Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 42: Don't Get Into A Relationship Before You Hear This...(Or: How To Be Single)

Episode Date: July 30, 2020

"Too many people in the single world waste time and emotion pursuing TERRIBLE leads.   They date men and women who don’t invest in them, they spend hours waiting for texts back only to get one-word answers, and they chase intimacy from people who only want attention/sex/validation...   I don’t have a dog in this fight. Being in a relationship can be incredible. But being single is also AMAZING and gets taken for granted way more often...."   --- Follow Steve: Twitter - @stephenhhussey Instagram - @stephenhhussey Facebook - @stephenhusseywrites --- Want to build the self-worth and confidence that makes you TRULY fall in love with your life? Click here to reserve your spot on our next LIVE retreat program!

Hello there podcast listeners and welcome back to the Love Life Podcast with your host, silly old Stephen Hussey. How are you? Settle in, get cosy, we've got a good one for you today because I'm going to talk about being single. And maybe you've noticed that the title song which is hotly requested from people who send in emails uh the title song for this podcast is called team single um and i want to discuss one of my super popular articles on the blog and that's not my words this one got a lot of comments a lot of feedback. People seem to really be into it. So I wanted to talk about it here.

And the article title is, Don't get into a relationship before you read this. So I'm calling this, Don't get into a relationship before you listen to this. Brackets or how to be single. So I'm going to do what I've done on a few of these podcasts and talk through my article and maybe intersperse with a little commentary here and there. But I feel this is something that has to be addressed.

I think the state of the way singledom is perceived by society, by the wider world, by people's friends and family can put an immense pressure on people and it's time to correct that balance. So I'm going to begin from the beginning of the article. Let's start. Single, dating, friends with benefits, coupled. People like to tell us that one state is desirable over another. And yet, 10 years of working people in their relationships has taught me that it's possible to feel wildly fulfilled or totally miserable in just about any state between flying solo and being in a committed relationship. But that's not what we're told. The cultural story tells us your life will finally make total sense when you meet the right person. Actually, it's even worse than that. It says get a relationship or else your life won't have meaning. Yikes. This is why being single can be extra tricky, especially for women who face far greater pressure to prove their worth by quote,

locking down a steady relationship by around age 30. The cultural narrative tells us that all roads must eventually lead to a relationship, rendering singledom as a kind of purgatory abound with lonely humanoid atoms hovering past one another until they finally get paired up and can live the rest of their lives in blissful duality. well i say fuck that i don't have a dog in this fight being in a relationship can expand your capacity for true connection allow you to experience love companionship and the feeling of sharing your life with someone but being single also has undeniable benefits that get totally taken for granted. The sense of unbounded adventure, the total independence and ability to pursue your own path, the sense of freedom that comes with being able to decide your own schedule and build the life you really want for yourself.

But to do single right, you need to avoid the traps that lead to dating burnout, bitterness or a feeling like you're simply waiting in limbo for a connection to come and finally give your life purpose. Here's how. Number one, stop forcing dating. The greatest tyrannical mantra of singles is this, I must find someone else to merge with as soon as possible Says who? Unfortunately, a lot of people say so Even as a 30-something year old man Despite not being subject to the same pressures as women

Every year I get older I find people have a bemused expression If I tell them I've recently been happy single and pretty much out of the dating game. It's strange, but it seems to render people genuinely incredulous when you tell them you're enjoying not having a relationship and don't plan to have one for a while. Their loss. Let them assume you're hiding or that you need to quote grow up or pay someone to give you extensive therapy and delve into all the reasons you may be burying a terrifying fear of intimacy now i'm not saying that getting into a relationship is an unworthy goal i'm saying that once you learn

how to love being single and squeeze the juice out of it, you won't care about finding a relationship unless it already adds to your bountiful, exuberant, jolly, freedom-filled single fun fest. Think Homer Simpson skipping through the land of chocolate and you'll get a picture of where I'm at on this. And the epiphany comes when you realise, just because I'm single, I don't have to date. Suddenly, everything gets easier. You can switch off from all the dating anxiety and throw yourself into all your passions guilt-free and love every second of it. You get piles of precious free time. You can actually read books.

You can go fly to your college friend who lives six hours away because you've always felt like seeing budapest it's a pretty damn enviable position and whether or not you have dating aspirations once you realize you can let that go and enjoy this chunk of time? Relief. Number two, listen to your gut. Okay, but what if you are single and you are also out there trying, dating, looking to meet someone? Then you need to be smart about it. Too many people in the single world waste time and emotion pursuing terrible leads. They date men and women who don't invest in them, they spend hours waiting for texts back only to get one-word answers, and they chase intimacy from people who only want attention or sex or validation.

So, if you're single and looking and want to actually enjoy it, i.e. keep your self-esteem, self-respect, not get burnt out with people in general, you need to listen to your gut more than you listen to what you'd like to be true. I'll say that one more time. You need to listen to your gut more than you listen to what you'd like to be true. I've written many times about how to decide whether you should stay or go when it comes to a serious relationship but let's make it super simple. Ask yourself if you're dating these four questions. Am I really really attracted to them? Do I really really like them and respect the way they live? Do they treat me really really well And finally, Do we really, really want the same thing in the next five to ten years?

Or at least in the next couple of years? Your gut knows the answers to all of these or at least it should if you're seeing someone and getting in any meaningful way to know who they are if it doesn't then you're still avoiding an important conversation you need to have with this person so listen to your gut and have it now once you start listening to your gut then comes the difficult part, following it. In relationships it knows where you need to go. Unfortunately what it has to say is sometimes very unpleasant and you want to punch it especially when it says now I need you to go and break it off with that person you have amazing sex with because they clearly treat you as an

afterthought and trying to win them will waste years of your life and turn you into a ball of misery and resentment. Ultimately though your gut is your friend. It will help you drop the wrong people faster so you have space for the right person when they eventually cross your path. Number three, be open about whom you meet but be picky about whom you invest in. This one idea changed my entire life. Why? Because I've seen 10,000 single people do this the opposite way around. Most single people do dating like this. They open up a dating app, they swipe through profiles, they go to parties, they attend single events, and in their head is a constant no monkey telling them all the reasons they don't want to talk to that person. The no monkey says things like, he wears those shorts

with that t-shirt, she's into that stupid book, his smile seems kind of cocky, I don't know. Or, I don't like people who wear beanies. She's probably an annoying hipster. And so on, and so on. Hey, you have standards, great. But maybe also that monkey who keeps telling you a thousand excuses not to meet people hasn't always got your best interests at heart. Because here's what happens when that monkey kicks up a fuss and you dismiss everyone. You stop meeting anybody. In fact, you meet so few people that the next time you finally bump into even one guy you actually like,

your monkey looks at him as if he's a magical, never-ending banana tree and screams at you pick him oh my god he's amazing him ignoring the fact that those bananas often disappear for three weeks stop texting back and then reappear kind of moldy later saying hey you up bananas can talk in this flimsy metaphor i'm creating here um so the smart way today is to flip this around be very open-minded about whom you talk to even if it's for five minutes but be super picky about who you invest emotion in that way you train your monkey to examine the tree a bit more to see if it actually has strong roots, i.e. if these bananas are the real deal or just a clever mirage. Yeah, we're back on bananas again, by the way.

The bananas are the guy, you know, you want a good banana, not a bad banana. Banana might not have been the best word here because of the image it conjures up. Yeah, you know, I'll think out my metaphors a bit better in future number four have some adventures people always want to know if they should be on the quote hunt when they're single as i said in point number one if you don't want to date right now don't date this is a golden opportunity and look you can enjoy it now before your brain wrecks it all by falling in love and then you have to take a whole another human being's needs and desires into account you know that sort of thing you have to do in relationships right so put simply now is your time guilt-free to go on adventures obviously this hopefully applies whether you're coupled up

or not but when you're single now is actually the optimum window to take advantage of your relative freedom and seek out unusual activities fun places solo travel generally you can enjoy the fact that you can show up to parties and leave exactly when you get bored. You're a free agent. Basically, you get to dive into as many things as they want, and when they suck, you can say screw it and spend a weekend binge-watching those Seinfeld episodes you've never seen

as you sip an oat milk latte while pondering, maybe I'll go for an afternoon walk later and treat myself to some new books or go and just do a little bit of shopping because hey you're single and who else do you need to spend the time and the money on and as most people who are in long-term relationships will tell you you kind of don't get that time back that window could close pretty quickly, especially if you do meet someone in the next month or six months, so you might as well embrace and enjoy this moment now. Instead of being the person who constantly bemoans singledom, be the other person who's having so many fun adventures that they have to be convinced to finally bring someone else along for the ride. Number five, be willing to totally change what you thought yesterday. One danger of being single or being in any position for too long is that you can become

stubborn. You can easily get set in your ways, certain that you know everything, or you build up some idealised story of why you're single in your head and you never want a relationship, it's easy to rationalise any situation and cling to a narrative that's no longer true. Which is why I've always loved the saying of having strong opinions loosely held. In other words, be willing to let go of any belief that stops serving you at any time. Maybe being single is working for you today, and it's amazing, but life goes through phases, and it doesn't always have to be an all-or-nothing scenario. Some of our beliefs that make us single now may not be true tomorrow. For example, we might think, I'm happier alone than I am with someone.

Maybe, but that could also be a belief we've adopted after a couple of not so great relationships and we feel a bit burnt and bruised and being open to the right person coming that makes us feel fulfilled in a way that suddenly feels easy and doesn't feel like a struggle could completely change that belief and maybe we think oh well I am happy with someone, it just needed to be the right person all along. Or we might tell ourselves a story, I don't have time for a relationship. Maybe. Or maybe we just have other priorities right now. And maybe right now we are focusing hard on our career, our friends, our hobbies, and in time we'd be better off trying

to make some more time to carve out for a partner and someone who would serve and support our goals and be open to that process and dip our toe in the water with dating and see how it feels or we might tell ourselves i can't find someone who really gets me maybe but maybe that also just takes time and it's worth being open to new people and being surprised by what might happen because life tends to work in funny ways and you want to be ready for the day when someone amazing does walk into your world and if we live in a very dismissive way where we think i'm looking for a unicorn and no one can fulfill my great standards, then we kind of lose that wonderful possibility of serendipity and someone who really does fit us well coming along.

So for the record, once again, I have no dog in this fight. I have been happy single. I have been happy in relationships. But I do know the danger of clinging hard to one position and using it to justify whatever we're currently choosing. Just look at the couples you know who rationalise why they're staying in a crappy relationship for the last 10 years and you'll know what I mean. It's a beautiful fact of life that the philosophy we followed yesterday can turn out to be completely wrong for who we are today. Meet someone, break up, stay together, go solo. All can be happy roads, if chosen for the right reasons. Okay, that is all for that article. I know there's a lot to chew on there. I would love to hear your thoughts on this,

if it's changed your mind about being single, if you've realized there are many things to appreciate about it, if you found it hard to appreciate being single in the past. I'm a big, big champion for this idea because, like I said, the societal narrative is so damn strong in the direction that everyone needs to be in a couple or constantly moving towards the state of finding someone. Like people ask you about it. Have you found someone yet? Are you looking for a relationship? That's weird that you're not looking for one. And again, relationships can be great.

But this idea that everyone needs to be pushing themselves towards one at all times, I think is very, very dangerous. And I think it causes people a lot of pain and unnecessary suffering when they could be really, really enjoying this time of their lives, having a blast and actually choosing what's right for them and deciding when it's right for them to get in a relationship whenever if ever that is so that's my two cents um if you've got thoughts send me your emails at podcast at matthewhussey.com i would love to hear from you any thoughts for or against uh send them away and i'll try and get back to some of you. I'll try and read a couple on a future episode. And if you feel that you do struggle with being confident on your own,

having self-worth, being the kind of person who can love yourself outside a relationship so that you don't end up choosing bad relationships just so you can be with someone and try and cover up those feelings, consider reserving a spot on our next retreat program because that is where we take people

who do feel that they don't have that internal self-worth, they look externally for that in their career, their, you know, hobbies, their relationships, they define themselves by the things they have instead of looking inwardly to be able to build themselves up to a place where they are have incredible strength with or without those things and once you're in that position it creates a feeling of fearlessness that is unmatched by anything else because suddenly you feel like you are choosing from a position of power and that is a completely different state of

mind when you go into trying to find love when you go into dating you have a completely different attitude to people who don't meet your standards to people who treat you the wrong way to people who aren't going to give you what you really deserve and when you're coming from that place of confidence you won't even recognize yourself. And it's an incredible feeling. And if you want to do that for yourself, you can go and check out our retreat at mhretreatathome.com. mhretreatathome.com. And you can go and get started on the process. Alrighty, my pickles, puddings, and pears, that is it

from old Stevie today I have said quite enough you go and whether you are happily coupled up like two very snug peas in a pod or single and free as a daisy right now

go and knock the hell out of it I will see you on the next episode have a week