Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 245: There Is No Such Thing as Right Person Wrong Time!

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Have you ever felt like you lost "The One" because of bad timing? They moved country, they weren't ready to commit, or they hadn't matured enough yet?  It's common to tell ourselves this is a case of "right person, wrong time". But that can make the pain of loss even worse. We despair that we've lost a great love and it's down to pure bad luck.  If you're struggling to get over someone like this, make sure to listen to this episode. Matt and Audrey talk about the myth of "right person wrong time" and the essential mindsets that can bring you back to confidence and optimism about moving on and finding love again. ►► Order My New Book, "Love Life" at → http://www.LoveLifeBook.com   ►► FREE Video Training: “Dating With Results” → http://www.DatingWithResults.com   ►► Get Vulnerable Stories, Real Insights, and Practical Tools Delivered Straight to Your Inbox Every Friday. Sign up Now For My Free Weekly Newsletter, The 3 Relationships at . . . → http://www.The3Relationships.com

In many ways, when it feels like right person, right time, you still have all your work ahead of you together. It's all ahead of you. And many of the relationships that feel like right person, right time still don't work out. I want to let you know that if you're enjoying my new book, Love Life, there is a place where you can have me literally coach you through it from start to finish. This is a brand new course that we have released inside my Love Life Club. This is where I coach people year round and we introduce new courses all the time. The latest and ongoing course is the Love Life Book Immersion Series, where every week I walk you through another three chapters of the book over a six-week period. It's really powerful. A couple of them have happened live, but you're not too late to join

right now. And you can go back and watch the recorded ones that I've already done and still join us for many of the live sessions that are coming up. If you've enjoyed the book, this is an opportunity to have me, the author, take you on a course to actually apply it practically to your life. Go to lovelifeclub.com to become a part of the Love Life Club, where you not only get this course, but you get to make me your coach for a year. We have live Q&As every month, not just with me, but with Audrey, with my brother, Steven, on-demand courses and places where you can get your specific love life questions answered. Go to lovelifeclub.com to join. And I look forward to seeing you in the book immersion series. Now onto the episode. Welcome to the Love welcome to the love life podcast everybody i'm audrey hussey and i am matthew hussey our mic people may not realize this but our microphones have to be set to very different

levels because my natural volume is much higher than mine. Higher. But people love your voice. They love your voice too. Well welcome everybody. You get both of ours today. We are excited about today's episode. What are we talking about? I wanted us to talk about this idea of right person wrong time. It's something that we come up against all the time isn't it when we're coaching people and we're speaking to members of our community it's definitely something that I've experienced and I've thought about um it's such a relatable feeling which is you know if this person could only be insert thing they could be ready available you know not just coming out of a divorce want commitment whatever it might be

if they could only be in a different phase of their life this thing that we have this connection could be the great big love and they could be the one and you have such a when we spoke about it the other day you had such a helpful and insightful kind of way of looking at this and I just thought it would help a lot of people to hear it so I guess I'm here today to ask you what is your opinion and your thoughts on right person wrong time I don't think that someone can be the right person and it be the wrong time and this comes down to my definition of what the right person is. You know, if you take what we talk about in the Love Life book, that chapter,

how to tell love stories, there are four levels of importance. Level one is admiration. Level two is mutual attraction. Level three is commitment. And level four is compatibility. Let me interrupt you very quickly. When you say four levels of importance, can you just explain that in a little bit more detail? Importance to what? Importance in our lives. Like things we should give importance to?

Exactly. Got it. Like what we should think is important or valuable. Understood. So carry on. But you picking up on that word is meaningful because that is the word that gives the whole model meaning yeah is that it's not about how much you feel it's about how important you should be making something because you can be in level two with someone which is mutual attraction and feel so

much and it can feel so important but that doesn't make it important it's just a reflection of how strongly we feel often level two feels really really important feels like everything yeah it's everything but you don't have commitment at level two. Commitment is level three of importance. In other words, if someone who you have mutual attraction with is actually committing to you, then that's definitely a higher level of importance than someone who you have attraction with, but they're not committing to you. But even then, compatibility exists as level four because compatibility says it works we work together we're in the same phase of our lives we want the same things we have the same idea of what a relationship is we have ideas of what we want for ourselves in the future that also make it

possible for us to have an amazing relationship. In other words, our individual futures that we hope for are synergistic with each other. And you don't have to be, I should say, you don't have to be at the same phase of life, but you have to, the phases you're in have to be at the same phase of life but you have to the phases you're in have to be synergistic too they have to be compatible and when someone when it's the wrong time for any number of reasons someone's just come out of a divorce someone is 25 and they don't want anything serious um someone isn't ready for a relationship because they're not ready to give up whatever it is that they think they need to give up in order to be in a relationship yeah they're going traveling around the world for the next three years oh that's a good one yeah that might make book the wrong time makes them the wrong person because it falls into level four compatibility well it might fall into level three and level four right level three perhaps because

they can't commit because it's the wrong time in which case you only have mutual attraction and you by the way you might have some compatibility you only have mutual attraction. And you, by the way, you might have some compatibility. You might have compatible values. You might have compatible views on life. You might have compatible energy. But that doesn't mean that you're compatible in every way that you have to be. Compatibility is about more than one category. It's a kind of a whole series of things that have to align for a relationship to work. You also said to me when

we spoke about this, you said something about how you don't know that somebody is the right person until you have actually lived through the relationship and you've lived enough time with them you've seen them in enough context to know that they are the quote-unquote right person and what you were saying was you know that this label of right person is oftentimes not earned when we talk about this idea of right person wrong time yeah in the same thing as love at first sight is not a marriage. Yeah. People overvalue love at first sight all the time. What is love at first sight?

What could it possibly be? Deep attraction. Yeah. It's not love as we define love in a marriage. It's not raising a child together. It's not taking someone to a child together it's not you know taking someone to the hospital when they're sick it's not dealing with financial ups and downs together or dealing with a time in life where your partner has lost their passion for their job and is thinking of

quitting but they can't because you have responsibilities together and how do you navigate that because they're unhappy but also you need the security and so you're dealing with the messiness of that like these are real things that people in relationships face that go so far beyond the idea of love at first sight, which I always find to be a little bit insulting to long-term relationships or marriages. You know, where people have stood the test of time and weathered storms together. And like you said, you don't really know who someone is or what they would be to you until you've weathered those storms together you know the idea of right person wrong time it's like well how easy to say you haven't had to go through a whole bunch of things with that person

yeah they have not had to pass any of the stress tests of a real relationship. And so even if it was the right time, in many ways, when it feels like right person, right time, you still have all your work ahead of you together in making a relationship work, functioning together, healing together, you know know working through life's obstacles together it's all ahead of you and many of the relationships that feel like right person right time still don't work out so to then ascribe some special you know transcendent meaning to this person who seems like the right person but it's the wrong time and to then ruminate obsessively about that person that becomes very quickly becomes a story that we're telling ourselves as opposed to real life how can it be real life you've never had to live it

and by the way it becomes a way to avoid real life and that's my real problem with it is that real life is happening while we're continuously dreaming and thinking of this story and replaying the story of you know what could have been if it was only the right timing with this person, real life is happening and it's playing out and you're on the stage, but you're, you know, focused on a imaginary play going on somewhere else. That's the danger of it is that those stories they actually make us miss our life and they also make us there is a kind of and we've all done it so i don't mean this point in any pointed way we've all done it but it's a kind of arrogance that a lot of us have that we we know what the best thing is for us at all times. We know that this person is the best thing for us.

This person is what we need. And therefore we've become fixated on that person as the answer to our problems. If that could only be, but life is much more interesting than that. So I want to return to this because I think there's something really, really important there. But than that so I want to return to this because I think there's something really really important there but there's something I want to highlight because

I also know that all of this is true but when you are in that place especially if you think I really like this person we had such an amazing connection it's amazing time we got close it was this it was they really did feel like the right person but as you say they're going traveling they're this they're not ready and you know the butt is always kind of tends to be a massive massive butt but the problem is is that you know when you talk about story I think what hurts so much is when you don't get to live out that story to find out whether or not you could have made and gone the distance. And sometimes it makes it that much harder to move on from a situation because you're right, it is a story. You do get caught up in the fantasy of what could have been with this person but I just want to acknowledge everybody

who's listening who's like yeah but also ah I just want I kind of yeah I want to highlight that and I suppose I'm wondering if you personally have any if you have any thoughts on how you actually move on from that story because that story is very intoxicating it's a little bit like quick sand and it does you can get stuck in it for so long so long you can waste years in the story well i think that we don't broaden our lens to see how many of those stories are exist all the time like i there are authors that i read i read thomas pain who was alive several hundred years ago and i think we probably would have been mates like i i i really there's something about you know his way of thinking that i just would have loved to hang with this guy and to talk. And I feel like we would have had a lot in common and, and he's been dead for a very long time.

We'll never be friends, but it doesn't mean that there isn't some shared DNA there, that there aren't shared values there. You you know who hasn't had that experience of reading an author and uh who's who they'll never know or who isn't even around anymore and thinking god i i feel such a connection to this to this writer i feel i feel like i am them and they are me and i am somehow accessing myself through this person and you know it's a special feeling it but to say oh god right friend wrong time like imagine saying that about Shakespeare you know like right friend, wrong time. Many people have read Shakespeare and thought, you know, God, to be in a room with Shakespeare, he understands human nature on this unbelievable level.

But, but it's just, yeah, he was born in a different time. That is always, that's the case, by the way, 99.999999999999% of time, with everything. I mean, it's a creepy example, but you know, there's a 98-year-old somewhere who could meet a 20-year-old, and the two of them could recognize that they have a special connection, and that there's something about the way they think that, you know, God, if they were born in the same decade, they would have been lovers. But turns out this one's 90 and this one's 20. They weren't born in the same time. And I think the more we shave off the extremes and the more we kind of find ourselves in these kind of margins of, it was the wrong time by five years.

It was the wrong thing because they want to travel for the next three years. And I need to have a child now, if I'm going to have a child, I, you know, when we start playing in the margins, it starts to feel more and more tragic. Hey everyone. playing in the margins, it starts to feel more and more tragic. Hey everyone, I hope you're enjoying the episode. If you haven't already, go check out my free training, Dating With Results, which is a one hour training designed for anybody who wants to find love faster. If you have never taken one of my programs, this is a great way in and it's free. Go to datingwithresults.com and you can watch that training right now.

Enjoy it. Let me know what you think. And now back to the episode. How do you make it not interesting then because you always say like that's not interesting and i think it kind of leads in nicely to what you were just about to talk about um but how do you make it not interesting i think that um i think it comes down to to what is your commitment to real life. Real life doesn't, it's happening with or without you. And one day it will end. And there will be no, you won't get to say, but wait, I want to go back and actually do it this time. I want to go back and actually live it this time.

I'm sorry, I spent 50 years thinking about a situation that was never going to happen. But, you know, I want to go back now and just do it properly and just do it for real. Even if it's a relationship that's half as good as the one in my imagination. I want to go back and have that relationship now. Life won't give you a second chance. At least not in my understanding of life the world cups are often decided by penalties and the person might miss the goal by a few millimeters that means it bounces off the goal post instead of going in or the goalkeeper might get a fingertip to it that just

stops it from being a game-winning goal and forevermore that team lost the world cup it might have been by millimeters but it's it's still a loss and i think that we we obsess over these things that feel like they're millimeters away, but a millimeter is as good as a mile. You're either in a relationship with someone or you're not. It is fucking binary. Wow.

It's ones and zeros. It feels in our mind, it's like, but we're just millimeters away. If they could have just got divorced six months ago instead of today, or if they could have just been further along in their maturity, or if they could have just been ready for children a couple of years sooner, or if they had just been a couple of years older, we feel like we're millimeters away. But it's binary they are either saying yes to a relationship or they're not you're either born in the right time for this person or you're not you're either at the right place in each other's lives or you're not that is binary that's the way that you have to make something not interesting is go is it a one or is it a zero and if it's a zero then it doesn't matter how close it was to being a one

it's not a one so that's how it's not interesting and and by continuing to obsess over the zero that was almost a one or could have been a one if the circumstances were slightly different. We really are missing what could be happening right in front of us. And I'm not, by the way, to your point, I'm not saying it's not sad. I'm not saying it doesn't feel tragic. There are some things that feel like almost too painful to bear. Some misses that just break our heart. And it's okay for something to break your heart. It's nothing, I don't want anyone to listen to this and go, I'm against grieving over the thing that wasn't it's okay to grieve over the thing that wasn't but there's a difference between grieving and going into an obsessive pattern of rumination where we continue to tell the story

over and over and over again and end up dishonoring the time we have in our real life by doing so. And you once said something which I think is so valuable here is that it's okay to grieve the relationship that it wasn't. But you shouldn't grieve it as if it was that relationship. Yeah, it's okay to grieve the disappointment that someone didn't turn out to be the one but you can't grieve them as if they were the one because much more eloquent but the the one the one by definition the one for i don't believe in this idea of the preordained you know one i think that the one people someone becomes the one by having the stuff that you're looking for. And then on top of that, actually being willing to go all in with you and make that relationship as good as it can be. And, you know,

I think a relationship becomes the greatest relationship you've ever had because of the way that the two of you construct it. That's what makes it so special. If you don't have that, then you just have chemistry. And we've all had chemistry with people before. It's not, that's not the construction of something. If you have a relationship that never was, or never became that,

then you can't grieve as if you lost the one, because the one is the one that's there. Yeah. But you said earlier that we have an arrogance in thinking that we know what's best for us and what's going to make us happy can you can you elaborate on that i brought a book down for this episode because there's a book by david white called consolations and in this book uh he basically takes words everyday words and kind of re-imbues them with a fresh sense of meaning. And often his take on certain words is counterintuitive.

It's surprising and unexpected. Often he finds a lot of redeeming qualities about words that we would think are just always connote something bad but he also finds some really insidious qualities in words that we often think are good and one of those examples is ambition and i'll just read the first paragraph or so. He says, ambition is a word that lacks any real ambition. Ambition is frozen desire. The current of a vocational life immobilized and over-concretized to set unforgiving goals. Ambition abstracts us from the underlying elemental nature of the creative conversation while providing us the cover of a target

that has become false through over-description, over-familiarity, or too much understanding. The ease of having an ambition is that it can be explained to others. The very dis-ease of ambition is that it can be so easily explained to others. This has always haunted me and stuck with me because that idea that ambition is frozen desire it's our over concretized version of what we think we want it is very powerful white is talking about it in a the sense of careers and ambition in our working lives but it could just as easily be applied to our love life. What is ambition in our love life? It very often takes the form of that person we really want to get. That person we wish we could get, but can't. That person that we wish was in the right stage of their life or wanted the same things as us, but doesn't. That person that we wish was being

intentional about wanting a relationship because we have such an amazing connection with them, but isn't at a time when we are, we, we don't often think of ambition in this context, but it is a kind of ambition. It's a, it's a frozen desire. It's as David White says in the love life sense, ambition is very much frozen desire. It is God. It's so so that's so i hadn't even thought about it like that but it takes on such profound meaning in your love life ambition is frozen desire the desire we have for a person that has become this calcified, concretized story that is no longer living. It's dead.

It's kind of dead. We keep it alive in our mind, but it's dead because it stopped evolving a long time ago. It's set in stone and it's now the same thing we describe over and over and over and over again. It's no longer living. That part is the part that haunts me is this idea of like, it's so easy to explain it to ourselves and other people.

And that's almost what's great about it. But also that's the downfall is that we have this rehearsed rumination that goes on and it's so easy to justify why we're obsessing over this person in this story and every time you get a new audience they'll listen fresh and that brings the story to life again for you yeah you know i want to pause there because that right here is so important the power of our words and the power of our communication around certain things it's so much stronger than we realize and we have to be very very careful about stories and love stories and how we tell them and sometimes what we think is sharing and connecting with friends and divulging in how we're feeling about something can actually be the very thing that's keeping us stuck

and I think that is so common I think it happens to everybody at a certain stage for instance you know if you're going through a heartbreak if you're talking about it six months later a year later about how this person left or cheated or betrayed or just how sad you are and how great it was and how nobody compares that has a certain power you are breathing life back into it newly every single time you're talking about it i think there's actually some studies that say that every time you recall a memory you basically refresh it and rewrite it in your mind and you certainly cement it because your neural pathways are going towards this thing and we get very addicted to our pain we get very addicted to our

thoughts and our feelings and we have to be so mindful and conscious and strict with ourselves I think when it comes to to those conversations we have with other people and internally it doesn't mean by the way that if you're going through something and you're hurting, you shouldn't talk about it. That's a very healing and a very important thing to do. It's part of a process if you've been hurt, to be able to talk about it with people. But there is a point where we have to go, okay, enough. I can still talk about it, but is my story evolving?

Is the way I'm talking about it different? Am I talking about the things it's taught me? Am I no longer talking about them and now talking about me? Is it evolving in a positive way where I am being the protagonist of my own story, not this other person that didn't want me for whatever reason? Not the one, the right person at the wrong time yes i think there's a lot there's a something there that's really really important and we have to be very strict

with ourselves and and by not repeating the story anymore we also are starting in subtly to make way for a new story we're starting to make way for a different experience for something else to happen do you think we don't do that because we're afraid that nothing better will come along and by making space for it we'll be making space for something that doesn't feel as good because what can feel better than this disney-like love story about this person where it was just these star crossed lovers and it was so perfect if only for this one thing yeah i think there's some there's a sense of we've built it up too high it's now and nothing can compare to it i think and in some ways an unwillingness to confront the messiness of real life and real life can often be disappointing real life can be complicated real life. And real life can often be disappointing. Real life can be complicated.

Real life, it doesn't exist as this perfect story in our mind. It's a ever evolving thing that plays out in real time. You know, the script of a movie is very poignant and perfect and a conversation happens between two people and it's a great conversation and then it cuts to another scene but in real life you're still at the end of that conversation you're still standing at the kitchen counter with that person and asking them what they want

from postmates exactly so what should we do now you know it's not real life is messier and i think that sometimes it's an unwillingness to confront the messiness of an actual lived life and also i think we underestimate sometimes how much just the familiar feels good to us we just want the well-trodden path even if the well-trodden path leaves us unhappy yeah we went recently we, just literally last weekend to Los Olivos to a little wine region in California. We were at the end of this crazy book launch and we went to, um, this beautiful little wine region. And I had planned out all of these things that we were going to do and the vineyards we were going to go to and two of our favorite moments on that trip were moments that we didn't plan our two favorite moments i would argue yeah there was one where we went into a little tasting room that was in the

town and we just stumbled upon it and amidst the 50 different tasting rooms in this little town and your thorough list of the top ones we should visit. Yeah, well, no, but I didn't have a list for those. We were just walking around trying to find something. And I was like, we got to this one and you were like, should we just go in here? And part of me was resisting because I was like, well, I don't know if this is the best one.

And, but I also knew you would be annoyed if I started like overanalyzing our getaway together. So I was like, okay. I pretended to be more chill than I was easy breezy so we went in there and we ended up having this amazing conversation with Robert the guy behind the counter who you know was this chiller super sweet guy very relaxed very laid back just you know we had the best hour just sit we We were only meant to go in there for like 20 minutes. And then we ended up sitting there probably in there for longer than an hour, just all from walking into this little wine tasting room that wasn't on our list. That was completely random. And then the next day we rented these bikes to ride between three different vineyards that we were visiting.

And as we left one of, no, our final one, we finished, we were riding back to our hotel and we ended up taking a wrong turn, which is my fault, but we took a wrong turn and ended up going down this long road. And halfway up the road, we were were like this is not right like we're not this is the wrong road and i was like oh my god i'm so sorry i've like taken us you know five minutes down the wrong road and but then on the way back you saw these like donkeys 20 donkeys in this pen along with a whole bunch of other animals i mean just sheep were in there pigs were in there everything and you immediately because of course your obsession is animals you just left the path i was on and went and rode over to look over the pen swift right yeah and the woman there she

started there was a woman with the animals and she started by saying we're not we don't open to the public and then after like five minutes of us just standing there and looking at the animals i think she felt sorry for us and she was like look i'm leaving in 15 minutes if you want to come say hi for 15 minutes to the animals then come on in shout out to casey in los ol who let us hang out with you and she was so lovely and so we we literally go in there have the best time like chill with the animals you had a pig like literally come up to you like it was a dog and roll over and want you to rub its belly it was like you had a goose who was trying to climb your feet and mate with you potentially

mate with me um it was just amazing and that was like a highlight of the whole trip so we came away from this weekend away with the two favorite moments of our trip being moments that we couldn't have predicted especially one of them and that really we could never have planned for we could never have planned for the farm that didn't open for the public that opened for us we could never have no wine list would have told me that there was this amazing character robert in this place that we were going to fall in love with that is the to me that trip was a wonderful example of ambition is frozen desire. Because we had all these plans and the best part of the trip were the two things we couldn't have planned for. Imagine that now applied to your love life.

And I just want to leave this as a parting thought today. In your love life, who has been the person that you haven't been able to get off your mind that is your version of ambition being frozen desire it's your version of the plans you're making or the plans you wish were happening that are distracting you from the path that you might take, that you didn't intend to take, the wine bar you walked into, that you walked into randomly, that leads you to a love far more interesting and far more beautiful than this kind of overly simplistic fairy tale, this hollow, dead fairy tale that you keep telling yourself in your mind

that cannot possibly compare with the real thing. Leave us a, send us an email, podcast at matthewhussey.com. Let's get two kinds of emails in from this one people who the love they found was completely different from the love that they held on to in their mind for so long about someone else and maybe even from people who haven't found that yet but you're like you know what i am i've listened to this episode i this has really got you know sunken deep with me and there is a frozen desire that i want to let go of once and for all that this has made me realize i'm holding on to a story instead of living my real life and the endless possibilities for love to come in a form other than the one that I've been

imagining and retelling for so long. And for anyone who is listening to this that wants to come and join us in the newsletter, because the newsletter is a place where, in addition to the podcast, I'm now writing a weekly letter to our audience where I'm talking about ideas, philosophies, and strategies that help people not only find love faster, but help people work on the three relationships that I believe determine everyone's quality of life, which is our relationship with other people, our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with life itself. This newsletter is called the three relationships for that very reason, because it helps you with all three. Uh, so if you want to find love and you also want to improve your entire

life along the way, as you do that, this newsletter is a really beautiful place to be right now and i'm taking a lot of time to do it every week so you can go and sign up for free at the three relationships dot com that's the three the number three the three relationships dot com and i look forward to writing to you in that newsletter and of course we will see you next time or speak to you next time in the next episode of Love Life. Thank you, Audrey. Thank you. And yeah, thank you for listening, everybody.

Until next time. Thanks for listening. Be well and love life. Thank you.