Let's Be Honest with Kristin Cavallari - If You're the Only One Initiating... That's a Problem

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Dating coach Matthew Hussey joins me to discuss why people are having such a hard time finding a successful relationship, why we get obsessed with someone when they don't text for 2 days, how to figure out if you're compatible with someone, qualities for a long-lasting relationship, why having tough conversations is a necessity, attention vs intention, and having FU Confidence.A word from our sponsors:Ritual: Get 25% off your first month for a limited time at ritual.com/BEHONEST. Start Ritual or add Synbiotic+ to your subscription today.Quince: Get warm weather ready with Quince! Go to Quince.com/honest for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Thrive Market: Go to ThriveMarket.com/honest for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift!Farmer's Dog: Get 50% off your first box of fresh, healthy food at TheFarmersDog.com/honest. PLUS, you get free shipping!Bon Charge: Go to boncharge.com and use code HONEST to save 15% off my favorite Red Light Face Mask and other wellness products.Urban Stems: Mother's Day is coming up on Sunday, May 12th. You can visit UrbanStems.com/honest to see some of our top picks! Just be sure to order in time by using code HONEST for 15% off your purchase. Produced by Dear Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. This is Let's Be Honest with Kristen Cavallari, a podcast all about getting real and open on everything from sex, relationships, reality TV, wellness, family, and so much more. And just a fair warning, there will probably be some oversharing. Welcome in to Let's Be Honest. I'm your host, Kristen Cavallari, and today's conversation is one that I've really been looking forward to. I have with me Matthew Hussey. He is a world renowned coach, a speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. His new book is out, Love Life, How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person, and Live Happily No Matter What. It is

a guide with tools and principles for healing your heart, finding love, and loving life. Hi. Hello. I am so excited that you're here. I think you give hands down the best dating advice. Thank you. So I'm excited to dive into it all. Me too. I'm excited to be here. Okay, good. All right. I want to start with the dating culture today. What do you think is wrong with it? And why are people having such a hard time finding a successful relationship? I think part of it is that we are, our nervous systems are kind of programmed for dopamine. And I think it makes it really hard to sit with anything for very long. We're so used to novelty now like I in writing this new book it to sit there in front of a laptop and just write for two or three hours at a time was at times in the beginning of the process was excruciatingly difficult yeah and I and it really was like a wake-up call for me about how much my

attention span has been hurt by you know the way that we live our lives today and it dating is a part of that you know the dating apps are this dopamine machine and it feels good to swipe and it feels good to get matches and it feels good to get messages and it feels good to swipe and it feels good to get matches and it feels good to get messages and it feels good to get another one from a new person. And that's a very addictive cycle for people. So I think that's tough. And then I think there's less humanity in the process because less people are picking up the phone and it can feel harder to even just

get to the point of a date where you meet up and then people get back from a date and they're onto their phone again. And there's a ridiculous amount of temptation there that just interrupts the process of attraction. So you're not like getting home and building anticipation for the next time that you are going to see someone in the same time that in a bygone era you would have done. Instead, you're now bombarded with just the buffet again as soon as you get home. And I think that interrupts a lot of the attraction circuits that allow us to kind of psychologically invest in the narrative in the same way as we once would have done. So it all amounts to much more superficial surface level interactions instead of the depth that,

and not just the depth, but the staying with something long enough to, for it to even become what it could be. You know, the thing that makes something great is that you, I'm not, I don't, there's a word, there's a way we use the word settling that's very negative. Like I don't want to settle for someone. And that's understandable. None of us in life want to be shortchanged. We want to feel like we got the best thing we could get in any area of life. And people are like that in their love lives. I want to get the best person I can get for me. And anything less than that feels like settling. But I think there's a way to change the language around that word that turns it into an immensely positive thing where instead of settling for

someone, we say, I'm going to settle on someone. And settling on is very powerful because it implies agency and choice and imbuing something with all of the meaning of a decision. It's like saying, where am I going to live? Well, when you settle on somewhere and then, you know, once you've really settled and you get your house or your apartment or whatever, and you say, I'm going to be here for a while, you start making that place into your dream place. And then you start doing all of the little things that turn it into this space that sparks joy. Every time you walk through the door. It didn't start that way. It gets better over time the more you invest in it. And relationships are the same way. But

to your point about dating culture these days, I think that never have we been less inclined to just settle on a person and then make that as good as it can possibly be. Instead, we're trying to optimize at the front end. And by continuously optimizing and never choosing, we never actually make anything. We never even see how good anything could be because we never spend long enough with anyone to see how good it could be.

Exactly. So how do we decide who we choose? So tell me, well, okay, let's talk about chemistry versus compatibility because, and I know you think that you need both, right? For a lasting and successful relationship. And I agree with you. So first I want you to explain the difference between the two, and then I want to get into them. Well, chemistry, I think is this,

it's a feeling, you know, you can have physical chemistry. You can have the kind of chemistry that is just, we really enjoy each other's company and the conversation flows. Isn't it all encompassing though? We need all of those, don't we? I think you can have, you could have chemistry with a friend, right? You can have, you can have chemistry. You can, I can meet a guy and be like me and this dude have amazing chemistry. I want to hang out with this guy all day. Like there's a kind of chemistry to that, but there's also the very animalistic physical chemistry we can feel with someone and we can have both. I think chemistry

can imply that very animalistic attraction. It can also imply a connection that you feel to someone, but neither are the same as compatibility. Because compatibility is, do we work together? Does it actually work? And compatibility is about a number of things. It's, are our personalities compatible? We may have an amazing time. We may have amazing conversation. But when we think of our values, do they line up? When we think of the way we see the world, are those worldviews compatible? Are they synergistic? When we look at our lifestyles, do they work together? When we look at our future and what we want, do our intentions about what we're building

align or are they completely different things? The timing of our life, does that line up? These are all compatibility issues. And so, you know, in the book I talk about there being four levels of importance in any situation with someone. There's admiration and admiration is just you think someone's awesome or attractive or hot or whatever, but it doesn't mean they even know you exist. So again, not that important. Level two is mutual attraction. That's what we're talking about when we talk about chemistry. That's when you like someone and they like you back. Level three is commitment. That's when you don't just have mutual attraction. You're both saying yes to something.

Okay. There's tons of people who spend all their time, you know, being upset or fantasizing about someone that they're in level two with. Right. That they never even reach level three with. Right. And my view is always level two is not that important. You could have chemistry with lots of people.

It doesn't mean that there's anything behind it. It doesn't mean it's going anywhere. So we get very caught up in level two. Yeah. And that's where we create a lot of story in our head about what should be instead of what is. Yeah. Level three is commitment. That's when two people say yes to each other.

Yes, I want to be with you. Yes, let's build something. And level four, because level three, even that isn't enough. Love want to be with you. Yes. Let's build something. And level four, because level three, even that isn't enough. Love is not all you need. I can't wait to have that conversation with you too. You need more than that. You need compatibility. And two people can say yes to each other for a relationship, but if they're incompatible, for example, even in their morality, if one person thinks it's okay to lie and the other one is all about telling the truth and honesty, then you're going to have a compatibility issue. If one

person wants to spend their life traveling the world and one person's a homebody, you're going to have a compatibility issue. So the compatibility is the final level because if you have all four of those things, you could have a long-term relationship. If you're missing compatibility, you could have a relationship, but it can be hell on earth. Yeah. Those are usually the toxic ones, right? Or they're not toxic. Yes. And they could just be relationships where two people make each other unhappy. It's not that either of them is a bad person, but they just, they don't work together. Yeah. Okay. And do you think that chemistry can grow? Because I've always taken the stance that it can't. Like I've always said, I'll know within the first five minutes of meeting someone, if this could grow and turn into something. But I've heard a lot of people say,

you go on a date with a great guy, for example, he's a nice guy, kind, all the things, give him another shot, even if you don't feel it. What do you think about that? Chemistry is very complicated. It's very complicated. We often, I think, misdiagnose anxiety as chemistry. And someone appealing to our nervous system in a way that's familiar we we often think of that as chemistry and sometimes we need to suspect ourselves in situations where we say we have so much chemistry with a person because there's something about the way they push our buttons that triggers something in us there's a certain like charm there's a certain swagger there's a certain like charm, there's a certain swagger, there's a certain charisma, but it's,

in, it's the kind of thing that we've seen a hundred times before that also comes with a hell of a lot of negative side effects. And, and also there might be something about the dynamic that person creates with us that feels like chemistry, but is something else. You know, if you felt more, if you started feeling more obsessed with someone when they didn't text you back for two days, that's not chemistry. Nothing material changed. They just fell off the radar. Right. So why did they suddenly become like, why did now we feel like, oh, now I really like them. I think I really like them. You know, why is it when someone doesn't text us for five days and, you know, we have a

great date with someone, then they don't text us for five days. And then a day later they text us and say, what are you up to? And we go, oh my God, this feels so good. That that's not, I don't think of that as chemistry. I think of it as there's a roller coaster of highs and lows that we are used to that feels exciting. And we start using it to convince ourselves how much we like a person. On the other side, there are people that we meet that, you know, I think, or even that we just see online that we judge very, very quickly

without really knowing that that's someone we could have chemistry with or we could have sexual attraction with. Because I think sexual attraction is an interesting thing. You can feel sexual attraction with surprising people. Okay, yeah. You can have it and go, this person's not my type. That's so strange. And you wouldn't have picked them out of a dating profile lineup, but there was something about them after, like when you got to know them a little bit in

person or, and sometimes even when you think of workplace relationships, why is it that they build? Why, or why is it like you can, someone can on week two or month three, suddenly do something that makes you look at them a bit differently. Maybe they finally get comfortable enough to be a little goofy or maybe they show up to a company event looking a way that you didn't know they could look or, you know, there's just something they did that they didn't do before. And you suddenly start looking at them and you're like, huh, why do I feel this? I didn't feel this on day one. So do I think if you go on, you know, a date and you feel absolutely nothing that it's

worth going on another date? I'm not so sure. But do I think people don't go on enough dates or don't like actually spend enough time in front of people to really know if they have chemistry. Yeah. I think we, I think that we are like, what am I trying to say? Our door policy for who we let in is really strict and so strict that we actually end up turning away a lot of people that we might have chemistry with if we actually got them in front of us and spent a little time with them. Okay. So you think people should be going on more dates? I think we are far fussier on dating apps than we ever would be in real life. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I agree with you. Well, I think someone's personality,

obviously, like what you were just saying, that's how you can really distinguish if you're attracted to someone or not. It's so hard just based off of some photos. If most people took their dating history of everyone they've ever dated and not people they dated and felt nothing for. I mean, like if you took everyone you've ever dated and had real attraction for, I guarantee you half of those people would never have made it into your life via an app. I've thought about that. I've definitely thought about that. You're like, that boyfriend, he wouldn't, I would have swiped left on him. I know. It's so true.

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and how can you distinguish between what is actual chemistry and what is sort of that addicting, sort of toxic behavior? Like we were just talking about, if they ghost you for five days and then come back in? How can you distinguish what is real chemistry? Well, I think it's almost worthwhile to say, how do I decide what is chemistry worth having? Okay. Because I might have chemistry with a person who's not a great person but maybe there is like an energy that you know you find them sexy and there's an animal attraction there but they're a horrible person right right it's so i almost i think it's better to say

what kind of chemistry is worth pursuing for me. Okay. So that the wrong kinds of people, chemistry or no chemistry, just can't get through the door, especially if you're being intentional about finding love. Right. And the kind of love that is going to make you happy. So I think it's worth asking the question, what qualities are necessary in a person for me to be happy and peaceful? Okay. And then sticking with that list.

Yeah. Like being really clear on like, that's got to be, no matter what, that's got to be the price of entry for someone in my life. Is that no matter what else they have or don't have, they have to have those things. Because what we do instead is we just say, I want to find someone I'm attracted to. And then we start looking for all these charisma and the way they look and the way they dress and their life and what they represent in life and all of these things that don't, none of them have a bearing on how great of a partner they'll be. And we then get really into this person and we have, I always say we have really high standards for things that don't matter that much. And we have really, really low standards for things that matter the most. So, you know, people, I get people say to me a lot,

I have really high standards. That's my problem. And I'm like, but you just asked me about how to get a guy that has been treating you like crap for the last three months. So how high are your standards? What you mean is I have really high standards for how tall they are, how sexy they are, how successful they are, how this they are. Like, what do you mean you have really high standards? You have really high standards for those things. And you appear to have no standards for how kind this person is or how considerate they are. You seem to have no standards for how much they see you because this person doesn't get you at all, it seems. But apparently that doesn't matter.

These things really matter. So I think we have to start changing the things we have high standards around. It doesn't mean you have to let go of the things that you're looking for in terms of their appeal to you, your attraction to them but you at the very least you better start valuing the other things appropriately because otherwise anyone is going to get through the door okay right right and you're gonna you're gonna be in a situation a year from now where you're coming to me saying i keep i just you just, you know, this person, we have an amazing, we have amazing conversations and the sex is great. And I just love their company and da, da, da. And then you go, what's wrong? And they're like, well, they don't want to be with me.

Okay. Well, maybe we should have a standard around that because that feels like a really crazy thing. It really feels really strange not to have a standard around someone wanting to be with you. That should be like the baseline of who you give your attention to. Yeah. Okay. So what conversations should we be having in the beginning to knowing if we're compatible, making sure we're on the same page and realizing what kind of qualities, like what kind of qualities should we be looking for? What are the most important qualities for a long lasting relationship? Well, I think it's worth us asking what in my past when it was missing made me miserable. Okay. You mentioned that in the book. Yeah. That's a really important question. Yeah. What was missing in my past relationship that even though I told myself this person was

so important, I really didn't want to lose them. What did they not have or not give you that made your life miserable? Start with those things because what you realize, and it's powerful to start with those things because you already have a reference point for the fact that when they were missing, it didn't matter how great you thought the person was, you were really deeply, deeply unhappy. I've been in situations like that where I was anxious all the time or I didn't feel safe in the relationship and I was so unhappy. And coming out of the situation like that, you go, I'm never putting myself in that situation again because it doesn't matter how great someone is. If you feel anxious all the time, it's misery. So nothing is worth me making that a negotiable thing ever. So ask yourself what was

missing and then make that your precedent for what your expectation is or what you must have next time around. But I think in terms of some general qualities, I think someone who, firstly, someone who sees you, like who do you feel the most yourself around? It's a pretty good question for a relationship. Who do you feel the most yourself around? Yeah. It's a pretty good question for a relationship. Who do you feel the most yourself around? Who makes you more of yourself? Who makes you a better version of yourself? Yeah. Who do you feel seen by and truly acknowledged by? Who makes you feel like you can share more of yourself? That you're not like kind of just showing one angle of yourself and because you feel like that's the good angle.

But who do you feel like the relationship gets better the more of you that you share? Okay. Is a good question to ask. And then who do you feel is a great teammate? Yeah. I don't think we spend enough time thinking about who's a great teammate. I know for me, one of the things that made me go, oh, I want to marry this person is because I thought she's an amazing,

like I want to build something. I'm ready to build something and I can't imagine a better builder than this person. Like she's an amazing teammate to me. She's an incredible builder. That I was like, I'm never going to do,

I'm never going to find someone who is going to have my back like this. Yeah. Who's loyal like this. Who's going to show up for me in this way. Who's, you know, truly accepts me for who I am in this way. Like it just, all of that stuff added up to the most important things for me and kindness. Like, and do you, did you figure that out just over time or are there specific questions that you can ask to know if you guys are on the same page with all of that stuff? Well, I think it's the reason we have to, I think we learn a lot if we actually are brave enough to have standards early in the relationship. So instead of ignoring, a lot of us are too afraid to speak up about things that we would

like more of yeah or things that we don't feel like we're getting enough of yeah because we're worried about scaring someone away we're worried about being difficult or high maintenance but sharing the things that you would like yeah is a really good it will reveal quickly what it is you have. And we often just hold back. So stop holding back as much as you are. I've always said you don't learn who someone is until you have your first tough conversation. It is so important to have those conversations because that's how you know if you guys can solve problems together, how you're going to treat each other when there's something tough that comes up. You just learn so much about someone. So how can someone build up the confidence to have those conversations though? Well, know that not having them has never worked.

Right. So necessity, necessity is a pretty good motivator. Yeah. You don't even need self-worth to say, I can't not have this conversation. Also recognize that standards are a catalyst for attraction. Instead of thinking of standards and having a hard conversation as being this thing that is going to scare someone away, see it as actually with the right people, having a standard is what attracts them. It's part of what is attractive. So I'm not being my most attractive self if I can't actually say what it is I want, or if I can't say, hey, that wasn't enough for me. If you go on a great date with someone and you don't hear from them for five days afterwards, and then all of a sudden they're like,

so what are you up to tonight? In your head, play out like the scenarios because there's a part of us when we're in people pleaser mode and when we're not wanting to be too vulnerable, there's like, I'm not going to let them know that you're upset. Yeah, but it bothered me that we had a great date. I thought it was amazing.

And then I just didn't hear from them. Yeah. And now all of a sudden, five days later, they're like, what are you up to? So when we're in that state, we go into like avoid a mode or indifference, right? We'll be like, hey, I'm good. How are you? Like you want to seem easy breezy. Exactly.

And when we're in that state, that's not necessarily the best thing to do because all it does is like approve that cycle. Right. You're saying that's normal for me. state, that's not necessarily the best thing to do because all it does is like approve that cycle. You're saying that's normal for me. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. We went on a date. I didn't hear from you at all for five days. And now you're asking me what I'm up to tonight.

Like that's perfectly normal in my world. Yeah. Well, there's trust me, there's no shortage of other people who are doing that. And by just mirroring that, you're approving it. You're also showing yourself to be the same as everyone else because we live in a culture of people now who think their power is indifference. Okay, right. Instead of being like, no, no, no, my power is in my humanity. Yeah. That's what's going to make me stand out.

So you might say to someone, where was my text three days ago? Or you're five days late. Where have you been? You could be playful about it. You don't have to suddenly have a sit down conversation with someone you just met. But you could be like, you're five days late. Where have you been? That's a playful way to call someone out and be like, yes, this wasn't quite what I wanted or what I'm happy with. But so depending on the stage you're at, you can, I think people often think of standards as like this aggressive conversation

you have to have with someone instead of, no, no, no, you have to learn to calibrate it depending on where you are with someone. Like, you know, it's not like you're entitled to start yelling at someone on week one for something that they're doing that's annoying you or whatever. They'll definitely never call you again.

But you can, you can point, like you can playfully jab someone. Yeah, just letting them know you've got boundaries and expectations. Exactly, like, and you can be playful. You can do it with a wink. Yes. Still, I always think about it in dating as we spend too much

time mirroring someone's behavior and not enough time modeling the kind of behavior we want to see from someone. When you send the message I just said, you're modeling what you want to see. You're saying, firstly, you're modeling a level of honesty and directness. You're also modeling the kind of communication you want, which is more frequent than you've been giving me. By the way, it also should be said, if someone didn't message you for five days, why didn't you message them in those five days? What's that? Well, let's talk about masculine and feminine energy. I'm curious what your stance is on that. Because to me, I, in the beginning, want the guy to kind of pursue me.

So I wouldn't send a text because I would want the guy to reach out to me and not chase me, but definitely initiate. So what do you think about that? Well, I think it's fine. I think we have to pick our moments, right? So if you had a great time on a date, there's nothing wrong with sending a person a message being like, I had a really great time tonight.

Okay, I think night of 100%. But if I didn't hear from a guy for two, three days, I'd be like, he's just not into me. That's what I would think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's fine. Yeah. I think we, my thing is this, patterns are important. Like what's the pattern of the

communication? Do I think it's the end of the world if you reach out on day two or three and you're like, Hey, how's your day going? No. But if for the next three times, you're the one who initiates the text conversation, that's a problem. Now, if you find that there's a pattern where you find it's like a bit too often, you're the one initiating, then I think that's an appropriate conversation to have where you're like, I feel like I initiate more than you do. And it's not that that's a problem. It just makes me go, I feel like I need to step back from this because we're not in the same place. Right. Okay. You know, and it, again, it's a level of honesty there about that,

that most people are not willing to do. I think at any point you can have a conversation being like, hey, it's sexy to me when you take the lead. So I need you to take the lead. Okay. You can point that out to someone if they're being a little bit, because you don't know the reason they're being passive in the beginning. It could be a number of things. It could be a little tinge of shyness. It could be a bit of them not wanting to come on too strong. It could be them being in a bit too much of a pleaser mindset where they're like, well, what do you want to do? There's a bit of that too sometimes with people. So we all need to be directed a little bit. If you say to someone this is you

know I'd find it really attractive for you to take the or I find it sexy for you to take the lead like you tell me what we're doing tonight okay like that's a when someone hears that there's a bit of a like oh okay yeah I mean okay if that's what you want then yeah I'll I'll do that and by the way if someone can't respond if you can, if you are that direct with someone and then they can't take the direction, then okay, fair enough. You might say, this isn't my person. This isn't for me. I think too often we're not being vulnerable enough ourselves and we're expecting somebody

else to like read our minds and come forward too much. When I was single, I remember going on dates where at the end of the date, I was convinced this person's not attracted to me. Like I just, there's no way. There was nothing on that day that suggested that this person is attracted to me. And then a day later, so I'd be like, I'm just going to, I'm not going to leave it. A day later, I'd get a text saying, it'd be so great to hang out again. And I'd be like, what?

I literally was like, there's no way this person wants to see me again. Isn't that so funny? Yeah. And so we, sometimes I think we do, we do like, we're playing this game in our head about how much someone is supposed to do, or they're supposed to come over to me. If they want to kiss me, they have to come over here and they have to do that. And we're in our heads going, she definitely isn't attracted to me. Like she hasn't dropped one hint that she finds me attractive. She's not made one comment, nothing. She hasn't touched me once on the date. Like she definitely, it would be wildly inappropriate and a massive leap for me to go over there and kiss this person based on what I've been receiving.

So I think we do need to be careful that we don't get into this like overly proud state where our pride actually becomes a barrier to giving someone enough hints and enough cues that we want them to keep going. Okay. Right. We've got to get our egos out of our way. Yeah. Because there's a balance. There's on one end of the spectrum, there's like crazy amounts of pride that stop you from even leaving the house. And that like, if you think the extreme of pride is i don't need anyone yeah right the and then there's degrees then all the all the way on the other end of the spectrum is like extreme proactivity and if you go too far in that direction you're the one texting someone every day right and you're not even paying attention to the fact that they only ever react by texting you back they're never texting you first they're never you're the one doing all of the work here.

Right. There has to be a sweet spot between pride and proactivity. And it's a nice kind of little model because everyone can ask themselves, am I, am I too much on the scale of like being overly proactive with someone that's not showing me anything? Or am I so proud that I never get rejected, but I also never give someone a green light to actually try. Right. Okay. Yeah. That's such a good point. Talk to me about attention versus intention, which you talk about in your book, explain the difference. And then you have six steps for figuring this out before you get too far in with someone. Yeah. Well, you might have to remind me

of the six steps. You're challenging my memory there. No, no, no. I've been writing this over four years. If you take attention, for example, attention is level two. That's like two people who are giving, you know, someone can give you attention by saying, what are you up to tonight? Like that text is attention and attention feels good. Yeah. But intention is where they actually mean for it to go. And whether where they mean for it to go is the same as where you mean for it to go.

Attention can sometimes feel like intention. I think that's where we get confused a lot of the time. Yeah. Like someone, if someone, you know, takes you somewhere special for your birthday and you're like, they must really like me and there must be something here and this must be going somewhere. Otherwise they would never have taken me on that fancy trip or they would never. And, and that's actually not necessarily true. Right. Right. Someone, and by the way, we get so hung up on this idea of whether someone likes us,

not realizing that whether they like you, isn't the point. They, they, if they're doing all of these things with you and they hang out with you. Yeah. They like you.'t the point. If they're doing all of these things with you and they hang out with you, yeah, they like you. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't mean anything. Right. They like you to a degree, maybe.

Or they really like you, but they just don't want a relationship. Right. Or they can really like you and not want any of the same things you do for your future. Right. That's really important as a distinction to make

because otherwise you go around all the time with your friends and you're like, so do they like, I just don't get it. Why do they keep doing, like, why do they keep looking at my stories or why do they keep going out with me or taking me to these places or whatever if they don't like me? No, no, no. They like you. It's just, it doesn't matter. They don't want the same thing you do. And you figure that out by how? Having those tough conversations. Yeah. Look, I remember early in dating my wife. She was in London. I went back to LA and I just slowly started to text less and less. And it started to get to the point where she was like, this isn't interesting to me anymore. Like I'm not, she liked me. And by the way, I liked her, but at the time our intentions were not aligned. So I remember

sending her a message saying, I don't know how long I hadn't spoken to her for, but after it might've been a week or something, we hadn't spoken at all. And at this point she was just starting to like in her mind not that I knew it at the time yeah she now she's like yeah I genuinely started to back away because I was just like oh this I've had enough of this person now I didn't realize they're not there with me and now that I've realized that I'm backing off yeah and I sent her a message saying I miss you well didn't turn out how you wanted it to. Well, I also don't think I deserve that reaction because I, you know, she picked up very quickly on the fact that that message was out of sync

with how much I'd been trying. Okay. Yep. So she sent me a message back and she said, and now bear in mind, if she was mad or she just had decided to back off, she could have been like, I'm just not going to text him back. But that wouldn't have communicated anything. She also could have been like, I'm going to not show him how much this has bothered me because I don't want him to think he has all this power or whatever. So she could have just mirrored me and be like, miss you too. How are you? Right. That wouldn't have communicated anything either. In fact, it would have communicated something. It would have communicated the wrong thing. That you can just do that. That you can

just do that. You can fade and come back and nothing, there's zero consequences to that. Right. So that's where the kind of being cool backfires. Yep. She, instead what she did was she sent me a message that said, hey, I hope you're well. To be honest, when you send me a message like this, I don't really know what to say. We haven't been that close for a while. And rightly or wrongly, this message comes across as a bid for attention. Wow. Oh my gosh. I love that. Yeah. That was her message to me. What did you think when you got that? Exposed. I was like, I was like very naked, you know,

because she was right. Of course she was right. You know, there was a part of me that was just reaching out to see if she was there and to get a hit of attention and to feel connected. And there's nothing malicious about it, but it was like a, you know, I just, I'm in a state in that moment where I'm trying to feel something, right? And you should, people have to start seeing it that way. Like if someone's reached out,

but they've not been there for you, then there's a good chance they're just trying to feel something. And you've become the vehicle for them feeling something. Yeah. So I'm not proud of that, but that's the truth. Yeah. And she sent that message, which was a very, like, just a beautifully worded message.

Because if you think about it, language matters, right? This is why I don't believe in necessarily people feeling like they need scripts for everything. But I think seeing something like that is very helpful. Yeah, absolutely. Because it teaches you a language. Yeah. And there's a language to standards. That's why I put so many examples in the book.

Because once you understand the language, you're like, oh, I can make it my own. But there's a reason why this language matters. This language works. So when she said, hey, I hope you're well, there was some warmth to it. And then it was, you know, I, to be honest, when you send this, I don't really know what to say, which is her way of saying it's, this is confusing behavior, not attractive behavior. Then she says, we haven't been that close for a while now. Well, that's her pointing out the elephant in the room, right? She's like, you may not be mentioning the fact that you've not been trying, but I'm not going to ignore that fact. So we haven't been that close for a while

now. So that's her pointing out the discrepancy between what I'm saying and what I've been doing. And then she said, and rightly or wrongly, which is a really nice phrase because it takes ego out of it. It doesn't say this is absolutely what you're doing. It just says it. I might be wrong, but this appears like, right. She said rightly or wrongly, this message comes across like a bid for attention. So I might be wrong. I might have misread this whole situation, but it sure feels like this was a bid for attention and not a genuine act of connection because you want to progress things with me. And by the way, that story isn't a story of how I then saw that message and thought, oh my God, let's be together.

This is my future wife. It wasn't. It was a story of me realizing this person wasn't going to tolerate that from me. Yeah. That they had a higher standard than that. And that I wasn't going to be able to bring this energy to this dynamic. And so we parted ways for a while after that. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I think it's important people hear that.

I do too. Because otherwise it sounds like this one message is like a magic bullet and it worked and then everything worked out great. But real life isn't that simple. And instead we went our separate ways for a while. And it, what is I think really important about that is that she didn't, because I backed off, she didn't then four days later go, Oh no, what have I done? And then reach out and go, how's your day? Right. Exactly. Because that, exactly. Because that then is, what that says is

the message I sent you wasn't a standard, it was a tactic. Yeah. And there's a big difference between standards and tactics. Tactics are what you do to get a result. And if you don't get the result you want, you just change tactic and try something else. A standard is who you are. This is who I am. This is what I expect. It doesn't change because I miss you. It doesn't change because you then genuinely take me at my word and you back away. This is who I am. And when you maintain that standard in your life, you make space for the right thing. You make space for someone who's right to come along or you make space for the person that you're actually employing that standard with to genuinely see that the only way into your life is to become that thing that is important to you and that nothing less is appropriate. That's amazing.

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Again, that's code honest for 15% off your purchase. Well, I think to have these standards that you're talking about, I think the underlying thing is confidence, right? And you talk a lot about this. You call it FU confidence in your book, which I absolutely love. And it's interesting because people have always come to me with how do you have confidence? That's the number one question I get for the podcast. And I haven't talked about it because I don't know how to explain it. So I'm really excited to talk to you about it because I think you explain it so well in your book. So explain FU confidence and what it means and how we can all achieve it. What's been your best answer when people ask you?

Well, okay. So I, in my earlier day, like my teens, when I was on TV in high school, I said I wasn't confident. I was just faking it till I made it. Now I think it is knowing yourself so well, really getting in touch with yourself and not settling for less. It's being okay being alone. I think that's a large part of it when it comes to dating specifically. It's picking yourself over something that's not going to work for you. But it's a tough thing, I think, to just tell someone how to have confidence, right? So how do you explain that? Well, I talk about confidence as being

something that is in three different levels. So there's surface level confidence, which is how you walk, talk, and act. That's really just... Faking it till you make it in a lot of ways? it's the level that can be faked. Okay. Yeah. Not easy, not as easy to fake as everyone says it is, but it can be faked. And we all know people with wild amounts of insecurity who portray a lot of confidence on the surface. But that's not to say the surface level isn't important. I think it is important because

away from the kind of fake it till you make it idea, even just, you know, our ability to have a conversation right now, the way we are to string sentences together in a certain way, to articulate yourself well, to move your body in powerful ways. It's all important. It's important for communication. So it's worth learning surface level confidence. I mean, if you take, you know, Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, so much of that was about surface level confidence. Important stuff, but surface level nonetheless. Then there's the second level down. So this is where we get a bit deeper. And the second level is called the identity level.

This is now, what are the things underpinning that confident exterior? What are the things that you draw confidence from? So it could be, I draw confidence from, it could be physical things, my house that I have that I'm really proud of. And it's a roof over my head. I know I can go back to, it could be, I'm confident because I have a great friendship group. I'm confident because I'm great at the guitar or I speak two languages or, you know, I have a great job. The identity level is also based on some of the things we think make us very capable, like deeper qualities. I'm resilient. I'm ambitious. I can rely on myself. I know how to be courageous when I need to be.

These things can give us a real sense of confidence as well on the identity level but as we move down to the third level we get to what I call the core and the core is something much much deeper it it because the stuff on the identity level can change. You can lose people, you can lose things, you can lose skill sets as you age. You can have failures that make you question your abilities. The identity level is precarious. So where do you go for confidence when nothing's going right? Where do you go for confidence on your bad days? That's what the core is all about. And the core is often described as, well, I think of the core as your relationship with yourself. And anytime you talk about your relationship with yourself,

you get into the self-love conversation. And this is a conversation that I think then starts to get really murky really quickly because I think there's a lot of very general, vague kind of platitudinous advice about self-love and what it is. Half of us can't tell if it's just a bumper sticker, like you should love yourself, or if it's a bubble bath and candles or like, what is self-love and, and, and on what basis do I really feel self-love? I think that's something people really struggle with because there's a lot of mixed advice on why you should love yourself. Right. Right. If you ask, I would say this on stage, I would be like, why should you love yourself? And people would initially be stumped.

Yeah. Because they'd be like, well, I told myself it was good advice, but now I'm realizing I don't know how, on what logic I'm applying this advice. Well, how would you answer that question? Why should we love ourselves? Well, this was something like, this for me was a multi-year like journey of discovery to,

to, to, to try and figure it out for myself, not just for other people. Because I was like, this, the way we're trying to love ourselves is broken. Yeah. We're trying to love ourselves the way that we love other people, like almost like the romantic model for love of like the way we fall in love with other people we try and do that with ourselves and it will never work for ourselves it's not like it we fall in love with other people because they have these great qualities and when you combine great qualities with a also a sense of like mystery and distance yeah right it makes us want to like get someone it makes us want to like be close to them and make them ours and be connected to them and so desire initially gives

way to falling in love well how do you desire yourself like how do you right if familiarity breeds contempt okay yeah with ourselves what other emotion is there even room for? I mean, we've been with ourselves every day since the day we were born. We know all of our flaws, all of our annoying habits. We know everything we've ever done wrong, everything that we feel like we've done that we're ashamed of or we have regret over. So when it comes to ourselves, we have a lot of contempt. And you ask some people are like, how am I supposed to love myself? I don't even like myself. So the question is, if the romantic model won't work, what's the model that will work for self

love? And when I started looking around in the world, I started to look for other models, other ways that we love, and the one that struck me as really interesting was the parent-child relationship, because if you ask a parent, why do you love your child, they will not tell you, well, because they got an A last week in English and they looked so cute in their little dress this morning. And they said this really funny thing and they're so intelligent and they don't do that. If you say, why do you love your child? That might be why you're proud of your child. If you say, why do you love your child? A parent will look at you like it's a crazy question. They'll be like, what are you talking about? Because they're my child. Right. Because they're mine.

Yeah. She's mine. He's mine. Yeah. There is a clue in there as to what self-love could look like. It's, if you think about it, we're one in 8 billion people.

So when we're trying to love ourselves, telling ourselves, special I'm special I'm special I'm there's a part of us like a cynical part of us that is like you're not special you're one in eight billion people like you're not special like there's people better than you in every way in every way you think you're great there's people better than you in every way. In every way you think you're great, there's someone better. Yeah. So you're not that special. And I would think that this for myself, I'd be like, I'm a very logical, rational person. I get it. Like I'm kind.

I get it. Yeah. There's plenty of kind people in the world. I'm not that special. I'm empathetic. There's plenty of empathetic people in the world. I'm a giver. There's plenty of people who give way more than I do. It's a trap to try to sell yourself on the fact that you're

special. But there is a way to love ourselves based on a different kind of special. And it's this, of the 8 billion people on this earth, you are the only one who is responsible for taking care of the human that is you. No one else on earth has that job. Yeah. No one else has that special relationship with that human that you do. You have to imagine that at birth you were given a human and someone whispered in your ear, just so you know, you're going to take on a lot of voluntary jobs in your life, but there's one job that is your number one job in this world from now till the day you die. Take care of, nurture, stand up for, be there for, give the best life to this human. Now, when we were growing up,

someone else had the job of keeping us alive and they may or may not have done a good job but someone else had that job of ushering us into adulthood but at a certain point custody of this human being full custody got given to us and from that point on we had one job, take care of this human. And when you realize that, it kind of changes everything. Because instead of worrying about whether you match up to somebody else, you go, oh, it doesn't make sense. Comparison through this lens of me being my human makes no sense. It's not like I can exchange me for another human. I got given a human, by the way, how lucky is that? That we're even, that we're a lucky person. Like we were one of the lucky ones that actually got given a human. Everyone who never existed, never got that. Right. So we already won the lottery. We got given a human.

Your job is to take care of that human and give them the best life possible when you realize that you stop comparing because you're like it's so irrelevant what anyone else has yeah that's not my human right it's like a parent worrying about what another kid has right like it's irrelevant it's not my kid yeah this is my kid my job is to give the best life possible to this child when you realize that it changes everything so now when you imagine someone saying to you why should you love yourself you say what are you talking about because I'm mine yeah yeah I'm my human like that's all. That's all you need. Yeah. So when people think about confidence, I want to almost kind of put a bow on this for people. When people are saying to you, how can you be confident?

We have to start defining confidence more clearly. that firstly, there's those three levels, the surface, the identity, and the core. But even within the core, there's two types of confidence. There's self-love and self-acceptance. They're saying, this is my human. I accept that I will never get another human and that my job is to give this human the best life possible. So I don't need to feel love for myself. I need to give love to myself. There's a big difference. One is a verb. One is an action. One is an approach. The other is a feeling. Stop trying to feel love for yourself. You don't even need to like yourself to love yourself. You just need to love yourself like it's your job because it is your job. But the other kind of confidence is self-esteem that is built by doing hard things. And the more hard

things you do in your life, the more you will build your self-esteem. But the more you decide to love your human, the more you will do those hard things for yourself that build self-esteem because you will realize that the only way to give this human the best life I can is to encourage them and to push them and to motivate them. To have standards. To have standards and to do difficult things that start to build this human's belief in what they are capable of. Okay. Wow. I love that so much. That's so great. For anyone, by the way, I know that's a lot to wrap our heads around. That and a lot more is what is in this book, in the confidence section.

There's also many chapters on how to find your person, how to find love. But for anyone struggling with their self-worth and their relationship with themselves, what I just laid out is laid out in the book in a very methodical way so that you can go back to it. I read this stuff for myself regularly because I need reminders. Like there are times where I'm burnt out. I'm having a bad time. I'm talking to myself poorly. I'm not being kind to myself. And those moments I say to myself, like, Matthew, you had one job. Where have you been? Yeah, I love that. I love that. Where have you been?

Yeah. You've been sleeping. You've left your post. Yeah. That's something I need constant reminders of. So I think one of the nice things about this book is that it's a reminder. It's a tangible reminder of all of those lessons that you can reread any time you need to reconnect with that idea that you are your human yeah it elaborates on that concept in a obviously a much bigger way than i could do in this hour yeah but i mean that's incredible and i don't know how we i think we just have to end there because it was so

powerful so great boom that's it that's it but everybody, so your book is out today, which is very exciting. You can get it anywhere you get books. Where else can everyone find you? Well, I would say you can get it anywhere you can get books, but there's a book site that we have called lovelifebook.com. The book is called Love Life. Hold it up here for people. Love Life, how to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what. And if you go to lovelifebook.com, you can not only get a book there, but if you take the order number on your receipt, wherever you get it from, it doesn't matter. Come back to that site.

You can use that receipt number to get a free ticket to an event I'm doing on May the 4th called Find Your Person. Amazing. And the whole idea of this event is to take all of the ideas in the book and to make them actionable for the next year of your life so that you can use them to find your person. So that's at lovelifebook.com. You can get both the book and your ticket to the event. And we also, for anyone who wants to come listen to our podcast, we have a, me and my wife do a podcast called love life and that is well you can listen to that anywhere you get your podcasts

and then what about socials too socials i'm on instagram at the matthew hussey i have a big tiktok account facebook account you're a really good follow i first discovered you on tiktok just great advice on tiktok that's so cool yeah historically our big platform was youtube and it still is i mean that's where people like we release a new video every week on YouTube yeah it's crazy now it's like it's the world we're living in oh my god people are finding us everywhere but yeah no I'm so excited about I'm really really proud of this and I know it's going to help a lot of people and I you know I encourage people To even if you're in a place in your love life where you're feeling Hopeless or you're feeling like just scared because that's the truth. We want everyone wants to find love and it's and we're unfortunately

We're shamed for wanting it. Yeah, I'm talking about it but there's nothing shameful in it we all want to find love and You know whether you're someone who's looking for love, someone who's trying to recover from lost love or someone who has, you know, been single for a while and you just feel a lot of pain and chronic loneliness and fear that it's never going to happen for you. This book takes you on a journey through all of those things. And it's going to be relevant no matter what age you are. I have an entire chapter on this book called The Question of Having a Child that's dedicated to predominantly women out there who really want to have a family and they're scared because they haven't met their person yet and they're wondering what to do about that. You know, that's a thing I deal with, with people every single day in my programs. So, you know, I wrote a whole chapter on how to, how to approach that area of your life and those decisions that you have to make when you feel like time is running out or when time

has run out and now you're figuring out what's your plan B and how do you turn plan B into the new plan A, you know, like it's, it really goes deep in all of those ways. And I just can't wait to hear the feedback. So I, yeah, I can't wait for people to read it. I'm excited for you. The book is incredible. You guys are going to absolutely love it. So definitely check it out. And I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I got, I got, I got all the power. Yeah, I got all the power. Dear Media IRL is back,

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