Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 249: Don’t Fall for THIS Early Dating Trap!

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

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And so now the person providing that safety really has a hold on you and all someone needs to do is come and tell you the right things and do the right things and that is going to temporarily and dangerously soothe that wound. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Love Life. Today we are talking about those early stages of dating where you decide you like someone and then it feels like that person singularly holds the key to all of our emotions, our happiness, our pain, our obsession. How do we control this for ourselves so that we can be the best version of ourselves in early dating and so that we can attract healthy partners? Because one of the things we talk about today is how that early obsession from us actually attracts the very people who hurt us the most. Before we go any further, if you enjoy getting this free podcast or watching my free YouTube videos, you might also enjoy getting my writings for free. I know a lot of you really enjoy reading things in general, but you also enjoy reading things that I write. And many of you have enjoyed the new book, Love Life.

Well, every week I write a brand new newsletter as part of my free newsletter, The Three Relationships. You can sign up by going to the three, the number three, the3relationships.com. And I will send you the first of many new newsletters this coming Friday. They're valuable. They're insightful. I spend a lot of time on them. I think you're really going to enjoy them. So that link again is the3relationships.com. All right, on to the episode. So somebody came to us recently, didn't they? And they told us a really, really interesting story that we felt was unbelievably relatable. And we thought we'd discuss it at length in this episode. To give you guys, listeners, a little bit of context. This woman came came to us she had taken a year-long

hiatus from dating and she felt that she was finally ready to dip her toes back into the dating pool so she joined a dating site which she had sworn off previously because had all sorts of bad experiences from it we all know how that feels. She joined this site, she matched with this person. She was very excited about this person because from the get go, everything seemed to be going really, really well. There was very intense communication, morning to evening, texting, calling. And you know, he was showcasing kind of his family values, the kind of person that he was. He was sending her pictures of his kids, which, you know, he was showcasing kind of his family values, the kind of person that he was, he was sending her pictures of his kids, which, you know, made her feel like he was letting her in on his

life. And also, you know, really putting himself forward as this family guy, like, good, trustworthy, you know, guy who shared her values. So at this point, there has been going on for two weeks and like I say constant very consistent communication and they haven't actually met in person yet because they live in different states and he goes away on a work trip and one night I think he was in Canada so not too far time zone wise but you know still in a different country one night he said he was going to call her and he never called and the next day when they spoke she said that she completely like flew off the handle and was so upset with him and said to him you know she really didn't appreciate the lack of consistency that

he went from one thing to the next and that it really affected her and that you know she very much knows her worth in these situations and she was not going to put up with that kind of behavior and you had a very interesting take on that whole situation so I thought it would be good for us to talk about it today and just yeah get your thoughts on it publicly there is a chapter in the book love life my new book that talks about how we can move forward in our love life after difficult relationships, after being treated badly, after not getting our needs met and being really unhappy with a certain person or with a string of people that represent a pattern of people in our lives that don't make us happy. And in this chapter of the book, for everyone who has it, it's called How to Rewire Your Brain.

In this chapter, one of the first of several steps I give for how to rewire our brain for success love is we need to decide first what we can no longer put up with like what's what can i not tolerate anymore in my love life and the second thing we need to do is decide what's important to us going forward so for example it might be that, you know, you, in your last relationship, you didn't feel in any way seen. So despite the fact that someone might have been charismatic or, you know, exciting or whatever it was initially drew you to that person. If you didn't feel seen and accepted for who you are, you might decide, you know what? Never again can I be in a relationship where I don't feel seen or accepted. No matter how exciting someone is, being in a relationship like that is so lonely that I can never do it again. That's an example of knowing what you can no longer tolerate, which is great for your standards going forward. You don't even need more confidence. You just need to know what you can't put up with ever again because it's too painful.

Then the second thing of, so what do I want moving forward? What is most important to me moving forward? We have to decide what that is because that basically orients our focus towards the right kinds of people. So if you say in my last relationship, I didn't feel safe. I, you know, it was always chaotic. And this person always made me feel anxious with their behavior. Then you might say, well, in my next relationship, the most important thing to me, not just in my relationship, in my life in general, the most important thing to me is going to be peace. I need peace in my life. And, you know, we work with so many people who are survivors of narcissistic abuse. They come out of marriages with a narcissistic partner after many years. And for many of them, the number one thing they want is peace because they've not felt peace for

a very very long time or it might be i want a feeling of safety emotional safety now the reason i say all of this is because just knowing these things is a huge first step to having a better quality of life. Because our former selves didn't have standards around those things, didn't know how to. And so we got into these very painful situations. But by knowing what you can no longer put up with, and by knowing what you're looking for now, you're going to steer yourself away from a lot of pain. You're going to say no to a lot more of the

wrong kinds of people where you don't experience those things you want to experience. And you're going to be more drawn to the right kinds of people. Now, when I hear the story of that woman who met a guy online, hit it off quickly, had an intense first week, and then based on the intensity of that first week, when she then felt a lack of consistency from him because he said he was going to call and then didn't. What I actually see is someone who was following those two steps she had decided what she could no longer tolerate which was someone who was inconsistent and someone who didn't make her feel safe which is what she had experienced in her previous long-term relationship and she was clear on the values she did want. So in this case, consistency. But there is a trap that I think she fell into that a lot of people, even among those who are doing the right thing and following those two steps in how to rewire your brain. There is a trap that a lot of people fall into that she fell into,

which is that if we say to ourselves, what I now want is a feeling of safety that I didn't have in my previous relationship. If we go into meeting a new person and we nominate them as the provider of that safety because we go on a date with them and we decide we really like them or we've had a bunch of phone calls with them and very quickly within a matter of days or weeks we've decided we really like them and we want them. If we nominate them as the sole provider of that safety then we are getting ourselves into a very

potentially bad situation because firstly healthy people will feel an incredible amount of pressure very quickly if someone said they would call and they didn't call and in her case she had a very intense reaction to that if that was an honest mistake they may quickly conclude okay well fair enough i didn't i said i would call and i didn't but this reaction is very extreme yeah we've only known each other for in her case we've only known each other for, in her case, we've only known each other for a few days. And I think they haven't actually met yet.

And I always say this, you know, you're at ground zero when you're talking on a dating app, but you haven't met in person. Even if you've been talking consistently for weeks, you are still at ground zero. Yes. You cannot expect somebody to have invested emotionally into you at all they're just enjoying speaking to you and why is it that we expect something more than that that quickly is because we've this need that we have going forward for what we feel like we must have in our next relationship we've far too quickly

transferred that need to someone we've just met yeah the peace that i want to feel the safety i want to feel the acceptance i want to feel the consistency i want to feel i am expecting that from you because i've decided i like you yeah and this is where a lot of the time the concept of standards is gotten wrong because we can't over expect from someone that we've just met the thing that we really need that we didn't get in our last relationship what we come to learn is we have to be able to give that to ourselves i have to be able to give myself a sense of peace as a single person what are the things it's one of the most beautiful things actually that people who come out of very difficult marriages or even abusive marriage marriages discover is that wow i'm

learning all of these things that bring me peace activities i do ways of living friends i get closer to that bring me beautiful energy who are kind who don't bring unnecessary suffering into my life we we learn the things that bring us peace and the more we can learn to give ourselves that sense of peace the less reliant we are on the next person we date to provide that now of course if someone really disrupts our peace because we find that in the weeks we're getting to know them they're never good for their word they always show up late or not at all they flake they rearrange dates all the time we don getting to know them, they're never good for their word. They always show up late or not at all. They flake. They rearrange dates all the time.

We don't know where we stand between dates because they never make a plan until the last minute. Then you may well conclude, and rightly so, that this person takes away from my peace. But there's a big difference between that and we went on a date or two with someone we've decided we like them and now what we want is for them to make us feel safe i know there'll be some people who say well i have brought it i have given this to myself i do feel peace outside of a relationship it's just whenever I start to date again, that peace gets disrupted because the dating culture is all sorts of messed up, non-committal, don't know where you stand, people trying to get as much as they can get from you without giving anything back, all of that stuff that we talk about all the time.

And so in a way, if so you know a certain amount of experiences in dating that have made you feel like it always goes wrong people aren't to be trusted all this you know these kinds of things when someone doesn't call you and they said they were going to and they suddenly break from this pattern of consistency that they were showing you what I see in that situation is someone who got quite activated by that because of their past experiences. So how do you reconcile those things? You know, where that person might say,

well, I do have a sense of peace within myself, but when I go back out there and date again, that's when my peace gets disrupted. And I don't know how to do that because I don't know how to stop that from happening I should say because it's other people that are bothering me it's a little bit like what Eckhart Tolle says about um mindfulness and he says you know it's very easy to be mindful and present and you know conscious in your life and then other people come into it and they disrupt your peace and i think there's a very similar thing happening in dating so i'm

just curious what you think about that yeah the the as soon as we date many of our triggers come back which is why people often opt not to date it's not because they don't want to find love it's because they don't want to get triggered and they are now putting not getting triggered above finding love in their list of priorities i think it's important to realize that part of life is that we don't get to, you know, just meditate in a monastery somewhere where there is nothing taking our thoughts away. We're not coming into contact with any of the worst parts of the outside world or other people that we live these lives that do bring us into contact with life in all sorts of different ways that's true even if you just leave your house you're going to come into contact with other people and other people are occasionally going to annoy you. They're going to be rude or mean or threatening or, you know, that that's

a function of being out in the world. And one measure of confidence is our ability to find peace and safety in a quiet room somewhere by ourselves. Another measure of confidence is our robustness, our ability to exist on that frontier between us and other people. And dating and relationships are a part of that. They are a kind of measure of our robustness. And there is this duality between, there are times where we need to retreat into our cave to control the conditions that allow us to find peace but i don't think anyone truly experiences the fullest life unless the being in our cave is balanced with times of needing to be robust by going out there and colliding with the world

so i think we have to see our love lives as a as a part of that dance that is beautiful if you leave a relationship and you have found a sense of peace by yourself that's that's something a lot of people don't achieve they never work to achieve that it's beautiful to have found that it's hard to achieve when yes when it's something you want it's very very hard to achieve yes and my point in saying all of that is that if we are dating and getting triggered instead of thinking there's something wrong with me, that I am so triggered by this, I think it's worth reminding ourselves that everybody who is brave enough to go out there and live, whether it's through dating or socializing or entering into some kind of competition or getting on the

jujitsu mat or, you know, whatever is the thing that you do to go out and meet the world. Instead of thinking there's something wrong with me for finding this hard, tell yourself, this is what everyone experiences in some form in their life when they go out to meet the world and therefore my job is to see if i might handle my triggers a little better than i have in the past yeah it may be that when that person said they would call you and they don't call you and you're at risk of losing sleep tonight because you're thinking about it the whole time you breathe get present zoom out

understand that this was a person that you didn't know three weeks ago or a month ago or even six months ago this person was not having any kind of an impact on my mood i always think that's such an important frame this idea of like we get so caught up on people that we've known for literally five minutes we forget that we had a whole life before they came into our life and everything was great and we didn't even know their existence. They were just so, they were completely not in any way relevant to us. Yeah. And suddenly, just because we've got excited about a feeling,

they become the center of our happiness yeah and they become they become kind of the center of our focus and everybody does it right this isn't i'm not saying that from a place of like it's so silly that people do that because i've done that and i think we've all done that we've just got very caught up in someone that we've only known a very short space of time but it's just i think that's a really important lens there was life before and there will be life after yeah and some things out of proportion here that this person has that much of uh power over me by not calling i have given them a level of importance that they shouldn't have and i'm also telling myself a story there's some it's not rational or conscious even but there's

some kind of deep story happening about my safety right now or i'm not going to be okay i like this person and here i am being abandoned and what would mean what would that mean if i was abandoned by this person in our mind it would mean everything it would mean you know it would mean some kind of death it would mean you know i would i'm unsafe i won't be okay but we have to there's a something i read recently i think it was by a psychologist who said the thing you fear has already happened you fear it this way you've you this this kind of heightened intense fear you have is because it already happened for you yeah wow not only did it already happen but you survived it which is why you're here today so there is this in some way this paradoxical thing about the worst fear you have or the thing that you fear has already

happened and that's why you fear it and therefore you don't need to fear it the way that you're fearing it right now because you've already successfully protected yourself yeah and in in the case of this woman who we were speaking to you know when she mentions two weeks of consistent communication, you know, not love bombing, but I would argue sending pictures of your kids and speaking morning to evening with someone that you've never even met a red flag but I do think that there is an intensity to that which I think you seek out that intensity because you are afraid of being abandoned and I think that level of intensity makes you feel safe and you're almost choosing your partners from a wound rather than a healthy place and the problem with that is that you oftentimes end up choosing unhealthy partners because you're choosing them from a wound rather than a healthy place and you don't just choose unhealthy partners you make yourself a target for unhealthy partners because

if you come along and demand a level of intensity from someone because you're coming from a wound and because that would make you feel safe to get that intensity you will inevitably drive away a lot of healthy people who say this is too much they don't like the amount of responsibility they already have they don't like the excessive demands being put on them at this early stage, the level of expectation. But toxic people, they will see that there's a level of power they can have over you because of that need for intensity from you. That they can have simply by providing the illusion of safety if they can come along and tell you after five minutes that they're having really strong feelings for you that they can't stop thinking about you that they want to go away on vacation with you that they see a future with

you that you know when they when they see that that stuff's going to work with you because that stuff won't work with a healthy person yeah right if you say that stuff to a secure person they're gonna say what's going on here i only have 25 days of annual leave a year i'm not taking it on you stranger you don't even know me so how can you think these things about me something's off about this yeah right but if you're coming from lack and those then those things start to sound like safety to you and so now the person providing that safety really has a hold on you and all someone needs to do is come and tell you the right things and do the right things, the right level of intensity in the beginning.

And that is going to temporarily and dangerously soothe that wound in the moment, which is why people say, why do I always attract toxic people? Why do I attract the love bombers? Why do I attract the people that are really intense and then they leave. There's something about that intensity that we are drawn to, because it feels good for that part of us that says, I really need certainty this time around, or I really need someone who wants me and really shows that they want me, or I really need that consistency or that great communication. Well, someone can come and love bomb you with all of that. So what I remember about that story that you told was when this person said that it really upset her that he didn't call, he then said, I'm so sorry. Please give me another chance. I'm so into you. I could really see this being something. And

he went into this very extreme reaction. And that to me was another warning sign. Because again, a healthy person doesn't do that. A healthy person might say i understand that it's upset you that i said i would call and i didn't um it was an honest mistake i got caught up with the rest of my evening i did want to speak to you but you know i i apologized for saying i was going to do it and not doing it and if she continued to be like well i just don't know if I can be with someone who he might be like, well, listen, I, you know, I hope that you can. This is a bit intense. Yeah. This is like a, you know, a very, a big reaction to this. I have apologized. I hope we can move on from it. But he sounds like the version of this person you're saying sounds very very mature right and patient i think you'd be more likely to just end up well there's also the

chance that someone just says i can't handle this exactly this is too much right but what they don't do is go oh my god i'm so sorry please give me another chance that's love bomber language I agree because it's not I'm not coming from a healthy place in the first place I'm just trying to tell you what you need to hear well it's a lot of drama and I don't mean that in a in a mean way I just mean like it's someone who obviously thrives on that drama and that kind of like big feelings and big emotions and is not trying to have a relationship. They're just trying to get the result. Yeah.

Like they're just trying to get the result of you being into them right now, of you still being in their lives. Because if you're trying to have a healthy relationship, you're concerned about the dynamic that's being set up. So I love all of this. And I think it's actually really, really important because it shines a light on our patterns,

other people's patterns. Are we engaging in healthy dynamics? But what would you say is the key takeaway from this story? Because there's been a lot of different things covered and I just, I don't want people listening to be left feeling more confused about what they should do if they're stepping out there and dating

and they themselves maybe have wounds and have you know um ways in which they get triggered in dating so what would you say is the key takeaway from this well i think it's really important that we know what we're looking for next time around that we didn't get this time around in our love lives but it's important that the thing that we are looking for next time around is something that we start by giving ourselves that if we need a feeling of safety it's important that we feel safe in our own bodies it's important that we feel like we set our lives up to feel safe as a single person that we feel like we have already taken care of ourselves and our needs if we need more acceptance can i give myself that acceptance i know myself better than anybody i know what i've been through i know what's happened in my life i know what i've had to

overcome i know how hard i've fought for the place that I'm in today or for the strength that I have today or for the circumstances that I have today you have full context on your life could you offer yourself the kind of acceptance that someone it would be very hard for someone to offer you from the outside because they don't have an inner window into how hard it's been for you or all of the things you've been through. So can we give ourselves those things so that the next time around, when we say it's important I have these things from a partner, we're not saying it's important I have these things because I don't give them to myself. We're saying it's important that in addition

to giving them to myself, I also feel this from a partner. That way, when we go on a date with someone and we decide we like them, we don't go into a state of massive expectation of, well, now I've decided I like you or I want you. You need to provide me with the peace, the safety, the consistency, the acceptance that I can't give myself, which then makes us ask for too much too quickly, which either pushes away healthy people or draws in toxic people who are just going to tell us what we want to hear but instead we say i don't need to feel the these things from someone on day one nor am i entitled to any more than they're entitled to those things from me initially all i expect right now is respectful interactions and frankly, a sense of progression,

albeit organic progression. And over time, when, as this turns into something that requires more and more of my energy, I'm factoring this person into my life my schedule my responsibilities on my you know what I choose to do with my week I'm speaking with this person regularly now of course as we start to near a relationship or beyond the point of having a relationship there are expectations that I have there are more rules in a sense that we have for how much effort I require or how much investment I require but I don't expect all of that in the stage where we're just getting to know each other what I can do is choose to direct my energy elsewhere if I feel that what I'm getting from this person isn't enough. Or I'm entitled to say to someone, hey, you know, if you're not going to call me next time, tell me because, you know, I was at home, you know, expecting a call and I actually didn't see my friend because I thought we were going to speak to each other at that time. You can say that, but it doesn't have all the intensity because I'm not nominating you for the position, for the role of make me feel safe.

I've already given myself that. All I'm really doing, I'm not expecting anything from you I'm just kind of assessing you and your behavior to see if one day you might be right for that role but you're not in that role right now you're in an interview stage you're in your probation period you're in an interview period and and I'm seeing if you're right for that role, but I'm interviewing you for that role. I've not given you the job and now I'm upset that you're not doing the job. That's coming from trauma. So let us know what you think of this podcast at matthewhussey.com. We've been seeing more and more emails coming in to that email address. So thank you so much for everyone who has been writing in and we will speak to you in the next episode of Love Life. Thank you, friends. Thank you, Audrey. Thank you. Be well,

everyone, and love life. Before you go anywhere, I have my retreat coming up on the 9th to the 15th of September this year. We are down to the last few spots for this event. It has been a completely unique year in terms of how early all of these spots have been taken because of the new book, Love Life, coming out and the number of people that have found out about the retreat. So if you want to join us, now is the time to safely grab your spot before they're gone. Go to mhretreat.com to learn more about this six-day immersive coaching experience that I do with a select group of people in Florida this September. I hope to see you there. mhretreat.com.

Take the link.