Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 196: When Is "Casual Fun" Dangerous in Dating?

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

Casual relationships and hook-ups are more common than ever. Some even talk about a "hook-up culture".  But even though we have more choice than ever, there are sometimes consequences we never anticipate. Society says we shouldn’t have stigma around hooking up and casually dating - and that's a good thing - but it can also be painful if we aren't honest about what we really want. We always have to ask the question: is this serving us? Am I feeling respected or am I doing something because it's simply easy right now? Matt, Stephen, Audrey and Jameson discuss the good and bad of casual fun, what you need to think about beforehand, and how to we make sure we don't hurt other people (or ourselves) in the process. --- Download our free guide on "How To Move On After Heartbreak" at MoveOnStrong.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

Girls just want to have fun and is that okay? That's what we're going to be talking about today on Love Life FM. First they have news weather and traffic going up with Audrey up in the sky there with helicopter chapter go ahead. What's going on Audrey? Tell us what's going on up there.

We're heading for some strong head wings. Giggity. Welcome, everybody, to the Love Live podcast we're back me matthew hussey audrey who's got her hand in the air stephen and jameson present present and accounted for and my lord has the cold snap set in in merry old england matt the weather changed overnight it's gotten steve i'll just say it's gotten a bit chilly in la it has has it like i i'm i'm yeah i'll tell you steve yeah i've had to put on an over shirt i went out this morning and i almost turned back around for a sweatshirt right almost i've got steve steve i have got a a buttoned down shirt on, unbuttoned obviously, over a t-shirt. I have a jumper on because it's freezing. There's two layers.

One very thin layer over another very thin layer. And that is actually coming from the man who likes to keep the house like a freezer. Yeah. He literally keeps me in a permanent state of frozenness. That's not what I'm saying. you did an ice bath the other day did you know you were gonna sign up for this when you got engaged to matthew i didn't i didn't it was actually quite funny because um i was going through a bit of a hard day i was having a hard time and matt was like okay i know let's do something to cheer you up i didn't say cheer you up i said take your mind off things big difference it's like major pain you guys ever watch that movie no this guy

is like wounded in the battlefield and i think it's like damon waynes goes up to him want me to get your mind off that pain and the guy's like yeah just takes his finger and snaps it that's that's your strategy yeah pretty much i think doctors even have a name for that if there are any doctors out there there's you know like where they sort of give you a sense a sensation no when you're like feel pain when they're giving you an injection but they kind of give you a sensation on your other arm or something to take your mind away from it there's a name for that i feel like any doctors out there nurses can help us with that that's just that's just misdirection yeah but there's a name steven i think i'm not sure we are gonna start by reading one of our dear

listeners emails that came in this one actually came in in relation to the porn episode we did. She said to my favorite podcasters, I wanted to share my thoughts in response to your question about porn, which you posted on Instagram. If you don't follow us on Instagram, at the Matthew Hussey is the place to go. It's an interesting one. In the past, it hasn't bothered me and I have dated men who would watch porn. However, I recently experienced the bad side effects of it when my most recent partner was into it. The issue for me was that he began to demonstrate behaviors relating to BDSM and there were certain things he was doing in the bedroom without us having had a conversation about it. Sure, I'm all about being feisty sometimes, but there's a time and a

place and a line, which he was definitely crossing. It began to make me feel, let's say, uncomfortable when it came to having sex. And at times I was wondering what scenario he was trying to play out. For example, one night I was getting ready for bed in the bathroom, and when I came out, there were restraints tied to my bed, amongst other things. I remember feeling quite angry that he had set this up without talking to me, especially as I had felt sex between us was becoming very dominating and I wasn't enjoying it. I also started to notice that unless he engaged in this type of behavior, he would struggle to get an erection. The more dominating he became, the more I found it harder to use my voice and speak up for myself. And typically, I'd say that I am someone who can stand my ground. I did manage to have some very awkward conversations and he'd often try to guilt trip me, but it took a while for me to realize what was going on.

I'm pleased to share that I am no longer with this person for an array of reasons, but this was something that I've only really had time to digest since we split. It would definitely make me hesitant to be with someone in the future that is very into porn. Some areas of it can represent dominating behaviors and speak a completely different language which doesn't express love or respect. If two people consent to this sort of experience, that's fine. But when it's one person who is addicted to porn forcing such behaviors onto their partner, it's a big cause for concern. Happy for you to share this on the podcast if you would like, but just refer to me as Kay from London. P.S. Y'all keep me company while cleaning the flat. Love you.

And, and she says this in caps, hi, Audrey. Hello, Kay. That's nice. She didn't say hi to the rest of us like that. Sorry. How good is it when you have a podcast to clean your flat i know i was just thinking of k in the kitchen cleaning having a great time which is what i do and it's it's lovely it was it just made us all feel human because you just go oh yeah everyone other people do that too you just clean up listen to a podcast feels like you're cheating

life when cleaning up is enjoyable because you're just somewhere else listening. I really love what you said there, Kay. I read that email, which by the way, anyone can send us an email, podcast at matthewhussey.com. We occasionally like to read them out on the podcast when we have time. But I really love that because I think it's so nuanced. You know, this is not coming from someone who has an extremely kind of dogmatic view on porn. It's someone who has experienced the negative effect it can have. And I love that you

contextualize that by saying that if ultimately it's just going one way, this person has this world that they go to that then instead of being in conversation sexually with me, they are just bringing back this world to me in a way that's never really discussed. And it just feels like it's all going in one direction, meeting this person's needs, what they're trying to achieve, which they're not even really talking to me about. And it's obviously affecting our sex life because this person can't get an erection unless they're doing these very specific things. That's a problem because in sex, as in any other part of our relationship, it's about being a team. It's

about having each other's backs. It's about looking out for each other and it's about making each other happy, not just getting our own needs met. So thank you, Kay. I thought that was a really beautifully written email. Well, we are talking today about about casual fun in dating and to what extent casual fun can actually be harmful in hidden or obvious ways. There is this frame that we set up for ourselves sometimes in dating where we tell ourselves it's okay just to have a bit of fun. I'm just having a bit of fun. We've all said that before. Oh, I'm just dating this person. It's, you know, it's just a bit of fun or I'm just seeing this person again or seeing this ex or going out in this way. I'm just having a bit of fun. And when we do that, there are sometimes consequences that we didn't anticipate or never intended as a result. And yet we do live in a society where increasingly it feels like it's, you know, we shouldn't have stigma around

just having fun. We shouldn't have stigma around just hooking up. We shouldn't have stigma around casual sex. It feels like a very good thing that we don't have stigma around those things. But we have to separate the conversation about removing stigma from these things, from the conversation about whether they're actually serving us. And today I want to have a conversation about whether it's actually serving us. And when we quote, say, we're just having fun, are there things that we need to actually be conscious of? So that's what I want to open up to today. And I can kind of kick things off with some thoughts of my own, or you guys can jump in first first I actually think it's important to frame up um the difference between um this idea of just having fun and you know just seeing how things go and not

taking it too seriously and enjoying something for what it is versus actually breaching your own boundaries and needs and desires just in the name of keeping someone in your life that isn't actually meeting your needs or making you very happy on a real level. Does that make sense? I think there's like, there are people who are in casual phases of their lives where they are just looking to explore options and maybe they're healing from something, maybe they're just doing whatever, but it's about making sure that you're not just indulging relationships that aren't making you happy i suppose it's that's that's the thing i would like to start with so what you're getting to there is is being really intentional about what you're doing and being really awake to what you're doing because we often lie to ourselves.

Exactly. And we'll come on to that. I often, by the way, think also though, that what complicates this even further is you can absolutely be in a stage of your life where you're just kind of, you know, an age where you're having fun and taking things quite lightly. There's no guarantee that the other person is. And I've hurt too many people in my life

where I was very content to just be like, yeah, I'm just having fun. And I didn't have a lot of regard for what was the experience of the other person. And that's kind of, in a way, that's kind of just yet another conversation.'s a there's a conversation to be had about how much casual sex is casual how many casual relationships are casual because i think it's a hell of a lot less than we think like there's there's usually one person who ends up feeling not so casual there's one person who likes the other person more

and is going along with casual because they just want to be close to that person and they feel like that's that's the way to do it is just to kind of not muddy the waters by getting serious even though internally they're starting to feel things and you know, how, how many casual hookups truly result in no hurt feelings. There are some for sure, but the idea of like this hookup culture where everyone's just having meaningless sex. And I just don't buy it in so many cases. Um, I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I just think that so much of it is one person feeling super casual and the other person trying to get close to someone they're attracted to. Or they start out evenly super casual and then suddenly somewhere along the line, the balance tips a little bit. Why am I jealous?

Yeah. Yeah. The moment you realize you're jealous, then you know it just went beyond something purely casual. Because if it was just casual, why do I care? Well, isn't that the theme of so many films, usually of which star either mila kunis or natalie portman there's two friends there's two friends and they try and make it fun and chill and then it's suddenly not chill and that's the kind of drama of the film yeah i think there's two there's two questions that people eternally ask don't they it's like can a man and woman just be friends and can you just

have a casual thing and i think those are two recurring questions in dating that sort of come up all the time i think it's because having fun is never seen as a permanent state is it it's like if you can't have fun forever because having fun forever would by definition mean you're in a relationship with that person. So having fun with someone inherently means there's an idea that this isn't going to last. And that's a difficult situation then emotionally to take on. If you get more and more attached, you know, it's going to have an ending where you feel either just, it feels like a breakup or it feels like pain, or you feel like you're with them and you know them really well anyway. So it's kind of like, by definition, most people are used to that situation ending in pain for someone. Right. And if that, which doesn't mean again, again, I do not think that like, I do not think there's

never a time in people's lives to do this or to be casual. I don't think everyone needs to be in a relationship all the time. I think sometimes two people realize something is what it is, or they realize it's temporary or they realize it has a shelf life or they just they're in a more relaxed open thing so that does happen but i just think for a lot of people it ends up as a kind of halfway thing that ends up with emotional attachment anyway you know i think the crux of it is what you said matt is you know how honest with you and i think this is a life lesson in general is how honest are you being with yourself about how you really feel? Because we are so good at lying to ourselves. We really are, especially when we want something. We're so good at saying like, no, this is fine.

We're just having fun. Like, see where it goes. I'm cool with that. I'm chill. And as you've said before, appropriating the other person's excuse for not committing to us when deep down, if we're really honest with ourselves, we really wish we were having a bit more than just fun. And we wish it was more serious. And we wish they would just, you know, commit to us in some way, shape or form. But we're just so good at lying to ourselves and that's the dangerous part which i think is at the core of this whole discussion it's we have to try to catch ourselves when the kind of euphemistic uh i'm just having fun is really an excuse to, to do continue a behavior that's hurting us and reliably hurts us a lot of the time. And we use it in all sorts of situations. We use it if we're casually seeing someone that we want more from, and they don't want more from us.

And so we kind of adopt that idea of I'm just having fun, you know, and it's a very easy thing. And by the way, what I think is really interesting is I know there were times in my life where I knew better. And if I said to somebody else, I don't know, I just feel like this is probably not a good idea. And the moment I started to get too heavy about it, there was always a friend or there was always someone, it could even be my mother, who was just like, oh, just go have fun. You're young, you're fine. You know, just stop overthinking. Oh, you make everything so serious. And it's like, there's that idea of just go have fun you know like it's kind of a way to bring everything back to the surface again jameson

why were you giving that such terrible advice and he was going around breaking hearts sometimes it was jameson you had a good time there well i think that's that's a really interesting point because it does come back to like maybe it was fun but it comes back to what the opportunity cost actually is so it's like it's going to be painful that's one thing right it's like how casual is it really when things end in life kind of like you're saying steve like it's just painful you're never going to escape the pain what are you going to do just avoid it forever no so like your mom or whoever is giving you advice like go live life have some fun but i think the uh the maybe the insidious part is just like when you don't you

don't realize that there is actually an opportunity cost so what is that opportunity cost great that's a great question and a great point i i one of is time. So there is an age at which you kind of feel like, well, the time is not the big factor. I don't need to base my decisions on lost time. And some would say that's never true, that time is always important. And if it distracts you from, you know, getting ahead and doing great work, or if it distracts you from, you know, if it breaks your heart and that heartbreak takes up just huge amounts of time to get over each time, that's a lot of wasted time. Some people would even say you should start looking more seriously earlier because, you know, there are dangers to leaving it too late. But there are certainly times in our life

when time is not the biggest factor. And there are other times where it's like, I, you know, I coach people all the time. We all do where you, you know, someone's kind of fucking around at an age where you go, what are you doing? What are you doing? You, I'm not saying that as some objective truth about age. I'm saying when someone is at a certain age and they say, I want something serious, but at the same time, they're like, oh, but I'm just having a bit of fun with this person. They're still throwing their time and their life away over connection. Yeah. It's like, you know, there's not a separate compartment of time that you're running down over here. And the clock of real life doesn't, you know, just keeps going at a normal pace. You're using up real time. And so time is one big opportunity cost is that even fun stuff takes time. It takes time

because it often gets messy. It takes time because it often results in heartbreak anyway, even though it was just supposed to be fun. It takes time because it creates a kind of tunnel vision that takes you away from going out there and start kind of being hungry. You know, if you're constantly having your needs met, even if in a fun way or a superficial way, it takes the edge off of looking for real connection because you're getting some form of connection. Even if it's a bit of a fast food connection, you're still getting something.

So there's that. The opportunity cost is, as I've said, how much pain does it actually cause you? And you have to be really honest with yourself about that, especially in situations where you really are lying to yourself. Like an ex comes back into your life and you know that ex is bad for you. You know that that person broke your heart before. You know how long it took you to get over it. But enough time has passed that you've been able to forget all of that or kind of willfully forget a lot of that. And then that person comes back into your life in some sort of fun way. And there's, feels like there's some chemistry and it feels like there's a playfulness to it. And all of a

sudden with that person, you're like, oh, this is fun. Oh, it's just a bit fun. Like, oh, it's a blast from the past. It's an ex. It's like, then all of a sudden it's, it's something that you can just, instead of seeing as, no, this is a gateway back into all of the heartache. It took me so long to get over. I almost see this as like, oh, it's just like a, you know, this is, this is fun and it can be fun and it can be exciting. And guess what? A month from now, all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, I'm like, I'm back in that place. That's so, so true. And, and I think we're creatures of habit and creatures of patterns. And if you keep repeating, if you keep repeating if you keep going for a certain kind of person and you basically um you date guys where you're constantly not really valued they're not really committing to

you they're flaky they mess you around blah blah blah all the rest of it um they're inconsistent you start normalizing that behavior and then you start your bar and your standard for what a person should treat you, for how a person should treat you, I should say, basically kind of lowers and lowers and lowers and you drive further away from what true connection and intimacy feels like and into the darkness and then it becomes really difficult to kind of find your way back because you now no longer have any real points of reference as to what a real connection should feel and look like. All you have is these kind of like spikes, you know, these kinds of ups and downs and really intense moments and almost feeling like you're constantly trying to obtain someone rather

than like ever just having them and feeling safe and comfortable and peaceful in a situation and I think that then becomes almost a curse in itself and it's the one of the biggest dangers of the we're just having fun rhetoric because you you do just end up feeling so disconnected from what a real relationship should feel like it's a great point this is i think the the primary argument that i wanted us us to get onto because in life, what we make familiar to us ends up more and more becoming our reality. And there are so many different realities in life, just as a bigger concept. There's so many different realities there's a reality where you're someone who is angry all the time and gets in fights all the time and if you're that person that's kind of your reality wherever you go there are guys like that

there are guys who wherever they go you know it's funny i a old boxing coach of mine in London, he said he went out with a guy that he knew, like he was coaching a white collar business guy in London. And one day this guy took him to, I think it was the Groucho Club in London. And he took him into this place that's kind of a really nice place. It's a members club and he was around a certain crowd a media crowd and whatever and this guy was he's from the east end of london he's never spent any time in places like that he's boxed his whole life he's he's been in a certain gear his whole life and he got taken into this place with this guy and he said

he was being very vulnerable with me and And he said, I realized something about myself that night. He said, because I went in there with this guy and I was standing at the bar and he looked at me and he said, what's, what's going on? And he, he, my boxing friend looked at him and said, do you mean he said what's going on you're like tight you're like look really uptight you look like something happened and he said nothing had happened but it's like he'd walked into this place already looking for the trouble already looking for like what what was going to be grief, what was going to be the aggravation that he was going to have to deal with tonight. And his friend who's like not even, just doesn't live in that world. He's not even thinking in those terms. His friend was in a

social club. He was still in a boxing ring. And all that was on his radar was the next way that someone could disrespect him. And if you look for that, that's what you find, right? There'll always be someone who aggravates you or disrespects you or says the wrong thing or gives you the wrong look. And you go through life looking for that. And that's your reality. There are other people whose reality is always helping people. And so they go through life and that's your reality there are other people whose reality is always helping people and so they go through life and there's always someone that needs to be helped and there's always someone they need to give to and there's always a you know and sometimes to a fault you know they're playing save the day everywhere they go in every situation

and in our love life it's no different What we have become familiar with, what has become so known to us, becomes the thing that's just on our radar wherever we go. And you say, how can you keep, not only how do you keep dating these people who are like this, how do you keep finding them? Like you can have a friend who you're like, I've never dated someone like this in my life. And you seem to find them. You are a heat-seeking missile for toxic people or for aggressive people or for sarcastic people or for mean people or for people that disrespect you. It's like,

how do you keep finding them? I don't even know where, where I would find this person, but it's like the race car driver where they say, you know, if, if you're a race car driver, you look where you want the car to go. And if you look at the post that you're about to crash into the, what are they, when, when you crash into, when you're starting to careen off the road and into a post, they say, look at the road because that's where you want the car to go. If you're looking at the post, even though you want to turn the wheel to get away from it, you drive straight into the post. And it's like that in life, only we've come to believe that the post is all of life. That all of life is that post and you can't go anywhere without hitting it.

But it's because it's what you know. If you've early on gravitated towards a certain kind of person, then that kind of behavior and that kind of person, that's the post to you. That's what's on your radar. And it weirdly becomes, whatever room you go into, that's in the forefront. Like my boxing friend who goes into a room and what's in the forefront is the potential fight. It's like everything else is dull colors and the bright color in the room is the problem. In dating, the bright color in the room is whatever you're used to. And other stuff starts to actually, we develop, we start to lose our peripheral vision. And other stuff just isn't there anymore because this is what we're used to. I have a friend who said she started, you know, her new boyfriend started treating, or the guy she was dating started treating her nicely. He was doing nice things. He didn't start treating her nicely. From the beginning, he was nice. And she said to her mom, I don't, this is weird. He's like, nice to me. He's doing these things and he's, you know,

and her mom said, that's how it's supposed to be. And for her, it was alien for someone to be this nice for somebody else. That's their reality all the time because the only people that are in full color to them are nice people. Everyone else kind of is the dull colors that don't stand out. And to me, it's actually the dating version, the adult dating version of what happens to us growing up. When we're growing up, our parents and our very immediate people that raise us, what they're like is what we're familiar with. It's what we're used to. It's what we know. And the reason that we go out and seek to replicate it is because it's familiar to us. It's because it's known to us. So we may see the wrong kind of behavior, but if it's reflected, we don't think of it necessarily

as the wrong kind of behavior. We think of it as how life is. And so we go out there and we find people that replicate the bad circumstances of our growing up because we go, that's just what I know. It's familiar to me. Anything outside of this is just complete unmapped territory for me. And so you end up just dating variations of this same person over and over again. And that person who treated you badly, or that string of people who have treated you badly, no longer feels like it was specific to those people. It becomes a globalized view of people in general. Like if you're a policeman and you're always seeing people in those moments, you're getting a window into people

in a certain aspect of themselves or their lives or a certain type of person. And it trains you to think that's what reality is. And I know that there was a point in my life where I realized all of the kind of casual flings I was having was having an effect on my mindset. Because even if I came across someone who had a kind of a very intentional way of going about their love life and they were looking for a serious connection, I was wired for like instant gratification. I was wired for something that moved quickly. I wasn't in a place where I met someone like that and I recognized that language. And the thing is, when you operate in, let's say in that case, a more casual world of connections, you're used to other people who are doing the same. And if I put myself in the perspective

of a woman who's dealing with a lot of guys who are in a casual place, the problem with that is that those people are also constantly giving you their logic right they're constantly selling you on why on their way of life their logic why that feels like the right thing to do why i don't know some guys it's they make arguments about why monogamy is flawed and why it's never going to work and And if you hear too many of those arguments, you might start to believe them. And you might start to believe that, wow, everyone thinks this. If enough people tell you you're being too serious or you're being too, oh, you're so intense. Oh, you're so like, you try and like go too slow. Or you try and if you hear that from enough people because those are the people you keep gravitating towards you start to think that's what people are like and you start to adjust your behavior to those people so now when you meet someone who's not like that you don't know what

to do with them because they speak a different language than you or they speak a language that you've long since forgotten and you don't realize how far you've drifted from what you originally wanted or set out to have, or from what in your head, logically, you're saying you want it. That's where you get the difference between people's, what they say they logically want and what emotionally they keep being drawn to. Because logically, I am telling everyone, including myself, I want to find something meaningful. And emotionally, I keep responding to really casual, superficial behavior. And you go, why do you keep saying you want something real, but you keep going for people who clearly are not looking for something real. And it's because that's the behavior I recognize. That's what's known to me.

That's what's familiar. And I'm drawn to what's familiar. And now I spend my life, because I don't realize how far I've drifted from the possibilities that are out there and from what I'm going for what I really want I spend my life trying to convince people who are just in the wrong category to be more like the thing I want because the wrong category is all I know I absolutely love Absolutely love this point. I think it's so important and I think so many people have, ourselves included, don't know about you guys, but have suffered with this and have been either on a receiving end of it or a perpetrator for it. And I just think it's going to resonate with so many people. And it is the fundamental issue with how, you know, a lot of people say, I keep attracting this kind of person or, you know, every time these guys just turn into, turn things into a casual thing and blah, blah, blah. I don't know why. And then every time you

speak with them and you kind of dig a little bit further a little bit deeper you realize that you know the guy they're speaking of they've already let back into their lives three times after they've been inconsistent flaky done this done that they've had no standards no boundaries with them they've tolerated really poor behavior they've ignored red flags they've done all of these things and then there's kind of still in the place wondering I don't mean this in the kind of in in the place wondering and I don't mean this in the kind of in a judgmental way because I think we've all done it but they're still in a place going why why is this not happening for me and it's exactly what you've just said I almost in my mind I picture it as like you know like a coloring book it's you know those books when

you're younger that you'd color in and the picture would reveal itself i almost see it as like you're coloring in the same bit over and over but you need to start coloring in and the bits that aren't colored in and see what reveals itself because it's kind of you've colored that bit in so much that the colors are really dark and intense and it looks really beautiful and maybe as you start coloring into the other bits it will be more faded and foreign and it won't make sense and the shapes will look a bit weird but over time that will make sense that will become a whole picture and the more you can start sort of you know dating and just surrounding yourself with sort of an energy that matches your values and actually aligns with the things that really matter the more that you can do that

the more you start really seeing the value in those really matter, the more that you can do that, the more you start really seeing the value in those people. And then the further away you get from the other people, the more you start going, I can't believe I used to tolerate this kind of behavior. I can't believe I would spend all day agonizing over why someone hasn't messaged and then be elated when I get a message from them at 9 p.m.

after they've ignored me for 48 hours. And you start going, I would never dream of going back to that. But it's just, as you say, I just think it's so interesting. I think it's literally one of my favorite messages that you have said. Thank you. I think that the way out of that is a very modest thing. It's curiosity. I believe in being curious about experiences that are outside of your own reality right now. If you have a reality, for example says everyone is not no one's trustworthy curiosity will say i'm gonna go and i'm gonna trust this person it doesn't even have to be

someone in your love life it could just be a a new person in your life and you go i'm just gonna trust this person a little more. I'm not going to assume they have an agenda or I'm actually going to be prepared to rely on them a little more. I'm not going to do that thing that I always do where I immediately put the walls up. And you don't know what result that's going to have. And sometimes it will be good and sometimes it will be bad, but it will be a different result. And when you put a different energy into the world and when you give time to a new kind of person than you would normally give time to, when you explore their mindset, their belief, when you start to build a relationship with them, whether it's a friend, a business contact, or a partner or a lover, you start to realize how many different kinds of

people there actually are in the world and how many different kinds of relationships there are in the world. And you even start to realize how many different kinds of relationships you can have with the same person based on your behavior with them. If you're a bit more trusting with them, if you're a bit kinder with them, if you are more vulnerable with them, if you realize different people can offer you many different relationships just by changing the dynamic you create with a person. And also, I have one piece of advice to add to this, which is, I guess, a public service announcement, which is just date less cool people. I just think so much of dating when you're younger,

isn't it kind of just like this kind of status game of like, how cool of a person can I get? How much fun is this person and then as you get a little bit older and people are just you know fun isn't as fun you know like going out all night and drinking probably isn't as fun because of the the hangover the next day and I think I think the advice I would give to like my future daughter or whatever would just be like, yeah, I know so-and-so seems really cool, but you might not value cool as much in just a few years, just a heads up, you know? He might be pretty persuasive as far as like dragging you along to like the fun thing. Like, let's go have fun. We had that line in the what he means versus what he says video where Jesse was like, you

know, I'm just having fun right now. And you translated that for Anna Akana. You were like, I'm just having fun right now. I'm seeing where it goes with my penis. And you're just like, yeah, I mean, so much of what makes somebody cool is it just like, it's sort of seductive, like this world of fun, this world of cool. And if you have had this conversation with yourself and you realize that's actually not what I want, I want my world to be a little bit more full of meaning and connection, then, you know, date the person that isn't as cool. Yeah. I was going to say, Jay, I really, I really think you're on something there. It's like, how does one practically

follow that when they're people feel like, well, I have to go on my emotion. If I'm feeling that with someone, I feel it. And I, I totally agree with you it's just it is quite a hard thing to direct people on it because you're almost telling them you almost want to tell people and this is what I say on stage a lot you've got to flip internally a switch inside of you that looks at shitty, flaky, non-committal, or just like dickish behavior. You need a switch inside of you that actively gets turned off when someone behaves that way. And the people who are generally very effective at finding great people to date, they do have that internal switch where they're just like, I wouldn't even be interested

in someone who's selfish, who lies, who acts like an arse, even if they're exciting, that wouldn't even interest me. So it's, I guess this is why we do a lot of internal work on our retreat and things like that, Matt, is because you really do have to have a fundamental mental shift in what turns you on and turns you off. Well well and so what you just said is very very important steven but there's a word you used emotion that i would also highlight in a different context which is you said your emotions may take you in a certain direction naturally, right? So they make someone hot that maybe is not good for you. You have to realize that that isn't a sign of who you could be attracted to in the future and the breadth of people you could be attracted to. It's just a

sign of the way your emotions have been trained. And the curiosity that I'm talking about comes in here because what it says is, I'm not going to rely on that instinctive feeling all the time for a minute. I'm going to actually, you know, when you try a new food that you haven't eaten before. It's all about food with you isn't it usually when you try a new food you're not emotionally drawn to that food are you you're always emotionally drawn back to your favorite food pizza but there's emotion there's there's a new food that you haven't tried yet that's your future favorite food chicken palm that's something did you say chicken palm i did yeah by definition steven you don't know what it is yet you can't

decide what's going to be your new favorite food okay although i did at one point in my life think i really wished i liked donuts because I would always see them in the Simpsons and I'd be annoyed that I didn't like them. You don't like donuts? No, I trained myself. I like them now. I love them, in fact. What an act of will to train yourself to like donuts. Good for you. Is there nothing this coach can't do? What a great use of your time and willpower.

So my point is that we have all had a food that turns into our favorite food that we don't know we like yet. And when you don't know you like it and someone offers it to you, your response is not, yeah, let me try that. Your response is, I'm good. And someone's like, no, no, no, no, no. You have to try this. You're going to like it.

It's really good. And you're like, no, I'm good. And you gravitate towards the thing you've always eaten. have to try this you're gonna like it it's really good and you're like no i'm i'm good and you gravitate towards the thing you've always eaten the person you date next might be a person you've never dated before might be a food you've never tried but the curiosity about that thing might give you your new favorite food might give you your new favorite song might give you your new favorite country in the world to visit. And it might not just be based around fun or cool, you know? Exactly.

There's a particular program we have that I think is actually strangely relevant to what we're talking about here. It's called the momentum texts. And the reason I think it's relevant is because sometimes when we want to attract something different, we have to do something different in our communication with people, but we don't know what that is because we've been attracting a certain kind of person and communicating in a certain way the whole time. And so you can go, okay, Matt, I want to get curious. I want to shift, but how do I do that? What does that even look like? And seeing text messages written out already that

look different to the kind of messages you send right now, that are intended to lead you down a path with a quality person that is more meaningful than the casual connections that we often gravitate towards or get sucked into. That is gold. And what the momentum text does is it gives you 67 different messages that you can send to someone that will change up your communication style. And therefore either attract a new kind of person than you normally attract and a better quality person or attract better quality behavior from the people that you're talking to already. So if you haven't got this program already, go to MomentumTexts.com. This program is seven bucks,

but I think it's the best value you can get with us because it literally gives you it on a plate and you can start using it today with anyone you begin talking to or even someone you're already talking to. So go check it out at MomentumTexts.com and also email us and let us know what you thought of this episode. Podcast at MatthewHussey.com is the address to email to. Let us know what you thought of this. Let us know what spoke to you the most. We'd love to read a couple of responses on a future podcast