Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 241: If You Attract Emotionally Unavailable People, Listen To This...

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

We may not realise it, but many of us subconsciously hide from real love because it forces us to be honest and show who we really are. And when we get threatened, we either go cold, hide, or lash out with passive aggression.  If you've struggled with emotional unavailability or always choosing the wrong people, this might be why... ►► 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

All I wanted was love and acceptance and to be with everyone and because I got embarrassed I just froze everyone out. I actually hurt myself by taking myself out of this really fun situation with people that loved me. What's up guys, it's Matthew. Welcome back to the Love Life Podcast. Something a bit more rough and ready today. We have a live that I did across our various social media platforms, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. I've been doing a bunch of fun lives lately. So by the way, just so you know, in the next few days, make sure you just join me on one of the platforms that you like listening to, whether you like YouTube or Facebook or TikTok or Instagram. You can see me live there over the next few days.

But this was a live that I did last week that has been getting really, really great feedback. It was on the subject of emotional unavailability. So if emotional unavailability is something you want to hear more about, either your own or somebody else's, then listen to this live because people have been commenting on it like mad and really enjoying it and getting a lot out of it. So check it out. This is me on emotional unavailability. All right, guys, welcome, welcome, welcome. Give me a hello when you get in. Starting a live today to talk about emotional unavailability, which is a big requested topic from so many of you when I was going live yesterday. We're live on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, we're about to go live on. Hey, RP. Hey, Maya. Hey, Nora. Paulina. What's going on? Hi, Emma. Lots of YouTube

comments coming in. Give me a shout if you're on Facebook as well. Ume says, hello from after midnight in Hong Kong. Well, thanks for joining me for your late evening. This is for you. This is the Late Late Show with Matthew Hussey. What's going on, everyone? So good to see you all. Let's see here. We've got TikTok in the house now as well. What's up, Ma? What's up, Sophie? So look, I wanted to talk about the subject of emotional unavailability and what that really means and how it might be affecting our love lives. And of course, the thing we tend to focus on when we're struggling in our love lives is I keep going for emotionally unavailable people. But what happens is we tend to miss something important in all of this. And this is reflected

in one of the questions I got. I'm going to read this to you because I think it's really, really important. Sophia said, do we attract narcissistic or emotionally unav pattern of attracting or being attracted way emotionally unavailable, and that's why you keep attracting people like this. Who here feels like this, to some extent, they are emotionally unavailable, and that's why they keep going for people like that. And if that does describe you, what do you think is your reason for being emotionally unavailable? I want to read some comments out right now. I see a lot of people agreeing with this. Edit by Carter on YouTube says, not to get hurt.

Yeah, that's really interesting. So how many people relate to being emotionally unavailable because they themselves don't want to get hurt? Danny T says, in my case, I'm the one who is unavailable. Joss says, don't want to open up because I feel shameful for some stupid reason. Lisa, yep, just figuring it out. Scared. That's really interesting. Me, Areej says, because I was abandoned as a child, so that's the only form of love I know. So what you're saying, Areej, is that that person who's unavailable is familiar to you, painful, but familiar. And that's why you keep gravitating back to it. Paulina says, because it's scary. Becky says, scared to be disappointed again. We were just talking about

this earlier, weren't we, Celia? This idea that people who have been disappointed a lot can become emotionally unavailable because they just can't take another disappointment. So you end up distancing yourself from feeling anything because you know that anytime you felt something in the past, it's just too painful. You just end up getting disappointed again. So eventually you just go, you know what? I'm going to shut down. Sarah, past traumas and not being used to meaningful relationships. Let's talk about that for a moment. Not being used to meaningful relationships. When someone isn't available to us, when someone either is difficult or they are untrustworthy or they're inconsistent, we can participate in those relationships and all the while distract ourselves with complaining about what that person is like,

about the fact that they're not capable of having a real relationship, about the fact that they're not giving us what we want. We tell ourselves if we could only get this person, then everything would be okay. And often, and some of you will have had this experience, when we finally get that person, we find that we're not as interested or that it feels like something is wrong or it doesn't feel how we thought it would feel. And it's because the whole time it was never really about them. It was about this chase that was making us feel like this was important. It was about the distraction of this person, distracting us from our real feelings about life, about love, or our difficulties

in being vulnerable. Being with this person, it distracts us. It monopolizes our attention. Meanwhile, by the way, when we see healthier love around us, we tend not to pay attention to it because healthy love requires something different from us. When someone isn't making us chase them the whole time, they're actually asking us questions about ourselves. They're actually curious about us. They're like, so tell me about you. Like what, you know, what are you interested in? Or what are you all about? Like, what do you think about life? What do you think about this? What do you think about that? They, who are you? You know, when someone is healthy, they actually want to know us. And someone wanting to know us can make us

have to actually be vulnerable. Being authentic doesn't attract people who are unavailable. Not in the same way. You can be performative and play games and attract someone who is unavailable. But authenticity is not required for attracting someone who is unavailable. Does that make sense? But when someone is available, that requires authenticity on our part to really engage with that person. And authentic is something a lot of us are terrified of being. You know, it's why so many people opt for cynicism instead. It's why so many people opt for sarcasm all the time instead, which can feel like a form of cynicism. I'm going to be sarcastic because if I'm sarcastic, I might make you laugh or I might put myself in control, but I never really have to show you myself. There's this fear of if I really show who I am,

you're not going to want me. You're not going to be attracted to me. Or I just don't know how that's going to go because maybe I never feel like I've really been who I am, at least romantically. Maybe I'm not even sure who I am. Maybe I'm terrified I will not be accepted. So when we're in that place, Joanna, I see you on TikTok saying, but why do we chase unavailable people? In your case, you said, why do we chase unavailable men? There are multiple reasons. There's not one reason, but one of the reasons is because we ourselves haven't actually decided what's valuable to us in a real relationship. We haven't ever sat down and gone, what's the kind of relationship I really want? Let me be intentional about this. And when we've never been intentional about that, when we've never really thought about that, we just get attracted to the superficial things.

And we get drawn in by people who are really good at putting forward the superficial things. Often they're very unavailable people, right? And they're people who lack authenticity themselves. So in having not really decided what we want, the kind of values we want in a relationship, the way we want to be treated, we just get distracted by superficial qualities and then we start chasing them. Of course, another answer to your question is that when someone's unavailable, it makes us feel like they must be valuable because our brain, we have this economics in our brain that says if something's rare, it's valuable. Here's a phrase I want you to write down,

diamonds and air. Diamonds and air. Which is more valuable, diamonds or air? Well, when you have air, you feel like diamonds are more valuable because you take for granted how valuable air is. But if you took someone's diamonds away, they'll live and they can be just as happy. If you take someone's air away, they'll stay alive for a few minutes. There's no comparison between the value of diamonds and the value of air, not even close. But instinctively, there's a feeling of diamonds being the valuable thing because we're told that they're rare and because they're shiny and there's alluring, right? So in relationships, we can value diamonds when air is the thing that actually

sustains us. Love, being seen, being accepted, feeling someone's loyalty, feeling their consistency, being in a mutual relationship of equals. But diamonds, they feel exciting, they feel sexy, they feel shiny. That's the thing that pulls us in a certain direction. And when someone makes themselves rare, when they're unavailable, they feel more like diamonds. Oh, they're rare. Oh, they're hard to get. That must be a reflection of their value. When in fact, it's a complete non sequitur. Someone being unavailable doesn't make them more valuable. That could just be a mind trick, right? Just because someone's hard to get, it doesn't mean they're more valuable something we often realize when we get someone who's hard to get we realize oh it was all just

a mirage but we want them when we feel like they're rare because their rarity makes them feel like they're super valuable and of course when we don't feel worthy and someone is running in the other direction we think oh well it's that of course they're running in the other direction, we think, oh, well, of course they're running in the other direction. I'm not great. I'm not worthy. I'm not good enough. So if they don't want me, that's also a reflection of their value. When someone wants us, some of us get turned off because we're like, you want me? I'm nobody. I've got nothing. I'm not worthy. So if you want me, there must be something wrong with you, right? You don't want me? You're onto something. That's how a lot of us feel. So we chase after people who don't want us or who are acting like

we're disposable because we think it must be a reflection of their value. And of course, if someone did turn to meet us, we'd actually have to have a real relationship with them. And a real relationship is what many of us are not prepared for. We're not prepared for someone to sit in front of us and truly get to know us. For us to truly be who we are and to risk being accepted or not accepted for who we really are. But when we're worried, we're fucked up and we've got all these problems and we're not good enough, instead of confronting those things and those feelings about ourselves, we go chasing after somebody who behaves badly or is difficult or is hard to get. Because then we can

go and tell all of our friends, they're so annoying. They're so difficult. They're not ready for a real relationship. When the truth is there's a big part of us that's not ready for a real relationship, which is why we keep chasing this person in the first place. This person allows us, I think of it as like, no, it's like Jerry Springer dating. Is that an aged reference? Celia, do you even know who Jerry Springer is? You do? Celia just turned, it's Celia's birthday today. Celia's on our team. And Celia, come show everyone your sweater. I love the fact that you're wearing a Love Life sweater right now. I'm going to give everyone out there a piece of advice I gave Celia today. This is Celia, everyone. Oh, rocking the Love Life sweater.

So by the way, everyone is trying to get their hands on these right now. And we do not sell them because we are not a merch company. We literally got them made up for our team because we love them. And we wanted to do something special for a few team members. But for those of you who want this sweater right now, if you get a copy of the book at lovelifebook.com, this link right here, if you get a copy of the book, you're automatically entered into, as long as you put in your receipt number on the page, you're entered into a prize giveaway where we're giving away, what are we giving away, Celia? There's a one-to-one with you. We're giving away, that's the grand prize is a one-to-one with me. Retreat tickets, we're giving away free retreat tickets. We're giving away some

Love Life sweatshirts. So these sweatshirts that Celia is wearing, we're actually, this is the only place we're giving them is as a giveaway to a few people who have got a copy of the book. We're also giving away some Love Life t-shirts, some signed copies of the book. So if you haven't got your copy yet, go and get a copy at lovelifebook.com and enter your receipt number on that page and you'll be entered into those giveaways. Also a live event we're doing on the 4th of May called Find Your Person, which everyone who buys a copy of the book is invited to. You get free ticket to this event with us and you can claim your ticket on that page, lovelifebook.com. Even if you don't buy the book on that page, go to that page and use your receipt number

from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you buy it. As long as you get a physical copy of the book, or if you're international, a Kindle copy, the audio book doesn't count. So if you already have the audio book, grab a physical copy as well so that you're entered into all of this. But earlier today, Celia's birthday today. So everyone, please wish her a giant happy birthday. And Celia's, you just turned 28? Celia was like, I feel so old. And I was like, Celia, I'm going to give you a piece of advice that you'll never forget. I was like,

you can only say that to people who are younger than you. You can't say that line to people who are older than you. It will never go down well. So always save that line for younger people. I was like, you're telling me you're so old. I'm nearly 10 years older than you. What does that make me? So young today now. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're welcome. You're welcome. Wait, but what was the thing I was even going to say to you? There was something I was going to say to you that you were over there. Oh, that's it. Okay. The point I was going to make was Jerry Springer dating. And that's why I know Jerry Springer. All right. Fine. Fine. Well, Jerry Springer dating is a term I coined this morning where, you know, when we watch,

I've never really watched Jerry Springer, but anytime, it was always clear to me that the reason that we watch Jerry Springer is because we can point at the people on that screen and be like, look how fucked up they are. And I think that there is that effect that goes on in our dating life where we date someone who we perceive to have more issues than us or we date someone who we think truly isn't available in a very obvious way. And we get to point at them with all of our friends and go, I'm ready for a relationship. They're just screwing me around because they're unavailable. Like, what's wrong with this person? We get to point at them, but we don't ask ourselves, why is it that I am even giving time to a person like this in the first place? What is going on with me that I am giving time to these people? And that's really important to ask ourselves,

what's going on with me that I keep giving time to these people? And what is it distracting me from? What kind of authentic relationship that I would have to participate in is this distracting me from? So Kat on YouTube says, exactly. I finally realized for me, I am the emotionally unavailable one. That's the answer. Sarah says, weirdly enough, that's how I found out I was an anxious avoidant myself. Let's see what's going on on TikTok over here. There's some funny comments going on. Thank you, everyone, by the way, for reminding me where I was. That's happened to me on stage before where I'm on stage in front of many, many people. And I literally completely forget where I am.

And I have to get the audience to remind me, which is a good uh good lesson i think in if you're ever anxious that you forget your train of thought or you lose your words and you're afraid of being talking to people for that reason or you're afraid of public speaking i'm just going to go off track for a moment it's a very good little public speaking kind of tip is you can't have an embarrassing moment if you're not embarrassed. Does that make sense? If you're not embarrassed, if you just say, oh man, where was I? I forgot my train of thought. Someone help me. Then it's no longer an embarrassing moment. It's just you having a moment where you lost your train of thought. But if you feel like the world is swallowing you up in that moment and you're like, I can't believe it. I'm on a live in front of all these different

platforms on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and everything else. And I forgot what I was going to say. This is so embarrassing. If you take that meaning on, then it becomes incredibly embarrassing. If you're just like, oh, I forgot my train of thought. Where was I? And then you involve people and you're like, somebody, if you involve the audience, help me understand. Where was I? Help someone remind me. All of a sudden, you're just bringing everyone in on it. So that's a nice little way to get over social anxiety and fear of public speaking, if those are things that you suffer from. So emotional unavailability. Have we really decided what it is we want

so that we don't keep just getting distracted by shiny things? Tell yourself, someone's not more rare and someone's not more valuable just because they're rare, just because they feel exclusive. It doesn't make them more valuable. Certainly doesn't make them more valuable to me because someone's valuable to me. If they understand me, someone's valuable to me. If they see me, someone's valuable to me. If they invest in me, but we have to start living by that instead of rewarding people who are unavailable. And again, if we are using unavailable people as a distraction from ourselves, then we have to start saying, what's the kind of relationship I really want deep down. I want an authentic relationship where I feel truly accepted. What I really want is acceptance. Okay. I can only get

acceptance if I am truly vulnerable. What does vulnerability look like? Well, it might not immediately look like me, you know, bearing my soul to someone I've just met, especially if I'm out of practice at being vulnerable. But it might mean me in little ways choosing to let people in a bit more. Me choosing to be a bit more of myself. And me knowing that the only people who are really valuable for my life are the people that accept who I really am. So instead of worrying about turning people off, instead of worrying about not being perfect, I'm going to start worrying about making sure I find the special people in life

who accept how imperfect I am and how awesome I am in spite of my imperfections. There's a great, um, anyone seen the film Goodwill Hunting? Just a great moment in that movie where Matt Damon's talking to Robin Williams and he's saying, I think Robin Williams is trying to encourage him to like, you know, go further with this woman that he's seeing. And he's like, you like you know why so I can find out she's not fucking perfect and Robin Williams looks at him and says well maybe you're perfect right now and that's what you don't want to screw up and there's something really interesting about that line that what the therapist in the movie Robin Williams picked up on was that Matt Damon was saying he

didn't want to get to know this woman better and go further with her because he would only end up realizing how flawed she was and therefore become turned off. But like he didn't want to ruin this perfect image he had of her. But what the therapist picked up on was that it was his perfection that he was worried about ruining. That right now she saw him as this attractive, shiny, sexy, intelligent person. And he had so much about himself that he was ashamed of and so much about himself that he felt was unlovable that if he got closer to her, she would inevitably learn how imperfect he was. She would inevitably learn the things that he was ashamed of and the things that he was worried about him, his life, that if she knew them would make him unlovable. And when we're deeply afraid of that, we opt for more superficial interactions.

I remember in this book, I write more than I ever have about my own life and my misguided search for love and attention and, you know, romance. And one of the things that I write about is for a long time, without even realizing it, I was not being vulnerable. If you'd have asked me 10 years ago, are you a vulnerable person? I probably would have said yes, but I would have said that from a place of not being very self-aware. I struggled with vulnerability. I struggled to truly share my fears. I struggled to truly share my insecurities. I thought that if someone knew my insecurities, that would make me really unattractive. That would make me less manly. That would make me appear less sexy.

And so for so much of my love life, I dated in a way that allowed me to be heroic. I dated in a way that allowed me to put forward this like very powerful and heroic version of myself. And that was fine. It got me attention and it allowed me to have some experiences and romance, but it didn't lead to real connection. And it didn't lead to me feeling like I was accepted. It didn't lead to me feeling like I was really seen because I never let anyone in enough to truly accept the parts of me

that I hadn't accepted in myself. You know, I had things that I felt shame around. I had things that I thought made me unlovable. I had things that I thought made me look unattractive because they were insecure, you know, ways that I might get jealous, but never want to admit that I was jealous because I saw being jealous as some kind of like, you know, giving away of power of feeling small, of feeling emasculated. So it just, I wouldn't share things, not from a vulnerable place. I might get angry or I might get controlling, or I might get passive aggressive, or I might go cold. That was a key one of mine is just go cold.

Just how many people have that pattern? You just freeze someone out. You go cold with someone because it's more power. It feels more powerful to go cold with someone and to just freeze someone out. You go cold with someone because it's more power. It feels more powerful to go cold with someone and to just freeze them out than to articulate that you're scared. And that was a key pattern for me. I want to tell you this story real quick, because it really sums this up. And then I have to go in a minute because we're going live on Ryan Seacrest's show on Kiss. When I was a kid, I remember me and my brothers having a sleepover with a couple of friends. And I can't remember what happened, but something happened that embarrassed me. And instead of saying that I was embarrassed as this young teenager, I went up to my room and I shut the door. And everyone was having,

it was like a beautiful day. Everyone was having a great time outside. Everyone was like bonding and playing football. And I just shut myself in my room and everyone one by one came up and knocked and, you know, said, come out, Matt, come on. It's all good. Like, let's have a great day. And I just told everyone to go away. And eventually my mom came and she was like, Matt, come out, like, come have a good time with everyone. Like, don't do this. And I told her to go away. I was like, I'm fine. I'm fine. Just leave me alone. And eventually the evening came and my, my brothers said to me, we're going to go to Alex, my friend who was there. They were like, we're going to go to Alex's house tonight and carry on the sleepover.

And we want you to come, like, come, let's go. It's going to be so much fun. And I said, no, like, go away. I'm fine. I'm fine. Just leave me alone. Go without me. And of course, the last thing I wanted was for them to go without me. Like, that was the worst thing for me, was this idea that they were going to go and have a great time. And I was denying myself that great time. I wanted them somehow to pull me out of it, but there was simultaneously nothing they could say to pull me out of it. Has anyone done that before? Like deep down, all you want is for someone to say the right combination of words that calms you down and allows you to feel like you can express yourself in a loving way again. But you feel so protective at that time, your walls go up and there's like nothing they can say.

And you can feel yourself in real time hurting yourself. I saw a comment just now on TikTok saying you punish yourself. And that's exactly right. And get this, they all went and had this amazing time. And in the morning they came back and they said to me, like, I remember the car pulling up, my brothers coming out and being like, oh my God, it was so much fun. We had the best time. Like we watched movies, we had sleepover, we played games. And I remember having this horrible, sick feeling in my stomach. Like I had deprived myself of this amazing time with everyone. And I had done it to myself. No one had done it to me. I had taken myself out of the experience of something that

I actually wanted. All I wanted was love and acceptance and to be with everyone. And because I got embarrassed and felt ashamed and was too ashamed to just share how hurt I had been, I just froze everyone out. And I actually hurt myself. I didn't hurt anyone else. Not that they even deserve to be hurt. I hurt myself by taking myself out of this really fun situation with people that loved me. So I have had to in my adult life, because I've seen situations in my adult life where I've done the exact same thing in dating. I felt insecure or I felt jealous about something. And then instead of sharing it, I pulled back and did the equivalent of locking myself in my room and telling everyone to go away. And as a result, I pushed people away. And that was a version of my emotional unavailability. And so instead of ever having to be that person, instead of ever having to be that weak person, a lot of the time I dated in situations that

made me feel heroic and strong and adored, and I never had to confront any of those parts of me. So I hope that resonates with some people. I talk more about it in the book. I also talk about how to get out of a situation like that, how we can start to make ourselves available again, how we can be vulnerable again, how we can show up differently and what that really looks like. Because until we start showing up differently, until we remove these unconscious barriers to finding love, we're always going to struggle to find our person. And we're going to find ourselves continuously drawn in by people who hurt us. Thank you guys. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Remember to pick up a copy of the book while there's still time to get on board for the amazing bonuses that are available right now.

Lovelifebook.com is the link. Go check it out. You can buy the book there and you can register for the amazing bonuses that are available when you do it now. We have the event on May the 4th. I do not want you to miss it. I'm putting a ton of work into this event and it's going to be a great one. So go to lovelifebook.com, order the new book, Love Life, How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person, and live happily no matter what. Thanks for listening, everyone. Be well and love life. Bye.