored by how diametrically different I felt and how I was showing up. That’s what made the blueprint melt away.

So my advice would be: If you can muster that incredible bravery to put yourself into new situations and say “yes” to things—whether it’s going to a party, being out at a social event, maybe having a coffee date or some type of exposure to other people who, again, don’t fit your blueprint, just do it from a place of playfulness and non-expectation, and do it as a way to start seeing how you show up differently with different humans regardless of what their external form is.

This is something that I think most of us know, but I can never hear it enough: I think when we’re in our late teens and 20s and maybe even 30s, there’s still so much (hype) around physical attraction. Physical attraction, of course, is incredibly important. We know that. But we all also know that that stuff doesn’t last. It just doesn’t. We all change and evolve as we get older.

One of the things that’s really come to me is how grateful I am that I chose and continue to love someone because of who they are on the inside. I mean, I’ve watched myself change. All of us. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a beautiful thing. This is part of our human journey is that we’re not going to look the same, and the external shell is going to change, and it’s going to be different. But what are the qualities of that person you want to be with? How big is their heart? Are they loyal? When you’re with them, do they make you feel like what you have to say and what you have to think is important?

I think that’s so individual for all of us. So, for me as a person, freedom is my number one value in life, and to be with a man who really respects and gets how important my freedom is to me . . . and this is just little stuff, but the other thing that was really important to me was I was very clear that I didn’t want to have biological kids. And so many of the guys I dated beforehand who fit that blueprint, they were like, “Okay, so we’re going to get married, and we’re going to—”

I’m like, “Are you looking at this thing? Have you heard what I’ve said to you? I have no interest in any of that. I don’t want kids. I don’t want to get married.”

So, for me, it was a lot about the experience of being with people outside of my “blueprint”—which taught me that it’s about those inner qualities and how I show up with that person that’s made all the difference. So, pay less attention to your head, don’t get twisted about the complicatedness of it, and just get your butt out there and start feeling your way into new truths.

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So you just realized you actually like someone?

Hold up a second . . .

When we fall for someone in the early stages of dating, it’s very easy to drop our standards and lose sight of our boundaries. We check our texts constantly. We cancel other plans for them. We agree to live on their schedule.

This situation is especially dangerous for people who have a more anxious attachment style and tend to respond to relationship uncertainty by bending over backwards to keep someone happy.

In today’s new video, I explore how different attachment styles respond in this situation, and how you can attract a healthy relationship where your standards and boundaries won’t be trampled.

In this video, I want to talk about the most dangerous moment you can encounter when you’re looking for love and why. And I’m also going to describe a key archetype that you may relate to, and if you do, I think you’re going to see a lot of your dating history in this video. Don’t forget to like this video, subscribe to this channel, and hit the notification bell, so that the next time I release a video, you’re notified first.

So, what is the most dangerous moment in dating?

It is the moment we decide we like somebody. And here’s why:

For many of us, finding love is one of our greatest goals in life. It’s something we have wanted for a very long time. It’s something we have always seen as being a fundamental part of our future.

And when it feels like it’s slipping away, or it hasn’t happened yet, or that it’s never going to happen, it starts to create a scarcity mindset. A scarcity mindset is particularly dangerous because it starts to change how we behave, as well as the version of us that we bring to the table when we meet someone. All of that means that when we actually meet someone we like, it feels rare, it feels valuable, and it feels like something we need to hold on to at any cost. And the “at any cost” part is what really makes it dangerous.

All of us are able to have standards and boundaries when it comes to someone we don’t really care about—someone we don’t really want. But when it comes to someone we really want, that is usually the moment we drop our standards and lose sight of any boundaries we once had. So the scarcity mindset makes us think we can’t lose someone, and when we think we can’t lose someone we’re attracted to, our standards and our boundaries go out of the window.

And here’s the truth: our standards and our boundaries are the things that separate us in dating. A lot of people think “my standards and my boundaries are the things that drive people away. They make me ‘too much work’ or it’s me asking for too much. In order to get someone to come closer, I need to ask for less.”

But our standards separate us, and they also tell someone how to think about us. It’s not someone else’s job to educate us on what our worth is. It’s our job to educate someone else on what our worth is. They’re waiting for us to tell them, and the way we tell them is by the things we accept and don’t accept, by the ways that we show up, and by the ways we ask that the people who are close to us show up.

So, let’s look at a common way that, when we have the scarcity mindset and let go of our standards and our boundaries, we end up hurting ourselves. This particular example is one of many, but it’s a very common one, based on an archetype that so many people out there will relate to. And if you relate to this archetype, then leave a comment.

The archetype is that of the anxious person who fawns when they feel like there’s a chance they could lose someone, or when they really want to impress someone, when they want to pull someone closer. Remember, our nervous system has different responses: fight, flight, freeze, faint, and fawn.

Now, when we have the fawn response, we typically give too much—certainly, we give more than is earned, and it’s not reciprocal (for example, we’re giving more than they are). But we also fail to advocate for our needs—to truly speak our mind. This makes for a very potent combination: giving relentlessly while not asking for what we need or not communicating how we feel.

What I wanted to do in this video is show you how different archetypes respond to that behavior, because it’s really interesting, and I think that if you relate to this pattern, you’re going to see a lot of yourself and your life in this.

Now, the truth is, whichever attachment style we feel like we most relate to, most of us can think of a time in our lives when we were anxiously fawning out of a desire to make someone happy, to please them, to hold on to them, or be what they wanted us to be.

So, let’s first take the avoidant. If you come across someone who’s avoidant and your instinct from a scarcity mindset, from a place of fear, is to fawn, is to give too much and not communicate your needs, what happens with the avoidant? Well, the avoidant will take, but they will also likely be suffocated or pushed away by the amount that you’re giving, by the amount that you’re showing up. And when they pull away as a response to that, because that’s a typical avoidant pattern, the combination of you continuing to give but not speaking up for your needs means that that person doesn’t even know they’re hurting you.

Can you relate to this? Someone disappears for days on end, doesn’t text you, doesn’t call you, goes quiet on you, and you’re so afraid to speak up and advocate for your needs that you don’t say anything. Maybe you don’t feel worthy of it. Maybe you’re worried that if you do say something, it’s going to push that person even further away. So, you don’t speak up about what you need. And as a result, this avoidant person avoids you, but really, with zero consequences. When they come back, you give even more. And you certainly don’t communicate that you were really hurt when they disappeared.

So, in this pattern with an avoidant, you don’t get your needs met, and that person doesn’t even necessarily know that you have those needs in the first place.

What about the anxious person? When you, as someone who’s anxiously fawning, come across someone who’s also anxious, that’s a very dangerous combination, because the anxious person is also looking to get their needs met. They want to feel important. And there’s a good chance that you’ll give and give and give to this person, and set no boundaries about what you give, and that person will consume you.

Some of you may relate to that with a parent figure in your life—someone who takes and takes and takes, yet you kept giving because it made them feel good, and you didn’t know how to set a boundary with your giving. So they ended up just taking over you. Many people experience that in a relationship—someone who just takes them over because they’re trying to get their needs met.

That doesn’t necessarily make them narcissistic, but there is a narcissistic quality to it sometimes. At the very least, there’s a very selfish quality to it. When we’re insecurely trying to get our needs met, often we’re not even thinking about how that’s taking energy from someone else. We’re just trying to feel good.

So, with an anxious person, you can end up consumed, and burning out, and becoming deeply resentful over time at the imbalance in the relationship. You’re always giving to them but you’re not getting your needs met. Remember, in this pattern, you’re giving nonstop, but you’re not communicating your needs at the same time—a lethal combination.

Okay, so we covered the avoidant and the anxious person. What about the secure person? How do they respond to the anxious fawning?

Well, the secure person finds that they’re with someone they struggle to connect with, because when we never speak up about what we want, they don’t know who we are. It’s like they kinda don’t know where we begin and end, because we’ve never given them any parameters around who we are, what we like, what we don’t like, what our opinions are, and what we want to do tonight.

I mean, imagine someone saying to you, “What do you want to eat tonight?” And you say, “I don’t know. What would you like to eat?” They say, “I guess, Chinese food.” And you go, “Me too! That sounds amazing.”

The next night, they ask you, “What do you want to eat tonight? Last night, we got Chinese. What do you want to eat tonight?” And you say, “I’m not sure.” And they go, “Well, how about Indian?” And you go, “Yes! That sounds great.” And you get excited about it.

What we’re doing in those situations is failing to show that person who we really are and what we really want. Now, for one thing, that’s incredibly frustrating for a secure person who enjoys making you feel good and doesn’t know how to make you feel good, because your opinions are just their opinions regurgitated. It’s never about you and you knowing what you want, or having an original thought in that department—certainly not you expressing it.

So, they don’t really know what you need and they don’t know how to please you. They also don’t really know what you think. So it makes it very difficult to connect, and it has the insidious effect of making us appear untrustworthy.

Now, that seems really frustrating because you may be thinking, “God, I’m giving so much. How can I be communicating that I’m not trustworthy?”

But when we never give an opinion, when we never state what we want or what our needs are, someone gets the impression that they’re never getting the real you. So, it’s a bit like someone who celebrates you no matter what you do, who always tells you you’re doing a great job no matter what you do. Eventually, you’re like, “I can’t trust you to give me an honest opinion. I’m never going to be able to trust you to give me constructive feedback, because you never tell me honestly what you really think. So I can’t really come to you as a trustworthy source anymore.”

That’s what happens with a person who anxiously fawns, is that people around them who respect themselves, who aren’t just looking for a source of validation, but are looking for a teammate, feel that they can’t trust that person as a teammate.

So that’s what happens with a secure person. They have the frustration of not knowing how to please us, they don’t feel connected to us, and ultimately, they don’t feel like we are someone they can trust.

The person who loves the anxious fawner, by the way, is the person who has really toxic intentions. The person who is quite willing to come along and monopolize your time, your attention, your energy—to weaponize it and get as much of you as possible before they discard you. That person is more than happy to come along and experience this free lunch for as long as they want it . . . before they decide they don’t want it anymore.

So, that’s the danger when our pattern is anxiously fawning when we’re afraid of losing someone.

Leave a comment and let me know if you relate to this, and as a result, you find that you’re attracting unhealthy people and pushing away healthy people.

I want you to understand that there should be something very comforting in the idea that you’re not a million miles away. You don’t need a personality transplant to get better results in your love life. Sometimes we just need millimeter shifts that take us away from our well-entrenched patterns and toward new ones that start to open us up to a different kind of person than the ones we’ve had in the past. This is something that’s not easy, but it can be done over time and it is achievable.

So, let me know if you relate to this pattern. I’m excited to hear from you. In future videos, I’ll talk about different patterns as well. If you don’t relate to this one, I’ll cover a couple more and we’ll look at—I think it’s a fun thing to be able to look at what happens with an anxious person, a secure person, an avoidant person, and a toxic person when you have this particular pattern. I think that will be a fun thing for us to do as an exercise. But let me know what you thought of this one.

Thank you to everyone who’s got a copy of the book. I’m so excited. All of the comments on Amazon have been amazing, and Goodreads, and Barnes & Noble. I really appreciate everyone who got a copy.

Even if you didn’t get a copy and you love the idea of reading my writing, or if you did get a copy and you’ve already finished it, and you’re like, “I want more of your writing,” I’m actually writing a free newsletter every week now called The Three Relationships that you can sign up for at thethreerelationships.com. I’m really proud of it. It’s a really great free resource that people are experiencing every week right now, and I get emails every single week from people who are reading it and loving it.

So, I want to invite you to come and be a part of that with me if you want to continue the journey in another way, and you don’t want to just watch videos but you also want to read my work. I’ve put a lot of myself into this and many of you enjoy the vulnerability I put in the book.

That same vulnerability shows up in the ideas, the philosophies, and the practical advice I put into this newsletter every week. It’s called The Three Relationships—it’s because I believe there are three relationships we’re always going to be in: our relationship with other people, with ourselves, and with life itself. And the idea of this newsletter is not just to help you with one of those relationships, but all three.

So, join us. I currently release it every Friday, so you can look forward to that this coming Friday. And thank you for watching this video. I look forward to reading your comments, and I’ll see you in the next one.

The post THIS Is The Most Dangerous Moment in Dating… Here’s Why appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Over the past week, so many of you have expressed how much Angela’s story in my new book, Love Life, touched you deeply (in the chapter titled “Have Hard Conversations”). So this week I thought I’d share the actual interview with her from my Live Retreat.

I’ve found that one of the biggest confidence-killers in dating happens when we dwell on the reasons why someone may not be attracted to us. Our looks, our age, our past, even the fact that we have kids—the fear of rejection for who we are can stop us before we get started.

Angela’s story is one of the most impactful I’ve heard on confidence and insecurity, and I think you’ll love hearing it in her own words.

Matthew Hussey:

Before we start today, I owe a giant “thank you” to everybody who got a copy of Love Life. You are responsible for getting us to the New York Times bestseller list. This week, we came in at #3 on the list, which is an extraordinary thing.

And I’m so grateful to all of you who have supported—many of you ordered months in advance of the book actually coming out. So many of you ordered on the week of. I am so appreciative. This project has been four-and-a-half years of my life. We wanted to get to the New York Times because we wanted to raise the profile of this book. We wanted to get it out there to more people. You have helped us do that. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping us make this happen.

This is such a crazy week for me and my team. We have been giddy all week knowing this, having this news. And I’m so excited for those of you who are hearing it for the first time. I’m so excited to be sharing it with you. This is our win together. And you have helped me reach more of the world with this book.

There is a story in the book about a person named Angela, a dear friend of mine. So many of you have read the book and have already read Angela’s story, but you may not have had the chance to actually meet Angela through video.

So I wanted to do something special today. In this video I’m about to show you, Angela was onstage at my Live Retreat in Florida, making the audience laugh and cry in equal measure—myself included. But it’s a true story of hope for people in their confidence, their ability to overcome difficult circumstances, and their ability to find love no matter what. I cannot wait for you to see this. I present to you my dear friend Angela.

Matthew (at Retreat):

There was this one person on this program (Live Retreat) who called me up a couple of months back because she’d had some things happen in her life since that program. And when she made that call, I heard it and I went, “You’ve gotta come back. You’ve gotta come back. And I need you to tell other people what you’ve done, because wow.”

And so she came back this time. And I’m going to bring her up here. And we’re just going to spend five minutes just talking about what she has done since, because her story is a very, very interesting one and so relevant to all of us.

So, Angie, where are you? Oh, there she is. Okay. Give it up for Angela, everybody. How you doing?

Angela:

Now, that was eight or 10 years ago now?

Matthew:

Wow, was it that long ago?

Angela:

Yeah, and I haven’t aged a bit.

Matthew:

You haven’t.

So you came on that program. And I remember, maybe a good place to start is I know there was a big event in your life. Let’s fill people in on that, because I feel like that gives us context for everything we’ll say after that.

Angela:

So as you can see, or you may not be able to see, I wear a prosthetic. And quickly, my story is that I was 23 and I was making my way home from work and life was great. I was with friends, I had the job I loved, and in a moment, everything changed. I sadly was hit by a drunk (and drug) driver. And when he hit me in a van at 70 miles per hour, I was injured for life.

The injuries I have now happened at that moment. And the hardest thing was when my leg was taken from the impact of the vehicle, the driver stood over me and he walked away.

And this is what led me to Matthew, because being in hospital and getting told, “You’re injured, you’re not going to walk again, you’re not going to live independently again . . . We don’t know if you’re going to be able to eat by yourself or dress yourself.”

I defied that. I made sure when I left the hospital that I would walk again. I walked in crutches, but that was good enough. But my self-worth was on the ground. And there was nothing around me and there was nothing there that showed me how to put that together. So I went onto YouTube and saw one of Matthew’s earlier videos. I mean that in a nice way, of course, and he was in a park in . . . was it London?

Matthew:

Yeah. It was in Berkeley Square. And I remember the video . . . nowadays we have Jameson, but then, I was sat on a bench just filming myself. And it wasn’t on an iPhone. It was on like an old Sony camera.

Angela:

And it was about core confidence. And I knew . . . I read what confidence was, you know, you read in the magazines or your friends tell you, “Be more confident.”

But I knew my confidence was on the ground more than most, because the thought that was left with me was, “How am I worthy if somebody could walk away and leave me?” So I clicked on the video. I watched it. I wrote every word down: what core confidence is, what the levels are . . . I’ve done the same as you guys and I still do the same thing. I watched the videos. I learned everything from it.

And one of the biggest things that you ladies have taught me is we share the same thing. We just get what you’re saying, Matthew. So I went on your website. You were doing an event down in London and it was about confidence, wasn’t it?

And then I went to speak to Matthew, and again, he was bouncing from one side to the other. And it was amazing and the ladies I met there are the ladies who went to the Retreat in Florida. And we’re still friends to this day. The journey that we’ve experienced, we’re still experiencing, and I’m still tapping into Matthew’s work today because I still want to go to that next level.

Matthew:

So that kind of brings us to the Retreat, because I remember a very specific moment on the Retreat that you reminded me of. At the home in Florida where we held it, there was a mini movie theater. And Angela pulled me to one side and said, “Hey, you know, let’s have a chat.”

We went into the movie room. We sat down, one-on-one, and she . . . and you can tell me if I’m paraphrasing correctly, but you had mentioned to me that when you were on a date, the monologue that was constantly going through your mind was, “He’s not going to want me because I’m missing a limb.”

Angela:

Pretty much, yeah.

Matthew:

What happened next?

Angela:

Before you got to that point, we sat in silence, and you said, “I’m going to sit here until you tell me what it is.” And I sat there and then I crossed my arms in defiance. I was like, “I’m not saying,” and I couldn’t say, because I felt so sad about that. I couldn’t say it because it’s a guy sitting in front of me, like, can I say the one thing that’s on my mind?

And you just sat defiantly and you were like, “We’re going to sit here all day.” It was like . . . that pain. My Scottish stubbornness was coming out quite badly. And in my head, I was thinking, “He has to see other ladies. So the more you sit there, the more you’re stopping him from going to talk to the ladies and allow them to have their moment and to talk about things.”

But I just sat. I just couldn’t see it. And then you said, “There’s nothing I haven’t heard before.” Just like you’ve said this week. And I said it. I think I blurted it out.

And you, Matthew, just said, “And what?”

Just those simple words, “And what?” and all the things I’d been carrying with myself was like, “Oh, you’ve been carrying this? You’ve built up this big picture.” And it was like, “And what?”

Matthew:

I remember saying to you . . . I remember looking at you and saying, “How arrogant are you?” You remember that?

Angela:

I started laughing, yeah. Cause I would never have thought of it that way.

Matthew:

I said, “How arrogant are you? And you went like this . . .” (Big eyes)

Then after, like, 30 seconds, you just died laughing.

As you were laughing, I said, “What? You need everyone to want you? Like everyone you go on a date with has to fall in love with you and choose you? No one can reject you? Who are you? No one’s allowed to say, ‘I don’t want you’? How arrogant is that?”

And you started laughing and said, “I know, that is arrogant!” And it was this . . . this moment that . . . I remember that moment because of the phone call that you gave me.

By the way, I also remember a moment where we were in the kitchen . . . ?

Angela:

Also, just to give you a heads-up here, this is pretty much the first time I’m wearing a skirt with my legs out.

It was my mom at the back, and some of you might know my special story with my mom . . . she’s always given me the confidence to get out there and share it. And here I am. But I’m digressing. So when I went to Florida, it was all about long dresses, and some thin cardigan to hide my arm. And I thought it was like a fashion statement I was going with, but looking back, I was actually covering up—covering insecurities, covering everything I could possibly do. And that morning, I went down to the kitchen, and I’m trying to catch up with everybody else. And remember Steve’s in the kitchen. I remember Matt’s mum’s at the top of the table making sure everybody’s okay, and Matthew came down and I just went (whoosh). I fell and my skirt went up.

And I was like, “Oh no, hopefully my pants don’t show.”

But I was more worried about my leg showing. I was more worried about that insecurity—that thing you were talking about this week, Matthew. The thing that’s holding you back, the thing you don’t want to talk about, the thing that’s just there.

But when you start talking about it . . . oh my God, your life will go like this (expansive arms). It’s taken me . . . since the Retreat, 10 years. I took on this stuff and then I kind of debated, like I’ll take this little bit, but maybe not that little bit. I’ll take this little bit maybe not that little bit. Some of it worked, some of it didn’t, and as time was going on, I was like, “Yeah, this is taking a bit longer than everybody else.” And then I thought, “Let’s just do all of it.” And with all of it, again, my life opened up. And this story was the recent phone call that I shared with you.

Matthew:

So tell everyone what you told me, because this was one of the greatest phone calls I’ve had in these last two years.

Angela:

Could I share something about your mum before that? So when I fell, and made kind of a scene, she came over to me and she picked me up, and she could see that I had spilled something on my dress. And she said, “You go upstairs, get dressed, come back down, and I’ll wash your dress.”

She washed my dress by hand and she hung it up, and just by doing that little thing, like, feeling embarrassed and feeling so awkward, just by that beautiful action that she’d done, and it’s not a big deal, but it touched me and it still touches me to this day.

And as Matthew says, that’s who his mum is, and the next day I wore the dress again because of his mum, so thank you. I’m digressing, sorry. So the thing was, leading up to this information I was going to share with Matthew was . . .

The Get the Guy techniques . . . the techniques that he shares with you today . . . if that was me 10 years ago, and this is now, your life is going to be even better than mine.

I met a guy, and the second date . . . the first date was good. We met for a couple hours, caught up. On the second date, as Matthew said, I just put it all on the table. Just told him. Got it over and done with.

And I was so worried when I was going to tell this guy what my accident was and what scars I’ve got and what I wear. And he turned around and he said the same thing as Matthew: “And what?”

I knew then that this was the man for me. Was it because of what Matthew said that this man had said this? Probably. But also what Matthew had taught me about myself.

When I was sharing this with my date, I remember before meeting up with him, thinking, “If he doesn’t like me for who I am, then stuff it. Like, I’ll just keep going. My worth doesn’t depend on that.”

So the Get the Guy stuff, that works. And if I’m standing here and you can see what I wear, my scars, the insecurities . . . any insecurities you’ve had, I’ve had it. Seen it. Done it. Got the picture. If I can get that, you can certainly get that.

And then a few months later, we went to St. Andrews, which is a beautiful place in Scotland. So we went on holiday and he booked the honeymoon suite and no one had ever done that for me and I was like, “Wow, this is amazing.”

He said, “Oh, it just so happened that at the hotel, this was the only room they had.”

I was like, “Wow, amazing.”

Then we went out for something to eat and he’s really nervous. He was shaking and at one point, he literally said, ‘You want to try this?” And when he was holding it toward me, it went and hit someone. It was that bad and I was thinking, “I’ve still got it.”

In St. Andrews, it’s a beautiful place up there, beautiful scenery, and I was like, “Yeah, let’s walk under the stars. Beautiful.”

Then he said, “Close your eyes, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

And I was like, “Okay.” And I’m closing my eyes and it’s five minutes later and I’m thinking, “I’m going to get murdered.” I’m thinking the worst.

And walking with heels on sand with a prosthetic leg is really difficult. So I’m going down to the sand and I’m trying to walk sexy, but slipping, but he thought it was cute. It wasn’t really. And then I just was like, “Wow, this is so beautiful. And look at everything you can see,” and then I said, “What are you doing down there?” And he proposed and six months later we were married. Because of you.

I’ve got two more things to share. Just don’t want to take all your time up.

Matthew:

You can run the day today.

Angela:

I think my nerves have kind of disappeared now because I’m super excited now that I’m sharing this with you girls. You see, all week, I’ve wanted to tell you things. I’ve wanted to come and sit with you, but I’ve kind of had to stay a wee bit closed in case I slipped up and shared this. Cause I’m a bit of a gab.

So another thing that I shared with Matthew was my story. The thing I couldn’t speak about, the thing that caused me the most torment, the thing I was scared about, again this thing that was holding me back . . . Matthew got it out of me.

I’ve now started my own charity and I now help families and children who have been harmed by drunk and drug drivers. But I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I hadn’t experienced the Retreat.

I wouldn’t have experienced that if I hadn’t listened to the wonderful elephant presentation here. Or Matthew’s mum’s love and affection . . . like, the way that she has with people. I am like that now when I go and visit families, you know, just with a touch. And my beautiful mum in the corner as well, like her kindness and compassion and beauty and always being there for me. You know, I feel very lucky.

But it took all this time to get here. I need to show you something. So one of the saddest things about being in the accident was being told that, “This is not going to happen for you. You’re not going to have your life.”

It’s like Matthew was talking about . . . the moment you imagine looking back at your life, and you don’t have the people around you or you don’t have the things that you want. And I was told because of the severity of my injuries that I was never going to have a child.

Imagine that you’ve always wanted to have a family and have a child, and to have that taken away from you . . .

How do you console yourself? I didn’t think I could, and luckily I’ve got the love of my lovely husband now and things like that, but Matthew wanted me to come out and talk at Christmastime, and sadly, I had to go back into hospital for another operation. And my operation . . . it was really hard . . . in fact, it was life-changing.

I want you to see what your love and care during the Retreat has brought . . .

So we’ve got a wee baby girl now.

I hope nobody told you and spoiled the surprise.

Matthew:

How did you not tell me that on the phone?

Angela:

It was really hard. I did say to you I had work, and I did have work, but I didn’t know if it would be safe to travel and all that.

Matthew:

What’s her name?

Angela:

Hannah. And she’s so cute.

It’s like sometimes I look at her and I just think, “Wow, I carried you. Amazing.”

What I want to share with you, and I hope you can all hear this . . . Like, if you’re coming to the Retreat or doing the Get the Guy thing and you’re thinking, “I’m just not getting it. I don’t have my goals or I don’t have this . . .” Or you may be thinking, “This is what I want to do.”

It’s funny how things just change. But they’ve changed because you’ve had this experience, and I’m not any different from you. My scars are different, my life experiences are a bit different. But I’m just like you, I’m just one of the girls. And I came from Scotland, two flights away, I dragged my mum here, she’s now sunburned. Sorry, sorry, it’s a lovely suntan.

I came this week because I want to tell you that this works. I was trying to think of a beautiful quote or something like that. But it’s simply that this works. There’s no sugarcoating it. There’s no putting a pretty bow on it. If you want your life to be better . . . sometimes I started out thinking I wanted to go in this direction, then this took me to this direction.

But I have fulfillment in my life in all areas. I know that I’m going to have dips, but I’ve got tools now. I feel boosted and I’ve got even more tools for my self-esteem and my confidence.

But I know what I’ve learned from you, I’m going to teach Hannah. And what an amazing little girl she’s going to turn into.

So I want to say thank you for listening. Thank you, Pauline. Thank you, Steve. And of course my mum. I love you. But the trailblazer . . . Matthew. Thank you.

Matthew:

Ladies, please can we . . . because Angela did not need to come here this week, but she has for us. Can we please give her a huge round of applause?

Give it up for Angela, everybody!

Matthew (current day):

Thank you so much for watching. Leave me a comment and let me know what that meant to you. What story have you been telling yourself about why finding love is never going to happen for you? I want you to leave me a comment telling me how Angela’s story affected you, and maybe even shifted that story a little bit. Maybe it made you realize that there is hope that no matter what the circumstances, things are possible for us that we never imagined.

What’s the story you’ve been telling yourself about why you’ll never find love? And how has your story shifted a little bit since watching that video?

By the way, this moment with Angela took place on our Retreat in Florida. For anyone who wants to join us this year, our event is from September 9-15. It is six days of immersion with me leading you through a process that I’ve developed over 17 years of my life now. So if that video made you feel like this is a place you want to be, and you want those six days of growth for yourself, then check it out. I’ll leave a link and you can come and see for yourself.

Thank you so much for watching. Do leave me a comment before you go. I will be reading them, and thank you again for everything that you’ve done to help us get this book out to the world. I’m so very grateful and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.

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Writing my new book “Love Life” has been an intensely personal journey. It was written over four years, so I was working on these chapters at practically every stage of my love life: from heartbroken to single to meeting the love of my life and getting married. I was on a journey to overcome many of my most painful challenges—discovering the internal blockages that were preventing me from finding the love I wanted, and uncovering deeper levels of core confidence in both dating and life in general.Whether you’re single, in a relationship, or married, there’s something in this book for you. In this video, I talk about some of my favorite chapters, and how they can apply to your life today.I’ve poured so much of what I’ve learned over the last decade into this book, and I can’t wait to hear what you think of it!

Hi, friends. Welcome back to the channel. I am Matthew Hussey, and if you are new here, for the last 17 years, I’ve been a coach specializing in helping people find love through greater confidence and relational intelligence. I am also the author of the brand-new book, Love Life, which is all about how to raise your standards, find your person, and live happily no matter what.

I wrote this book to be a copilot for anybody who is serious about finding love, to be a set of tools and principles for letting go of past relationships and healing from previous pain, overcoming the fear of being left behind, and finally finding the love that we are all looking for that every single one of us wants to find in this life.

It’s not about games or tactics. It’s not a book about telling you you just need to get out there more or giving you clichés like, “It will happen when you least expect it.”

I wrote this book to understand the real reasons why we struggle to find love, what’s holding us back, and why it feels so difficult today. I wrote a book that is designed to see you, because that’s what I’ve been doing for nearly two decades of my life: studying people in this area of life and understanding the essence of what is holding them back.

You see, when our internal culture of fear and anxiety about never finding love meets an external dating culture of people who are taking what they can get while giving the minimum possible investment, it creates a recipe for low standards and expectations, and for settling for far less than we’re worth.

But as Morrie Schwartz told Mitch Albom: “If you don’t like the culture, don’t buy it. Create your own.”

When you create your own culture, not only will you be happier and more confident because you’ll be living a life that you love regardless of what anyone else is doing, but your culture will also be the thing that ends up changing how people treat you, and attracting the right person to you.

Love Life shows you how to do this. And guess what? It is finally out after four-and-a-half years, and months of talking about pre-ordering the book. I can now finally say that you can order the book. It has already been translated into a bunch of different languages, with more to come.

In this video, I want to share with you the philosophies in the book and why I decided to write it. And if you’ve already gotten the book, hopefully, it’ll encourage you to read it cover to cover, because if you’re anything like me, you buy a lot of books and only read 10% of them. But I really want you to read this one. So, hopefully, this will encourage you to do that. And if you haven’t gotten the book yet, and this video helps you see that there are things that are intensely relevant to you in the book, my hope is that it encourages you to grab one.

I am currently signing the very first-ever copies of this book as part of a giveaway that I’m doing that includes some signed copies of the book, a one-on-one with me, Live Retreat tickets to our six-day retreat in Florida this year, and lots more that you are entered into just for getting a copy of the book.

And every single person who buys a copy of Love Life is going to get an exclusive free ticket to an event I am doing on May 4, called Find Your Person. This virtual event is going to be a complete one-off moment where not only do I want to take the concepts from the book and bring them to life live, but I also want to answer the question: “If I was single again and I had one year to try to make finding love inevitable, what are the direct and indirect things I would do?” That’s what this event is about. And it’s designed to give you a plan—a roadmap for going out there over the next year of your life for your love life.

All you need to do to get all of this is confirm your purchase at lovelifebook.com.

So, why did this book come about?

I have had a front-row seat to the pain and the anxiety and the fear that people feel in this area of their life when it seems to be not working out, taking longer than we thought, or we’re just not where we thought we would be by this moment in our lives.

It can feel like something is wrong with us when we keep being told, especially by technology, that it’s easier than ever to meet people when we have all of these different ways of doing it. It’s almost like we’re being gaslit into thinking it’s easier, when in fact something about it feels harder.

Part of this book is me wanting people to know that they are not crazy for feeling that it’s difficult out there right now, that there is a lot of flakiness, there is a ton of bad behavior. There are so many people with absolutely zero intentionality in their dating lives who just want to use you for an experience, so that they can have a hit of attention or intimacy before dropping us at the first sign of something else, or the moment the relationship becomes an inconvenience.

On top of all of that, many of us have our own challenges that we take into our love lives. Many of us feel routinely drawn to people who are bad for us, and not attracted to the people who might be better for us. It can put us in this never-ending loop of dating someone who’s exciting but hurts us, and then going back to someone who’s safe, but we don’t feel a spark with. And we go round and round, never finding satisfaction, never finding what we’re really looking for.

I remember getting to a point in my love life where, even though I knew how to create opportunity, I still couldn’t seem to find what I was looking for. And when we don’t find what we’re looking for for long enough, we start to worry that we’re the one who’s broken. The last five years of my life have not just been about me helping other people on that journey, but me being on that journey of discovery myself, figuring out: What are the answers I need? What are the internal blockages that could be preventing me from finding the love that I say I want?

I didn’t write this book as a married person telling people how to go out there and find a long-term relationship. I wrote this book through every stage of my love life. I wrote it heartbroken, so there are chapters in this book where I’m devastated, and I’m writing from that energy. There are chapters of this book I wrote from a place of being single and not knowing if I would meet my person. I wrote chapters of this book when I was first dating Audrey, who is now my wife. And the final edits of this book, I did on our honeymoon.

This book has come with me through every emotion and every part of the arc of my own love life. So, let’s get into the journey of the book itself.

Now, the book starts with an introduction that’s called “Karma Is a Bitch.” In this chapter, I take myself off of any kind of pedestal that anyone could have ever put me on where they think that I was a great person to date. I think people are going to get a real kick out of this chapter, because it’s a genuine window into the kind of person I actually was to date.

I also talk about my own heartbreak and one of the dark moments of my life. Then I go on to talk about the difficulties of being single—difficulties we can all relate to: the pang of loneliness that never goes away when we really want to find someone but that person is nowhere to be found, and how to manage those difficult emotions. This is a much more vulnerable piece of work in general from me. I get way more personal about my own life than I ever have. I also open up about a lot of the pain in my life.

I think people are going to really enjoy this chapter, and my hope is that in those chapters, you feel like you’re not alone, because what you’re feeling is a very human thing. And the yearning for love is universal. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

I then go on to talk about how this yearning for love can make us tell ourselves false love stories. So there’s a chapter called “How to Tell Love Stories.” In this chapter, I talk about the ways we value situations that shouldn’t have that much value placed on them. Just because we have a mutual attraction with someone, we think that this person, this situation, is the most important thing in the world. When that happens, it’s the beginning of us dropping our standards. It’s the beginning of us starting to do all sorts of things that we would tell a friend never to do.

There’s a chapter called “Question Your Instincts,” which is all about the bad instincts we have that lead us to more and more pain. I can think of a relationship in my own life where I had all sorts of bad instincts to give up things that were important to me to just try to please somebody else, to never have the conversations that I should have had about my own needs, and really ended up losing myself in the process, which is one of the scariest things, isn’t it? When we spend so long worrying about holding on to somebody else that we actually lose ourselves. And then, of course, when we get our heart broken, which we almost inevitably do in those situations, we find ourselves having to start building ourselves—and our confidence—up again from scratch.

I talk about the bad instincts we have because we’re taught a lot in our love lives to just “trust your instincts.” Our instincts don’t always serve us, especially if we learned instincts from parents or caregivers who taught us the wrong idea of love or who taught us that we had to earn love or that love was volatile or chaotic, or that it was hot and cold. We have instincts based on early imprints that don’t serve us later in life. So we have to question our instincts.

One of the worst instincts we have is the instinct to avoid conversations that would give us clarity about another person’s intentions. That instinct gets us into a lot of trouble, because over time, dating someone or having a relationship with someone, we build up a huge amount of resentment, never really speaking up.

There’s a chapter in the book called “Have Hard Conversations.” And this chapter, I believe, is one of the most important chapters in the whole book, because it teaches us how we can start to advocate differently for ourselves. How can I speak up about the things that I need? If I’m not sure where the relationship is going, how and when do I speak up about that so I don’t get another six months in only to find that this person was never serious in the first place?

Having hard conversations is one of the most valuable skills in the world. And if you’re anything like me, you haven’t always been good at it. I have a people-pleaser in me. I have a part of me that doesn’t want to upset people. I have a part of me that worries—if I really speak up for myself—that someone is going to go away, that I won’t be loved. And so, hard conversations were something I really had to learn. I had to learn how to feel safe to have difficult conversations with people. And how to, of course, connect with the fact that I was worthy of asking for what I really needed.

That’s a very important chapter that I think is also very practical, and it’s going to give you lots of very practical things you can say for different situations. I think you’re really going to enjoy that one.

But then I start to talk about the deeper wiring we have that can get in the way of us being attracted to people who would actually make us far happier than the people we’ve been with in the past. One of the hardest things is this feeling that “I just keep drawing the wrong people to me.” And sometimes it’s even worse than that: “I get attracted to the wrong people.”

There’s a chapter I write—it’s one of my favorite chapters in the whole book—and it’s called “Never Satisfied.” This chapter lists out five reasons why we keep going for the wrong people and what we can do about it. By the end of that chapter, you will understand your wiring on a whole different level. It will be illuminating for you when you realize, “Oh, these are some of the ways I’ve been getting in my own way.” I know that because it was a process I went through.

In that chapter, I tell you a very personal story about my own life that was an indication of how I kept creating a result unconsciously that I didn’t want. And it will prompt you to look for the ways that you might be creating a result you don’t want without even knowing it right now. Becoming aware of that is the first step, because once you are aware of it, you can then move to the next chapter, which is “How to Rewire Your Brain.”

I think for a lot of us, we know we want to change. We may even have some awareness of what we want to change, but we don’t know how to change it. Especially in our love lives, we can go through feeling like we’re broken: “There is something wrong with me. I don’t know how to change. I just keep getting attracted to this thing, or I keep sabotaging in this way, or I keep running away because I’m scared of getting hurt, or I’m just terrified of abandonment. And any time I start to like someone, I turn into a different version of myself that I don’t like.”

We all have wiring like that. But how do you rewire yourself? That chapter gives you specific steps on how to do it.

The next few chapters are all about getting the strength to handle what are some of the most difficult situations we can find ourselves in, especially in our love lives. One such chapter is chapter 10. It is called “The Question of Having a Child.” And I wrote this chapter for anybody at any stage who is suffering from the difficult emotions that come from either wanting a child but feeling like the circumstances haven’t arisen for you to have a child, or someone who has already missed their window and is now grieving and dealing with the difficult emotions that come with that.

This chapter is for you if you relate to any of that. I have, for the last 17 years of my life, been on the front lines of hearing these anxieties and fears from women who want this more than anything in the world. And they are now fearful or even panicking that this part of their life doesn’t align with what they had hoped for.

I have walked people through exercises to help them regain a sense of control and make a plan. And I put these exercises into this chapter. I don’t take on this chapter alone. I interview fertility experts—people who are at the top of their field in this area. But for anyone going through those emotions right now, this chapter is designed to restore a sense of calm and help you devise a plan that puts you back in control.

Then there’s a chapter on “Surviving a Breakup,” which is going to be so important to so many people, because many of you are not going to be picking this book up from a point of being ready to find love. You’re going to be picking this book up at the point of the most acute pain, of having just been left by somebody, of a relationship or a marriage ending that you thought would keep going—you thought would last forever, or at least you’d hoped would last forever. And you’re trying to get past that heartbreak. That chapter is for you.

There’s also a chapter called “How to Leave When You Can’t Seem to Leave,” which is for anyone out there who finds themselves in a painful or toxic relationship that you’ve been in maybe for some time, maybe for most of your life, and you’re struggling to get out. Or maybe it’s a situation with someone that you couldn’t even call it a relationship. It’s a dynamic you have with someone that you feel like you are just locked into, hoping they’ll change, hoping that one day, it will become what you want it to become. But your day-to-day experience of this person in this situation is misery. That chapter gives you the steps and strength to finally move on from somebody who brings pain to your life.

After talking about these challenging scenarios, I take on the subject of confidence in a big way. So many people feel like their self-esteem, or their lack of self-worth, is at the core of all of their issues when it comes to their love life. It is the deepest reason why they are accepting poor treatment. It is why they don’t believe in themselves. It is why they feel everyone is out of their league. It’s why they feel it’s never going to happen for them. It’s why when they find a relationship, they feel like they can’t enjoy it because “I always feel like someone is going to leave” or “I always feel like I’m not good enough for somebody.”

In these chapters, I give you a model for confidence that I have developed over 17 years of my career. It is the three layers of confidence—the surface, the identity, and the core. As I break these down, you’re going to understand confidence on a level that perhaps you never have before. This model clarifies it for people and provides a real sense of what they can do to feel confident in a way they’ve never been able to achieve before.

This on its own is worth getting a copy of this book. I don’t care if you’ve just met the love of your life and finding your person is a box you’ve already ticked. That chapter on core confidence is something everybody needs.

And last, but absolutely not least, we get to the final chapter “Happy Enough.” I don’t want to do any spoilers on this chapter. Just please read it. When you get your copy of the book, promise me you will read this chapter. I know it’s at the end of the book. I know, myself included, how few of us ever get to the end of a book we start reading, but I promise you, in this case, it will be worth it.

So, for those of you who have been on the fence or just haven’t gotten around to it, I hope that this has given you enough information to know you want it, and to adopt one of my little books for yourself.

And I also want to just take this opportunity to say “thank you” to all of you who have supported me over the years. It is not lost on me that a huge part of the reason that I’m able to get a book deal with a major publisher like HarperCollins is because of the audience that is loyal to me, loyal to my work, and would be excited for me to produce something like this. You make this possible for me at this scale. You have supported me in such beautiful ways in my life.

I have been doing this . . . I’m 36 now . . . I’ve been doing this since I was 19 years old. And that’s crazy. I’ve been through so many different times in my life during that time. I’ve been through some really, really difficult times that people don’t know about. I’ve had some very dark moments, more than a few dark nights of the soul. For a long time, I wasn’t vulnerable enough, I don’t think . . . not about the private details of my life, but about some of the struggles I was going through that you out there were also going through and are going through right now. And I wish I had been braver sooner in being able to talk the way that I talk in this book about some of those struggles, because I think I could have helped even more people by doing that.

But one of the most beautiful things about the last few years is that as I have gotten a little braver, and as I have shared more of myself, the response from all of you has been stunning. You have not judged me. You have only encouraged me and supported me and been my friends, and I felt so accepted by all of you. And then that’s made me braver.

I want to thank you, because you’ve had a big part in encouraging the kind of vulnerability that shows up in this book, and I believe that’s a vulnerability that’s going to change a lot of people’s lives beyond simply the knowledge and the expertise that I’ve poured into this book.

So, thank you for supporting me, thank you for believing in me, thank you to every single one of you who gets a copy of this book. You don’t know what it means to me. It’s been four-and-a-half years of my life and my work, and many more years before that, of experience leading up to those four-and-a-half years. And I’m just so grateful.

I’m also grateful to the lessons learned in this book, for everything they’ve allowed me to do because the things that I learned, that I’ve poured into this book, are also the reasons I’ve found peace and joy and happiness in this area of my life.

It’s no coincidence that in the arc of me writing this book, there was also the arc of me finding my person and getting married. I can draw a direct line between everything I was learning and everything I was applying in my own life that led me to find this extraordinary healthy and beautiful love that I have in my life now. And it’s a love that I know so many of you feel because you love Audrey too, and you’ve been so welcoming to her. Thank you.

I can’t wait to see what you think of this book. Please write to me and let me know what you think of it when you get your copy. And like I said, the link is lovelifebook.com. Make sure that when you do get your copy of the book, wherever you get it from, go to that website and register your purchase, so that you’re entered into the prize draw, and you get a ticket to the event I’m doing on May 4, where I can’t wait to see you.

Thank you for being here and thank you for supporting me and showing me love. I can’t wait for you to read this. I’ll see you soon.

The post My VERY Best Relationship Advice to Find Love in 2024 appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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You’ve been on a date or two with someone and things are going pretty well. Then suddenly they ask you, “Wanna come over to my place and watch a movie tonight?”

Is it too soon? What if you like this person but you feel it’s moving a little too fast? In today’s video, I share 5 things you need to know before you “Netflix and chill” if you want more than just a casual hookup.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the channel. It has been a crazy week. I wanted to get back to basics and do a video for you on the five things you need to know before you go and “Netflix and chill” with somebody.

Before I get into the video, the Love Life book came out this week. It has been a huge week, a crazy week, and so many of you have contributed to the way that this book has gotten out there by already ordering a copy. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing that.

I wanted to level with you on something right now: Tomorrow is the final day that week-one book sales count for the New York Times bestseller list, and the reason we want to get on the list is not for vanity; I’ve been on that list before with my first book. It’s because if we get on that list, it creates more publicity around the book, and more publicity around the book means that this book will find the people who need it—people who may not even know who I am, but who need what’s in this book to be happier, more confident, and to value themselves more.

So this is me saying to you, if you get value out of my work, if anything I’ve ever done, any video I’ve ever made—last week or 10 years ago—has helped you, it would mean the world to me if you would grab a copy of the book. I’m gonna keep doing this. I’m gonna keep making free videos. I’m gonna keep writing free newsletters. It’s what I love to do and I love being on this journey with you. So I’m not going anywhere.

But this is just one of those moments that if you wanted to support me, it would mean so so much. The link to get the book is lovelifebook.com. Thank you to everyone who has ordered and to everyone who does order as a result of this video to help us get to that New York Times list. And next week I will tell you if we made it.

All right, on to the video. So this video was inspired by one of my Love Life Club members who talked about a guy who invited her on a “Netflix and chill” date on her second date with him. Now, I don’t look at that and think that’s just a complete red flag. But when she was telling me the story, she was saying, “Someone in my life said to me, ‘He obviously just wants to have sex with you.’”

That threw her a little bit, because, as she said, “I like this guy. We had a really nice time. The way he framed it wasn’t like anything untoward was going to happen. And I really do want to see him again. And by the way, I already said yes. So what do I do? How do I see this?” This was the way she was coming to me.

So I want to give you five things that if you—and it’s not exactly a far-fetched scenario—go on a successful date with someone and then they ask you to come over . . . and have some dinner or watch a little Netflix . . . I want you to have these five things in your mind.

Before I get into these five points, I want to make something very clear: A video like this can often be misread as coming from some kind of prudish or puritanical place when it comes to sex. Let me assure you, it doesn’t come from any of those places with me. You’ll find no judgment here for who you want to have sex with, or when you want to have sex with them. I only make this video from the point of view of making sure that whatever you do in your love life is aligned with the result you ultimately want for yourself in the long term.

The first thing I want to say is you are always entitled to tell someone, “That sounds fun, but I’m just not comfortable with that at this stage.” Or “You know, it’s a little soon for me to go to your house.” You can even make a joke of it: “It’s a little soon for me to go to a stranger’s house,” and let them say, “I’m not a stranger; we have an amazing date,” and you go “Yeah, haha, I know, it was amazing. Still, it’s a little soon for me, but let’s do something. Let’s go somewhere. Let’s go see a movie. Let’s go to dinner.”

You can always tell someone, “Not yet.” Remember, you set the pace of your dating life, and don’t let someone take you off your pace just because you had a great time with them.

The second thing I want to say is if you do say yes, decide your boundaries ahead of time. And the really important thing about that is, when you get there, you won’t always be able to trust your desires, right? It’s not just “decide your boundaries ahead of time because otherwise when you get there, they’ll be able to just do what they want,” it’s that when you get there, you may just do what you want, and that might not be the best thing that serves the path you want to be on.

So before you get there, ask yourself: “What is it I really want?” And if you tell yourself: “Well, actually, I want true companionship. I want true partnership. I want a relationship. I’m looking to create something with someone,” then remind yourself that the only reason you’re dating in the first place is to find someone you can create that with.

So this idea of going to someone’s house is really nothing more than another date—a date where you are looking at someone and going, “Do we have a great time? Do we have the same values? Do we want the same things?”

The danger with going over there without having that clear in your mind is that you can go and just have sex with someone, and sex itself muddies the waters. It can create a false sense of connection. It’s something that makes you feel closer to someone than you really are, and it might not change the way they feel at all. It might not progress their feelings at all. Meanwhile, you might feel a lot closer to this person.

It’s almost like, because it creates a false sense of intimacy, you feel like you know that person better than you do by now, even though you haven’t actually spent that much time with them, and technically you’re still just on date two.

So deciding your boundary ahead of time means: “What am I okay with?” And be kind of specific. Say, “Am I okay with having dinner at their house? Am I okay with watching a movie on their sofa? Am I okay with us watching a movie under a blanket? Am I okay kissing this person in the middle of this movie? Is anything further than that okay?”

That’s why you have to decide. It’s not for me to decide. It’s for you to decide, but decide where the line is, and then stick to that line knowing you created that line in the first place because it serves the path you want to be on.

Remember, if you follow your feelings in the moment, then you’ll just do whatever feels good. But if you’ve set out your path, then you’ll stick to your path, and that’s going to make you much happier long term.

Number three: When you go to someone’s house, don’t let the fact that it feels familiar trick you into a false sense of intimacy that hasn’t been earned.

Remember, you are still just on a date. It may feel like all of a sudden there’s something a bit boyfriend-and-girlfriend-y about this situation. You’re lying on the sofa together watching a movie. This kind of feels like the cozy, comfortable part of a relationship. But you’re on date two or four or whatever date you’re on. So don’t let the fact that you’re in someone’s home and you’re doing something that feels very snuggly and cozy and familiar together trick your mind into thinking you’re further along than you really are.

Which leads us to number four: Don’t do anything with someone in their home that you wouldn’t do if you were on a date at an outdoor movie theater. Imagine it’s the summer and someone invited you to go and watch a movie screening in a park somewhere. If you did that, ask yourself: “What would I do in this setting? Well, I might have a little cuddle, we might have a kiss or two or 10, but that would be the extent of it.”

Don’t go somewhere else just because you’re in someone’s home, because that means you’ve forgotten the date you’re on. You’re just reacting to the setting you’re in.

And number five: Don’t let it set a precedent for the amount of effort that someone puts in. A lot of people, when they invite you on a “Netflix and chill” date at their house, once they’ve got that, it can come with a sense of entitlement that “this is now all we need to do.”

So now you find date three is like that. And so is date four and so is date five, and before you know it, you’re in a dynamic that no longer feels like you’re dating. It just feels like a kind of pseudo-relationship although you don’t know what the hell you are with this person. You’re just someone who goes to their house and hangs out.

Instead of falling into that trap again—there’s no crime in going to someone’s house and having a chill date with them, having a bit of dinner, and watching a movie—but if you’re going to do it, remind yourself that “this doesn’t change the amount of effort that I expect this person to put in on average.”

If on date three, they ask you to come over again, you can say to that person, “Hey, let’s go do something. Why don’t we go watch a movie, or why don’t we go to a restaurant, or why don’t we go for a walk somewhere?”

Take them out of that context and remind them that this isn’t just the norm now. This can’t just be the expectation. You are still dating, you are still getting to know each other, and you still expect effort.

I also want to say I feel I would be remiss not to say this . . . especially for women, let’s face it: Going to someone’s home who you don’t really know comes with certain risks.

There are plenty of unsafe people in the world to be alone in a room with, so whatever you do, if you don’t feel comfortable with someone, if you don’t know them that well and there’s even a part of you that’s in doubt, get to know them more in a public setting before you show up to their house on your own. Or if you do show up to their house, make sure people you love know where you are, the address of where you are, and you check in via ways that let the people who love you the most know that you are okay.

None of this comes from some puritanical place in me. It comes from one place only: Keep yourself safe.

Thank you so much for watching this video. Thank you to all of you who have ordered a copy of my new book, Love Life. It’s been a crazy week. I’ve been on CBS Mornings with Gayle King. I’ve been on the Drew Barrymore Show and done stuff with Oprah Daily this week. It has just been one of the wildest weeks of my career.

I know you have been along with me for the ride as I’ve been posting about it and doing all of these lives. Thank you so much for the love you have given me through this process, for all of the encouragement and the support. It means so very much to me. And I’m just so excited for all of you to read the book, and to let me know what you think. I’m so excited that you finally get to read it and that I don’t have to just hold it in secret anymore. So do let me know what you think. Send me a message. It means more to me than you know.

For anyone who still wants a copy who hasn’t gotten one, lovelifebook.com is the link. I will see all of you who have ordered a copy of the book on May 4. I can’t wait to see you. We’re doing lots of giveaways for everyone who has gotten the book: Live Retreat tickets, a one-on-one with me, signed books, Love Life sweatshirts, T-shirts, all sorts of amazing things. So we’re going to be announcing winners for those things at the event.

Of course, anyone who got a book is going to get a ticket to that event. If you haven’t already, make sure you go and register your purchase at lovelifebook.com so you can claim that ticket, and I’ll see you soon. Thanks, everyone.

The post 5 Things to Know Before You “Netflix and Chill” With Someone appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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“What if I never find the right person?”

I’ve been asked this question several times a week for the last 10+ years. You may feel SO ready to share your life with someone … only to have had dates that fizzled out or incompatible relationships . . . or perhaps you’ve remained single with no such person on the horizon. It can even begin to feel like that’s the way it will always be.

If you’re working through feelings of longing, loneliness, or sadness—or just want to feel more excited about dating—in today’s new video, I share 3 tools that will help you effectively manage those difficult emotions, and give you real hope for the future.

How can we deal with the fear of never finding our person? I know so many people who are constantly struggling with the fear and the anxiety of it never happening for them in their love lives.

When we have that fear, it’s not like the acute pain of a heartbreak, where the pain is massive and immediate and can stop us from even getting through our day. It’s a kind of chronic pain that never goes away—a pain of loneliness, a pain of longing and deep desire for companionship (to give our love to somebody), but having no one to give it to.

That can make people anxious or sad or lonely over a lifetime. And I want to speak to everyone out there right now who is relating to this, whether you’re 35 and you want to have a family and it scares you because you haven’t met your person yet, or whether you’re 65 and you’re thinking, “I just want to find someone to share my life with and I’m so scared I’m never going to find that,” or “I’m never going to find that again.”

So today I want to share with you three tools that you can use to help effectively manage those difficult emotions.

Before we get started, the three tools I’m going to give you today are actually from one of the later chapters in my new book, Love Life. Have you gotten your copy yet?

The reason I ask is not just because I deeply want you to get a copy of this since I know it’s going to help you. It’s also because everyone who gets a copy right now is getting a complimentary ticket to an event I am doing on May 4 called Find Your Person.

This is a virtual event, so you can attend it from any country in the world, but it’s designed to take the ideas from the book and bring them to life in a live event that helps you achieve your goal of finding your person.

Everyone who gets a copy of the book is getting entered into a drawing that I’m doing where we are giving away some really cool things, including tickets to my Live Retreat this year—six days with me in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A one-on-one with me to ask me your love life question or any question you want to ask in life, plus some Love Life sweatshirts. You’ve seen me wear them in some of our videos—many of you have asked where you can get them. The prize draw is the only place where we’re giving them away, and many other cool things. As long as you order your copy of Love Life by midnight on May 3, you will be entered into those exclusive prize draws. That link again is lovelifebook.com.

So what are these three tools that can help you manage these emotions? Well, I went through a very difficult time in my life that I talk about in the book, where I was suffering from severe chronic physical pain. This was one of the darkest times of my life. And one of the reasons it was such a dark time was because I couldn’t figure out how to make it go away. I tried everything. I tried every treatment, I flew around the world, I spent so much money and resources and time and energy trying to figure out how to make this pain go away, and nothing worked.

There was a certain point where I felt utterly hopeless. I had this sense that if this pain never went away, I would never be happy. And since I didn’t know how to make it go away. I concluded that I might never be happy. And that was when I had to start going on a journey of figuring out: “What do I do to manage my relationship with this pain so I can at least get to a place where I’m happy enough to enjoy my life?”

Because—and some of you who have experienced physical chronic pain over a long time will know this—when you’re in that kind of pain, it takes you out of your life. You’re not present. It’s like you’re on the outside of your life all the time. Even in the joyful moments, you’re not really there.

And the truth is, the pain that we can experience in our love life when we’re not finding what we’re looking for . . . we can spend years wanting love but never finding it, never having that love in our lives in a sustainable way where someone really commits, or where we can feel the love we’re yearning for and find someone we can pour our love into . . . it is a similar kind of chronic pain that feels like it never goes away.

I had a woman once say to me, “Matthew, how do I kill the desire to find another person? How do I get rid of the desire to want that love in my life? Because it hasn’t happened for me so far, and if it never happens for me and I keep this desire, I’m going to be sad for the rest of my life.”

So here was someone saying not, “How do I find someone?” but “How do I stop wanting someone, because wanting someone is making me so incredibly unhappy.”

It’s a source of chronic emotional pain. And one of the big missions I had with this book, aside from the obvious of helping people on their road to finding love, was to help people deal with the very difficult emotions that they encounter when they want love. So like I said, my chronic pain required new tools, and I write about all of these tools in the book, but I wanted to share three with you today. So here goes:

Number one, everything changes, and it’s changing all the time.

We have this tendency in life to think that the past equals the future, that however things have been so far, that’s how they’re going to continue to be. But hopefully by watching this channel, by reading this book, you’re going to start to do some new things, change things up, shift your behavior, even by 1%.

That’s going to open new doors. It’s gonna bring new people into your life. You don’t know where you’re going to be in a year. You don’t know who’s going to be in your life in a year. What kind of love could walk into your life?

By the way, that can be true in reverse too. We don’t know when something could get worse. People who are in relationships don’t know how long they have their partner for—whether their partner’s going to leave them, or life is going to take their partner through illness. Everything changes. So to think that how our life is today is how it’s always going to be . . . that’s just a story.

It’s a story that keeps us locked in fear and anxiety instead of remaining curious and open to the possibilities of our actual life. And even our relationship to our pain changes.

To anyone out there who’s heartbroken right now, I want you to think about a time in your life where you were devastated, where you were going through something that you never thought you’d get over. And then notice how you feel about it now. Notice how it’s already changed. Everything changes, and this thing that you feel right now will shift and change too.

The idea that nothing’s ever going to change is in itself a story, and it’s a really unhelpful one, because it keeps us locked in our pain.

I once had a coach to whom I was lamenting the fact that because of my physical pain, I could no longer eat certain foods because they inflamed my pain, or I couldn’t have a sip of wine, which I really loved with certain meals. I couldn’t do these things because they all made my physical pain worse.

I was just devastated, and telling her about how I could never do these things again, and she said, “Whoa, we don’t know if a year from now or five years from now, this pain is going to be in the same place. We don’t know if these foods and alcohol will affect you in the same way in five years as it does today. All we know is that right now, it’s affecting you adversely. So let’s shift things for right now. But let’s lose the ceremony of ‘Oh, I can never have these things again.’”

I never forgot those words: “Lose the ceremony.”

How many of us are doing, in some area of our lives, what I was doing with food, where I was lighting a bonfire and burning the things that I loved? How many of you right now in your love life have lit a bonfire and are burning your hopes and dreams to ever find love, to ever find a relationship—“It’s never going to happen for me. Here’s the dream I had of having a family. Here’s the dream I had of growing old with someone”—and you’re just throwing it all into the fire?

That’s the ceremony. Lose the ceremony. And the ceremony is the story that nothing is going to change. Just like with the foods I was unable to eat, you don’t know where your love life is going to be five years from now. You don’t know who will have come into your life. You don’t know what person, what kind of love, you could never have anticipated, might show up, and in the meantime, you don’t know how much better you could feel about being single a month from now. Everything changes.

Tool number two: surrender.

Eckhart Tolle once said, “Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.”

When we feel lonely, it feels unacceptable. But if we surrender to that, if we say, “This is how it is in this moment in my life right now,” all of a sudden, we start to see things differently. We start to enjoy things differently. We calm down.

One of the great ironies with my physical pain was this notion that every time there was a treatment or there was some doctor’s visit around the corner, I would secretly get excited again that it was all going to change, that this was going to be the moment where I was going to start feeling better.

It’s kind of the way that we go on a great date and all of a sudden it’s like: “I feel the hope that I might no longer be single—that I might now have someone who means something to me, who I mean something to.” And it’s hard not to get carried away with that.

But the problem is when that person then doesn’t text us back, when it feels like it doesn’t go anywhere, or when they ghost us altogether. The crash afterward can be severe.

That’s how it was for me when I went to a doctor’s visit and I thought it was going to be the thing that finally got rid of my chronic pain . . . and then it didn’t work. That excitement and that hope would turn to despair, and I would crash so hard and go into a dark hole, not knowing how I would come out of it.

I got to a certain point where I said, “This hope is one of the most pernicious, devastating things about this pain . . . the hope that one day it’s going to go away.” Because it made me live for the future. I was no longer present in my life; I was just waiting for a time when it would be better.

At a certain point, I had to say, “What if it stayed this way? What if I had to live with this pain as it is today? Could I surrender to that?” And in my mind, I still made space for the fact that everything changes—that it may not be the same in five years—but I said, “If it’s gonna be the same for the next six months or the next year or even the next five, how would I live if I was accepting and surrendering to this?”

And in my mind, I started saying, “You know what? I’m going to live aggressively. I’m not going to wait for a time where this gets better. I’m going to live aggressively today. The pain that I thought I’d never be able to live with . . . what if I could accept it? What would that look like?”

There’s a wonderful story of Prince Ilus, who founded the city of Troy, who on his walk, came upon an object from the gods that was cast down in front of him. He took one look at it, and because it was a sacred object, he went blind immediately. And being learned in the nature and the wisdom of the gods, he cast thanks up to the gods, even with his sight having been lost, and after a week, the gods restored his sight.

Now, I find the least interesting part of that story the moment where Prince Ilus got his sight back. He found a way to experience this grace, this surrender, in having lost his sight. And that’s one of the hardest things to do in life. Every single one of us is going to go through things in life that we can’t just shift or change, and how we cope with those things is going to be what makes us. What if you being single right now, what if you feeling lonely, what if you wishing you could meet someone—but not having met someone and experiencing the pain that comes with that—was something you could actually breathe into and accept and surrender to?

What if you said, “Every day I haven’t met my person, I’m going to live aggressively—I’m going to learn how to be happy enough here right now where I stand knowing that maybe one day I’ll have someone in my life, but I am going to learn to be happy enough in surrendering to the circumstances as they are right now?” How would that change your life?

Like I said, one of the greatest things we can do is change our relationship with our pain. When we surrender to our circumstances, we are saying, “I am choosing a more peaceful relationship with the circumstances of not having found my person yet.”

Surrendering itself can feel like an overwhelming thing. “I really have to surrender to this? To these circumstances, to this feeling?” Well, in a sense, we surrender to the current circumstances of our life, but we don’t have to worry that surrendering to the feeling is a way of keeping that feeling going in the way that it exists right now.

And the reason for this is in tool number three: Pay attention to the modulations in your pain.

There are some days where the pain of loneliness, of fear about the future, of sadness that we haven’t met someone, is at a 10. And aren’t there other moments where it’s a three? Are there moments where you don’t notice that pain at all because you’re happily swept up in your life with friends? Or that you’re wrapped up in a project that you find meaning and richness and fulfillment in?

There are times where your pain doesn’t feel like this. And this is really important, because in the moments of peak intensity of our pain, focusing on the times that are no doubt coming, where we’re going to feel that pain at a four instead of an eight or a nine, that can be the thing that allows us to surrender.

And pain at a four instead of an eight is life-changing. I don’t know about you, but for example, when you’re in a heartbreak and your pain is at a nine or a 10, you can’t do anything. You can barely eat, sleep, work, or function with friends and family.

When you’re at a four, it may still be unpleasant, but you start living your life again. And when you live your life again, you begin that upward spiral to a better place where new things happen. All of a sudden, the best parts of your life start to get better. You start to bring new things into your life, you start to create again. You might even bring your pain down to a two or a one.

So pay attention to the modulations in your pain. Don’t judge the reality of your life by 10 p.m. at night when you’re lying in bed in the dark and thinking and craving connection. Look at your life as a series of different feelings in different moments. This loneliness is not the one story of your life, and the height of your pain isn’t the reality of how you feel all of the time. Sometimes, through surrender, through realizing that everything changes, we can just settle into a peak moment of pain knowing that in a few hours, or in a day or two, a moment is coming when we will feel better again.

Now, firstly, if you’re enjoying these tools, and if you’re finding them valuable, leave me a comment. Let me know: What’s your favorite of these tools? Which one do you see as being most helpful to you? Which one made you feel better even as you listened to it?

But also know that these are just three of seven or eight tools that I put in the book that I use for managing pain that you can use for managing the pain in your life.

None of this is to send a message that we should just say, “Where I am today is all I’m ever going to aim for.” In fact, I believe that by managing our pain and our relationship with it, we can get to a place in our life where we are no longer hopelessly anxious or unhappy, but where we are actually happy enough and we feel like “I’m in a centered, peaceful place once again.”

When we’re happy enough, it doesn’t make us complacent. What it does is it gives us the confidence to go out there and start being aggressive about making things happen in life, taking opportunities, being vulnerable, going on dates, showing who we are to people, taking swings . . . because when we’re happy enough, we really don’t have anything to lose.

If this date doesn’t go well, if you’re not interested in me, if this date doesn’t go anywhere, I know I’ll return to a life I’m happy enough with, where I can exist there and be okay, maybe even a little more than okay. And that, I believe, is one of the most subtle but profound powers we can possibly give ourselves.

If you enjoyed this video, I cannot stress enough that this book is going to be something that is going to profoundly impact your life. I have spent four years of my life on it, and I’m so excited for you to read it. So grab a copy at lovelifebook.com and you’ll be entered into the giveaway with all of those really great prizes.

Even if you don’t win anything, you’ll still get a ticket to an event I’m doing on May 4 where we are going to take the ideas from the book and bring them to life in practical ways for your year ahead, especially if finding your person is something you want to do, but you also want to be happier or more confident today before that even happens.

Go to lovelifebook.com to grab your copy. Thank you for watching this video. And I can’t wait to see you at our big event, which is virtual by the way, so wherever you are in the world, you can join us on Saturday, May 4.

The post How To Deal with the Fear of Never Finding Your Person appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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You know those moments where you look back and think, “I wish I’d known then what I know now”? Well, in today’s new video, I share the 7 things I wish I knew back when I was dating. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes in my 20s and 30s to save yourself extra time (and heartache)!

If you’ve ever found yourself giving more than the other person in your relationship, felt heartbroken that someone doesn’t like you back, or chased the wrong person, you can’t miss this! Watch this video.

Seven things I wish I knew when I was dating.

I, like many people, perhaps most people, can look back on a time in my life where I was looking for love and misguided in the way I was doing it.

I want to tell you about seven things that maybe I would in some way go back and tell myself if I had the chance.

Before we get into the video, if you have not pre-ordered the new book, Love Life: How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person, and Live Happily (No Matter What), now is an amazing time to do so. Pre-orders really matter to authors like me because they help get the word out about a book.

And I wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to make the decision to pre-order, which, by the way, is getting easier all the time because we’re only a matter of a week-and-a-half out from the publication of the book, and I’ve put together some really exciting things for you.

When you pre-order a copy of the book, you get entered into a prize giveaway. We’re giving away Live Retreat places on my Florida Retreat this year, we’re giving away a 1-on-1 with me, if you’ve ever wanted a coaching session with me privately. We’re giving away some Love Life sweatshirts, and some really cool other things you’ll find at lovelifebook.com, where you can preorder the book.

You’ll also automatically get an invite to an event I’m doing on May 4 that is an exclusive for book buyers, and a couple of other bonuses. Go to lovelifebook.com to pre-order your copy now. I can’t wait for you to read this. I’ve worked so hard on it for years now—literally four years of my life—and I just can’t wait for you to get your hands on this. Go to lovelifebook.com and get yours.

All right, on to the video: What I wish I knew when I was dating.

Number one, you are not for everyone, and that’s okay. I know there were times in my life where if someone I wanted didn’t like me back or went cold, I would take that to be a reflection of my value or how attractive I was, or that I had failed in attracting this person—that I’d made a mistake, that I’d done something stupid that I shouldn’t have. “I shouldn’t have said that; I should have done this.”

But remember this: If we’re being an authentic version of ourselves, we will get rejected. It’s not just normal; it should be expected. Because when we’re bringing all of ourselves to the table, we won’t be for everybody, and that has nothing to do with our worth. It has to do with everybody else’s tastes.

I saw a meme once that said: “You can’t make everyone happy. You are not pizza.”

Well, so many of us in our love lives try to go around being pizza to people in the world of attraction, but pizza isn’t what we should be trying to be.

When my wife, Audrey, and I go to get sushi, my favorite piece of sushi—the one I look forward to the most—is uni. Now, Audrey can’t stand the idea of uni. It’s not for her. I can’t even get her to have a bit of mine when I eat it. I get so excited about it. I would go to a sushi restaurant just to eat uni. How much Audrey likes uni is not a reflection of uni’s worth. It’s just a reflection of Audrey’s tastes, which, when it comes to uni, are bad. Don’t try to be the pizza of people. Be somebody’s uni, because here’s the thing: Dating and love are not a popularity contest. If you’re being intentional about finding a relationship, you don’t need everyone. You just need one.

Number two, what we want and what we need are very different things. We might get attracted to qualities like status, looks, charm, charisma, the fact that they’re really skilled at certain things, they know five languages, they’re really good at the guitar, whatever it may be. We get attracted to these things that have no bearing on how great of a partner someone will eventually be—about how caring they’ll be in year three, or how much they see us or how loyal or consistent they’ll be.

None of those qualities that we initially get attracted to are about how happy this person will make us. They might affect how desirable they seem in a room or how popular they are or how much everyone thinks we’re lucky to have a person like that. And that’s, of course, the danger of going after the things we say we want, is that so many of them are driven by our ego that we think we’ll be worthy if we get a person like that. And when our friends or our family validate that by saying, “Oh, good for you, you got a person like this. They’re really impressive. They’re really fun. They’re really charismatic. They’re whatever. They’re good-looking.” When we hear those things, we think, “Oh, they must be great. They must be worth holding on to—even the people around me think they’re wonderful.” But so often, that divorces us from our real experience of being with someone. When we’re so busy trying to “get” someone or hold on to someone, we stop paying attention to how we actually feel when we’re with them.

I know I’ve been in a situation before where I was so busy trying to just hold on that I didn’t actually notice that I was utterly miserable by being there. And when we notice that, when we start paying attention to our actual feelings, and we realize we’re unhappy, we realize how absurd it is to keep wanting someone who is making us unhappy.

So it’s okay to want certain things, but never at the expense of what actually makes you happy in a relationship. Question the things you’ve told yourself you want. Get in touch with the things you actually need.

Number three, “hard to get” does not mean “great to keep.” There is this strange economics of value that happens for many of us where if someone’s scarce, if they pull away, if they make us have to work really hard for their attention, or if they’re unavailable, we feel like they must be more valuable, but one does not necessarily lead to the other.

There are plenty of reasons why someone is not available to us that have nothing to do with their value for us. I know there were times in my life where I thought someone was more valuable because I couldn’t get them, and that made me think about them and ruminate about them in ways that were unhealthy, and attach a level of value that they’d never even earned, and I didn’t know they had.

So just because someone is hard to get, it doesn’t mean they would be very valuable for our life if we were able to get them. And by the way, hands up in the comments if you’ve ever thought someone was hard to get, and then you got them and realized you didn’t want to keep them.

Also, remember this, because I can flip this as well: Your “sure thing,” the person who wants you, is somebody else’s unrequited love and certainly has been in the past. This realization for me meant that when Audrey—my now-wife—came into my life and presented as healthy love, presented as someone who actually wanted me, someone who was being intentional and wanting to move things forward with me, I didn’t devalue her because she was presenting as easy and not challenging in that way of me having to chase and chase and chase. Instead, I was able to see that this person was incredible for me, and she just happened to be, lucky for me, at a point in her life where she was ready for something more.

Just because someone is presenting as safe and secure for you doesn’t mean that they’re less valuable, and it doesn’t mean they haven’t at a different point in their life been somebody else’s “hard to get.” Instead of devaluing the person who actually wants you, see yourself as lucky that their “hard to get” isn’t what you’re experiencing.

Number four, intention is everything. Intention is: Does someone want the same things I do? Are we on the same path? Do we see what we want to build? Do we both want to be in a relationship? Do we want to be in a relationship with each other? Is what I want for my future the same thing they want for their future? Or at the very least, are our futures compatible? This is intention.

So often, people ask me, “Matthew, do they like me? Do you think based on what they’re doing, they like me? They watch my Stories. Does that mean they like me? They keep texting me, or every time I text them, they text me back. Once a month, they ask me on a date. Surely they like me. Why else would they be doing these things?”

There are so many people who go on a discovery to try to figure out if someone likes them as if that’s the most important question. The answer to that can be frustratingly simple, which is: “Yeah, they like you. If they keep wanting to have sex with you, if they keep wanting to spend time with you, if they keep giving you their attention, on some level, they like you.”

That doesn’t mean anything. The fact that someone likes us might be enough for them to give us some of their attention sometimes, but it doesn’t mean they have any value for our future, because in order to have value for our future, someone actually has to want the same things we do. They have to want to be with us. They have to want to say “yes” to a relationship with us. If someone’s not in the same place as us and they don’t actually want anything more than some hits of attention or to share our company for a few hours a week or a month, or to just exchange messages, then how relevant is it that they like us?

It doesn’t matter. What matters is what they want to pursue with us. So we have to stop asking ourselves if someone likes us. I always remember one of my first-ever YouTube videos, when I was, like, 19 years old, about how to tell if a person likes you. But in the years that followed, I’ve made far more videos about whether someone has any real intentions with you, because someone liking us can be really uninteresting if we find out they don’t actually want what we want. Intention is everything.

Number five, get out of the middle. This is something I would have told myself looking back, because in times where I could have been way, way happier by being decisive, I created a tremendous amount of unhappiness for myself and for other people by getting stuck in the middle. And here’s what I mean by that: There was a kind of tendency for me to overthink.

My overthinking had me be incredibly indecisive about what was right for my love life and who was right for my love life and who should I ultimately end up with. Like many people out there watching this, that decision overwhelmed me: “This is probably the most important decision I’ll ever make. How do I ensure I make the right one?”

And when I was overthinking about that, instead of just being in the moment and experiencing someone, and seeing where something went, it would make me look for things that made someone not the right person.

If I found something that made someone appear in some way—big or small—to not be the right person, I would then withdraw, but I wouldn’t withdraw in the sense that I would end it and move on. I would then kind of keep the relationship at that level without progression. And of course, this is exactly the pattern so many people do that ends up hurting somebody else so much, because you can waste an extraordinary amount of someone’s time and really hurt them by staying in the middle instead of either saying goodbye or fully committing. But I found myself doing this in my own love life.

The shame of it was, by staying and living in my uncertainty and not progressing the relationship, I also never gave that relationship the chance to be what it could really be. Because you never know what a relationship can be if you don’t go all-in.

You never give it a chance to really flower into the thing it could be. You certainly never give the other person the chance to be all they can be, because if someone feels inherently unsafe or insecure or can sense that you’re not all-in, they don’t feel safe to really open up or be themselves or give the kind of love they can give when they are feeling safe.

I neither freed up space for something that was right nor got to see if the person in front of me and the relationship in front of me could be right. I just stayed in the middle and spent an incredible amount of time and energy and emotions in that place. And of course, me living on that level with someone didn’t avoid the heartbreak I was worried about by getting too invested, because it ended up in heartbreak anyway for everyone involved, so that’s what I would have told myself: “Get out of the middle.”

Number six: Never abandon yourself for someone you want.

It is such a natural instinct when we want someone, when we want to please someone, when we want to make them happy . . . to start to ignore things we need: friendships, hobbies, aspects of our work that are really important to us. Interests we have that we would ordinarily give time to or want to talk about.

We start to morph our world into one that suits them so we can make them happy or appease them. We’ll just make ourselves convenient for their needs and for the ways they want to spend their time, or the projects that are important to them—their sense of purpose in life, of how they want to live, and it can feel like we’re doing a good thing when we do this.

It can feel like we’re being incredibly sacrificial in the best possible way—that we’re making the compromises people do when they love someone. The danger, of course, is that we start to forget or not pay attention to the fact that every compromise, every sacrifice, is always in the same direction. It’s always you giving up something that’s important to you or something that makes your life your life in service of somebody else. And maybe that’s okay for a little bit of time when you’re in a certain chapter with someone. But when that chapter never ends, we can lose track. We can start to forget ourselves—we can start to forget who we are and what we enjoy.

And we can ignore the fact that all of these things we’re doing for this person are completely taken for granted. They’re not connecting to the sacrifices we’re making. They’re not connecting to the ways we’re going out of our way for them. It just becomes an expectation, and that’s why in certain situations, when we start trying to reclaim ourselves or rebuild our lives, we can suddenly realize that that person won’t make any of the same sacrifices in return. That person’s not willing to compromise. Now all we’re doing is trying to take away something that has become an expectation. So we have to be really careful not to abandon ourselves.

The right relationship is the one where we can be ourselves with our interests and the things we love about our life and the people in our lives, and we can merge those with somebody else’s. Not one where we have to abandon ourselves and our world in order to keep the relationship going.

Number seven: Just because it’s right doesn’t mean it will be easy.

There is a line that’s thrown around, which is: “If it’s right, it’ll be easy.” And I don’t always agree with that. I think it will be easy a lot of the time, but there will still be hard moments, even in the right relationship.

There will be collisions, there’ll be tension, there’ll be disagreements, there’ll be times where someone innocently activates our trauma, our wounds, our insecurities, the baggage we’ve brought to the relationship, and it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve done anything wrong, but it will be hard for us that we feel triggered by something they’ve done.

I know that in my dating life, a lot of the time when it got hard, I would push someone away. I would become avoidant. That was because I was scared. This person hadn’t done anything wrong. I just got scared and started to push them away. The danger with that idea of “When it’s right it’s easy,” is that often what feels easy to us is what’s comfortable to us. What’s familiar to us.

I know for a long time in my relationships, what was really comfortable for me was being in the driver’s seat, being the one in control, but that wasn’t necessarily what created an equal relationship. It wasn’t what created happiness in a long-term relationship. It just allowed me to feel like it was easy for me, but easy isn’t the same thing as fulfilling. So I got to a point in my life where I realized: “I’m going to have to start to embrace what is uncomfortable to me.”

And I took that a little far as well. Because when the pendulum swung all the way in the other direction, I got really hurt, because when it got hard, I said, “This is good medicine for me. I’m going to learn. I’m going to improve. I’m going to grow in ways I need to grow.”

But what I didn’t pay attention to was that it didn’t get any easier. It just stayed hard, and in some cases, it got worse. So it’s also not true that great relationships are just hard. The nuance is somewhere in the middle, and that’s something I had to learn the hard way: that it’s okay for something to be hard in moments. That doesn’t mean it’s the wrong relationship.

If you’re able to embrace the hard and resolve it together, in the right relationship, hard leads to easy. In other words, if I would get triggered by something, and I brought it up and we had a conversation about it, there may be an initial tension or argument or blowup. But the way we came together afterward, in a compassionate and kind way, allowed me to heal that.

It was a corrective experience for me. And at the end of it all, I actually felt much, much safer, and in many cases, what’s been amazing about my marriage is that triggers I once had are no longer triggers in the same way, because the way we’ve overcome them has actually allowed me to heal and feel safe in ways I never had before. But I never would have gotten to that if I’d just bailed as soon as it got hard. So what I wish I knew when I was dating was that it’s okay for something to be hard, but it should never stay hard. Hard should lead to easy.

Thank you for watching the video. Grab a copy of your book at lovelifebook.com. Before you go, leave me a comment letting me know what you thought of this video, and don’t forget to like and subscribe to the channel so that next week you get the next video automatically.

Thank you so much to everyone who has been pre-ordering a copy of the book. I cannot tell you how much it means to me, and the more of you who do that, the bigger a splash we make in week one, and the more we make a splash, the more people who need this book will hear about it. So help me raise the standards of not just you and the people you love, but all the strangers out there who need to hear about this book to make great decisions in their love life and do love better. I’ll see you next time.

The post 7 Things I Wish I Knew When I Was Dating appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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A bad date—where we know we won’t see the person again—can be frustrating since it wastes our time. But what’s even MORE frustrating? An amazing date with someone who just disappears after seeing us only once or twice.

It leaves us wondering: “What the hell happened?? I thought we had real chemistry!”

In today’s video, I explain exactly why someone pulls away after a first date—and how you can tell the difference between someone who’s a keeper vs. someone who’s just telling you what you want to hear.

I just received the first box of my new book, Love Life. These are literally the first copies ever in existence of this book. This thing right here is four years of life for me, and it’s just a huge moment. I’m so so so excited. I can’t wait for you guys to get your hands on this.

And by the way, when you do get a copy of the new book, we are also doing a really exciting giveaway that I’m going to tell you about at the end of the video. You are going to want to be a part of this. The prizes are ridiculous. You’ll see, but for now, on to the video.

Why are great dates dangerous? Let me tell you. There was a question I received on a live session I did recently from a woman called Deborah, and here’s what she asked me:

“What to do if a guy you went on a date with suddenly disappeared, but the connection was just epic. He even gave me his favorite book. I have the copy. At least take it back!”

This is addressed not just to Deborah, but to anyone who is thinking about a great date they went on where someone had no follow-through afterward, and they’re driving themselves mad with the potential of what could have been.

I think of these things as the unhatched eggs of our love life—the little eggs of love potential that we nestle and keep warm and think about and drive ourselves crazy with overthinking.

Imagine the potential, imagine what that could have been. Now, Deborah describes an epic connection that she felt on this date. And this is where first dates can get really dangerous, because firstly, a connection is not character. Connections aren’t the only thing that make great relationships. Character makes great relationships: What’s their moral compass? What are their values? How do they show up in difficult situations?

None of these things you can see on a date. They can only be shown over time, so someone’s connection with you is not an indication of their character, but it’s even more fundamental than that. The connection you felt with someone on a date isn’t even necessarily a sign of how great your connection is with the person.

Now that’s a weird thing to hear. How can that be true? If I felt an amazing connection with someone, surely I have an amazing connection with them. But the problem is, a date is a measure of someone’s impact more than anything else.

You can feel a great connection with someone who in actual fact is just really really good at creating the right impact. They know what questions to ask. They look in your eyes and listen intently as you give your answers. They know how to connect with your answers and be relatable and say, “Oh my God, that’s just like me. I find that too.”

There’s just this rapport that they’re incredible at creating, and this is, of course . . . I’m talking about those slightly more . . . not necessarily on the manipulative end of the spectrum although it could be . . . but just people who are really good with people. These are people who want to impress you, and what’s one way I know how to impress? Make an amazing connection with you.

So some people are just really good at that, and in their presence, we feel so special, we feel so heard, we feel so seen, but if it was just on one date, then that wasn’t so much a measure of your connection with that person as it was a measure of their impact on you in the time you had.

Then of course there’s the more innocent end of the spectrum. There are people who are just huge people pleasers who are also really good at making you feel heard and seen and connected, because they’re going out of their way to validate everything you’re saying. They don’t disagree with you. They connect with everything. They go along with everything and you think, “Wow, this person and I just have so much in common,” but really, what it is is someone who’s just eager to please you with the things they say.

Have you ever met someone where you thought you had an amazing connection with them, but the more that time went on, the more you thought to yourself, “Oh, you were actually just saying what you thought I wanted to hear. This wasn’t really you.”

It’s also true that if we go back to that person who is just really good with people, or even narcissistic at the more insidious end of the spectrum, that these people can make us feel incredible for a short time, and then they get distracted and their attention goes somewhere else. And when their attention is on us, it is like a laser beam that feels so good, but then they move on.

I’ve had that with people before where I’ve been so charmed by them. I thought we’ve had the most amazing connection, and then I realized they’re just charming. And it sobers me up, because I realize, “Oh, we weren’t going to be best friends forever. They just were really really good at connecting with me in that moment.”

So we have to stop telling ourselves the story about someone who was an amazing first date being someone who has huge potential for our love lives. One of the things that I talk about in this new book, let’s see what chapter it is—ah, chapter two: “How to Tell Love Stories.”

For those of you who have pre-ordered, circle that chapter now—it’s about the false love stories we tell ourselves about situations that don’t actually represent any real potential.

Of course, by definition, someone who just disappears after a date shows no potential whatsoever, but because of the connection we felt, we now tell ourselves an incredible love story about what that situation should materialize into.

Remember, for a true love story to occur, you need not just connection . . . you need intention. You need investment. You need someone who’s actually committed to making the story go somewhere. Connection is not intention.

By the way, when we want to craft a love story, we look for evidence that the love story is there. In this case, Deborah, you’re talking about the idea that he gave you his favorite book, but we have to sober up on that a little bit too, and be a little bit ruthless about it and say, “Okay, he gave me a book.” Maybe it was his favorite book, but it’s not a book he can’t obtain again. It wasn’t his first edition of his favorite book that he gave you. It was a copy of a book that he likes. He didn’t give you his grandmother’s necklace. He gave you a book. But that feels significant in the context of an epic connection.

And by the way, Deborah, maybe you really did have an epic connection. Maybe there was something that wasn’t false at all. It was a real connection that you felt with someone.

But a relationship is so much more than a connection. Like I said, without a “yes,” without someone actually committing to us, a connection means nothing in the context of a life.

By the way, this is an interesting thing to think about: When someone has no intention of a relationship or committing on any real level, when they’re not being intentional about their dating life at all, it’s really easy for them to come and make a big impact on you.

I don’t know about you, but when I don’t have a care in the world, when I’ve got no skin in the game, when I don’t care how something’s gonna go, I am so relaxed. I am so playful. I’m so free.

And that can be seen as this incredible boldness and confidence and fun and sexiness. It can make someone have a huge impact on us because we’re just like, “This person’s amazing!”

How amazing they’re coming across can be a reflection of how little they care about the end result—that they have no skin in the game because ultimately, they want nothing long-term. The stakes aren’t high for them. And because the stakes aren’t high, they’re able to just show up in this really carefree, fun, confident way.

Those of us who are actually trying in our dating lives, those of us who are actually being intentional about finding love—it can be a little more awkward as we fumble our way through it and try to find this thing that is really, really important to us.

So to your original point, Deborah: “What do I do if a guy I went on a date with and had an epic connection with suddenly disappears?”

You give yourself the closure that you are looking for. You accept that his disappearance is already a form of closure—that it would be a terrible use of your precious time to continue to invest in this love story in your mind that doesn’t deserve your attention.

You notice any moment where you feel your mind looking for ways to keep the story going, because that is such a human tendency. You’re not alone if you do that. We all do that. But I want you to notice even your language: “You know, I have a copy of this book he gave me. At least take it back!”

Even that is almost a desire to keep the thing alive. Like, “I’m waiting. I have the book. Come take it back!”

We shouldn’t even be thinking like that. We should get rid of the book. Throw it in the garbage. It’s irrelevant to you. You don’t need it anymore and you certainly don’t owe it to a person after a date to wait for them to contact you so they can take their book back. That is just another way we’re trying to keep the loop open-ended; a way we’re trying to keep the story alive for another day.

We can decide that anyone who has simply made an impact on me but has no follow-through is not a love story worth having in life. So I’m going to take my energy and direct it elsewhere.

If you want to create a real love story, that is what I wrote my new book about. It is called Love Life: How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person, and Live Happily (No Matter What).

And I have the final version of it—the copies that are going to go out to you—and I wanted to tell you about something we’re doing. We’re doing this incredible Love Life giveaway for everyone who gets a copy of the book from now until we launch, and that giveaway involves a 1-on-1 with me, and some people are going to win tickets to my Live Retreat in Florida, which is going to be unbelievable. We’re going to have Love Life sweatshirts to give away. Remember these? I’ve been wearing them in a whole bunch of videos. Well, so many of you said, “Where can I get that sweater?”

This was never even part of the plan. But we literally said, “Well, if we’re going to do a giveaway, we might as well get a few of these sweaters made up for people as prizes in the giveaway.” So you can win one of these, and also, even if you’re not a winner of one of the prizes, we’re giving everyone a ticket to an event I’m doing on May 4 called Find Your Person.

It’s virtual. Everyone can come. Everyone who buys a book is going to get a ticket to that event, and we have some other incredible bonuses that we’re giving away to every single person who gets a copy of the new book regardless of whether you win one of the prizes.

But the good news about the prizes is there’s actually quite a few of them, so there will be a lot of winners, so head on over to lovelifebook.com, grab your copy, and you’ll see all of the information there about the giveaway that we’re doing.

This is a celebration, friends, so come be part of it with us. Once again, lovelifebook.com is the link and thank you as always for watching this video.

Leave me a comment if you’ve already got your book and let me know how excited you are and what part of it you’re most excited about. I will see you in the next video.

The post Is a Great First Date a Red Flag? appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Long-distance relationships are a tough gig.

You miss each other. You feel like a separate part of their life at times. And you don’t always know when you’ll be together again. So . . . is it worth it? Well, it depends.

Long-distance relationships are tough, but there are warning signs that can help tell you if it’s likely to work long-term. In fact, there’s one thing someone can SAY to you that basically guarantees a long-distance relationship won’t last, and I share it in this video.

There’s a certain thing that if someone says it to you, it’s a pretty sure sign that your long-distance relationship will not work out. And I want to give you that today and also what you can do if you find yourself in this situation.

Before we get into today’s video, I want to tell you about something really exciting I’m doing at the moment. I’m going to explain more at the end, but basically, I have a brand new newsletter called “The 3 Relationships.”

You can sign up at the3relationships.com. This is a personal email written by me sent to you every Friday. And the feedback on this so far has been amazing. I’ve been doing it in private for my existing mailing list, and people have absolutely loved it. I just haven’t talked about it to the world yet. I’ve been doing it all year, and it’s now become one of my favorite things that I do. So if you’re not signed up, go to the3relationships.com, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about the theme of this and what it’s all about at the end of the video.

Somebody recently came to me with a question about her long-distance relationship. She had been seeing someone for seven months. In that time, she had been talking to him regularly—pretty much every day by text or by phone. She described the amazing connection they have, the incredible chemistry that she felt, the way she felt the conversation was great—the way she thought he was great.

But the reason she had brought the situation to me was because she asked him for exclusivity and he gave her an incredibly convoluted and confusing answer about where she stood with him, what he was available for, the fact that he wasn’t quite there for a relationship, but he did see them as maybe being exclusive in their arrangement, as he put it.

The bottom line was, even I, by the end of everything she said that he said, felt completely and utterly bewildered by all of the language he was using and how confusing that must have been for her. Here’s what I want us to think about:

If you are in a long-distance relationship, then you know this to be true: Long-distance relationships kind of suck. They are rough. You go long stretches of time without seeing somebody, you feel like you’re not really a part of their day, you have to be extra trusting because it feels like you’re not really a part of each other’s lives. You’re not experiencing regular physical intimacy, which is a wonderful part of being with somebody. You’re hanging on constantly for the next time you’re going to see them. We try to enjoy life as much as possible in between, but it can also feel like we are deferring our joy, deferring our happiness, until the next time we see them when we’re going to feel complete for having this person back in our arms.

Who would choose such a relationship? If we had the choice, surely we would choose someone down the street in our own town who was actually present—who we could have a relationship with.

So it does beg the question: Why would anyone choose a long-distance relationship?

Now the answer to this question is going to shed some light on that thing I said “If you hear it, the relationship won’t work out.” And it’s also going to shed some light on this woman’s situation and the wildly confusing answer that this man gave her when she asked for more.

So why would anybody decide to have a long-distance relationship? Well, there are three big reasons: One, because that person is worth it. They are both an amazing person and someone you have something amazing with.

The second is because we have a scarcity mindset. Maybe we’ve been single for a while. We haven’t found anyone we like in a long time. We’ve had no success in our own town or neighborhood, and so when we meet someone we feel a connection with, and they happen to be hours away or even a country away, we think to ourselves, “I don’t know if anyone better is going to come along. I don’t know if anyone is going to come along at all, so I better take this as far as I can possibly take it.”

The third reason someone would want a long-distance relationship is because it’s convenient for them. Now, why would a relationship that is inherently so inconvenient, so difficult, be convenient for a person?

Well, there are two possibilities: On the extreme end, it’s because they’ve got some kind of a double life that they don’t want you to know about—that (from their perspective) it’s good for you not to know about. Maybe there’s something they don’t want you to know about their lifestyle or the way they live. Maybe they have a relationship already. Maybe they’re married with kids already. There’s something they don’t want you to know and it helps them for you to be far enough away that you never find out about it.

The second and perhaps more common reason is because they are avoidant. They don’t actually want anything serious with anybody. They are not looking for a relationship and it’s a lot easier to maintain these superficial connections with people who are far away, because people who are far away ask fewer questions and feel they have less of a right to ask you for more, because the distance creates a natural geographical excuse. “Oh, you mean so much to me. I have such an amazing time with you. We have something so special. It’s such a shame you’re so far away, and it’s so hard to have a relationship.”

The distance that comes is a convenient cover for their avoidance. Now, let’s look at the woman in this scenario and see which of the three categories she’s in. Is she in the category of thinking someone is just really worthwhile and that’s why she’s having a long-distance relationship? Is she in a scarcity mindset? Or is she someone who’s in this relationship because it’s convenient? Which one do you think it is?

We know it’s not because it’s convenient, because it brings her pain and she doesn’t want to be in a long-distance relationship. She wants to be in a real relationship with this person where she sees him often. So we know it’s not number three. And when I asked her this question, she said, “It’s number one. I’m with this person because he’s worthwhile.”

But when I asked her why he was worthwhile, she described to me all of his amazing qualities and how great their conversations were, and how interesting he is, and just how wonderful she thought he was as a person.

But not once did she describe how he made her feel. So I asked her and she said, “Well, I guess I feel great when I speak to him.”

I said, “No, no, not when you’re speaking to him. In general, how does he and this relationship make you feel? I know it’s not positive, because otherwise you wouldn’t be talking to me.”

She said, “Well, it makes me feel confused.”

I said, “Okay, but beneath that confusion, what do you feel?”

She said, “Frustrated.”

I said, “Frustrated is what I feel when I can’t find my shoes in the morning. This is not frustration. What do you feel at a deeper level?”

Because the truth is what she felt was hurt. What she felt was pain, disappointed that someone she really liked wasn’t in the same place as her. But when we feel hurt like that, confusion is where we go when we don’t want to confront how hurtful a situation is. Confusion keeps us in the game, because as long as we’re confused, we’re still in the game.

And by the way, avoiders thrive on creating confusion, because as long as they can keep you in that state of confusion, they can keep getting what they want. They’re getting their needs met even though you’re getting none of your needs met.

So what is it that if you hear it means that your long-distance relationship is unlikely to work out? Well, it’s if someone gives you a confusing answer to a simple question. The question being something like: “What are we? Where do you see this going? Do you see us as a couple? Are we exclusive?”

These are all simple questions. When someone gives you confusing answers, that’s a form of misdirection that’s designed to take you away from the very simple truth of this situation.

So when you ask those questions: “What is this thing here that we have?”

If that person says, “Don’t look at that! Look at this rabbit I’m pulling out of a hat! Oh, he’s wearing a tiny hat himself. Look at the flowers coming out of my cane. Aren’t these pretty?”

“I know I know. That’s a good rabbit, but what is this thing over here? What are we again?”

So when I talked to her about all of this, she said, “Well, what do I do? How do I confront him about it?”

And I said, ‘You don’t have to confront him about it. It’s not about confrontation. It’s about taking your power back, and to take your power back, you need to start by owning your needs and what you want. You want a healthy relationship with someone who wants the same things you do, who can give you a simple answer about the fact that the two of you are with each other and only with each other, and that you’re both committed to making the relationship work. It’s as simple as that.”

So this isn’t a confrontation. It’s a statement. It’s just saying to the person, “Here are my needs. They’re not being met in this situation. And I can’t keep investing in this situation while they’re not being met. So unless you’ve changed your mind about any of this, I’m going to go in a different direction.”

Now that person, at that point, what do you think they’re going to do? If they’re in category number three, they’re going to try to confuse you again. They’ll try to give you a bunch of logic as to why you’re being crazy or “too much” or why you’re overthinking things, and all of that will be designed to keep you in the game.

Your job is not to be distracted by the misdirection, but to see the truth of what’s really going on over here.

Thank you so much for watching. Before you go, make sure you sign up to the 3 Relationships newsletter. What is this newsletter? I believe there are three relationships that determine the quality of our life: our relationship with other people, our relationship with ourselves, and our relationship with life itself.

And I really enjoy writing. So many of you have said to me that you really love my writing. You’re very kind to me in that respect. I’m trying to improve all the time, but you really enjoy learning from me in writing form. So I wanted to do something every single week that was like a private letter from me to you so that we could have a kind of dialogue.

I get replies to this every week. I read the replies. They’re beautiful. A lot of people tell me that there’s so much value in these that it’s amazing to them that it’s free, that is just in a newsletter, but my goal with this was to make something every week that you actually looked forward to as an email so that it gave you a hit of joy every time you saw my name on a Friday, and it was the 3 Relationships newsletter.

So if you’re already signed up and you’re enjoying it, leave a comment and let other people know. If you haven’t signed up yet, go to the3relationships.com and you can sign up right now. I’ll see you in your inbox this Friday. Thank you so much for watching this video. And I’ll see you next week.

The post If You Hear THIS From Your Long-Distance Partner . . . RUN! appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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People ask me a lot, “How did you meet your wife?”

Well, it wasn’t just one decision. It was actually a few simple steps that even an introvert like me could use to be in exactly the right place to meet Audrey when I did.

I believe anyone can apply this advice in their dating lives to find love. So if you want to maximize your chances of meeting (and attracting) someone amazing, the 3 practical steps I mention in this video could lead you to your person . . . possibly without you ever having to swipe right!

I made this video to help you find love faster through a three-step process I’m going to show you to help you meet 10 times the number of people you’re meeting for your love life right now.

And to illustrate this three-step process, I am going to tell you a story about how I met my wife, Audrey, that I haven’t told publicly, and it’s probably going to surprise a bunch of you.

Now, before we start, I just want to let everyone know I did an entire live session for free called the Love Life Reset that is really relevant to the ideas behind this video. So if you didn’t watch that, it’s still available for replay for free at lovelifereplay.com.

Go check that out as soon as you finish this video, because it was a really powerful event. Thousands of people showed up, and I also gave away some really cool gifts on that event that are only available until Thursday, March 28, 2024. So go take advantage of those. The link again is lovelifereplay.com. Make it your mission to go and watch that as soon as you have finished this video. All right, let’s get into this one.

God, it can be hard to find love. We so want to meet someone—we want to find someone we’re attracted to who’s also attracted to us, and that combination of things rarely happens for most of us, which is why I think we keep going back to the wrong people. Or it’s at least one of the big reasons we keep going back to the wrong people, because it feels like, “Well, when is lightning ever gonna strike like that again for me where I find someone I’m really attracted to who actually thinks the same about me?”

By the way, if you use what I’m about to tell you in this video, you don’t ever need to use a dating app in your life if you don’t want to. I don’t have anything against dating apps, but I know so many people are asking themselves, “How can I just meet a person in real life? I have burnout from being on the apps. I just want to go out and meet someone the old-fashioned way.” This video will show you how to do that.

So what happened here? And why is it so relevant to you in your love life?

Firstly, I have always believed that in order for us to find love, atoms just need to collide. That’s how I think of it. We are an atom, and other people are atoms, and we just have to collide with atoms enough times to where we end up colliding with the right atom at the right time. And that fusion produces the kind of love we have always wanted.

A key question we have to ask ourselves is: “How often am I in my life colliding with other atoms?” And you might even want to nuance that and say: “How often am I colliding with new atoms?”

One of the most important things—and this isn’t even one of the three steps I’m going to tell you—but one of the most important things occurred when my friend invited me to an engagement party and I said “yes.” That moment of me deciding “I’m gonna go” is where all the possibility starts.

By the way, the same is true for my wife. The moment she decided to leave her house and go out that night, the possibility started for her.

Now, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve said “no” in my life. There’s no judgment from me if you’re someone who’s saying “no” a lot, if you’re someone who’s staying warm under the blankets in your house, because you’re basically me if that’s the case. But what I did know is that if I didn’t say “yes” enough times in my life, I was radically hurting my chances of things happening.

So I went to the party, but when I was there, three specific things happened. And here’s the really crazy part: I have been talking about these three specific things for about 16 years. I had already been talking about them for a decade before I even met my wife. But how I met my wife couldn’t have been more proof of the validity of these three things.

Now, the first one is eye contact. One of the big mistakes that people make is not only not making eye contact at all, which we can’t do if we’re being too shy, if we’re only ever talking to or looking at the people we’re comfortable with already or know already, or—and this is extremely relevant today—if we’re just looking down at our phone. You look at any coffee shop right now, any person in line, and chances are what they are doing is looking down at their phone. Nothing can happen when we’re doing that. We have to have our eyes up and in the room.

But when we have our eyes up and in the room, the other part people miss is making eye contact multiple times. We’re worried that if we make eye contact too much, it’s going to signal too much, or we just overestimate how much our eye contact is obvious to somebody else. I know so many women who make eye contact with a guy once and then look back at their friends and they’re like, “Okay, he knows.”

He doesn’t know. Or if he does know, that one piece of eye contact isn’t necessarily going to make him brave enough to come over and do something. But making eye contact multiple times over several minutes may just give someone the bravery they need to come over and talk to you. Now, that doesn’t guarantee that they will. In my case, my wife and I were looking at each other that night, but I hadn’t gone over there yet. We just kept making eye contact.

So that’s where step two comes in. You get proximity to the person you want to talk to. In other words, you just get close to them. I was watching the boxing and that became a great excuse for Audrey to come over and watch the boxing, too. In that moment—and, again, I can guarantee you, at some point, I would have found a way to get close to her—but she took the opportunity while I was watching the boxing to come and show interest in the same thing that I was looking at but getting closer at the same time.

Now, again, remember, when you get close to someone, it gives someone an opportunity to be brave by making it easier for them to be brave. It’s far easier for someone to turn their head and say something to us than it is for them to walk across the room and risk being rejected . . . at which point, they have to come all the way back to where they came from and feel embarrassed that they ever took the risk in the first place. So getting close to someone makes it much easier for them to take the risk. And you’ll sense a theme here: We want to make it easy for someone to take the risk.

So this is where step three comes in if someone hasn’t spoken to you yet. Remember, step one was eye contact, and not once but multiple times. Step two was get proximity to the person. Step three is say something.

Don’t obsess about what you’re gonna say. Don’t go into your mind going, “What’s something really witty I could come out with in this moment?”

Just say something, say anything. Because the point of what you’re saying isn’t to be unique. It’s not to stand out from anyone who’s ever spoken to them or approached them in their life. It’s to offer an invitation.

By saying something, what you’re really saying underneath that is, “It’s okay for you to talk to me. I am open to having conversation tonight. I am someone who doesn’t mind being talked to.”

The way Audrey did this was simply by asking me something about the boxing. That gave me a very simple license to talk to her, and one that I ended up extending for the next eight hours.

Now, why don’t we say something? We’re afraid of saying something foolish or embarrassing, getting tongue-tied. We’re afraid of getting rejected. But we have to flip it. What if I told you that all three of these steps—eye contact, proximity, and saying something—aren’t about you approaching someone? They’re about you making yourself into an approachable person. We’re not the only one who struggles to go and meet people. Everyone else does too.

And this is especially true of the people who aren’t in the habit of running up to every single person they think is even mildly attractive, because if you only reserve your energy for the people who race over to approach you, you’re likely doing it for the biggest players while ignoring all of the people who actually would make incredible partners if they only had the chance for that lightning to occur.

So making ourselves approachable is a very different game, isn’t it? Because instead of saying “I have to be brave,” we’re flipping it and saying, “I have to live in such a way that makes people around me brave.”

And if I do that, I’m gonna get approached by 10 times the amount of people that are approaching me right now. I’m gonna have options I never would have had because people are gonna feel braver around me.

What we are doing is going everywhere in life offering green lights to people.

Now, whether we like them after that or not is another story. That’s about us assessing who shows up and whether we actually like what they have to offer, whether we feel a connection in conversation.

But the great tragedy of so many people’s love lives is that they never even get to that point with people who could be so right for them, because, first, they don’t say “yes” to leaving the house; and second, when they do leave the house, they are not following this three-part structure that makes other people brave around them, that increases their approachability in their life.

What blows my mind is that I had been talking about these things as ways to meet people for 10 years before I ever met my wife. My life would be on a completely different path now. I wouldn’t have met the person who is the love of my life if I hadn’t said “yes” to leaving the house that day and if those three things hadn’t happened that evening that allowed us to organically meet each other.

And one of the things that was true in that moment that my wife—that I still talk about today—is the two of us were more interested in finding love and creating space for that to happen than we were worried about getting rejected.

Rejection never feels good, but if you have something that’s more important to you than avoiding rejection, you’ll still embrace the possibility that you might make eye contact with someone and they don’t look back at you. That you might say something to someone and then the conversation just fizzles out after a minute or so because they’re not really interested in having a conversation back. In those minor little moments of coldness, indifference, or even rejection, you have to be in the mindset of “I care more about finding love than I do about avoiding those kinds of awkward moments.”

The good news is, bravery is a team sport when it comes to love. You don’t need to be the only one being brave. You have to be a little bit brave and you also have to act in a way that makes someone else a little bit brave. Just brave enough that they do something with you instead of nothing.

Now, if you like this video, go here next: The replay of the Love Life Reset. The worldwide virtual free event I just did is still available on replay for you to watch right now. And do watch it right now, because I give away some incredible gifts in this event that are only available until March 28.

So go check it out. I can’t wait for you to see this. So many thousands of people watched it live, and the feedback was absolutely stunning: People feeling more optimistic about their love lives again. People feeling like they’ve got a fresh approach to going and finding love that they hadn’t thought about before.

Go check it out: lovelifereplay.com is the link, and I’ll see you over there.

Thank you as always for watching this video. I’ll see you next time. Be well, and love life.

The post How Me and My Wife Met… (It’s Not What You Think) appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Have you fallen for someone who just can’t give you the same affection back?

Emotionally unavailable people are the relationship version of junk food. You know it’s bad . . . but your addiction keeps you going back for more.

This is nothing more than a formula for heartbreak. In today’s new video, I dive into the psychology behind why we’re attracted to emotionally unavailable people, and why just because something’s scarce (such as someone’s attention) doesn’t mean it’s valuable.

Before we get into the video—which is going to be about why it is that we chase emotionally unavailable people and what we should do instead—have you signed up yet for my March 19 event called the Love Life Reset? If you’ve been struggling in your love life, if it’s not where you want it to be, maybe for a long time it’s felt like disappointment after disappointment, or perhaps you’ve come out of a long-term relationship and found yourself single again in a season of your life where you didn’t think you’d be on your own again and you have no idea what it’s like to date in this current landscape, this event is going to show you how to hit reset and start a new and productive approach to finding the kind of healthy love you want to find.

Go to lovelifetraining.com to sign up. It is completely free. It’s going to be a live event. That live event is going to happen once only, so come join us.

All right, let’s begin.

Emotionally unavailable people. Have you had this experience—you go on dates with people you either feel no chemistry with or people you feel tremendous chemistry with, but then when they’re flaky, distant, inconsistent, when they tell you they’re not ready for a relationship, when they pick you up and put you down and leave you, not knowing where you stand, you start to obsess over them? You can’t stop thinking about them. You really, really want them. It’s the kind of person where you might come to me and ask: “What should I do about this person?” If this is you, I want to tell you that you are not alone. If you keep getting attracted to people like this who are emotionally unavailable, it can come from two different places.

The first one is simply an economics—a false economics—that can happen to anyone, which is the mistake of thinking that because someone is making themselves rare and scarce, and in some cases, absent, then that must mean they are more valuable.

And I’ve said this in a video before—this is to me like the difference between diamonds and air. When we think of diamonds, we think “really valuable.” Air? Boring. But air, we take for granted, because we have it despite the fact that it’s the thing that if it got taken away, we would last a matter of minutes. If our diamonds got taken away, we’d be diamond-less, which is to say, we’d be fine. Diamonds feel really valuable because they’re scarce and therefore expensive. Air is everywhere, but we take it for granted.

And I think that translates directly to our love lives. There are people who act like diamonds—rare, difficult to obtain—and we start thinking they must be valuable as a result. Meanwhile, a lot of the time, we find ourselves ignoring the much healthier person over here who actually wants to date us, who’s straightforward, who calls when they say they’ll call, who actually shows up for us in our lives.

So everyone is capable of doing that, not just people who have something deeper going on.

But there is another reason why we get attracted to emotionally unavailable people, and that’s when there’s something deeper going on: If we find ourselves throughout our lives consistently going for a certain kind of person who makes us miserable, who makes us unhappy, who gives us constant anxiety, who makes us feel this pendulum between massive anxiety and unhappiness and feeling unsafe and not knowing where we stand, and then the elation, the ecstasy, the euphoria of feeling loved by them and getting their attention when they come back.

If we keep getting attracted to these people, it’s because there is something familiar in that pattern to us. Maybe we were raised in an environment where we got taught that that’s what love is like. It’s capricious. It’s there one minute, not there the next. And when it comes back, it feels so good. When it’s not there: “Oh my God, I’m so unsafe.” Then it comes back again: “Oh my God, that feels so good.”

And notice, by the way, the pattern of that. There is an addictive pattern to that. They call it the trauma bond, right? I feel miserable, but then you come back and you make me feel amazing. And of course, the next time I’m miserable, I hold on for that next hit of when I’m going to feel amazing again, the next time you text me. And I’ll suffer through those terrible lows, the hangovers, for that next big high that I am going to get from you.

By the way, this is literally something that I talk all about in my new book, Love Life. So those of you who have already ordered this, you’re going to read all about me talking about not only why we chase unhealthy love and what it does to us, but how we can take an approach to finding the right kind of love. If you haven’t pre-ordered it, go to lovelifebook.com and grab yourself a copy.

And let’s get back to the video.

We can get into a cycle where we consistently confuse the anxiety that someone makes us feel with love and passion.

Wherever that comes from for us, you may or may not have done that kind of excavation on your past and how you were loved as a child by your parents or caregivers, but wherever it comes from, what happens is our nervous system gets wired for a certain kind of experience, and it starts looking for more of that kind of experience. So if it’s these high highs and low lows, and that’s what’s familiar to us, that’s what our bodies, our minds, our nervous system goes out in search of. And when it recognizes the familiar, it latches on to it. “I feel crazy about this person. I feel terribly anxious, but amazing when they text me. This must be love. This must be important.”

We confuse the anxiety and the unknowing, the uncertainty, the oscillating between high and low . . . with love. And it’s not love. It’s a feeling that we have become addicted to.

So what we have to be conscious of is, right now, this thing that I keep saying is love or is the right person can actually simply be looked at through the lens of addiction. And when we’re in that place of addiction, the problem is, we find it hard to appreciate something that might be better for us, something that might be far more valuable, someone who might give us a kind of love that in the long run would leave us happy and peaceful.

I think of it like if you had someone addicted to drugs, and on the day they quit, you sat them in front of a gorgeous sunset and said, “Isn’t that amazing?” It would be very difficult for that person to appreciate that sunset.

Now, a sunset is amazing. It’s awe-inspiring. It makes us feel connected to nature, the transcendent nature of this planet, of the universe, of how small we are. This exquisite experience of being mindful in the presence of something greater. But if you show that to someone on the day they’ve just come off of the synthetic highs of drugs, it cannot compare, it cannot be appreciated.

And that’s really, really important for us to connect to, because in that example, it seems very clear that one of these things is a recipe for unhappiness and the other one is very beautiful, very important. But in our love lives, it can be harder to see things in that way. The healthy kind of love that would make you happy is something that can only be appreciated once we have regulated our nervous system and once we have, as Chris Bailey puts it in the book How to Calm Your Mind, “decreased our dopamine baseline.”

Because we get ourselves on this dopamine cycle with people in our dating lives, and the more we get attached to dopamine, the more we feed that addiction, the higher our baseline gets. And so we now need the chaos, we need the massive highs, we need the passion, the love bombing that people often give us, we need that drama in order to feel the thing we think we want to feel when we’re in love.

Instead, when we can detach from that, we can begin to lower our dopamine baseline, and from that place, begin to appreciate new things.

Now, how we do this in practice is one of the things I’m going to be talking about in two days on the Love Life Reset.

So if you’re reading this and thinking, “I relate to this so much, and now that I look at it through the lens of addiction, it’s starting to become clear that there is a problem here that won’t go away on its own without conscious and intentional effort and a new approach,” then this event is for you. It’s about a new approach that’s going to bring you the kind of healthy love that will make you happy but will also make you feel peaceful.

Come to lovelifetraining.com, and sign up now for free. The event is happening in two days. I do not want you to miss it. It’s only happening live once. So come join us, lovelifetraining.com, and I’ll see you on March 19, 2024.

Thank you so much for watching, and I can’t wait to see you there.

The post Are They Emotionally Unavailable? DON’T CHASE, Do THIS! appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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