Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 68: 5 Texting Mistakes That Keep You Single (and What to Send Instead)

Episode Date: November 15, 2020

I’ll keep this short, because I really want you to just get to the new episode and start listening. This is one of the coolest and most informative episodes I’ve ever made about how to create and sustain attraction in early dating... I talk about the 5 texting mistakes that kill attraction, and how to avoid them. If you’re sick of the lack of progression in early stage dating... If you’re tired of things never actually going anywhere… And you’re wondering what simple things you could be doing differently to change that… This episode is for you. Can’t wait to hear what you think. --- P.S. Get on the early-bird list for my brand new program at MomentumTexts.com This is my BRAND NEW texting program that's the price of two cups of coffee (one cup if it's somewhere fancy!) Can't wait for you to dig in and learn all the secrets of keeping attraction through texting and connecting through your messages. Go check it out!

I started thinking more about what I think one of the big problems in early dating is for people right now. And to me it's that people never get any momentum. They don't get from a first conversation to FaceTime or an actual date. Or they don't get from date one to date two. Or they had momentum and they lost it and they don't know how to get it back again with that person. Hello my little cherubs, chuckles and Charleston chews. It is, of course, Stephen Hussey, the host of the Love Life podcast, here with you today. Hello, and we have a very special topic today, because we are going to be doing a special announcement at the end of this episode. So hold on for that until the end, and it is going to be all around the topic of texting.

Now, if you want to confession listeners, I have been notoriously bad at texting over the last decade of my life. I often struggle to get back to people. I go, oh, I'll message them later and then forget to and then I'm messaging them saying, hey, sorry, I didn't get in touch. I've had it in past relationships where I've been a bad texter. And now looking back, I think, man, I could have had so much more fun.

I could have been more creative. I could have been more thoughtful and reached out to people and done a lot more emotional connection through texting. And you know, to even talk about it as texting now as a separate thing from our lives seems anachronistic because it's what we do. I mean, if we're not talking on a messenger, we're talking on WhatsApp, we're talking on text with people, we're on Tinder, online dating. Obviously, many of us are now confined to smaller spaces because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

So texting is part of the lifeblood of communication now for where we are. And it's also an opportunity. It's an opportunity to spark joy in someone. We can flirt. We can actually create that excitement, that tension, that little spark in the early stages when we meet someone for the first time. You know, most people go on Tinder. They go, oh, hey, how you doing? Yeah, good. What'd you do? Oh, I'm an accountant. Oh, right. Wicked. Do you like going to the pub let's go to the pub and then you move on

because you think i can't live life like this and you decide not to meet up with them but if we're more creative if we know how to actually have a few tools in our tool belt when we start texting there are many more opportunities to actually meet people, connect with those around us, flirt, keep attraction going so that it doesn't fizzle out after the first few messages. And even when we're in a relationship, it's a part of keeping the desire, keeping those bits of connection through the day, expressing our needs honestly. All of this adds up and all of it matters to being the kind of person we want to be in a relationship so without any more kerfuffle

i'm gonna hand over to young matthew hussey who is technically older than me but he's youthful and sprightly in spirit that boy um so i'm gonna hand over to him just for a note he uh matt mentions at the end of this a link you can go to that link is momentum text.com momentum text.com the word momentum the word text.com um okay it out. And I'll put the link in the description to the show as well. So you can go click it there. And that is it for me. Over to Maddie boy. Texting. We're going to do a video on texting. People think of texting as this silly superficial subject, but I actually think that there are a lot of mistakes that are made in texting that prevent people from getting the relationship they want so I'd like to

treat it with a little more seriousness I suppose today. How do we do that? It's a good way for us to kind of lend this video the gravitas it deserves. Jameson tosses a familiar toy stuffed monkey into Matthew's lap, which he proceeds through the rest of this video to call George. Nice. Mistake number one, playing games about when to text back. Now let's say monkey receives a text. Huh, it's from George. But instead of texting George back and having a conversation, monkey thinks, no I am gonna

wait and George is gonna see how busy I am, how important I am, and how attractive I am. But the problem is George is by his phone right now. She could have had a message with him and carried on the momentum and ridden that wave. Instead, she waited five or six hours to text back George, who incidentally was no longer curious. Now look, I'm not saying that when someone texts you, you should always be by your phone waiting to text them back. But if someone happens to text you in a moment where you're not doing anything and it's organic to reply to them right away, why not use the momentum of that moment and have a conversation? If five, 10 minutes later you need to go, that's fine. That's where you can be busy in an authentic way. But don't play games of making someone wait just to look cool. Number two, obsessively

sticking to text as the form of communication. I think of different mediums, whether they're texts, pictures, voice memos, phone calls, FaceTimes, all as having a kind of energy bar. And the more you do them, the more that energy bar gets depleted and we start to get diminishing returns from that thing. If we over text, it doesn't matter how quirky or fun or witty we are by text, it begins to wear thin. And most people have had that experience. It's like, okay, I need a different stimuli now. I need something else. That's when it pays to send someone a picture and just say, you know, the view from where I am right now. If you happen to be looking out on a beautiful view,

or if you happen to be sitting in bed with a dessert in front of you, in front of the TV, take a picture of the dessert and be like, the view from where I am right now. Check out my view right now. In that moment, you're changing up the medium. The same can be done with a voice memo. In the middle of a text conversation, when you feel like it's getting a little dry, send someone a voice memo instead. If they're teasing

you, shake it up by sending a voice memo back saying, you're so mean. It's cute, it's playful, but it's a pattern break that suddenly injects new life into the conversation because the energy bar of voice is not depleted in the way that your texting has. Mistake number three, being one note. What gets someone really attracted to us is not when we're one energy, but when we're able to be versatile between different energies. If you find yourself always being very polite and sweet, today be a little bossy. Say to someone, are you going to call me tonight or what? If you find yourself sending lots of nice, friendly messages to someone, amp up the sexual tension today. Tell him you look really hot in that picture you posted today. Those are things that show that you can be many things.

So think of the energy you normally have, the one you're most comfortable with, and do the inverse of that today. Mistake number four, talking about everything except yourself. People truly fall for you when they hear your story because your story is what makes you different from everybody else. So the next time you have a conversation with someone, ask yourself this, am I only describing here what I've been doing, or am I actually revealing who I am and what I'm thinking about? Here's an example, because I know this sounds a little abstract. If someone asked you, what did you do last night? You say, I cooked ribs for the first time last night.

Now, that's not a bad text. It's still a conversation starter, but it's still only talking about what you did. What we want to do is add on to that a bit about who you are. If you wanted to do even better than that in telling your story, you could say, I made ribs for the first time for my family last night. I'm a little late to this cooking thing, to be honest, but I'm actually really enjoying learning about it. Now someone sees a hint of vulnerability, what you're learning about right now and how you feel about it. Mistake number five, being too passive. Almost everybody has had the experience of something moving way too slowly, of someone who keeps drifting back and forth, giving you kind of mixed signals. They're not asking you out,

but they do keep reaching out by text. You don't know where it's going. It feels totally ambiguous. This is where I like to apply what I call gracious impatience, which means warmly, politely, being more upfront about what you actually want. So let's say Monkey wants to progress things with George. Now they've been texting back and forth for a few weeks, but it seems like the momentum isn't carrying them to the next stage. Why doesn't he ask me out on a date? Why doesn't he at least pick up the phone?

Here I am, just texting away. What am I going to text myself into an early shallow monkey grave? Sorry. Well, the passive response would be to be texting George and to be like, yes, like I think that is true as well, George. Bye, George. We'll do the same thing again tomorrow. Or Monkey can be graciously impatient.

The next time George messages her, she can say, yeah, that's a real funny joke, George. You're a real funny guy there. So anyway, mister, are you actually going to ask me out or can I just expect to house your week for the rest of my life? Now, I know this sounds like a simple message, but there is a lot that is right with this message. When you say, so mister, there's a little bit of an authoritative, but almost sexy tone to that.

You're being demanding. You're being a little bossy. Then you give the standard. Are you gonna ask me out? That's what you want. You're actually saying what you want. Or can I just expect a how's your week for the rest of my life? That's you being intentionally hyperbolic and dramatic to create a playfulness around something that you're also kind of not playing about. Before you go, I have to tell you about something. I have been working on something in private that I didn't know I was gonna be creating this year,

but it just happened organically. I started thinking more about what I think one of the big problems in early dating is for people right now. And to me, it's that people never get any momentum. They don't get from a first conversation to FaceTime or an actual date, or they don't get from date one to date two, or they had momentum and they lost it and they don't know how to get it back again with that person. I wanted to create something that showed people how to get momentum

in the early stages of dating someone and then keep it so that it actually turned into a relationship. And the way that I've chosen to do that is to create a texting program that shows you, I think there's like 60 or 70 different text messages in the program that you can use to create, to sustain, or to regain momentum with the person you're dating. And I did something even more unique because I created a numbering system whereby it went from one to five. Number one being you just met this person, very first message. and number five being you actually feel seriously about this person. And I assigned each one of the text messages I give you in the program a number so that you know when to send the message and when not to send the message. So this program

is all about the practical, but you'll also get deeper principles from it that you can apply across the board in your dating life. So I've called it the Momentum Texts. I'm very proud of it. It's like a cool little program. It's not a big program. It's really quick to digest, but it's packed with stuff that will help you in your dating life right now. And I just think you're going to love it. When you get in there, you're going to realize this just is more than you bargained for. It's more than you realized it was going to be. You can go to this link. It's going to be out in the next couple of days. You can sign up to an early bird list, or if you're late to this video by a couple of days, chances are it's already out and you can just go and get your copy right now. So go check it out.

Oh, and I should say this is, you know, I know I have some programs that are significant investments. This is not. This is super affordable. It's the price of two lattes or one and a half lattes if you live in Los Angeles. Between one and a half and two lattes, depending on where you get your lattes. Go check it out. I'll see you there. Once again, listeners, if you want to be on that early bird list to know exactly when that Momentum Text program is dropping next week so that you're first in line, go to MomentumText.com and you will be giving your thumbs the best little weapons they can fit in their pockets. Do thumbs have pockets? I don't know.

But you're going to be happy when you're texting and you have this thing in your hands. So yes, go to MomentumText.com and you'll be first on the list as soon as that program gets released. Alrighty, that is it from the boys hussy today. I will let you go enjoy the rest of your weekend and week whenever you're listening to this. And yeah, happy tapping. Does that sound appropriate? Tapping your thumbs, happy tapping.

I'm going to go with that. Happy tapping. All right, have go with that. Happy tapping. All right. Have a good one. I'll see you soon. Bye-bye.