Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 194: 5 Reasons You’re Still Single

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

You might feel like you’re seeing all your friends in couples, and you wonder why it hasn’t happened to you yet.   Although we can’t control the exact moment we’ll meet “the one”, there are things we can do that make it MUCH more likely we’ll find a great relationship by having the right habits and mindset.   So in this episode, Matt, Stephen, Audrey and Jameson discuss 5 reasons you’re still single and what you can do TODAY to maximize your chances of getting the partner you desire. --- Download my free guides and give your love life a kickstart today!  ►► FREE download: “3 Secrets To Love” → 3SecretsToLove.com   --- Email us! You can in touch with the show and give your feedback/thoughts at [e-mail]   --- Follow Matt on Insta @thematthewhussey Follow Stephen on Insta @stephenhhussey

Welcome everybody to the Love Life Podcast with Audrey, Steve and Jay. They're gonna find you love fast. I hope that was our theme song. And everybody knows that everyone can see the show. So listen to the Love life podcast with me matthew hussey james and jordan audrey Hussie Jameson Jordan Audrey Lestrade and Stephen Hussie my brother hello friends and I'm I'm a I'm a friend and director that works that's worked with Matt for a long time and Audrey is Matt's fiancee yeah again that's just for my parents who want me to set the context every time well let's do it properly you know like you know like when you're watching a movie and everyone's just asking the question like well why did they do that and it's just like well watch the movie you want to do it as if like someone just started listening to the podcast

today yeah but they want it like every episode steven steven co-wrote the get the guy book with me and is a new york times bestseller he's also written an article for the blog on the how to get the guy.com website for years jameson has been my creative partner in crime for nearly 10 years now since i got to la has directed essentially any video you see of me online has been shot and directed by none other than jameson jordan who runs the film department in our company and Audrey Lestrat is not not only my fiance but also heads up the content division of our entire company so and also graces us with her presence on the podcast and has become a creative force along with the rest of us when we write videos and create content together and think about what we want to make the four of us including uh billy and sometimes celia who aren't here we all put our pens to

paper on how to create the best stuff for you and also if we ever want to talk about matt behind his back or how he works too hard and stuff audrey's just really good at those conversations too it's multifaceted judas well here we are we we thought we would do a an episode today that talks about the things that keep us single that have nothing to do with love. Stephen, a long time ago, you turned me on to a book called Obliquity by John Kay, who I believe was an Oxford professor of economics. Yeah, I think that's right. That was a long time ago we first read that book. A long time ago. But the book was based on an idea that always stuck with me, which was that success comes from indirect factors, indirect variables. Meaning, if you want to get rich, focusing on getting rich is not necessarily the key variable that's going to get you there. It's the indirect variables. So creating a product that meets a need would be one thing. Having great time management

skills might be another. Having an incredible ability to build a team and to influence that team to your vision. These are indirect factors. In our love life, there are indirect factors that play a key role in either keeping us single or making it much, much easier and quicker for us to find love. And so I thought it'd be fun today to talk about five different things that off the top of my head I can think of that have a big influence on why we stay single. And even if you're in a relationship listening to this, I think you're going to find these interesting and in some cases even relevant. And they may even be relevant, some of them, to why your relationship might struggle. And then let's invite you out there to email us, podcast at matthewhussey.com, and let us know if you think we've missed any key ones,

because I think it would be great to hear from you, because this is not designed to be comprehensive, but doing this a long time, these are five things that right off the top of my head came out, and we're going to discuss them. And these are five things, but I'm glad you said that, Matt, because it does kind of open up your brain into thinking in this way. The list can probably go, you can get super creative with this and start thinking really differently about your love life. 100%. Before we go any further, I want to make sure if you have not already, you have checked out the program we have called the Momentum Texts.

This is, I would argue, the most what I realized is a lot of people were having these kind of long distance exchanges that weren't going anywhere. And I thought to myself, if you were texting someone who wasn't in the same room as you, who wasn't maybe even in the same neighborhood or town as you, and you wanted to actually make sure that it moved forward in a very intentional way that led to a relationship, what would you send them? And how would it differ from the kinds of messages people send and the kind of conversations they have that lead them constantly into casual relationships that never go anywhere? Ones where people are just using each other for attention.

Ones where they're just using each other for validation and some kind of short-term intimacy, but never turn into anything. And so I created this program, which had over, I think it's over 60. 67. 67 different messages that can either be texts or conversations that lead you down the path of a real relationship. And they really do make a difference. And after COVID finished, this still became, this still remained one of our most popular programs because what people realized is, hey, there's like

a real epidemic right now of people just constantly getting into these relationships that don't go anywhere, that end up hurting your feelings anyway. You still get your heart broken. You still end up feeling like you've been put through the ringer, but you don't actually even get a relationship out of it. Nothing ever happened. It was like it never got off the ground in the first place. And so this is designed for anybody who's like, from the moment I start talking to someone, I want them to be aware that I am someone to be taken seriously. I want there to be momentum. We're still going to flirt. We're still going to create attraction. We're still going to create tension. And these show you how to do that too. But it's going to make sure that things actually go somewhere. And the great news about this program, unlike some of our more expensive

programs, this is $7. So this is super easy for people to get their hands on. If you don't have it already, go to MomentumTexts.com. Like I said, it's ridiculously practical. It's really easy to use and you can be reading it right now. So go over to MomentumTexts.com before you do anything else, before you listen to this episode, and then come back here and let's get started. Now you're back with your copy of momentum texts well put um tell us about the subject map so let's talk about those five things as a starting point that have nothing to do with our love lives but keep us single the first one i put is and i feel like this is very relevant to the last couple of years for obvious reasons. You work from home. Now, as someone who's always worked from home,

I've worked from home since the age of 21 when I left university. I mean, I had a very brief spell of working in an office, but it certainly wasn't the kind of office. It was a two person office that I worked in with me and sometimes Steven and one other person. It was not the kind of bustling office where you were ever, you were never going to meet anyone. And over the course of my life, I've known how insular it can make you to always be working from home and to not have those daily interactions that either can put you in a place where you meet someone through your work, which firstly is not always advisable, obviously, but there are people who tend to work in buildings where they might connect with people or even just the act of going to work puts you on sometimes public transport or it puts you in a lunch area in a certain part of town that means you're around people and you're

around that buzz of people in their working day. It makes it more likely that after work, you might end up at a happy hour with people. And at that happy hour, you might meet people. You end up with a social circle that comes from work sometimes that means that you get invited to things. And I'm someone who has, and all of us here, maybe less so you, Audrey, because you have had a lot of experiences of working in productions and on sets, Jameson too. But, you know, I know that we've had a lot of experience of working from home and I'm wondering what your experiences are of doing that. But I know my experience was that I, it, it took special effort for me to actually

do things for me to actually meet people. It had to be a very conscious decision because my life wasn't naturally going to put me in a place where I was meeting people. Stephen, is that your experience of it? Yeah. And I think more and more people go through this now, like the culture shifted, right? Post-pandemic, more and more people are remote workers. Even if they don't work from home, they don't work in an office. And you're just not bumping into anyone. You're not meeting friends of friends. You're not going for after work drinks. You're not going for lunch hours. It all makes a difference to just how much someone is like, come with us to this at the weekend. If you don't bump into someone, it's unlikely you're going to get that. And it's a real i saw a chart that that showed recently how much

time people spend alone at different periods of their lives and like after a certain age of late 20s or after college like the alone time shoots up massively and we hear that less people have sex than ever who are young like there's there's less young people having sex i'm sure there's correlations between these things and it's so seductive the idea of like oh working from home it's just like it's a it's so easy you know i remember when covid was going down and a lot of parents were just deciding like i'm just gonna homeschool my kids this year and the kids are like oh that's so great like i don't have to get up so early for school and i'm just like oh like school sucked i hate getting up early didn't like having to have homework and like those tests that had a lot of pressure but it's like you kind of need to be

there like you have to like you you want to just be tossed into this environment where it's just like where suddenly the interactions don't need a lot of activation energy that's one of your terms matt but um and that i think ties back to the obliquity point right where it's just suddenly you're you have these excuses to be around these other environments and these other little mini incentives these little mini interactions where it's like oh yeah did you hear about holly's birthday party oh yeah she sent an invite to everyone in the class you know or it's just like um those and it's not like you're gonna have a work romance it's that you meet that person at work who's inviting you to that party and at that party you meet someone else from a different office.

And it's those little rabbit holes of interactions. That's exactly right. I want to also mention the activation energy actually came from the book, The Happiness Advantage by Sean Aker. Just so I'm not taking credit for that term. But I love that term because it's the idea of activation energy, which is, as Sean Aker describes it, the energy that the example he uses in the happiness advantage is if you want to play the guitar more and you want to practice it

and you can't seem to get yourself to practice it, keeping it tucked away in the closet is a bad idea because there's a high activation energy for you to practice. You have to go to the closet, get it out, bring it back down. So keeping it by the sofa where you know you're going to sit and watch TV anyway, where you can just reach out and grab it, lowers the activation energy and therefore makes it more likely that that will be something you actually do i can categorically say that that's not true because during the pandemic i was trying to learn the guitar and i did real good for like two weeks and then i had it next to the sofa and it stayed there afterwards for a year yeah it's funny because i used to steven will perhaps remember this during at school like i'm talking age 13 14 and just so that you know audrey that i've always been the insane person i am today for exams i would i would

have like a hundred cue cards and i would stick them all over the mirrors in my room at home and everywhere that I saw all the time because in my head if every day I woke up and the first sight I got was of these cue cards it would it would like make its way into my brain didn't work no because you then look through them yeah yeah they became wallpaper yeah your mind just doesn't actually want to to learn no no i didn't literally i vividly remember matt would do this and he'd try all kinds of techniques like listening to stuff when he went asleep to see if it stuck in when he fell asleep to it like in friends when charla tries to quit smoking the walls of the walls of my bedroom yeah and walls always cue cards everywhere it was like a beautiful mind it looked it looked like a detective trying to crack a case and i'm glad

i'm glad you've outgrown this particular habit and yeah but not really i mean only in that sense i still am a compulsive note taker who's always scribbling things down and trying to put them in places where I'll remember them but but think about but think about how little you would have studied if the cue cards were were still inside of that binder which was inside of your backpack which was inside of your locker at the school well yeah but you know what's interesting what I've I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole on this but what I would say has changed in me is not that same feeling of I really want to do well and I really want to remember all these

important details and so on but what has changed in me is I've recognized that there has to be a division where I go okay what I need is a reminder in the right place at the right time to go and open up that important binder, whatever it is. So if I say, okay, I'm going to write today, I need a reminder in the right place that reminds me to write. And then I need a place I can go to be intentional about writing. If the pages of what I'm writing are sprawled out everywhere all the time, rather than lower the activation energy, all it does is mean I can't ever switch off from it. And that's bad for me. And I actually think there's a parallel there between that and what we're talking about, because working from home isn't

a death sentence to our love life or our social life. What it does mean though, is that you have to be very intentional about creating opportunities and socializing and being in community with other people. In the same way, by the way you know you could say going to work every day in a busy building in a part of town where there's lots of people where you have lunch around people and so on that can become its own version of the notes on the wall if you're not careful where it just becomes all these people around you, all of these opportunities around you just become wallpaper that you're no longer tuned into them because there's no intentionality. And I, I do think that there are tons of people who are in situations where they're around a lot of people

and there's undoubtedly, undoubtedly there is a benefit to that. That is just, you're more likely to stumble into a relationship. You're more likely to just end up meeting someone and kind of, you can just, you can hit into another person and just end up, something happens as a result of that. That's the part that you have on your side but if you're not intentional you can still end up phase you can live in a big city and be incredibly lonely and not talk to people and and find that you're still complaining about how hard it is to meet people and how you never meet anybody, even with that.

Yeah, very good. I like that. It's also connection, isn't it? It's like you say, intention and connection. Feeling connected to what you do and doing it. Yeah, I'm one of the ways I think is most important to get it is through making yourself part of communities. And this is the thing that, you know, work is not a guarantee of that, especially if you don't have a great community in your workplace. But the more ways you can tap, you know, happy hours after work are a sense of community and that can really help you. Making a friend at work who as a result of that friendship invites

you to something. And then when you go there, you get to know their three best friends quite well and you do that multiple times that creates a community that you start to actually become a part of you and I have you know been hanging out with a couple of people in LA that we haven't spent a lot of time with before and as a result I think we've been invited to like three different events all with that same community showing up every time. And we've sort of ended up becoming a little bit part of that community. And as a result, you, you inherit a whole new group of people. And I, when it comes to our love life, I think of those communities as, it's like, you just got dropped in another pond with all these new fish.

And one of them might actually be a great person for you. And by being in that pond, you now have access to that fish. And it's not as easy to do that as, you know, being on a train and meeting someone on a train is hard. Or it's at least challenging to overcome the kind of social barriers to that. The difficult kind of awkwardness and people worrying you have some weird agenda. Everyone listening. Everyone listening. But being part of a community is really important. And I would put this to anyone out there who currently does work from home and anyone who works somewhere. Are you

creating that? And it's going to lead us on to our second point, which I want to bring up, which is the second big reason you're single that has nothing to do with love is that you have friends, not communities. What do you mean by that? Friends are, you know, you could have a best friend who's in a relationship and you get on well with your best friend and their partner and you hang out with them and you love them and they're great. And it gives you a sense of connection, but it doesn't really necessarily create, it's not a community. And especially if people who are in relationships long-term often they end up becoming part of less sometimes they become part of more communities especially you know having kids is kind of another opportunity to

have new community right you go to a school you meet other parents and it kind of for some people it ends up being a new community but a lot of people who get into relationships start losing communities because they create their nest and they spend a lot of people who get into relationships start losing communities because they create their nest and they spend a lot of time there and naturally it becomes you know in a little bit inward focused and so being with being friends with that person doesn't it gives you connection which is important it may give you support which is important but it doesn't, it gives you connection, which is important. It may give you support, which is important, but it doesn't necessarily give you community. And a lot of people who are single will say, I have friends. But if you ask them, do you have communities? They'll struggle to say yes. And I see this as a problem when someone keeps the, when they,

all their friends, they have, they have three or four friends, but they're in long-term relationships and they're always doing relationship things that, especially if those relationship things are kind of more just going to dinner with each other, that you may sound like someone, you know, Matt, you always say make friends i have friends yeah but it's not community there's a uh there's a famous ted talk by a woman called i think it's meg j she wrote a book about why your 20s are really important and you shouldn't just waste them and she's trying to tell young people like don't don't just blow off your 20s as nothing like they're important years to to build and one of the things to build is your communities and she she talks about the importance of weak ties weak ties being

the people who are like on the edges of your social circle who might have access to all kinds of other social circles and people you know and the importance of nurturing weak ties so it's not always just the two friends you go to dinner with it's like who's on the periphery who might be that person who is fun and single to go out with when you're single it's like they're going to be a better person to call and go do you want to go out for a drink tonight and you know whatever or they're going to introduce you to 10 of their friends. I love that concept. I'm so happy you brought that up, Steve. Because those, you know, those weak ties probably have a community of their own too, right?

And it's like every one of them is a possible access point to a whole new world, a whole new group of people. And it's, you know, we tend to entrench ourselves more and more and more in our community and then we claim we never meet anybody well we don't claim it we do never meet anybody new and we go but they are so hard to meet people yeah because you you keep going to the same that you keep fishing in the exact same pond all the time and and you know the hard part about building new communities is that it often involves saying yes to invitations you don't want to say yes to yes like i'm i know that when stephen fry said there's nothing I hate more than a party,

I relate to that. We were talking about this yesterday, weren't we? Yeah, I truly relate to that. And I know that what I mean when I say there's nothing I hate more than a party is not that I hate parties. What I hate or what the child in me hates is going to a place where I don't know anybody or I only know one or two people. And there's many more people than that there.

And I am going to have to, you know, be a grown up and suck it up and shed my shyness for a night and talk and deal with the awkwardness of small talk and the awkwardness of beginning conversations with people that you don't know have any interest in speaking to you and fumbling your way through a night of new people. But that's where all the treasure is in terms of new opportunities. So the price of admission for all those new opportunities is often saying yes to things that are uncomfortable to say yes to. I know I don't have a problem with the party that like recently when we were in London, we went out the night we got back. Steve, you'll remember we went to a comedy night and we went out to a bar afterwards. There was no hint of me going, oh, I hate having to do this because we had about 15 of us and all of them were either blood relatives that we love or they were closest friends. And so that wasn't, that was just like taking home with us. That was just like being a traveling circus. We were just all together. There was no effort. I don't have to entertain anyone. I don't

have to take any risks. I'm just surrounded by love love walled in in a fortress of love albeit in venues i might not have been to before so that's a different thing but we didn't meet anyone new that night correct because we didn't need to we were having so much fun together we didn't need to and it's all very well saying i don't you know i i that's all i want to do because that's all i need is i just want to go out with the people I love and spend time with people. That's fine. But you can't simultaneously complain you never meet anybody. You can do that, but you can't complain you never meet anybody. now but still when we have to go to events and we say yes to events that that we don't know anyone

at it it's still like i i still can't say no all the time because the truth is there's always people at those places that are interesting that i learned something from. You might meet someone better than me. Never. Impossible. Impossible. Jameson just nodded. Just keep this kind of. It was just very like yes. Your tone was so yes and. And so I thought Matt might fall for it.

Jameson saw the trap a mile off. And he wanted to see if I handled it the way he hoped i would but that you know that that community element is not you that's not free that's not free that this is a big thing i i think it's important for us to all realize like it's free when you go to university to an extent right that's the one time where you leave school because school is tough school is a community but it's rough because a you're like finding your feet and it feels like the stakes of getting it wrong are social suicide and you those people you're gonna be stuck with for years if you get it wrong. And so it feels like, oh my God, I'm just, you know, my mistakes here are going to follow me. And this

same community grows with me year after year. And so it's hard at school. What people like about college is that they get to leave and then go and create a whole new community with a, and there tends to be a lot of people at a college. So, and you tend to go mix with different people and, and even at college though, I would argue it's not free because you on freshers week, I don't know what you call it. What do you call it?

The first week of university in America, just orientation, orientation. You, you have to, you still, and the thing I regret most about university is not going to sign up for more like clubs i that was a mistake i made because my kind of

insular nature meant that i went and i made friends with people on my course because it was easy but all those like different clubs that assembled on freshers week on orientation week to say, Hey, do you want to be part of this thing? I wish I had said yes to more of those things because I would have had much more community in college, but it's, we're at least kind of community is crowbarred into our life at that point. It never gets, I don't think, unless you start a job that introduces you to a ton of people, it never gets that on a plate for us again. And we then as adults either have to build community by saying yes to people we wouldn't normally say yes to when they invite us to places, especially the times when what

they're inviting us to involves other people, which will make us more inclined to say no, by the way, but that's exactly the time we need to say yes. Or by actually joining a club or a society that does something we want to do, but by nature, we're doing it in a kind of scarier way than just doing it ourselves. It's the difference between running because you want to get fit and saying, you know what, screw it. I want to run and there are running clubs and a running club is going to introduce me to a whole new circle of people. I'm going to go and join a running club, even though I'm going to be the new one, even though no one's going to know me, even though I'm going to have to make conversation. You know, it's all of that is what comes, especially for those who are introverted

or shy or anxious socially. Those are all the things that bring dread to people, but that's where all the treasure is. Yeah. Very good. I like that. I agree. The next reason that we might be single that has nothing to do with love is that we live in the middle of nowhere. This is interesting because I used to always hear this excuse. When we'd go on tour, we'd hear an excuse in every city about what was wrong with that city. And most of the time we just kind of,

you just kind of dismissed it on stage. It was like, every city has their excuse. You know, there's loads of opportunities everywhere. But now I feel like you've come around and just been like, there is such thing as just living in the wrong place. Well, there's an excuse that holds more water in a way. Because when you make an excuse about new york or london or la

you're making a kind of commentary on the kinds of people that you meet there and the dating culture there so someone may complain about la and say know, it's sort of superficial and transactional and it's hard to make a plan with anyone in LA. It's not as easy as New York where you can just kind of meet someone down the street, down the block. You have to get in your car and go somewhere and people are flaky in LA and everyone's kind of driven by their desire to get ahead and be in the industry or whatever. And they're looking, you know, there's all these excuses for LA. They have some validity, but it's a commentary on the culture.

And people have slightly different excuses about New York. And they have slightly different excuses about London or about any other city in the world. Every city has its kind of excuse. But when it comes to living in the middle of nowhere, it's not a commentary necessarily on the culture, although you may have a commentary on the culture that it's small town mindset and everyone, you know, people get married younger or people like there's certain tropes about small towns, but it's more likely that someone is making a kind of commentary on the fact that there's just such a limited number of options. And that holds more water because there is something of a numbers game about dating. And at least whatever you say

about New York, at least you can say there are a huge number of people cycling through that city every year. And, and it kind of, there's new ones coming through all the time. There's people landing and starting a life in New York and leaving and, you know, they're being recycled. There are a lot of people there. When you live truly in the middle of nowhere or in a very, very small town, your options go way down. Now, there's some people who romanticize. I've seen some people online, sometimes of a certain political persuasion but call themselves trads and they romanticize the idea of living in a small town or country area because like you're going to get more like real traditional people there with traditional values who aren't just like playing the game swiping on

apps stuck in i'm an urban zombie mode in my pod again this is their characterization i'm an urban guy i like living in the city that's my preference but their view is that there's something better about meeting someone outside of that well i think there may there may in some ways be truth to that although there's there's there's going to i don't know the american equivalent i suppose would be like moving to like i feel like there's a difference between moving to the midwest and where there's still a lot of people in the city you're in, but a sort of different pace of life or a different, you know,

a different rhythm and a different blueprint that people have there and moving to the middle of Idaho. Where? Yeah. Montana. I mean, Whitefish, Montana. that's a one score for audrey well chet who i assume is how you know montana hey i was really proud of the fact that i had some good american knowledge did you get it from chet yes but that's not the point chet is a guy on our team who's a uh one of one of our key people who grew up in montana and what did he say there was like couldn't let me have it could you i i still

think it's great knowledge where you got it from is is is fine but i i he literally grew up in an area where there was no one around i mean he had to drive miles i think to any to life anywhere wasn't there one high school and had like 20 kids yeah something and he met the love of his life then they're still together and they're the best in montana yeah they met in high school oh they did that's right that's right they went to the same high school yeah well that's that he met in the one community that existed when he was a kid your your theory about love sorry continue well not really because had he not met her at his had she not been in his high school that like he was out of options at that point you know he one would argue chet got insanely ridiculously it's a lottery win

disgustingly lucky and they're and they're happily married as we know and and you know an amazing couple but you know it's it makes me sick how easy it was for chet it's it's a disgrace uh but no i exception not the rule but the but that is a very very difficult um situation to be in you have a friend that just moved to the countryside in england even though she really wants to meet someone and i remember you showing me this gorgeous beautiful house that she's moving into and my first thought was oh no like she's not gonna last out there in the country like this house is gorgeous and she's not gonna last out there maybe there should be like a class action lawsuit against hallmark for making all these movies every christmas season it's always the big city girl moves to some small town where she meets someone who's some he's

probably a prince but happens to be in the rural area and uh and that's the that's the message we're told to steven's point or like she meets the one guy who looks like a hollywood actor who lives in that small english country town but by the way that guy that guy apparently was single for like 18 years before she moved there. It's like how convenient the Jude Law was there. Yeah. In the local pub. And by the way, like go to the average countryside pub in England and you ain't going to find Jude Law. You're not going to find Jude Law. And one would argue that, you know, you may not be looking for the person who's downing pints at 2 p.m

in the afternoon steve do you remember when you know we had a brief spell living in that house that was in the countryside yes and just how disproportionately difficult it made life oh yeah yeah to even go out to even go to the movies with someone it was a real pre-planned event i remember that it was a special treat to like drive to kfc you remember like it was like a big deal right that we were like go get kfc and it was it felt like and i know by some people's standards of living in the middle of nowhere it wasn wasn't that far. But for us having lived kind of close to people, a lot of our lives and close to the nearest town for us, it was like, whoa, it, the activation energy for being able to, to just get like a restaurant or fast food or whatever was really high.

Yeah. Let alone, you know, the idea of going on a date or meeting somebody, we wouldn't even want to go somewhere to meet some, like you wouldn't want to go out. Like it's one thing. This is what I think is really interesting.

It's one thing to be in the middle of nowhere and say, I'm going to drive half an hour or 45 minutes to a date because I have found a date that seems interesting. But it's another thing to leave the house, to go somewhere for the evening, just on the hopes that you might meet someone. And to do a 45 minute drive somewhere that's likelihood is it's not going to be fruitful anyway and now you're driving back and that was your evening yeah i think something that's something that's worth mentioning i think at this point is obviously it's all well and good to say that but it is not always an option for people to move

from where they live. So you said something really interesting, Matt, when we were talking about it initially, where you said something like, you know, if you're currently, say one of the reasons that you're tied to your hometown or wherever you're living and there's not a lot of people there is because you are taking care of your mother you know you said maybe instead of living an hour away from the next big town and two minutes from your mother you can move 20 minutes from your mother and half an hour away from the next big town or whatever it was and that extra that 30 minutes makes a big difference correct and i think that's a really really good point it's that you know even if there is something keeping you where you are is there a compromise that you can make in your life that still means that you might have

more access to more communities and um life i guess i also think that there's a it's all about what's most important to you right now. I'm not using this in the sense of a sick mother here. But for example, there are some people who live further out for financial reasons. But if they took a smaller place, they could live closer to where it's going on or to where there's a lot of people. And you might decide like, okay, I can't, I'm going to take a smaller place because what's more important to me right now than having that extra bedroom is having the ease of meeting people. And that's more important and i think sometimes we get ourselves into these situations in life that are not productive for what we really want to happen because we're holding on to some idea of the way life should be right now i i i want the extra

space well then then you have to say i want the extra space more than I want to find a relationship because sometimes it's just about making those kinds of sacrifices and saying, it's not as important. What, what are the, it's like saying, what are three things that you'd like to have now pick two of them? You know, what's, what's one you can sacrifice in order to make the other two more likely. What I like about that, Matt, and the way you're describing it, because look, a lot of people aren't going to, they're not going to listen to what you just said. They're not going to listen to a podcast and decide to move, right? But I do think even just going down this line of thought is helping people be realistic

about the way that their lives are being incentivized by these obstacles. And once you realize like, like oh that really is stopping me from doing x y and z every single weekend then at least you can be realistic about like wow i'm gonna have to really double down on my effort if i'm not gonna actually move because it costs a lot of money to move even if you get a smaller place just the act of moving is talk about activation energy but um but it's time to be like maybe be realistic about just how how many things in your life are pulling you away from the school and how hard you'll have to work to compensate for that i love that always a voice of reason jameson finally people say that

in the emails they send in they're like you you know i love jameson's sort of his rational and reasonable way of coming in and making sense of i'd love to see that that's bold statements the fourth reason we're single that has nothing to do with love is we don't train we don't take care of ourselves. Are you saying people need to spend more time in the gym? Is that your solution? I sort of think of this one slightly, both literally, but metaphorically too. Meaning Meaning, if we are excited about taking ourselves out because we like ourselves, we have an outfit that we enjoy wearing, we like the way it fits us, and we feel sexy, we feel good, and our hair is done, we've been taking care of ourselves, then we actually get excited about taking ourselves out. We don't hide under our clothes and sort of disengage because when we don't like taking ourselves out, when we don't feel

good about ourselves, we kind of disengage. We may go for coffee, but we're certainly not making eye contact with anybody. We're not head up, we're head down. We're scurrying away to a corner of the room because we just don't, we don't want to be seen. Whereas when you feel good about yourself, you might be more likely to want to be seen. You might be more likely to make eye contact with that person. You might be more likely to smile at someone. I've had that feeling of going into a coffee. I've had both feelings many times in my life. I've had the feeling of going into a coffee shop and being like, I just don't, I don't even want to talk to the person behind the counter because I just feel rough. And I think I look rough and I don't, you know, it's just, this is not a me that I want to be seen. Unfortunately, I really need coffee.

And so I have to be in this place right now, but I don't want to be seen and I don't want to be engaged with. And there are other times where I, I like put on a fresh pair of, of sneakers and I'm like liking the way my clothes fit and I feel good about myself. I feel like my skin's good today. And I'm like, when I go out, I'm like, my head is up and I'm looking at the, you know, I'm like engaging with life and my, my head is in the room. That energy is much more likely to create interactions. It's much more likely that someone will see that glint in your eye and feel like it's warm or welcoming or sexy or charismatic. It's much more likely that you're going to do the little things like give someone a nod or say hi, or be a little louder with your voice that create spontaneous interactions with people. And we all know it. We all know it when someone walks into a room and there's a kind of

energy about them that there's like a, there's a feeling, they exude energy and as a result they lure you in they they have their own gravitational pull we can have that if we are someone we want to take out and fun fact you're also way less likely to bump into an unwanted ex if you look good than if you look bad because that's just the way that it works in life if you look like shit you're way more likely to bump into your ex you don't want to see and if that's not an incentive i don't know what is and that scientific fact is something you can carry with you yeah in your life yeah that's science it's true it's actually true it is somehow true that in the worst possible moment that's when that i i'll always it's always the moments where i feel like a piece of shit that someone will come up to me and say i love your work

makes you think we're in a simulation but it's true and actually a very recent example of this was halloween where we had really cool outfits. I thought you were going to say where I ran into an ex. They stretch as far as LA. No, we had really good outfits. And I was really, really excited to go to the party in a way that I don't normally get that excited. And I was like, I can't wait.

Because I just thought, I can't wait. Because I just thought, I can't wait for everyone to see how fantastic our outfits are. You really were like that. It really put like a energy in your step. Yeah, I loved it. I was so excited. So I don't want anyone to hear this and go, oh, this is Matt's kind of Matt's body shaming people

and saying everyone needs to train. Although I do believe everyone should train. It's our way of saying, doing things that make you feel sexy, that make you feel good in your body, that make you feel like, ooh, I like my new kicks today. Oh, I like my new outfit today. Oh, I like the way my hair looks today. Doing those things makes you more likely to enjoy taking yourself out and keep your head up in the room. And that makes it more likely that you will actually have interactions with people that are spontaneous and unexpected.

Rocket ship underpants. Live your life like you're just wearing your favorite rocket ship underpants. What a rocket ship underpants. It's just your favorite set of underpants this is this is classic jameson wisdom just cap off the point the great thing about training every day is you kind of just like you put a natural pep in your step and you kind of naturally have that swagger if you miss a day at the gym that's fine just put on your rocket ship underpants your favorite pair of underpants makes you feel like all right I'm good to go today. Well, I feel like that needs to be merch that we sell.

Can we get some sort of design rocket ship, like a rocket ship on some underpants? We can do that. I'd appreciate that. At least if we work out the percentage. Not on my to-do list. Steve, do you like this point? Yeah, I think how you feel determines whether you are bothered

and if you are not ready you don't even take opportunities when they're there i if i could if i felt like crap and then me and a friend went for coffee and there was a chance oh should we go and get a drink after i'll be like i look like crap like i'm not gonna want to go and talk to a woman if i look like this you know i? You're kind of just threw your sweatpants on or whatever. And you just feel not like this. You're unshaven. You feel, and then just like, well, I'm not, I'm not going to want to go and be sociable or go to a bar after or hang out or party. So yeah, just feeling like you're ready. It's really important. Let me go home and put on my rocket ship underpants and then we can go out.

My tip for this, for anyone who works from home, is shower and get ready in the morning. Like the temptation sometimes is to be like, oh, I'm at home. I'll just shower later today. And it's being that idea that if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. You know, if you get ready first thing in the morning and make yourself look your best, the rest of the day, you're in a place where you're primed for any

opportunity that could come your way. You could be in the grocery store later that day and you'll be happy to bump into someone attractive because you already look your best. If you've saved your shower and your routine for five o'clock in the afternoon, then it means that you don't want to bump into anybody attractive that whole day. So just stay in a state of readiness by getting ready first thing in the morning. I love that. What's number five? The fifth reason that you're single that has nothing to do with love is that you're too tired.

Go on. Well, we all have a lot going on in our lives. And one of the worst things about being out of balance is that it puts us in a kind of continual burnout state. That means, firstly, our energy is off. So if we meet people, our energy is just off. When you're tired and in burnout mode, you're not playful. You're easy to anger, quick to anger. There's an irritability about us. We get frustrated. We often get pessimistic. We feel resentful. And these are energies that we wear wherever we go. And it puts us in a rush. When you're in a rush, you don't engage with people i you know that that constant state of i've got to get to the next thing i've got to get to the next thing and being tired as you do it you don't know that state do you how dare you with your sarcasm you you don't do that it's not sarcasm. It's empathy, Matthew. We care about you. No.

Stand corrected. I've never thought about it. I'm now being flanked by it on both sides. You sarcastic cretins. And this is what happens when you're tired. Well, that, and being too tired means you don't want to say yes to invitations. It means you don't feel inclined to date. And it means if you do happen to run into somebody, you're less likely to have the time or the energy to do anything about it.

I always think about, I think you said it was Dr. Ruth. I heard the story from you, but you were like on some talk show. It was on Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. And wait, tell this story about what Dr. Ruth said. I think it's fascinating. I think Rachel, oh, she was on, that's right. So she was on Rachel Ray the same day I was. talk shows on rachel ray rachel ray and uh wait tell this story about what dr ruth said i think it's fascinating i think rachel oh she was oh that's right so she was on rachel ray the same day i was have you ever seen dr ruth audrey we have i we have to do something with dr ruth

maybe we'll get her as an interview on the love life club we have to do so i'm gonna make a note right now because imagine matthew was a woman born in the 1930s i think you've seen a video i think you've seen me on stage yeah she is this um just the sex therapist yeah yeah yeah doctor yeah the people in america will know her because she just is a kind of legend who's been around for such a long time and i don't know how old dr ruth is now she must be like mid 90s right yeah it must be um but she's tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny and that's so cool she's so great yeah she's she's still is she still broadcasting um she's i think she is i need to get in touch with her. She's still active on Twitter.

She's just active. I need to get in touch with her. That's so good. Wasn't she in the Holocaust? Yeah, she survived all kinds of crazy shit. Holocaust survivor. I think she was a very young child in the concentration camps. Amazing, amazing woman.

And pioneered because she was talking about sex in america on tv in scandalous ways for her time and she was so sex positive and so like there's a documentary i want you to watch on her because it will it it really will touch you it's just a amazing amazing woman and um we were on dr ruth and she you're on rachel sorry i was on rachel ray and dr ruth was on before me and she was with rachel ray on this big talk show and rachel ray said to her um i think she was talking she was either talking about sex or bringing life to your bringing good energy to your partner or something and rachel ray went oh but you know you you get so tired you know and dr dr ruth in her her accent she was like

tired i have no time for tired people. If you're tired, sleep. Yeah, I love that. I always think of that because whenever I feel, it's just so common now. It's like we're always just trying to plan our next coffee or trying to get the right amount of energy. And then I just think about like, what would Dr. Ruth do right now? She'd just be killing it.

She'd just have so much energy, so much enthusiasm. And it's also something that I think Emily Moore said too when you spoke to her on the Love Life membership, which is that one of the sexiest things in the bedroom is just enthusiasm. And what I liked about the Dr. Ruth story is like, I think it adds the appropriate amount of shame when you're feeling that tired excuse.

Seamus strikes again. Yeah, I do. Seamus strikes. of shame when you're feeling when you're feeling that tired shameson strikes again yeah i do shameson shameson strikes uh or it's just like all right wake up a little bit you're alive you know it's just like you in this moment like do you have to just it's one thing to be tired but do you have to like be tired you know what i mean right does that have to be your story for the next hour but that's a good way of putting it because the that's we have to decide do we want that to be our story we we go through life and we add so much to our plate and we say yes to so many things and we try and please so many people and at the end of it all we love myself included we love to talk about how tired we are and we wear it as a badge of honor and it's

certainly not sexy it's not helping our loved lives it's not making us inclined to go out there and meet new people and and it and it might be a real thing i'm not saying it's an act we we might really be tired but if we keep if we're tired all the time and if every evening you get to the end of the evening and you're like, I can't, I can't, I can't go on a date. I cannot be bothered to go and do this, to add energy to my love life. I'm exhausted. If you keep getting to that place, then you have to ask yourself, is this, is this a story you want to keep telling? And, and I have full empathy. I'm not trying to say that I know there are people in positions where they are trying to look after a sick relative. They are trying to hold down a job or two.

They are trying to raise children as a single mother in some cases, in many cases. They are trying to deal with all of the admin they have to do around the house. They're trying to, where possible, fit in time for a best friend, if they're lucky, on the weekend and occasionally see other family members. And by the time they've done all these things, they are dead. There is no energy left and and when that's the case like that is going to have a very real impact on our love life a because it requires a little time and b and some would argue and i would argue more importantly it requires a little energy it also requires us to bring our best self exactly because you're never

gonna attract the kind of person you want if you bring in the worst version of yourself every time and that's the thing you can most people even if they say they don't most people have a little time well they don't have his energy because somehow even the busiest among us find time for the latest big show on netflix somehow but it requires nothing of them and now love life requires a little energy and it's an energy we don't have and time energy is when you really think about it time is energy if you don't have energy it doesn't matter how much time you have, you won't be able to use it. You can tell on a date or on someone's Tinder profile when they find dating a chore. And even though they're there, they're not really having

fun with it. They're not coming on the date like this is going to be a joy. They're coming on the date going, I hope this isn't disappointing and that that energy feeds into everything like you meet someone who's who just thinks oh god i just oh date is hard isn't it like my job's so hard dating i barely have time for this and you're thinking like you need lift at the beginning of a relationship you need lift it needs two people to be like yeah like yeah this is great i want to do that this weekend i want to take you to this restaurant i want to go to that gallery you both at different times need to be that person giving it lift but if you're kind of like tired bored lacking in energy is very, very hard. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So the answer to this is not an easy one.

It's a structural issue in our lives. But we have to start asking ourselves, what would I need to do to free up some energy? What would I need to start saying no to? How would I need to reorganize my life or my time? What do I need to stop doing? And where do I need to start saying no to? How would I need to reorganize my life or my time? What do I need to stop doing? And where do I need to have boundaries? Because if I don't, I'm not just not going to have time, I'm not going to have energy. And if I don't have energy, it doesn't matter how much time I

have. If I'm burnt out, I will not be able to use it. And our love life requires us to be the kind of optimistic and positive person with a little life in them who can go on a date and be the kind of energy that somebody else wants to be around. And have, by the way, have enough energy in our exchanges with people that we even get that date in the first place. So we have, you work from home, you have friends, not communities. You live in the middle of nowhere. You don't train, which remember is a bigger metaphor. It's not just about training and you're too tired. Email us podcast at matthewhussey.com. We would love to know either something you feel we've left out that is indirectly having a big effect on your love life, even though it has nothing to do with love. Or if one of these in particular has really resonated with you, if you have a comment you want to make on, well, when you were saying one of those

five things gave me an epiphany about my life right now and something that needs to shift, email us. We want to read your story on an upcoming episode of the podcast. I also want to encourage everyone to go on Instagram and tag the show. Put a story up on your Instagram, tag the show, maybe tag an episode you like and link to it for the people that follow you and tag us. My account is TheMatthewHussey. Tag TheMatthewHussey account and we're going to pick, not only will we repost some of those stories, but we're going to pick one of those stories and that listener to answer a question for on the podcast. And we can do it anonymously, but if you're a listener and you want your question answered, we will pick one of those people who post a story about the podcast and tag me on

Instagram. If you then DM me with your question, we'll pick one of those questions to answer on the podcast. That's fun. He just threw that out there and didn't tell us about it. A little bit of competition i thought it'd be fun yeah it sounds so fun if you haven't already downloaded the free guide the nine texts i want to encourage everyone to go and do that that's something super practical you can get right now for free you know no no you know the best free guide that people should go and download i was looking at the guys recently get the free training oh you like that one i love that one okay all right don't go and download nine texts no don't go down at the nine texts at nine texts.com don't go and do that you're telling them to do it no no i'm not i just want i just don't even i don't think i even got to the end

of my sentence so people will be like where do i get those nine they don't want the nine they wouldn't they wouldn't have even known where to go to nine text.com to get it exactly that's what i'm saying they literally it's like no one would have arrived at nine text.com they couldn't get those they wouldn't have known how to get there don't listen to them go to get the free training not what is get the free training it's a video training on commitment. Well, it's not on commitment, but it's on the subject of commitment and what to do when you're stuck in the phase of the limbo stage, I suppose. You know, when you're in a kind of situation ship,

don't know where you stand, don't know how to ask for commitment and you're being messed around by some guy. Where is that? Getthefreetraining.com, is it? No one's going to go there. I think they probably should, though, because it's actually, it's a free full module from the Attraction to Commitment program. And it's a fantastic module.

Yeah, it is. It's amazing. I just, I was reviewing them the other day and I just, I love it. Well, I want to just finish by reading an email here. This one is from Linda, one of our dear listeners who emailed into podcast at matthewhussey.com. Linda said, you said to email about any epiphany anyone had. I don't know if I've had one or not. However, I have been in a relationship for almost seven years and a good portion of that time have been unhappy. I have told my boyfriend several times, at least three, about how I feel, why and what needs to happen to change that. The last time I told him it's been six years and I won't be living like this for another year. and all I'm getting are promises and excuses. My birthday is coming up and he told me he was

going to come visit me. We're long distance and his family loves me. I doubted it, but I said, great. Yesterday he told me he won't be able to make it, but maybe I could visit him. I don't know if it was an epiphany or the straw that broke the camel's back, but that's going to be a no. I've spent the entire day trying to think of the words to end it. You should know he has a history of drug use and a few years ago relapsed. One of the reasons I didn't end it sooner, I was terrified he'd harm himself. And yes, I know I'm not responsible for any of that. I just decided I'm done. I'm not getting any younger and I would rather be single and alone than in a relationship and alone.

Wish me luck. Thanks for allowing me to rant and for the podcast. It really helped. Well, thank you so much, Linda. That's amazing. How strong. That's actually, that's amazing.

I mean, yeah. Some real shit. Six years. People are going through real shit all the time well thank you for taking the time to email us linda we love hearing your stories uh on the love life podcast send them into podcast at matthewhussey.com and we'll read more of them in upcoming episodes and thank you to all of you who listen, because it is wild how much this podcast is growing every month. We had a hundred thousand more downloads last month than the month before. It is really crazy. So thank you. It's so validating. It gives us so much energy in going into each new episode. Tell your friends, tell your family, send it around. I cannot tell you

how much it means to us. And we'll see you next time.