Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 162: Why "Single-Shaming" Is Dumb (And How To Resist It)

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

No matter how far we’ve come, there is still a stigma in society for people who choose to remain single for longer than the average person.   And this leads to all kinds of judgment: you must be sad, you must want a partner, you must have a problem…   Matt, Stephen, and Audrey discuss why “single-shaming” persists and how to avoid feeling the pressure from society in influencing your decisions about your romantic life. ---  Let's Create Magic in Your Life, Together Join Me In-Person for the Return of The Matthew Hussey Retreat (May 30th - June 5th) → http://www.MHRetreat.com ---  Follow Matt @thematthewhussey Follow Stephen @stephenhhussey ---  Email us! You can get in touch with the show and give your feedback/thoughts at [e-mail]

Music Music Well, welcome to another episode of Love Life with me, Matthew Hussey, and my brother, Stephen Hussey. Hello, everyone. In the room at last, Matt, flown over from Manhattan, old Manhattan, to the sunny golden coast of LA. After two and a half years two and a half years because of um you know unforeseen world circumstances i haven't flown for about two years and now we're back baby it's lovely to have you here you can feel the energy in the room can't you it's all shifted tension dare i say i don't think there's tension no well it's your words your words now steven we have a special guest today it's normally you and me so the guest isn't me you are a guest and you are special but you're not today's special guest okay all right lay on me well we have audrey lestrat here with us who is not only

one of the most empathetic emotionally intelligent human beings i've ever met i also proposed to her what yeah do you not you didn't know this do you not oh audrey got it yeah yeah yeah i remember now do you not follow me on instagram uh drift in and out but i've seen a couple of posts right yeah well this one was a pretty important post when i when i said when i was announcing this right right yeah yeah so everyone else, remind me what it was about. Right. Well, this Audrey, I proposed to her. Great.

Thank you. And we have been meaning to do this for a while because Audrey is someone that is behind the scenes with us in the organization now. And we brought on because her ability to craft amazing content and add to the conversation has been extraordinary and so what people don't know is that when we're planning podcasts and when we are planning videos audrey is a fundamental part of that process with me jameson and you steven and we have been wanting to kind of involve her as a voice yeah even as a one-off but she gets nervous and she's very humble and and sweet and kind of prefers to stay behind the scenes.

But we actually managed to rope her into this today, didn't we? We did. I don't know how you did it. I don't know what you put in her coffee, but she's here with us today. Welcome, Audrey. Hi, guys. First of all, you made it sound like you proposed to me and you didn't sort of specify whether I said yes or not.

Well, if you want to know whether she said yes, follow me on Instagram and go back a couple of weeks and you'll see. That's a good way to get more Instagram followers. Nicely done. Learn if she said yes on the Instagram. Do not tell them, them babe do not tell anyone we thought we thought this episode it would be really nice to have a female voice given the subject and the subject is the insecurity that so many of us can feel when we find ourselves single. The judgment we can feel and even the shame that we can be made to feel by other people. The term single shaming is one that

you brought up, Stephen, when we were preparing this episode and you have an article that you're going to be bringing us today as a kind of launch pad for a conversation about how we can feel better and more at peace during the periods of our life where we are single. So before we get into that, I wanted to just say hi to all of our listeners and read a review that was left on iTunes recently from Ellie Dact. Always looking forward to a new thought-provoking episode. This week, I enjoyed the title, Wasted Your Love Life on the wrong person because although they weren't the right person for you at the time or ever and it may feel like wasted time there is still an exchange of love there which still contributed to your own personal growth stay awesome thank you so much for that review i also want to encourage others among you to come and review the podcast over iTunes. We are reading

them and it does help us spread the word about the Love Life podcast. I also wanted to make sure that everyone out there knew that coming up is the in-person retreat in Florida. And this will be one of the last mentions, I suppose, of the in-person retreat. Stephen, we're going to be spending six days together with all of our team and over 200 wonderful women traveling in from all across the world. We are indeed. And that is our first one in over two years.

So it's a huge thing for us. We are on pins and needles for it. We have surprises. we have parties, we have life-changing transformations that we always get on that program. It is the biggest, biggest thing we do. I think it's fair to say, Matt. It's certainly the most transformative experience we have and have been doing for over 10 years now. I'm very curious, Audrey, how are you feeling about this? Because this is your first time coming. Yeah, I have heard a lot about it from you guys.

I'm excited. I mean, I did the virtual retreat for the first time last month. And having always been kind of on the almost dipping in and out of it I guess I hadn't really seen the impact that it had but you know it got to about day two halfway through day two and I was like oh I really get it um so I can only imagine that everybody being together and doing it in the room will just be phenomenal i can't wait i'm genuinely excited i'm well knowing you're going to be in the room is going to make me it might make me a little bit nervous knowing you're going to be there the whole time there's

going to be a lot of our new team members there's a few who haven't experienced the magic of it yet so we're bringing them along to come and experience it themselves. But it's going to be a real return of the retreat. So it's going to be like Retreat 2.0. It'd be nice to see how tall everyone is because we only see them in Zoom, don't we? Yeah, there might be a few surprises. It's true. You never know. Do you notice people move differently than you thought they would as well when you meet them?

You've only known them on Zoom and they go, I didn't think they'd move like that in person. Yeah. What a surprising walk. Yeah, exactly. Well, that is happening from the 30th of May until June the 5th. And if you haven't registered yet for a phone call with one of our team to talk about it. This is an invite only program, meaning you actually jump on the phone to one of our team and they'll speak to you for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour about your journey, your goals, what you're trying to achieve in your life right now. And if they think it's right for you, they will extend you an invitation

to the program and you'll have the opportunity to spend six days with us in a beautiful part of the world on the beach. So you can go to mhretreat.com to learn more about the program, watch a video on it and book your phone call with one of our retreat specialists. Again, this will be one of the last times we get to talk about this because it is upon us. So go check it out at mhretreat.com. All right, let's get to it. Steve, you had an article that you wanted to talk about today in relation to the theme of single shaming. So can you kind of break down this article for us? Yeah, I want to talk about this because obviously there's a lot of people

who listen to this podcast at different parts, stages of their relationship. And obviously we do talk to lots of people who are single and looking. And I think it's something I always want to stress because I think it's such a cause of, sadly, it's such a cause of anxiety for people in judging what their label is. pejorative, sometimes accusatory tone from family or friends, or you are single, often with the phrase you are single still added to that, or why are you still single? And this article by the BBC basically asked a question. It said the number of singletons is increasing. There are more and more

people reporting every year. Many of them report being contented with being single as well. So more people are choosing actively to not be partnered. Yet people still insist on telling them, you'll find a partner soon. And the article says, what's with all the pity? Why is it seen that there's some kind of pity party for people who are single? And I almost look at it as, the article kind of alludes to this, but I look at it as the three S's. People either assume you're selfish, sad, or striving. You're too self-centered for a relationship, you must be really sad, or there must be something wrong with you or striving. You must be looking for a relationship right now.

Surely you must really want one. And I think it's just interesting to bring to the table where are the unfair stereotypes? Is there a problem with us just seeing things as a stage of your life you have to evolve through in a linear fashion from single to marriage to something else to buying a house to doing whatever the way we see our lives or people see lives as a kind of marching through tick boxes and i think single is is given this weird status as one gets older as kind of, don't worry, you'll transition out of the kind of pin, in my life,

anytime I've had someone to share it with, it's been better than not having someone to share it with. That the people that put pressure on other people to be in a relationship, if we were being generous and weren't just doing it from a place of judgment. We're doing it from a place of thinking objectively sharing your life with someone is a better state to operate in than not sharing your life with someone. Of course, we know that there's not, you know, there are other ways to share our lives with people, with friends, with family members, et cetera, but, or even with casual partners or people that we don't commit to long-term. But if I were kind of playing devil's advocate on this, I would say that the pressure comes from in the most generous interpretation, people having decided that, that sharing your life with someone is kind of an optimal state of play for a happy life? What do we think about that?

I think that you can certainly say there's forms of flourishing that take place in a relationship. There's challenges that are unique to being in a relationship. There might be great you know everyone knows falling in love is a wonderful experience people have felt it they enjoyed it they you know went through that whole thing and so you know clearly we have some yearning for love and romantic love is a part of that and so of course of, lots of people strive to be in partnerships. It's a very human impulse. And okay, in the 21st century, we have a more expansive view of what those partnerships might

be or how they might be traditional or non-traditional. But ultimately, yes, there's something about people do like sharing themselves with someone, I think. Which should be differentiated from falling in love, right? I think the differentiated from falling in love right i think the partnership element falling in love is something people enjoy but the partnership element i would argue is the part that friends and family or people who put pressure on us are more worried we're gonna miss out on i think there's maybe two archetypes if we're to zoom out of people who put pressure so to speak on single people one of them is loved ones who care about your well-being and they want you to find love and be happy and be connected and I think a less generous archetype is people who

put pressure subliminally because they actually have a little bit of judgment around it or they feel a level of superiority because they're not single themselves. And so I think they're two worthwhile things to identify, right? Because I think that pressure, if it only came from a good place, would not feel so aggressive to people who aren't in relationships

and so what you're saying are you saying it that comes from a good and a bad place at different times well i just think that the way that being single is demonized in society is seen as a lesser state and a state that's not desirable and you know poor single people who don't necessarily get to experience life in all of the ways that people in relationships get to I think that stereotype is does come from a judgment it comes from I guess what I mean is that if you are single, you feel judged. You feel like people look down on you. Yeah.

Not all the time, but that's probably fair to say. Yeah. Especially if you're a woman. There must be something wrong with you. And, you know, why are you still single? And all of those things that people just say to you all the time, if you're single past a certain age. And I think those are very different from the concerned family member who just wants you to find love i think those kinds of rhetorics

and those kinds of things that you hear from society they're the things that kind of shame you so to speak and make you feel bad about it rather than just yeah voice of concern i do i i don't know though i i do feel like the thanksgiving table when their grandma who's well-intentioned who's just worried about you says the thing that kind of taps into your greatest insecurity even though she's well-intentioned perhaps and granny's not just coming from a judgmental place but even her well-intentioned kind of wait but what's going on you need to find someone still aggravates a part of us that is deeply worried about that. If we're nervous about something and someone brings it up,

it just brings to the forefront that fear for us. But why are we deeply worried about it? And I think that's an interesting question, right? Are we deeply worried about it because we are desperate to find someone to share our life with or because we are made to feel like a freak if we don't have someone to share our life with, or because we are made to feel like a freak if we don't have someone to share our life with by a certain point in our lives.

Well, and the problem goes on there, that you are then, see, it's fine if there is a sense of, oh, Jennifer's looking for love and can't find it yet, and we're worried about her and she really really wants to be with someone then there's okay she really wants that and that's something to be solved and we can look at ways of helping and there's all genuine concern i think the thing is though but then it means if your inherent judgment is just because someone's single there's some problem then they

get in a relationship well what's the nature of that relationship is it good for them is it healthy have they just jumped into it and oh yeah we're all happy for jennifer she's in a relationship great well what if something happens and now jennifer's not in a relationship in a decade in 10 years 20 years now what is she has she failed has is she now someone to be pitied but we all thought oh she's made it and and so that's where i think the narrative gets really screwed up in that life is long and it's not a linear path and just because you've got a great job today and you've got a great husband or wife, it doesn't mean, these states aren't permanent. And that's why when we sort of ascribe

a special status to them, we're kind of then saying, well, but if you lose it, then what are you? And there's something, I do think there's people who do just well-intentioned think, maybe you have the belief, human beings are best in partnerships, like if that's your belief.

But I think that as a catch-all is probably causes you know maybe the majority of people that works for but there's loads of people that doesn't work for there's loads of people where their circumstances change uh you have non-traditional situations or whatever or just life happens to you. And then what society just tells you, oh, you suck now, but you were doing great when you were married for 20 years, but now you're not.

I suppose there is a, yes, we have to make a distinction between what's the pressure that I'm feeling that is coming from the outside that doesn't actually relate to what I want. It's just me trying to now wear a badge that's going to get other people off my back or make me feel like I fit in better to my family or to my friendship group or to society as a whole.

And the internal pressure we feel from a genuine fear of being on our own, that's a very real thing. And, you know, I do feel like part of where, when our family gets concerned about us or the people that just genuinely care about us without agenda, there is a intuitive feeling of, I feel like if this person I love doesn't find someone, it's only going to get harder for them. There's a kind of view of everyone else,

everyone's going to get paired off and you're going to be the only person left at the dance. There's that thing. And the ultimate fear, I think, not to be too morbid, but ultimately the thing they're most fearing is and if you don't find your person and it gets to a point where it's too late to find anyone because everyone in this world in this landscape where everyone's gotten paired off and there is no one available then you'll be on your own later on in life and i think that that's what so many people fear for themselves it's like their worst

fear is that they'll be alone later in life even if they're married now even if your mom or dad is married now even if your sister is married now your brother their their fear their greatest fear for themselves is that i lose my person and then I am going into old age alone and I die alone and so that therefore becomes their fear for you I love you and I don't want you to die alone and it's going to get harder the longer you leave it for you not to die alone. I feel like that's where that fear comes from for the people that care about us. And the part of us that isn't agitated by a kind of societal expectation,

but is coming from an internal fear of that happening. How do we quiet that part of ourselves in in the context of people asking these questions or nagging at that state for us i think as a woman personally i think that being single when you're when you want to be in a relationship and you're looking for love, being single at a certain point in your life is really hard. Like it's unbelievably isolating and difficult and makes you feel like there is something wrong with you. And it's scary as well so I think everybody nobody is impervious to that feeling some people get lucky where they meet people when they're a little bit younger when they're maybe in their late 20s and they just hit that kind of sweet spot of just meeting somebody they want to settle down with at a time that makes sense for you to settle down.

But I think that, let it just be said, that nobody is impervious to how hard that is and how difficult it would be. And I think if you find yourself in that situation, whoever you are, you will have and as in the situation being you are single you are looking for love you want to be in a relationship and it's not going anywhere you're not finding that connection I think that is an unbelievable an unbelievable unbelievably difficult situation to be in and and I don't think you can necessarily you can do things to quieten it but

I think it is just an ongoing struggle because until you do meet someone you will have that fear that you're not going to and if that's something you really want you're essentially scared of not getting the thing that you really want, which is terrifying, whatever area of your life. But I think also realizing that everybody is kind of one breakup away or one situation away from being single and no one is safe in terms of, no one is safe in their relationship, in their jobs, in their lives, in their looks, in anything. Nothing is for certain.

And so we're not completely alone when we're in that situation you know it's not a case of like you're the freak over here who hasn't got what they want and everybody else does because no one is safe and that's what levels the playing field really I mean we think that it's so uneven between people who are in relationships and people who are not but but anything can change at any moment for anybody and and does often so there is a sense in which there people are always entering and leaving the relationship room of life but i i do think that people would benefit from separating the because when we talk about single shaming shaming is a is an interesting word right there's there's fear-mongering that has is its own thing that's

like someone taking your fear of being alone and amplifying it shaming suggests there's something inherently wrong in what you're doing uh and that you should feel ashamed of the fact that you haven't found anyone that's the really that's the kind of insidious part of what people do and i think that it's a step in the right direction simply to remove the shame from being single even if you can't eradicate all of the fear of being single because the fear of being single is a human thing that's not i would argue a societal thing that's a human thing what is lots of people fear being alone in many ways like what if i i lose all my friends or you you know, people don't, you know, whatever people, people fear being isolated in certain ways. Right. Correct. If it's not being single. And even if you remove the word fear from it, you can just have sadness. I may not be afraid

necessarily, but I am sad. I am sad because I know there is this really wonderful experience of life to be had and I am not experiencing it. Or I could be sad that time is moving on and I'm my friend who has been in a relationship for 10 years. No matter what, I'll never get those 10 years that she's just had with someone that I can't by definition, if I'm 35 and I haven't met someone, I can't experience years 25 to 35 with that person. So there can be a sadness at having missed out or feeling like we're missing out on one of the great experiences of life. But I do think it's a step in the right direction to just start by removing, we have to remove the nonsense from the argument. The shame that people make us feel that we're somehow deficient, we're somehow lower status or have not got it together if we haven't met somebody or if we haven't, if it hasn't worked out for us so far. That's the part that we have to be able to let go of so that at the very least, if people could finish this episode of the podcast with only their fear, I would be happy with just that feeling of why I'd really like to meet someone.

And I'm sad and I'm a bit afraid that it's never going to happen for me, but I don't feel like there's anything wrong with where I am right now i feel like that would be a positive thing especially for for women who you know there's someone we all know that mentioned being at a certain age and being told on dates at literally being told on dates by guys that there must be something wrong with her that they don't know about right because she's still single and said the stigma is oh you must be crazy or there must be something we don't know about you yeah or you must be crazy or you must be wildly unhappy or there must be something really significant wrong with you that is going to come out and the article was saying like men get us men do as they get older get a certain stigma but like bachelor doesn't have the same like connotations

as say the word like spinster which kind of has all these you know pejorative terms bachelor the worst for a man is he can be seen as a child he's not serious or he's like incapable of committing to one person like he just wants sex or things like that but whereas a woman's one is more like oh it must be really sad you know what's funny actually something's wrong it's almost like a guy has the with a guy you imagine someone who can't commit with a woman people's mind goes to not worth committing to right yeah or has tried really hard to have someone commit to her. Correct.

Couldn't quite get there. She couldn't get commitment. Yeah, exactly. Whereas he didn't want commitment. But I will argue that it is changing. I do think women more and more are having the same probably unfair judgment of men who are single in certain stages of their lives. And I think that's because the world is changing.

You know, it's no longer such a man's world created by men for men, which is, you know, heavily biased towards making men feel good and women not so much. And I think that hopefully as the tables start to kind of turn a little bit and things start to even out, perhaps the judgment will also just get a little bit better on both sides because men won't want that label themselves you know I think people are just being more and more open-minded in general to that and to people being single later in life

because they're realizing that there are so many different inputs that lead you to being in a relationship or not being in a relationship. And yeah, it's just there's so many different ways that that can go nowadays. I remember Martin Snow, the boxing coach that you just saw in New York, Stephen, our mutual friend, who coached me for a number of years in boxing who's this old kind of rough around the edges new jersey guy really fun character and uh i remember i was when i was boxing and at a certain point i was getting obsessed with how i threw a punch one of the things he said to me was it's it's yours it's yours like it's your it's your punch you know it's like your life you can't you can't do it wrong it's yours and you can you can get so lost in obsessing whether you're doing it right or wrong where you forget like it's your thumbprint you your thumbprint is your own your love life is your own you can't

you in a sense you can't screw it up it's yours yeah and i remember sitting with someone who was my agent years ago having come out of a relationship where i just wasn't happy i didn't feel like this was the right person for me and i remember leaving this relationship and being demoralized because i wanted to meet someone that i felt the right way about and i didn't feel what I wanted to feel. And I remember he said to me at the time, he said, Matt, I just, I don't think it gets to be that easy for you. I just moved to LA at the time I met someone. And he was at the time he was like, Matt, I don't think you get to just move to LA and meet someone and be done i don't think it gets to be that easy for you um and there's something interesting about that because we do compare ourselves to other people we compare

ourselves to that that friend of ours who effortlessly met someone when they were 23 and has been with them ever since or you know our cousins sam and james our cousin sam who married jamie who she met when she was what 15 and they're still together now with two beautiful kids and that you know i i could compare my life with that or you could compare your life with that but that's not our path and and for some people the path is you meet someone who's amazing at 50 or 60. For some people, your path is you meet the perfect person at 21 and then you lose them to a car accident at 28. And then here you are again looking for somebody else or being single for the next 20 years. It, there is no right path. And that's the part that we have to let go of.

We have to let, forget whether there's a, uh, an ideal path. That's a different thing. Whether there's an ideal path, because let's say you're a woman and you want your own biological children. And therefore there is a timeframe on which it makes sense for things to happen. You may have an ideal path in your mind. That doesn't mean it's going to be your path. And you can't screw up your path because it's your path.

Yeah. You talked in the retreat about plan a and plan b and you know making peace with the fact that plan b or plan c might have to be plan a and i think there's something to that in this point which is if your love life isn't going where how you want it to be going right now making peace with the fact, with all of the beauty that is in your life, all the ways in which your life is awesome, and making peace, so to speak, with that life

and making that the life that you want to lead is actually the best way to then become the most attractive version of yourself and end up attracting the best partner for you right because I know that I was single for a few years and in the beginning I found it really really hard being single because I really wanted to meet someone and it wasn't until I got really kind of okay with my life as it was I still still, don't get me wrong, I still really wanted love. I really, really wanted to meet someone.

But it was, I was good. I was in a happy, good place. And I think that's only then was I actually able to welcome the kind of love that made sense for me into my life. And I think there's something to that, right? It's making the life that you have right now the situation that you're in right now making that your new plan a right yeah and not being obsessed with some past version of plan a because that's where people get stuck people get

stuck lamenting a plan a that's dead there's not there's no longer a possibility but they're sitting in it lamenting it and talking about you know steve we talked about someone we both know who a a guy who's not experienced in this this phenomenon in his love life but is he's seeing well he kind of is but he's seeing his friends who he kind of is, but he's seeing his friends who have got jobs and who have made things happen in their life that he hasn't yet. They've all achieved a level of success. He's not come close to they're getting married off and he's sitting there saying to himself that he's messed up his life because he hasn't done those things yet. He hasn't achieved anything that his

friends have yet he hasn't achieved what he thought he'd achieved by this point in his life but the crazy part is he's still alive and it's all still to play for yeah when there's an open field ahead right but but he's he can't do he can't make the most of that open field because he's literally sitting there lamenting the old plan a which is dead yeah and you think of how many people go through with lines of shoulds like should have graduated that age should have got married then should have bought a house then should have done you know that the more of those you have you are setting yourself up for all kinds of lots of things are not in your control and you, you know, I have no problem as well.

Like, don't get me wrong. If you want to make something a priority, if it's important, if you care about that right now and you want to direct energy to that, that's great. Like, if you really want to, it is a dream to own your home and work towards that,

or there's a certain goal, job. but i do think you have to accept that life doesn't always work on the timeline you want and there's sometimes a rhythm to your life that isn't one that is prescribed to someone else sometimes your life is like oh i thought i'd this. Actually, my 20s were for really building and growing in certain ways. And I had a lot of shit to learn and I went through loads of mistakes, but I actually had to focus on building a career or building security in other ways.

Or, you know, your 20s might've been whatever, exploring different things. Maybe they were having fun, whatever. But I think it's fine to, if there's something you know is important and you want to make it your, create the space, we do all kinds of things to say, hey, if you want a relationship, here's the things you actually can do, the places you can affect. But what I've noticed is that if you are doing the right things for a certain goal you have, you kind of then have to let

go a little bit of the timeline and the outcome it's like if you are doing all the things living the way you want to live you're being open you're meeting people you're having fun doing it and you you know you're feeling like you're living with your integrity then then it's like, well, okay, if the right person's not here yet, I'm living in a way that I'm fulfilled with. I feel like I'm doing my part. And if you feel like you're doing your part, you kind of then don't feel so much anxiety about the actual thing, because it's like, you know, if you're working on your business you feel like you're doing everything right you're working hard you know well the result will come if i'm making that a focus and taking it seriously and nurturing it the result will come it just might not come in the way or the timeline you thought it would come in well growth spurts happen in different parts of our

lives at different times and they happen in they happen differently on different time frames for different people life is funny you know you you could be someone who spent their entire 20s building avidly building a business and by your 30s you're done you're burnt out you're like i can't do this anymore i've just my whole of my 20s while everyone else was out kind of being a bit more fast and loose and having fun and do it i was avidly building something and now i am tapped out you could be anthony bourdain and spend your 20s doing drugs and your 30s working in restaurants and then in your 40s have a like literally you're on a rocket ship where you achieve so much and in your 50s he

became a megastar in his 50s yeah and then just when you think he's got it all and he's accelerated to this unbelievable point, then he ends it all. He kills himself. You don't, everyone has a different time. Who's to say like, it seemed like he had a terrible timeline for the first 20 years. If you insert by certain lenses, right? He was 40 years old and broke and struggling and had all these anxieties about where his life was going to go and so on. You could say the first 20 years, oh my God, what a terrible trajectory. You could say the next 20 years, what an amazing trajectory. And then you look at the next, you know, that

point and you go, oh, then that. You could be Sam Harris. Like jay when did sam harris get big he didn't get big in his 20s i think he was in his early 30s early 30s and and now he's like having the time of his life building the waking up app and and you know building his business and doing all of this which is amazing like doing this in his what what is he now, in his 50s? Yeah. That, you know, he's having, I would say in a way, like this huge entrepreneurial growth spurt and success in his 50s. That's amazing.

Someone can have the best relationship of their life starting at 50, at a time when someone who had the best relationship of their life for a decade in their 20s or 30s is alone yeah so we have this idea of this linear way that life is supposed to go and life doesn't care life does not care about that linear path that you had planned. And if you're alive and you're breathing, it's all still to play for. All of the things that you want to experience in life, they are all still to play for. Life is a cruel bitch. But it never, as long as you're still here, it never denies you the opportunity to have a whole new era. That's the interesting part.

It has many different chapters. Yeah, you're still here. If life has been cruel to you or if life has been chaotic or if life took away something the one thing you know is that if life if you're still here life won't deny you a new era if you want it and that's there's something very exciting about that and i think the one thing you can know for sure as well is that if somebody is being judgmental towards you being single it's because they don't know how vulnerable they are to having their relationship taken away from them and it's actually they're in a much more dangerous place than you are at because they're obviously ignorant to the fact that their whole

world could change tomorrow or they're coming from a fearful place of knowing that and it's their fear they're projecting onto you that you know they're not comfortable a fearful place of knowing that and it's their fear they're projecting onto you that you know they're not comfortable with how happy they would be if their life changed they would fit you know in in a way implicit in what they're saying is that if my life changed i'd be terrified for my own happiness yeah because if you're secure in your ability to be happy in different weather in different eras then you don't freak out so much for the people in your life. Because you believe I'll be okay and therefore they'll be okay too. We'll all be okay.

We'll all be okay in the next era, whatever it brings. I really like that movie, The Best Exotic Marigigold hotel I watched it on a plane mom mom wanted me to watch it for years and she loved it and I just never felt like my kind of movie and then I watched it on a plane it's a really sweet film it made me feel like filled with hope yeah definitely it made me feel feel like being older and having like another crack at it. It made it feel like, that's cool. It seemed fun. That's cool, yeah.

It seemed fun. Like there's always a new era. Like that, you know, I think about that when someone I love is going through a situation or finds themselves in a, you know, having to reset their life again. That movie comes to my mind because I'm like, like well this is your

fucking adventure best exotic marigold hotel era it's a new adventure yeah you're judy dench in india exactly be judy dench in india for god's sake the the the point you made audrey you know that we spoke about on the retreat the virtual retreat recently um was the point that was made that we have to at any time be prepared to make plan b the new plan a what that requires is for us to redefine the word settling we're not settling for the situation we find ourselves in. We're settling on the situation we find ourselves in. And there's a huge linguistic difference between those two phrases. Settle for implies we kind of gave up.

It implies we settled for a lower standard than we should have. We settled for a life or a person that was beneath our worth. Settling on implies a conscious act, a decision to make the best of the situation we find ourselves in. And the way that plan B becomes plan A is we settle on our current experience and consciously apply focused love and attention and investment to it. Much as you would wherever, I've lived in the back of people's gardens before in their tiny

little outhouses their tiny little back houses not outhouses jameson i didn't live in a toilet i've i've lived in the back of people's houses and i've lived in this beautiful house that i'm in today the one thing that's always been true wherever I've lived is I really made it cozy and beautiful and it always had a sense of magic to me because I settled I didn't settle for that place that I was living in I settled on it and invested in it and made it as gorgeous as that could possibly be. And like we said, when we focus on a dead plan A, that is the source of fear and anxiety. I thought recently that,

and if I could kind of leave people with something uber practical today, I always think of the phrase wait or create i'm someone who i i struggle i don't know if struggle is the right word i suppose because it's just become a relationship i have a relationship with anxiety which is true. I never used to call it anxiety when I was younger because I didn't really identify with that word. I just didn't have the language for it. But in my 30s now, I realize my whole life I've been dealing with anxiety in one form or another. And one of the areas that anxiety rears its head for me the most is in thinking

about what i've done wrong what mistakes i've made what i shouldn't have said the way that i think i screwed up today the the friendship today that i feel like I hurt by something I did, or the email I sent that I look back on and I'm like, oh, that was a, I wish I'd written that differently. I feel like I did the wrong thing in that email. And it all, it creates this anxiety, as does thinking about the fact that you should have found love by now, or you should have handled that relationship differently, or you should have, you never would have broke up if you'd have done this differently, whatever. To me, all of that anxiety of focusing on what happened and what we wish hadn't happened is a form of waiting. It's all kind of remaining still while we analyze and chop up the

past. Creating is the root out of anxiety and into creating a new plan A out of what we thought was plan B. Creating is whatever I said to that friend today that made me feel like, whatever I said to that friend today that I wish I hadn't said, or whatever I did today that I wish I hadn't done, creating is saying, I can do far more more for that relationship by what I do now and for the next year than damage I just did in the last day. There is so much I can do for this relationship. Or if that relationship is dead, there's so much, the infinite number of possibilities of new relationships I can create, new friendships I can make, new opportunities I can create far outweighs what I just lost. That's true after a breakup. That's true if you've spent the last 20 years of your life single. What you can create now by settling on your life now, not settling for, settling on your life now and applying love and

attention to it and seeing where it can take you that creation that creating is the root out of all of that grief about what hasn't happened in your life because you come to realize that what's possible still far outweighs what is already dead for sure I also think it's so important to remember that there is an abundance of love in the world and there is an abundance of people who will love you and ways of finding love and giving love and experiencing love and the more you And the more you become, the more loving and the more open-hearted you are, you become a magnet for love, right? And the right kind of people get drawn to you if that's the energy that you're putting out there.

But you have to not come from it from a scarcity mindset, but rather realize that there is just so much love in the world to be experienced at our fingertips if we only know where to reach out for it and and value it in the right people also and sometimes the fact that you took the scenic route to get there means that you have a different value you put a different value on it when you find it or you know the right love when you see it because you actually you went through it and you experienced a lot in the meantime you've done all the growth work and maybe you didn't waste time because of being pushed into being in relationships maybe you had the space for the right love later on if you weren't just jumping into things because well

mum really wants me to get married now so i'll just jump in with this person and by the way the person that does jump in with that person and then realizes it's all wrong and did the wrong thing. Yeah, they'll have their own path as well. That's a scenic route too. And they end up in the same place. So it's all this comparison and this judgment of each other that is just nonsense. It really is pointless. Your life is your thumbprint.

You're the only one who has it it doesn't matter what anyone else is doing it's your thumbprint it's your snowflake you can't screw it up it's yours yeah i love that so i want to just let everyone know if you are going through some kind of heartbreak right now, or if you find yourself in the position of wanting to meet someone, I really love what you said, Audrey. I keep wanting to say babe. It's a tricky one, isn't it? Because I never say Audrey outside of a professional world. And the podcast somehow sits in limbo

between the professional world of our meetings in the company and our actual normal life. You managed to avoid calling me babe on the podcast. That's true. That's true. Sorry, sweet. I really love what you said about you you found a way to be happy with your life the way it was but it didn't mean that you didn't really want to find love a lot of people can't

admit that a lot of people want to hide that and be like no no i'm really happy i don't need anybody admitting that is really powerful because both can be true. You can be happy. You can find peace now and also very much be open to the wonderful experience of meeting somebody. And if you find yourself in that place right now, or if you've been through heartbreak and you just want to know how to get back out there in a healthy way, we have a free guide called The Three Love Habits, which details three habits that are well worth forming in your life right now that will not only put you on a path to meeting someone amazing, but will allow you to experience peace in the meantime even when you're not meeting that person and will enrich your life in the meantime in other ways because our philosophy here is that

when you're out there making things happen for your love life there should be wins for your whole life we shouldn't have to do lots of things in service of our love life that don't give us wins everywhere else too. Absolutely. So if you want to check out that free guide, it's at 3lovehabits.com. It's completely free. It's a fun read. And it's something that will absolutely help put you on the path to finding love in a healthy way while being happy now. Matthew, we also have an email review from Inez and you can email the show podcast at

matthewhussey.com. If you keep it short, you've got more chance of us reading it out on a podcast. It says, dear Matthew and Stephen, I'm glad I'm coming across a situation where I needed dating advice from you because it has given me the opportunity to thank and congratulate you and your team for the amazing podcast you have created. There is always one sentence that ends up being my takeaway lesson from your episodes and your advice has really helped me grow

into a better version of myself. So thank you so much all the way from France. And Audrey is French. So as one of your countrymen, countrywomen, Audrey. Merci, Inez. I really love that idea that there's always one sentence that ends up being her takeaway lesson. Email us, podcast at matthewhussey.com with your one takeaway sentence

from this one. I'd be really curious to know, because we've said a lot of things here. I'd be really curious to know of this last hour, what's been the one takeaway sentence that spoke to you most? And maybe we'll read a couple of those in one of the upcoming episodes. Don't forget to leave us a review over iTunes. It really means a lot to us and it does help spread the word. If you know that this podcast will help other people, it's a small act of kindness today to help let other people know about it. And it means an awful lot to us too. So that's over iTunes. You can leave a review and it means an awful lot to us too so that's over at itunes you can leave a review and we look forward to speaking to you in the next episode thank you to

our special guest audrey today thank you thanks for having me guys it's been a blast uh yeah thanks very much we'll see you soon my pickles cheers everyone