Why You Keep Attracting the Wrong Person | Matthew Hussey

Welcome back everyone of the school of greatness. Very excited about guests. We have the inspiring Matthew Hussie in the house. My man. Good to see you brother. It's good to see you. I'm excited man. This is our first ever interview in the, I don't know, I don't know when we got called this yet. The greatness basement. I don't know what this is. The dungeon. Greatness base. I love it. Something like that, you know. I like it. It's very cozy. Yeah, it's nice, right? Yeah, so welcome to my home and to my home studio. Very excited about this. It's so nice to be, I always think it's funny speaking to you like this, cause we have, for every one conversation we have on the air, so to speak. We have like 200 off. So many. We travel the world together, different things. We've been all of the place together. We've known each other for what, I don't know, eight or nine years maybe? You think? Yeah, long time, it must be 10. Closer to 10. 10 years. It's crazy. Closer to 10. And it's fun. For me, I get to see you like, I get to step back into your world where you're a master and just what you experience you doing your thing. You see me doing this with you every time we hang out. We're just asking each other questions and trying to understand the meaning of life and how we've ruined ourselves and previous relationships and why we put ourselves in these situations, which is what I'm excited to talk about cause you've got a new book you've been working on for really 10 years since your last book. This is called Love Life, How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person and Live Happily No Matter What, Not Happily Ever After, which is pretty cool. And you and I are now finally in healthy, cautious, loving, abundant relationships that bring us a lot of joy and peace. But we went through different challenges of trying to discover who we are, how we can build ourselves up to really attract and learn how to choose the right person for us. It took us both a long time, but we did it. So congratulations. Congratulations, yeah, you were, of course, at my wedding with Audrey or with Audrey on back at the end of last year, which is amazing. It's amazing, man. So what I wanna ask you about today is how do we become the person that we need to be to attract the right person in a relationship to become happily happy no matter what. And I think a lot of the things I wanna talk about today is one, becoming the person you need to be to attract the right person. What do we need to do to become that person? However, when you become that person, you create a lot of opportunities. You start to attract a lot of interesting people in your life when you become more of a high value human being, right? When you build your confidence, when you develop clearer boundaries and values for yourself, when you're taking care of your health, when you're clear on your mission or the career you wanna go after, when you're full of love and energy and passion, you start to become very attractive. You attract a lot of opportunities. It's almost like people just reach out to you and say they wanna go out with you. They'll message you online, like this will just start to unfold when you really take care of self first. So that'll be step one, how do you build yourself up to attract the ultimate person for you in your future self? And then step two, how do you, in a sea of opportunities of individuals that are now in front of you, because you have developed yourself as a high value human for a relationship, how do you know when to choose and who to choose when there could be so many great people in front of you that you might be dating or meeting? How can you actually make the choice that you know is gonna be great for you for the next 10, 20, 50 years potentially in an intimate relationship? That's part two. And also I wanna ask you, you've coached, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of women online through your coaching program, your live events, millions in your social media, in your YouTube. And I'm also curious, have you ever met women who have been in multiple relationships at the same time, who are actually happy and fulfilled with their life? I'm gonna ask you that as well later. So have you ever met women who are like, I'm in an open relationship, I've got four boyfriends and one main boyfriend and my life is amazing over a span of five, 10, 20 years. I don't even know if that's possible. So curious, I'm gonna wait for you to answer that one. But first off, how do we become the person we need to be to attract the right person for us in love? I wanna challenge first the idea that when we become the person that we want to need to become in order to attract the love that we want, that we attract many more people. Because my experience has been that often in order to attract what you really need, you have to give something up. And often the thing that you have to give up is the kind of attention that you have been used to. We all have our favorite way of getting attention in life. Our thing, our trick. Our thing, yeah, it's like our magic trick. What's our magic trick? I got a six pack, let me be sure of this and post that. You know, I make a lot of money. Let me show the money that I have in certain ways or I'm funny, let me be funny or whatever it is, right? That's exactly right. And that becomes our kind of known way of guaranteeing a certain level of attention. And different people can do it to different degrees. You know, some people have a very easy time getting attention. Other people have a hard time getting attention, but the principle holds across people. We have our favorite way of getting attention. Like you said, for some people it's physical. For some people it's their sense of humor. For other people it's their achievements in life. They're intellect or whatever, yeah. And we tend to display the thing that we know guarantees us a certain level of attention. And that often becomes the thing that we end up complaining about. Because while it works to get us attention, we often resent in the end the kind of attention we're getting. I don't want people who just think that I am funny and don't really see me for who I am. You know, that robs me of a real connection. I don't want someone who just wants me for my looks or just wants me for sex or just wants me because I earn a lot of money. So we end up resenting the situation that in some way we construct for ourselves. And at a certain point it becomes about deciding what we really want. What's the thing I'm trying to get? Am I trying to serve my ego in love or am I trying to serve my soul? Am I trying to have quantity or am I trying to have quality of connection, of love, of teamwork? What is it I'm really looking for? And I think because a lot of us haven't truly decided that we are still doing the thing that gets us the easiest or most obvious result, the one we know how to get. So we're still going broad of trying to get like a lot of attention from as many people as possible, as opposed to focusing on being intentional about the type of person we want to attract. Yeah, exactly. And by the way, the person, some people listening to this might not relate to using their magic trick to... And of course it's not a trick, it's that that thing you're showing may be a very attractive quality that you have, but it's not all of you. And you don't necessarily want to bring someone in just on that thing, because now you're engineering your love life to get just people who value that thing. And that thing might not really be you or it might be something that is quite superficial or it might attract very superficial people. So it's... Some people won't relate to going broad in the sense of like, I love how much attention this thing gets me. It might be more fundamental than that, which is that I'm afraid that if I stop using this thing, I'll be invisible. They might feel like the only attention they get is for this thing. And that if I were to sacrifice that, I don't know if I'll ever attract anyone again. And so that speaks to a much greater sense of a waiver approach that at some point we might have to take in our love life, which is laying down the weapons that we know how to use so that we can start to attract someone who sees us for who we really are, who loves us or likes us initially without all of that, who is open to a relationship. It's like a guy who complains about always attracting people who want him for his money. And why on a first date do you keep going to five-star restaurants? Right, right, right. Or do you go to the family-run ramen joint down the street? Sure. Like, the food's amazing. Why do you, you know, what do you, why do, you know... What if I'm impressed with that magic treatment? Yeah, and some people will say, well, that's because that's what I like to do. I like to go to nice restaurants. And that's fine, but you don't have to do that. You could do that every other night of the week. You don't have to do it on a first date. And if you feel like you have to do it on a first date, then you have to suspect yourself. Why do I feel the need to lead with this? The same is true. If you find yourself within five to 10 minutes of a date, you've already slipped in some humble brag about your career, why did you feel the need to do that? It's worth exploring. We all do it. There's no judgment. We all do it, you know, but why did I feel the need to do that? Why didn't I just connect with this person? There's a big difference between impressing and connecting. Yes. And... What is the difference between impressing and connecting? Well, I think impressing is this... It's often about ego. Sometimes it comes from an insecure place. I think it comes from a place of thinking that this thing that makes me impressive is what makes me valuable. It's what makes me worthy. And so I wanna make sure that you know that I am this thing, or I have this thing, or I've achieved this thing, or I'm capable of this thing. And so we lead with that. But impressing is really about us, isn't it? It's not about them. It's about us. I want you to see me in a certain way. Whereas connecting is really about them. Connecting is when we genuinely... We don't just relate to someone else, but we make ourselves relatable to them. There's a book called On Writing Well, called by William Zinzer. It's a very famous book on writing. And it's actually a book about tips for writing nonfiction. And he says that whenever he reads a writer, he often finds that in the first paragraph, it's just them trying to impress. It's just them wanting to be clever, and they have this very wordy, flowery, show their vocab, show this amazing sentence structure. And he says, but buried like three paragraphs in, he'll often find a detail or something that writer says that makes him go, aha, a human. And he said, it lands as good writing the moment he gets that feeling of, aha, a human. And if you think about the way we connect with people, if you think all the way back to the beginning of your relationship or any date you go on, it really, a connection is born, the moment that someone else feels has that moment. It's like, you're speaking is, what did Christopher Hitchens say? He said, like speaking is publishing in real time. You're always publishing while you're speaking. And so when you're with someone and they say something and you just almost breathe like that, so I have relief of going, oh, I get you. Oh, I've felt that before. Oh, I know what that's like. Oh, that's like how I think or feel or relate to life or the world. Then we go, aha, a human. And when we feel that, we connect. Interesting. And connecting takes us away from impressing. Impressing sounds like trying to be perfect, whereas connecting sounds like trying to be real and authentic. Yes, exactly. I think connecting comes from being real and authentic. And impressing is what we do when we go in like we have something to prove. And if you approach anyone, less from a place of I've got something to prove and more from a place of I wanna find the human in you and I wanna show the human in me. And if we do that, then we're just gonna enjoy each other's company. And that's like the highest goal is that we enjoy being around each other. Not that I have some kind of power over you by impressing you. So now you've put me on a pedestal and now from that pedestal, I feel like I'm in control and I can control the dynamic here. Cause that's what so much of that is, isn't it? It's like, if I'm impressive, then it gives me a sense of control. But if instead I come to connect, it's like we're really relating to each other. And the power isn't my power over you. The power of the situation is that we really enjoy spending time together. You and I are friends. And the reason we love spending time together is not cause, you know, we come over to each other's houses and impress each other. Right, right, right. It's with friends because when we hang out, we're enjoying each other's company and that comes from connecting. And I think actually our love lives would be served more by bringing the connection part forward. And the impressing part can, that will happen. There are all the things that are wonderful about you. Don't worry. They're gonna figure it out. By the way, how much more powerful when someone figures out something that's awesome about you and you didn't scream about it, it's even more impressive. It's really powerful cause you go, if they didn't feel the need to make that the headline, what else do I not know about this person? It's interesting you say that because I can't remember what it was in the last month, but Martha was like, oh, I didn't know you did this like 10 years ago. Like she just found out something that I did in the past, but she was like, I never knew you interviewed this person or you did this thing or that's really cool you did that. And just allowing someone to discover things about you, I think is impressive that you didn't shout it at the rooftops in the beginning, the first date or something. And that doesn't mean that you have to artificially hide things either from a place of humility. If organically certain things about your life come up, that's fine. But it's, I think it's questioning our intention going into a situation. I think of it, look, like I'm out there talking about a book right now and talking to lots of amazing people and people who on the surface are very intimidating, big shows, whether it's podcasts like yourself, whether it's TV, whatever. It's like you're in some high stakes environments. And if I go into those things thinking, I need to impress everybody here, then I'm already in danger of losing the thing that actually makes people connect with me. Because I'm trying to now be something, I'm trying to wear something and wear this badge and look how great I am. When someone is, I guess when someone is connecting with another person at the first meeting, first date or first interaction, what is the biggest mistake they can make? You think in pushing that person away from actually wanting to be curious about them and wanting to learn more about them, what is the biggest mistake that a guy could do and a woman can do in their first interaction of a date? I mean, something that I think there's a real deficit of these days is actual vulnerability. Not like there's sort of fake vulnerability, there's a lot of fake vulnerability, there's a lot of people telling like their hero's journey. You know what I mean? Sure, sure. And we all have one of those stories, right? We all have the story of when we weren't doing so well. And when our back was against the wall and the odds were against us and we were in a really bad spot in life and then we came through. But those aren't necessarily vulnerable stories because you're the hero of that story. It's like, look how hard it was and look how awesome I am that I was able to get out of that. There's no shame on doing that. It's just, I don't think that that's the same thing as connecting with who you really are and what you think about. And that's like a very, we have these very well scripted hero's journey stories of our life that make us sound really impressive. But I don't think that's the same thing as really connecting. And I think, and being vulnerable. And so I think one of the mistakes I suppose that people make early on is never really being vulnerable and vulnerability isn't. I always remember I did a TV show in Australia and before anyone who doesn't know me watching this thinks that that must mean I'm Australian. I am not, I'm English. I feel like everyone in America always still thinks I'm Australian. But I was doing confusingly. I was doing a TV show in Australia and... Did they know you were British in Australia? Yeah, they know, they know. But I remember this woman that I was coaching on this show. She kept going on to every date. She went on this date and I was supposed to give feedback watching them on the dates and seeing how they did and what they could do to kind of improve next time around. And one of the things I kept noticing was like throughout the date she was just really laughing hard. Everything this guy said. And at the end of the date, I said to her, he wasn't that funny. You were laughing like constantly, but he wasn't very funny. It doesn't mean you couldn't have politely laughed now and again at his attempts to be funny, but the way that you were laughing all the way through the date was sort of inauthentic. That wasn't really you. Because I know you didn't find all of those things funny. And by the way, you were laughing hysterically even when he wasn't trying to be funny. You know, like it... Sure. So I said that in itself was an absence of vulnerability because instead of just connecting as you were and sitting into the date and maybe occasionally allowing there to be a breath without feeling every silence and that would have been, even that would have been a more authentic experience. So I said to her, the next date you go on with the guy, I want you to just share a little more, because you also asked him a lot of questions. That's another version of not being vulnerable is when we just ask someone else lots and lots of questions and keep them talking. And we don't ever share anything. And I coach a lot of people who are like, especially a lot of women I work with are like, men don't ask questions. And I know that if you were to watch a lot of them, by the way, that's true. A lot of guys aren't asking questions. They're all too happy to just take the floor and talk about themselves. But we play in, if we're in an insecure place of not wanting to be vulnerable ourselves, we play into that dynamic because we keep setting them up. We ask another question and when they've finished talking, instead of vulnerably allowing there to be a silence for that person to have to now come in and ask you a question, you feel it again. And you ask another question and then that person says, okay, me again. And then they start talking and telling you another story. So we actually precipitate that dynamic by never taking the floor for ourselves and telling a story or sharing. So anyway, for me, her version of just asking questions and laughing was a form of lacking vulnerability, not really sharing. So I said, the next date I want you to go on, I want you to be a more authentic version of yourself and I want you to share. And this is darkly funny, but do you understand the context in which this was funny? She went on the date and she told a story of a horrible car accident her father had had. Oh my gosh. That changed his life forever. And, you know, I just remember being tickled by it because it was obviously a very, this was a big story in her life. This was like one of the most tragic moments in hers and her dad's life. This was not like a second date conversation. This is how to, like when I said be vulnerable, I didn't mean go and tell the most tragic story of your life. Yes. There's other ways to be vulnerable because not everyone deserves to know the beginning of our connection with them, all of our flaws, everything we're insecure about, everything we worry about on our worst days, all of the things we're struggling with. Yeah, like you don't necessarily trust someone enough with, you don't feel safe with them enough to share all of those things. But there's other ways to be vulnerable. If you share with someone something that you're passionate about, that's vulnerable. Like if you, because often what we're passionate about isn't popular or it's not cool. It's weird, it's nerdy, it's some unique hobby. It's weird, yeah, it's like our thing. And it's a little bit like it's very us, whatever that thing is very often, or why we like it is very us. And so sharing something, whether it's a TV show or a song that you listen to a lot, that you, like if it came on your Spotify shuffle, it would like, it would embarrass you that it came on in a room and that was on your, the shuffle gods really screwed you by playing that while everyone else was around. Sharing those things and the things you're into, that itself is an act of vulnerability because you're sort of allowing yourself to be seen a little bit. So I think these are all ways that people can be on a date with us or be in a room with us and go, aha, a person. And it's worth asking ourselves, how did I create any of those moments on this date? Or was I constantly tight and tense and censoring myself and anything that was really me and asking them lots of questions, which is, it feels like connecting when you're only ever asking someone else questions because you're like, I'm doing it all right. I'm told to be a great listener and I'm told to be curious. And I was doing that. I was being really, really curious, but that, there's a point where that goes past. Too much, yeah. Yeah, because now there's not a connection here. No one knows anything about you. Yeah, exactly. Now here's something I'm curious about. What is it that women actually want today in a relationship? And I'll give you context. I was watching this video online recently of some guy on the street asking a woman, like, what's your biggest turnoff in a man? And the woman said, she was probably in her late 20s, the woman said, when a man is nice to me. She goes, I know I probably shouldn't be saying this, but when he's too nice to me, it's a turnoff. And then turns into another video of a guy holding flowers at a restaurant who's taking a selfie video saying, I just got stood up by my date. You know, we were having a good conversation online when we were connecting. You know, I was taking the lead by choosing a restaurant that I thought she might be interested in by doing research on her profile and making suggestions. We were having great interactions. I was being very kind and generous with my attention. I brought flowers, I was on time and she stood me up. And I'm trying to be a thoughtful, generous, kind man. And I got stood up for it. So what is it that women actually want today, do you think? You know, and maybe this is just this one woman that was interviewed saying, when a guy's too nice to me, it's a turnoff. But why is it sometimes it seems like when men are actually trying to be good leaders, trying to be providers, trying to show up and do a nice gesture, here's some flowers, pick the restaurant, you know, show up well dressed in grooms, why is that a turnoff for some women? Okay, I feel like there's a lot to say about this. Listen, firstly, can we talk about the, spent a lot of time looking at her profile, figuring out what she might like, picking a restaurant for the date, bringing flowers. Like that raises a lot of questions for me. Okay, well, let's say it was all good intentions though. Let's say it was like they were having a good time. Those might be good intentions. Let's just take it that they were good intentions. It's still like, I don't know if that's nice. I don't know if that's nice. I think that that's like a, there's that. It's like trying too hard or it's like. I mean, you know, if you've just been talking to someone and you haven't even been on a date with them yet, I mean, it's different if you were long distance talking with someone for a month and you were having an amazing time with them and you were like having great phone conversations and FaceTimes and then you show up. Like finally you get to meet in person and you've picked a restaurant you know they'll like because they've told you what food they're into and you've brought flowers because you know what flowers they like at this stage. And you know, you're bringing them because it represents a connection that you already have. Then all of that feels more appropriate to me. But that feels like a kind of a bit of a victimized, a guy victimizing himself by saying, look at everything I did for a person who's sort of gonna show up to that date and go, why did you do all of this? We haven't even been on like a date before. We don't even really know we like each other. Why are you buying me flowers on a first date? It feels a bit like, I don't know a lot of people that would show up to a first date having put in all of that effort. And I would worry that anyone who puts in all of that effort for someone that they're just meeting up with to see if they like each other. I would worry about that person coming across a little bit creepy. Interesting, okay. So I think that that's a, and look, we're talking about a YouTube video. So you know, it's quite possible that someone did all of those things and then said, look, women say they want a nice guy and then I brought flowers on a date. But let's rewind for a second because you said the woman saying, yeah, now look, I think that's very honest. And she was like, I shouldn't be saying this, but when he's too nice to me, it's kind of a turn off. Yes, now there's versions, you know, okay. There's the version of it I just said, which I think does indicate to a person like, there's something a bit off here about how hard you're trying at this stage. Sure, I get that. Because I shouldn't, it could be too creepy. I get that. I shouldn't be getting this amount of effort at this stage. And by the way, if I am getting this amount of effort at this stage, here's what I know about you. This isn't really about me. Because you don't know me. Interesting. So if you suddenly, it's like a guy. It's like love bombing almost. Yeah, and we, you know, love bombing is often, there's, there's can be a more manipulative or sinister aspect of love bombing that I kind of know what I'm doing. When I love, I think there's a very dark end of the spectrum with love bombing and there's a much more naive end of the spectrum with love bombing. The sort of dark end of the spectrum is someone who's really trying to get you to move faster than you would organically move so that they can extract a lot of attention and value and love from you very, very quickly. But the more naive end of the love bombing spectrum, I think happens with people who, you know, fall for someone very quickly. And then because they've fallen for this person that they don't even know, they are now trying on a level that is completely unjustified because they're responding to the story they've created in their head, not the person they actually have in front of them. And when someone feels that, they are, they can sense that there's something off about this, that you don't really know me. We've exchanged texts. You don't know who I am. You don't know what I'm into on a deeper level. You don't know what I'm like. You shouldn't really know that you like me this much yet. So given this kind of flowers and poetry and whatever, and this doesn't... Interesting. This is actually a sign that you're projecting right now. And I don't like that you're projecting. It makes me feel strange because you're not really seeing me. And so, and if, by the way, if you could be feeling this about me right now, based on how little you know me, what it says to me is you could be feeling this about anybody next week. Interesting. So this is about you, it's not about me. So I do wanna go back to the women, saying they want a nice guy thing, or that they might get turned off by someone who's too nice. So I think that's one version of being turned off because someone's too nice. We sense that their niceness is false. Gotcha. But what if someone is genuinely nice? They're just maybe not mean to them. They're not showing them poetry and flowers, but they're just attentive, kind. That's a sign of, look, that's a sign of an unhealthy person. In, if it's a woman saying it, it's a sign of an unhealthy woman. If it's a man saying it, it's a sign of an unhealthy man. What is a woman saying? What are they, what is a woman truly saying if they say, I don't like nice guys? They're saying that my nervous system does not produce the effect that I call love around people who do not send it into some kind of fight or flight response. Wow. It's, there are, when I am met with someone who does not make me chase, when I am met with someone who doesn't make me feel I have to earn their love, when I am met with someone who doesn't play games, doesn't give me anxiety by being consistent for three days and then dropping off the radar for a five or a week, when I am with someone who doesn't do those things, it doesn't feel like love to me. It does not feel like passion. It doesn't feel like fireworks. It doesn't feel like the thing that I think I'm supposed to feel. And there's obviously so much knowledge now on where those things come from and that there are old patterns in how we relate it to our caregivers or our parents or how they relate it to us that gets us used to a certain pattern. We get this nervous system imprint that is created at a very early point in life. And we spend the rest of our lives replicating that if we're not careful. So the great kind of challenge, I think, for all of us, and this is true, by the way, of men too, right? How many men relentlessly chase after women who don't seem to want them, who reject them, who treat them like they're disposable? How many guys are playing the friend to a woman for years on end who picks them up and puts them down whenever it suits her? And they're doing it for years on end. This is not just a female pattern. This is a people pattern. Why is it that we respond to people who treat us poorly? Why do we think we do? Because there is something about it that is known to us. It's familiar. It's familiar. And we don't realize it. We think we hate it. I hate it. I hate that this person doesn't want me. And if I could just get this person to want me, I'd feel good again. But what people often find is if that person truly turned around to meet you and gave you everything that you wanted from the beginning, it would have felt strange. That there's something in this dynamic that is in a weird way safe to you. It doesn't make you feel safe, but there's some kind of safety in the familiar. And that's not our fault. We should exercise compassion towards ourselves for that because it's not our fault that these really damaging and destructive patterns are things that we chase because this was created at a time when we weren't deciding our response systems to things. It was, we were in survival mode. And I spoke to a woman recently, I did a show recently where the host of the show said, I really struggled to have hard conversations with people. Like if I have to have a hard, and a big part of this book is like I have a whole section on how to have hard conversations. Because by the way, every relationship is shaped, is made in the crucible of hard conversations, right? Can you have the difficult conversation? Can you say the thing you're afraid to say? And can you express your need without fearing that if you do, something bad will happen? And so many of the times people end up in painful relationships or not even relationships, they end up in painful dynamics or they end up in limbo with someone where it never ends up as a relationship, it's always casual, is because they're afraid to have the hard conversations. There was this woman that was one of the hosts of the show and she said to me, I really struggled to have hard conversations. And I don't know why, I just, you know, every time I go to have a hard conversation, it's like I break out in sweats and I panic. And she said it's just, it wasn't that in my family, like no one's really ever had hard conversations. She said, and she didn't realize what she was saying as she said it, but she said, you know, I mean, it's like my dad, for example, if I try to have a hard conversation with him, he just leaves the room. And she kept going, but she didn't realize what she had said, which is your entire life, because that wasn't a pattern your dad started yesterday. Right? Your dad's most likely been like that since the day you were born. So what you learned is that if you tried to have a hard conversation with your father, he would leave the room. He would abandon you. So now you have what therapists call a core abandonment wind. Right? That's a, this is something that's now with you. And you wonder why with this person that you're on date three with, who shouldn't even be that important to you. Why it feels hard to articulate that, you know, you are disappointed that they showed up half hour late to the date, or that they didn't text you for a week and then all of a sudden like reached out out of nowhere to say, do you want to do something in one hour? And then you went without expressing that like, hey, we had two great dates and then you were like, I didn't hear from you for a week. And now you're like, are you ready in an hour? The reason she didn't express that is, and the reason it made us so terrified to express it. Irrationally terrified is because in her world, it's been perfectly rational. It's not, this is where compassion comes in because we're very good at calling ourselves crazy. Like I feel crazy. Why am I so scared of having this conversation? Or we get called crazy by other people. That's a favorite thing to call people. Ah, she was crazy. Ah, they're crazy. Like you can't believe what they tried to do or what they said to me. They're not crazy. That something happened. They experienced something in their world at a time when it was their reality. It was her reality growing up. That, and I'm extrapolating here, but like I said, if she's saying that about her dad, almost certainly her dad didn't start doing that last week. He's been doing it her whole life. It was real for her that there was a time in her life where if she tried to express a need with her father or tell him something that she wasn't happy with or something that she'd like him to do more of or less of or a way that he'd hurt her, he would not be able to have the conversation and he would leave. That, when you're a child, that poses a real threat to you. So what she's feeling now is rational for her in her world based on where she came from. We look at it from the outside and go, I can't believe that she would be so afraid to say this thing and she's gonna end up in a two year relationship with someone who never meets any of her needs, who doesn't even know what her needs are, who she resents deep down because it's like he never thinks of me. But she's terrified to have that conversation because for her, if she has a hard conversation, it means abandonment and abandonment means on an emotional level, not a logical level, she might not survive. And so when someone says, I struggle, I find it a turn off when someone is nice, they are articulating a deep, deep pattern that has been there for a long time in their life that they didn't choose and that they may not even be aware of. And most likely it sounds like their father probably was either rude to their mother or rude to them as a child or maybe had some behavioral patterns that caused them to feel rude at different times. Yeah, or they were neglected and they felt like in order to get attention, they had to do a lot or they had to be the golden child or they had to meet everyone's needs, they had to go out of their way all the time to make someone happy. And so, and then they'd get like, whether it's from the father or the mother, they'd get like a hit of love. And all of a sudden it's like, they're like, I feel calm, I feel safe, oh, this feels so good. And then of course it's right back to, the next day they're cold again and you have to fight for that next hit. And so if you've experienced that and now you're out there looking for love, you may very well have developed the association that love is something you have to earn. Love is something that comes in fits and starts. Love is something that you're grateful when you get a hit of it. And then you have to endure these periods of someone being cold in order to get the next hit. And of course that's, you know, what's known as the trauma bond. But that's really what someone is saying. When someone says I get turned off by people who are nice and I get turned on by people who, you know, give me and we have all sorts of euphemistic terms for it, like the bad boy or the person who like, you know, is super bold or the person who is, has an edge or whatever. But a lot of the time what we're talking about is, I'm trauma bonded to people who are hot and cold, inconsistent, make me have to earn their love, their attention, take it away from me and then give me it back again. And that, by the way, makes that woman who said that, a perfect target for abusive people. It makes them a perfect target for people who forget, like whether they're abusive because they're narcissists or because they're, you know, sociopathic. It makes you a perfect target for someone who's in, even just a selfish phase of their life. Because someone who's in a selfish phase of their life takes what they can get. It's intermittent, it's up and down, it's hot and cold. They're glad to be around someone who doesn't ask a lot of them. So even if you don't get someone who's truly toxic and abusive, you're still gonna attract people who are selfish. Yes. And those people are gonna waste your time and your energy because they're not where you're at. But you never test the relationship because you, this is, on some level, what you're looking for. This is what's familiar to you. So I mean, I can relate to this because in previous, you know, previous seasons of life, I really struggled of having the hard conversations. Like I dreaded it. So, you know, looking back, I can say, man, that's crazy, just have the conversation and whatever, just deal with it. But in the moment, you know, when I didn't have the tools or the nervous system to feel safe myself, and I needed the approval of someone else to feel safe, or I needed someone else to be okay with the hard conversation that I was having. And when they weren't okay with it, or they would explode, or they would cry, or they would scream, or they would, you know, not speak to me for two days or something because they were upset of what I wanted to talk about, or they avoided it. It would make me feel like, oh, I'm really insecure. And I always had the fear of like, I guess it was being alone, or it was like the person not loving me in return, or me not being good enough, or something like that. There was probably a combination of insecurities or fears that caused me to be afraid of having difficult conversations and just saying what I really wanted to say. And then I remember having like, you know, throat clenching and like heart palpitations over like years of being in these different relationships where I never felt like I was able to speak up. And I can't blame the other person, you know? We can never blame the other person for our decision to not communicate, not set standards, you know, not say the things we need to say. We can't blame the other person, but it always felt like, oh, this person isn't willing to accept me for who I am if I say the full truth, if I talk about the things that I'm uncomfortable with, if I don't like this situation, they will not accept me. And they didn't accept me for my authentic conversations or my truth. But I was afraid of losing them for them not accepting me for who I was. And therefore it was never gonna work out. And it wasn't until I started to really understand that and become aware of it and started to heal that process. A lot of things changed with Martha, because I was like, wow, this is an incredible human being in front of me that I'm starting to date and connect with and meet. Wow, she's pretty special. But I got to the point where I was like, but I can't be willing to lose myself in order to try to have someone want to stay with me. I cannot go down this path again, which I'd done five or six times in 20 years in different relationships where I lost myself to try to please someone else so that they'd want to like and love me. And therefore hating myself in return, resenting myself, resenting the person, resenting the relationship, feeling guilty of why I wasted all this time and energy being in this relationship, fighting for it, while all the while I was losing myself and losing myself respect in that process. And it wasn't until Martha was like, oh man, I'm gonna have the uncomfortable conversations pretty early on, right, in the first few months. I'm gonna talk about these are my standards, these are my values, this is what I want, and this is what I'm not willing to deal with in a relationship. And be willing to say, maybe this isn't the right fit. If you don't have the same or similar standards, and if you're not willing to fully accept all of me, my past, my shames, my insecurities, et cetera, then maybe we're not the right fit. But that means I may not be with a great person in front of me, and that's a scary thing. Well, it was scary, but I'd also set me free when I made the decision, like, okay, I'd rather be free and be fully myself, authentic to myself than trying to please and change who I am to be with someone to have them like and love me. And that set me free to say all the conversations I wanted to, and it was like the more honest and hard conversations I had, it was like the more she fell in love with me. Well, this is the interesting thing. This is the tragedy of giving into those patterns, because I think this is a really important thing for everyone to hear is that the past does not have to equal the future when it comes to these patterns. Our nervous system may have gotten wired in this way at a time when we didn't choose for it to be wired that way. It just happened to us, because that's what we needed to do to survive. But it doesn't mean that it's not a life sentence. Once you become more aware of those patterns, you do have the power to have an enormous impact on changing them or even just how you relate to those patterns. You know, I relate to what you're saying, because I know that one of the things that I have come to enjoy in my life is just moments of being able to sit and read a book. Just to sit and read and to do it. And it doesn't matter if my wife Audrey is there, but just to feel like it's the same as if I was only on my own. In other words, I just feel like I'm in my own company and able to fully relax doing that without feeling the need to entertain somebody else. And that, even what I just said is my stuff. They used to scare you in the past? It's a feeling of being responsible for somebody else's emotions. And their happiness or their joy, yeah. And so it would make me, I realized, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was afraid to speak up about what I needed, about really silly little things, you know? I was afraid to say, I really could use just a night to myself or I could really use just a few hours to just read. Like it's just something simple. Like I love, on a Sunday, I love just reading or spending a few hours just catching up on like the news. And because it's not something I do on the weekdays. I like once a week, I like to sit down and just look at like everything that's going on and just feel like I'm doing it at a leisurely pace. And that responsible for someone else's, are they having a good Sunday? Now, what are they used to be like in the past? I just wouldn't say anything. And then I would become less of myself in the relationship. And there would be resentment from my side, but I'd also be a worse version of myself because they would feel me kind of frustrated. Frustrated on some level. Was there something like, did you try to communicate this in previous relationships? No, it was all my fault. Oh really? It was all my fault. You never tried to even say it and someone was mad at you? No, I think... For wanting like two hours by yourself. No, because even if that was true, it predated any one I dated. It's like this deep feeling from childhood, of feeling like I'm responsible for... Probably because you're the oldest, right? Probably. And I think in my family dynamic, I felt responsible a lot for people's emotions. And so it carried over into my relationships. And with Audrey, I would notice that something that she'd be more than happy to give me, I was afraid to say. And even when I did say it, I would then feel anxious having said it. Really? Yeah, because I would feel like I've upset you. I've now like... She's like, no, go do your... I feel like, you know, are you mad at me? Is everything okay? Are you happy? And it almost like in my head, there was this subconscious feeling that there was gonna be this weird comeuppance for it. You took your two hours of alone time, now I'm gonna... Something or like, yeah, or like I'm gonna go and do something really fun that you would have wanted to do. I'm not gonna invite you. Yeah, like it just... My brain was doing all of these weird things. And I had to pay attention to that and go... It's... Look, what you said is absolutely true. That if you keep doing that, it's a very similar pattern to yours. It might have different origins, but there's a similarity in being unwilling to speak up about your needs and what you want. And what you said is true, that if you didn't learn to speak up about those things, then you could be really unhappy in a relationship. And we tend to focus on that side of it, that I never wanna be that unhappy again, like I was in the past when I was in a relationship and none of my needs were met. But we also often don't give enough focus to the inverse of that, which is that imagine how great your relationship could become when you're with someone who truly knows you. Like when someone gets to see all of those little idiosyncrasies about you and who you are, or like Audrey, my wife makes fun of me all the time. Really? Yeah, she's constantly making fun of me because she's like, you're so particular and you need, like when you wake up in the morning, she makes fun of me because she's like, when you wake up in the morning, you really like those like couple of hours before I wake up, where you get to just like do all your little rituals and the things you wanna do. And like she doesn't, she makes fun of me for it, but she loves me for it because it's like, that's you. I know you, I know who you are. And the more she knows who I am, the more she can actually be a teammate in supporting that. And so now she's such an incredible partner that she'll say to me, hey, do you want, like she might say to me proactively, do you want some time this weekend to yourself? Or do you want, and so because I'm honest about the things that I would like, which requires bravery and courage, because again, it's like old wounds and old things. Like I feel like it's gonna go, something's gonna go wrong if I do this. I've given her the gift of showing who I really am. I've given myself the gift of truly feeling seen and accepted for who I am. And I've also given myself the gift and her the gift of her knowing how to support me better, which is a beautiful thing because she wants to support me. She wants to be the best partner she can be for me and vice versa. And we can only do that if we know each other. And so that, we've both worked on that together. And it's, and that's another form of vulnerability, by the way, is sharing those things. And it's, this is like beyond any relationship I've ever had in my life because of those moments, me and Audrey have the most extraordinary connection and chemistry and all of those things, like these amazing things, but we also just, I've never felt so seen and accepted and loved and that's because, and she would say the same, and it's because both of us have been more brave than we were in previous relationships. How do we, but how do we learn the skill of expressing our needs and having a hard conversation without the fear of some blow up or backlash happening? How do we, if we've never done that before, had hard conversations, how do we learn to have them without the fear of something bad happening? A couple of things. I think that there's, I think first just noticing, I'm a huge fan of Nicola Perra's work because so much of her focus is on understanding that there is a nervous system response and therefore bodily sensations that we feel that you have to detach from the story that goes with them. So if you start thinking about having a conversation with someone, your body starts to react as if there's danger, if that's your version of danger from your past. And when your body starts to react, we try to kind of logic ourselves out of it by, it's very common, self-development is, it's very common in self-development to come up with reframes, right? Oh, but if you have this hard conversation, it could actually improve the relationship or it could, and reframes are really important. Reframing is something I use all the time in my life. But one of the things Nicole said to me recently that I really loved was that until you can regulate your nervous system and the sensations that are going on, you might not have access to a better story. Because that's what a reframe is, right? It's a more powerful story. For example, someone came to me some time ago about a hard conversation they needed to have with their boss. And a reframe that I gave them was that you're treating this hard conversation like it's the be all end all hard conversation that you have to have. And actually, this is like the first of the next 10,000 hard conversations you're gonna have in your life. This is like one of so many hard conversations you're gonna have in your lifetime. So instead of seeing this, like this big epic moment where you have to have a hard conversation, actually see it as practice for the next hard conversation you have to have. Because you're gonna have to have many in your life and your ability to have hard conversations is gonna determine the quality of your life. So instead of seeing this as really high stakes, see this hard conversation as practice for the next hard conversation you're gonna have to have with him or with anybody. With anyone, yeah. That's a reframe. But when our body goes into a true like nervous system response, when we go into fight or flight or when we go into freeze, for example, it can be extremely difficult to even have access to a better story. So hard, so hard. Someone can tell you, it's like a heartbreak. Someone can come along and say to you, you know, some story like, what is, there's plenty more fish in the sea is a story. It's like, it's a reframe. Oh, there's more people out there. That's a reframe. And you're trying to give someone a more empowering story, but in their state of heartbreak, which has physiologically overcome their body, they don't have access to the truth of the story you're telling them, even if it's true. So regulating your nervous system first, whether it's through, and you and I have done so much of this together, right? When we went to Poland with Wim Hof, what did we do every single morning? We regulated our nervous system. We did like 45 minutes of breathing, but you don't need to do 45 minutes of breathing. You could do five minutes of breathing. You can find a way to slow yourself down, whether it's through meditation, whether it's through losing yourself in a different task. We could even be calling a friend and having a nice conversation before revisiting this hard conversation you need to have. It's taking your body out of that state by regulating. And then when you've regulated, like I feel it, I do Brazilian jujitsu. At the end of an, whatever problem is making me anxious at the beginning of a session of rolling, at the end of an hour of rolling on the mats, I have access to a better story. And you can communicate it better. Yeah, because I've burnt off a lot of anxious energy. I've been forced, any kind of like sport, like that forces presence. So you're not thinking about the problem? It's like when Wim says, like being in the ice, being in the ice, being in a frozen lake or whatever, for him was the thing that took his, it was the first time he wasn't thinking about the greatest tragedy of his life was when he was in the ice. It's true. All his focus was just on the feeling, the shock, the pain of being in the ice. And for me, I get that from Brazilian jujitsu where it's forced presence for me. And then at the end of it, when I'm laying on the mat, I'm like, that thing doesn't feel as scary to me or I feel like I've access to a deeper truth or something better. So the start is regulating your nervous system first. And then to start to look at what are some, what are some better stories that I could tell myself here? For example, I have this story in my head that if I am honest with someone about what my needs are, they're gonna leave me. But what if, firstly, let me remind myself that in the beginning when I haven't done this, it's been a special kind of hell. Like the relationship where I didn't get my needs met was- Miserable. It was hell. It made me so, and I've been in those relationships and I know that people around me at the time who loved me were like, oh my God, he's in a dark place. It's struggling, yeah. I'd much rather be single than in a relationship with intermittent love where my needs are not met. And knowing that is a power. Because if you've never experienced that pain before, then you're liable to go back to it. But if you have had it and if you connect to that pain, then all of a sudden you go, well, nothing is worse than that. So I can't go back there. And then there might be also a very positive story that if I think of my dream relationship, if I think of the kind of, and I don't mean dream relationship in that you find the perfect partner. I mean, if I think of the kind of connection, the kind of team that I wanna be a part of, what, that's a place where I really feel seen. And if I want that, then I have to allow myself to be seen. And that means me sharing. You might also tell yourself that, hey, this, me sharing this stuff also gives them permission to do the same. And my end of the bargain, by the way, I think this is really important. We talk a lot, there's a lot of like, Instagrammable content out there now of like getting your needs met. But you're also in a relationship with a person who has needs on the other side. We don't, it's popular to talk about when our needs aren't being met, but what about when their needs aren't being met? What about the things that would make them really happy? There's not nearly as much content around that stuff. How to be, how to serve your partner at the highest level. Yeah, no, no, the reason there's not is, I believe, is because those posts are usually created by people who have experienced the pain of overgiving. Yes. And never being vulnerable enough or brave enough or confident enough to receive and to ask for what they want to receive. But the other end of the bargain is when someone, in finding, you're looking for someone who sees you and your needs and wants to show up as a teammate in meeting those needs. But the thing that often gives someone the sense of safety that they can do that is when you're also taking care of their needs. People don't feel safe to meet our needs when they're worried that they've got to watch their own and vice versa. When, it's like when I said, when Audrey anticipates my need, it actually frees up my energy. Cause now I don't need to be worried about my needs. I'm like, oh, she's got me. She's got me. It frees up energy to go, what does she need? Like what's the thing? She just asked me the most beautiful question in the world. She said, what do you need? How can I be better for you this week? How can I support you this week? That frees me up. It frees up mental bandwidth to go, hang on, have I done anything that awesome for her this week? Like this is someone who really has my back. Who else in my life is asking me that question? That's unbelievable. She's the greatest teammate in the world. I'm so lucky. I'm so grateful. And from that place, you're like, I better be showing up for this person in the same way. Like what does she need? How can I be there for you? Like what are you missing? What am I not doing enough of that would mean a lot to you? So it's a two way street. 100%. And if you're giving and giving and you don't feel like your needs are being met, then you probably need to communicate, hey, I need some time for my needs as well, or here's what I need, is it, you know, make a request. Is this something you can provide? And notice if you are giving and giving and feeling resentful, because that has nothing to do with them. They, it may come from the fact that they're giving less than you are. But you have an expectation then too. Why, well, but the fact that you're resenting it and you haven't said anything. That's on you. That's your pattern. That's your work to do. Because there's something, I bet you, that pattern doesn't just show up with this person. I bet it shows up with other people in your life too. I bet it's shown up with people in the past. So we have to suspect ourselves. When we have the same resentments all the time, it's suggestive of the fact that there is a pattern that requires healing within us, that healing that could hold the key to the relationship you've always wanted. Because by the way, you're never, like I said, by changing these patterns and healing these wounds, you will find yourself in a place where better and better relationships are available to you because people will start to see you. You'll start to attract a different quality of person. You'll start to attract someone who sees that you respect yourself. You'll start to sculpt the kind of relationship that you want. But we deny ourselves these relationships. And we wonder why is I keep running into people who take me for granted. This is something I used to do in relationships. I used to think that everyone in the world thought the same way as me, essentially. That if I'm attracting this person, they must think similar to me. They must wanna give like me. They may wanna be thinking about me the way I think about them. They may wanna be generous the way I'm trying to be generous. And therefore thinking they're gonna be similar with their generosity like me. But when it wouldn't happen, I would get frustrated and be like, huh, why aren't they giving the way that I'm giving? So I had an expectation, right? And this expectation left me feeling frustrated, resentful, confused, whatever it might be. And because I lacked the ability to communicate my standards through hard conversations, the relationships never worked. I'm sure there's many other flaws that I had why those relationships didn't work. But that was one thing that left me feeling frustrated, not only in intimacy, but also in friendships or business relationships where I was like, I'm gonna show up a certain way, and I have an expectation that other people show up a certain way. Or if I'm gonna be generous in one way, I have an expectation that if I do something for someone else that they would be just thoughtful and similar ways and be as generous. And when some people did that, but not everyone. And so it left me feeling frustrated more times than not because I had an expectation. As opposed to just communicating, okay, here's what I'm all about, and here's what I value. Here's my values, here's my standards, or not having any expectations at all. And being the generous person and not having, being resentful if there's not a standard met in return and being okay with that. And so I've had to learn the hard way of like making sure that I either don't have expectations in certain friendships, business relationships, intimacy, or communicate with hard conversations and see if someone can meet that standard. And that's the interesting thing. That's where romantic relationships hold this strange sort of space of their own. Because there's things you can do with other relationships that take all of that pressure out. With business relationships or certain friendships, maybe you're not your very closest friends, but with people who are kind of on the outskirts of your core circle, you can have few expectations. Because you say, when I'm with this person, I have a great time. They don't really show up for me in meaningful ways in my life, but they're fun company when we get to have it. And that's okay, because I got other people, I've got a handful of core people in my life that really do show up when it matters. I don't need that from this person. So I don't have to have any expectations. And if I give to this person, I'm just gonna know the deal that I'm gonna give to this person, but I'm gonna expect nothing back because I know that probably I won't get it back for this person. Our intimate relationships hold a special place of power in our lives, because they tend to be the person we have the most proximity to on a daily basis. It's the person that we expect the most from. And it's the person that, we can't meet certain needs elsewhere, right? It's not like sexually, you go, well, if this person doesn't meet all of my needs, I'll go elsewhere and I'll mix it up and spread it around. Like it's not like that. So we have certain rules in place for most, monogamous relationships that say that there are certain things that it's inappropriate for me to get elsewhere. And even if that's not the case, because that's not the case with many of our needs, it's still the case that this is the person I'm gonna invest the most time and energy into and the most love into and the most of myself into. And so if that's the case, by definition is the relationship that has to come with the most reciprocity. It can't be a one-sided thing because of how much I am required to give to this relationship, how much I'm prepared to give to this relationship. So- That's why you gotta communicate the hard things, express them. You have to and look, you're right. There's people are different. We're not all the same in relationships and you might really like this and she really likes that and they're different. But it's why I think compromise is important. Where might we be able to give each other a bit more of what we want? But it's also the thing that I think people fail to do a lot is view their romantic relationships holistically. So I might not get this thing as much as I want, but it's like if you really like phone calls, right? And your partner, when they go on a trip, you don't really hear from them because it's just not like for them sitting on the phone, it just doesn't lend itself to their communication style. So they'll text you, but like being away and then sitting on the phone for an hour just isn't, it's just not their natural thing. So you could try and force it, but most times it just feels a bit forced. Yes. Well, if that person in every other way, it's an incredible partner. And when they're with you, they are so present and they text you, it's not like they leave you, they don't ghost you on texts. There's a back and forth through texts. They'll send you pictures of where they are and what they're up to. They might leave you a loving voice, no. And the big and, you're in a relationship that's not long distance. In other words, the majority of the time you're together, it just so happens that sometimes they have to take trips without you for work or whatever. Then it's like, this is all right, I'm loved. Yeah, of course. I feel loved in this relationship. I don't need them to try to be good at this thing that they're not good at or they don't feel natural at because I get my needs met. On the whole, I do get my needs met. Would it be nice if they enjoyed sitting on the phone as long as I did? Maybe, but it's okay. Yeah. Now start adding in variables and you can quickly see how justifying that can become a problem. Let's say that this person also isn't good at texting. Let's say that this person's work takes them away for half the time. Now you might have a real problem because you're not together 50% of the time. You're someone who values closeness. Phone calls were a way that you felt close, you were fine, you would have settled for messages and pictures and just feeling a little bit involved in their day, but you don't even feel that. And now they're away half the time. You're gonna be miserable. So it's viewing these things holistically. No one is ever gonna be 100% of everything you needed a person to be and they're always gonna be differences. So when we ignore the fact that our needs are getting met less of the time than, you know, they're not being met more of the time than they are. And you're ignoring that, then you're unhappy. Yeah. In your book, Love Life, How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person and Live Happily, No Matter What, you talk about, there's a quote from your book that said, I made a big miscalculation. I underestimated people's ability to make poor choices in their love life, even when they had an abundance of choice. How, when we have an abundance of choice of opportunities, maybe great men in front of us or great women in front of us and we're going on lots of dates and like, wow, there's so many inspiring people. Where most people are struggling to find one person that they're interested in, but now you have an opportunity with lots of people. How do we choose properly when you have an abundance of choices with the potential partners? How do you know the person you're going to choose for the next 20, 30, 50 years potentially is the one for you? Look, I think a very simple place to start is, who do I feel most at home with? Like, who, when I spend time with them, makes me feel most like myself. And I think when we listen to that, we are listening to, do I want to say my heart? We're listening to our heart, we're not listening to our ego. Because I think ego drives us a lot in our love lives. We chase after people who seem impressive on the surface, people who look a certain way, people who have a certain life, people that we think are going to look good to our friends and family and they're going to be celebrated by the people around us, everyone's going to go, they're amazing, you know, and by the way, the person that all of your friends and family initially say is the most amazing is not necessarily the best person for you. That, you know, the- So true. How many people have- Some people have gotten married by saying, oh, but my family loves this person. Yeah, and by the way, your family aren't all the greatest judge of character. And they're not spending 24 seven with this person. They're not, what they're getting is an advertisement. Two hours on a weekend or something. How many of us have ever spent a few hours with someone a day with someone and thought they were the greatest person ever? And then weeks or months later, we look back and we realize, oh, this was a very charismatic person who really knew how to be endearing and was very charming. And I just, when I met them, I just felt so good around them. And I felt like, oh my God, they're like, they're so, you know, you just felt this amazing thing. But later on, you realize like, this person's like actually kind of like, there was no friendship there at all. This was just a person who's really good at making people like them. And some people were like that with your family and friends. It's like- Now, by the way, that's not me saying if all of your family and friends think someone is bad news, you should not listen to that. Because if the people you trust the most are like, this doesn't, something doesn't feel right, you should hear that. And again, if the people that trust you trust the most, it's almost like on that level, it's more important that the people you trust the most feel like, oh, this person's a really good fit for you. Like I can see that this person is like, you two go really well together. Like they get you as opposed to, this person's really amazing. Like if, that's a bit different. You should be thinking of like, does this person bring the best out of you? Correct. And if a family sees that the person you're with, maybe he doesn't make as much money or have the job that I think I would want him to have or whatever, he's not there yet in life. But if you are a happier human being in general, if you shine more consistently, if you bring out the best aspects of yourself because of this relationship, then that's something that people should approve of. That's exactly right. Do they bring out the best in you? Are you sad constantly? Exactly. Are you constantly having the conversation of problems with this relationship, right? And everyone's experienced a friend or a family member who is terribly anxious and unhappy in a relationship that they are desperately clinging onto, thinking it's the most important thing in the world. And the rest of us from the outsider going, this shouldn't be the most important thing in the world. You're unhappy. So I think someone we feel at home with, someone who makes us feel like the most like ourselves, look for the areas where ego seems to be driving. You know, and ego is often driving when you have a poor answer to why you like someone. Oh yeah, when you're asked the question, why do you love this person? And you don't have a good response. No. That's a red flag. It's for sure. For sure. You know, Dr. Ramani, our mutual friend, who's the leading expert on narcissism says, one of the surest signs that something is up is when she asks why someone loves someone and they do not have a good answer. The answer approximates to there's just something about them. That's not a good answer. And saying there's great sex isn't a great answer either. No. Just having, we just have great explosives of sex. And there's some prerequisites for a great relationship, right, chemistry is important. It's not that you can say, I'll just be with someone who's nice to you, even if you have no chemistry. That also isn't going to work. So you have to have chemistry, but chemistry is a prerequisite. It's not like the thing you have to go like, I'm trying to get the greatest chemistry anyone could ever have. It's just that you need chemistry. Yes. There's a moment in the book where I say, don't comparison shop for chemistry. Right. Instead, see it as a beautiful thing. If you found someone who's an incredible teammate, who's all of these things you really want, values that are important to you, and there's chemistry, that's an amazing thing. So, am I coming from ego, or am I coming from a place of what actually makes me happy? It's a huge, huge, huge decision. And sometimes we don't learn that until we have spent time with people that are less familiar to us, but make us feel really good. Yeah. You know, your ego might flare up in some way or another, or you might be like, oh, but do I still want, do I want to like, do this, maybe I could have someone with this, or that, or whatever. Like, there's a lot of that in the world. And it creates massive confusion. Instead of just going, this feels unfamiliar, but there's something about this that feels really good. I love your definition of like, when you should, when you know that you're choosing the right person as someone who makes you feel most at home. I love that idea. And Martha, my fiance, she's always like, man, I wish I would have met you like 10 years ago. We would have had so much fun, like over these last 10, 15 years being together. And I keep saying to her, you know, I wouldn't have been ready for you. Because if I would have met you 10 years ago, I'd have looked at you and I would have not have had the same level of, I don't know if you would call it attraction or just like curiosity to be in a relationship. Because my nervous system wasn't built for you. It wasn't built to feel safe and accepted for who I was. It wasn't. I still needed to learn how to regulate my nervous system, heal, reflect, and really go through a growth period emotionally and physically really to feel familiar with safety. And feel familiar with peace. Because I didn't have the familiar, I didn't understand that that was safe. No, and when you're in that, I think for a lot of people, especially those who are playing the field and experiencing different people or whatever, there is a kind of being single is this dopaminergenic cycle. Yes. And it's hard to get off that cycle because you're wired for it now. You're wired for instant gratification, you're wired for variety and excitement. And what next? And the dramas of the first few weeks of knowing someone and the romance of just figuring each other out. And all of that is like, and texts and phone buzzing and this and that. And this person's now called and it's like a frantic sort of dopamine engine that you get stuck in. And at a certain point, you have to come to value something else more. Because otherwise, and this happens of course routinely is people get locked into that cycle. And it was clear to me at a certain point, oh, this happiness doesn't lie here for me. Anxiety lies here for me. Uncertainty. Uncertainty is having an effect on the way I see the world or myself or this is not gonna serve me long term. But that doesn't, just because you realize that, it doesn't mean that you immediately have an appreciation of what the other thing is or that you even know what it looks like or what package it comes in. Or you don't know any of those things. And so, there's a whole chapter I wrote in this book that I'm really insanely proud of because I think it's so on the money of what's happening for so many people. It's called Never Satisfied. And that I think is the feeling, I explain the steps of why it is we struggle to be satisfied. And the next chapter is how to rewire your brain so that you can actually rewire yourself for happiness. Because I know for a long time, I was that never satisfied person. In relationships or just? Yeah, my love life, I think in life too, right? But in my love life, I was just chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, dopamine, dopamine. I'm not happy, I need to get out of this relationship. I'm single, dopamine, dopamine, I'm not happy here. I knew, you know, like there must be some perfect person who's gonna make me feel differently about this whole thing and I'm gonna feel different when I meet that person and that person didn't come because it wasn't really about that, something was going on with me. I was in that cycle and the other thing that is available to you is so, I don't wanna, this isn't a, this is an elector on whether someone should be single or in a relationship. So I don't wanna become that person. But what is so amazing about a healthy relationship is not available to you until you come to value something different. It's like someone who's been used to doing drugs every day. And then the day that you get them to quit drugs, you sit them outside their house in front of a beautiful field and you say, appreciate the sunset. Yeah, there's no dopamine rush anymore. A sunset is a mate, like a sunset is an awe-inspiring, unbelievable thing. It is something that you just mind blowing. Why do we all go on holiday and everyone at the same time goes out onto the beach and watches the sunset? Because there's something stunning and magical about a sunset. But for the person who's been doing drugs every day, that's not the day you can appreciate a sunset. You are coming out of all of those feelings that you've been addicted to and all of that instant gratification, dopamine. So it's about, again, it's nervous system stuff, it's retraining my nervous system. And this is some of the stuff we talk about in how to rewire your brain, but you have to orient yourself towards a different goal. And in the beginning, you can't expect the new thing to feel like the old thing. Because it's not gonna feel like the old thing. But the more you lean into the new thing, you develop an appreciation for how much better it actually feels. And that's like a kind of stunning and eye-opening realization. And I feel really passionate about this because I see a lot of really unhappy people. I was one of them, by the way, who are stuck in those cycles. And I think there's a lot of people who get stuck in optimization cycles in their love life. Where it's like, especially Taipei people, not everyone does, but a lot of people do where it's like, I'm trying to find the perfect thing and I'm trying to, and if someone's missing this thing, I'm gonna optimize and go for another person who's got all the good things about this person, but and also that thing. And it's like, people don't work like that. You exchange one basket of ingredients for another basket of ingredients. And you'll get new good stuff and new bad stuff and challenging stuff. I'm a huge believer. I think the settling is a word that has a really unfairly negative connotation. And it shouldn't. Is there something amazing about that word? You can change the meaning of that depending on the word that goes after it. So if you tell someone you have to settle for something, that feels immediately negative, right? Like settling down. Yeah, because I feel like I'm being shortchanged. But if you say settling on something, that changes it because you, Lewis, settled on a particular business and brand. You're such a capable person. You could have done a hundred different things in this lifetime and you would have been a success at them. So how the hell do you decide which one you should do? You found one that scratched the itch in a bunch of different ways. It allowed you to be creative. It allowed you to broadcast, which is something you're really good at. It allowed you to connect, which is something you're really good at. It allowed you to harness all of these relationships, which is something you're really great at as relationships. It allowed you to put to work your strategy mind. It allowed you to be competitive, which is something that's in your bones. And so this business ticked a lot of boxes for you. But it's not the only business that would have ticked boxes for you. There are other things you could have done that would have ticked boxes, but you settled on greatness. And you said, I'm gonna go all in on this and I'm gonna keep going on this. And the thing that has made what you do so great and what you have done is extraordinary. What you've built, the audience you've built, the platforms you've built, the body of work you've built, is extraordinary. But it's not extraordinary because you found an extraordinary thing. You didn't find the word greatness. And like, you just went, I've got the, if you'd have said to me like 15 years ago, we didn't know each other then, but when you started, if you'd have said to me, Matt, I've got the greatest idea. I am gonna take the word greatness and I am gonna just own that world and build a brand out of it and do all of the, I would have been like, that's not an idea. It's like, you've taken a common word in the English language. You talk about it. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? But that's not what's made this extraordinary. What's made this extraordinary is that you have settled on it and you take this thing to another level every year. And people who are looking at you going, there's, you've got a lot of, I've walked with you in the street in Vegas on holiday in places on, when we've traveled, you have people coming up to you everywhere you go. And you're a hero to so many people and so many people wanna create what you've created or wanna be where you are. But you didn't start with this really special thing. You spent year after year after year making a really special thing. And every year I see you take the same core thing and stick with it again. Yeah. Not go, you know what? Now what I really wanna do is, now I really wanna do real estate. Yeah, I'm over this. I'm gonna move on to something greater. Yeah, it's not, that's not it for you. You're like, I'm gonna make this thing even better. And deeper. I think that's how people should approach relationships. And that's my point, is that you settle, when the thing that makes a relationship the greatest relationship of your life is that you take someone who ticks the boxes for you. And that's the starting point. But then based on the values you each bring, and I think there are some very powerful values for a relationship, like being growth oriented, like teamwork, like loyalty, like prioritizing the vision of the relationship. I think when you take those things and you put those two people like that together, what they start with is not nearly as interesting as what they will create together. And you can only create that if you settle on a person, but you will never settle on a person as long as you are looking for the perfect person as a starting point. Because the perfect relationship doesn't exist at the beginning, but the perfect relationship for you can exist over time if you settle on someone and you resolve to make that relationship as good as it can possibly be. And that's why I get so excited about my relationship because I'm like, it's amazing right now. It's gonna be even better in six months. Cause we're building something together. Martha says that to me all the time, she's like, how do I love you even more today than I did last week? And I think it's cause we're both focused on growing ourselves individually and growing the relationship together. And I'm sure there's gonna be adversities and challenges we face, but us facing it together makes us even more connected and appreciate each other even more. And there's something even fun about that. When you know you're an amazing team, there's even something fun about knowing that there's gonna be challenges and how you're gonna solve those as a team because you're a killer team. Like that's even that, there's something exciting about it. So I think we almost have to pay attention to some of these ideas we have about love and relationships. You know, the way we use words like settling, are you settling for someone or are you settling on someone? That will change. If you settle for someone, you'll become passive and resentful in that relationship. If you see it like you settled on someone, of any choice you could have made, you chose this person. And because you chose it, you're gonna lean into it and you're gonna make it as great as it can possibly be, that relationship, that will change the way you approach relationships. The same is true of the word commitment. There's amazing, this is such a fantastic example of the point of making. If you look up, I think it's in Apple Dictionary, I don't know how it's reflected in the Oxford Dictionary, but if you go on your Mac and you type in the word commitment, there are two different definitions that come up. Really, what does it say? One is a, I think it reads and people can go and look for themselves and get the exact wording, right? But one of them says roughly, a obligation that restricts freedom of action. Wow. Right, now, if you, you give me someone, that has that as their definition of commitment, and I'll show you someone who has a hard time ever being in a relationship. But there's another definition of commitment under that one. And it says commitment, dedication to a cause. Now, when you think of dedication to a cause, it creates a completely different energy in your body. I'm dedicated to this cause. I'll fight for this cause. I'll do anything for this cause. Like there is a, there's something heroic about that. I'm dedicated to the cause of our relationship, of our future, of our vision, of where we're going. There's something stunningly beautiful about that. Dedication to a cause, an obligation that restricts freedom. One is about shrinking your world, and the other one enlarges it. There are so many people out there struggling with the idea of committing, whether it's to a business, an idea, a path, a country, a person, a new sport, and your definitions around these words, the way you choose to see them is gonna determine your ability to stay with something, to invest in something. And I think that's so fascinating. I really do. Yeah. This is big, man. There's so many more questions I wanna ask you, but I want people to get the book, because I know you're gonna answer a lot of these questions in here as well. Love life, how to raise your standards, find your person, and live happily, no matter what. So make sure you guys get a few copies. If you have a friend who's been struggling in relationships, get them a copy as well. If you know someone that just went through a breakup, get them a copy. If you know someone who's in a healthy relationship, get them a copy so they can still use these tools to improve their relationship as well. Love life. There's so many great concepts in here. Again, how to rewire your brain. I love the chapter in here about, if you know you want to leave, but you don't know how to leave, it teaches people how to get out of a relationship the right way. Yeah, there's a lot of talk in there. That's a big chapter on anyone who's in toxic, abusive, or narcissistic relationship. And you can apply that, by the way, across the board, not just to your love life, but if there's family relationships that you're struggling with and you don't know what to do about them, there's a very hard-hitting chapter. There's chapters on confidence in there, which is why this has mass appeal. I want to say this just to, because I think it's important for people to hear, I have come to believe that there are three relationships. We are all in in life. One is our relationship with other people. The second is our relationship with ourselves. And the third is our relationship with life itself. And these are three relationships that you can't get out of. You're, for as long as you're here on this planet, you are in these three relationships. And these relationships, the quality of them, will determine your happiness in this world. So we better focus on those relationships. And that's, in many ways, this book is designed not just to be a book for people who are looking to find love, but a book for people who are looking to improve those relationships. And I talk about my own journey, even I talk about some times where I fell out of love with life because I was, you know, handed some difficult cards along the way and struggled. And, you know, maybe we could talk about it on another episode, but, you know, it was in a very dark place, in a very depressed place. And I talk in the book about how I improved the tools that I used to improve my relationship with life in the hardest times of my life. And that, you know, that's why the double meaning in the title of this book is so important to me. This isn't just about your love life. It's about your love for life. And it's why that last line, you know, how to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what was really, really important to me. So I don't think this is just a book about finding love. This is a, I believe that this is a book that will get passed around for people who are struggling with all sorts of things in their lives. That's cool, man. And again, if you don't have a good relationship with life, you're probably not going to have a good relationship with yourself. And if you don't have a good relationship with yourself, how are you going to find someone that you can actually love and appreciate without being jaded on them trying to hurt you in some way? So you need to have a healthy relationship in all three areas, or those first two at least, if you want to have a healthy relationship with someone else and trusting them in your life and opening your heart to them. So I'm going to get the book, lovelifebook.com to get that special event with Matthew Hussie. We're going to do another episode here in a moment. So I want people to check out part two, a separate episode. You know, make sure to subscribe so you can watch this and listen to this as well for part two coming up here soon. But, and I'm going to ask you some of those questions you just talked about there. But to wrap up this interview, I wanted to ask you about, I've asked you a bunch of questions at the end before. You've been on this show many times, but I want to ask you a question about if you could give your 18-year-old self three pieces of advice about love. It's got on my pen. You know, if you could give your 18-year-old self three pieces of advice about love, knowing everything you know now from being in multiple different relationships, going through breakups, being in challenging situations and in love, being single and dating a bunch of people over the years, you know, now being married, if you could give your 18-year-old self three pieces of advice about love that you wish you would have known then, that you know now, what would those three things be? Okay, I think I got it. Three on the spot is hard, by the way. If you imagine... I got it, though. 18-year-old Matthew sitting in front of you, saying, I just want to find love and I just want to, I just want to feel loved and I want to find a great, I want to have a great family and be married one day and you get to sit in front of him with all the wisdom that you have now and all the heartache and all the pain and all the love that you've experienced what are you going to say to your younger self? I think the first thing I would say is that it's... It's not... This is going to sound cheesy, but I really mean it. I would start by saying it's not your fault that you are the way you are. That these things that you think are a sign that you're going through breakups are a sign that you're broken, whether it's your shyness or your anxiety or feeling like you're terrified of rejection or that you're not good enough. These things are either, they've either been part of you from the beginning or they are a response to things that have happened in your life. I'm not saying everything is nurture. Some of it is just our DNA, our brain, but either way, these things that you keep judging yourself for and telling yourself that you're broken for, they deserve compassion because they're not... You didn't choose them. And the reason I think that's important from a love life context is because what I lacked for so much of my life was self-compassion. I thought I wasn't good enough. I thought that deep down I was shameful. I was ugly. I was unlovable. I was bad, not good person. I was just not... If people really knew who I was, they would think I was disgusting and pathetic and weak and unlovable. And I'm not saying all of this was always conscious, but it was on some level, this must have been how I was feeling because I was really deeply afraid to be seen. Yes. And so I would have said it's okay that you're okay. Like the way you are, it's not because you're broken or that you made choices to be, it's that you're responding to something. And that would give me self-compassion. And the second thing I would say to myself is share those things. Now, I don't know how well it would have gone for me at 18 to share those things with girls my age, but in general, I would have said as a lesson for life, share those things because that everyone else is also, in all the ways you fear you're broken, everyone else is too. And if you can share that with other people, that is gonna be your ultimate power. I spent my 20s, Lewis. You know, I was coaching people and I was lucky enough like you to be quite known, relatively speaking, you know, as a 25 year old, I made a bit of a name for myself and a lot of people knew who I was. And I never really allowed myself to truly just be myself because I was trying to be something else. I was trying to like be impressive. And these days I'm much more focused on connecting with people. You and I would never have had this interview 10 years ago. Right. You were trying to impress too much. I'm sure the first interview we did together was strong because it's fun sometimes when someone is being impressive, right? We get to watch someone, you know, do their thing. But this now, this wouldn't happen 10 years ago because I wasn't sharing myself in that way. So I would say share yourself because that's the root to real connection, real friendships, real love. And then the third thing I would say to myself is, have compassion for these flaws in other people. Because, you know, I spent way too much of my life writing people off or judging people for things that they were struggling with, you know, and things I didn't like about the way they did this or that or the way that insecurity showed up or the way. And, oh, like honestly, man, I look back on it now and I'm like, they were me. They were me. Like, they only didn't know that that was me because I wasn't being vulnerable with them. For, you know, I didn't even offer them the ability to have compassion with my deeper flaws or my insecurities or my vulnerabilities because I never shared them. You didn't reveal them. No, because I judged those things in myself. And when you judge them in yourself, you judge them in other people. And the more in my life I've developed space for myself and who I am, the more compassionate I've become with myself, the more compassionate I've become with other people, the greater my capacity to love other people for who they really are is. And I think that's such a big point to me. You know, one of the comments that I read a lot in self-development circles is like, it's really hard to meet someone when you've upped your game in life and you now are someone who, you know, is growth oriented and you're doing this and you're doing that and whatever. And it's like, you're Paul shrinks because you're just so awesome and everyone else sucks. You're so cautious and everyone else is un-precious. That's basically sort of the subtext is that, why is it so hard now that everyone sucks and I'm great? And I have to say, I have found a slightly different experience to be true. I have found it easier to love other people the more that I have learned to love myself and the more compassion I've developed for my own complexities and the things that make me a difficult and complicated and somewhat damaged and whatever person. It's made me able to love other people more because now that I'm making more space for myself, I also make space for the way that other people are and the things that those things on the surface that are easy to judge, the things that the deeper wounds that those things represent that they're struggling with. It makes me emotional as I say it because I think that that's, I have found it easier to love and I think that having that compassion for yourself breeds compassion for other people. So I would say have stopped judging other people so much and have compassion for who they are cause they're you. Mm, this is beautiful man. Make sure you guys get a copy of the book, Love Life, book.com. Check it out. Matthew Ossie, thanks for that. Appreciate you man. Thanks. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend, leave us a review over on Apple podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis house. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.