Matthew Hussey: 5 Reasons Why There is No Such Thing As The Right Person At The Wrong Time & How to Stop Missing Your Ex

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We think that we're going to be happy by getting
a person, but you'll never be happy by getting a
person that doesn't meet your needs. It doesn't matter how
impressive you think they are. And that's the danger, right
That's the trap people fall into. I've fallen into it.
One of the world's leading dating in a relationship coach
here has helped millions of people find love, Matthew Hussey.
We write people off at lightning speed. They may have

(00:21):
a wisdom that you never picked up on. If the
reason so many people never reach the point of real
relationship is because.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hey everyone, I've got some huge news to share with you.
In the last ninety days, seventy nine point four percent
of our audience came from viewers and listeners that are
not subscribed to this channel. There's research that shows that
if you want to create a habit, make it easy
to access. By hitting the subscribe button, you're creating a

(00:51):
habit of learning how to be happier, healthier, and more healed.
This would also mean the absolute world to me and
help us make better, bigger, brighter content for you and
the world.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Subscribe right now. The number one health and wellness podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Jay set Jay Shetty Sly. Hey everyone, welcome back to
On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier,
and more healed, whether it's your relationships, your work life,
or everything in between. I'm glad that I get to
sit down and talk with fascinating people who are sharing

(01:29):
vulnerable journeys, powerful insights, and great habits. If you've been
struggling in your love life, this episode is for you.
If you've been going through a tough breakup, if you've
been struggling with dating, this episode is for you. And
if you're someone who's just trying to understand how to
unlock love within yourself, love in every interaction and create

(01:52):
a space where each and every one of your relationships
are fulfilling and full of harmony, this episode is for you.
I'm sitting down with one of my great friends and
amazing thought leaders, Matthew Hussey, New York Times best selling author, speaker,
and coach specializing in confidence and relationship intelligence. Matthew is

(02:13):
the host of the podcast Love Life with Matthew Hussey
that I've got the honor of being a guest on,
so check that episode out, and over the past fifteen years,
Matthew's proven approach has inspired millions through authentic, insightful, and
practical advice that not only enables them to find love,
but also feel confident in control of their own happiness. Today,

(02:36):
we're talking about his new book, Love Life. If you
don't have this book, make sure you go and grab
it right now. How to raise your standards, find your
person and live happily no matter what. Please welcome to
the show. The author of Love Life, Matthew Hussey.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
What's up. It's so good to see you, So good
to see you. Missed you. It's been a while.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
I know, I know, we find it hard to catch
each other. One of us is always traveling.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
I know, but it's so nice to be together.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
I'm excited about this conversation.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Man, me too, Me too.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Last time you were on, people absolutely loved it. And
when I was reading through your book, I was blown
away because I know that you've put five years of
work into this. This has been a real labor of love,
and we all know how hard it is to write
books and how much effort it takes. And when I
saw the amount of honesty, the amount of self awareness,

(03:26):
the amount of openness that you approach this book with
I think anyone who reads it is going to walk
away feeling like they feel heard, they feel seen, and
they actually know how to be honest and open with
themselves through the journey of love, which is what you've done.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
That's that's how I feel anyway.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
So I'm really excited for be able to read it,
and I've got so many questions for you.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
So I'm going to die right Yeah, yeah, awesome.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
So I want to start with this idea because everyone
that we know, since we're young, wants to fall in love,
and we've all heard so much advice on love that
has somehow become our version of what love is. Or
we've all seen so many love stories, whether it was
a bad love story with our parents, whether it was

(04:13):
a good love story with our uncles and aunts, whether
it was our older brother or older sister, whoever it was.
Where did your earliest ideas of love come from? And
which ones do you still agree with and which ones
do you disagree with?

Speaker 1 (04:29):
I suppose on some level some of them must have
come from my upbringing. You know, my mum talking about
you know, the kind of giddiness that she felt for
my dad when they first met, and you know, the attraction.

(04:51):
I'm sure so much of it was songs and movies.
I suppose the thing that I think about now is like,
what I value today is different, I think, than what

(05:13):
I might have valued at twenty one. It's still you know,
I very much value attraction and chemistry because I think
it's going to be a long road if you're in
a relationship that doesn't have those things. But the things
that became kind of non negotiables for me changed, like

(05:36):
finding someone who brings me peace and being in a
relationship that felt peaceful. That was something that made its
entrance later in my life, and I paid the price
for it not making its entrance sooner. You know, I
was in multiple relationships that really robbed me of my piece,
and so I think that probably early on I wasn't

(06:00):
seeking peace. I was seeking just the ride, you know,
the experience of feeling these incredible feelings for somebody and
and also perhaps being heroic to that person. I think
that was probably an early idea that you know, I

(06:20):
was the there had to be something heroic about the
way that I showed up or presented myself. And I
think that for a long time that that prevented me
from ever really being seen. You know, I if you'd
have asked me at twenty five, are you vulnerable? I

(06:41):
would have been like yeah, I wouldn't have said no.
I wasn't self aware about it. But like, there was
a lot that I never really brought forward about myself.
I think that we are very good at like, you know,
we all tell the hero's journey of our life, and
we love that, right because it's a kind of here's
where I was and here's where I am now. You know,
whenever you hear like a rags to riches story, it's

(07:05):
back then I was in a bad spot. Now I'm
in an amazing spot. And I remember I used to
tell stories like that in my life. I could be
dating and telling stories like that of where I'd come
from and where I am now, and there was nothing
really vulnerable about those stories. There was still the story
of like how I'm awesome, because it's a hero's journey,

(07:28):
you know. But it's a lot harder to be like
here's what I'm struggling with right now, or that thing
that you just did just made me really jealous and insecure,
or you know, I'm feeling emasculated right now, like those things,
my God like that to bring that stuff forward for
me was was I didn't realize how hard it was

(07:51):
and how terrified I must have been of doing that,
and how deeply unworthy I felt to be able to
really show someone who I was and still feel like
I'd be loved afterwards, you know, I'd get like, you know,
vulnerability hangover at the end of and by the way,
sometimes sometimes it did backfire. I remember, you know, when

(08:14):
I was trying on the whole vulnerability thing. I remember
saying to someone about a moment in an evening that
had made me insecure. I remember talking about like I
didn't want to, but I could tell I was being passive,
aggressive and cold, and the walls had gone up, and
so I was like, I'm not being That's the hard

(08:35):
place to be, right when you know you're not being
your normal, fun, loving, happy self, but you're also not
being honest about what you're feeling. So you're just in
this weird no man's land of like being unpleasant to
be around. And I realized, like this, I can't hide
how I'm feeling right now, and instead of like gaslighting

(08:59):
this person and that I'm fine and I'm not let
me just share something that made me insecure, and it
really backfired, like this person said to me, I find that.
This is the literal words that were said to me,
was I find that really unattractive And it crushed me
because I thought I was like in my head, I

(09:20):
was like, I'm never doing that again. I remember living
with my friend at the time and I walked to
his room and I was like, I can't believe what
just happened, Like I'm such an And I didn't say
I didn't say wow, that was really lacking in compassion
from her side. That was like the depths of my
own like lack of compassion, self compassion. Was that instead

(09:41):
of saying wow, that was a really that was a
kind of a mean and response lacking compassion. Instead, I went,
I'm such an idiot. I can't believe I said that
out loud, Like why did I reveal that weakness? And
it took me a little while to recover from that

(10:02):
because it kind of it reinforced That's that was the
dangerous part. Is it reinforced this idea that I needed
to be heroic at all times and not to have
those weaknesses, and that it was those parts of me
were contemptible if people knew about them. So that was
a that was a big That was a big thing
for me. I think thinking I had to be a

(10:23):
hero all the time and not realizing that a real
relationship is so much more interesting than that.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Wow, man, so powerful. So many things to unpack, so
many things to unpack. One of the things I want
to start with is what is the difference between a
peaceful relationship and a boring relationship?

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Because I think.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
That great question. That's a great question because.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
I think a lot of people think of peaceful as
boring when we're not emotionally mature. So I can relate
to what you're saying, where you actually want a relationship
that's kind of like Chao and up and down and
passionate and then we love each other we hate each other,
you know, there's that kind of energy, there's something and
we kind of do that in a lot of our lives.
And by the way, we do that even in marriage

(11:10):
and relationships where we can often invent drama because it's
too peaceful. And I've had friends who've reached out to
me and said, Jay, I keep creating drama in my
life because that's what I'm used to. And I don't
know what to do with this guy or this girl
because they're actually peaceful. So people are scared that peaceful
means boring. But you've just said you like a peaceful relationship.
I know you're not a boring guy, So what's the difference?

Speaker 1 (11:33):
I you know, So when you was just saying that,
I thought to myself, I there are days where I'm
on time for something and I will kind of go
and do one more thing before the meeting that makes
me late, so that I have to like make a

(11:54):
game of getting in the car and like finding a
way to like how can I still like other GPS
says I'm going to be there and that two minutes before,
but I'd like shaving off a minute like I was
on time? Yeah, why did I do the one more
Nothing was gonna nothing was going to go wrong if
I didn't do that one more thing?

Speaker 3 (12:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Why did I do one more thing? That made me late?
And I had like I had to realize at a
certain point that that was like my nervous system. I
I you know, I grew up around like my dad
was always late for everything. I learned that from him.
I used to hate it, by the way, but like

(12:35):
I had, I had also then adopted it and I'm
not that way anymore in my life. But like it,
I realized, like I have an addiction to this feeling,
this like mini drama of am I going to get
there on time? Which creates this little mini drama in
my day for like ten minutes. It's like an adrenaline
rush and like you know, and it's a horrible feeling. Really,

(12:56):
it doesn't feel good. It feels like stressful and anxiety inducing.
And now I'm going to come across as rude and disrespectful.
Is someone's time and I'm like stressed. But it's like
a my body is used to that I'm not used
to like getting somewhere on time and like have ten
minutes to just chill and like it's there's a new
feeling that can feel boring. So in terms of a relation,

(13:21):
I think we do it everywhere in our lives. In
terms of a relationship, I knew when I met with
my wife Audrey that I had found peace that wasn't
by any means boring because I felt at home. I didn't,
you know, I didn't just feel safe. We can feel

(13:42):
safe and very bored. Right, we can feel like I'm
with someone who is very non threatening. I feel like, I,
you know, this person's not going to leave me. I
feel like I'm very safe in this situation. But I
don't really like this doesn't feel like my person. I
just feel same. And when you haven't felt safe for
a long time, sometimes that's a very lovely feeling on

(14:04):
its own. Just to feel like I'm no longer in
an abusive relationship, or I'm no longer in a relationship
with someone that makes me second guess myself all the
time or feels like they're going to leave me at
any moment. But eventually we will get bored in a
situation where the only thing that's presenting as a positive
thing is the safety we feel. But in this relationship,

(14:26):
I felt at home and I felt like I felt
more seen than I'd ever felt before. You know, I
really was astonished to the extent to which this person
got me and that we seem to get each other.
And you know, the first night we met, we spoke

(14:47):
for eight hours straight, literally like everyone else was like
partying and doing that, and we were just we talked
for eight hours the first night we met, there was
an attraction there that made us talk to each other.
It's not like we started talking to each other on
the in the first second because we knew we were
such great conversational lists. Like, we started talking because there

(15:09):
was a there was an attraction. But then it felt easy,
it felt like home. Somehow. It took me a minute
to realize that. By the way, I'm not this wasn't
a love at first sight story of like and then
everything was smooth sailing, but it it did. It took
me a while to realize, Oh, this is like, this

(15:30):
is this feels like home. I'm more of myself around
this person. And I think that's a beautiful thing to find,
is someone who makes you more of yourself. And of
course I think you know you can't if someone says
to me, I've got zero sexual attraction to this person,
that's a problem. It's a genuine problem. You have to

(15:52):
have some form of attraction to the person you're with. Now,
by the way, does it need to be the greatest
attraction you've ever felt for anyone in your life? That
trips a lot of people up. Because I always say,
don't comparison shop for chemistry. It's one of the things
I talk about in the book, because I think we
were always comparing whatever is in front of us with

(16:12):
the peak of our chemistry that we've had with someone
that we can't seem to get over. But you only
have to take a look at what are the situations
that we find hard to get over, Like what was
that peak of chemistry and attraction? And it's often in
situations that were entirely unsustainable. It's you know, you go,

(16:33):
you have a holiday romance with someone and oh God,
like if i'd love to fill that animal attraction for
someone who was good for me and who I had
a long term relationship with. And it's like, well, how
long did you know that person? Two weeks? They didn't
have to do very much, Like it's easy to create
the conditions for chemistry in that kind of a situation.
The same is true of people who have a three

(16:56):
month fling with someone where there's like it becomes more
interesting because it's flaming really hot, and then it disappears.
You know the woman who I coached who said, you know,
this person was the one we had this amazing three
month thing, And I said what happened? She was like, well,
he went traveling and he said he didn't want to

(17:17):
continue the relationship. And for me, that's like literal fireworks.
You know, they fireworks. We look at them and they're
really exciting and we get we're like, ah, isn't this magical?
And you look at those fireworks. But if those fireworks
carried on for three hours, aha, you'd be like this
is I want to go home now? You would be bored.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Right, for fireworks to be exciting left end, they have
to end. So we have to be very careful about
comparing the like slow burn energy of a real relationship
with like that fast twitch muscle of a short term
encounter or an affair that is naturally exciting because it's

(18:01):
an affair. It's like, you know this serious. Yeah. So
I don't think you should absolutely have chemistry, but we
have to be really careful with comparing chemistry with previous
chemistry because that chemistry may not have lasted either if
you'd actually got what you wanted.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, And it makes so much sense. The idea you
just the analogy you painted of the fireworks is a
brilliant one because a real relationship is one that you
don't want to end, and the chemistry based relationship is
one that has to end, right, It has to come
to an end, and for it to feel meaningful, and

(18:43):
a real relationship, you never want to end. And that's
why it feels meaningful. And that's where we're kind of
stuck in between. And the thing I hear the most,
and I asked my audience and my team a lot
of questions before this interview because I know a lot
of my audiences dating trying to figure it out. And
one of the biggest things which we touched on here,
but I want to ask you about, is that people
find it overwhelming with the number of options they have today.

(19:07):
And I've spoken to friends who are like, well, this
guy's great, but maybe there's someone greater, right, and we're
constantly living in this They're good, but maybe they're fifty percent,
and maybe there's a fifty one, and then maybe there's
a seventy nine, and maybe there's a ninety nine, because
I can see someone else over there has a ninety nine,
and so we keep second guessing even the person in

(19:29):
front of us, even if they are fulfilling our needs
because of the overwhelming number of options.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Hey, everyone, it's Jay here.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
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(20:01):
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Juni at a Target near you. So, how when you
said you fell at home and you know, I think
that's what people want to feel. They want to feel

(20:23):
at home, they want to feel more than safe. But
how do we know or would have been the best
signs and indicators that people can look out for that
they're actually making things harder for themselves by wishing, hoping,
wanting someone else? Or is that a sign that you're
not with the right person, that you feel that there
is someone who has more.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
It's such a tough question because I think it's sometimes
we're wanting something else because there's you know, the person
that's in front of us isn't compelling enough. There really
is something lacking in that relationship. But I do think
we have to ask ourselves what are the things I

(21:03):
really must have for an amazing relationship? Like I For me,
when I when I was going to ask Audrey to
marry me, I literally called up a friend and told him,
and he was like, you know, why are you doing that?
I'm just curious, Like what he was it was almost
like his way of testing whether I was ready or not,
you know, whether I was just in some crazy like

(21:24):
infatuation or and I said, you know, I'm I'm ready
to build something in my life. I feel like for me,
my my dating life was just like hitting reset all
the time, and it was honestly at a certain point
making me anxious like dating and being with different people,

(21:44):
and it just didn't you know, there was a time
in my life where that was really exciting, and then
it started to just go the other way and I
and I had to listen to that and go, this
isn't this isn't going to work, Like I, this isn't
where it's at this isn't making me happy, this isn't
bringing me peace. The way that I was dating was

(22:06):
it had almost like an addictive quality to it that
was really unhealthy. And I thought, this isn't going to
be a good look ten years from now. It's not
going to make me feel good. It's not going to
bring me more peace, which is a different By the way,
that doesn't mean that you know how to give something up.
When you have those realizations, you might realize eating healthier

(22:27):
would be better for you, but it doesn't mean that
you've trained yourself to be able to do that. But
I got to a point where I said, I want
to build something now, and with Audrey, I thought, I
in my head, I was like, I'll never find a
better builder. And I said that to him, like I'll

(22:48):
never find a better builder.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
This is.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
The builder for me. Like we're going to be able
to do such amazing things together and the life will
have and the you know, the high level of empathy
and compassion, and you know, the person that I am
with this person it you know, the way she makes
me feel like that's that's truly special. And I'm not

(23:13):
a you know, there's the one out there kind of
a person. I've never been that way if you look
anyone looks back through my videos, and you know this
because we've spoken about it back when I was single.
You know, I've never been a person who believes in
the idea of the one. So I think that it's
finding someone that we've you know, we look at what's

(23:36):
really important to us, not what's important on an egoic level,
because I think a lot of the things that make
us question whether this person is right for us are
ego based. I don't think they're based on how we
feel around this person. We worry is this the kind
of person my friends think that I should be with?
Do they look the part? Are they my type? My

(23:58):
normal type?

Speaker 3 (24:00):
Do they make the right amount of money?

Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah? Like, is this has this person come in the
package that I had always told myself they would come in?
And those things can be really, really limiting, and they
can have us like constantly trying to optimize for some
version of something that we think we're supposed to be with,
which is a very dangerous way to go about finding love.

(24:24):
You can't optimize for human beings. You can optimize for
a lot in life, but you're dealing with people. And
by the way, even if you let go of this person,
you're going to find someone else who's also imperfect, and
they might Okay, this person is, you know, scores a
seven in this area, and they score a nine. But

(24:44):
guess what, they score a three in this other area
that you didn't even know was great in this relationship
because you took for granted how amazing that person was
in that way, Like, it's very dangerous to optimize in
that way in our love life life. And I've come
to really believe in life that if you find a

(25:05):
connection that has all the right raw materials and you
both have the same level of commitment, then you can
build something extraordinary together. And actually the extraordinary is the
thing you sculpt together. It's no different from a career.
You know, neither you nor I started by doing our

(25:26):
dream version of this. It's evolved and evolved and evolved
and evolved, and every year you sculpt it a little
closer to your ideal way of doing it all. And
along the way, you do a lot of things that
you don't necessarily You're like, oh my god, I couldn't
do this for a lifetime, and this part I thought
I would enjoy and I didn't enjoy it nearly as
much as I thought I would. I'm going to stop
doing that. And you, you know, you you sculpt it

(25:50):
like dream careers are sculpted, they're not found. And I
think that that's true of relationships as well, Like I'm
more grateful for my relationship with Audrey the more time
goes on, Yes, because we keep sculpting it into something
that's better and better what that requires, which is really
hard for a lot of us, myself included for many years.

(26:11):
And this was one of the things that I think
really hurt me was I got myself into an incredibly
indecisive state where I was constantly second guessing myself. And
I you know, when we talk, when we when we
think of what's like, what are we worried about in

(26:32):
our love life? For so many of us, it's that
we're going to settle. Yes, I'm going to settle for
the wrong person. Well, I think we can actually start
to reclaim the language of settling and make it into
a very positive thing that what if it wasn't settling
for what if you decided to settle on Because when

(26:54):
you settle on someone, there's a power to that it's
like you resolve to say, I'm going to settle on this.
It's like people crossing a country when a country is
you know, it's like people crossing America and deciding when
to stop. At what point did the early settlers say
this is good enough, I don't need to keep going,

(27:14):
like I've found an amazing place. And when you find
that place, you go I could live here. Then you
settle on it. And it's only by settling on it
that you can make it great. It's only by putting
your attention on it like a laser, that you can
see what it becomes. And I don't think that I
ever really settled on anything in my love life in

(27:37):
a way that gave it a chance to see what
it could really become. And in this situation, I really
gave myself that chance by saying I'm gonna I'm going
to go all in on this. But or she was
smart because she also saw that Audrey is ridiculously perceptive

(27:57):
and in tune with people, and she saw in me
early on like, oh, this is a pattern for him,
and that doubt and that what do I want?

Speaker 3 (28:08):
You know?

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Is this right? And that she saw that early on
and One of the things that she did was she
she called me out firstly, and she was like, look,
if you're I'm willing to like really see what this
could be, and you don't seem to be in that

(28:30):
place where you're like actually going all in and seeing
what it could be. She said, So I don't want
to continue if you're not going all in because I'm
not like, I'm not here for someone half of someone's energy.
And the way she phrased it was amazing because she

(28:51):
said to me, look, that doesn't mean like six months
from now we could break up. Yeah, you might decide
this is wrong for you. I might decide it's wrong
for me, and no one's the villain if that happens.
But if you're not willing to go all in right
now to at least see what it could be and

(29:12):
give it your real effort, then then this has to
end here for me. And what was for me what
was amazing about that is that it lowered the stakes
for me, especially when she said because I felt like,
you know, in the past I had hurt well, I
didn't feel like I had hurt people and I had

(29:32):
been the villain, and I was like, I can't do
this anymore because I also suffer from ridiculous guilt. So
it was like, I can't do this again. I can't.
I was like avoidant because I was like, I don't
want to get close enough to anyone to hurt someone.
If I hurt someone, I'm going to feel sick and
that's going to haunt me, and then you know, I'm
just making myself miserable and them, And so I had

(29:53):
all this like stuff. And when she was like, you're
not six months from now you decide this isn't for you,
that's okay, You're allowed to do that. That lowered the
stakes for me. But by also demanding as a standard,
And that's what so much of this book is about
how to raise your standards and what that looks like
in practice, because I think the reason so many people

(30:14):
never reached the point of real relationship is because they
don't have standards for what they expect and how to
communicate and know how to communicate those standards. But because
she had a standard that she lowered the stakes, but
she also had a high standard and said this is
the price of entry for continuing. That allowed me to
fully invest. And when I fully invested, that thing started

(30:38):
to actually realize its potential and to we got to
see what it actually was when I was showing up
fully and she was showing up fully. So I sympathize
with anyone who is struggling with those decisions in their
love life. I don't judge anyone for it, because I
struggled in my love life with this. I wrote a

(30:59):
whole chapter of the book called never Satisfied because I
related to that idea that you know, you find someone
who you chase, who feels exciting to you, but they
break your heart, you know, Or you go for someone
who feels safe and you're bored. You're doubting yourself, you're
doubting whether this is the right person, and you just
sort of, you know, cycle between those two different extremes.

(31:24):
And it became the not just a goal for me
to help other people, it became a goal for myself
to go I need to figure out how to be
happy here, because otherwise I'm going to constantly oscillate between
feeling suffering because I'm chasing someone who doesn't want me,
or being with someone where i feel like I'm not

(31:45):
fully there, and that's not fair to them, and it's
not fair to myself, like I need to figure out
a way to be happy here. So so much of
this book is about finding that peace and that happiness
that I feel really really lucky to have been able
to find in my own life because it's it. You know,
I wrote this book single, heartbroken, then dating, then you know,

(32:13):
falling in love, and then the last edit, I did
you know for two days on my honeymoon, Like that
was a crazy arc for me. So it wasn't something
that was created by a married person who was just like,
here's all the answers. I was like, some of these
chapters I wrote in the worst possible pain of my life.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
You know, you talked about standards then, and obviously that's
such a big part of what you felt with Audrey
in that moment. I think what scares us about setting
standards is that we think it's going to scare someone away.
So Audrey saying that to you requires so much self
worth in her saying I may lose this guy if

(32:51):
I say this, but I know that's where I'm at,
you being vulnerable with that person many years ago saying
I'm going to open up about my life and them
saying that's not very attractive. I don't find that attractive.
That was you, again trying to demonstrate and be vulnerable,
but because you were with someone who wasn't emotionally compassionate

(33:15):
enough to receive that, and because you didn't have enough
self worth, you made it a weakness in yourself. It
sounds like when Audrey said that to you, if you
would have said, well, I'm not in, she would have
been like, okay, cool, we're not in, then it's not happening.
It doesn't sound like she would have been like, oh
my god, he doesn't like me. I'm not good enough
because she had a certain standard and that's what standards,
whereas when you were trying to be vulnerable, it was

(33:36):
like trying to be vulnerable, but it wasn't a standard yet.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
Well, I would say, no, it wasn't a standard. Tactics
are different from standards. That's why I'm not that when
I was being vulnerable, that was a tactic. But like
we do constantly employ faux standards that aren't really standards.
They're just a tactic. So she's like, I'm not going
to text this person back so that I generate interest,

(34:02):
and then if it doesn't generate interest, three days later
we text them anyway. That's because it wasn't a standard,
it was a tactic. Well, yeah, when something as tactic,
we do to try and get a result, and if
it doesn't work, we go for a different tactic. A
standard is who we are and we don't change it.
Like if my standard for being open and vulnerable was

(34:25):
what I did in that moment with that person, I
wouldn't have stopped doing that just because I didn't get
the result that I wanted, which was connection. I would
have said, well, this is how I want to be.
And come to think of it, one of I would
have said, if I was in a better place, one
of my greatest standards is to find someone who really

(34:45):
accepts me. And if this person doesn't accept me, then
my standard is going to be that, well, maybe this
relationship isn't for me. You know, I want to be
this vulnerable in a relationship. I want to be able
to share from the heart both the good and the
and the bad, and my flaws and my insecurities. And

(35:07):
if I'm not accepted, then okay, maybe maybe it's not right.
But instead what I did was I went down a
very masochistic rabbit hole of going I'm not good enough.
It's just been proven. I'm never going to reveal those
weaknesses again. And I stayed right. So you're right about

(35:27):
Audrey because I can guarantee you if I had not
then said all right, I'm going to show up differently,
she would have been out of there. And the big
difference is we have to make the goal our happiness,
not a person. You know, we think that we're going
to be happy by getting a person, but you'll never
be happy by getting a person that doesn't meet your needs.

(35:49):
It doesn't matter how impressive you think they are. It
doesn't that's the danger, right, that's the trap people fall into.
I've fallen into it. Someone's particularly exciting, impressive, charismatic, gorgeous,
there's something they have, all these things that you go,
this makes them a very valuable person. And then you say, well,
my needs don't really matter anymore. The only thing that

(36:11):
matters is I can get this person. Because we think
if I can get this person, then I'll be worthy
and I'll be happy and it'll all work out. But
everyone out there, you know, most people out there have
been in a relationship where they thought it would be
heaven to get someone, and then they experienced what the
relationship was actually like when their needs weren't being met,

(36:36):
when they didn't feel safe, when they didn't feel acknowledged,
when they didn't receive someone's empathy, when they felt like
they couldn't really be themselves around that person, when they
felt like they were constantly clinging onto the relationship because
they never you know, they're in a relationship with the person,
but they never really felt like they had them. You know,
there's a special kind of hell to be in a

(36:57):
relationship like that, and at a certain point we have
to come to realize that this is this is this relationship.
I keep telling myself, I'm going to die if I lose.
It is worthless if I don't get these couple of
things that are missing. And so for me, one of

(37:17):
the greatest ways to have a standard next time round
is not you. There's a whole you know. I wrote
two massive chapters in this book on how to be confident,
But you don't even need confidence for standards in the beginning. Yes,
you just need to know that I can never experience
that again because it's too painful. It's like you don't

(37:39):
need to if I put your hand in a flame,
you don't need a standard or confidence to get out
of it. Yeah, you just you don't need self worth
to get your hand out of the flame. It's just
too painful. I can't do that again. And a lot
of people, especially people who leave really abusive or difficult relationships,
a lot of them, when they have enough time them

(38:00):
away from it and they start to their nervous system
calms down and they start to experience a different reality.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
Yeah, they look.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Back and they're like, no matter how much I still
may dream about that person or fantasize about that person,
or you know, get sentimental about that relationship, when they
really think about what it was like to be in
it and what that person was like, they're like, I
could never go back to being in that kind of
a situation. So the necessity is the birthplace of standards

(38:33):
before you ever increase your self worth.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah, And I love that because I think we get
so locked into like self worth, self confidence, self esteem,
and because that's a lifelong journey and a lifelong pursuit,
you feel you can't have standards. But I want to
go back to something you said, because I think this
is we're really I'm really enjoying this conversation because I
feel like we're really getting into this kind of subtle,
nuanced space of what's really holding people back from having

(38:58):
love in their life. And it's something you said earlier
which I'm kind of connecting to what you're saying now,
this difference between an egoic standard in your words, and
then an emotive standard or an emotional standard. And maybe
there's a better word for it that you've developed or
come across, but I'm trying to separate it because I
think an egoic standard is, well, yeah, that if they

(39:22):
asked me out, they have to pay on the first date,
so we start getting lost, or like an egoic standard
is they should message me first, Like I don't think
those are the types of standards that Audrey said to
you or the kind of standard that you're recommending. There's
this great my favorite TikTok page to follow in the
world is called Guy with the List.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Have you seen this guy?

Speaker 2 (39:43):
So what he does is he will take random videos
of girls who share their X and they are hilarious, right,
they are the most ridiculous things. Like it's like I
don't like guys who work out with their mates all
the way through to I don't like eyes with a
big bum right, whatever it may be. And this guy,

(40:04):
what he'll do is he'll take the clip of a
girl saying that, and then he'll go to his notes
page in Apple and additors list and things have not
to be it's the best page in the world.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
So it's just the longest list.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
He's on seven hundred and ninety four the last time
I saw, and it's like a guy with the list.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
It's brilliant.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
And the reason I bring it up is because I
think that's what we think standards are now, and I
think to your point earlier, I think you labeled it
an egoic standard. So walk us through how we transform
our egoic standards into I'm calling them emotional standards whatever
the right word is. How do we transfer them over

(40:42):
because I think we think we're setting standards, but their
standards like he's got to pay on the first day,
she better text me first. I won't reply for a
week the example you gave, And I think that's what's
tripping us up.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah, I think that it's almost like there's standards that
arise from ego and there's standards arise from what's going
to make us happy, and that the two are often
completely different, right, because actually the things that make us
happy can be much more subtle and less prescriptive than

(41:16):
the things that feed our ego in some way. There's
two points I want to make about this. The first
one is in relation to the kind of inherent judgment
that is in so many of those X and so
many of those things. I would never want someone who's

(41:37):
like this. I would never want someone who does that.

Speaker 3 (41:39):
I would.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
We write people off at lightning speed, and not just
entirely superficial things, but ways that people are not like us. Right,
So you've got people who are like, oh, if they're
not into especially like you know, your audience is into
self development. My audience tends to be into self development.
It's very easy for someone who gets into self development

(42:02):
to suddenly be like, I want somebody else who's into
self development? Yeah, right, And I get that question all
the time, Like, now that I'm doing all of this
growth work, I want someone who can keep up. I
want someone who's on my level. And I want to
remind people like you weren't doing this two years ago,
Like this is in a way, this is like a

(42:23):
complete contempt you have for you two years ago, well
before like a certain mentor or influence or something came
into your life and turned you onto something. There's also
a slight arrogance about the standards, you know, these things

(42:43):
we have because it's you know, someone could have lived
on a farm their whole life, and I have no
idea what self development even is as a kind of
idea a concept, let alone that there's this entire industry
around it. And they may have a wisdom that you

(43:03):
never picked up on in the world that you grew
up in, and that might be one of the greatest
bits of synergy between the two of you, is the
wisdom you bring and the wisdom they bring that's different
and it has come from a very different place, a
very different way of living. So, you know, I think
there's a lack of humility sometimes in thinking that people
have to be like us and then judging them for

(43:26):
the ways that they're not like us. And a lot
of the way we judge other people arises out of
a lack of self compassion because we haven't really accepted ourselves.
We haven't really you know, I know, every time I
got punched in the face by life, every time, like
I took a big hit and I, you know, experienced

(43:49):
a really bad heartbreak that was a big one for me,
like a very humbling experience for me. I experienced years
of chronic physical pain, and when that happened in my life,
I like truly just hit a kind of bottom because
I just didn't know how I would ever. I tried

(44:09):
everything in the world and I couldn't make this pain
go away. And it started to basically not just ruin
my life because I felt like I couldn't experience joy anymore.
I was just thinking about my pain all day every day.
But it also robbed me of my confidence because I

(44:29):
started to feel like, Wow, no one's going to be
attracted to this version of me that is so frail
and fragile and doesn't feel like I really didn't identify
as the heroic version of me anymore. I was like,
this is I'm going to be perceived as pathetic by
someone who wants like a strong person because I feel

(44:51):
so on the edge of breaking the whole time, because
anyone with chronic physical pain knows that it's so centralizing
and even doing basic things can feel like it's too much.
But my point is that that going through those things
in life. It allowed me to access a level of

(45:13):
compassion for other people because I was like, God, how
many people have I written off in my life because
you know, they're this way or they're that way, or
they're you know, and look at me right now, I'm
like on the floor.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
And I found that as I came to accept more
of myself and be honest about my own stuff and
not just the things going wrong in my life, but
even just difficulties. Like if you have a jealous moment
and it makes you a little crazy, then you're not
so quick to call other people crazy when they you know,

(45:52):
react to insecurity they have and it makes them do
something extreme in that moment, you know, like that, well,
you she's crazy. You can't believe what she did, Like
she's so she's crazy. It's like you don't. You don't
throw that around when you know you've done your share
of like crazy because you were in pain and you

(46:14):
didn't know how to how to cope with it, you
know it. So I've I've found that the more the
more I've like been humbled in life, and the more
I've become accepting of myself and compassionate towards myself. Actually,
the more it's made space for everyone else, because now

(46:37):
I wouldn't if I was single again, I wouldn't be
writing off people on all of those things that I
might have written people off for eight years ago or
ten years ago. I actually think I would have more options,
not less. People say I'm growing so much, I've got
so few options now because so many few people are
on my level. I'm like, if you're really growing, I
actually think it makes space for more people because you've

(46:59):
become more compact and more accepting, and you see the
soul of that person underneath those behaviors and the way
they are, which kind of brings me on to my
other point, which was when you know the person says
they didn't pay on the date they invited me, and
then you know they didn't pay for the whole check
or whatever. I think. We're we're not always good at

(47:24):
getting behind why someone is the way they are, Like,
what's really driving the way they are? Does this person
have the same values as me? They might do something
different on the surface, but underneath that might be the
same value. We just have arrived at different points, Like

(47:45):
my wife's a vegetarian, I eat meat, like we both
love animals. Sincerely, I love animals. She makes jokes about me,
you know how much. You know how I am with
animals is one of her favorite things in the world,
eat them, and she doesn't like We've arrived at different places,
but underneath it all is like the same beating heart.

(48:10):
And I think that's the thing we're quick to write
off when we make those really quick judgments about people.
And that's not to say like there are certain you know,
red flags that might come up with someone where you go,
you know what, not worth finding out what's behind this
because it's just too severe and I don't, I really
don't like this, and it has been a major warning

(48:31):
sign for me in the past. But I think that's
that's different than taking something like you know, someone someone
didn't pay half the bill, or someone didn't pay the
whole bill, and like I I know that. I used
to think to myself, I really enjoy paying the bill,
but if someone didn't offer for me, I would be

(48:54):
like it. And this is even my judgment, right, because
that for them, it might just be conditioning and it
might be even There were times where even spoke up
about it where I found myself paying constantly, and I
got brave enough to say, hey, it makes me feel
kind of taken for granted that you don't ever offer

(49:14):
to pay. You know, I've been in situations like that
in the past, and sometimes if you said that to someone,
they'd be like, oh my god, I feel awful, like
they're so embarrassed, and they're like they will then feel
shame about it and be like, god, I you know,
they look at themselves and they're like, oh, I slipped
into a pattern there that I don't like, especially if
I expressed that it's not that I hate it's not
that I don't like paying, it's that I don't feel

(49:36):
like we're a team. You know, that might make someone
go well, I value being part of a team as well,
and I actually don't like that you don't feel like
I'm a great teammate. That's the last thing in the
world I'd ever want to be. So now like you
can actually come together because of a moment where you
say something like that. But I know if I was

(49:57):
on a date when I was single and someone didn't
even offer, and by the way, I would still pay. Yeah,
I still wouldn't let them. But if someone didn't offer it,
it would be there would be a little piece of
me that would be like, that doesn't feel like teamwork.
And maybe you know, maybe fine, if someone invites you

(50:18):
on a date and they let you pay half, Okay,
maybe you say I don't I didn't love that, but
maybe you see like maybe that needs to play out
once or twice more before you decide everything that means
about the person.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
Yeah, well, I think you just said the nail on
the head. It's like actually having and I know this
isn't sexy and it's not popular, but it is what
you're trying to say that having the clarifying conversation around
why someone behaves the way they do is far more
useful as to whether this relationship has a future than
what they do. So the fact that you're paying or

(50:53):
someone's not paying actually doesn't show anything unless you had
a conversation about why that's the case, and actually how
they deal with that conversation and how they respond to
it is going to give you all the notes you
need as to whether this relationship has a future or not.
Because what ends up happening that's with a very tangible
thing with paying, There could be something that person does
that annoys you, and you let it go for the

(51:14):
first month. You let it go for the first three months.
Now you move in and it triggers you and you're like, God,
can you just stop doing that? You've been doing it
for nine months now. And they're like, well, wait a minute,
why didn't you just tell me that? And it's like, well,
if we actually talked about it on month one. I
know Ridley and I have had so many conversations like that,
And it is true that as you spend more time together,

(51:34):
a you discover more things you disagree on, and B
you discover more things you're grateful for. They're both happening
at the same time, and the disagreement doesn't turn into
a disconnect because you have the skills to say, I
know how this person deals with challenging conversations because we've
had them for so long. We're not waiting for three

(51:54):
years to hear to have our first challenging conversation because
we've already had them about less important things. And now
that we're growing up together, they're like, you know, I
think a lot of people aren't having the early conversation.
So when it comes to that, how do we want
to raise kids? Where do we want to live? What
do you want to all? These are harder conversations if
you haven't talked about who should pay for the bill,

(52:15):
because these are much more, bigger, emotional conditioned decisions where
people have far more stuff to pull from as to how.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
They make it.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
So it's so much to say about all of God, Yeah,
you're absolutely right. And Christopher Hitchins used to say, it's
more important how someone thinks than what they think, And
I think that we never when we're being too judgmental
or assumptive. We don't necessarily learn how someone thinks. We
learn what they think, and then we discard them based

(52:44):
on what they think or what they do. You're absolutely
right that by having the conversation, you see how they
deal with the conversation itself, which should, by the way,
for anyone wanting a serious relationship, it should that should
be like, one of your baseline needs is that I
need someone who is willing to have real conversations with
me where we can acknowledge things, because someone who can't

(53:08):
acknowledge things can't grow right. It's like one of the
key features of narcissism is the inability to admit wrongdoing
and that breeds incompetence, by the way, because if you
can't admit wrongdoing and take ownership, you can't get better
at something. So you know, whether you're dealing with narcissism
or just someone who can't see themselves clearly or can't

(53:31):
acknowledge the way you feel or the way something they've
done has made you feel. If you're in that situation,
it's going to be a rough relationship. So how soon
do you want to find out? The way the two
of you engage on that level? But it's also engaging
on that level is a form. This is I think
what we've what we forget is that well, let me

(53:53):
make two points about this. That I wrote an entire
chapter in this book on hard conversations, not just because
we tend to avoid them at all costs because we
don't like them. Like it's like, you know in fight Club,
where you know, he says, like most men will do
anything to avoid a fight, Like it's like most people
will do anything to avoid a hard conversation because we

(54:13):
just hate it's awkward, it's embarrassing. You know, we probably
many of us grew up not being good at confrontation
or not being taught how to have healthy confrontation, and
so we avoid it and we hold on to it,
and we hold onto it, and we're afraid what will
happen if we speak up about our needs. I know
that one thing I did a disservice to people that

(54:34):
I had in my love life in previous times of
my life because the times where I might have really
needed some time to myself, I didn't express it. And
then by not expressing it because I was afraid, I
then became like resentful and avoidant and started to push

(54:55):
that person away because I had just decided my needs
couldn't be met in this relationship with giving them a
chance to even see that part of me and show
up for me in that way. So we do that
all the way to the beginning of dating. You know,
we do that when we see you know that I
joke in the book about red flags because I'm like,
if we listen to every single piece of advice on

(55:17):
the internet about what's a red flag, not only would
everyone be undtable, so would we like I'd be excluded
from the dating Paul, because I for sure have some
of those red flags or have at some point in
my life. So, you know, we and that's I don't
want to be hypocritical. I've been a contributor to the
advice on red flags, but like when you start adding

(55:39):
them all up, you're like, oh my god, is there
any room for mistakes? Is there any room for someone
to do something that you know isn't them on their
best day? Now, Robert Green, I heard him say, you know,
if someone does something, pay attention to that, because nobody

(56:00):
ever does anything once. If they did it once, it's
a pattern. I think that's an amazing Like if I
was creating a survival guide for life, that would go
in it because it's great advice. But I also know
that there's things I've done in my life or my
relationship that I did once, especially after a hard conversation

(56:22):
I felt bad about and decided I don't want to
be that person or I don't want to do that again.
So we do want to reserve some space in life
for the fact that we can learn, we can adapt,
we can progress. What I know for sure is that
people don't progress without the hard conversations. What we ignore,
we tacitly approve, and what we point out bravely, albeit

(56:47):
there are elegant ways to do it and I show
people elegant ways to do it in the book. Yeah,
that to me is then you're looking for progress, like
is when I've mentioned it is does it bring us
closer together? Because in the right situation, communicating should actually
bring you closer together. It shouldn't. Then you shouldn't feel
gas lit, you shouldn't feel like you're called crazy or difficult,

(57:11):
or that should actually bring you together. And then our
standard has to be that by having that conversation, I
need to see progress in that area. And if I
don't see progress in that area, I'm not going to
ignore the fact that there's been no progress in that area.
But if there's no progress now it has become a
kind of a delusional thing to expect that they are

(57:34):
going to change. But I can't stress this enough. We
in our love lives today, everyone is really really good
at and rightly so I'm not this is what they're
talking about is real. But we're really good at complaining
about what dating is like today and how hard it is,
And it is like it It is hard. Finding love

(57:58):
is hard. It is the wild West. There is so
much bad behavior, there's so many ways to just God,
there's just so many ways for it to be bad,
and unfortunately for us, our love life is an area
we can influence, but we can't control it to the
level of precision that we can other areas of our lives.
If we want to lose weight, we can eat better

(58:21):
and we can work out, and our body will change.
May not get to our perfect weight, but it will
change reliably. In your love life, you can go on
a day every day for the next year and still
not find love, or you can find love and six
months later that person cheats on you and leaves you,
and you're back to square one. It's a maddening area
in many ways because we deeply want to find love.

(58:43):
It is one of the most human of desires is
to find love, and it panics us at first. It
frustrates us, and it makes us angry. But at some point,
for many people it panics them because they're worried I'm
never going to meet anyone. We can't just decide I'm

(59:03):
going to find love in the next three months and
make it happen. But what we have to start taking
ownership of and where we have to start taking our
power back, is that you can go into your dating
life from a place of leadership, and so many people
I think go in with a state of following. What's

(59:24):
the level right now of people's effort, what's the level
of men's chivalry, what's the level of whether people pick
up the phone or not instead of relentlessly texting. What's
the level of communication between dates or what I can
expect from someone in terms of assurances that we're just

(59:45):
seeing each other. Like there's all this rhetoric about where
things are and people don't try anymore and no one
wants to commit and so on. But if you're not careful,
you can get into a really passive state about all
Mitch Albums said, if you don't like the culture, you
have to be brave enough to create your own. I
love that, and by the way, that's what we do

(01:00:06):
in business, right. That's what you've done in your business,
is that you've created a culture that you love, that
is right for you, and that's what you you know,
in the most positive way, infect your team with is
that beautiful culture and that amazing way that you see
the world and the way that you do things, and
it makes your organization unlike any other in the world.

(01:00:28):
It's got your thumbprint on it. That's the beauty in
a way of starting a business is that you get
to do it your way and our love life can
be the same. We can decide what's the culture that
I want to have instead of commenting on culture, what's
the culture I want to create in my love life?
If someone you know, if I'm sick of this whole

(01:00:50):
constant texting thing, or why don't I be the one
to leave someone a voice note today? Like why if
someone's just sent me the fiftieth text, why don't I
send them back when they ask me how am I
doing today? Why not just say maybe it's too scary
to call them, but maybe I just leave a voice
note and say, hey, how you doing. I thought i'd

(01:01:11):
you know, I thought i'd leave you a voice note.
I'm out with my sister right now. We're in Ikea.
We're trying to find furniture for this thing. I'll send
you a picture because I am dreading getting home and
having to actually make this. Tell me about your day,
like how you doing? Blah blah blah. Like you know,
you can inject a different level of energy and enthusiasm
or sexiness or flirtatiousness or whatever it may be. A

(01:01:33):
little laugh here, that's endearing. You can do all of
that in a voice note in a way that when
someone listens to it, now it's not just another text
on their phone. You're like attacking a different sense. And
that will increase the level of intimacy even just by
one percent two percent, And that might just make you like,

(01:01:54):
that's leadership because you're not just we spend so much
time mirroring people like I'm going to mirror how someone
else is, what someone else is giving me, and this
this person I'm seeing, But we have to start modeling
more like it. Don't get me wrong. If you model
behavior that you want to see by being the one
who picks up the phone first or leaves the voice

(01:02:16):
note and then they don't meet you there, then you
can say, Okay, I'm going to start to mirror their
lack of investment. I'm going to start to back off.
But you can't just be in a state of mirroring
all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Like this is such a good point.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
It works on every level. Man, I was at my
coffee shop this morning and there's a guy there that
really like we always have like a really nice, like
three minute conversation, and this morning like it never goes
further than that. But this morning as he was going
to the coffee bar, he said, can I get you
a coffee?

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
Like I remember in that moment, I thought that was
like a little moment of like vulnerability and leadership. That
was like had the potential to upgrade the relationship.

Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Like this is just another guy in a coffee shop,
but it was like, oh we might hear you offered
me a coffee. I say yes, And now like our
relationship is one way, you got me a Coffeeah yeah,
and now we might sit for ten minutes so on.
That's how things move, but they can't move if you're
in this like fearful protectionist. I don't want to get hurt.

(01:03:23):
I don't want to give more than the other person.
I don't want to That's not a good standard to have.
A great standard to have is lead and model the
kind of culture you want to see. And if someone
doesn't meet you there, that's where the standard comes in. Yes,
that's where you of course the standard is modeling. But
the counter standard if they don't meet you there is

(01:03:45):
to say this isn't someone I'm going to continue modeling
that kind of investment for because they're not meeting me there.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Yeah, that is Oh man, that is so well put.
And I'm so glad that you made that so clear
because I couldn't agree with you more. I feel like
we're limiting ourselves so much and we're actually creating what
you just ended on there. It's a really powerful point.
We're actually creating a culture that even if this relationship lasts,

(01:04:13):
it will be set at the wrong level. So the
culture of that relationship now is we sometimes text, we
rarely call, and now, even if the relationship lasts and
we do like each other a little bit, it's never
going to change from that. So you're way better off
setting the standard and the culture from day one and
seeing if it develops and grows. And I find what
most people do, and I think we've all experienced this

(01:04:34):
is for three to six months we try and not
disrupt the culture, and then six months later we're like, no, no, no,
but I always wanted this, and I thought we were
going to get there, and the person's like, no, no, no,
but this is what we are. And I remember that Radi,
who's the only person I've ever been with since I
left the monastery like it was like she was the
person that I was fully clear with about who I was,

(01:04:55):
what are my expectations were, where we were, and thankfully
she was that back too. And we had some really
hard conversations early on about some big things that were
important to her, not important to me, important to me,
not important to her. And what I loved was how
we talked about those things and how we kind of
navigated those things. And it's not that we're perfect and

(01:05:15):
we don't have issues. We have so many challenges. You know,
we've been together for eleven years now. There's so many
things that have come up over the years that have
given us different challenges. But the difference is we set
a culture of how to deal with difficult things early on.
And I think what I hear time and time again,
and I know you hear this probably ten xt the
amount I hear this. It all comes down to the

(01:05:39):
fact that we want people to like us so bad
that we're willing to act unlike ourselves in order for
them to like us. Because if they can like a
version of us, then that's good enough for us. And
so if the version is I never bother you, I
never text, I never call you, We will be that

(01:06:01):
person for you because that makes you like me. We
all love to be referred to as that person who's like, oh, yeah,
they're low maintenance, and we love that label. We're like, yeah, yeah,
I'm low maintenance, and inside we're like, yeah, I've got
way more needs than this. But guess what I've set
the culture of being low maintenance. Now a year later
they're like, wait a minute, you were low maintenance here ago.

(01:06:22):
Why are you high maintenance? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
And there's two problems with that. One is that it
can actually make it so that someone can't even really
read us or our intentions. It's a bit like when
someone is like, wants to be calling indifferent. Well, if
there's a story I tell in the book of a
friend of mine who was dating someone and then went
on a trip and he didn't really reach out to
her on that trip, and by the time he got

(01:06:47):
home after a few days, she said to him on
the phone. It the fact that you were away and
you didn't really speak to me made me feel funny,
made me feel like you may have been sharing your
bed with someone else and they hadn't been on Like
this isn't two people who had been dating for six moneys.
They'd been on a couple of dates, but that was

(01:07:10):
the moment when he said to me, I think I
liked this person because there was an intentionality to it.
She didn't go, I'm being high maintenance by saying this,
she just communicated what she was feeling. And by doing that,
instead of being cool indifferent girl like chill, I'm chill,

(01:07:31):
Like I don't care that you didn't text me while
you're away, she went, no, no, no, no. It made
me feel funny, Yeah, because it would. The subtext is
it would hurt me to know, like maybe we haven't
known each other that long, but it would still make
me feel something to know that you'd shared your bed
with someone else while you were away. That's a very
powerful thing to do, because if he's seeing multiple people

(01:07:54):
in that moment, all of them playing cool, indifferent whatever,
he now sees someone who who is actually telegraphing the
kind of person she is, that she's a three dimensional
person with real feelings and that she wants something more.
She is not the kind of person to date if

(01:08:16):
you don't want something more. And by the way, even
the first time someone gets like it's just a little
bit jealous of something can be a moment of intentionality
in a relationship because you the moment you see someone's
a little bit like, they convey a little bit of
even if it's playful jealousy. I don't like that made
me feel funny. You're not allowed to text that, but whatever,

(01:08:38):
you can go you it almost can make you like
that person more because you can go, oh, that's like
it's almost like you've telegraphed that we've gone to a
new level where jealousy is even possible. Yeah, because at
the beginning, jealousy wasn't even possible, and now it is.
You must like me. I think I like you too.
You know. It's like there's a we're so afraid of

(01:08:59):
saying these things that actually telegraph intentionality, which is a
really really powerful thing.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
Yeah, but it all comes down back to the root
of we're so scared because we're scared that that person
will leave, and often they will because their friends saying
to them, oh yeah, man, their psycho are their obsessive
leave right, And so we don't want these extreme labels,
and I think often so we're scared of looking unattractive,

(01:09:29):
we're scared of being unwanted. We're scared of being rejected, right,
That's the reason we don't say any of this because
we're like, if I say that, they're going to think
I'm psycho crazy, obsessed, and I don't want to come
across that way, and so I won't say anything until
one year on which, by the way, they're going to
think the same exact thing when it's a full surprise.
So I want to talk to you about that. And

(01:09:49):
then the other idea that I see a lot of
that people get stuck on is when they say something,
they say it as a demand or a command, where
it's like, well, I expect you to do this. And
that's where I think it's unhealthy because I like someone
being honest with me, but I also don't want that
to be my progress report because I may have a

(01:10:11):
really good thing to say back. And so if I'm
going to say back, if someone was like if someone
said that to me, like you didn't contact me, I'll
be like, yeah, you know what. When I travel, I
actually really struggle to stay in touch with anyone because
I'm really trying to be present. I'm really trying to immerse.
But now that I know that's a value for you,
next time I go away, let's talk about how often
we can both keep in touch realistically, because I'm also
not going to promise I'm going to call you every

(01:10:32):
single day, even if I'm really excited about you, because
I'm also going to set my standard back. And I
think often people don't want to hear that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:39):
Either.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
They want to hear someone say, oh, of course, I
understand everything you're saying, and I'm going to call you
every day when I go away again. And so one
side is you're scared of getting fully rejected, and the
other side is you're scared of not getting exactly what
you want. And I don't think both those expectations are
useful because you might get rejected and you're never going
to get exactly what you want in an authentic way.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
No, And I think that's why we if we're the
one who wants something, we have to zoom out enough
to look at whether this person and what they bring
to our life and what this relationship is like holistically
is enough for us. Because we may say I want

(01:11:24):
this person to call me every day, but that may
genuinely not be their style, right. It's they're not someone
who enjoys sitting on the phone as much as you do.
They might pick up the phone and call you every
couple of days, but in the meantime they will text
you or you have to It's like you have to
zoom out and go. How much of this relationship, not

(01:11:45):
these moments, whether they call or not. How much of
this relationship correct meets my needs? You know, what are
the fundamental things? Well, I need to feel safe with someone,
like I need to feel like they actually want me
and that I'm not kind of investing under a misapprehension
about what this is. I need to know at a

(01:12:07):
certain point that regardless of our differences, we're giving this
a go and we're exclusive. So that might be one thing.
Another thing is I need to feel like whether it's
on the exact platform I might have hoped, I need
to feel like I get enough communication, you know, holistically
in this relationship to feel like I'm actually connected to

(01:12:30):
this person. You know, if someone very very rarely travels
and then they go away and you don't hear from
them a lot when they travel, that may not be
a big deal. If they're on the road half the
year and then they're not really connecting with you while
they're traveling that's going to have a much bigger impact
on your life. It doesn't make them wrong, but it
might not be enough for you. Yeah, and that's where

(01:12:51):
we have to start getting really honest with ourselves. We
get so caught up in who's right and wrong, and
we don't spend enough time just asking is it right
for me? Does this person work well with me? Are
we compatible? And compatibility is everything you know you can't.

(01:13:13):
I talk about four levels of importance in any relationship
or any person, any dynamic you have with a person.
The first one is admiration. That's just you admiring someone.
It doesn't mean very much. They may not even know
you exist. The second one is mutual attraction. That's when
you actually know you like each other. The third one
is commitment. That's when you don't just like each other,

(01:13:35):
but you're actually saying yes to the relationship. And the
fourth one is compatibility, because actually love isn't all you need.
You need two people who actually work well together. You know,
is it's not is this person you know? Am I
good at handling them? And are they good at handling me?

(01:13:56):
Like that's a pretty I think that's a pretty good
barometer of a relationship I came.

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):
To this is a great one.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
Yeah, because you're gonna come with your stuff. This nonsense
of like we have to come to a relationship fully healed.
Who does No one who likes an it's a it's
this idea that gets talked about that no one actually does.
No one comes to it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
Ever.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
I'm to make myself whole and healed and everything before
a relationship. Good luck. And by the way, half the
people who say that stuff, who have been married ten years,
they weren't that way when they met their partner. So
we find imperfect people. You know that we are damaged
vessels that somehow still work, and that's beautiful. And we're

(01:14:40):
trying to find another damaged vessel that we go. Oh,
I understand the I understand the fabric of their challenges
and what they struggle with, or at least it makes
sense to me when I hear it. And you know,
I have compassion for it, and I have empathy for it,
and I have affection for it even and vice versa.

(01:15:02):
And so now when we go through our inevitable things,
we're just good at handling each other. So it's when
we when we have a standard we may not end
up exactly where we want to be, but the ultimate
standard of holistically, are you getting what you need from

(01:15:24):
this relationship. That's a really important question that not enough
people ask and as a result they suffer in unhappy relationships.

Speaker 2 (01:15:35):
Yeah, it's so interesting to get into that kind of
you know, to go beyond that superficial conversation of make
a list of what you want and like, you know,
try and find it out and you know that that
kind of ego centric list that we get. Let's let's
talk a bit about breakups, because I think the challenge
is that everyone in their life goes through at least

(01:15:55):
one or two maybe more, really painful breakups. Whether it's fidelity,
whether it's out it feels out of the blue, someone
just goes Yep, not working out for me anymore, whether
it's different goals and different plans and priorities that emerge
over time. And I think everyone who goes through a
breakup blames it on themselves. Often thinks that this is

(01:16:19):
the end, there'll never be another person, and it feels
like a really dark, dark, dark empty road and a
lonely road. And I think it's really interesting because there's
so many piece of advice and everything about like how
to get over a breakup, and I've talked about that
as well myself, but I just find that it seems
to be a path that you have to walk and

(01:16:41):
have to take and there's no real acceleration or there's not,
as you said, there's not like I'm going to get
over this breakup in three months, right, there's no timeline
or deadline that you can set on it. But it's
just uncomfortable, and it's almost like sitting in discomfort. What
do we do when we're sitting in that discomfort?

Speaker 1 (01:16:58):
Well, when you're you're in the depths of it, because
there's different phases, right, Like there's certainly a phase of
any heartbreak when it's genuine deep heartbreak where you are
just questioning your existence, where you are like.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
This.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
You know, I remember having my own heart broken and
sitting on the door the doorstep of my house with
a friend of mine and just with tears in my
eyes saying to him, I just feel like I'm not
good enough. Like that was my deep sense, was that
I am not good enough, and if I was good enough,

(01:17:39):
I would have been able to make this work. And
that's it's a horrible place to be, and you you know,
we have to have compassion for ourselves in those times
because it's brutally difficult. It's a time where we just
need love and we need to celebrate the fact that

(01:18:03):
we got through another day and that we got I
managed to get out of bed today, and you know,
it was an act of it was a heroic act
for me to just get out of bed. We then
have to you know, I always think that all of
these moments give us gears that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

(01:18:25):
And the worst pain of my life has given me
access to gears that I didn't know I had. And
as much as no one wants to hear it when
they're in it, those gears turn out to be really valuable.
They really do. I mean, we all choose suffering in
our lives. Like we choose to go to the gym

(01:18:47):
that's choosing suffering. We choose like to write a book
choosing a form of suffering. We choose to make a podcast,
or we choose to climb a literal mountain, or like
we choose pain in our lives regularly because we know
that it gives us. There are benefits to be had

(01:19:08):
I have to argue that the benefit I have gotten
from the pain that I didn't choose has been no
less valuable than the benefit I've gotten from the pain
I did choose. In fact, actually I think the most
valuable pain I've ever had is the pain I didn't choose.
And when you realize that, you can kind of almost
I think, look at some of the worst moments of

(01:19:31):
your life as like a menu of pain, and beside
the item on the menu is the very specific, unique
benefits that can only come from this kind of pain,
and you can kind of imagine yourself choosing, like retroactively
choosing that pain, which is a very valuable thing to do.

(01:19:52):
Because I was told by a psychologist about an experiment
on rats where one rat was on a wheel and
was just given, you know, like the free reign to
just run whenever it wanted to run. There was another rat,
this was Rat A. Rap B was connected to that wheel.

(01:20:14):
He was on another wheel that was connected to Rat
A's wheel, and any time Rat A chose to run,
Rap B had to run right, so both doing the
same amount of exercising. But at the end of the experiment,
Rat A shows all the positive markers of exercise and

(01:20:35):
rap B shows all the negative markers of stress. Oh wow,
same amount of exercise was the difference? Well, rat A
chose to run, rat B didn't. And there's something profound
about that to me, because if we can take a
situation that we didn't choose, who would choose to be heartbroken?

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
It's the worst, it's a terrible pain. But what if
in that pain you did realize, like, there is something
here that I'm going to gain from this experience that
I couldn't have any other way. That if I look
on that menu of pain, this one has some really
good benefits, Like this one has some really amazing stuff.

(01:21:18):
Who I'm going to have to become to get through this.
What I'm going to have to learn, The way I'm
going to have to get comfortable even just to get
through a weekend right now on my own is it
is going to be this unbelievable feat and to get
comfortable in my own company and to sit in this pain,

(01:21:39):
and there are such profound benefits from that. What if
I did actually look at those benefits and say they're
so powerful that I'm going to choose this pain so
that I can experience those benefits, and so you turn
yourself from rat B to rat A, and all of
a sudden, you're not a victim of that pain any more.

(01:22:00):
You're the beneficiary of these exquisite gifts that you could
only get this way, and that only there's one tool
I've used to get through some of the worst, worst
pain of my life. And then on a practice and
on a psychological level, with heartbreak, what I always remind

(01:22:22):
people is that if anyone who doesn't choose you cannot
be for you. They if they don't see you like
what is a relationship. It's someone sees you, they accept you,
and they want that. That's the most beautiful part of
a relationship. So if someone doesn't see you and accept

(01:22:44):
you and want what they see, then this relationship is
missing the most beautiful part of any relationship. It shouldn't
even be you know, it shouldn't be desirable at that
stage because it's not. It has failed the fundamental test
of what makes a relationlationship worth having. We're not talking
about a person who you know, in at least the

(01:23:05):
case I feel, we're talking about the person who was
taken from us by life. We're talking about a person
who's just walking around somewhere, still existing on the planet,
but choosing not to be with us. That should lose
its romance to us, you know, and to say, well,
if that's the other game we play is if it

(01:23:27):
was a different time in life, if they were a
bit older, they would have been ready to commit, If
they had been in a different phase where they weren't
so busy with their work, they might have had the
space to really give to this relationship. But they said
their work isn't allowing them to. If it's like, we
go through all these scenarios where it forces us into
this sad love song of right person, wrong time, and

(01:23:52):
that's a really like pernicious story. That's a very dangerous
story because it takes what belongs in the realm of
science fiction and brings it into our reality. Like when
we're thinking about an X from like five years ago

(01:24:12):
and we're like, I miss them. I don't know why,
you know, you don't even know who they are anymore.
That was five years ago. They're a different person now
in many ways. You're a different person now. In anyway
if you've got together now, you'd be getting together as
different people you miss. A ghost person doesn't exist anymore
in the way that you think they do. You know,
and when you're saying, oh, if only we met five

(01:24:33):
years from now, it would have worked in what parallel universe?
It's a this is science fiction like, it's not. It
didn't happen in this universe. So it's it's like it
is wishing for a parallel universe where everything all the
Domino's unfolded in a different way. It's not this universe.

(01:24:55):
So we just we have to get out of this
mind because it gets us bought into a science fiction
story that doesn't really exist. I don't believe in the
right person at the wrong time. It's the right person
is right in their personality, they're ready, and their life

(01:25:19):
is compatible with yours. If you're missing one of those
three things, then it's not the right person. The right
person has to be more than someone who you have
a great time with and you like who they are
and have great conversation and and and great intimacy. That
can't That's not the only criteria for someone who's right.
So we have to stop telling ourself the story that

(01:25:40):
someone who you know broke up with us, or it
was bad timing or whatever. Is the right person for us.
That is a that is just a story. It is
not reality. The right person is the person it happens.

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):
With Matthew Asi books called Love Life. That was that
hit right there, man, that have resonated so deeply. If
you haven't already gone and ordered this while you're listening
or watching, please please please go and grab this book.
As you can tell, Matthew's just woven beautifully his own experiences,
his own challenges, mixed with insights, lessons, research, practical steps.

Speaker 3 (01:26:15):
I mean, it's all in the book.

Speaker 2 (01:26:17):
And today we've just given you a little tip of
the iceberg of And this was genuinely just a real
conversation of me and Matthew going back and forth, which
we need to do a lot more of, but just
sitting here with you today, Matthew, I've gained so much,
so much, honestly, and as someone who's written a book
about love too, there was so much today that I
feel like we uncovered and unpacked, and so I can't

(01:26:38):
wait for people to dive into Love Life, how to
raise your standards, find your person, and live happily no
matter what. Grab your copy now, Matthew. Thank you again
everyone who's been listening to watching, share and tag your
greatest insights with me and Matthew on Instagram on TikTok.
I know you guys are cutting up all these amazing clips.

Speaker 3 (01:26:55):
Keep them coming.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
Let us know what resonated with you, what you're trying out,
what you're practice seeing, what you're implementing, what's working for you,
and something that you're struggling with as well.

Speaker 3 (01:27:04):
Let us know so that we can.

Speaker 2 (01:27:06):
Try to create more conversations and more content that can
support you on your journey.

Speaker 3 (01:27:11):
Matthew, thank you. Any last words you anything you want
to share.

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):
No, I would just say if people go to lovelifebook
dot com, not only can you get the book there
from any retailer you want, but I'm doing an event
on May fourth called Find Your Person is designed to
be this It's a virtual event, so you could do
it from wherever you are in the world, wherever you
buy the book from. But we're all going to get
together and I'm going to take everything that you learn
from the book and apply it to a year plan

(01:27:36):
with you. I love that anyone who is like finding
my Person is a real priority for me in my
life is what I deeply want. I'm not ashamed of it.
I want that for myself. This is going to take
all of the knowledge and the awareness and the ideas
you have from the book and actually put you on
a path in this live event to getting that over
the course of the next.

Speaker 3 (01:27:56):
Year of our life Love livebook dot Com.

Speaker 1 (01:27:58):
Yeah, if you go to Love Lifebook dot you can
not only get the book, you can use your receipt
from the book to get a free ticket to this event.
It's not a you know, it's not a paid for event.
No one can come just by buying their way onto it.
It's literally something that's just reserved for everyone who's getting
a copy of the book.

Speaker 3 (01:28:13):
I love that. That's a beautiful idea. Man. Well, yeah,
lovelifebook dot com everyone, that's the place to go.

Speaker 2 (01:28:18):
If you love this episode, you're going to love my
conversation with Matthew Hussey on how to get over your
ex and find true love in your relationships.

Speaker 1 (01:28:27):
People should be compassionate to themselves that extend that compassion
to your future self, because truly extending your compassion to
your future self is doing something that gives him or
her a shot at a happy and a peaceful life.

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Episode Transcript

Host

Jay Shetty

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Matthew Hussey: 5 Reasons Why There is No Such Thing As The Right Person At The Wrong Time & How to Stop Missing Your Ex