A Bit of Optimism - The First Steps to Find Love with Matthew Hussey

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

Finding love is a journey. We might take some wrong turns along the way.Matthew Hussey helps people find love, and sometimes, redefine their relationship with love. Matthew is a dating coach who balances practical advice about the art of attraction with the importance of centering our own sense of self in our search for love. Starting as a teenager and working primarily with women, he’s helped thousands of people find romance and create relationships built on values which feel right for them. I sat down with Matthew to ask him everything he’s learned about love after decades as a dating coach. He shares with me the most common mistakes people make when looking for a partner, what we ought to be looking for, and why our own happiness is ultimately our own responsibility, not anyone else’s.This…is A Bit of Optimism.To learn more about Matthew and his work, check out:his new book, Love Lifehis YouTube channel matthewhussey.com 

A lot of the work I do is not about saying, go find a boring relationship devoid of chemistry. It's saying, let's take some of these high standards that you have around certain things that aren't always predictors of great relationships and turn them towards areas that make for very good relationships. I regret having you on because you were causing me stress. Saw a little bit of it on your face. Okay, let's unpack this. Looking for love? Well, get ready to throw out everything you think you knew about finding the right partner. Matthew Hussey is a leading love expert and best-selling author who

has spent nearly two decades helping people find the kind of relationships that build their confidence and bring them joy. If you're looking for a relationship, in a relationship, or enjoy being single, I found the things Matthew said to be universally valuable. In fact, he really challenged me on some of the decisions I've made in my own love life. Oof. This is a bit of optimism. Here's the reason why I think everyone should pay more attention to the work that you put out there versus so many other influencers, quote unquote, with various relationship advice.

You have a humility about you and an honesty about you where you don't want from anything other than to see that other people can find some of the same joy and happiness that you have found, but also to learn some of the lessons that you've learned. And I appreciate that you don't claim to be an expert, but rather you are just somebody on a journey who's got a curiosity and a fascination. And you, in some respect, you've made yourself the guinea pig. Well, that means a great deal. I've admired you, your work for a very long time. So to hear that from you is, I don't take that lightly at all.

It means a lot. So to hear that from you is, uh, I don't take that lightly at all. It means a lot. I've learned a couple of things about myself over the last few years. One is that I'm willing to sacrifice money to speak about things I really, really care about because there's certain books that I know I could write that would create more opportunities five ways to meet a bit of partner but i have a deep deep deep love and connection for the heart of what i'm doing nothing brings me more joy than being able to help. I had a woman that came to me. She was in her 60s. This was her first question to me.

How do I kill the desire to find love? When she said it, it like I got a ball in my throat because she had arrived at the point where she had decided that her wanting to find love had become the most painful thing in her life she said i haven't found what i'm looking for i have i feel invisible i don't get many opportunities at all every night i go to bed haunted by the space next to me wanting to find love and not finding it and i'm worried that if I have this desire for the rest of my life, I'm going to be sad for the rest of my life. And I don't want to be sad for the rest of my life. That's a kind of chronic pain, the chronic pain of

loneliness, the chronic pain of, I wanted to have a family and I didn't have a family in time. And now biologically, I can't. The grief of life not going the way that I wanted it to go or hoped it would go or thought it would be by this stage. That is my life's work is having those hard conversations. What happened with the woman? her to see that there was the very physical component to her pain which was that pang in her stomach in her chest at night and that initial feeling of God I wish someone was there next to me there was a relationship with that pain that was compounding that pain to an unmanageable degree. And I suffered from, for many years, a kind of chronic physical pain that I had in my head that at times got too much for me. At times I thought, I don't know, I do not know how I'm going to do this. It made me utterly miserable. And someone really helped me

to understand that I had a relationship with my pain. You're in a monogamous relationship with pain. There was a whole bunch of ways that I was reacting to that pain that was making it way worse. I was measuring my life by the worst moments of that pain, even though it fluctuated. my life by the worst moments of that pain, even though it fluctuated. And in her case, there was a story that went along with her pain that once she started telling herself that story, my life doesn't mean anything because I never got married or I never found what I was looking for in this area. I can never be happy because I haven't found someone. I never will find someone, which was another story. All of these were things that turned her pain into overwhelm. We worry about fear, anxiety, anger.

Overwhelm is 100% the most dangerous emotion. Because overwhelm is the crescendo of any and all of those emotions. And it's in overwhelm where we do things we regret. It's in overwhelm where we think we can't manage. And so a huge part of what I try to do with people is lower the temperature so that it's below overwhelm. Because then you're in power again and then you can create magic again. And we are not in those moments where the whole story of our life is being reduced to, I didn't meet someone or I haven't met someone or I still don't have someone. A kind of singular vision about our lives that is one story.

Our life is many different stories. There are many different stories that can be started from where we are now this is not the only story of our lives so how is it that you started you know sort of I would expect guys to give guys advice and those sort of men's groups exist and women to give women advice how did you become a man giving women advice on dating? Originally, I saw that... Like why not men? Well, I had worked with men. I grew up in this sort of nest of amazing women who I loved. So I always had a really good relationship with women.

When I was helping men for a few years, I had women coming to me and saying, why aren't you doing the same thing for us? And my first response was, well, I don't really know what you're going through. I didn't even know you were having these issues. I was a naive 19, 20 year old guy. But then I started to pick up books that were designed for women, not designed for men. And I started to read them. And my first feeling was, I don't relate to this idea as a guy. There was a very famous book called The Rules, which was really designed for women more than men. There was a line in there that said something like, I hope I'm not misquoting it, but this is at the time I read it as, if a guy isn't already talking to you, if he's not like coming

over to you, don't go over to him. Like save yourself the trouble. He's not interested. That's madness. I had never related to that in my life. In fact, the opposite was true for me. The more attracted to you I am, the more likely I'm going to avoid you. So it just, it didn't resonate. And I went, oh my God, if these are the kinds of ideas people are living by, they're going to miss out. They're

going to miss out on so many people. And frankly, they're only ever going to meet the loudest guy in the room. And the loudest guy in the room, there's no, you know, not always the best guy. You know, there's, in the sort of advice giving world, there's a lot of published children. Divorce attorneys are always divorced. Child psychologists have screwed up kids you know but you are happily married and so so it gives a lot more credence and credibility when you're dispensing relationship advice and you actually made it work well actually if i think about my earliest years in my love life the story of them was me not being that excited because i kind of felt like I was in situations where it wasn't like the person that I really wanted to speak to. For me to be brave enough to go,

even if it meant going and getting rejected, just the ability to do something instead of doing nothing. That stayed with me so much so that my wife, Audrey, we met because I went home one year for Christmas. I live in Los Angeles. I went back to London. My friend from high school invited me to his engagement party, which I didn't want to go to. I had other things I wanted to do, like sitting at home in my mom's house and relaxing and just being cozy for Christmas. But I said, yes. So I did something instead of nothing there. And then I got there. I actually can't even, I don't think, take credit for speaking to her first because there was a TV and there was a big fight on and I'm a boxing fan, so I was watching the fight. But she came over and stood next to me and asked me what was going on on the TV.

And that was how we started talking. Ironic, right? That you learned all the skills to go meet the people and yet the person you married is the person that came over and met you. Yeah. That was more like, she didn't know much about me, but that was more like the advice I've been giving to women for so long, which is that actually there are ways that you can create more opportunity. You don't have to be in the passenger seat all the time. Do you think that skill set is diminishing the courage to go and talk to a stranger? Because we don't have to. The technology has eliminated the practice. I think, yes. I think it's been eroded as a skill set.

Because that's all it is, is a skill set. Like anything. I mean, being comfortable at a party is a skill set. Who didn't come out of COVID and feel more anxious going to a social event for the first time? If I don't socialize for a month, I start to get a kind of low level feeling of, oh God, I've got to go here and talk to people. I really remember being in New York one evening and a guy I just met being like how would you ever meet someone not on an app he was like i was in my 20s at the time but he was like the idea of going to a bar and talking to someone are you kidding like and i remember thinking god what an interesting statement

as a from a 20-something man that like the idea of going out to a bar and saying something to someone was unthinkable to him. So I do think that skill has been eroded. And I think that it's a tremendous shame and a tremendous opportunity because if you are someone who even has a modicum of an ability to go and make an impact in person. You're way ahead of the curve these days. What are the most common ways that people get in their own way? We don't gravitate often enough or at all to the kinds of people that actually make us happy or bring us peace. It's a bold statement. I agree with you. So who are we gravitating to?

People that on some level satisfy our ego. People that we might like to be seen with. we might like to be seen with people that we feel proud of because of what they represent people we have massive amounts of initial chemistry with those butterflies that you get when you have amazing chemistry with someone and you're like oh my god this is this person's amazing right what i've learned is that all those amazing feelings of attraction are actually dopamine not oxytocin, because it's the feeling that you found the thing you're looking for. You haven't necessarily built any foundation of anything. So initial chemistry can be exciting and intoxicating, but means nothing as to the viability of a relationship. Really nothing.

So then what am I supposed to listen to? If not the chemistry and the intuition and the excitement and the butterflies, and if not the familiarity, because don't I want to be with a friend who gives me comfort and peace and makes me feel safe? Well, familiarity may not make us feel safe. Maybe the familiarity for us is someone who makes us feel terribly unsafe. Many people find themselves in situations where someone doesn't text them back and all of a sudden they want to fight for this person, for someone who's made us feel unsure of ourselves, who's made us feel less confident, who's made us feel more insecure. And yet now my instinct is to fight harder. I'm always very, very suspicious of the phrase, trust your instincts. I had a

boxing coach once who told me your instincts will get you killed. He said, when a punch is being thrown at your head, your instinct is to blink. Your instinct is not to slip or to parry or to get in a good position. Your instinct is to blink and squint. You go blind in exactly the moment you need to see. Our instincts in our love lives can get us emotionally killed because we have all sorts of bad instincts. Someone makes me unsure of myself, fight harder. I've decided I like someone after one day, clear the schedule. I'm going to see them as much as I can in the next two weeks. Drop my friends or that class that I enjoy doing or whatever it is. I'm just, I am all in for this person who I don't even know, who essentially is a perfect stranger.

All I know is the impact they have had on me I don't know their character the character can only be measured over time it can't be measured on a date only impact can be measured on a date and so we have certain instincts that really do lead us to make big mistakes like over investing we do that all the time in early dating. We make our mind up about someone we can't possibly have made our mind up about. We get obsessed with someone where the obsession cannot possibly be an indicator of how right for us they are. I think chemistry is important, but when people say I have high standards, they're usually talking about a very narrow group of things. They're often the same people who say,

I have really high standards. That's why I never meet anyone. You learn that for the last two years, there've been an on and off situationship with someone who's been treating them horribly. So what do you mean when you say you have high standards? Do you mean you have high standards for looks? Do you mean you have high standards for charisma? You can't have high standards for charisma. You can't have high standards for kindness. You can't have high standards for empathy because you wouldn't value this person who's treating you with zero empathy. You can't have high standards for teamwork or for trust or for consistency. So a lot of the work I do is not about saying, go find a boring relationship devoid of chemistry. It's saying, let's take some of these high standards that you have around certain things

that aren't always predictors of great relationships and turn them towards areas that make for very good relationships. I regret having you on because you were causing me stress. I saw a little bit of it on your face. Okay. Let's unpack this. I get excited when I meet someone, I want to spend all my time with them. Younger me, it was insecurity. Like I better spend a lot of time with this person. Otherwise they'll meet somebody else immediately and so i i gotta i gotta speed up the get to know me process

older me it's born out of genuine excitement yeah absolutely when i get a cold response it makes me fight for it and then sometimes get it and be like, huh? You know, like I fought for this. Oh, when you finally get the person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think the hardest thing is not knowing what's right or who's right for me. Because different people bring different energies. Some are exciting, some are calming, some are adventurous, some challenge me intellectually, some challenge me the way I live my life in the world to go on more adventures. And they all have different kinds of appealing, but who's right for me? I don't want to date myself. I don't want to date somebody who

matches my energy because I'm smart enough to know that balance is good. I want to give something that they don't give. And I want them to give something that I can't give. I once heard Bruce Springsteen talking about what a great show was when he's touring what does an audience want and he said the audience simultaneously wants to be surprised and wants to be made to feel at home and that's what makes a great show so i've never said this before but i think there's something really profound to learn about relationships from that statement because speaking from my own experience, I've never felt more at home than in this relationship. I've never felt more accepted. I've never felt more like I could truly reveal the parts of me that I thought would always be shameful or that would

make someone not want me anymore and felt like I can say any of those things and I'll still be met with love and I'll still be met with acceptance. And that's the home part for me. But I think the surprised part is, I suppose, that kind of James Hollis question of, will this diminish me or enlarge me? And I think you can apply that to a relationship. Will being with this person diminish me or will it enlarge me? How much should we listen to our friends and family? If I let my parents choose everyone I dated, I know the ones they like. They like the ones with the big personalities. Yeah.

Every girl that I ever brought home that my parents fell in love with had a big personality. Yep. I think my mom has that too. My mom, she could be charmed and that's a dangerous instinct because now your mom's falling for the same thing you are. Yeah. And the awkward, shy ones, my parents were like, no, we don't like that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We don't like her. Yeah. I'm like, cause she's awkward and shy, you know? I think when you feel like you're really growing with someone and when you feel like you actually make a really great team it's one thing to observe someone in isolation and go sexy person charismatic person successful person like this person's great look at them go

but i don't think that's the same thing as me and this person make a really great team together. Like we take care of each other. We've got each other's backs and we function really well together. I talk about in my book, four levels of importance in any relationship or in any situation with a person. The first is admiration. And that's just where we admire someone. We may not, they may not even know we exist, but we just think they're great. The second is mutual attraction. And that's the point of chemistry and connection. The third is commitment. That's when we're actually saying yes to each other. And the often overlooked part is compatibility is do we actually work together you know it's one thing to say yes and to commit to each other but does it work do we function well together and

that's i've had a lot of failed relationships with really good people like really really amazing human beings who with a couple of exceptions i'd struggle to say anything bad about anybody I dated because they were good people. That's why I dated them. It just didn't work as a relationship, but they're good people. And, you know, wrong time, wrong place, wrong maturity, wrong circumstances, whatever it is. But so that's, that's an interesting one. I also think that there's a thing that happens to us as we get older, it can be a bit dangerous, which is that we feel the need now to justify all of the no's that we've handed out in the past. All of the times we said, not quite right. the past, all of the times we said, not quite right. When we're looking for someone today, the stakes feel almost impossibly high because it's like, now I have to find someone who makes sense of the people that I have decided not to be with. And I think it could raise the stakes

massively of the person we eventually choose so much of what you say makes sense and i think those four things are brilliant but a lot of what you say i'm struggling with because there's paradoxes involved that i can't trust my instinct i can't instinct. I can't worry about chemistry on the first few times. I can't give too much too soon. I can't chase someone and give a lot of energy upfront. I have to consider, am I growing or am I diminishing? Which really you only discover in time. So there's that rub, which is how do I even know? I have to feel safe. I have to feel at home. And sometimes you have that feeling and that feeling goes away.

Or sometimes that feeling comes later. And what I've been guilty of is projecting safety because I want it so badly. I say a couple things. I get a couple good responses. Then I project a level of safety that I don't have. I've done that. And so much of what you say is so insightful, but how does one start? For all of this, there's more nuance when you get into it because the paradoxes you're seeing are very, like that to me is what makes it so challenging but it's what's forced me to make distinctions that i think if you if i only started what i was doing doing what i was doing last year

i wouldn't have made certain distinctions but i've had to make those distinctions because the very contradictions and paradoxes that you point out there are very real to me, and I've come across them again and again. For example, a phrase I used to say a lot, I still believe in it today, but it needs nuance. A phrase I used to say a lot was, don't invest in someone based on how much you like them. Invest in who invests in you. And that's a very important idea. I say that again, because that is exceptionally good. Don't invest in someone based on how much you like them. Invest in who invests in you. Invest in someone based on how much they invest in you.

That is a very, very important idea. And if we just did that, we would save ourselves from 80% of the heartbreak that we're ever going to experience in our lives. Now, there's a problem with that idea. The problem is if both parties go into the situation with that in mind, we're in a standoff. Who goes first? I don't know if you're going to invest in me yet, but I have to invest a little bit. Otherwise I'll never know. Or what if they both read your books and take the advice and both invest.

And so you get a false sense of investment because they're following a strategy and it feels good. And so I'm investing somebody who's investing because they have following the same strategies as me. But well, I think for me, you know what I mean? There's like an intellectual investment. There's an emotional investment. Like I can intellectually do something,

but I think it's more likely to yield what I'm looking for. Or I can feel it and it feels natural. I'll give you a real life example. I met a couple at a, they were at a wedding. I was at a wedding. They were a wonderful couple. They're clearly in love. In fact, I think they've now engaged.

They said to me, when we hug, we make sure to hug for at least whatever the number was, 20 seconds, because that's when the oxytocin releases. And I was like, I mean, okay, sure. And I'm a cynical idiot and cynical bastard, even though I know a lot of the science, I'm still cynical. And I was talking to her and she says, can I give you a hug? I'm like, yeah, I'd love a hug. And we start hugging. And I said to her, you're counting in your head, aren't you? She goes, yeah. I'm like, stop. We're ending this hug right now. Right? You've intellectualized an emotional connection, right? Here's the great thing about human beings. Human beings, they know, they can feel, right? We're social animals. Like

this is all inbuilt. I said, we're going to do this hug again, right? This time, do me the favor and just don't count. Just hug. Just be in the hug. Right? And we hugged and it was beautiful. I don't know. Maybe it was 15 seconds. Maybe it was 20 seconds. Maybe it was 25 seconds when it started to feel like magic. And I stepped back and said, how'd that feel? Did that feel fantastic? She said, yeah, I'm like, I'm no counting required. I resonate so much with what you're saying. And I think this is part of the problem with the work that I do and the work that you do and the work that others like us do, which is we're explaining things to the point where people are following the advice intellectually, but they're forgetting that the relationship

is emotional. My feeling about all of this is exactly the same as yours. I always hated my own work for that. Like I think of like sex therapists, there is an irony that we all know intuitively to be true, that it's both helpful if you're in a relationship where you need therapy around sex and intimacy to get help but also by shining a light on it there's something immediately unsexy about that and that we're now going to have to get over that hurdle that we've talked about the fact that there's an issue and now that's in the room. It doesn't make things bad advice, but it does mean that you can intellectualize things to the

point of like you've pulverized them into nothing. But I think that's the world we live in. I think that's the world we live in of 30 second TikTok videos and reels and stories and all for terrible reasons, which is you know well-intentioned people are trying to help but they're also counting the clicks the views the the forwards and saves you know and and the incentive structures all screwed up in the advice giving world but i think you you find people that make sense to you and it's going to make mentors really important who you decide you vibe with and who you listen to because you're going to connect with someone who you're going to you're going

to hear the authenticity in what they're saying like to me the other side of the equation of the don't over intellectualize it is that i can't stop thinking like i over intellectualize everything i'm the same way i i over i'm hyper rational hyper logical i'm also very sensitive and emotional but i like breaking things down yeah for me as a single person i made choices that consistently led me to more anxiety and consistently led me in directions that weren't right for me, either because I just wanted to be with someone instead of no one. Well, I think that we live in a world today where whether or not it's true for us or not, it truly feels like there's endless options. We go shopping on dating apps.

We're shopping for people. It's Amazon. You're scrolling through the products on the shopping shopping app and once you're done there you there's instagram and once you're done there there's hinge and once they're done there there's like you could just keep going to a new platform and being presented with what feel like constantly better options this person's got more of this that person's got more of this, that person's got more of that. And we end up with this kind of composite in our mind of the person we want that is built on all of these different inflated standards. It gets really dangerous because it starts to miss the point

of what actually makes us happy. Like I sometimes think of people going from East to West in America and how, like at some point, every person had to say when enough was enough. Like one person would say it in Chicago and another person would say it in Montana and another person would say it in Seattle. And it's like, when do you decide this is home? Do you keep saying that, well, they have mountains over there, or if we keep going, we might find an amazing ocean or it, it, at a certain point, what makes a home a home is that we actually put down roots, you know, FOMO being something that is a kind of a bit of a joke, because by definition, anytime we're doing anything, we are by definition missing out on practically everything. So worrying about the

party you missed tonight, why aren't we worrying about every event on earth we're missing tonight? We're always missing out on basically everything. And the same is true in our love lives. There's plenty of people that would be awesome to marry. There's a lot of them. And I think that there's this feeling of if I don't make the choice, everything is still possible. And that's exciting. There is something exciting about that. Versus saying, actually, you're going to miss out on all of it anyway. You're going to miss out on everything. So whoever you settle down with, you're going to miss out on all of it anyway. You're going to miss out on everything. Whoever you settle down with, you're going to miss out on everyone else. Everyone. I promise you. And I promise you, whatever you wish your partner had, I guarantee you somebody else has that.

Somebody else has it. And at some point, I think we have to decide where our peace is going to lie. Okay. So gratitude is the thing we're talking about here, which is going into a relationship the same way we should be going into life, which is like, I don't believe in bucket lists. To me, a bucket list is a list of things I haven't done. Right. And so I'm forced to look at the things that are missing in my life. That's what a bucket list is. So I live my life with a reverse bucket list,

where I will write down something I've done or an experience I had or a place I visited that I never thought I'd ever have the opportunity to do. And it was magical. And then I write it down. That's great. I keep adding to it. That's insane. It should be done. And so I think what you're talking about in a relationship is instead of looking for the things that are missing and knowing that somebody else has them, to also say, or just replace that with, look at the things that I'm getting and other people can't give me those things. Because just as you are missing out on everything, other people are missing out on this. Because just as you are missing out on everything, other people are missing out on this. And if you can't be grateful, then maybe this is the wrong person for you. My friend, Dr. Romani, who's an expert on narcissism, she says, the moment someone says,

what is it about this person? What do you love about them? The moment you find yourself saying, I don't know, there's just something about them you're in trouble yeah because it shouldn't be hard to talk about the incredible qualities yeah and the incredible character of the person that you've decided yeah to spend your life with someone who has the raw materials for a great relationship with you and vice versa i see it like it's a plot of land yeah and we often make the mistake of really overvaluing the land and a relationship isn't a plot of land it's like the it's the castle the two of you build on that land and it's all of the ways that the stone gets weathered

over time. It's not the house, it's the home. Yes. What you invest in it is the fact that the two of you have this incredible thing you've built together that becomes, it actually does become one of a kind. Because the two of you, only this combination of these two people could have made this. So here are some of the things that I'm getting, right? Gratitude in the relationship and looking for the things to be grateful for rather than the things that are missing. Teamwork, which I love, that we will build this. We can break this. We have the opportunity to make it whatever we want and build however we want to build it, which I think is magical. One of the things that I need you to wax philosophical on is confidence. Is it correct that we first have to find confidence and love for ourselves before we can find love for another? Or can the right

partner help us find that thing that has been elusive even to ourselves? Both. I don't think you don't get to show up with zero ability to connect to yourself or to love yourself and to just give someone else the responsibility but i'm not a big fan of like this thing that goes around where it's like you have to have done the work on yourself before you ever meet someone else you have to be happy first like give me a break how many it's an impossible standard how many people do we know that are in happy relationships that absolutely were not enlightened people on the day they met their partner like it's kind of an insult to people who are actually out there and single that we keep

telling everyone you just haven't done enough work. Like the rest, all the rest of the world who's married, Kate, who met Brad at university at 21, they'd figured it out. Like, and they're still married. And that's because you just, you're not enlightened enough yet. I have a real problem with that idea. It's a tricky one because you could be insecure in a relationship and the relationship can be highly functional. Or you not i mean we all have insecurities yeah we all have insecurities but i we can be insecure and the relationship can be functional but it doesn't mean the relationship wouldn't be a lot stronger if we worked on those things can i answer my own question and then you can tell me if i'm right or wrong yeah and then i want to tell you something about confidence because this is like this you're

on onto a whole passion for me right now. It's okay to be insecure in your own relationship. You're always going to have insecurities in your relationship. The thing that makes the relationship, one of the things that makes the relationship work is that you're open and vulnerable with your partner about those insecurities.

And if you attempt to hide those insecurities from your partner, that's when the problems will arise. But I think to have a successful partnership, to be able to sit in that very uncomfortable space, even with someone we love, and say, I need to tell you about me and what I'm insecure about and what I fear, even if it's completely nonsense, that's what, you know, most of them are irrational. And it's very freeing to be able to do that. If you have a safe partner.

If you have a safe partner. And if you learn your partner's not safe, that becomes a kind of filter for the right or the wrong relationship. My relationship now, I can be very, very honest about these things. And I met with love. I've had relationships. I had one relationship where I said something made me insecure that night. And the response I got was, I find that really unattractive. Simon, it destroyed me. It like really, like it wrecked me. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. For me at the time, I was like, I'm never ever doing that again. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's the last time.

Like I could have cursed Brene Brown's name. I was like, Brene Brown's all about vulnerability. This doesn't work for us. You can't use this as a man when you're in a relationship. And of course you can, and she's right. But I was with the wrong person. Of course. And that's not a lesson that you always learn at the time because you turn it it inwards yeah and you say oh i'm the problem or i am gross i am tragic i

have to stop doing this or yeah like what's wrong with me this insecurity is really unattractive yeah but i oh that's that's nice the the thing i think that's really important in relation to loving ourselves because that's a very very overused idea is the loving ourselves thing it's a it's become very trite I've I was fixated on that for a very long time because I was not someone who was good at that I never really connected with that idea I got it I'm I'm like, I get it, love yourself. Never any real emotional connection there for me. And I needed a more robust model for that. Otherwise I was never gonna be able to connect to it.

And for me, loving myself, and this is what I tell people these days, is you can actually make it very, very simple, which is firstly, if I like people, if I care about people, then I'm a citizen of the world. There's no reason why I should treat myself worse than I would treat anyone else. Forget treating yourself better for a moment. There's no reason why I should treat myself worse if I care about people. The reason we treat ourselves worse, by the way, is because we apply a romantic model to loving ourselves. In the romantic model, we fall in love with someone because there's a sense of mystery and excitement and space between

us and all the things Esther Perel talks about. We want to close down that space and we want to grab onto someone and, you know, what we do romantically in love. And we don't need help with that. It just happens to us. When it comes to loving ourselves, that's not natural at all for most of us. And the reason is because the romantic model doesn't work. If familiarity

breeds contempt, who would you have more contempt for than the person you've spent every minute with for your entire life? Your entire life. You know every one of your flaws. You know the worst things you've ever done. You know all of your bad points on a level of detail, microscopic detail that you'll never know about anyone else. So it's really easy to hate ourselves. And for anyone who's listening to this, if you really struggle to love yourself and you find it really easy to hate yourself, welcome to the club. To me, that's the normal state of affairs for someone that you've had to room with for your entire life. If we take away the romantic model and we look for a different model,

I think there we find the basis for actually loving ourselves, which like I said, starts with I'm one of those 8 billion people in the world. So there's no reason to treat myself worse. Could there be a reason to treat myself better though? And if so, what would it be? And the way I've come to look at that is that we are the only person who's been given the job by nature, by God, whatever you believe. We're the only person who's been assigned the job of taking care of the human that is us. No one else on earth has been given that as their primary job. There's one human that it's your job to take care of. And that's you. When we start to look at it through that lens, it changes things. It's a bit like the way a parent is with a child.

If you ask a parent, why do you love your child most parents will not say because they got an a in english literature last week and they're really gorgeous and they dress well and they'll say what are you talking about that's my son that's my daughter they're mine do you know what's really funny is how honest people are with about their kids as well like like i mean you hear parents talk about. And especially somebody who doesn't have kids, it's really funny to hear, which is like, you look at their friends and be like, Oh, my God, that kid's a really good looking kid. My kid's kind of funny looking. You know, it's like, like, yeah, people haven't romanticized that their kids are the most gorgeous kids. They haven't. They know that there are other kids who are more talented, smarter, more athletic, better looking. But the difference is this one's mine. This one's mine. And I think that if we can have the same, this one's mine love for a kid where we can completely say, not the smartest kid, not athletic at all, by the way, my kid's got two left feet and two left hands, you know, and I love when parents talk with absolute love about the imperfections or the comparisons of their kid versus the other kids.

Which is amazing if you think of it, like if we could apply that to ourselves. And yeah, I wish we could do that to ourselves. Oh my God. And you can, because guess what? You never had a choice. Right. You didn't get to go to the buffet of humans and choose one. You got given, this is your human. You never got the chance to choose otherwise. Just like no parent gets to design their kid.

No. Other than the partner that they choose, I guess, is some element. Which is where comparison becomes silly for all of us. Because it's like, did I have a chance to be Simon? No. I only got the chance to be Matthew. So my job is not to worry about what Matthew doesn't have. My job is to give Matthew the best life I can possibly give Matthew because Matthew is my

responsibility. My job is to make Matthew as happy as I can make him. And if I was making Matthew as happy as I could make him, what would I do today? And if you ask people that question, today? And if you ask people that question, if it was my job to take care of this human, to make them happy, to keep them out of harm's way, to keep them away from unnecessary suffering, to put them in the line of sight of people who actually want the best for them, what would I do for them today that is different from what I did yesterday? And the number of people that having asked that question would say, well, today I wouldn't text that person back is vast because yesterday their primary directive was not to take care of their human. Yesterday, their primary directive was to try and get an instant feeling of gratification or satisfy ego or feel comfortable or feel in that

moment like i'm just doing something that feels familiar or but you don't necessarily do any of those things when you actually care about someone the same way that a parent doesn't give their child everything their child wants because they actually are vested in their child's happiness, not in what's comfortable for the child every day or what the child thinks they want every day. It's such a great metaphor, such a great little trick. This is your human. What would you do to look after it? Because it's very easy to be objective.

It's very hard to be objective about ourselves, but it's very easy to be objective about others. It's not I have to take care of myself. It's I have to take care of that kid. I have to look after my human, my Matthew, my Simon. It's quite brilliant, actually. What are you doing for the next nine hours? You want to keep talking? Because this is brilliant. We can do a 12-part series. I'll tell you a really funny story story and then we're done. I promise to anybody who's still clinging on. It's very often a woman will say to a man, what are you thinking? Sitting there watching TV, quiet moment. Woman will turn to man and say,

what are you thinking? And the guy will say, nothing. And we've all said it. And what we mean is nothing of consequence, but we say nothing. And the number of people we accidentally make insecure, because how can you be thinking nothing? Is it something I said? Is it something I did? Is this something with a relationship? And then you're sitting there just watching TV and there's a whole, I don't know what's going on next to me, but it'll come out in a day or two and it won't be pretty. Right? And so somebody gave me some advice a long time ago, which is answer the question, literally. Like if they say, what are you thinking?

Actually, the thing that you think is of no consequence, actually say what you're thinking. Let them in on it. And I remember I'm sitting next to my girlfriend. She goes, what are you thinking? And I told her exactly what I was thinking in that moment. And what I was thinking in that moment is, I wonder if the remote control will work if I point it backwards instead of forwards. And she said, that's what you're thinking and she went never mind and everything was fine i've it is so funny you say this i told her exactly what i was thinking i do exactly this

exactly this and it's the source of so many ridiculous moments it reminds me of like gareth in the original british office yeah yeah where he gets asked like what he's thinking. And he says, I was thinking, I was wondering if there'll ever be a boy born who can swim faster than a shark. That's what would happen if I point the remote in the wrong way. But you're right because this is exactly... but it's you're right because it's this is exactly like my mind wanders yeah and it thinks about ridiculous things and instead i just say them now if somebody asks me the question what are you thinking i will tell you exactly what i'm thinking in that moment and you'll be very disappointed yeah but you won't be insecure but you won't be insecure because because unknown is worse than bad news yeah you know yeah so i tell you something bad about the relationship at least we can talk it through. But if I tell you nothing,

I don't know where you're taking that narrative. On that note, Matthew, thank you so much. This has been an absolute joy, an absolute education. I wish you and your work to be nothing but out there

and I hope you have great success helping people the way you want to help them. Thanks, Simon. Thank you for inspiring me over the years and I sincerely hope we get to do it again. This was really fun. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more,

please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simonsenik.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsay Garbenius, David Jha, and Devin Johnson. Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Rudershan.