Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 240: My Brother Stephen Interviews Me About My New Book!

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

My brother and I sit down to talk about why I wrote my new book "Love Life", how dating has changed in the last 10 years, choosing the right person, and how to break toxic cycles in relationships.  ���► Get Your FREE Ticket to Find Your Person LIVE on May 4 PLUS a Chance to Win a 1:1 with Matthew & SO Much More! Order Your Copy of Love Life to Enter the Love Life Giveaway at. . . → http://www.LoveLifeBook.com 

So in this book, I think it's fair to say this is the most open I think I've ever seen you been personally about yourself on any platform. Were you surprised when you first read those parts? I was surprised how confessional you were willing to be. What's up everybody, welcome back to the Love Life Podcast with me, Matthew Hussey, and today, Stephen Hussey, who had an idea. He was like, you're doing all of these other podcasts to talk about the new book. And there is some amazing stuff that is coming out of you doing all of those podcasts. But you haven't actually done an interview

about the new book on our podcast. That's right. And I wondered, has anyone really cracked the nugget that is Matthew Hussey's juicy brain? So you're like in the mountain of podcasts I've done, no one's got it yet. Like no one's really had the scoop. Right. Many, many have come close. Right.

But I think this is the one. Okay. I like it. Well, it makes me slightly concerned now about what you're going to ask is somehow the most dangerous podcast like imagine if the most controversial podcast i did was the one that we did ourselves yeah i think i do yeah that is my concern or your aim or my goal yeah well this is what we're going to do today i have no idea what steven is going to ask but i feel like some great stuff is going to come out of it. I have a good feeling about this.

So let's get started. Guess what, everybody? The time is finally here. Love Life, the new book, is no longer available to pre-order because you can actually order the bloody thing. It's available. The book is out. So when you order it now, it will actually ship to you immediately. I am so excited about this. I've been waiting for this for months and months and you finally get to read it. Remember, every single person who gets a copy of this book also gets a complimentary ticket to a live virtual event I am doing on May the 4th called Find Your Person, where we're going to be taking all of the ideas from the book and helping you

apply them in a real way in your life to find your person this year. Not only that, but every single person who gets a copy of the book is also getting entered into a prize giveaway where we're giving away tickets to my live retreat six days live with me in Florida this year by the beach we're giving away a one-on-one session with me we're giving away love life sweatshirts and all sorts of other goodies you can get all of this stuff by going to lovelifebook.com and entering the order number from your receipt on that page. Enjoy, let me know what you think of the book and thank you for supporting me. Let's get on with the episode. Well, Matthew, my boy, I wanted to bring you here to talk about some of the ideas in the book,

some of the motivation behind writing it and kind of like how you've changed throughout the process. You've now been doing this a long time. This is your second book that came out 10 years ago. 10 years ago, Get The Guy came out. Yeah. And so I was thinking like the dating world has changed a lot then. We've changed a lot. A lot's happened. That's a formidable length between books. So in this book, I think it's fair to say this is the most open I think I've ever seen you been personally about yourself on any platform. Were you surprised when you first read those parts? I was surprised how confessional you were willing to be and how much you were willing to, as they say, bleed on the page. But I think it makes for an extremely compelling read

and i think it was an important step you know because you let's just for argument's sake call you a youtuber as a youtuber is that what i am is this what i am to you steven it's one of your roles as a youtuber you are you are a very private person many people go on youtube and spill everything about themselves but you're actually quite private in many people go on youtube and spill everything about themselves but you're actually quite private in a lot of ways so i think a lot of people will be surprised by this so i just want to ask why you made that decision with this book why now i think the way that i am in this book in many ways or the level of like vulnerability and openness in this book actually mirrors the greater level of vulnerability that I have had in my personal life

over the years of writing it. Like I don't think that this hasn't just been like a public shift in the form of a book, although a book does give you this kind of it's kind of like if you are going to make if you're going to put that many hours into something you really do want it to be a statement of who you are today right as well that's how i felt about it anyway but it's not just that it's that i think in the last five to seven years of my life, I've been on a path of opening up more in general. You know, I don't think I realized in my twenties, the extent to which I wasn't good

at really being vulnerable. I think I was good at sort of telling stories that looked like they were vulnerable. Right. I don't mean even with, you know, our audience. I mean, even in my private life, in my love life, I think I was good at telling stories that were, you know, like sort of hero's journey stories you know where you talk about something that you somewhere you were and it was a difficult place and now where you are now but it was always like very past tense it wasn't me talking about what i was struggling with during that time. And certainly not things that I was worried would make me unlovable if I expressed them.

Yeah. Well, here, you know, in this book, you talk about chronic pain, it's therapy. If it's relationship mistakes you feel you made, I think that is all stuff you would have not gone near. Definitely not. Definitely not. No. definitely not definitely not no in my professional life i worried that it would be received as like almost a lack of credibility i suppose because i was insecure on that level

and i wanted to you know come across like i i had it you know figured out and the areas where i felt like i was struggling or didn't have it figured out I was sort of like let me figure that out in private and then I'll come and talk about it once I've got it figured out which I now realize wasn't ever really necessary that our audience would have loved and accepted me for being on that journey but i couldn't i wasn't capable i wasn't i wasn't involved enough or accepting enough of myself at that time to realize that yeah and that's true in my that was true in my private life too i don't think that i if i really shared you know what i was struggling with or the ways that i might have felt insecure or the ways that i was still trying to figure things out i felt like on some level i don't again i wouldn't have

said it consciously at the time but i now look back and i realize so much of that was me hiding what i thought were the unlovable parts of myself the parts of myself that i was ashamed of or felt weren't good enough for um yeah so a lot's changed in the last 10 years in dating as a whole the landscape i think when the first book came out the publishers wanted us to write a chapter on online dating and i think we were a bit you know oh okay we'll throw in a chapter on online dating i guess some people do this but it's like it wasn't a mainstream thing a lot's changed in a decade right most people who are single are on dating apps and the dating apps exploded and all the issues with them do you think dating has gotten harder or easier since the first book i it's funny because you talk you're like online dating now is just this very ubiquitous thing

that so many people do and we didn't touch it in this book i didn't like i was like i don't care about this i really don't know but i think this book has a very different uh area it's approaching about relationships yeah because i don't think this this isn't a book about dating it's a book about love you know it's a book about what is getting in the way of us finding the love that we want yes and i think in some ways one of the things that's getting in the way of us finding the love that we want is the sort of dopaminogenic cycle that so many of us are on in our lives that online dating makes worse and i'm not someone i'm not like anti-online dating i think you know how many people i know met because they were on a dating app you know i can't you can't deny that there are so many people

who meet through the apps but yeah i've been on a bit to several weddings that are like from dating apps yeah close friends so it's like i can't say they don't offer some value for people as there there should be a few weddings from it right so because the part of the thing we have to do in our love lives is we just have to collide with other people and dating apps provide a way for people to collide from home which is sort of an introvert's dream to not have to leave the house but to still meet people to get out of any conversation with ease to only reply when you want to reply like there is so much about that that is attractive because it is by definition, the path of least resistance. It's why apps work so well is because they play to human nature. We want whatever is the easiest path and dating apps funnel you down what feels like the easiest possible path, the lowest activation energy for meeting other people. I open my phone,

I can swipe and send a message and meet people with the most minimal effort. And the way I think so much has shifted is that we are, I don't know that it's the only problem but i i think it's a real problem of our time that we are dopamine junkies and i'm clearly not the first person to have said this this has been well researched by people who have made documentaries about social media and the effects of it on us but what we forget i think sometimes is that dating apps are a part of that. And they put us on a similar dopamine cycle where we can get these hits that, you know, stimulate these initial positive emotions, these highs, but they don't give us the real thing. They don't, they're not giving us real connection unless we're actually meeting up with

people. But the meeting up with people is the part where all the activation energy comes back again where you actually now have to get out of your house and go and meet a person for coffee go and meet a person for a drink or a walk or whatever you do and i think we're so used to these short hits of, you know, attention, feeling of validation, a quick feeling of progress that we get from matching with someone that it's, it can be hard to then do the real thing of going out and actually meeting a person. Yeah. Well, it's like junk food interaction or shallow interaction versus deep interaction. And, you know, I'm new in LA and I've been saying yes to a lot of social things now in Yeah, well, it's like junk food interaction or shallow interaction versus deep interaction.

And, you know, I'm new in LA and I've been saying yes to a lot of social things now in person. And that is where I'm like, oh, this is really narrow. Even though it's intimidating every time and you're going to some party, you don't know anyone. I feel like I'm doing the rich, nourishing interaction there because I'm really in the field.'m actually i'm not meeting 10 new people on a dating app i'm actually there having to make conversation having to be interested use all my tools and connect in person and you really notice the difference between the the dopamine interactions 100 and it makes me like what i think about is how can people almost like live in a more analog way and a less digital way where they're still using those tools but you can still go on the apps but you're limiting

the way that you use them and heavily moderating the way that you use them so that or monitoring i should say the way that you use them so that you don't get stuck in it's not doesn't become this compulsive thing that you just keep going back to all the time it becomes this intentional thing that you do even when you're messaging with someone where's are you being intentional about that leading to a date or are you just endlessly shooting the ship with someone yeah where it doesn't nothing happens and we are kind of getting stuck in this culture we may not like that nothing's happening but we're also not steering the ship we're like waiting for someone else to steer the ship and you know we've

talked about this before that mitch album quote if you don't like the culture you have to be brave enough to create your own and that means what what are you doing to create your own culture in your dating life because the dating culture. A lot of it really sucks. It's frivolous and a lot of it is superficial and it's people who aren't being intentional. It's people who waste your time. How much are you taking ownership of the experience by helping steer the ship towards the things that you want,

which are intentional, conscious interactions with people that actually go somewhere. And how good are you at discarding the things that don't, clearly aren't that? How good are you, how ruthless are you in being able to let go of the things quickly? Well, that's the other thing. Or the opposite.

That's the other thing. One of the big that's the other thing one of your you know one of the big points in the whole book is about how do you choose the right things and all the reasons that people choose the wrong things and get stuck in situationships flakes toxic relationships all these kind of myriad traps and dating apps can be this way where that starts sometimes, where someone presents themselves as a shiny object and we're just drawn like a moth to the shiny light. Even if you actually soberly could look at that person and be like, I don't think I'd actually connect with this person in real life. But they've done very well at presenting a glamorous profile and it has things that might look show-offy and cool but it's almost like from the very beginning sometimes without that sobriety and intentionality we're just already

choosing the wrong things from the start like this will make me look good people will be impressed if i attract this person i will feel validated but you're not even asking if you find that person interesting or their personality what they have to offer the same is true in business you know you you have to decide what's important to you and what's valuable to you because otherwise you'll you'll do anything you know you'll say yes just because something feels exciting regardless of whether it's off brand for your company or whether you've got the time for it whether it fits into your top three priorities for the year something comes along and it and it just feels sexy it feels shiny but when you really step back from it you go this go, this doesn't fit with our company's values or this isn't in line with our goals.

This is going to be a distraction. And they're 38 years old and they end up flirting at a party with a 23-year-old. And they hit it off and there's this chemistry and it feels fun and it feels exciting. And at no point, you know, it's now month two and you're still seeing this person and at no point are you really acknowledging the fact that you've got a window if you want to have children biologically and that that's really important to you maybe you haven't even admitted how important it is to yourself because you're so wrapped up in the feelings you have and the chemistry you have with this person and how exciting it is. And you're not acknowledging that this person is absolutely not on the same trajectory as you.

That this isn't in their sights for another five or 10 years. And even if they're telling you, it's a, well, I'm not sure what I want yet. You can't be with someone, if that's really important to you and your time is starting to slip away, you can't be with someone that isn't sure that what they want in that department yet because you're making too big of a bet and i feel like i almost want to rewind and say

i shouldn't be saying you can't that's not for me to say but i get passionate about this because i'm almost speaking on behalf of that person themselves and being an advocate for what i know they really want because they're not being an advocate for it themselves right now they have they have sort of silenced the part of themselves that five years from now is going to be going why yeah there's. There's like a misranking of priorities going on. Yeah. Because when we feel something, when we find mutual attraction, it feels like the most important thing in the world. And we talk in the book about the four levels of importance that, you know, in any situation, admiration being the first one, that's when you just think someone's hot sexy impressive charismatic

or they have great qualities or you think they're super eligible but admiration is level one of importance which is to say it's not very important at all because in admiration that person doesn't like you back they may not even know you. You could feel that way about someone who works in your building who doesn't know who you are. So the second level is more important, which is level two. That's mutual attraction. That's where you have chemistry, some connection. There's something drawing the two of you to each other. And that feels really important. It actually feels way more important than it is because most people, especially as they get older and they start to feel like they, you know, maybe their social life isn't as expansive as it once was. It feels a little harder to meet people. When we meet someone we're attracted to and then they like us back it feels like the holy grail

it feels like the most important thing in the world but it's still only level two because level three is commitment if you want a relationship then and you're willing to say yes to a relationship is that person willing to say yes to a relationship right are you saying yes it's a wildly underrated phase of important level of importance it's amazing how many people have made someone the most important thing in the world to them even though that person's not saying yes to a relationship yes they're saying they're not ready they're confused they don't know what they want they want to travel the world they don't want to you know whatever reason they give for why they can't go all in what it amounts to is that person

doesn't want a relationship with you even though you want one with them so there are a lot of people who are overvaluing level two mutual mutual attraction, and wildly undervaluing level three, commitment. And level four is compatibility. Commitment itself isn't enough to have a long-term happy relationship. You have to have two people who actually work together where they are a compatible team. Their values are synergistic.

The way they see life is synergistic. Their futures align. What they want from their futures fit together. It works. The way they want to live their life today works. And if something is off in the compatibility on a fatal level because you want such different things that the relationship doesn't work or you have such different values that the relationship doesn't work then it doesn't matter that you're both saying yes you're going to make each other miserable yeah so you need all four admiration admiration, mutual attraction, commitment, and compatibility. The problems occur when we overvalue something that is just admiration or just mutual attraction, and we're not valuing commitment and true compatibility.

Well, there's, dare I say a quite a startling phrase about yourself on this topic where you say but i was ready to enjoy being in love and this i would later learn is not the same thing as being ready for a relationship that's pretty honest and startling so do you think love is its own kind of like drug or trap because like no one is going to say they don't want love right no one's going to say they don't want love everyone does but how do you then distinguish between the two like you want love someone might want love but they don't want a relationship there's the feeling of infatuation that feels like love right but then we have love as something more pure than that which is wanting the best for someone

right love is a almost love as a verb like i want to how what's the best way to love you and i think you can you can love a person and realize you can't give them what you what they want i think you can love a person and realize you want very different things and there are times where loving a person is saying i have to let you go because i'm going to continue to hurt you if i keep holding on to you so that i can experience the feelings of love and i think that's what happens a lot is that people hold on and hurt people because they they want to keep experiencing the feelings of love yeah but holding on to that person is not an expression of love yeah it's actually an expression of selfishness yeah and to me a relationship is a structure that the two of you are willing to express that love in creating.

You're both saying we love each other and we want to be together and build something together. Create, like make this relationship, this vessel for this love where we both, it's not just something we experience. It's something that we create, nurture, build together. And, and that is, that's where the decision comes in. We might fall for a person, but that's not falling for someone isn't a decision right the decision is what we do as a result of falling for someone or as a result of developing feelings for someone what do we do with that momentum like for me when i proposed to audrey i remember very clearly thinking i a friend asked me like why are you proposing and he meant it in the most loving way he was like it was almost like yeah i meant that like you know just as a curious question not as not you

oh right okay but a mutual friend we have said steven why why the hell are you doing this sit me down and explain this to me i but a mutual friend of ours said to me like why are you proposing and it was his way of like almost stress testing right why i was making that decision a very happily married man he was is and i said because i'm ready to build something in my life in my love life and i i can't imagine a builder than audrey and that to me with that was the decision part i'd obviously over the course of our dating and relationship developed really like profound feelings for audrey but there are plenty of people who claim to have profound feelings and then obliterate your heart and and they're just not ready to build like they don't or they

don't have they don't have the tools to build they're like they're incompetent builders or they they're selfish or they they and i don't mean that in a derogatory way i mean they are just they have no interest in actually putting work into something they have no interest in investing in something. It's why I say attention is not intention. Attention is like feelings, right? I'm giving you attention because I feel something for you and because I want to feel something from you. But that's not intention. Intention is where you want it to go. And intention isn't real investment until real investment shows up. You can have great intentions, but until investment shows up, you're not building anything. So for me, it was like, I am ready to build. That's what I felt in my core. I was like,

I am done hitting the reset button on my love life i want to build something lasting and i can't imagine someone better to do it with than audrey and so so why did you become a builder i think i would describe me and audrey's early relationship as me sort of like learning to build the train while it was already in motion right like in a cartoon where they're building the track exactly as it goes wily coyote yeah exactly and i and doing it you know partially incompetently but knowing I felt like, it was like I was realizing on the job, this is, I would be a fool not to build something with this person. Like that would be foolish. I knew that because I also had the sense in my single life before that,

that that wasn't working. Like I really had this sense that oh me like jumping from one short-term relationship to the next or dating different people this is not this is not working like this is not where peace and long-term happiness lies for me. I liked Audrey. I fancied Audrey. I thought we had amazing chemistry, but that wasn't going to be enough for me on its own. I saw qualities in Audrey that made me realize this is what a person to do life with like this is a an incredible this is going to be an incredible builder this is going to be an incredible teammate i think as an observer what i saw as well as your brother is that you had healthier and this is probably largely thanks

to audrey but healthier communication than any relationship i've seen you in where you were able maybe she was able to bring discussions or problems or issues to you and it didn't cause a massive blow-up or it didn't you know threaten the integrity of the relationship and it was able things were able to actually be solved as problems together that's what i've seen from observing you too yeah rather than you know uh like they're whatever they've said something and now it's creating a massive issue and we can't like get over it or whatever it is yeah why i remember i haven't i remember having the distinct feeling early on in some kind of fight we were having. But I remember the way that she handled it meant it became really clear to me in this particular conversation that I was the problem.

You know when you like... Yeah, I hate that bit when you do something and someone you because of the way you've reacted which probably wasn't good they then react in a way that also isn't good and it just sort of it it gives you justification for thinking that they're in the wrong. Yeah. Or that they're the one who is creating the problem. And there was a way that Audrey communicated with me. And I talk about the specifics of some of these ways in the book that meant that i could i had nowhere to hide

because i realized oh this is me like i'm i'm the problem here yeah i can't blame this on somebody else like i'm there's something i'm reacting to or there's something i'm triggered by and she's handling this compassionately but she's also being quite clear like i remember there was a time at the very beginning of our relationship where we i can't remember i think we were just dating at the time were we in i can't remember i was but it was early on and I got jealous about something and it like really inflamed me and it was like almost like an old me came out and it made me feel really exposed and I was like passive aggressive and you know didn't like just a side of me that I don't like came out of just being insecure but being too afraid to communicate that something had made me feel unsafe like feeling like that would make me appear weak or not attractive so just instead going cold and being

difficult and being judgy and i just remember i think we fought for a bit and then somewhere along the way, she started to be very compassionate that like I was upset or that something had affected me. While at the same time saying like, you can't bring this to me in this way because it's really unfair. And if it were the other way around, I wouldn't bring this to you in this way. Like it was this combination of compassion, but also a standard that, you know, you have to do better. And it would have, it was a moment where it would have been really hard for me to walk away and go, she's the worst. Instead, it was like, it shone a light on me and that, oh, there's something, something has come out for me here that if I don't figure this out with her, I'm going to have to figure it out with somebody. Like it's not, it's going to follow me into another relationship. And I think those

moments are really powerful because if you go, oh, if I don't think like, this is going to follow me, I have to figure this out somewhere. And when I realized, well, who better to figure it out with than someone who's as kind and as compassionate as this, who's as empathetic and as accepting as this, that a really not of course not every person's going to appreciate that like i was able to appreciate it because in my core i'm kind and i'm compassionate and i'm empathetic and that all that crap that was coming out in that moment was just my fear but in that moment i recognized the qualities that I really value in somebody else. And I saw someone who would actually accept me. Cause I remember after I, I remember that time when I got,

when I started, when I actually opened up about how I felt and I started to let my guard down, I then, and I don't know if this has happened to you steve but i got like an emo uh like a vulnerability hangover where i felt like i'd said too much so like there was a second wave of me being cold because once i felt like i'd said more than i'd said in the past to other people i was like this i shouldn't have i shouldn't have done that i've gone too far now beyond the point of no return yeah because she's never going to look at me the same now. Right, yeah. Now I'm going to be, I'm not going to be strong, sexy guy

who she was dating up until tonight. Now I'm insecure, needy, frail guy who gets hurt easily and is oversensitive and is threatened and that's how that's going to be the new truth of how she sees me it's like just time to write this relationship yeah we'll get it right yeah well there's that great you know do you remember in um uh goodwill hunting there's that great moment where matt damon is with robin williams and he's making his case to robin williams about why not to get closer to this woman and he says you know robin williams says well he says something like well why don't you see her

again and why don't you you know give her a real chance or whatever and he says why so i can get you know so i can learn that she's not perfect after all and i can yeah and robin williams says to him well maybe you're afraid that you won't be perfect yeah you know i i remember relating a lot to that scene at one point because uh i i think when i was like a younger man dating um i was very addicted to like the i liked i loved the first three months of a relationship yeah when you both think each other are perfect it's a very heroic time and you're like i can't see anything wrong with this person and they don't think anything's wrong with me and then when that first bit where they don't think you're perfect or they

criticize you i'll be like oh no like that bit you know i mean it'd sort of be like i like that bit when we were both angels yeah you know everything was wonderful we just couldn't get enough of each other and then that first like critique or first bit where you're exposed and you're not the perfect person you're like shit i don't like that i think a lot of people spend their whole lives sort of heroically dating and enjoying heroically dating and being seen heroically exactly being the hero in the process and getting to be that very shiny person who comes along and is very dazzling and you know it's the the most vulnerability you really have to express in those stages is crying in a movie you know like you watch a movie together and you shed a tear and it's like a very safe first test well it's a very safe no

but it's not even like it it's very safe isn't it because it's like you get points for being sensitive right and you don't actually have to reveal anything right it's just like something's touched you and you seem really in touch with your emotion exactly but it's not the same as me sitting on a bed with audrey saying these things that make me feel like I'm throwing up my like actual fears and then afterwards wanting to hide under the sheets because I'm like I've blown I've now you see now you see the real me well fuck you you know what I mean like I screw you for pulling that out of me. And now I feel weak as a result, you know? And one of the most beautiful things that Audrey both said, but also did for me through her actions, like it proved itself in her actions, was she communicated that when I shared something that made me worry I was unattractive or shameful

or weak or insecure, all of the things that I might fear would drive someone away. She made it quite clear to me that that was not the truth of how she now saw me. That in fact, what it did was it made her feel closer to me because she had this kind of context for all these different parts of me. And that those parts didn't negate the heroic parts of me. They didn't negate the strong, powerful parts of me. It was a different form of power.

And it was also, it allowed her to view me contextually, to understand me, but it didn't become the truth. It didn't stop her finding me really sexy an hour later it just became wow i'm i feel closer to you and i learned over time it was like a form of safety i had to like actually learn it wasn't something someone could have just said to me for it to land it was demonstrated to me because a day later it it I'd feel powerful again in some of those other ways or she'd find me deeply sexy or

you know, whatever it may be it it didn't become the truth of how she saw me and that That made me realize oh I am safe and I'm not gonna be suddenly judged Or shamed for these parts of me and i'm allowed to be all of these parts of me which for anyone who's done you know kind of that deep work whether through therapy on their own of sort of integrating these different aspects of themselves instead of shaming them and burying some and only bringing out to visit the public others when you integrate all these parts of yourself you fully accept all these different aspects of yourself and i know that that was a i was already on this process of trying to accept different parts of me that hadn't seen the light of day

very much or that you know i was afraid to talk about but her showing that level of compassion and acceptance and still and celebrating all of me instead of just going oh no that now i know who you are really that that was like a part of an integration exercise yeah for me that was really powerful so it might take some patience right to find someone as great as that for a relationship or someone who's gonna really be accepting of all of you so and one of the subtitles of your book is uh how to be happily single no matter what so what do you think of this as one interpretation of your work your perceived goal by outside is to get people in a relationship but in a way you're like someone helping to give us medicine and help rehab us out of a compulsive junk food relationship addiction and in a way you're encouraging people to hold space and hold out for the right thing and

to stop getting this junk food sugar high on like the quarter thing the half thing the this is okay but not quite what i want this person doesn't really accept me but they have great sex and in a way you're kind of like rehabbing people to say being single isn't so terrible you'll be okay being more patient and actually being more slow and intentional about how you meet people so in a way you're not the guy getting you know your your job is not getting everyone in relationships and that success in a way you're part successful you might be people staying single a bit longer and being more cautious about getting into things well i would add to that that love needs space and unless we're creating that space it's always going to be occupied by someone who is someone that's just like

you know you have this feeling with or this chaos with or this or someone you're micro dosing on as i like to think about it because you know you were with them a while back and you've just never really been able to let them go, so you still text them or you still hook up or you can't really seem to shed them. But what we don't realize is the hidden costs of all of that, that when we keep people in our lives who are wrong for us or who we know will never give us what we want

or we know we never give us what we want, or we know we're not that into, they still take up psychological space in our minds. They take up physical space. They take up Friday nights. They keep our head down and looking at our phone when we could be looking up in that coffee shop we're in like we are taking ourselves out of the world and reducing the opportunities for

possibility to enter love needs space and the only way to create space, as I talk about in the book, is to be happy enough with where you are now. Happy enough is not like blissfully happy. It's just happy enough that I can hold. It's a very powerful place to be. But to give myself a little credit, I had to, I had to realize a good thing when I saw it. I had to notice this is the right stuff. And also before Audrey, I had to notice what was the wrong stuff. You know, like I had to know who and what to say no to, what not to give space to, because it wasn't right for me. Yeah.

So even though it might look like I got lucky of, you know, like got lucky and swept into this good thing. That's not the case at all. I was becoming much more conscious about what it was I valued. And the same qualities that when people listen to Audrey in a podcast or watch her on stage at the retreat or the friends of hers, the same qualities that make people feel like, oh, Audrey's awesome. She's kind, she's empathetic, she's compassionate, she's like present.

Those were the qualities I had to value in order to decide to keep going. And we have to take ownership of what we're deciding to value. Because there's a lot of people out there that talk about how they, you know, like, it will be oh good for you you met someone who you know helped you to feel safe or helped you to open up or helped you to but it's not I didn't get I don't believe I just got lucky I believe that when I almost let Audrey go because I was not sure where I was like you know am I do I want to do this long distance thing? Am I really ready? Like I had all those thoughts and it would have been the easiest thing

to just let it go. But I was being conscious at that time about the things that I was choosing to value. And I believe that we all have to do that. What am I going to value going forward? What qualities in a person am I going to value? Forget how sexy someone is or how alluring they are, how eligible they may seem or how impressive they'll seem to my friends, whatever it is, what are the qualities that if I don't get those, nothing else matters. You have to know that going in. Otherwise, how do you know what to say no to? Because plenty of shiny people will come along in your life and many of them will ruin your life.

You need to have a way of knowing what to say no to and what to pay attention to. Even if sometimes, by the way, it feels unfamiliar. Because for many people, and you know I write about this in the book, there's a whole chapter on how to rewire your brain when you keep going for many people, and I, you know, I write about this in the book, there's a whole chapter on how to rewire your brain when you keep going for bad people and you want to start attracting healthy love. The situations that are really, that will create long-term happiness or peace for you can often feel strange they can feel unfamiliar

they can feel sort of disconcerting for some people they can even feel boring yeah well you talk about that woman in the book who says uh i think her name's lucy but she goes home i think to her mom and says it's weird he's so nice to me like is it and it's a novel says that's how it's supposed to and she says that's how it's supposed to be and i do think it is a novel experience when someone's like they don't bring drama they don't they don't complain when i did this thing i wanted to do they didn't make it a huge blow and by the way very like jarring lucy didn't register that what she was feeling in that situation was peaceful she didn't go home and say, mom, I feel so peaceful. She said, mama, it's, it's so weird. He's so nice to me. It first just felt weird. What she would go on to realize

is what she actually felt was peace. She felt safe, but for her safety in the beginning felt weird and when we're used to a different kind of energy that makes us feel anxious makes us have to chase someone or earn their love makes us feel like we have to fight for them comes in you know these massive fights that make us feel like crap but then make up sex that feels euphoric and amazing because you feel safe again and you feel connected again like that coming off the back of something like that into something that's healthy may feel very jarring for a lot of people it won't even show up on their radar well it'll be invisible well a lot of people will what what a critic will say to this or someone who can't get there they'll go i am not attracted to that kind of behavior i'm

i've had women out retreat or whoever might might even be they're not 20s there might be 50s and say I'm attracted to the bad boy because it never never it never ends so long as you keep feeding the addiction so how do you choose to be attracted you have to make a choice to rewire yourself and that means you have to spend time away from the old thing you'll never rewire yourself if you're still in the same cycle with the same people and you keep texting them back and you keep hooking up with them. And the next time one comes through the door and he's charismatic and he's got that thing. I don't know what it is. He's just got that thing that I always like. If you keep feeding that, it's like sugar. It's like you'll never stop craving sugar so long as you keep having sugar. It's like you'll never stop craving sugar so long as you keep having sugar,

right? Sugar creates cravings for sugar. And at a certain point we go, oh God, this makes me feel awful in the mornings. I get headaches. I feel irritable. I don't like the way I look. And at a certain point, many people experience enough pain with sugar that they go i have to cut out sugar yeah but at first other things you eat don't taste good yeah because your palate is trained for this thing that's poison and i'm not saying this from any righteous place you know me steve i love a bar of chocolate oh get matt in the biscuit tin and it's game over he'll go for it like a wild dog yeah so i'm not this isn't me preaching about food but the same thing applies it's that other things other things your palate is not able to appreciate them because you're still in the addiction cycle with something

that's harming you and i a lot of those people who say i'm just not attracted to the other thing they've never gone through the teething process of of getting out of that cycle with those people and putting weight behind their intentions by giving time and energy to different kinds of people and by actually experiencing them for long enough that they start to appreciate what is fucking amazing about those people and i and a lot of people who are like oh i just like the this kind of i don't like these kinds of people they're too this they're too that it's so it's so reductive about the people they're talking about you know oh god they're too nice for me or they're just not enough this not enough that it's highly highly reductive well it's selective you're choosing to see one thing about someone

and you're saying the other person is sexy and exciting but you're also missing out all the terrible things you're you're yeah and you're choosing to ignore 95 of what may be interesting about this other person the more subtle ways that they're strong or fascinating or what they've overcome in their life or how interesting their character that the way they show up for you all of these things that you can only appreciate by getting away from the stuff you used to think was the most important yeah and starting to value something new and putting weight behind it by saying i'm going to spend more time. You could do it with friendships too, as an experiment. If you keep hanging around shitty friends or people who are mean or people

who put you down or people who just don't bring good energy to your life. If you start distancing yourself from those people and start saying, I'm going to value kindness in my friendships i'm going to value people who are supportive i'm going to value people who don't shame me or judge me i'm if you put weight behind that by actually spending time with those kinds of people your life will you'll start to have that energy in your life and you'll start showing your it's like you're teaching yourself this is what's important to me now and it becomes kind of self-fulfilling the more you teach yourself to value that the more you do actually value it but you have to put weight behind those intentions what i love about what you're talking about and what you do in this book is you actually show

people the process practically of how to choose these right things. Because I think for a lot of people, it can sound very nebulous and hard to do. This is who I am. But you actually show how you can have a whole healthier decision making process when you approach love. Yeah, there's two of my favorite chapters in the book. One is called never satisfied which is about why we keep choosing the wrong things and the other one is called how to rewire your brain which takes that knowledge of why we keep choosing the wrong things but then

shows us how to rewire our behaviors our values and put ourselves on a different path so that we actually start moving towards the kind of love that is going to make us profoundly happy and at peace so you know i i can't wait i can't wait for people to read it and and i appreciate this conversation this was fun thank you for doing it good sir this was great great questions your 151st podcast interview perhaps but this and who's to say if it's the best certainly that i'm never going to have more chemistry than with my brother you heard it from the horse's mouth so So should we wrap up there? Thank you so much. And by the way, as I said earlier in the episode, the Love Life book is now out. It is available. So if you order it now, it will ship to you immediately. This is a huge

moment. We've been talking about this for months and it is finally here. Go grab your copy at lovelifebook.com. Don't forget to put in your receipt number in the little box on that page because you'll get a free ticket to my live event. Find Your Person on May the 4th, a virtual event we're doing exclusively for everyone who gets a copy of the book. And you'll be entered into the prize giveaway where we're giving away retreat tickets, Love Life sweaters, a one-on-one with me for anyone who wants to ask me a question specifically, and some other really cool stuff. So go to lovelifebook.com and get your book today because they are officially available. We will speak to you next time in Love Life. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you, sir. Be well, next time in love life thank you steven thank you sir be well everybody and love life