Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 225: I Asked You to Be HONEST About Your Dating Behaviors. Here’s What I Learned…

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

We asked you about what behaviours and patterns have caused the most pain in your love life. And you answered!  In this episode, Matt, Stephen and Audrey talk on the topic of jealousy in a relationship, insecurity about our looks, and getting over people who don't choose you. ►► Pre-Order My New Book, "Love Life" at → http://www.LoveLifeBook.com   ►► Transform Your Relationship With Life in 6 Magical Days. Learn More About The Matthew Hussey Retreat at. . . → http://www.MHRetreat.com --- Follow Matt: @thematthewhussey Follow Stephen: @stephenhhussey Follow Audrey: @theaudreyhussey

Welcome Welcome everybody to the Love Life Podcast with me Matthew Hussey, Audrey Hussey and Stephen Hussey. They said I'd never be back. You say that every time and no one says that. And here I am. Good to be here folks. No one ever says you'll never be back. What is this fantasy you have of people telling you you can't come back and you get to come back and say, I told you so. I feel I thrive when my back's against the wall. So we're coming back fighting, baby.

I don't think you have a very good grasp of this podcast. This is a very compassionate, loving space. Oh, we are talking today about patterns and the kinds of patterns that trip us up in life and love and how they hurt us when they go on unchecked in our lives and we actually put a question to our audience for them to tell us, for you all to tell us. Where did we put it? Instagram, right? Instagram, yeah. And Facebook. Yeah. So you can go and check this out at my Instagram, at the Matthew Hussey, if you haven't followed that Instagram account. So we put the question over there. We got some responses and we're going to talk about them today in an episode that is about patterns.

And there is nothing more important in some ways because our patterns shape our entire life. And our patterns were shaped at a time in our life where we weren't deciding what patterns to sign up for and which ones not to sign up for. Our patterns were just a response to what we needed to do to survive at a certain time in our life. And those same patterns that we created back then that essentially happened to us are the things shaping our lives today. So what more important thing could we be talking about? Before we get into the episode, if you haven't already, especially if you are new to let go of a previous relationship, struggling to move on from heartbreak, want to get out there again and create fresh energy in their love lives, want to get out of their own way. And maybe on some level have that fear that

what if it doesn't happen for me? What if my time runs out? What if I never meet someone? Of course, the ultimate fear so many people have is of ending up alone. And this training is about empowering you to both find theating With Results. And you can watch it right now by going to datingwithresults.com. That link again is datingwithresults.com. By the way, my new book is out. Well, it's out for pre-order. It comes out officially on the 23rd of April. But if you pre-order it, you are in line for a whole bunch of bonuses that the people who buy when it's officially out won't get. These are our gifts to you for supporting us in a time where, frankly, we need pre-orders. If you're a fan of us and you like the work, pre-orders help immensely. They're what help the book make a splash. They're what help you hit the New York Times list, which also helps it reach more people. Pre-orders matter. And so your pre-order matters to us.

And you know what I love, Matt? When you pre-order a book on Amazon and you just forget about it, and then you wake up on the day it comes out and a little book is already waiting for you. And you go, oh, my God, I forgot about that. I ordered it two months ago. It's a surprise gift to yourself. It is. Like Christmas. I like that.

Well, pre-order now because there is something that's coming up, by the way, in the next couple of weeks for people who pre-order. I cannot even tell you about it right now, but I will be able to tell you about it in a couple of weeks. And it's a really big deal. It's very, very exciting. So if you pre-order now, you'll automatically be on the list for that bonus when it comes around. The link to pre-order is lovelifebook.com. The book is called Love Life, How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person, and Live Happily No Matter What. That link again is lovelifebook.com. Audrey, what was the question we asked and what were the responses? The question was, if you were to guess at at it what pattern in your love life has caused you the most pain up until now we had so many responses on instagram alone we had over two and

a half thousand responses in 24 hours and audrey's gonna read every single one strap in folks this is a nine hour episode yeah nine hours later um so no we have actually the team and i have gone through and selected some of some very good themes i think just things that are coming up for people uh the first one is from katie katie said that the pattern that has caused the most destruction in her life is jealousy she says being jealous when i have no reason to be in brackets self criticism yeah jealousy is such a good one i mean it's a horrible one but it's a good one it's a great one to start with because it's so it's so human it's so so human and i i suppose what's always helped me with jealousy because i've had i've had that

as a pattern as well at times in my life and it still rears its head sometimes unconsciously where you you sort of you think oh i should want you know you can come away from a party and someone talks about something they're up to in their life right now and you come away going oh i should be doing that or you know why am i not doing it's like immediately stokes some sort of competitiveness that isn't helpful because it actually takes you out of your own life as that's how I think of jealousy is that it takes you out of your own life because it's comparing yourself with someone who you, you, you're probably making some kind of parallel between drawing a parallel between you and that person. Because we don't tend to get jealous of people who are just in a completely different lane or completely different to us. People we don't see as our competition. But if we think someone is in any way like us and they're getting something that

we're not, that often stokes a lot of jealousy. And I, I look at it like you're not them. You don't have their DNA. You don't have their makeup. You don't have their problems. They don't have your problems. They don't, you know, you could be looking at someone whose love life is going really well right now, but they didn't spend the last three years dealing with some of the things you spent the last three years dealing with. Maybe you went through a really hard time. Maybe you've been suffering in certain ways, or maybe there's something you went through in childhood that has made it disproportionately more difficult for you to trust in love. And when it's disproportionately

more difficult for you to trust in love, you're going to have a harder time finding love and connecting with people. Whatever it may be, there's a thousand examples of that. But when we're comparing ourselves to people, it's usually the case that we're not comparing all of the different things that we've been up against or had to navigate or whatever that have made us uniquely us with our challenges and the things that we have to overcome. We're just looking at a result someone else has got who is a completely different human being to us and thinking that we're somehow deficient for not having what they have what if you're jealous not not you're not jealous of a specific person but you're just with your partner and you're just jealous in general

you know i think oh that happens have i read that completely wrong is she talking about jealousy within a relationship of like sex jealousy of well she just you know the question the question was uh if you were to guess at it what patterns in your love life has caused you the most pain and she's saying jealousy so i think she's talking about jealousy in relation to other women and feeling threatened yeah exactly in a way what you're speaking to might be more like jealousy or if is if envy and jealousy have a difference envy might be like wanting wanting what someone else has i guess jealousy in a relationship is feeling threatened that your partner might someone someone else gets their attention

and might steal them away yeah like you're scared unsafe i think it's safe it's how it's how it's felt and how it's experienced i so okay so i completely misheard that but if anyone was wondering about the other thing then that's also helpful well but they're not entirely unrelated because the kind of jealousy we experience in a relationship still has us comparing ourselves to someone you know it has you comparing yourself to someone else very often unless it's just a generalized feeling of like jealousy that your partner is doing something without you you know some people feel that they just feel jealous that their partner you know went to a movie without me um but there's a i think the answer for that is, do you, is your goal your own comfort all the time? Or is your goal your partner's happiness? I think that's a good cure for jealousy in a relationship. Because if you really care about your partner being, and you have to check yourself on that. Because a lot of people, I think if they're honest with themselves, their number one goal is not their partner's happiness. Their number one goal is their own comfort.

Yeah. But if your partner is taking a holiday with her girlfriends or he's taking a holiday with his guy friends and there's a part of you that's like, I don't want him to go. You have to check yourself and say, is my goal for them to be happy? If this trip will make them happy then they should go i'm assuming obviously that nothing untoward is happening on this trip and it's not like a you haven't got a history of this person cheating on you and this weekend they're going to vegas with all the boys but you know like if the if if they're going on an innocent trip with their friends and you're jealous of that and that bothers you then then that's, you're not putting

your partner's happiness first. So that's a kind of generalized jealousy. Then there's the jealousy of other people, which is, you know, I don't like, I don't, you know, I get jealous when they're around people like this, people like that. And that there is a, on on one hand there's a putting other people on a pedestal that we're doing when we get jealous we're taking our own insecurity and using it to inflate the importance of something that someone has that you don't think you have you know so you might be around someone who's seems particularly good-looking or has what you think is a better body than yours and you see your partner around that person and it makes you jealous but you're

overvaluing a trait or a quality that they have in that situation and you're almost certainly undervaluing the traits and the qualities that you bring to the table. Now, the follow-up to that is someone saying, but what if my partner wants those things and I really am coming up short for my partner? Well, if you follow that to its extreme, you're not the right person for your partner, if that's the case. Like if you take it all the way to its extreme, you're not the right person for your partner, if that's the case. Like if you take it all the way to its extreme, my partner doesn't value what I have to offer, then that's not your person. Now there's space in the middle of that where it's my partner wants me and loves me, but they also value this thing in this other person that I don't have. But then you come down to like, what I think of

as just a kind of radical acceptance that you can't be every person on earth. You can't be everything. You can't be everyone. You, you just can't. And nothing can be everything. A great, if you think of your favorite movie, it's, and then I said, is it your favorite? Like, is that movie that's your favorite movie, your favorite comedy? Well, if that movie is not a comedy, then even your favorite movie isn't your favorite comedy. If I say, what's your favorite comedy? And then I say, well, is it your favorite drama? No, your favorite comedy isn't by definition your favorite drama. So you can't, you can be amazing that and accept that and say there will always be people who are amazing in ways that I am not. I'm not trying. I can't be all forms of amazing to my partner.

There's an impossible mission and I will always fail that mission. And you'll never be the form of we all have some illusion like perfect on paper. Everyone has some idealized vision in my head of these are all the traits i would love someone to have and then you go oh no they love tall guys and i'm not a tall guy but that isn't how actual psychology works empirically in practice people don't go oh i've got a boyfriend he's so amazing i love him so much i'm so attracted to him but he's not six foot three like i put on paper when i said i thought of my ideal man like like you say you're gonna fall short of one of those things on paper your partner likes the best but it's not being someone's dream person isn't about being their favorite of

everything and let's just be real for a second right let's be really radical acceptance let's say that that person gets a guy who's shorter than that she might one day see a tall guy and think oh there's a handsome tall man right yeah it's okay yeah no there's a maturity it's okay that's all right yeah like unless they're going off and sleeping with that person, it's okay. You don't have to be everything. And that guy isn't everything. He's not everything either.

He's just something you think you're not. And that's why it's getting to you. The thing that you said earlier, which I think is a really helpful piece of advice for someone who is actually chronically jealous with partners. And there's lots of reasons why we experience jealousy. It can be that we have been betrayed in the past. And so we have a lot of points of reference where we were made to feel like our trust was broken and so we just we can imagine that happening again we can imagine being left or being cheated on or being betrayed in some way and then there's just a chronic feeling of unworthiness that a lot of

people carry around with them which stems back usually to childhood or very early formative experiences which makes people feel like who they are as a whole is somehow not enough to be lovable and you know it's almost like me as just simply myself is never going to be enough for someone and what you said earlier I think is really really helpful to reframe the latter, which is being with someone who, it's all about what your partner values. And if you know that you're with someone who values building a life with you, who values the history that you share, who values how comfortable they feel around you, who values whatever it might be, those very, very real and very true characteristics that form a healthy relationship,

then somebody walking in with, like you say, a better body shouldn't be so much of a threat because how can that compete with all of these other very rich, very real things that are anchored at the core of your relationship with your partner. And so I think your jealousy, it's very, very important for people who experience jealousy to not shame themselves and say, I'm just a crazy, jealous person. Because oftentimes jealousy is kind of, it doesn't come come from nowhere but I do think that choosing the kind of partner who makes you realize that those things that you might be feeling jealous and

insecure about are not the things that you should feel jealous and insecure about because actually you're very safe because as long as you keep building what you're building with that person that person is always going to value that more than the cheap thrill of dating somebody else. And like you say, the other thing I think is helpful is recognizing that your partner finding other people attractive is a very, very normal thing. And it's a really hard thing to get your head around right because you go what if they find them attractive then that makes me feel unsafe it makes me feel like there's something wrong with me or I don't know there's just something about it that's just very very hard to like if I said to

you Matt I find that guy over there really attractive you would feel something you would be like I don't like this because you're not supposed to find other people attractive you're you're mine like that's a very normal thing but it's also an unreasonable ask to to ask your partner to never ever find other people attractive and so I think that recognizing that that's also a very normal thing and it's something that we just have to learn to live with and just the trust piece is really the at the core of this it's like they can find somebody attractive but if you know that they value your relationship and if you know that you can trust them let them find them attractive and just don't focus on it focus on your relationship yeah i agree they don't need to value you the most in every area that's impossible

how dare you i hope you value me the most in every area well let me say this they don't need to they don't need to take that back you just you people have to get out of this idea of rating each other as a hundred in every area they need to value the you the most in the areas they value the most and when that's the case you can feel safe and my experience has been when i feel safe i actually care a lot less about the kinds of things you're talking about for sure of course of course all right what's our next pattern well um our next pattern is uh not being able to forget about people who choose not to be with me or staying in situationship like relations for too long this reminds me of that limerence subject which we're going to talk about on the podcast

in the future because it's so interesting but this idea of not being able to forget about people who choose not to be with me I to me that's really really interesting I've got a lot I want to say about that but what do you guys think it becomes a kind of obsessive thinking a kind of constant rumination this idea that this person who didn't choose me is is very important there's so many different ways you can look at this but it gives them so much importance in your life that you just in life you you can either wait or you can create it's as simple as that. And when I think of like constantly thinking about someone who didn't choose us, to me, there's a sense of like, it's a form of anxiety, right? It's proving that I'm not worthy. It's proving that I'm not good

enough. It's proving that there's something wrong with me. And if I could just convince that person who you know uh uh didn't think I was enough then I would be enough and I I always find that the times in my life where I have to put myself out there a lot, they're always a good time for me to kind of immunize myself against that kind of thinking. Like right now, part of having a book coming out is reaching out to podcasts that we want to go on. And there's, of course, we have many friends who have sizable podcasts. And so those are, those are simple, but then there's the whole world of podcasts that are people we don't know. And I have to then go back to being the person who is reaching out and asking people on a date and seeing if they say yes. And of course, not all of them do. A lot of people just don't even message back.

Some people say it's a pass. Other people string you along and it never goes anywhere. Some people say yes and I have found it to be such a waste of time to sit there focusing on the ones that that don't open the message or don't reply to the message because it's not even what's going on my in my head isn't even necessarily true some of them just they have a thousand things going on and they're just not even thinking about it they're like see the message like i'll get back to it later and they never get back to it some people have a completely wrong impression of me they they may think i'm something at first sight they never really get under the surface of who i am and the way I talk and what I teach and so they have made up a false impression of me and so they reject me based on

that false impression you know there's all sorts of reasons that people say no or don't reply I I really have stopped I you know some of them some of them I've had I've had people in my life that the more they got to know me or they got suddenly they spoke to a friend who said oh that Matt Hussey guy's amazing like a and then they go oh okay well maybe I should do something with them I've seen that enough to know that it's so silly for to take anything too seriously when it comes to rejection there's just so many things that play a part so this you have to then suspect yourself and go why am i what's going on with me that i am getting so attached to every person that says no what's that notice the pattern in yourself and notice it as a pattern because it's highly likely that the reasons people are rejecting you or saying no or whatever

are they vary from person to person but your story probably never changes wow yeah that's so true that's so true your psychology also really works against you when looking back at the past there we all know it there is a natural tendency that the past always seems more romantic yeah like things in your childhood seemed like oh that was just so easy and fun even if that wasn't true when you were living it you think that relationship was better than it was and that happens with people sometimes as well you romanticize people and idealize them the further you get from them especially then if it's like oh they decided they didn't want me anymore you kind of end up in an idealizing state and that becomes its own loop and rumination and it can actually be very out of touch with the reality of all that person's flaws and the very fact that

you talk about all the time is someone didn't choose you that is really fundamental and i know i had a major shift when i truly internalized that whole point that you talked about for a long time which is like if someone doesn't want you in some ways that that should sort of turn you off like that should make you go oh this this person doesn't want to give me what i need and i want someone who's down to give me what i need i want someone who thinks i'm amazing i want someone who really wants to be with me that's sexy and attractive to me that internal shift if you make that it's like everything becomes so much easier but it's hard to make yeah yeah so common also you know I want to move on to the next one but I think we obsess over somebody not choosing us because again that's

that feeling of unworthiness right it's if i can possibly if i can make this person who doesn't want me want me then i'll feel worthy and oftentimes we're just repeating patterns and it's it's actually you know this idea of not being able to let go of the very same people who have rejected us is a disordered attachment yes and so it's very important to to recognize it as such which is you are having a actually kind of a trauma response in that moment it's not about them it's not about the situation it's all about you and you know really kind of diving deep and understanding that can can bring a little bit of peace and a little bit of a respite from it because it can be a very intense feeling for people it also allows you to depersonalize it because when you

realize this is a disordered attachment that has come from childhood or from an early formative relationship that's just repeating itself through all of these relationships all of a sudden the person that you're obsessing over doesn't seem that important anymore they seem like a yet another one in a long line of people that you're projecting all of that unworthiness onto and that desire to be saved or to be protected or to feel like you're enough onto. By the way, for anyone who hears that and you're like, my God, that's me. The retreat is where we help people with that over six days. So just a side note, mhretreat.com is where to go if you want to come and work on us with that. We have a six-day retreat happening in Florida in September this year.

So check that out. Yeah, I think we've got time for one more. And this is another theme that came up. And I thought it was a really, really kind of a common one. This woman said, not expressing myself so her pattern i should say is not expressing myself for fear that he will leave um can you guys speak to that a little bit each one of these i could spend a whole day on coming at it from like all different angles i'm literally just picking an angle out of 10 different ways to see these as we

go so please don't when you're listening to these think of these as comprehensive answers but that idea of not expressing your needs it comes from you know having our needs invalidated for so long that we don't think it's okay for us to have needs and we feel like in order to to be loved in order to be around someone in order to to be worthy of someone's company or their love or then we we have to have no needs we have to supplicate to them we have to please them we have to worry about them all the time if we we feel unworthy, then we are going to go out of our way to please someone else because that's kind of, that's the, it's kind of like, that's the caveat. Yeah. You can get a great person as long as you have no needs and you do

everything for them, but you can't have a great person and have expectations. You can't have a great person and have needs. That's too much. And that's the, you know, that's what, that's what that pattern, that idea is what makes people feel incredibly unsafe when they have needs because they feel incredibly resentful the whole time that someone isn't meeting their needs. But that resentment they feel is their safe zone. That's their comfort zone. They know how to feel resentful. They know how to bottle all of that up. They know how to go and tell their friends that they're sad or that they're not being treated very well.

Or they know how to do that. That's safe. What's not safe is being someone's equal. What's not safe is saying, this is what i need in this relationship um and and so for those people so much of the time expressing your needs brings you out in cold sweats it makes you feel like you're unsafe it makes you feel like someone's going to leave you immediately that you've asked too much you may find yourself expressing a need and saying i from now on i need you to do this and then instantly regretting that you said anything because you're like oh my god now they're going to leave me or i've been too high maintenance or i've been difficult i've rocked the boat

so don't ever be surprised if you start listening to things and they, you know, you hear this thing of having needs and you go and have them. And then immediately you find yourself freaking out that you said anything is because it is alien to you to be in a relationship where you express your needs. And that's, you you know we can have a whole other episode on that but that's a it's a essentially a new way of being where you have to start to learn that there are relationships that will exist that are reciprocal where you can have needs. And in fact, the ones where you express your needs and people stay actually become far more honest and deep relationships. Because in those relationships, you're actually being who you are. In the relationship where you don't show your

needs, you're actually being someone else. You're not being who you are. And so that person doesn't even really ever get to know you. They don't even know who they're in love with. They don't know who they're dating because you don't express any of your needs. So, you know, there's, I want to get, I just finished with this, a way to have needs when so far your whole life has taught you that you're not safe if you have needs is to tell yourself that not having needs is ultimate pain because pain will make you take action. Even if you don't believe something more is possible, even if you don't believe someone is going to meet your needs, if you know that the hell of not having your needs met has become so great that you just cannot exist there anymore, then you know that the hell of not having your needs met has become so great that you

just cannot exist there anymore, then you'll start having, you'll start expressing your needs just because you realize you can't stay here. But eventually what we want to do is, is you always want to, you know, a negative driver can get you to move, but a positive driver can pull you in a direction. And the positive driver is when you actually start thinking about the kind of beautiful relationship you want to be in, which is one where you can fully express yourself and someone knows who you are and they see you. And the relationship you have as a result is a very beautiful and honest one of two people that know each other, truly know each other. And that can be a very positive thing to aim for.

But that's a lot to do for someone who doesn't believe they're worthy right now. So one of the greatest movers is just necessity, knowing that you can't stay here anymore. So we are gonna finish the episode there, but we might do a part two of this because I suspect there are way more patterns that we should touch on. Oh, yes.

If you want a part two, tell us. Email us podcast at Matthew Hussey dot com. Let us know if you'd like us to do another one on patterns and what patterns you'd like us to touch upon. And if we get the responses, maybe we'll do another one. Remember, if you haven't already uh go over to watch dating with results the free training that you can watch right now if you're like i don't want to wait until the next podcast i want to do something now you can go over to datingwithresults.com to watch that free training and if you get the chance pre-order a copy of the new book Lovelifebook.com is the link for that.

Thank you so much to you, Stephen and Audrey. Thank you. It's been so fun. Bye.