Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 182: How To Leave A Narcissist

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

What do you do if you’re dating a Narcissist? It’s one thing to recognise the signs: questioning your sanity, feeling devalued, never having your needs account for. But what about when you FINALLY decide you have to leave? That can be the hardest part. A narcissist can make you feel guilty. They can make you feel like you’re being impulsive, unfair, or even outright cruel for abandoning them. Taking the decision to get your life back can mean unwinding years of entanglement, but it’s the first step to real freedom, a clear mind, and a better life. In this episode, Matt, Stephen, Audrey and Jameson explain how you can overcome your doubts and get out of a toxic relationship once and for all. --- My 30-Day Confidence Challenge is back by popular demand! There's still time to claim your place on this FREE training taking place September 27th. Simply visit MHChallenge.com to sign up. --- 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

Welcome to today's episode of Love Life. I don't think I can overstate how important this episode is. If you find yourself in a situation where you're not valuing yourself enough, where you are either a prisoner to a relationship with a narcissist or someone with narcissistic tendencies, where either you are stuck in that relationship or you keep going back to that relationship every time you leave. I honestly believe this episode is like an in case of emergency break glass episode. The most precious thing we have is our time because it is the one thing we cannot get back. And this episode is life-saving because it saves our time and it stops us giving it to people who don't deserve it. Please, please listen to this and

send it to anybody you know who is in a relationship that they are struggling to get out of despite the fact that they are not happy in that relationship. Welcome to another episode of love life all right now before we start the show i've got some beef audrey oh you know there's a bunch of vegetarian so no she's particularly upset you know that there's a bunch of people that still haven't been over to your dating solution.com no yeah oh yeah i can't believe it more than a few haven't they heard how many downloads we get a month do you jameson how many downloads over a million oh god and you're saying some of those have yet to go i'm saying that i have not seen a million people go to that page from our data. Well, if our iTunes review is anything

to go by, I'm pretty sure you can convince them to do anything, babe. Right. Well, let me give it a go. Has anyone out there got a dating challenge right now that they need help with? Maybe you're single and looking and struggling with where to meet people, how to meet people. Maybe you're single and looking and struggling with where to meet people, how to meet people. Maybe you're struggling to turn date one into date two. Maybe you're in an endless texting exchange that's not moving forward. Or maybe you've been seeing someone for a long time and you're not getting the commitment that you want and deserve. If you go over to yourdatingsolution.com, you can put in your name, then you get to put in your specific dating challenge right now. It will then recommend you the best solution from our years of doing this for your particular challenge and the stage of your love life that you're in. So you don't have

to go trawling through hundreds of our YouTube videos to find the answer you want. This tool will recommend you the best program for you. Check it out at yourdatingsolution.com. How do you think I did? That was good. Do you think a million people will go there? I'm going to go there right now. I'm going to go there faster than Audrey. I'm going to get it before she does. No, I'm already on the page right now. So I beat all of you to it. All right, hurry up.

I'm going to go on it 999,000 times and then hope that a thousand other people make up the rest. I don't think you understand how this works. okay now that we've got that ugliness out of the way and we've cleared the air with our audience i wanted to read a little email from ruth but before we do given that we've got all of the jams together it seems only appropriate to lead in with this. They are the gems, help where they can, inspiration, in life and love and confidence, they'll make you laugh, sometimes you'll cry, and that is why, pickles, peaches, spears, we love the gems. That, of course, the jingle by Andrea Gall, one of our devoted listeners. Thank you, Andrea. It's so good.

It's really good. It never gets old for me. No, it's brilliant. Now, we had an email from Ruth, one of our listeners. She emailed in to podcast at matthewhussey.com in response to an episode we did recently on age gaps between men and women. She said, hi all, thanks for this interesting podcast. Visuals aside, some men are just turned on by older women, so the aging part does not matter. There is another factor you did not broach in this episode. An older man can have a baby with a much younger partner, but an older woman cannot or will not

have a baby with her much younger partner. I had a beautiful relationship with a younger man who actually lied about his age, adding 10 years to his age so that I would agree to go out with him. A year into our relationship, I found out that he was not 12 years younger, but 22 years younger. I immediately broke up with him, but he wrote me the most beautiful love letter and won me back over. We had the best relationship for six years, but I knew there was a window. It worked when I was in my 40s and he was in his 20s. But would it work when I would be in my 70s and he would be in his 50s and his friends were divorced and dating 30-somethings? He eventually wanted a baby and I did not, having already had four grown children. We both suffered immensely from

the breakup, but today he is a happy father of two and I am with a wonderful man my own age. So an older man can be with a younger woman because it is quote natural, i.e. he can father a child and they can form a family. But an older woman often cannot have a baby because she is in menopause already or too tired to adopt and thus they cannot form a family. So it is not, quote, natural. Hope this adds to your knowledge on the subject. Ruth.

I have one... For me, one thing doesn't make sense in that email go on well she says um but an older woman often cannot have a baby because she is in menopause already or too tired to adopt why would that be any difference for a man in terms of being too tired to adopt. So if you're older and you feel like you're past the age of wanting to take care of children, why is that different for men and women? And also, isn't that kind of implying that if you can't have children naturally, there's something not natural about the relationship? Well, I suppose, yeah, I might not use the word natural in this situation.

I suppose in saying that a man might be, or a woman, I should say, might be too tired to adopt at a certain age, maybe she's going with the kind of stereotype of the woman's going to end up doing more of the child rearing than the man and therefore it makes it matters more if she's older and too tired than if he's older and too tired maybe i just think it's a really lovely email and it's great that she sent it in and i'm really glad actually when i read it i really loved the fact that she's found someone her own age and he's also you you know, got everything he wanted. I just think it's a very personal take on the subject rather than a universal one. I see what she's trying to get at, but I don't think I agree with the point she's making.

I understand that. I think the universal part of this message that we can all ask, regardless of gender, is will my age gap with this person age well and that to me is at the crux of long-term relationships that have a significant age gap you have to ask that question if you're just enjoying it for the moment and you're not lying to yourself that you're saying you're enjoying it for the moment, but really you're thinking about it forever. Then fine, just have fun. But if you are looking for this to be the relationship that you're going to have for years to come, well into your future or for the rest of your life, then it's worth asking the question, how will this age gap age? Because you can kind of find some synergy in where you are at certain chapters especially if

you can meet someone at a chapter where sort of you're both in the same place even though you're at very different ages you're you're both maybe have a similar level of freedom or energy or your plans kind of merge well together. But ask yourself in five years or 10 years or 20 years, is that still going to be the case? Or is this going to get more and more difficult? Is this age gap going to feel bigger and bigger as the years go on? And I suppose if the fear is to, I mean, a lot of people's fears is ending up alone, right?

That's kind of a universal concern that we all have. And so if that's your fear, I think taking a gamble on someone who's 20 years younger than you is quite a risky move. Because as she's saying, how is he going to feel when she's in her 70s and he's in his 50s is a legitimate concern. Yeah. You always have to ask, are the stakes higher for me than they are for them when there's a big age gap? Because a lot of the time they are. I mean, if you're a 35 year old woman who wants children and you're dating a 25 year old man, the stakes are higher for you. There's a window. If you want to have children, your own children, biologically, there is a window that is much shorter than his window. So he has time to screw this up and do it again and do it another five times with other

people. But the years that you have to have children are precious. So you just have to go in with your eyes wide open. Now, if he's saying he wants kids now, then that's different. That's great. But if he's saying, I'm not sure if I want kids, I'll see in a couple of years, I'm not sure, I'm just playing it by ear. Just know that the stakes are not the same. And be real with yourself about that. And be real with him about it. be real with him about it because maybe if they're because they're going in with that natural asymmetry he's going to have to make up for that

with just being pretty he's going to be super mature and he's going to have to just say like i'm ready to have kids but you know i don't think you have to fool yourself that there's not an asymmetry i think that there probably is depending on what part of your life you're in yeah you're almost relying on him not being a regular 25 year old if he's a regular 25 year old then then that's going to probably present problems and if he's not a regular 25 year old fantastic but he's going to have to kind of prove that yeah that's right yeah i'm i'm quite intrigued we didn't mention the fact that he was telling quite a big lie of being 10 years different in age than he said. And that makes me also think that's quite an impressive range he can play, you know, like an actor. I think I'm thinking about myself.

Could I? I'm 33. Could I play 23? I don't think I could at this. I don't think I could. But well, hang on. No, I think I could play about 26. No.

A push. No, but he's playing older. No, he's not... Yeah, Steve, you would need to be able to play 43. So I'd need to be able to play 43. No, he's younger. He's younger. Sorry, yeah, so he's saying he's older.

Correct. Yeah, but you'd have to... He's saying he's 10 years older. No, but you wouldn't have to just be 23, be able to show yourself as 23 if you were 33. You'd have to show yourself as 13. No, if you're going to no but you wouldn't have to just be 23 be able to show yourself as 23 if you were 33 you'd have to show yourself as 13 no if you're going to play younger but he's pretending he's younger than her and he's saying he's 10 years old here's what i didn't understand about this maths sorry jameson math he said he was 10 years older than he was but then she says a year into our relationship i found that he was

not 12 years younger but he said 10 not 12 12 years younger than her ah i see so she thought they would she thought the age gap was 12 years and it was actually 22 years so instead of him being in his 30s he was in his 20s let's say that this is like an iq test and this was actually 22 years so instead of him being in his 30s he was in his 20s let's say that this is like an iq test and this was steven and steven was playing i'm playing 43 but no you were actually trying to play what 53 how does it actually no you you would have to be 33 playing 53, right? No, he's playing 55. No, he's playing 10 years older. No, but what I'm saying is if he's 22 years younger,

then he's got to look 22 years older than the age he's given her. No. No. Stephen, how are they not understanding this? I'm just trying to figure out what age she was and then what age Steve would have to like. She says it. She was in her 40s and he was in his 20s,

but she thought he was in his 30s because he said he was in his 30s. So he was actually in his 20s, not in his 30s, while she was in her 40s. He was a 20-something playing a 30-something. Hang on, hang on, hang on. Let's say she was 50. Oh my God my god so this is what i want to do i want to attach an exact age to it i see the email but he says let's say let's say she's 50 he has said that he was 40 right for example yeah or 38 he said he was 38 right yes when in fact he was 18 28 28

why am i getting so confused because it's too late in the day it's too late my day so he's yes that's right yeah he was an 18 year old he added some gray chest hairs yeah so he was wait you know it reminds me of uh you know in bojack horseman yeah yeah the kid lady caroline lady caroline is that her name princess caroline princess caroline princess caroline that's it she she dates that that young boy those two young boys who were just sat on each other's shoulders with a trench coat pretending to be yeah i do yeah i do i'm still trying to work out this age thing okay well i think we should move on so she's 50 he's 28 and he was pretending to be 38

exactly yeah yeah we were almost there. All right. My God. Thank you so much, Ruth, for adding to the conversation. We really do appreciate your opinions on the things we talk about. If you have anything to add to any of our podcasts, email in podcast at Matthew Husewhussey.com. Well, we have a review here on iTunes from Nance Moo, who says, just want to say, I absolutely love this podcast and Matt's calming voice. Audrey's laughter also is very soothing.

Very good. I think I really need some advice on dealing with a man who I feel that my soul is connected to, but we seem to repel each other. Or more so, he always withdraws when he gets too close to me. I don't know what to do in this situation except just walk away, but still feel that soul connection. I need help well that caught me off guard because i thought that was just going to be a review telling us how great we were but there's there's a she's trojan horse to question into that that's funny she feels her soul is connected

but they seem to repel each other and i like i, you know, you've slipped in Nancemu each other, but you're not repelled. He's the one who's repelled. So you've sort of, I feel like you've created a little love story out of this where there isn't one because you feel this soul connection, but he's the one saying, he's the one withdrawing anytime that you get close. So, and this is a common thing we do is we invent a Romeo and Juliet love story where there's only one person make light, making life difficult. And you've turned it into like a little Romeo and Juliet thing where it's, we repel each other. No, you don't. You try to get close and he withdraws, right? That's just you moving in and him moving backwards and you

moving in and him moving backwards. So you have to ask yourself, do I really want to spend my life romanticizing unrequited love when I have feelings for this person and this person has no interest in actually reciprocating with any kind of action or investment. The danger is creating love story where there is no love story. At best, you have an attention story. So put this in its proper place a soul connection as you call it is worth nothing without real life investment this is what movies always do too like although every single i think every single bad romantic comedy but even the good ones it's just like they have a rule the writers have a rule that the characters have to meet and they have to hate each other and then they have to like fall in love and get over it together.

And it's fun and it's cute. But it's just, is that, does it ever really work that way? Are you supposed to really hate the person? And then, oh boy, we do repel each other, but our souls are connected. If someone's, if you're, if someone's repellent to you, it's probably for a good reason. Well, it sort of sets up the idea that it's romantic to have all these hurdles to overcome between each other.

Do you know what movie really bugs me for this? The movie Serendipity. Have you seen it? I actually haven't seen it. No. Serendipity is an old romantic comedy. John Cusack, right? Let me just see. Movie Serendipityity is it john kusak and kate

beckinsale sounds right yeah in serendipity i've just i've just looked it up on google right now this is the plot on a magical night when they're in their 20s jonathan meets sarah he finds it love at first sight but sarah believes in destiny after 10 years the two with 3 000 miles between them must decide if fate wants them to be together again when love feels like magic it's called destiny when destiny has a sense of humor it it's serendipity. But basically, all you need to know is they meet and she believes in destiny. So she's just like, let's go our separate ways. Even though we've just met each other and found this amazing thing, it's clearly not, it's not hard enough to meet someone great and have a connection you have to

make it more hard by saying no it's destiny and if if we're supposed to be together destiny will bring us back together so they part ways in that moment sounds like a pretty avoidant move on her part yeah it's just there shouldn't we don't need more hurdles hard enough to find love we should we should do like a review on just how bad some movies are at at uh at love and relationships well do you know i was thinking let us know what you think of this we were thinking of doing a new segment on the podcast where we take a movie we say all right everyone watched the movie this week and then we come back the next week and we comment on it from a love and life lesson point of view. Not like a review of how good or bad the movie is. Kind of a, you know, here's what we learned from that movie, or here's how badly that

movie got it wrong in terms of life lessons. Jameson and Steven, you remember back in the day where we used to do some YouTube videos based on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie review site, but we called it Sexy Potatoes. Sexy Potatoes. And it was all about taking life lessons from movies. So if you think that we should do that, and as a big podcast group here that listened to this podcast, we all watch a movie each week, and then we come back and talk about it as a segment on the podcast.

Let us know what you think. Let us know if you'd like that. I'd like to point out that that was our newest resolution this year, to watch one movie a week, and we never did it. Well, then they have to be movies we think are going to be good i can't be doing with just watching a terrible movie each week i don't think we're ever planning to watch a terrible movie i just think we never got around to watching a movie no but i mean like we can't i don't want to for this segment just watch bad movies because that's just going to annoy me that would be a weird resolution to watch a bad movie every week yeah exactly no but we every

week we watch like a movie we think is going to be good and then we see what we think about it. That was always going to be the resolution. I'm not talking about our New Year's resolution. I'm talking about the podcast. And there's a good lesson in here too. It's not too late in the year to go ahead and make good on your resolutions, you know?

Okay. The last quarter of the year. Is it the last quarter of the year almost? Yeah. Terrifyingly The last quarter of the year, last, is it the last quarter of the year almost? Yeah. Terrifyingly. Last third of the year. We have a voice note here sent in to podcast at matthewhussey.com from Corey Smith. Hi, Love Life Podcast. Hi, Steven. Hi, Audrey. Hi, Matthew. Hi, Jameson. My name is Kori and I'm from New York. I found your YouTube channel a few years ago and I just want to say that I really appreciate the content that you guys put so much effort into. Your advice has helped me not only with relationships,

but also with my confidence and social anxiety. I feel like today when you go on the internet, there's so much information that gets thrown at you. And it's so nice to be able to go to you guys and just get genuine and authentic and insightful and applicable advice. It's so helpful. I really appreciate it. I also love the group dynamic. I love that you guys have gotten Audrey and Jameson in on the action. All of you guys crack me up so much. Seriously, you all are the highlight of my week. Thank you. And I'm excited to see what you guys keep putting out. Thank you so much, Corey. How lovely. I love that we get to just be a part of people's weeks. I feel like that's my favorite thing about the podcast is we just get to,

it's different from a YouTube video, isn't it? I feel like we accompany people as they're on a car ride or sort of cleaning the house or, you know, on a train somewhere. It's quality time. Yeah. I also just, I'm loving these voice notes i i love that you can i mean the written emails are amazing as well but i just love being able to hear people's actual voices and actually hearing what people feel and how how you know good or badly we're

doing it's really nice there's something to that just the difference and the subtle difference between youtube and a podcast i think you're onto something with like because there's the there's like the famous um it was like some kind of media philosopher who coined the term like the medium is the message but it's like a lot of truth to that we talked recently about how like oh tv you know just kind of it's there to entertain you and to make you kind of like things and social media is there to just kind of like grab your attention for good or for bad podcasts there's something's kind of special you are kind of like just carried with somebody in their day i don't know i'm sure someone's like written probably a good paper on that and that theorist for all of you listening is marshall mccluhan who said the medium is the

message so that's your fact for the day and for anyone curious Stephen did get a PhD from Oxford University yeah political philosophy I also have Google Stephen is the message well I think we should uh go on to our main topic. What do you guys think? Which is how to leave a narcissist. Yep. Big topic. We, I had a conversation recently with someone that just reminded me how important it is that we do this topic at some point. And I don't want you to get kind of derailed by the term narcissist, because the truth is what we're about to talk about can relate to anybody that you're with,

who has consistently treated you poorly, who has ignored your needs, who has disregarded your happiness, who has been gaslighting you for a long time, lying to you, breaking promises, someone who consistently lets you down, disappoints you. I think that our dear friend, Dr. Ramaniani who we absolutely love and you know her work is so tremendously valuable to so many people we've had lots of conversations with her both in public and in private at this point about this subject and of course she is the expert when it comes to diagnosing narcissists we're not the experts when it comes to diagnosing narcissists we're not the experts when it comes to diagnosing narcissists but i sometimes think that we can get a little lost

in worrying about whether we can diagnose someone or not because the truth is if someone is making our life miserable they don't need to be a narcissist for us to decide that enough is enough what I would like to do today is talk about anybody in your life whether you are able to attach the label to them of narcissist or whether you just feel like they're somewhere on the spectrum of narcissistic tendencies, I wanna talk about how we come to trap ourselves in these situations and what it really requires for us to break free of them. Because the nature of what Dr. Ramani

and other psychologists call the trauma bond is that we can become imprisoned by that bond. And it can be extraordinarily difficult to break free from it and to finally release ourselves from a relationship like that. And we should say that a relationship like that is tremendously detrimental to our mental health, our wellbeing, our self-esteem, our quality of life. It is a situation that is maddening. It slowly erodes your confidence in yourself, especially if your needs are ignored, if you are gaslit over things that you would like to happen

and told that it's crazy for you to want those things or your high maintenance for wanting those things, or that when someone tries to convince you that your version of reality is completely false, it can have the effect of you not knowing which way is up anymore. You stop trusting yourself. And of course, when you're with someone who constantly breaks their promises to you,

constantly lies to you you and then if you catch them in the lie makes it your fault somehow it makes us unable to see what the truth is anymore it divorces us from ourselves we start start becoming somebody else. We live a life of trying to manage this person. We live a life of trying to read between the lines of what things this person is saying are true and which things are false. And the anxiety, the stress, the sadness, the depression that all of this can produce is one that can massively affect our health in the long term. I really believe that it's responsible for so much of our pain in our body, the chronic pain. I've spoken to so many people whose pain shows up in rashes or in muscle pain or in head pain. The way that our body stores all of this

stuff is profound and affects people through the course of their lives. So we pay a price for staying with someone like this. I want to start by just talking about how we find ourselves in these situations and how one of the qualities that we like most about ourselves in other contexts can become our biggest enemy in the context of a relationship like this. And that is our empathy. We show a level of understanding about this person that allows them to get away with the same thing over and over again. Let's talk about that for a moment. When does empathy go too far?

Empathy extended outwards is a beautiful thing. But I think it becomes dangerous when you can't extend it back to yourself. Explain what you mean by that for a moment. Just so that everyone, I really want people to get that message. What what you mean by that for a moment just so that everyone i really want people to get that message like what what do you mean by that well i was gonna say if you're with someone who if you're taking care of them and making sure they're okay and they're taking care of themselves and making sure they're okay who's taking care of you you know it's quite a common thing that you hear but in order to be there for other people your own cup has to be full and your priority in life should always be to make sure that you're okay now that doesn't mean that you have to put yourself first in every single situation and

in fact you shouldn't it's really important to put other people first sometimes and to put those you love before you when they need you more than you need them in that moment but ultimately your empathy towards other people cannot come at the detriment of actually making sure you're okay that's when you're you have to suspect yourself I think as to whether or not is it really empathy or are you just caught in a toxic cycle where it's serving some kind of need for you you know whether it be that you you like the identity of coming to the rescue of other people or you feel safe in that position because then you never have to look at yourself and you never have to look at the ways in which you're not really taking care of yourself and it's much easier to put for some people it's much easier to put other people's needs before their

own because there's a lot of shame and guilt around having needs and sometimes people who feel that way can gravitate or can be a magnet for people who are narcissistically inclined because ultimately they're just people who have a hell of a lot of love to give. Right. And that's not, I'm by no means blaming, you know, in the instance of an actual true relationship with a true narcissist, I'm by no means blaming, you know, the person who finds themselves in that situation, a victim in that situation. But

I do think that in general, sometimes we, if we are wildly empathetic, we can sort of, we can almost wear that as a badge of honor and use that as our identity. And it can get us into trouble because we end up having no boundaries with how far we let someone exploit that well i think that that's exactly right and we what happens is because we're so close to this person we've heard all of their stories and people who are really good at mobilizing your empathy get very good at telling stories that make them sympathetic. Yes, I have this awful trait. Yes, I am not good at this. Yes, I struggle in this way, but this is what happened to me growing up. This is what my mom was like. This is what my father was like. This is the stuff that I've been through in my life. And by the way, we all have things

that we've been through in our lives that could have made us worse people or better people, right? Everyone has things, but there are certain people who are really good at taking their past and constructing a narrative that creates excuses for really bad behavior in the present. Now, there's a difference between contextualizing who you are in the present by talking about the past, but also saying, you know, that has been part of why I've struggled. However, I own it and I'm going to fix it. And then showing that you're doing that. There's a difference between that

and repeating the same damage to a person over and over and over again, always citing your past as an excuse, a way to abdicate responsibility for that. And if you're somebody who is truly empathetic and you're prone to feeling sad for people or seeing people as sympathetic, then it can be quite easy for someone who's manipulative to use their past as a way to mobilize your empathy. And it could also happen

in reverse, by the way, if, if they know that you pride yourself on being generous, being kind, being empathetic, and then you start calling them out on their behavior and having more boundaries, they can then attack you for that and say, oh, and you're supposed to be you see yourself as this empathetic person well right now you've got absolutely no care for what i've been through and what i the ways that i'm struggling and you're always playing this empathetic character and yet right now you're just abandoning me you know that now they can weaponize it in the other direction and get you feeling guilty that you haven't been empathetic enough and it's so interesting right because you it has no it knows no limit in terms of if you want to extend a sympathetic or a compassionate or kind of understanding lens towards a person

you can do that with a serial killer you can say it's not their fault they're born this way they went through these different things in their childhood that's why they ended up being aggressive and killing people and or even just they're a psychopath they don't feel empathy they're not it's not their fault they're not born with that you can actually have compassion towards anyone for anything and the kind of what's really interesting is the duality between this over compassion you might extend towards somebody who treats you badly but this total lack of compassion you extend towards yourself as you put yourself repeatedly in harm's way of that person and for some reason your well-being and the way that you feel isn't being prioritized by you in the same way that you're prioritizing being understanding towards them yeah i think jack cornfield said something

along the lines of your your compassion for people is incomplete if it doesn't extend to yourself yeah i think that's right i think um i think it's so easy to get stuck in roles that you play over and over again in relationships and especially with people you know well i think you can adopt a role really easily where you've got used to being a bit like you you have a masochistic relationship with that where you you give in to their needs or their difficulty or their drama or their like selfishness and then you like um chastise yourself and oh i've got to do this now and now i've got to do this because of their problem or they screwed up and now i've got to fix it and i think it takes a lot of stepping back to get out of that and to actually take control again

and say like, what? I do think there's a big difference between giving love to someone and having love for them and sacrificing yourself, sacrificing your needs. And I think a lot of people just conflate them together. Like if love this person i will sacrifice my happiness to just fulfill whatever their thing is or help them because they're whatever a narcissist an addict a different whatever but i do i think there's a real difference between loving them and completely sacrificing yourself, your happiness, your well-being. And I think some people get addicted to that role a bit. Absolutely. The thing that scares me about empathy in the context of a relationship like this is it can really, if that empathy becomes a proactive kind of forgiveness for that person

and a forgiveness that leads to you constantly letting them back into your life, not a distant forgiveness where you say, I forgive you, but I can't have you near me. There really is no limit to how far you can fall in that relationship. As you say, Audrey, if you excuse them on every level, they're like, well, it's their past. Well, even if it's not their past, it's their genes. They can't help it. It's just the way they're built. You can always find a justification. And by the way, those things are true. They're actually true. But the danger of saying that's true, therefore I should forgive this person and be involved with them romantically. That's the, that's the non sequitur. And the danger of that is that if you continue to use your empathy as a, as an excuse for forgiving someone and letting

them back in, there is no limit to the level of destruction that someone can impose on your life. You're letting them into the house where they can wreak havoc. And you have to at a certain point say, I cannot trust you. I cannot trust you with my heart. I cannot trust you with my time. I cannot trust you with my energy. I cannot trust you with my future. And therefore, I can't let you in the house. Because if I let you in my house, so to speak, you will predictably wreak havoc. So I can have a distant compassion for you, but I cannot have a kind of proactive, close degree empathy where I constantly let you back in because you will destroy my life and i think part of what people struggle with is this this hope that this person will change that yes they've been terrible yes they are still wreaking havoc in my life yes they are still making me unhappy but if this one thing could change

then we could actually be so happy i also think it's a duality between the good and the bad times because i think if you've ever been with someone who is either a narcissist or narcissistically inclined or you know selfish or toxic or whatever you want to call it they're not like that all the time at all but even in that i think there is embedded in that idea is a kind of hope the hope for the good times to be more the hope that the bad times will start to be less of course i suppose what i mean is that um people who are like that are very good at being really, really charming. So the good times feel better, both because of the bad times being so bad that in contrast they feel better, but also because they are so good at making life even better

than a healthy person can because they're not playing a role. So people get addicted to the highs for sure because of that and that's that's then in turn very difficult because you're almost turning your back on when you think about it rationally you end up feeling like you're turning your back on the happiest moments of your life it's just that they happen to come in conjunction with the most terrible moments of your life which we all know when we leave someone or break up with someone all we do is think about the good times we don't think about the bad times so i think that's another thing that makes it incredibly difficult for people to walk away

i mean when someone makes your life so miserable the good times don't even have to be that good to feel like they're incredible if you're in the middle of the desert starving and someone puts like a Wendy's cheeseburger in front of you. Oh, that's ruining our chances of sponsorship for Wendy's. Oh, I thought Jameson was going to say, now you're talking. Because I feel like that's the kind of Jameson meal. Okay, well, this is hurtful. No, you love Taco Bell. But I think Matt's point is it could be Del Taco in the desert.

It could be something atrocious out there, and it still feels like it's better than the alternative. I was going to say McDonald's, but you know I love McDonald's. I mean, call it trash. It is trash. But I love a McDonald's cheeseburger. We actually ordered McDonald's the other day at like midnight, didn't we? And then we ate it in bed.

Yeah, we did. And that was a weeknight. That wasn't even like a drunken weekend night or something. Because we have so many of those. I know, I was going to say. But you know what I mean? Like it feels like a sort of end of the night thing. And that was a weeknight.

But all of this is very much besides the point if if you're in the desert and starving and you see a wendy's that's gonna be the greatest meal you've ever eaten in your life a one day old wendy's there might be people have really i just don't want to confuse the point you can have a one day old soggy wendy's with a melted frosty yeah yeah trash can wendy's yep trash can wendy's is wendy's not very nice i've never had it i just One day old soggy Wendy's with a melted frosty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Trash can Wendy's. Yep, trash can Wendy's. Is Wendy's not very nice? I've never had it.

I just, I don't know much about it. Again, I don't want to hurt our chances at sponsorship from Wendy's. Right, right, right. Is it because you love it so much? I'm just thinking about the podcast. Yeah, he's talking. We've got to keep this train going and we need money for that. I mean.

We need Wendy's money. It's not easy doing or putting all this production together man's trying to keep the ship afloat let's at least criticize a lesser brand like white castle or something something smaller oh there goes white castle oh my god we're not we're not gonna end up promoting white castle dropping like flies well no wait i think there is something really important what you're saying matt which is actually like you can have um just a normal day finally after just a week-long fight with this person that's been making your life miserable and you have one

nice day where it's like oh yeah we went and we had uh we had dinner together and no one fought and the waiter wasn't rude. And suddenly I'm in love again. You're grateful for civility. Grateful for civility. What a nice way to put it. Which is, should be the absolute like flaw of your relationship, but suddenly it becomes a treat.

And this is, this is how warped our perception of value becomes in a situation like this. Basic things that should just be the foundations of a relationship of respect and dignity become things that we long for. If you have not already, sign up to the 30-Day Confidence Challenge, the free event that we are doing that kicks off with a call live with me on the 27th, but carries on for 30 days, where I'm going to be giving you five specific challenges that measurably increase your confidence over 30 days or with a prize bonus at the end that's free for anybody who completes all five challenges.

So the only thing you need to do to get this bonus is do good things for yourself. The entire challenge is free and you can sign up at mhchallenge.com. If you want to finish the next 30 days with a sense of momentum and pride, and you want to measurably improve your confidence, sign up to the 30-Day Confidence Challenge. We've got thousands, literally thousands of people from all over the world

who are joining us on this. And don't forget to send the link to anybody that you care about that you want to do it with. It's at mhchallenge.com. I'm going to be doing it this year. We're all going to be doing it. Very excited. I've not done it before, so I'm excited. Yeah. We've done it before and literally we've had tens of thousands of people come through this and we very rarely run it. I think the last time we did it was in January this year. And, uh, and people love it. Every time we do it, people absolutely love it. We have a Facebook group where everyone kind of keeps each other

accountable. And it's just a really fun thing that, that no one is excluded from. Everyone can be a part of. So come join us. It's at mhchallenge.com. Now, I want to just loop back to this hope because what keeps people there, whether it's a hope for the next good time or whether it's a hope for things to just fundamentally change, that hope is the most misguided thing we have because, and again, Dr. Ramani would say, if he or she is a true narcissist, they will never change. And don't expect them to. But even if, let's say, you're not sure whether the person you're with is a diagnosable narcissist,

what I want you to think in terms of is empiricism. Empiricism is basing what I do or what I believe on what my actual experience of this person is. Have they ever truly changed in this area to any degree that's really meaningful, that's made your life better. And by the way, if you're listening to this and you're resonating with all of it, the answer is no. You may have experienced spikes of change after you had an argument or after you threatened to leave. But if ultimately it just always returned to the same baseline, then you know that those changes weren't real. They were just a tactic, more of a manipulation. Empirically, you have to ask yourself, has this person ever changed? Or has this been a repeatable pattern throughout my relationship with this person? And if I'm still

talking about it now with my friends, with a therapist, if I'm still ruminating about it constantly, then it's still happening. And the answer is no, it has not changed. And if it hasn't changed, then on what basis are you thinking it's going to change in the future? And the truth is, if you really relate to this episode right now, you've probably been through every kind of emotion with this person there is. You've cried, you've been angry, you've been depressed, you've been guilty, you've been frantic, you've despaired. You've been through everything you can go through with this person. You've been frantic. You've despaired. You've been through everything you can go through with this person. You've begged for change.

What emotion have you kept up your sleeve that you're going to bring out next year that's suddenly going to change this person. I have to know. If you're telling yourself that they're going to change, what's the reaction that all this time you've been storing to suddenly get a different result? Because the chances are you've already cycled through all of them many times. You have to assume that this person is never going to change because the stakes are way too high. What are the stakes?

You don't get your time back again. So staking your life and your happiness on the idea that this person who has never changed will one day change is just about the worst bet that you can make. It makes me really emotional just hearing you talk about it because I just think of the amount of people who are currently stuck stuck and I think the word really is just stuck in the quicksand of that kind of relationship and how how much it just

destroys people because it destroys their confidence it destroys their self-worth it destroys it warps reality as you said in a way where they just feel like they don't even know which way is up anymore and you end up having no kind of bearing on what a proper relationship should feel like and a proper connection and being treated with respect and having your needs met you forget you lose sight of what that even feels like. And I just, I just, I don't know. It's, I really love this episode, just hearing you talk about it. And I think it's such an important thing for people to hear, but it makes me sad to think there are people in that situation. And I, I just have so much compassion for that. Just look how much

empathy Audrey has. See how dangerous it it is it's interesting you say that jay because do you remember there was that book i think it was paul bloom who wrote that book against empathy or the case i was just about to reference that yeah i was just about to reference paul bloom he literally wrote a book called against empathy because it is he's trying to call out the fact that it is actually a baser emotion the same way like anger is just a baser emotional reaction and it can feel if we indulge empathy too much it's just because it can feel good and he makes some really interesting points where it's like yeah i mean lots of nazis had empathy you know they had empathy with each other and that makes

you go to war and fight whoever um because you have so much empathy for that person next to you, even if that person next to you is atrocious. And so he argues for a rational compassion, which is very similar to what you're saying with this distant compassion, which is you realize, you understand intellectually what happened in that person's past to explain it. But you don't take that extra step of like, well, just because it explains it doesn't excuse it. And doesn't mean that I have to emotionally invest in this situation or their, of their past. You can take a step back and understand without needing to go that extra emotional journey. Just intellectually understand it,

rationally have compassion for their situation. You don't have to make it your situation. Yeah, as you were saying that, I was thinking just because it explains it, it doesn't mean you have to choose it. Yeah, or justify it. And just because you feel for them, you can feel someone's plight.

You can be like, this person is going to be bad for themselves and others, and it's going to cause them pain. And you can feel a lot of, you know, you can feel a lot for that person because they're also going to be a victim of their own behavior in the long term. Yeah. But I do think there's a remove as well of like if you can really deep really deeply love yourself more in that moment and i don't mean that in a selfish way but if you can deeply deeply care about yourself and what you know how are you going to be useful to the world

how are you going to be at your best how are you going to also thrive and give love to others it's it's going to be by having a more expansive like my world can't be narrowed down to this person and try to fix their problems or try to fix their issue i think a good a good thing for people to do listening is to try to catch yourself in certain phrases and certain things that you say if you if you catch yourself a lot saying no no you look i know it's gonna sound bad when i say this but and then you explain their behavior i know that that i'm making excuses for them i know that i'm making excuses sounds like i'm making excuses yeah that's a good one i know that it sounds like i'm making excuses for them but and then you go to talk about their childhood all the things they were cheated on 10 years ago, there's a kind of, firstly, it allows you to

be in this special role of unique understanding that no one else has. You don't know them like I do. You don't understand. There is a side of them you don't see. You don't know them like I do. You don't understand. There is a side of them you don't see. You don't know what they've been through. And that becomes the justification for all of the unnatural level of giving. The mutated kindness that you show in this situation. You become the... And this is what happens for a lot of people in these kinds of relationships is you become the expert historian on this person.

And that uniquely places you to forgive them, to justify their their behavior to continue to go back to them even when everyone on the outside says that's crazy now audrey you touched upon something earlier that i want to revisit because there's a kind of elephant in the room when it comes to this kind of empathy empathy and it's that empathy itself can become a really convenient mask for our own fears empathy says i just really really care about this person and they've been through so much in their life and they really struggle and they don't mean to do bad. And I would, it would just be so wrong of me to abandon them. Our fear deep down may say, I'm terrified of being alone. If I leave this person, I might be alone.

I might never find anyone again. Because I'm unworthy. Because I'm not good enough, because I'm unattractive. So if I go back out there into the dating world, I may never find anyone again. Now, all of that sounds kind of sad and it sounds almost like cowardice, right? I don't want to leave because I'm afraid of being alone, so I'm going to stay here and be treated awfully. That sounds like cowardice. This person has been through so much and I don't want to abandon them. Sounds heroic. So one path sounds righteous.

Our empathy allows us to play a righteous role and it means we don't have to admit our deepest fears which are that while i care about this person while i empathize for this person while i of course don't want to abandon this person because i love them my staying is also coming from a place of deep deep fear about myself and what's going to happen to me if I leave and I think that can come in the form of as you say I'm scared of being alone but it's just the consequences you just have to see as the consequences in general of making a difficult decision and a and a big shift in your life yeah you're terrified of the pain it would bring on

precisely it might not be to be alone it might be and and i think it's almost too simplified because sometimes people are scared of being alone because their self-worth has been shot because of that person or because that person has made them feel like if they are if they go out into the world without them there'll be nothing or they'll be in trouble or they can't do it and that happens a lot with people who have personality disorders they they belittle you and infant and infantize you is that the word infantilize you um and just generally make you feel like you you are nothing without them right to a to a degree um but i think it's it's recognizing that um that fear can come in many shapes and sizes and it tends to just be the fear of the unknown if you step away from from devil you know. The hardest part about all of this

is that no one is coming to save us. And we have this situation that's making us miserable, anxious, depressed. But leaving can only happen if we're willing to light the fuse that blows up our own life. And it's hard to light the fuse that blows up our own life. And it's hard to light the fuse to blow up your own life. It's a really, really dip. Most people go through their whole lives avoiding this. Something has to blow it up for them. Usually life has to do it somehow because it's

really hard to do it yourself. And what happens is every time we think, every time things get so bad that we think this is, I'm burning. We got to, we got to go like this. Can't, I can't stay here. The terror of blowing up your own life suddenly rushes in. I'm going to be alone. I'm going to have to go through all of this pain. I'm going to have to grieve this person. I'm going to have to have night after night for a period of time of that dark night of the soul. I'm going to have to go through all of this pain. I'm going to have to grieve this person. I'm going to have to have night after night for a period of time of that dark night of the soul. I'm going to have to continue to be strong even while this person is contacting me. I'm going to have to reevaluate where I am in my life. All of these fears rush in and it's so overwhelming that our mind starts doing a trick. It turns on the sprinklers

and starts telling us it's not so bad. It's not as bad as we think. And sometimes it's good. And do we really want to do all of this? Maybe we're being dramatic. Maybe we're expecting too much. Aren't all relationships a little like this? Your brain will tell you whatever it needs to tell you in order to lure you back to the status quo. I really believe that in order to move forward and start making real progress,

because staying where we are doesn't represent progress. If this person isn't going to change, then there's no progress in staying where we are. There's just guaranteed misery. In order to start making real progress, we have to actually start by accepting where we are. And I actually think that's the hardest part. The hardest part is firstly, anticipating all the pain that's coming. And secondly, letting go of the life we where we are. I am 50 years old and starting again in my love life. That's where I am. I've been telling myself I'm in a marriage that's going to last and is a functional relationship.

And it's not. I'm 50 and starting again. Acceptance is, I've just invested 15 years of my life into a relationship that's not going to continue. Instead of thinking that you've invested 15 years in service of making the relationship better. I also think you're closer to finding love the moment you leave. You are the furthest away from finding a happy relationship and happiness when you are in that situation. Even though psychologically, I think we play a real trick on ourselves or we think we're

closer and we think we're further away when we walk away but we actually become you know exponentially closer to finding happiness the moment we leave that situation because happiness does not lie it does not reside with that relationship that's been perpetually making us feel miserable but but the but in order to do that you have to accept where you really are and you also have to be willing to lose the image you have with other people about where you are because it involves people in your circle or in your community learning that you're single that you are no longer in this relationship If you've been putting out an image of a successful relationship or a functional relationship or of happiness or of something that's working, committed, then you're going to have to let go of that image with your peers, with the people around you.

You have to be willing to accept where you are and also have other people know where you are. And that's the beginning of real progress. Because I'm a huge believer in, you know, I've heard Tony Robbins say before, happiness comes from progress. It doesn't come from achieving everything we want. It comes from making progress. And I really believe that. But if you've been kind of lying to yourself and to people you know about what your current level is or where you are your debts, which would be an enormous achievement, you don't feel like you've made any progress.

Because you've been telling everyone you've got 100 grand. So even though you've done something massively significant, it doesn't actually feel like you've moved forward at all. In fact, by the image that you've created, you're still so far behind. Whereas if you were honest about where you were with yourself and with other people, you're like, I'm 20 grand in debt, but you know what? I'm working on it. I'm actually, I'm working on it. I'm improving my situation. And then you halved that debt and you only had 10 grand of debt. That would be an amazing day. That would be a huge achievement. You would feel that progress. It would make you more confident. It would make you feel like you've got momentum. It would spur you on. But there's no progress if you've been lying about where you are in the first place. You don't feel it even when

you make progress well that's the thing society superficially applauds things that look like security and doesn't applaud the things that represent actual difficult progress you know that the society will clap when it looks like you have your comfortable little nest and all the right things in the right place, the house, the car, the spouse, the something, the job. But if you like quit the job you hated for 10 years and went to go like start a business that might be exciting to you or something, they're not going to applaud that because they're going to like, oh no, that's like, you've rockeded the boat you've done something out of the ordinary you've disrupted your like nice job or whatever even if that might represent for you a massive step of progress or you got out of your relationship

that was you know toxic on many levels or difficult or unhappy they're going oh no your life's falling apart you want to know the most attention i've ever gotten in my whole life go on it's the day we got engaged best day of your life really crapping on your point already but i go for it wasn't it I'm not denying how special the day was but but it's very telling to your point Stephen and I'm not saying it was beautiful that people were so happy for me don't get me wrong it was it was an overwhelming amount of love but on the days that I was silently overcoming my demons over the last seven years, those weren't days filled with attention. Those weren't days where I got, you know, I mean, we released our engagement photo and it was you know we got like 200,000 likes on Instagram that is wild like that's beyond anything I've ever posted ever in terms of the

amount of likes and engagement and comments it's a lot of people tapping but that's because to your point people reward those external moments those socially designated moments of importance over the profound work that people do on themselves to make themselves feel more peaceful or more happy i mean me getting engaged was literally just a representation of years of work that led me to meeting the right person and being being in a place where i was able to receive that love and being able to take a step like that it you know that all that inner work that happened no one was celebrating me for that that's the silent stuff that's the stuff that was happening when i was making videos and going through really difficult times and people would

comment on the videos and be like matthew you look sad you you know? And they keep, I remember like, I used to get tons of DMS from people at a certain stage in my life from people saying, you look really sad. Is everything okay? And it was, you know, I used to get a lot of them because I was working through stuff. And even though I wasn't saying it publicly, I was, people could feel a kind, a lot of people could feel a kind of energy from me and you know people weren't always right about that some days i was happy and people said i was sad so you can't really win but some days they just say what's wrong with your eyes some days they just say what's wrong with your eyes because i have dark circles under my eyes um yeah exactly

but my point is people reward us for those things people People don't, you know, the work you do to be happy on your own, people don't reward you for, there's no big clapping celebration for, I finally found happiness. Well, also, you know, not to get too deep into the philosophy of it all, but I think, um, mental health is really sort of young in terms of the way that society accepts it and um i think more freud but sure but it's it's um it's really young you know and i think like talking about love is easy it's easy to package your life up in a way that people people want to celebrate love they want to celebrate happiness i think celebrating you know the way in which you've overcome anxiety adversity heartbreak you don't you're not necessarily

going to publicize it in the same pretty package that people can can celebrate you on and i would actually argue that that's something that's changing i'm just just trying to be positive towards society no but i think i think it's just it's it's what's easy to celebrate and reward. We celebrate people who say, we just had our 20-year wedding anniversary without any knowledge of their relationship. That might be terrible news. We don't know. We don't know what kind of pain someone is enduring to stay in something where someone is just constantly subjugating them, making them unhappy, making them not feel desired, bullying them.

And we give out prizes because someone made it to year 10 or year 20 or year 30. But there should be just as many prizes for people who get out of relationships that they shouldn't be in. People who have the courage to leave. To me, the through line here, the really, the big part of your point that's resonating with me is the theme of honesty.

If they are, if you're honest with yourself and you get engaged and you get all that attention and you know it's like a really beautiful relationship, then awesome. Get all the attention you want. But because it's coming from an honest place, loads of people get engaged to try to save the relationship or to just give it a shot or whatever. And that's fine, but they're not really being honest about it, right? And so this internal honesty, this moment that you switch on and you say like, all right, I'm going to accept this. That really just, that honesty really does set you free to actually make progress. And I think that progress really can lead you towards real

happiness. If you're about to leave something and you know it's tremendously difficult for you to leave, you have to be honest with yourself about how hard the road ahead is going to be. So that you don't expect it to be easy. I'm going to leave this person and I'm going to go through a really difficult time. And we prepare for that. You don't go and sign up for a marathon without training. Right? You know this is going to be hard.

I'm going to make sure that I do the right things. And leaving a relationship is no different. You don't expect it to be easy. I'm going to leave and all of a sudden I'm going to be at peace. No, you're going to have many moments of doubt and wondering whether you did the right thing. You're going to have many lonely nights. You're going to have nights where you question yourself. You're going to have nights where you're terrified you'll never meet anyone else. You're going to have nights where you feel shame that you gave up so much of your life for this person. Where you're going to feel this fear that everything has changed since you've been in a relationship. Where you're going to feel this foolishness or this deep, deep hatred for yourself that you gave so much time to this

person. You're going to go cycle through so many difficult things. And those are exactly the things that if you're not careful, the fear of those things will keep you where you are. But what we have to remind ourselves is if we're in a relationship like that, I will never be happy. I will never have peace. I will never be free if I stay. Because anytime you start saying the status quo isn't that bad, and I have people say this to me, I'll be in a private session with them and people will say You know It's Matt You know The truth is It's like he's He's pretty great

And I just You know It's not It's not always bad And I have to remind them I didn't bring this to you You brought this to me I didn't go prying into your love life

And ask you about a relationship And ask you to talk about this person and then tell me all of these things. And I went, hmm, this doesn't seem okay. And you were like, really? I'm having a great time. You signed up to work with me. And you, through tears, told me all of these ways that you're insecure, that you're anxious, that you're unhappy. That this person doesn't take care of you, that this person isn't there for you, that this person doesn't care about your needs.

You told me all of this. So you don't get to now tell me that it's not so bad. Because it's on your mind enough that you're talking to me about it right now. You could have been talking to me about anything in the world and this is what you chose. So remind yourself, this person is not going to change. And therefore, I will never find peace or happiness or freedom by staying now it's going to be hard either way staying is going to be misery and leaving for a time is going

to be misery but one of those directions is guaranteed misery in the future. And the other one is initial misery that will give way to all kinds of possibilities in terms of your happiness. Two difficult paths. One leads to treasure. Which one are you going to choose? One is guaranteed pain. The other one is the possibility of treasure. Which one do you choose? They're both hard. You don't get to choose an easy one. I love that because it's not like, it's not like it's guaranteed treasure. Exactly. But it's an easy choice nonetheless,

because it's just, it's still not a hard choice. Yeah. Because one of them is guaranteed pain. Look, I want to say this to everyone out there that you don't, you really, once we, once we get past our story that we're just super

kind, super empathetic, you know, we're super loyal and that's why we're still in it. And we see the, the deeper situation that's going on that we have not made ourselves worth more than this. Because by the way, you can be kind to someone and just say, I'm going to leave, but I'm going to choose not to hate them. I'm going to choose not to try to punish them. I'm going to choose to leave with grace. That's still kind. You don't have to compromise your kindness or your empathy by leaving. But the reason that you're not leaving is something deeper. It's because you don't feel worth more.

You're terrified of what's next, the unknown. And it's easier to go back to your comfort zone, even if your comfort zone is suffering. Because at least it's a kind of suffering you're used to. You know your way around that suffering. So the person you have to really face is yourself. You're the one keeping you there. You're the one deciding to stay. No one is coming to get you out of that jail. You have to save yourself. And that, by the way, requires real work and real healing. We have a process in November for anyone who wants to come and do that work with us on the virtual retreat. It's

three days of the kind of healing I'm talking about. Go to mhvirtualretreat.com to learn more about that and book an appointment with one of our incredible kind specialists where there's only three of them. I mean, we don't have have a big team there's three people that every day are talking to people about what they're going through what they want to emerge from and what new chapter they want to begin and help usher people towards the virtual retreat if it's right for them if it's not they'll tell you but if you go to mhvirtualretreat.com you can book an appointment for that. But even if you do it yourself or with a therapist or with friends around you, I don't mind how you do it, but you have to work on the deepest fears that are keeping you there and overcome those. Or this will be a situation

that you stay in your whole life. And I've seen it happen over and over again with people. And it's like from the outside, it's like the world's slowest car crash. Watching people go through this and stay in these situations forever. If you stay, you'll be talking about it forever. If you leave and get over the initial pain,

you'll be free forever. We would love to hear from you. If this has resonated with you, if you have feedback for us, let us know. How has this episode impacted you? Podcast at MatthewHussey.com. I think it'd be fun to have a little voice note right now. Is there someone else who's emailed in with a message for us? Absolutely. There's a really lovely lady called Alison Cho who has sent in a voice note, which is my favourite, as I mentioned earlier.

Send us a voice note. Here goes Alison's. Hello, GEMS team. So I'd like to thank all of you for the incredible work that you do this podcast is definitely one of my favorites and I also think the name love life is especially apt it's you know not only helped me navigate my relationships but overall life as well so in the last couple years I've been dealing with a severe chronic health issue that has disrupted my life pretty significantly and so just to hear Matthew's overall philosophy to life in terms of staying curious and open and I love what he said

about creating magic from where I am and so that has really kind of helped me through this time and so yeah thank you all I love the dynamics between all of you and especially Audrey's inputs you are just such a bright light so yeah wishing all of you well and sending my love from singapore as well oh allison i actually it sounds like i picked it out because she's choosing these reviews no it was in the agenda but that's such a lovely voice note thank you so much allison hang on who's responsible for the agendas uh both of us oh yeah it's like to be honest with you it's quite hard to find a review that doesn't mention you because you are a bright light it also continues our theme of having a very international sort of sources of our emails and

reviews and singapore is in the top of my list of places i want to visit top five i would say i want to visit singapore airport i want to do a speech in singapore okay guy guys what about you jameson i want to know why you want to visit singapore airport have you not seen it no oh man we got there's a waterfall at singapore airport that pours out of the ceiling basically it's are you sure it's not just a leak no dude look at this look at that yeah tell me that's not magical the most beautiful aesthetic in my opinion it's a leak is plants isn't that crazy i'm showing jameson a picture of singapore airport right now it's it's really stunning.

Right. I'd hope you'd have more of a reaction when you got there. Well, I am hyper aware that it's a podcast, so it's not the most visual medium. I described what I was doing while people are listening. They too can go and Google Singapore airport. Oh, if you guys could only see this image right now. It's unbelievable.

It is a modern marvel if anyone uh has a speech that they'd like to hire me for in singapore we would love to come audrey would love to see the airport jameson would love to see audrey's reaction to the airport and uh i'd love to give a speech and i'd like like to eat lots of food. Stephen wants to eat street food. So let us know. Let us know. We had an iTunes review here from first-time listener Mel, who says, I've been following Matthew for a while via TikTok and today decided to listen to

an episode while I got my steps in. I valued the advice and appreciate the insight. Keep it coming. Well, I'm glad you've graduated from three second clips on TikTok to us here. That might officially make you the person with the longest attention span on tiktok that you've come to this podcast and you've listened so thank you for being here um well i think it's that time what time is that it's time for that part that silly show where we do the pickles and here we go that's good got, wait, what bit is it? Well, I should say, Stephen, there was someone who posted on Instagram a story of just a basket of peaches and pears

that she had put out in her kitchen. And she said she could not fill this basket with peaches and pears without thinking of our podcast. I saw that one. So there you go that's how that's how much you've programmed us into people's brain i know how i know how to come up with a hook and i'll never let anyone tell me otherwise and i feel like you're withholding it from us steve i haven't heard you work it in very often into the podcast in the last couple episodes. So just work on that for us.

Yeah, please. Okay. I did repost it. If anyone has any podcast-related stories they want to put up on Instagram, we will repost them. Okay. Enough of this. Enough of this funny business. Let's get down to something serious.

Jameson, what is that I see? Is that Indiana Jones? I don't think so. It seems like it could be something else. Stephen, do you see it? Some kind of explorer? Some kind of mole-like figure. An enchanted mole-like figure no it's not a mole it's audrey making her way over to the archives she's strapped on her little advice satch, her little love specs, and she's entered the elevator, taking it first down. Level one, flirting tips.

Level two, attraction. Level three, confidence. Level four, Taiwanese street food. Oh, she's got off on the wrong level. That's Stephen's level. Get out of here. Level five, life advice. Don't look at me.

Oh, she's grabbed something. She's got something now. She's bringing it back up to the surface. Dusting off her specs. Unraveling the scroll. She's bringing it back up to the surface, dusting off her specs, unraveling the scroll. She opens it. Here she reads from the archives.

Do you guys want to hear what I brought up from the archives? Do we ever. Yeah, go on then. This, of course, is the part of the show where Audrey goes into our backlog of all of the programs we've ever created and just grab something that that caught her eye i have a really good one where's it from it's from uh a program called how to talk to men which is about how to talk to men and it talks about lots of different seems aptly titled

lots of different ways that you can talk to men for this particular section talks about all of the different ways that you can approach someone when you're out and about which i think people really people really struggle to do that don't they you know it's really difficult especially nowadays with dating apps and things i think there's a really kind of a general feeling that you know if you come up and talk to someone they might just look at you like you're some kind of freak and we met because of my mighty courage correct in approaching you that's true Thank you. Anyway, I feel like this is going to be a really nice little opener for people because it's a really difficult and nerve wracking thing to do to go and approach someone. So in this particular part of the program, you talk about ways to approach someone so as to ensure that you don't get rejected. So really, really low risk approach.

And you talk about what you can do when you're in a coffee shop and you want to speak to the person who's sitting near you. You can lean over and say, could you make sure no one steals this table while I go to the restroom? The reason I really, really like this is because I feel like you can basically leave your jacket or something on the desk and then go and use the bathroom even if you don't need the bathroom it's a really good way of breaking the ice and speaking to someone without showing any real interest but what that means is that when you can come back from the bathroom you can actually start a conversation with that person because you've already spoken to them

and I think it's really really clever so I saw it and I thought what an amazing way to approach someone and also what a what a way to turn having to go into the bathroom into an advantage you know like it is always that used to be that awkward moment in the coffee shop where it's just like oh god what do I do with my laptop my jacket my maybe don't do this with a laptop it's a little bit too high stakes but uh what about my my coffee is half finished I don't want this with a laptop. It's a little bit too high stakes. But what about my coffee is half finished. I don't want anyone to throw it away. Now you can use that as a little excuse to be a little bit brave, rejection free. And I think it also will make the other person brave.

Because if they thought you were cute and they wanted to talk to you, they've just sort of found a really great excuse to be chivalrous and be there for you and do you a favor and and it's really brilliant so that's from how to talk to men and i really liked it and there are actually many many other scripts it was quite hard to pick one but i thought this one was particularly good so that's from how to talk to men and good news jameson people can literally go there now and get a free chapter because we've got a link that is get the free chapter.com where one of the chapters from how to talk to men which is on flirting obviously the next step once you start talking to someone you're telling me this secret

scroll that audrey had to go seven floors down to the earth to take, people can get a chapter for free at getthefreechapter.com. Yeah. But it's more fun when you send Audrey down to the archives to get it. I'm just saying it's a great deal for people who want to go to getthefreechapter.com. Well, they may want to take the tour down to the archives. I wouldn't go down that. No, you wouldn't recommend it.

Not floor five where Steve was. No, you just don't want people down in your archives. I wouldn't go down there. It's quite dusty. You wouldn't recommend it? Not floor five where Steve was. No. You just don't want people down in your archives. Your little knickknacks. Your little knickknacks down there. Yeah. You don't want people rummaging around your secret archives. I just think that, you know, whatever you do, don't stop off at level five with Stephen's Taiwanese.

Level four. Excuse me. No. Okay. Yeah. That was quite traumatizing. What I saw down there. stop off at level five with steven's taiwanese level four i'll have you know okay yeah that was quite traumatizing what i saw down there stay out of there well you can go and get that free chapter on flirting from how to talk to men at get the free chapter.com Well, it's that bittersweet time again where we must leave you. But we leave you, of course, with the wrap-up. It's been a hell of an episode, guys. Went deep on this one.

The jams came together of course we first heard from Ruth on age gaps and how lovely to hear that Ruth despite the age gap ended up finding love and someone of an age for her that worked out we have heard from Nancy Mu on soul connections that have been given far too much weight when of course what's really important in life is the investment people actually give us, not the connection we simply feel in our mind. We've talked about self-compassion, the all important thing, self-compassion, the thing that can be lacking when we find ourselves in a relationship with either a narcissist or someone who just treats us poorly over time. That compassion that is incomplete if it does not turn inwards towards ourselves. We've heard from Alison on creating magic where she is

and the bright light of Audrey that apparently shines all the way to Singapore. We've talked about choosing the path that is hard, because there is a hard path either way, but there is one hard path that leads to an easy life, and that is the one we must choose. We, of course, all want Stephen to say Pickles, Peaches and Pears more. That's something we're all craving right now. So, Stephen, if you will do the honours.

Pickles, Peaches, Plums, Puddings, Puddles, we're all craving right now so steven if you will do the honors pickles peaches plums puddings puddles pilchards and pears thank you all for listening to us and our ridiculous words and of course thank you to mel who's out there somewhere either watching TikTok or listening to us on the stepper. We appreciate you. We will see you all next time on the next episode of Love Life. Remember, while you are searching for the love you want, love the life you already have because there is magic in it where you stand right now. We'll see you next time. Thank you, everyone.

Well, see you later, everyone. Till next time. Pickle, pickle, pickle, pickle, pickle. I've seen the blog site. Swoop de woop with the blog site swoop de whoop where the blog site