Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 254: What To Do When The Attraction Isn’t Strong Enough…

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Have you ever been there? You meet someone online, the connection sparks, and attraction starts to grow with every conversation. But then, when you meet in person, something‘s off. Maybe their height isn‘t quite what the pictures showed, or their photos were way outdated. And even though you try to push past it, the initial spark is gone. And now you feel stuck . . . You know you‘re not interested, but the thought of letting them down fills you with fear and anxiety.  If this sounds familiar, you won‘t want to miss this episode. Audrey and Matt discuss how to navigate this situation if you‘re a people pleaser or struggle with guilt when delivering bad news.  -- ►► Transform Your Relationship with Life in 6 Magical Days... Learn More About My Live Retreat at → http://www.MHRetreat.com ►► Sign up Now For My Free Weekly Newsletter, The 3 Relationships at ... → http://www.The3Relationships.com ►► Order My New Book, "Love Life" at → http://www.LoveLifeBook.com

Before we get into the episode everyone, it is my duty to tell you that it is retreat season. In September from the 9th to the 15th, I am going to be coming together with a group of people from all over the world for six days of immersive coaching on the beach in Florida, Fort Lauderdale. Audrey Hussey is going to be there. My whole team is going to be there. We have an incredible group of people traveling in from all over the world. And the reason I say it's my duty to tell you now is because this season is going to end because we are coming down to the last few spaces on the retreat. So if you want to come and do six days of deep coaching with us to work on the things that are holding you back in your life, then go to mhretreat.com and you can find all of the information about this program there and how you can apply to get one of those last remaining slots. Come check it out. It is

the pinnacle of what we do. I have been doing this program for over 15 years now. And it continues to be the most transformative, immersive program we have. So come join us, mhretreat.com. I also want to let everyone know that we have a brand new free guide that is available at whattosaynext.com. Have you ever wanted to talk to someone and not quite known what to say? Have

you wanted to be more sociable, but censored yourself and got stuck and not known what to say next or how to engage? This guide is great if you are shy. It's great if you're introverted. It's great if you just get tongue tied. It's great if you're introverted. It's great if you just get tongue-tied. It's great if you're struggling with the concept of going out there and meeting people or flirting or just bringing a different kind of energy to your social life and your love life that could create opportunities. We have not released a free guide like this in a long time. I mean years so this is a cool moment in time it's brand new it's full of practical suggestions of things that you can say and you can find it and download it for free at whattosaynext.com lastly before we get into the episode did you know that every Friday, a select group of people

get an email personally from me containing ideas, strategies, things I don't write anywhere else. I take a lot of time to construct this email. It's really valuable. A lot of people have commented that they can't believe that this email is free, that they look forward to it every single week. And of the many emails they receive from many different people, it's the one they always open. If you are not on this list right now, you can be by going to the3relationships.com. That is the name of this private email that I send out. The3, the number three, the3relationships.com. Sign up now, it's free, and you can look forward to my private email direct to your inbox this coming Friday. All right, now everybody on to the episode

how are you feeling i'm good i'm good yeah how are you feeling i feel really good i said earlier today to you i feel very grounded today yeah i've been doing the right things i've been sleeping now i've got my aura ring we're not sponsors of aura ring though we should be aura ring yeah we should be we love it but i've been tracking my sleep i've been eating very well these last couple of weeks and training a lot and i feel I feel pretty good I'm in a very different place to you because I just came back from a weekend away with my friends and we went to Vegas as you know and you didn't get any sleep I didn't get any sleep I mean it sounds sounds way wilder than it was it wasn't like a big debaucherous trip by any means but I was staying in a room with with one of my best

friends Marta and she we just stayed up talking one night until four o'clock in the morning and I was just I slept like four hours and it felt like being back at university that's fun yeah so I'm like the opposite to you I'm a bit tired and a bit like foggy but I'm ready for this episode I'm very very excited me too this is love life and we are talking today about how to let someone down if you're struggling to let the people that they're dating, they're not interested in down? Like, why do you think that happens? I almost, I want to use as a bit of a case study for this, someone that I spoke to recently. And some of the issues that came up for her, because while everyone may not share the exact same issues and challenges around it as she had

i think that there will be a lot in here in terms of the pattern of why she found it difficult that people will relate to this person had been talking online to a guy and hitting it off he seemed very nice they seemed to get on but then when she finally met up with him in person several weeks later having already built a little bit of a connection to her disappointment disappointment he didn't appear the way that he appeared in the pictures that he had sent he was very different size he looked quite different and he had given a false sense of his height she to her credit wasn't in any way being dismissive of him because of those things. But she was very caught off guard by the misrepresentation. And she also found that when they were together,

she just didn't feel an attraction. But since seeing him, she had struggled with how am I actually going to let this person know? How do I say I'm not interested? You know what's really hard about that? Is that if they were already building a little bit of a connection before and then they meet and she says, hey, actually, actually like not for me you feel really guilty right if if that happens because you know that the other person knows that it's some it most likely is because of a lack of attraction or something that they you know what I mean because there was all that connection so it's something about her actually seeing him in real life that put her off and she knows that by ending it with him he will know that and that will hurt his feelings and that's probably why she's

struggling with it yeah yeah i think that's true there's like more guilt because of the connection that was built well i asked her you know where does this come from for you and you know i said what what are you afraid of and she said that he will be angry that he'll be mad at me and that it will make me a bad person and when people say things like that there's often a history there you know that that doesn't sound like something she just came up with out of nowhere and so you know i spoke to her a little bit about where that came from for her and it was clear that there had been previous relationships in her life where in certain formative relationships where it had really been the case that if she spoke up people got mad and they would shame her for the things that

she said. And she would be told in one way or another that she was a bad person. And those same beliefs were coming out in this situation. With this person, by the way, that had misled her. She wasn't in the wrong for not being attracted and it would be completely implausible, which I pointed out to her, to spend the rest of her life with this person, just out of a fear of, it would make me a bad person to say to him that I'm not attracted and to potentially hurt his feelings. But in this situation, she was afraid that she was going to make him mad, that there would be consequences to making him mad and that she would come away from it feeling like she was a bad person. And as a result, her nervous system was just going crazy. Anytime she thought about being honest with him, like

calling him and saying she wasn about being honest with him like calling him and saying she wasn't interested in seeing him again because he had been pushing to see her again she would just go into this like childlike mode of panic i can't i can't call and say this i don't know what to do and i think a lot of listeners out there will relate to that feeling of having some kind of situation in life where there's either a potential confrontation or you're letting someone down and feeling like it takes whole it's more than just some rational thought about i don't want to hurt someone's feelings it like takes hold of your body when you you think about doing it, it literally changes your breathing to think about it. It puts you on edge.

It makes you anxious. You feel like your whole body goes into fight or flight at the idea of, you know, hitting call on your phone. Which I'm curious, do you not think that's kind of normal? I think there's a version of this that's very very common in the sense of we don't like delivering bad news to people and i think there's the version of this that is you know when when someone is saying i don't want to make someone i feel like they're going to get mad and i feel like i'm going to be a bad person yeah there's a to me there's more history to that

yeah but yeah i think it's it's so common the idea of like i i don't want to deliver bad news you know that feeling of just whatever that word is that sound is in a word yeah it's really hard but i think there's all these thoughts that swirl around our head in that moment that take us away from just being present with the situation which is that the situation is there's something about whatever the situation is now that's untenable right they are they keep reaching out to hang out i don't want to ghost someone but i also can't be in integrity and see this person and just fake feelings for them because I'm afraid that I'm going to hurt them. By the way, that would inevitably end up hurting them anyway, because they would sense the

disconnect. Of course. And so we end up just hurting them in a very slow way where they can sense that our feelings aren't the same as theirs, but because we're not admitting that, they feel like they might be crazy and that affects their self-esteem. So there's nothing tenable about the situation. And if you're really present with it, then you look at it and you go,

these thoughts, I'm having all these thoughts around this. What are the thoughts? I'm going to hurt this person. Okay, that's one thought yeah maybe there's a thought that goes up that extends from that which is that this is going to scar them or this is going to stay with them i'm and i'm going to be the one who did it maybe there's another thought of you know guilt like oh is it my fault did i lead this person on did i take it too far you know should i have found a way to tell them earlier i've left it too long already maybe that triggers thoughts of i'm a bad person maybe it triggers a thought of

this is why i hate dating because i'm either hurting someone or i'm being hurt it all sucks and then you go into that spiral these are all just thoughts if you step back from those thoughts and get present you just realize there's a situation i'm in right now that just isn't working what does the situation need the situation needs me to be honest with this person so that i can essentially liber integrity for myself by actually, you know, letting go of this person and directing my energy elsewhere instead of having this constant guilt of I'm not texting them back or I'm not calling them back or I'm feigning interest when I'm not really interested. It's also I think really interesting because when it comes to other people other people get to do that right other people get to say actually you're not for me or you know actually I don't want that I don't want to hang out I have it on a different like on a different scale in different in a different area where if my one of my friends cancels on me let's say you know she doesn't want to hang out because she's tired or busy or ill or anything I don't mind she can literally cancel

on me on the same day I do not mind I go oh my god I know she loves me she doesn't want to hang out today because she needs to take care of herself in whatever shape or form that is I have zero issue with it but when it comes to me even if i'm sick i'm like i need to go because i can't possibly cancel because then i would be a bad person and we don't put ourselves in the same arena as the rest of the world and this just reminds me of of this situation where it's like if he turned around to her and said i'm really sorry i'm not i'm not sure this is going to work for me I'm not you know I don't look at you in that way this is more platonic for me she would maybe be disappointed maybe she would feel um you know sad and hurt and

offended because those are very human reactions to being rejected or being told that somebody doesn't want to be with us but she wouldn't go and he's a terrible person and an asshole for having me told the truth but for some reason there's just a different standard that we have with ourselves why is that the judgment that we place on ourselves tends to be so much harsher than the judgment we place on other people you know we're our standard for ourself especially if we're people pleasers then our standard for ourself is impossibly high and often we set the bar too low for other people right we don't even have standards for other we're so focused on whether we're doing a good job and we're doing right by other people or we do the wrong thing like i had it when i was really sick recently and i said to my friends i was like don't worry i'm really sick but i'm still gonna come because i

really want to see you guys and they were like we don't want you to come you're sick like you're gonna get a sick stay home no and they they they basically made me cancel because they didn't want to hang out with me because i was sick but i was like i'm just gonna dose up and i'm gonna you know go there and show up and even if i show up for two hours i'm gonna prove to them that i love them by showing up and that's not the right thing to do yeah it shows how far out of our way we will go to not feel guilty to not feel like we have let someone down yeah at the expense of what is best for the situation and that that's the same in this example is that what's best for the situation is to give him his time and his energy back and to give her her time

and her energy back so that they can both go and find someone who's right for them. But the fear of letting someone down, the fear of hurting someone's feelings, that keeps us trapped in this anxious rumination where nothing happens. I don't exactly know what it is. Is it like we're bad or we're not good enough or we're not lovable unless we go 10 times out of our way for people, whatever it is, there's a pre-existing belief there. And I think the fear of he's going to get mad is almost what if they basically shine a mirror back at me about this belief I have, which is my biggest fear you know let's say he goes i can't believe that you're so selfish you led me on she goes oh see i knew i was a bad person i knew i like i'm selfish and i'm bad and i'm you know she's none of those things but

she believes that and so she's so afraid that he's to tell her the very thing she's afraid of being. Does that make sense? Yes. I think that's probably where it comes from for us. In so many people's cases, that comes from history. That comes from this trauma that we have been led to believe we are bad, that there is something wrong with us i was talking about this earlier today uh i heard something to the effect of when uh i think it was george sanders who was

the american novelist was saying that when young girls the time when they start to lose their self-esteem or have it affected is when the world starts to invalidate their experience and essentially tell them that what they're experiencing is not true you know so the example he gave is that you know the young girl points out the creepy neighbor and says that that neighbor is acting really creepy and the family who loves the neighbor says he's not creepy he's a really nice guy and she learns that her experience is not valid that she can't trust herself and if i'm seeing this but no one else is and that must mean there's something wrong with me right yeah so because i still feel it i still feel that he's creepy but everyone else is

gaslighting me into thinking he's not creepy so then i'm the i'm the only if i'm the only person seeing it then there must be something wrong with me yeah and that and that's true for so many people in who end up in narcissistic relationships is that slowly their self-confidence gets chipped away at because their experience is constantly invalidated they're constantly told that they're wrong they're overreacting they're seeing things yeah they have bad judgment and over time that starts to really erode someone's self-esteem people lose their faith in their own judgment they start to become very indecisive because they don't trust their own decisions anymore so that makes it really hard to decide things and they start to think something must be really wrong with me

because I keep thinking there's something wrong here. And apparently there's not anything wrong here. Yeah. And I think with narcissistic relationships, whether that's romantic or family or relationship, like friendships or whatever it might be, the other thing you end up feeling is that you're constantly doing wrong by this person so it's almost like that person always makes you feel like you keep messing up like you keep upsetting them you keep doing something wrong even though usually it's i mean

with those kinds of personalities you're not doing anything wrong. They are just the kinds of personalities that are kind of basically trying, that's what they want, right? They want the control and they want you to grovel for them. They want you to prove yourself to them. They wanna feel like they have control over you. They want you to feel bad. They want you to feel bad.

This is why a lot of people in those relationships end up apologizing for things and they don't even at a certain point they don't even necessarily know what they're apologizing for right and they're betraying themselves every single time they do because every time you say sorry when you're not sorry just because you want to keep the peace what you're saying is your needs don't matter and that's very destructive over time and i think that's what if that have if you are in those kinds of relationships that's how you then end up in situations where even doing the right thing that's a little bit difficult because the right thing in this instance is to let someone down

and potentially hurt their feelings and disappoint them but you you do not trust that your ability to judge like almost like your needs in that situation the fact that you need to step away from that person so that you can find someone who makes you happy on your quest of finding love that's not a good enough reason consciously you know it is unconsciously you feel like the other person's need matters more than you yeah and if you hurt them or you let them down then you're bad you're a bad person i think it's always interesting to point out how divorced that idea is from the reality for people like this because the very fact that this person is so concerned on a deep level not on a superficial level but on a deep level with

wanting to be a good person is evidence of the fact that they are not a bad person yeah you know that i had the same thought when you were saying telling the story the narcissist in their past or the the person in their life that was able to weaponize this idea that you're a bad person was only able to weaponize it in that way because this person cares about being good. If you took a truly bad person, a strategy for manipulating them that would really be unsuccessful would be trying to tell them like,

you know, if you do this, it makes you a bad person. That would be the least effective strategy with someone who's actually bad. Yeah. Because it just wouldn't motivate them. It might do on a superficial level if you said everyone's going to think you're a bad person. Exactly, yeah.

If you're attacking their ego and ultimately their ability to control and feel powerful and feel relevant and feel important if you're attacking that then yeah but not just i will think you are a bad person yeah the in the case of the person i was coaching she was really afraid that it would you know she would feel like she was a bad person if she let this person down so we're already talking about someone who has a high degree of of concern to higher degree right that's in that that's actually the problem is that there's such a preoccupation with trying to be quote good that she doesn't want to

do the thing that would actually be good for her and ultimately would also be good for somebody else after the short-term pain of it so that's one side of it is we have to recognize that this idea that we're a bad person for delivering bad news is a non-sequitur the other thing is this idea that i'm going to make this person mad one of the things that i reminded her of is that a it's okay for people to feel mad it's okay for you to say something and it disappoints someone. It's okay for someone to get mad. These are things we can't say we can never be responsible for disappointing someone

or for making someone mad. But also in the past, when she's made people mad, it made her feel frightened like some that something bad comes of that you know i get abandoned uh someone cuts me off someone's mean to me someone tries to smear run a smear campaign on me someone does something nasty and our trauma in situations like these always takes us to the worst possible eventuality. You know, I am going to tell this person I'm not interested in going any further and then they're going to stalk me and harass me for the rest of my days. Right. Now, there are worlds where that can happen. That's one reality, but there are many others there are a thousand different realities between them going on with their day and you never hearing from them again and then being fine five

minutes later and them viciously spitefully harassing you for the rest of your life it reminds me of in inside out too when uh she's lying in bed i'm sorry spoiler to anyone who hasn't seen it so fast forward if you don't want this room but when she's lying in bed and uh she is like playing out all of the different scenarios and then it's actually this like room full of like i don't know what they are like people in her brain basically drawing all these different scenarios and it was like she misses the goal and then everyone gets mad at her and then she dies alone on this bench forever and it's like all these different things it reminds me that it's almost like it's this anxiety we have like inside of us that comes from trauma right where

we just go you know all these there's all the ways in which this could go so horribly wrong and i couldn't possibly handle any of those scenarios and that keeps me frozen yeah exactly they're all versions of catastrophe yeah that our brain is sketching out and that's what trauma does right that's it takes us to these worst possible scenarios and then we live in them right so for her it's he's going to get mad at me and then something awful is going to come of that that's your unconscious mind right and because you are letting your unconscious mind rule your conscious state you end up actually being creating a situation where you are more likely to create to make him mad at you or to make him think he can get mad

at you and speak to you like that because maybe you go into it hedging or you go into it not having your own back or not having standards or boundaries around how he responds to you or you know yeah you just you just maybe end up actually attracting the very behavior you're most afraid of of receiving because you are so kind of in the belief that it's going to be the truth and it's going to happen does that make sense really interesting yeah you start literally creating the very response that you don't want yeah even if you're just too on a minor level if you go into something that's perfectly reasonable for you to say but you're extra apologetic like too far then someone might start to think that you've really

wronged them when you haven't because why would they be apologizing this much if I hadn't been wronged? Or maybe I should be mad. You know, like that. Yeah, instead of going, oh, we've only been on one date. Fair enough, like she doesn't feel the spark. It's yeah, we did talk every day for two weeks. And you know, we did have a big connect. You're right, like how out of all, you know, exactly.

So you end up, it ends up up being the focus is exactly on the thing You're trying to avoid. Yeah shine a spotlight on it I heard it said recently that the thing you're the thing you're most afraid of has already happened that's why it lives on as this fear is that you it's happened and Because it's happened something we don't connect it with enough is that it happened and we survived it happened and we're here in her case she's terrified someone's going to get mad but that had already happened in her life many times and what she was evidence of and where she'd gotten to in her life now was evidence of is that the ship couldn't be sank none of those people that tried

to sink that ship sank the ship so she didn't need to worry that if he got mad, she wouldn't be able to handle it. She already has handled it. She's handled it many times in the past. So while her nervous system is telling her, I can't do this, we can't do this, if he gets mad, if this goes wrong, you know, we'll never be able to handle it. It's actually important that she, the kind of the adult in the room comes out and reminds the child, like the child is still living way in the past, a time when the adult in the room was mad at her or the narcissistic partner was mad at her and she went to pieces and didn't know how to handle it. But the adult in the room can remind that frightened child, hey, you know, we already did this. Like, we've got it. Like, the fact that we're here is evidence of the fact that we already survived

that thing. It happened and we lived through it and now we're here. it's okay even if this person got mad and even if something really you know like catastrophic happened we'd still get through this because this is what we do people haven't been able to sink the ship in the past this new person's not going to sink the ship now we're okay and with that perspective we can start to breathe differently we can start to calm that part of us down that tells us to freak out in this situation and also practically how i think you elegantly let someone down is first of all you sit down whether with yourself or with a friend and you literally script out what you're going to say how you start the conversation how you're going to phrase it what you're going to do you know you don't make up some nonsense story about why you can't right now commit because you're just you know not over someone or you're you know you have issues of

commitment you don't make up some nonsense because that's actually when someone might get mad because they can sense that you're using excuses and if they don't understand then they will just assume you're lying and then they'll get mad at you for lying so you are honest but not in a way that's going to be hurtful and decimate someone's feelings you you sit down and you script out something that's elegant which is something like you know i have a list in my head of the kinds of the kind of relationship i want the kind of qualities i'm looking for in a partner the kind of you know personality traits and things about someone that I'm looking for and I just don't think that in the long term this is going to to be that for me and I don't want to

waste your time on my time because I'm really looking for that and I want us to find what we're looking for. And I just don't think that's it. And you also accept that in this situation, you're the bad guy. You know, we're so afraid. I always say in the context of men being like, I'm not a bad guy, I'm just a confused guy. I'm just a scared guy and like men are so afraid and there's like you know the contest that we always talk about with some of

our love life club members and stuff you know they're so afraid of of being the bad guy that they try and just be the hero in these situations and there's so many different like examples of that but it's okay to be the bad guy sometimes because if you were never the bad guy then you are just people pleasing and always putting yourself last there will always be moments whether it's you're giving someone feedback at work you're um i don't know you're letting some a friend down in something that they want to do and because you can't do it, they can't do it either. You are breaking up with someone. You're leaving a job that you are really needed for because you want to pursue something that's better for you.

There's going to be a million and one instances in life where you're going to be a bad person. And to that, in the eyes of the other person that you're letting down or disappointing or making, whose life you're making harder. And I think we have to accept that we have to accept that we are good and bad at any given moment and that's okay the alternative to your point is what she ends up marrying this guy and staying with him for the rest of her life that's ridiculous so she has no option but to be the bad guy and and that's okay and he's allowed to have his reaction to that he is allowed to be disappointed to cry to get mad but if he does she has to know that's his disappointment it's not her fault it's not her responsibility to make him happy it's his responsibility to make him happy.

It's his responsibility to make himself happy. And if she does not want to continue with him, that is not her fault. And it really is, it is part of the little war zone that is dating. Like you can't, you are also by stepping into dating you're entering an arena where people won't want you where people will find you not attractive enough where people will say you're not their type where people will dismiss you for any one of a thousand different reasons like that's just that is what

we're walking into any single one of us yeah and it's okay like it's a it's a messy business trying to find someone that you have a mutual attraction for each other. That is a messy business. And in a sense, more often than not, it's kind of natural that you would either like someone more than they like you or vice versa. That's kind of a natural state. So it's important that we don't think that we've done something terribly wrong if we decide we don't want someone we will be on the receiving end of that too yeah yeah and no doubt already have been you know so yeah that's that's really really an important point this was a great subject by the way thank you for bringing it i think people are going to really like this i hope that it appeals to people who not just in dating but in life are struggling to say

unwelcome things to other people because i that's something we're going to have to do a lot in our lives. Like it's never going away, the need for us to say unwelcome things. I'm not suggesting that we should go through our lives speaking truth to everyone everywhere we go, as if it's our job to like, you know, somehow deliver them something they need to hear. I think we have to pick our moments, but you know, there's going to be plenty of times where we have to say something a friend doesn't want to hear. If you have kids where you're going to have to say something that's potentially going to hurt their feelings with siblings or with parents, where in order to have a boundary, you have to say something that risks hurting their feelings yeah or delivers an unwelcome truth to them and that's a for people who are conscientious this can be very hard

i think one of the interesting things is we have to look at our conscientiousness over a longer timeline and then it actually starts to change what we're willing to do in the moment because if we look at our conscientiousness on the timeline of a single day 24 hour period we'll never want to deliver bad news because we'll be so scared of hurting someone and ruining their day but if we look at it on a longer timeline, it's like delivering to someone in a company, something feedback that you know is going to help them. Your short-term conscientiousness might go, I don't want to hurt their feelings today. But actually, if you take a longer term view on what could benefit that person,

being honest with them today might be the thing that 10 years from now or five years from now means they're even better at what they do i mean who hasn't got a story of someone from their past telling them something that was hard to hear at the time but they now credit that moment with having you know been a catalyst for growth or change or something that they now, some new quality about themselves they now hold dear because of how they reacted to that difficult conversation. Often we end up putting those people on a pedestal

and going, I'm so grateful for the day that that person told me that thing when no one else did. And so I do think it can help to look at it on a longer timeline. And I also think for those that are conscientious or for the people pleasers or the people that are prone to guilt, I think it's really important

before we have a conversation with someone that we really connect to a deeper intention about what energy we're coming from when we say this because on the surface it's very easy for our ego to get caught up in i hate the idea that i'm gonna hurt this person that i'm gonna have to let them down that i'm gonna have to tell them i don't want to go any further and that that's gonna hurt and that's going to make them think less of me, and all of that. But if we can truly connect to one, like wishing this person well, and we deeply connect to that, I really wish this person well. Like I want, I want want i don't just want what's best for me i also deeply want what's best for this person and if that means in this case i need to give

them their time back and oh i know that's going to be painful and i know it's going to be hard for me to tell them that i don't want to continue but I also know that it actually gives them all of their energy back to go and find love that they're not going to find here and I want that for them I want them to find love if you can really connect to that then it does become easier to have that conversation. And I think we also, when we come from that intention, we obsess less over the exact wording and instead we really connect to our why. It's like what we may lack in eloquence, we make up for in intention.

And just remember, while it's really valuable to have a clear idea of what you want to say and how you're going to say it, so much of what will carry you through in the moment is just having a very clear and pure intention for why it is you're making this call, for why it is you're saying this to this person. Think of yourself as wishing them well, like on a deep, deep loving level, you are wishing them well. You know that it can suck to get rejected, but at the end of the day, you also know that you're freeing this person up to go and find the kind of love that you really want them to have but isn't going to come from you wish them well wish them nothing but love and if you can come

from that place nothing you say will be disingenuous because you will actually mean it so if you fumble your words or if you find yourself not being eloquent, you'll make up for it in the energy that you bring someone when you're having this conversation. Before we finish the episode, I thought we'd read a few emails that have been sent in. You can send us an email, podcast at matthewhussey.com, either just to let us know what you think of the episodes what you liked what you didn't like or just to ask us a question for a future episode we have a few we actually got quite a few emails in response to episode 250 which was called how soon can i ask for exclusivity and there were some really lovely emails in response this was the episode where we talked about getting in my jar did everybody title

their subject line get in my jar they actually did people said i for i forgot we asked for that by the way and then i just saw lots of emails piling up saying get in my jar and nice things in the subject line and i was like how are all these people saying the same thing and then i was like oh we must have asked for this what did people say uh mihala said dear matt and audrey uh this was subject line get in my jar only nice things This email is long overdue. Anyone else a chronic procrastinator? But this really needs to be said. Your podcast is just awesome. I've been listening to it since launching and I'm very much enjoying the depth of the topics, delicious banter and all the wisdom shared. Having Audrey on the format is also the perfect wisdom combo for me. I love her

input, humility and empathy. I listen to all episodes, even though a certain topic may not feel as relevant for my stage of development. Every time I am happy I did because there is always a new element of perspective I go home with. This particular episode was such an example. Asking for exclusivity may not be a struggle area right now for me, but Matthew made an excellent point. Someone may want to know you, but he may not be a struggle area right now for me, but Matthew made an excellent point. Someone may want to know you, but he may not necessarily allow for himself to be known yet. This being a sign of emotional unavailability.

Wow, that hit hard. I guess I never thought of emotional unavailability in this way before. So this for me was a great insight. Thank you guys for the tremendous value you put into the world. I hope you know how much you're helping people and I've personally grown so much throughout the years with you. In other words, you got me in your jar. Keep up the great work and much love from Romania. That was from Mihaela. This email was from Sanar. Hi, Audrey and Matthew. I just recently got into a relationship quite fast.

He's a good guy, sweet, reliable, and hopefully trustworthy. But ever since we had the conversation of making it official, fears started plaguing my mind. My last relationship ended toxic and ended in another girl plotting and mate poaching him. She was shady, befriended my ex and masterminded everything so that she could have him. She saved me from him so I was better off. It's been over a year and I thought I'd moved on from it. My boyfriend has never done anything to make me think that he would do anything wrong. And the relationship is new.

But old fears that I thought had disappeared started popping up that another girl would try and mate poach him. I trust him, but men can be extremely oblivious to women's manipulations. We are all idiots, aren't we? She's not wrong. You are not allowed to agree with that. Only I as a man can say that we're all idiots and jeremy jeremy can say it i agree maybe you sometimes i agreed with the oblivious comment okay fine people say if he can be stolen he was never really yours but how can i ensure i chose right and save my humiliation any advice on how to prevent this from happening or self-sabotaging something new thanks and i loved your latest

episode it's one of my new favorites i think she was also referring to the get in my jar episode but i can't confirm that yes she was so i have a lot to say on this all right well how long do you want to take saying that because we're kind of technically at the end of the episode but we can give like what's our pithiest answer to this okay so a few things spring to mind the first one first of all i really empathize and really appreciate what she's going through. And actually, the reason I said she's not wrong is that there are absolutely a lot of women who are master manipulators, who will try and steal your partner, who will say things and act in a certain way. And women know how, like those kinds of women

know exactly what they're doing. But I think that to almost blame the woman is a mistake because what she didn't have in her partner was a true teammate. She didn't have someone who went, why are you saying these things about my partner? Why are you even talking to me about my partner you know what I mean there are certain relationships where you never leave any space for somebody to do that and there are other relationships where people leave space

and if someone is leaving space and they're not being a good teammate to you and not being loyal to the relationship in the way that they should be and in order to protect it as well as they can and the way I see it is he had left enough space for somebody to manipulate him and that's on him that's not on the other woman and all that you can do going forward into a new relationship is communicate that with your partner and make sure that your partner doesn't make the same mistake there is no universe where for me for instance a man could come along and start telling me anything that's wrong with our relationship it just there would be no scenario where that would even happen and I trust that it's the same the other way around and that's because there is a level of protection around the relationship and that's on the people inside

the relationship not on the people on the outside so in my opinion he was do you think that's something that needs to be communicated in the relationship or do you think that she should just assume that she's got that kind of a person until proven otherwise i think it can be communicated i think you can communicate what you would perceive as a betrayal i think you and i for instance in our relationship early on communicated what we would perceive as a betrayal and that can be different for different people so ultimately everybody has their own kind of textbook on how to be handled and what they think is important in a relationship but I I know that you know for the both of us we would feel like that would be a betrayal. If I was, if you were speaking to some woman, or I was speaking to some man about you behind your back, or allowing that person to have an opinion on you, on our relationship, that would be a betrayal to

our relationship. There's no two ways about it. This is very black and white for me. The same as if you're messaging somebody, that's cheating. it doesn't matter that you haven't actually you know seen each other naked like if you're messaging somebody in a way that's inappropriate or in a way that has any kind of intention behind it that's not pure and not just friendly and platonic and and innocent then you're cheating and that's something that you have to make peace with in your inside yourself it's not something not something that your partner should be checking in on. It's not that they should be going, are you messaging people? Are you doing this?

Are you doing that? Ultimately, you state your boundaries. You state your expectations. You state your standard for a relationship. And then you trust that they will uphold that standard until they, innocent or proven guilty, until they show you that they can't do that. You just assume that they, it's heard loud and clear and they go, okay, in order to be with this person, I have to uphold this standard. I can't talk shit about my relationship with this random person. I can't message this person over

here. I can't talk to my ex behind her back because she has stated that's a boundary for her and the wrong people for us will break those boundaries but that's we can't help that there's nothing we can do about that that's just that's just life unfortunately i love that answer and so now i would just say just know that you can't control everything so you know after you've done what audrey just so eloquently said let go let go if you see things you don't like then you can reserve the right to talk about those at any time but recognize you just can't control everything and your own past and the things you've been through are going to make you want to control everything because that gives you the illusion of safety but there is no you know safety from what

i saw a video on instagram yesterday of a sinkhole on a football field. Did you see this, Jeremy? There was literally a football field in America where there was just a sinkhole that appeared underneath it. Thank God there was no one playing on it at the time. It was like a school football field, I think. And half of this pitch just fell into the ground. Like, just disappeared. It was crazy.

That's how little control we have is a sinkhole just swallow us up like the idea that you are going to be able to go into a relationship and predict everything that can or would happen will happen it's just. It's just a bad instinct because you'll never be able to control everything. But by trying to control everything, you will suck the enjoyment out of your life. And you know, to your point about the sinkhole, trying to control your new partner from being coerced into leaving the relationship by some manipulative

individual you might spend all your time and energy trying to do that and then what ends up happening is I don't know they reach back out to their high school girlfriend behind your back and you go what but i obsessed over making sure this thing didn't happen it's kind of like you know your point about the sinkhole if somebody's gonna hurt you they're gonna hurt you you can't predict in what way somebody will and won't hurt you you just have to trust that your values align and that you have communicated those values to each other yeah that's good isn't it selective focus you're not spending all day every day worrying about them getting hit by a bus

why aren't you monitoring that 24 hours a day or any time they're out of the house like making sure there's a little camera on them that's what i worry about i work that's the thing i worry about the most in our relationship is that something happens to you. Yeah. You know, if you leave the house, I'm like, did you get to the doctors okay? Yeah. You haven't texted me to say you got there okay.

This is the problem, isn't it? I've made you feel so safe in every other way that all you have to worry about is some tragic accident on the way to the doctors. But for you, Sanar, you are exclusively focused on this one thing that could go wrong in a world where a thousand things could go wrong. And what that can tell you is, oh, what I'm experiencing, these thought patterns aren't a reflection of how likely something is to happen they're a reflection of my past pain and that can actually allow you to stop taking that thought so seriously start worrying about buses on the way to the doctors or sinkholes or sinkholes unless you don't play football in which case You have nothing to worry about A sinkhole

It's not The lesson of that Wasn't that a sinkhole Can only happen Under a football field I know that was my joke Yeah but I then Added to the joke

Well I think we did it I hope everyone Found this useful Yeah It was really I really enjoyed this episode. It was definitely more sinkhole chat than normal. Get in my sinkhole.

Oh, no. Nope. No. Okay. No. Just get in my jar. We'll stick with jar. All right.

Thanks, everyone, for listening to the love life podcast do we have anything i've missed any sort of announcements or anything let me just check no just come to the retreat nothing just come to the retreat mhretreat.com why wouldn't you want to get all this in person mhretreat.com is the link uh leave a review on the podcast they really mean a lot to us and thank you to everyone who's been leaving a review also on the the new book love life because it's crazy it's still number one in self-esteem in amazon uh it's number one in interpersonal relations and the last time i checked it was number two in love and romance which is quite interesting isn't it yeah i know i can't remember what one was number one some piece of

garbage yeah no i can't remember i'm sure it's a lovely i hope it's a good one otherwise that would be more insulting i'm sure it's a good book um but uh thank you everyone uh and uh well we look forward to seeing you again in the next episode of love life be well friends and love life