Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 176: How To Stop Fear Of Abandonment Ruining Your Relationship

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

Today Matt and the team answer a listener who asks what she can do about fear of abandonment. When you're scared of someone else leaving, it can make you bail at the first sign of an argument or problem. You make assumptions and think the worst any time you have a negative moment. If you've struggled with the insecurity of worrying someone else will leave, this episode will give you some tools and mindsets to help feel more secure and clear about your worth and be comfortable in your relationship again. --- Join our next Virtual Retreat! - Claim Your Limited Time Summer Self-Care Discount ($100 OFF the usual price!) for The Virtual Retreat at MHVirtualRetreat.com. Offer ends August 7th! --- Email us! You can get in touch with the show and give your feedback/thoughts at [e-mail] --- Follow Matt on Insta @thematthewhussey Follow Stephen on Insta @stephenhhussey --- ►► FREE guide to download: “Top 5 Reasons Why Men Disappear” → WhyHesGone.com ►► FREE guide to download: “3 Secrets To Love” → 3SecretsToLove.com

And someone finds us hard to be with not for the original reason that we were afraid of but for the patterns that we demonstrate when we're afraid Welcome to the Love Life Podcast, where we help you find the love you want and love the life you already have. I am here with my wonderful co-hosts, Stephen, Audrey, Jameson, also known as jams today. Oh my God. You're going to love today. There's so much good stuff coming up. We talk about retroactive jealousy. We talk about the negative patterns we have at the beginning of relationships, where if we're afraid and we think that someone is going to potentially hurt us or leave us, we go into fight or flight response and sabotage the whole thing. And how do we stop doing that? We read your emails that you have sent in and we just have a good old time. Join us on the couch for this episode of Love Life. Who's on a couch? So, you know, tuck yourself in if you're in bed and listening to this

or strap yourself in if you're in the car listening to this any others no i think that's it okay good and let's get started with this episode i've started recording so i just don't want to let's make sure we don't say anything embarrassing about Matt oh but just before we start can you just sort out Matt's girdle Audrey yeah just push that in why would I need a girdle when my torso is underneath the table what's a girdle so you wear it to stop to like keep all your belly in it's like a corset for men can we just get a quick adjustment on matt's girdle he's popped out is that uh is a girdle just for men okay no it could be for men or women but i thought it was good it was like like loose skin on your neck

i think that's chicken neck no that's not that's a that's a wattle a wattle yeah a wattle i think so exercising and i don't need one anymore all right well let's just leave it on for now and we know you don't need it but let's just leave it on for this one and me and audrey i'll have you know, went running on Sunday. We went to a running club, didn't we? We did. Stephen, you would have been proud. We were in a shoe shop buying hiking shoes. And the guy said, tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. on a Sunday,

there's a run taking place over in the park in Malibu, four miles. You guys can come. I think he sensed that we were cool yeah he was really surprised when we actually showed up he was like oh you guys came I mean how many people honestly could you invite at 6 p.m on a Saturday to a 7 a.m run the next day and they would actually show you did the thing like um like the film yes man where you just you say yes and actually go to stuff when people make offhand comments and you know like he just shows up and he's like i came and they're like oh god you came we were preparing for the how to meet men masterclass uh for love life and we one of the things inside it was you

know say yes to more things and put yourself out there in more kind of organic ways so we were just living and breathing the content that we were creating really we've been saying yes quite a lot steven we would be proud i mean audrey it's mostly audrey saying yes on my behalf so we had dinner with friends last night we got dinner with friends tonight as well but i sort of wake up at the beginning of my week steve with just stuff in the diary that it would be i don't remember ever actually committing to i think audrey moving nightmare audrey moving to la as as sort of scuppered you out of your ferrety little hobbit bachelor existence takes one to know one, Steve.

And actually put you into the LA social scene at last. We went to dinner last night and there's people there I didn't know and she's told everyone that I call her a pig. Well, you shouldn't call me a pig then, should you? It was out of context. What could possibly be the context? That was rude of her, wasn't it?

You don't, why would you say that to strangers? They've got no context for that. Well, let's take some time and let's just set this context. Yeah, do we get any context? I sometimes call her a little pig. But I'm like, but it's like my little pig you know like oh you know every woman's fantasy also he does it when i'm eating or in the kitchen he comes over to me yeah come on i do it mostly at the end of the night after i've eaten after it's always after everyone's always after they've eaten in life it's always after you've eaten in life

that's true so i basically get in bed and i'm like hey i'm a little pig and it's cute it's like how in in spanish people say you know like gordo gordita gordito means my little fatty so you you get to decide it's cute you're like i'm being sweet and adorable and she will love it no i think deep down you'd be upset if I stopped absolutely not you don't you don't you don't understand the inner workings of your mind like I do I know that you would be upset if I stopped could you imagine if somebody like wrote in with this problem and you were giving them advice like my fiance won't stop calling me a little pig even though I tell him I don't like it she doesn't the rant that Matt

would go on to defend her honor can I just say she's never actually said she doesn't like it I don't like it no I don't mind so that's what we've been up to it's an in joke you know it's like an in thing it's like jameson it's like you and i making raptor noises so it's a it's like our thing isn't it yeah is this really that's a relatable reference it's one of them yeah are you going to give them an example of a raptor noise now so jameson and i, sort of anytime we enter the house, because Jameson basically has the code to my house. Well, not basically.

I mean, for years he's had the code. So, you know, if there's anyone just coming into my house, I know it's Jameson wherever I am in the house. But the other way I know is that there is a raptor noise

that he will make when he comes into the house and I will do a raptor call back just to make when he comes into the house and I will do a rap to call back just to let him know that I know he's there. It's like a sort of Jurassic park reference. I don't know where it came from originally. I think it actually, it came from when we would shoot a video and you were excited about it.

Matt would just make this like sort of excited raptor noise after he was done. Like, Oh, that's right it was oh we got it wrapped i would do it if i did good work yeah that's right so you'd go you do your one as you go through the door you do you do yours net you have to do your you have to show the evolution so you do yours you just i just i called cut on the camera. We got it. We nailed it, Matt. Oh, my God.

Yeah, that's as excited. So then I would come in in the morning and it's like 6 a.m. And I don't want to disturb anybody. So I just say. And one time I thought a crow had got into the house. Oh, you did, didn't you? You actually did. You thought a crow had somehow gotten in and it wasn't it was jameson's gentle raptor well and we all know that raptors evolved into birds i think

that's what happened right so actually it was um i was not wrong for thinking a crow had got into the house because i don't call jameson a crow no it's okay they're very intelligent we should we'll start calling the podcast the pig and the crow well and kick you both off it yeah we should do you know what i'd like to start doing i like it would just do a little like prize sort of some sort of prize competition thing where somewhere in the show there's a random rapticle and if you write in and tell us when it was in the show you get something I think this is

the worst context time contest idea I've ever heard no listen we'll just let us know we'll know people are listening if they send in we'll know that they actually listened because we'll

never put it in the first like 10 or 15 minutes it'll always be buried at the end of the episode why are we testing people to make sure they're listening do they win something well i i will say this i was testing people earlier when i you know on the previous episode when i said leave a review i was there was a you know a bit of like well hang on look you know we're here we're out here doing this are you listening leave us a review on itunes and um i'll tell you this jennifer hopkins passed the test even though she didn't successfully leave a review but she did write in to podcast at matthewhussey.com saying i'm sure this is a dumb question but how do i leave a review just listened to the podcast and thought it was great

oh yeah lovely steven but do you is there something i've been saying that's sort of misleading about how to leave a review no just get get yourself to itunes go and tap how many stars you want to give it preferably five and then you can put write a review but that's on the itunes podcast app if you're on your phone then go to the podcast app right yes yeah if you've got an iphone so go over to the podcast this is me telling everyone how yet again to compliment us go go over to the podcast app on your phone, click on it, then search for Love Life with Matthew Hussey. And then when you get there, leave us a review. Please do it because he looks really sad that there have been no reviews left since last week.

No, I'm doing a public service. I'm trying to help Jennifer Hopkins out. She's graciously said she wants to leave us a review and would like to know how. You're right. He doesn't look sad at all. He's very composed about the whole thing. What topic are we doing today? What's the subject matter of today? today well matt we're going to talk about fear of abandonment we have a question that got sent in from tara and she says after a few relationships well hang on hang on let's before you do that steven could i just would you mind if i just let everyone know a little bit about something special going on right now i'd love it if you did.

Did you know, Stephen, that until August the 7th, there is a summer self-care special on the virtual retreat? Go on, what's that, Matt? Well, what we want is for everyone to give themselves the gift of self-care this summer. But do you know what's a bit of a farce go on the idea of self-care being some sort of lavender bubble bath right because you know i do have several baths sometimes in a day right and if that counts as self-care then i mean you are excelling at self-care it's just hygiene it's just hygiene i don't think that quite cuts it. Self-care is not simply running yourself a bubble bath, Stephen.

It's not just pouring your glass of wine or opening a tangerine while you're in that hot, soapy water. It's not booking yourself a massage, although that might be a nice thing to do. That sort of stuff is, you know, it's the momentary pleasures of doing something nice for yourself, but that doesn't move the needle in terms of self-growth. Real self-care is about taking the necessary action to give you a greater long-term happiness and fulfillment, which is why the virtual retreat in November is the ultimate act

of self-care because we are all, all four of us, Jameson, Audrey, Steve and me, going to be spending three days with you with three days of immersion coaching for your whole life. And it's not a love life retreat, it's a life retreat. And the great news, Stephen, is that until August the 7th, there's a summer self-care special ticket that is available that gives you a hundred dollars off of the virtual retreat and three special bonuses. Now, one of them is my daily momentum formula, where I give you all of the nerdy little things that I do to make the most of my day. Audrey's already laughing because this sort of stuff she makes fun of me for, but it's absolutely life-changing. So that is going to be the first thing you get. And the

great thing is you get that on signing up. The second thing you get is Momentum Week. This is a ticket, a free ticket to a week where we're going to actually be getting together and working for an hour every day on the very things that we've been procrastinating. So this is a very, very valuable week-long system of spending an hour a day focusing on pure productivity together on the things we've been putting off. And lastly, you get a special Q&A with me just before the retreat itself so that you can ask me any questions about how to get the most out of the program. And then of course, on top of that, you have your virtual retreat ticket. All of that is available at mhvirtualretreat.com and is only available until August the 7th. This is a reduced price.

It's the best price you'll get between now and the event. We really believe in this. That's why you're hearing about it and not hearing about a commercial for mattresses or, you know, shirts. We're talking about something we really believe in and is coming up and the tickets are available now at mhvirtualretreat.com. Well, I wanted to start on a little email review, Stephen, before we get into the question for today. This is from Bettina who says, Hi Matt, Stephen and team. I'm at work at the moment listening to the episode three mistakes that stop you getting to commitment of the podcast and i am loving having audrey giving her opinion and point of view as a woman at some point when matt discusses someone

living in another country and how easy it is to say, come see me. I loved how Audrey speaks up and defends her point of view. I would definitely be the person happy to pack my bags and fly to a country to see someone just for the fun experience. I love to travel and see different cultures and languages. So it's a combination of two exciting things for me. Congratulations on the engagement, Matt and Audrey, and more space for Audrey in the podcast podcast please you go girl regards bettina thanks bettina that's such a lovely thing to send in thank you so much that was nice thank you bettina i love this well steven what was the question that was written in today by tara to podcast at matthew hussey.com, which of course is the email address for anyone who wants to send us a story, anything that you've experienced listening to the podcast,

just any sort of general commentary, ribbing, any of us here on the podcast, you can send in podcast at matthewhussey.com. What does Tara have to say, Stephen? So Tara says, after a few relationships, i'm now starting to realize the common factor in all the relationships is me how do you become more self-aware of your own patterns and break them i have discovered i have this fear of abandonment so when things get difficult sometimes my first instinct is to run and have one foot out the door i think it's self-protection help can you jameson do you relate to that at all or have you never had that because i certainly do relate to that no i totally relate to that i mean what part are you are you questioning like having

patterns or just the idea of when you get scared, when you think that someone might be doing something that threatens you or the relationship or when you when you're kind of when you get triggered and immediately think, oh, I might get hurt here. There's that that flight reflex. Yeah, 100 percent. I think, too, I guess there's two sides of it there's probably the the person that is uh terrified of rejection so they want to they want to just leave before they get rejected and then there's the other type i could just think of archetypes of friends of mine that just they're really good at being alone and so they'll just leave out of a certain kind of like laziness or not wanting to try so like you mean as soon as there's any kind of inconvenience then it's like oh I can't do I

can't be doing with this yeah so you probably caught me just like looking like I was thinking about this because I was trying to decide yeah is there a is there a distinct archetype that does this or is there a couple different types that's interesting do this yeah that's interesting I Elaine de Botton talks about the idea that when someone does something you don't like in a dating or relationship context well I suppose especially in a relationship context when someone does something you don't like, there's an immediate projecting into the future of what, you know, what makes us so angry or what makes us so upset, what makes us react so strongly is not just this thing in the moment. It's the thought of every time this is going to come up in your relationship and projecting that into the future in a catastrophic way which leads you not to thinking

huh that person did a thing i don't like today but instead to the conclusion you've ruined my life yeah that's what I relate to. I think more. You're more on that side. Yeah, yeah. Where it's like, yeah, because we've talked about how important storytelling is in a early in a relationship because you can't help but just kind of project. Your brain is like this computer algorithm that's just like, oh, I'm going to project

into the future. What will this be like? What will this reality be like years from now? And I feel like I'm very good at doing that. But then there's a negative side to that where it's like one little fight. You project that into the future and it's like, well, it's not that you got mad at me for leaving a dish in the sink. It's that now I feel like you're going to be mad at me for everything all the time,

forever to infinity. Yes. Well, so that's one type the idea that you know i'm immediately looking at all of the ways this could affect me negatively in the future and then there's tara who is saying that this is based in a fear of abandonment so when she feels threatened in any way like she could get hurt she's the one who she's like well i'm gonna jump first you're not gonna get there before me i'm gonna leave you before you have the chance to hurt me yeah i think there's a spark of of fear and a feeling of like oh god they're they're suddenly starting to feel some cracks or they're they're suddenly not happy and there can be a a mix of ego in with that

as well where that self-protection thing does come and says like well i i i'm not going to stand around wait for you to like get sick of me or for this to happen. Like I'm, I'm getting out. Like you don't like it. I'm out of here. And there is, that is self-protection and fear coming from ego as well. Exactly. And it, and it produces, that fear produces extreme reactions, right? And it can happen both in a romantic context.

It can happen in a work context. You can have someone who criticizes you at work. Your boss may say something to you and you immediately go into a fight or flight response. And it comes out as anger. The anger is, how dare you criticize me for this? I do so much. I work so hard or whatever. It might be that it comes out in you then attacking the other person. It might come out in blame. It might, but what all of that anger is, is fear. There's a fear of, I'm saying this, of course, in the case of the person that we're, the kind of person we're talking about now, the fear is, I'm, you're going to decide that I'm not

good enough. You're going to fire me. And I'm already projecting to that future. And my insecurity about that, my fear about that is leading me to this this terrified place and it's coming out right now as anger or defensiveness um and the same is true in a relationship we we had uh as an aside uh i want to come on to the idea of people who are worried about being abandoned in relationships but we we had a dinner last night with a friend of ours who is a movie director and he said jameson you'll you'll find this interesting i think he said actors when they tend it tends to be when they're mad on set and they yell at people, when they get angry, because we've all seen the kind of tirades that actors can go on or the footage of someone going crazy or the audio of an actor losing his mind on set at somebody. What he said is whenever an actor does that, what's actually happening is he's scared or she's scared. It comes from fear. Fear of I'm in a bad movie or, you know, the movie's going to be bad or this script is bad and I'm going to end up looking bad. I don't look good.

I look old. This other actor is doing better than me that I'm working with. And I shouldn't have signed up to this project because it's not going well, or I can't trust this director. And it comes out as anger, but what it really is is fear in that moment. And what he really is is fear in that moment. And what he said is what he learned,

when he learned it was coming from fear instead of just I'm dealing with an asshole, he decided the number one thing he can do is make them feel safe. If he can make them feel safe, he'll solve that problem. But to know that, he has to understand that it's coming from a place of fear. And I think that that's a very interesting thing to apply to relationships in general. How often is someone angry because they're afraid and therefore how often is the

solution to make them feel safe in that moment but to rewind for a moment we've got tara here she says when i get scared that i'm going to be abandoned. I leave first. So what is the solution to that? Audrey, what do you think? That instinct, you get that overwhelming fear that comes up and that fear makes you want to jump the gun and be like, well, I'm not going to allow this to play out and be the fool here and get trampled. I'm going to get out before that can happen to me. What do you think people should be doing in that moment? Because of course, some people might say, well, I'm, you know, that saved me a lot, you know, that saved me a lot of pain. And in a lot of cases, my instincts proved to be right. I was right that that person was going to

abandon me. I was right that that person was on their way out in some way or criticized me too much and wasn't accepting me. there's that battle isn't there between the instinct that is protecting us that sometimes has served us well and the knowledge the self awareness that tara has that that instinct can go too far and it can make her take the escape parachute too soon. Yeah, I suspect we can all talk ourselves into believing our relationship's gonna fail because we only see what we see in terms of our partners.

We only know what they tell us. We only see how they behave towards us. We don't know about 90% of what goes on in terms of our partners we only know what they tell us we only see how they behave towards us we don't know about 90 percent of what goes on in their brain when they're not speaking it out loud so to a certain extent I think we're always we can always talk ourselves into thinking that we're not safe we can always talk ourselves into thinking somebody could leave us but for me fear of abandonment feels very very intimately linked to a sort of you know a non-secure attachment to other people and I suspect I don't know much about it but I suspect there's probably different types of fears of abandonment because for instance the idea of kind of running away uh I I personally don't exactly relate to but I definitely know that I worry about

people disappearing from my life leaving me people I love or who have come to rely on leaving me that's something that I do think about and you can drive yourself crazy thinking about it because people can leave and things happen the really tough thing is that when we are in an anxious mindset or our nature trends towards that kind of anxiety and fear of being left of it's going to fail and i'm not going to be here when it does i'm going to leave now we tend to have extreme reactions to things right if you are speaking in terms of attachment styles it can produce an extreme anxious reaction and it can produce an extreme avoidant reaction in a sense the the

running away or the ending it prematurely is an extreme avoidant response to the situation i'm gonna leave you before you can leave me i had a friend who once said to me and it kind of reminds me of this and in a way it's um she said to me i never want to be the one they got over i'd rather be the one that got away well i think she phrased it as she said i always want to be the one that got away never the one they got over now the problem with that statement is that you're always the loser well exactly it's like i either way you don't end up with somebody, but at least I have my pride. You know, like that's what's kind of messed up about that idea is that it values pride over everything else. Well, I think it's interesting because when she was telling me about it, it was coming from a place of, you know, that's always been my mentality. And as a result, I've come out relatively unscathed

in terms of relationships. And I've been able to say that I was the one who always called it and whatnot, but I'm no closer to actually being in a long and happy and successful relationship. And she was actually working sort of to be more vulnerable and to make herself more vulnerable in a relationship in order to get over this idea that she somehow needed to control what the outcome is. We really feel like if we are left or abandoned, or not abandoned, but are left and it triggers that kind of fear of abandonment or are rejected, we really, really worry about how much that's going to affect us.

And we really think, you know, will I ever be able to get over this? Even though you logically think that, of course, you will eventually, you don't necessarily want to spend a year of your life feeling terrible. So I can understand it yeah but that's the thing right it's all about your relationship with rejection and what that means and the meaning you ascribe to that yeah there's a saying by there's a quote by victor frankel who wrote man's search for meaning and he said between stimulus and response there is a space in that space is the power to choose our response and in our response lies our growth and freedom and like when you don't allow if you just go stimulus response trigger protect myself get the power okay you're not gonna leave me screw this i'm out you've you it's fear

it's i'm not even gonna sit in this space and figure out what's actually going on here in case it means the worst but sometimes it's okay if it does mean the worst maybe that's okay and it might be it might just mean that okay maybe we don't figure this out and it means that we're wrong for each other and that's all right or this person decides something that's okay but but you are not allowing the space because that person might be like what the hell why did you go crazy over that one tiny argument why did you suddenly like bolt just because i brought up a problem or i brought up something that was bothering me and you bolt whereas they might

have been like i just wanted to solve a problem that was something was bugging me or something was an issue and i i know i've had that response in the past where i've been like self-protection mode and i've been like well you're going to criticize me like I you know and it I know I know now that that can be triggered in myself and the space it's incumbent on me to hold that space and say okay let's just sit and actually talk about what's going on here and maybe we can actually just figure this out calmly but you if you're just terrified of the rejection you won't allow that space i'm curious how would you how would you make someone not scared of that rejection because i think it's a very it's almost you could argue it's a kind of trauma response

probably a lot of the time and so you know that space is all well and good that you mentioned Stephen but it's a really hard thing to hold when you're feeling really activated in something and it's kind of yeah it's just triggering all of your all of your trauma all of the things that you're most scared of and you know you do sort of step into that fight or flight mode I think how would you advise someone to actually hold space for that emotion in order to processand and do these freezing challenges in the snow uh the with wim hof the reason that someone chooses to run a marathon, the reason someone gets up on stage to do their first stand-up set, even though their heart is beating out of their chest. People choose these things because they're difficult and because they hope by doing that to expand their capacity for these different types of

situations and to start to tame their fear of these things. I know that by pushing myself to overcome this thing, I actually have a shot at expanding myself, at creating a new reference point for what I am capable of for getting a new experience in life. And it's why we get to look back to a younger version of ourselves. If we have chosen to live and participate in difficult and uncomfortable experiences in life, it's why we get to look back at a younger version of ourself and go, look how far I've come. And I think that one of the difficult things is that when it comes to relationships, we, we see it almost as a, a burden or a, you know you know oh this is just straight up trauma that i've you know

this kind of situation makes me freak out and run away but i actually think we might benefit from starting to see these moments the same way that we would choose, the same way that we would see chosen pain. The gym is chosen pain. A marathon is chosen pain. Getting up on stage when you're terrified of it, of being in front of an audience is chosen pain, chosen discomfort. Well, we can actually, and all of those things, by the way, grow us. All of those things make us bigger as people. So we could look into, look at our relationships and those moments in dating as wonderful moments to choose discomfort. This can be actually in the same way that going to the gym and working out

is chosen pain. This can be chosen pain. I can, and I'm not talking about, you know, no one hopefully needs me to say, I'm not talking about this as a reason to stay in an abusive relationship or anything like that. But when it comes to someone just said something that made me feel it it triggered me because it made me worried they're gonna leave me or that I'm not enough or you know it it freaked me out and not because they did anything terribly wrong, but just because it made me scared. That's a moment where we can say to ourselves, okay, I can choose now to use this as a chance to get bigger. That doesn't mean i know how this is going to go i'm my instincts might be right it might be that this person is you know that there is a sense in which this person it might be that this person

ends up not wanting to be with me but i don't have enough information for that yet i just don't know and if i don't have enough information about that yet, I'm going to choose a path that is uncommon for me. My well-trod path is fight or flight. And the unfortunate thing about both of those paths, those extreme reactions, reactions is that they actually start to manipulate the result. That's what's really sad and damaging about them is that they, it's no longer a fair experiment because they actually tamper with the result. Like you said, Steven, if, if I, if I out fear, give you the silent treatment for the next three days, that might affect how much you want to be with me. Not because of the original thing that you said or criticized or gave some feedback on and said, hey, you know, I'm feeling this or I'm not sure

about that about whatever. That's not the thing that made you truly question the situation. But me going silent for three days does. That's the actually the thing that makes you go, Whoa, I, this is unpredictable. This is not a healthy pattern that I want to engage in in a relationship this is making me feel like I have to tread on eggshells in even saying anything and that's not the kind of relationship I want to be in is where I have to tread on eggshells and the same is true if you say something to someone and all of a sudden they come at you in either a desperate way or a really angry way, then it has the same effect. So that's where we actually begin to self-sabotage. And the very thing we're afraid of becomes self-fulfilling. And someone finds us hard to

be with, not for the original reason that we were afraid of, but for the patterns that we demonstrate when we're afraid. So that, that we have to say those common paths that I take actually are hurting me more than the thing that I'm afraid of. The alternative is for me to take the uncommon path the the path that is not well trodden for me which is let me let me learn more let me actually have the kinds of conversations that help me discover more discover more about who this person is, about how they feel about me, about where this is going. And, and those conversations, by the way, can include vulnerability. They can even include admitting that you're scared, but admitting that you're scared is very different from acting out one is vulnerability the other is a destructive pattern and the brave thing to do is to be vulnerable instead of be destructive through vulnerability you'll start to reveal if someone could actually be right for you by being destructive you just tear down something in a way that means you'll never really know

i wrote down tame your fear because i think that's so powerful when you said that um and to go one layer deeper in analyzing the psychology of it i think what we're doing is we're trying to control the situation in order to quieten our fear and even if the outcome is the exact outcome we don't want to happen at least we're in control of it and we can orchestrate it in a way that's on our terms right but we do it at the detriment of absolutely everything including finding a happy relationship and because I love what you said about taming your fear because I think when you can really connect to the fact that that's where that's coming from which is a place of fear the next step is to feel brave enough to as you say communicate that fear and say I want to run away right now because I feel scared that you're going to leave me now that's really brave that's a really hard thing to do but as you rightly say the right person will make you feel

safe and that will begin to heal and i and i would say that to tara and to anyone out there who relates to what tara said just going from running away because you're scared to telling someone that you feel like running away because you're scared is a massive sign of growth and evolution. If you could just make that transition, you will change the nature of your relationships. That was a huge change for me. And I don't know when this happened, but when I got comfortable in relationships,

voicing things that I had done before, when I was like, hey, sometimes when this happens, I respond like this. And it's making me feel worried, anxious, trapped, you know, defensive. Even just vocalizing that, speaking it out, it's like, oh, like it's out there, like clarity. That's something in my early 20s I would have never done

because I would have just felt it, felt the animalistic fear and been like, right, this is what I'm going to do in response, but not actually just calmly spoken out. Here's what I'm feeling right now. But yeah, it's about not feeding the fear, right? Instead of feeding the fear, you have to tame the fear. Running away is feeding the fear. Acting on impulse of the emotion is actually just reinforcing that fear, but doing something a little bit different and recognizing why you feel the way that you do and just really connecting to the fact that

you do feel it that's that's got to be as you say just a couple of steps towards taming it and what i like about that construct that you made is it works for all kinds of patterns because a lot of it's like it's you don't you don't just stay because that's taming the fear because your pattern might be that you stay too long that might be someone's pattern from uh from a um anxious attachment style right they're just gonna very straightforwardly i'm gonna put up with whatever because I'm afraid to be alone. But with Tara, she's asking, you know, what do you do when you recognize this pattern? And you're absolutely right. You just recognize it and you speak it.

And that is truly a zero to one level of progress right there. Because once you can do that and it doesn't actually it's just so much easier said than done. Because you can still, I'll still in my relationship have so much difficulty. It's just so easy to skip that part where you just say like, this is making me feel like this. Instead of like, you're doing that. And it's just like, if you can just find your pattern and just try to break it, and if you can keep iterating that process of but you will see a different result than you're used to and that ends up becoming a new reference point because you realize a different result is possible and you realize oh wow that that did something interesting

it's almost like you become a kind of experimenter because you're like that that that's interesting i actually voiced that and and as a result we had a really interesting and productive conversation as a result i learned more about this person as a result i feel more open uh you know there's a result there that you get that you are not used to because you've been doing the same thing for so long that you had lost any awareness that that a different result existed or that a different way of being existed and i think that there is something truly exhilarating that's a really underrated exhilaration but there's a real exhilaration in doing something different and seeing different things happen as a result because it it kind of opens up the world to you because you realize how many other ways of

experiencing life are there than the one that i've gotten so used to in my life it's the beginning of kind of uh of everything being on the table in terms of just how much how many different ways to exist there are and and the other thing i'll say just to wrap this part up is that that kind of openness also gives someone a chance to truly know you and understand you and not misinterpret you. Because when we, I don't think any of us truly realize the extent to which we are confusing when we have extreme responses to things. When either we get extremely angry or when we get extremely afraid and run away or extremely defensive or we go on the attack,

I think we kind of intuitively think people understand more about where it's coming from with us than they do. So we forget that all they're seeing is a it's it's like the actors all you're seeing is an angry arsehole that's that's all you're seeing in that moment but you're not you're not actually and that person may go you know no they must understand that it's coming from insecurity but of course people people actually don don't, they don't. There's a, you know, I've said before there's that moment in catch me if you can, where DiCaprio Frank Abagnale Jr. is speaking to the agent.

I forget his name, but Tom Hanks is character. Hanratty. Hanratty, agent Hanratty. And he, he says to him, people only know what you tell them and that line is so unbelievably true for relationships is that when you tell someone I'm afraid it's like a pressure valve on the whole situation because someone goes wait what and you go i'm afraid and that's why i'm acting like this right now it's like it lets all the air out of the balloon and someone then goes you're afraid what are you afraid of i'm afraid that you're gonna leave and then someone's like

what wait whoa what i'm gonna leave and then and it's like, what? Wait, whoa, I'm going to leave. And then, and it's like, now you have this, you have the real conversation that no one was having, but no one even knew, the other person didn't even know that there was this other conversation happening. They just know that you're angry and then they're pissed at you for being angry

or that you just left. And then they're pissed at you for being stubborn, but they don't know. People don't know what you don't tell them. And so that kind of honesty is also a way of giving someone else a blueprint for your mind and who you are, which granted is a very vulnerable thing to do and can be dangerous by the way in the wrong hands especially if we don't know how to have boundaries if things start really going south but giving someone that access to our mind is also the only is the only way to have a real relationship you don't have intimacy ultimately if you don't do that. And the price of admission for an amazing relationship is that kind of intimacy that comes from that kind of vulnerability. Yeah. And also I think just as a really minor point, it's never underestimating how your

partner is themselves being triggered. So it's almost, you know, you get triggered by something, so you react in a way that becomes more distant. And then they're very likely to be triggered by the fact you're being distant. And so for all you know, all of their fears of abandonment and things are coming through in the way that you're responding. So you become, it becomes a little bit kind of meta. And it takes one person to almost go this isn't anything to do with you it's to do with me and then suddenly they no longer

feel unsafe themselves and they have suddenly got more bandwidth to make you feel safe and to make sure you feel okay. Before we continue with the show, I just want to make sure that everybody has gone over to the website, howtogettheguide.com to use the new tool on the homepage where you can enter your name, tell this tool the biggest challenge you're having in your love life right now,

and it will then recommend you the best solution I have to your love life challenge right now. So if you haven't already go over to howtogettheguy.com on the homepage, you'll see it says start here. And then it takes you through a process to get your customized solution. Go check that out now, howtogettheguy.com and get your solution to help you in your love life. I want to read an email that got written in by a lovely woman called Samantha. And I found her email so vulnerable and relatable and yeah I think you guys will enjoy it too. So she said dear Love Life team thank you for posting some of your rewind episodes this summer particularly the get too obsessed when you like someone episode.

It could not have come at a more perfect time. I signed up to a dating app this past week after a long hiatus and sadly was immediately reminded that I do just this. I allow my imagination to run wild even after first few messages have been exchanged, which I'm aware helps no one and only sets me up for disappointment and potentially missing out on something that could be real. Thank you for the tip of we'll see. I'm putting that in my phone as a persistent notification right now. Thank you for all the great work you do. S in Chicago. I love that she put it as a notification in her phone to just keep reminding herself herself that's really great not to get carried away because because we all do and it's really nice she's tricking her mind her more sort of

evolved and conscious mind is reminding her less evolved mind to to you know do you want to remind everyone about the wall c concept i was well i was gonna say let's just remind everyone of that episode what was what episode was she referring to the episode is called get too obsessed when you like someone question mark and it's all about kind of when you are in very early stages of dating and you get really carried away and you kind of you obsess as to whether or not somebody likes you um it can feel like a huge amount of time in between messages if they don't text you. And yeah, it's a great episode.

I think it was about, it's about two months old, three months old. So that would have put it back in somewhere around May. Probably. Okay. We need to start. We're going to start numbering episodes for you guys so that you can find them more easily. Somebody called Brittany wrote into us also, and she was writing in relation to a past episode when we spoke about jealousy and exes and all of that stuff and she said that what we were talking about is actually called

retroactive jealousy and that we feel when we feel jealous and insecure about our partner's past relationships social media makes it super easy to stalk exes and see what they're like I have felt insecure when former girlfriends seem more outgoing and social than me sexier with larger breasts also better careers and I always look she says I always look at boobs that's a major one but I think that's quite interesting because I definitely think that women compare themselves to exes and I'm sure men compare themselves to exes as well but it's just an interesting thing that it's called retroactive jealousy and it's interesting to hear that you know lots of people suffer with that i i sometimes think you know because we all relate to how we may suffer from that in our lives we might take our current partner and and have some imaginary picture of people from their past that we compare ourselves to

i always think there's something funny about the fact that most of us never consider how we're a ghost in somebody else's life like how are we the phantom enemy yeah in the in the lives of people we've never even met yeah like think about it for a moment who you know who that you've ever dated is now dating someone who you've become this this you know foreboding terrifying figure to that they're like oh but you know so wait what did what what does he do for a living or who is he or what's his thing and you know they gave your ex gave them just enough information for them to you know emotionally torture themselves I think it's a really relatable thing she said and I think what's really interesting about it is we can spend an enormous

amount of time comparing ourselves to people and static images on social media and the idea of what people were but the reality is that people that person with the great boobs and whatever she if you met her and you spent a decent amount of time with her she would just become another person she probably isn't that great and there's probably far less to feel insecure about than you feel like there is when you look at her Instagram and I think that's a really it's something that we have to be quite sober about because we can drive ourselves crazy otherwise we've just the sort of idea of what someone is but ultimately they are just another person there's a there's a but you know there's that great moment in forgetting sarah marshall where the uh what's his name the main dude in

that not russell brand but the guy who gets his heart broken jason jason siegel you know where he's he the ex he's the ex who got his heart broken yeah and russell brand is the guy that that got the girl and not the guy you want to date that your ex not the guy you want dating your all this snow it's like russell brand on steroids all the snow But it's just this great moment where he's, he meets older snow, Russell Brand's character out on the water surfing and older snow is just kind of just chill, relaxed, confident guy.

Who's, you know, making cool references. And there's just a moment where Jason Segel, is it? He just goes, fuck your cool. And it's like a moment where he's, it's like he wants it to be the moment where he realizes, oh, you're a complete tool. And instead it's like a moment where it just, he's almost like, I get it. I get it. it you know i get why she'd want to be with you and of course as the movie unfolds you you begin to realize that aldous snow has a whole bunch of

issues of his own and you know is not he even he is not the character you know is not the intimidating character that kind of he's once thought to be in the sense that you realize oh to be with him would be a nightmare and he turns out to be his ex's nightmare um but but in that moment that's almost the like that's almost the most terrifying moment is the idea of meeting someone and and being like man you're cool what i love about that movie too is like it really is just the worst possible situation to get over this ex she's everywhere she's on billboards she's all this stuff and that movie was kind of made a bit before social media was at least the way social media

is today and i do think this whole retroactive jealousy thing, it is sort of just a real, like a modern, modern phenomenon. And I do wonder, like, is this making it just, I mean, look, is it making it just awful for people right now? Or is there also some kind of silver lining here? Are we all just becoming a bit tougher? I don't know if it's new. I think it's just, you have so many more ways to torture yourself today. Well, totally. Yeah. It's definitely not a new phenomenon, but the phenomenon of just it being so almost ridiculously in your face. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's funny. We're funny. People are funny. I remember being at dinner with a guy before social media was where it is today. He was an older guy. Maybe he was in his late 30s at the

time, but he was, he was kind of funny in the way that he spoke. And he was, I remember him saying like, you know, has, he was like, has my wife, you know, had bigger dicks than me? He was like, probably. Like, yeah, she probably has. But, you know, like I'm me and I have this and, you know, we have a great relationship and ultimately she chose me and whatever. And I remember when he said it, I wanted to throw up. I remember being like, I, you have the fact that you can even admit that and say that out loud is like some kind of Jedi level of equanimity that at the time I was like, I cannot relate to this. You just, you know, I was like, why are you putting this in my head but i kind of look back

now and i was and it's almost like he had you know he almost had reached some kind of just level of radical acceptance and maturity where he was just like it doesn't matter yeah well that's it and i think that's that's the kind of the cherry the points to this right is that if you let it you will care if you stalk your partner's ex you will feel something probably most likely if you think about your partner with other people you will get jealous if you think about all these things you will feel something, probably, most likely. If you think about your partner with other people, you will get jealous. If you think about all these things, you will care because you're a human being.

So accepting that that is absolutely something that is able to make you feel shit, it's able to make you feel bad, but then choosing to go, as a result, I'm gonna just avoid it. I'm not gonna allow myself to open that box. I'm not gonna allow myself to go there because what's the point every time i do in fact if i was to go there i would just end up hurting myself i agree with that totally and i think that removing

the references to someone and removing the all the things that can link you back to them or trigger those thoughts is is always a good idea if you've already kind of, if you've already opened the wound and done the damage, I think one of the things that can really help is just to, just to realize and connect with the idea that whoever this person is that has become an almost mythical figure of intimidation in your mind, they're not king of the world. They're not queen of the world. You're taking a feature of them and making it really, really important,

whether it's that they're really funny or whether it's that they're really beautiful or good-looking or whether it's that that dude's got a great body or he's taller or he's whatever, he's more successful. You're taking a feature and blowing out of all proportion. And you have to get back to the point where you go, no one is a God. No one is king of the world. No one is this person that's, by the way, so intimidating because you think that person has it all together. You're not thinking of that person in their deep, dark moments of despair or the things they're going through in their life or the ways that

that person that you're intimidated by has not got happiness figured out or the way that they torture themselves or the way that the thing they're going through right now we we rarely consider that and it's almost like i mean this is a this is a really horrible example in some ways but it's actually also not the you know this always affected me in in the movie crash the cop was he called jameson i go to you for all these references ryan phillip no the the really nasty cop oh the white supremacist cop yeah dylan is the Matt Dillon. There's that harrowing scene where he sexually assaults the woman that he's searching after stopping them in the car. And which is one of those scenes that kind of got burnt into my mind and, you know, affected me. I remember at the time thinking i could never watch this again but it's fascinating to me how he immediately became less intimidating

when you saw him in his own life and how kind of sad and pathetic his own life was in many ways and you see him sort of having a conversation with his dad where he's just you just kind of get a sense that oh this isn't someone to be feared this is a sad human like this is and i say it's a tough you know obviously it's a tough example to give but i i think there's something to it you look i'm not saying the context makes you want to forgive the person in some cases it does but the context what it does is it immediately takes this person off of their intimidating pedestal and i honestly think that that the greatest antidote to taking it back into a jealousy context the greatest antidote to that is is actually to stop thinking of this person as this towering figure but as a person who is going through all sorts of struggles who is probably torturing themselves over something

probably not achieving something they really want to achieve probably comparing themselves to somebody else has all sorts of issues in their own life and when you do that you just they cease to be this godlike figure that you've made them into no one can can be under scrutiny. And I find that to be the great equalizer. That was like one of the main themes of that movie. There's the line that the little girl says, like, there's no such thing as monsters. Oh, really?

Yeah, I used to listen to the Crash soundtrack and that was the name of one of the tracks, which is like, there's no such thing as monsters. Oh, wow. I didn't even know that. That's so interesting. That really adds to that. There's no such thing as monsters. What a great way to end this episode.

Anytime you feel retroactively jealous, remember there's no such thing as monsters. Well, before you go, don't forget, email us, podcast at matthewhussey.com. Let us know what you thought of this episode. And in general, let us know how you're feeling, what you're up to and what you're going through right now. Or if you've got any anecdotes you want to tell us that we can read on the podcast, let us know. And don't forget before you go, if you haven't already signed up for a 14 day trial to the Love Life membership, come over and do that because we have a lot of great stuff coming up. I promise you every month you are not a member. You are missing really, really good stuff. This podcast is the tip of the iceberg of what we're doing. We have a whole club of people in the Love Life Club who have access to private webinars,

Q&As with me, Q&As with Stephen. We have masterclasses. Masterclasses. We just did one on how to meet quality partners. I love the masterclasses. They're really good. They're so good, yeah. Two-hour deep dives.

I think I like them because we work so hard on them and i'm involved with them so i think i'm biased towards them but i think they're really good yeah i think they are they are they are we kind of we tend to round up people's questions and subjects and worries in certain departments and really just do a very kind of very very deep dive into how we can answer every single facet of the problem. Yeah. And we have interviews that we do with amazing people. We've had Ed Milet recently.

We had Guy Winch. We've had Lisa Bilyeu. We've got coming up Judge Faith Jenkins. So all of this is going on in the love life club and you can join for a 14-day free trial just to try it out for two weeks come over to ask mh.com ask mh.com and sign up for a 14-day free trial to the love life club so what did we learn today guys i have tame your fear and there is no such thing as monsters we call that audacious audrey's wrap-up no we don't yeah you guys have really been pushing audacious audrey i have not been pushing on i don't even know what it means but i just like

the alliteration i want to do a segment where audrey goes through our programs because she's seen some of them not all of them and picks her like just a little tip bit of something she really liked from one of our catalog audrey's a-list not bad audrey's a-list is good that's better than audacious audrey we'll still find a segment for that i'm not sure what it is yet i was going to call it Audrey in the Archives, but that sort of makes her into sort of like a sort of weird mole-like figure. Like a librarian. Yeah, like she's

sort of, what's his name in Game of Thrones? Who's in the Grand Library. Jamie Lannister. Sam. Sam, like sort of squirreling around the main library like a moth. Thanks, babe. Not like a moth thanks babe not like a moth like a mole just sort of scrolling through books okay so we have three options uh any other suggestions send them in so yeah i mean i think at this rate anything is better than audacious

audrey or audrey in the archives do you guys know that I have, speaking of going into the archive, I have the moment that the term jams was coined. No way. I have it recorded. Jams for those of you new to the podcast is the acronym for Jameson, Audrey, Matthew and Stephen. It's the best. Jams. And we didn't know where it came from. We were just passing it by. We couldn't figure out who got credit for it. Was it Matt? Was it Stephen? Was it Audrey? Can we all place bets before we release them? Obviously me.

I don't know. I feel like it might have been me. I don't think it was you. Any bets? Any takers? Steve? I don't know who it was. Alright, hold on a minute. Play I don't know who it was. All right, hold on, I'm going to play it. They can pick their person. If you put all our names together, you could make the word jams.

What would jams do? Does it roll off the tongue? Does it roll off the tongue? Not exactly. Oh, my God. Wow. The master himself. Nicknamed Master Steven. it was me all along it's a great how arrogant we were i think steven knew it was him and he immediately set a trap for us to look arrogant

and conceited so that he could sort of in a very chill way be like i don't know who came up with it you couldn't just let him have it you know the first time we talked about it i did think i might have but you you guys gaslit me out of thinking that oh i'm so sorry i feel bad now yeah i feel i feel pretty bad well it's a great plot it's a it's a great plot twist when you find out you were the killer all along when you find out you were the genius all along it is a great twist bruce bruce willis and i think this is genius it was me i think this is officially the best way to end the episode well uh yeah on steven's high it's really great steve i'm happy to give it to you i think that's wonderful and uh thanks everyone if you want to we are doing one more

thing where we kind of want you to send in voice notes of you know how you feel about the show any comment you want to make on any any comment is welcome so you know even if it's abuse as long as it's you know the sort of abuse we can air whatever you want just leave us a voice note and we'll play some out loud on the podcast record it on even if you just record it on your phone you know no essays just 20 seconds 30 seconds 60 seconds max and send it to podcast at matthewhussey.com thank you everyone steve and Audrey Jameson. Appreciate you guys. We'll see you in the next episode of Love Life,

where we help you find the love you want while loving the life you already have. Bye.