Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 3: Don't Let Your Vision Of A Healthy Relationship Be Compromised

Episode Date: February 24, 2020

When you fall in love, it's way too easy to start trying to fit someone into your world, even if their behaviour compromises your deepest values. You start to go off track, for weeks, months, years, until you're left asking, "How did I get here?"    If you've ignored the red flags for too long. Stop. Pause. Make a decision that NOW is the time to get back on track and listen to this message...

Well, hello, hello. It's Stephen Hussey here on Monday morning and I have a question. Have you ever got to a point with someone you're dating where you made a decision? You decided, I really, really like this person. And then your brain went, oh shit. Well, let's talk about it. You know, one of the reasons I think we get hurt more than we need to is because the way we come to like people tends to be somewhat binary. We go, I'm not interested. I'm not interested. I'm not interested. And then the point where

some flash of lightning happens in our mind, maybe it's because we think they look particularly beautiful or handsome. Maybe it's because of something they've done or something that has been revealed to us about this person. We all of a sudden decide, now I like this person. And so we go from that zero to a one like that, and now we stick on the one. The danger of this is that it creates a kind of static image of a person. So we now in our minds say, this person's right for me. I really like this person. I want to be with this person. And we're no longer qualifying that based on what's actually happening. We've decided in our mind. So now what we're trying to do is make reality fit to the vision that we have in our mind. I'm interested in looking at all of the little moments, the scenarios that happen

between you and another person that become signposts for whether this person is actually right for you. If you think about it, you have all of these requirements long-term. Even if you don't acknowledge them in the short-term infatuation stage, there are all these requirements that you have for the person that you would wanna be with for the rest of your life.

Whether it's the way that they would treat your family, whether it's the way they deal with stress, whether it's how they deal with arguments. What I want us to begin doing is to make our vision for the kind of person we want to be with the more static part of the equation. That doesn't mean it never changes or we don't update our vision, but for the purposes of this mental exercise, let's say that's the static part, or it's much more healthy and beneficial for that to be the static part. And the fluid part is the behavior we witness in somebody else. If you do

that, then when someone doesn't communicate well with you, when someone decides for a week to just go off the radar and not text you or not call you, when someone treats you badly or just starts ignoring you, ghosting you, you don't then tell yourself, oh, the love of my life is ghosting me. You start to say, oh, they're ghosting me, so I don't think they're the love of my life. But if in those binary terms, you've decided this is my

person, this is the person I want to be with, then the fluid part becomes your vision, becomes your boundaries, becomes what you will and won't accept, what behaviors you'll justify. And that's a very dangerous thing because I've made you the certain part and the uncertain part is how I should be treated or what kind of relationship I have. So now the compromise becomes all of my needs, not you. I want to flip that so that your needs become the most important part. They become the static part. The person is the thing that can be compromised if that person can't live up to it. See, I believe that real confidence and certainty is self-awareness of knowing what your deepest needs are in a relationship.

And I'm not talking about all the superficial shit, you know, the stuff that we wanted as a teenager, that as we grow up, we learn, oh, that stuff's not really that important. I'm talking about the bedrock of the kind of relationship that you wanna have. And then having the certainty to go out into the world and find that and not settle for less than that. But most people don't

have that level of confidence or certainty. Insecurity, uncertainty is being unwilling to change the person and instead just making your vision mold the person you have. And that's how you end up in a scenario where you go, my God, I never would have imagined in my life that I would have tolerated this kind of behavior. I never would have imagined that I would accept this from someone. And here I am going through this hellish relationship, enduring all of this suffering, all of this bad treatment in order to stay with this person. That's because you made the person the static part and the vision the malleable aspect of your love life. I know so many people listening will relate to what Matt talks about in that clip of

falling head over heels for someone and letting the vision be compromised. You know, for me, I grew up very shy, very insecure, introverted, and I was overweight as well. And it doesn't help when you're at school and chubby and trying to meet girls. And so when I finally did get into a position of being in relationships and, you know, being with the first person I was really, really attracted to and feeling like, wow, this validates me. I remember being in all sorts of ways, letting the vision of what I thought was the right kind of behavior be totally compromised. And, you. And if I was with a girlfriend and she acted self-centered or cold or in ways that I thought were not appropriate or starting fights

and things like this, I would make excuses or I would decide, well, maybe they'll change or if I just ignore this or maybe it's my fault. And all those things where really what I was doing was not standing up for myself, not asserting my value, not letting what's actually happening outside reflect on what I thought was right inside. And that's all about core confidence. That's all about building up that internal sense of self-worth.

And that can take time. That can take many relationships of not asserting your worth to see what that feels like. But some people can go their entire lives without learning that lesson. And that's what's very, very dangerous. And so you can do this so much quicker. I remember for me, there was a point where it flipped like a switch inside of me and suddenly it made no sense at all to ever compromise that vision for someone and it became easy to stand up for myself because it became easy it started to feel like standing up for myself is doing things that are good for me and that feels good and that

was much more important than trying to hold on to someone who felt like they weren't behaving in the way I thought was right or was compromising my values and once you get that you become invincible so if you are serious in 2020 and the decade ahead with actually working on your self-worth in a serious way, getting that core confidence, working on asserting your value so that what you have externally in your relationships reflects your deepest standards internally, go to our free video training at getcoreconfidence.com. There you're going to see a video from Matt where he breaks down the three layers of confidence and drills down into how you can start getting core confidence today. That is it from me for Monday. That's plenty to be chewing on with the beginning of the week.

I'm going to go hit the gym, do some writing, start my week off right. I hope you do too. Please subscribe to the podcast if you don't already on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and leave us a review on iTunes. Your reviews really make a difference in getting the podcast if you don't already on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and leave us a review on iTunes. Your reviews really make a difference in getting the podcast noticed and we appreciate every single one of them. And do not forget you can email on podcast at matthewhussey.com. Matt and I also go through that inbox. I read every single one and let us know in there what you're going to do. One thing you're going to do this week to align more with your vision, whether that's a difficult conversation you need

to have, whether it's you're going to say no to that person who's treating you badly or that flaky date, whatever that is this week, let us know what you're going to do. Start making that tiny shift right now to align your external world to your deepest standards inside. And that's it. I'm going to head out now. Thank you so much for joining me as ever. It's been a pleasure. Have a week.