Love Life with Matthew Hussey - Are Anxiously Attached People Better Off Single?

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

If you’ve ever walked away from a relationship thinking, “I’m never doing that again,” you won’t want to miss this episode. Heartbreak has a way of creating rigid rules—what you���ll never give, tolerate, or risk again—and those protective habits can quietly block the kind of love you actually want.You’ll learn how relationship stress can show up in your body, why some people feel lighter and healthier after leaving the wrong dynamic, and the surprising connection between big-hearted, nurturing partners and anxious attachment.--- ►► The Year of Love is happening next week on Tuesday, January 20. Discover the simple 4-step action plan for finding your person in 2026. Sign up for this free virtual event in 5 seconds at MHYearOfLove.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today I'm talking about whether relationships themselves are detrimental to our health. And should this mean that we just swear off of dating altogether? I'm also talking about the strange connection between nurturing, giving women and anxiously attached men. What do they have in common? We're talking about all of this today. I think you're really, really going to enjoy this episode if you've been in some difficult relationships. if maybe you feel like they've made you feel like you don't want to do it again because you just gave so much and it hurt you and you don't want to go through that again.

I promise you, this is a very, very important 45 minutes for you. Welcome back, everybody to the Love Life podcast. I am Matthew Hussey. If you don't know me by now or if you're coming in new, for the last 20 years, I've been working with people at all stages of their love life, millions of people across the world. And I've written two books on the subject, two New York Times bestsellers, get the guy back in the day and love life more recently in the last two years. And I'm really excited to be back with you today. I'm on my own. Not in life, but in this podcast right now. Audrey and Stephen are

both not with me. Stephen's back in London and traveling back later this week. So I'm recording a couple of episodes without him. And Audrey is busy at work with our baby. And so here I am, all alone on this one. I am nonetheless feeling very enthusiastic about this episode, because I think it actually is an extremely important one. There was a Reddit post brought to me by David, our producer, in the dating or in the women dating over 40. Reddit, subreddit. And there was something about this that caught my eye. He sent me a few different popular posts.

And this one from just 12 days ago caught my eye. It was someone who titled it physically healthier without an intimate relationship with a man in my life. I've been doing my usual winter clear out and noticed something unexpected. I'm getting rid of loads of sports. recovery gear, knee supports, elbow straps, all the stuff that I seemed to need constantly. Since my breakup about 18 months ago, I've been on a bit of a journey of peace and self-care. I've gradually shifted my exercise and movement towards what my body actually wants

instead of doing things to my body to chase a result. So I kind of think from that she's saying, you know, there were things that I did to try to get in shape for my partner, that weren't necessarily great for my body, the wear and tear on my body of trying to obsessively worry about that for my partner took its toll and I needed all this recovery gear. She continues, I can't help but think that not having a male presence in my intimate home space has been soothing too. There's just less tension, less performance, less emotional static in the background. I sort of feel like she's describing just relationships. in general, not just intimate relationships.

You know, we just got through the holidays, didn't we? And I, you know, we live in L.A., me and Audrey, and L.A. is a place where a lot of people are away from their families. Of course, many people are born and raised here and have families here, but a lot of people moved to L.A. And I think it makes for an interesting place around, after the holidays are over, because before the holidays, everyone or lots of people go to be with their families. And there's a lot of

anticipation and excitement and there's a kind of romance of the holidays and being back with your family and where maybe where you grew up. And then you get all that group of people back again after the holidays. They fly back into LA and you're like, how are you? And often people are like, yeah, I'm good, I'm good. Yeah, I had a great time. And it's always, you always feel like you have to ask, did you? Are you okay? And I know what they mean, because what they mean is, I had a lovely time. I was back where my roots are. I was back with my family. And then I came back to L.A. and I was itching to get back to my space and my normal routines and not being in the dynamics of the relationships in my life, especially some of the more fraught ones or the more triggering ones.

You know, there's what is that phrase? You know, if you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family. A lot of people feel that coming back from the holidays. And I think that's important just because when this person is describing less tension, less, I suppose performance might be less important here, but less emotional static in the background. I think of what it is to just have other people in the house or to be, you know, in close proximity with other people. Anyway, she continues. I honestly didn't expect to feel physically healthier from being independent, especially in such a relatively short time. But here we are.

And it makes me a lot less inclined to entangle myself with anyone who needs a relationship to be the emotional center of their life again. That's interesting. So she says, and it makes me a lot less inclined to entangle myself with anyone who needs a relationship. So what she's saying is, she's not saying I'm closed off to relationship. She's saying, I don't want to be in another situation where I am someone's life, where they need the relationship, where I am the center of it all, because it's just too much, too much performance. too much pressure. And then, of course, there are lots and lots of comments on this. Someone agreed and said, I stopped having seizures the day I left. I'll always have epilepsy, but now it's successfully managed.

Within a month of leaving, my chronic pain went away. I dropped weight, inflammation, anxiety, depression, my skin is glowing. I will never let go of this, never dating again. So there's someone who's literally saying, I felt so much better after I left a relationship that I am never dating again. I remember coming out of a relationship where my chronic pain that I had prior to the relationship increased significantly during the relationship. And it's not surprising for you to hear, I'm sure, that this was also the most anxious

I've ever been in a relationship. I was quite unhappy. I didn't know it at the time, but I was quite unhappy. and I felt incredibly anxious. I felt emotionally unsafe for one of a better word. In other words, I never really felt secure in the relationship. And it really, really got the better of me. You know, it affected my every, I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that

other than the moments where I felt safe, which were kind of not all that common and increasingly less common as the relationship went on, apart from those moments, I felt anxious most of the time, if not all of the time. And I sort of felt like most of my life was a distraction or it was an attempted distraction from that anxiety. You know, it wasn't that I wasn't productive in that relationship. It was that I, in some ways, well, I definitely wasn't more productive. A lot of things or a lot of projects fell apart in that relationship.

But in some ways, like I was more kind of like anxiously driven because I felt like I needed to do anything I could to distract me from obsessing over this relationship and thinking about this person all the time, constantly thinking about whether I was doing a good enough job of being a great partner or whether I was living up to some expectation or whether I was doing a good enough job. or whether I was doing a good enough job to hold this person's interest and attraction and whether I was looking good enough or achieving enough or being exciting enough. And I remember just living in this anxious state all of the time that it made me, God, it made me worse in so many ways. It made me a worse friend. I'm sure to people in my life, I just looked incredibly selfish and self-centered because I was so busy worrying about myself.

all the time in their eyes, you know, I was being selfish in my eyes. I was being anything, but in my eyes, I was just constantly focused on this relationship and, you know, trying to constantly, in my mind, like, hold on to it. So I, it was in a paradoxical way, it was like the least selfish time of my life because I did nothing for myself during that time. It was all in service of the deity that was this relationship. But it was, I think in the eyes of probably a lot of people in my life, it looked like an incredibly selfish time. It looked like a time where I had no time for them, no energy for them.

I wasn't interested in them. And I think the people that knew me best knew that wasn't true because they knew that there was more to it than that. But I'm sure people who didn't know me best felt that way. But, you know, friendships drifted during that time. I wasn't able to be a good energy with my family. You know, I wasn't able to bring them my best energy. I'm sure I brought them a lot of like unconsciously negative energy,

certainly an enormous amount of anxious energy or lots of just me being in my head when I was with them and not being in the room and be present with everybody. And the upshot of all of that was that I was, I was just immensely anxious and my anxiety triggered more of my chronic pain symptoms. You know, I had a lot of issues with pain in my head and my neck and my ear at that time and even prior, but it all just got worse and it all got inflamed. And for a while, I didn't know what was wrong, but I didn't know why.

it was getting inflamed because I didn't, I couldn't accept how bad I was feeling in the relationship or how anxious I was or how much it was making me unhappy because the story I told myself was this is, this is it. You know, this is what, this is what life's about is making something like this work. And so I really relate to that idea of your chronic pain or whatever the, you know, whatever your particular challenges are being dialed up to an 11 during a bad relationship. There's other comments here from someone who says it's so often happens that the post-breakup glow is a direct result of less man-induced stress as opposed to a conscious program of self-improvement.

I think there's a decent amount of truth to that. I think just when we leave a bad situation or a situation in which we've not serviced any of our own needs, there's a peace. that we can access, even in heartbreak. I remember distinctly in the worst heartbreak of my life, feeling simultaneously, extraordinarily heartbroken and sort of oddly, like there was a different feeling of peace because I was no longer worrying.

I was no longer anxious. I was no longer constantly fretting over that relationship. So I think that there's a lot of truth to that. She goes on to say, the elimination of stress is the biggest factor, followed closely by a good deal of personal time that is freed up, time that was previously spent attending to that man, managing that man,

unrecognized time and labour, that was spent doing things that benefited him or kept the peace. I am truly convinced that every single major acute health issue that has befallen me was a direct consequence of unrelenting stress that by far and large was authored, by whichever bad long-term relationship partner I was involved with at the time. It's funny, I, I in a way, can't read these comments without seeing the inverse of them, which is that this is like almost a thread of people for whom the pendulum has swung very far,

to one side. But whenever that's happened, I think something that can actually restore a lot of our faith in, I think this is a good tool for restoring faith in human beings in general, is ask yourself where that pendulum swung from. In this case, what I see is an awful lot of incredibly romantic people. What I see is, an incredible amount of people who loved so intensely, who gave so generously, who gave so generously, who had in some ways a very pure approach to love, which is that I just, you find love and you give in service of that love. When I think about that, I think that's very beautiful. that all these people in some ways are so badly hurt and got so, you know, emotionally damaged or physically ill

because of how much they viewed love in a very pure sense or because of how much they were willing to give to love to another human being. I actually think that that is easy to read something like, this and go, oh my God, look at all of these bitter, angry people. But actually, I look at it and I go, look at all these people that gave so much. Look at all of these people that had such high hopes for what love could be. And no doubt imagined that there would be true reciprocity in that love, had hopes, even probably in the midst of a difficult relationship, had hopes that if they continued to give, that it would not be taken for granted. or that it would one day be recognized,

that it would create a kind of mutuality, and it didn't end up doing that. And that is what creates the disillusionment. That is what creates the bitterness, is to sort of learn at some point with a specific individual that this kind of emotional, physical, psychological debt is never going to be repaid

it is never going to be recognized. It is going to continue to be taken for granted. And this person is going to continue to sap my soul. And that's what leaves people at the end of situations like this with an enormous amount of regret. Is I have nothing, with a feeling is I have nothing to show for this. All I have to show for this for how much I gave to love is a bad back. a knee that doesn't work anymore because I've worked out so much trying to impress this person.

Or, you know, I'm 20 years older and I look back on all of those years that I lost. I have a lifetime of chronic anxiety or chronic stress to show for it that's now showing up in my body or in my other relationships or it's affected my career or my opportunities in life. There's another side to that coin. There's another beautiful side to that coin. And, you know, I want to talk about that. There's lots of comments like this. I won't continue to read them. But I want to just start by saying, I think that this isn't something that exclusively affects women.

And I want to talk about men in just a moment. But I do recognize that there is a gendered part of this issue. and I think it would be it would be disingenuous to not recognize that and to simply wade into this conversation whether you know well men feel that too they do there are many many many men who actually experience exactly what's been described here but there is a gendered component to this and I think that that is a kind of societal embedded script that men feel a woman is going to come along and take care of them, that she's going to clean up after them, she's going to tidy up the mess, she's going to take care of the home.

And I know these ideas sound antiquated, but my God, you know, if the world we're living in today reminds us of anything, it's that what felt antiquated 20 years ago feels somehow relevant today because of so many conversations that are being having being had that just feel you know the harking back to to quote traditional conservative expectations but there are so many men who still expect a woman to do these things to play nurse to them when they're sick to be a shock absorber for all of their important stress that they feel at work you know I I think it's interesting sometimes to read men talking about challenges in dating and how often the challenges start with, I earn this much money and I work in this, I work in finance or I work or, you know,

and they lead with that. And I think, why does your question need to lead with that? And the reason that it needs to lead with that is because, or the reason they do lead with that is because there's almost, this embedded entitlement that says, because I'm this, you know, because I earn this much money or because I work as a successful man in this profession, this is what I should get. Right? Because why even bother to list those things otherwise? Right. And I know that when someone starts a question like that, you know, I earn X amount of money a year in finance and work long weeks. I'm like, if you start there with a question on a forum online, there's a very good chance that that's either what you're actually leading with verbally on a date, which is like, means it's

your identity and you wear it in a very heavy way. Or it's the energy that you bring. You bring the energy of this, I'm this guy. And as soon as someone is that guy, there's for a lot of guys an expectation of what they should get, of what a woman should be in their lives. And that's not, by the way, certainly not limited to men who consider themselves to be successful. There are many men who are not, you know, typically or, you know, stereotypically, what's the word I'm looking for, who are not the kind of archetype of the successful man who still have all of these expectations and entitlements that a mother is going to come along essentially. sort of coddle them and take care of, you know, everything from their food to their house to their

feelings. And so there's a lot of women who end up being these shock absorbers for everything, including playing their therapist, including managing their stress from work, while that many of those women are working themselves and don't feel like they can gum, and dump all of that stress on him because men aren't natural caretakers. So, you know, women are good at absorbing all of that energy and stress and, you know, looking after someone and making them feel good again. But, you know, men, they just give you solutions and they just tell you what to do next because they're not caretakers in that way. So there's all these scripts still today that kind of create this environment where it, for so many women, they have had that experience.

of being in relationships where for whatever reason they now fall into the role of being the person giving more than the guy is giving. I do want to say that there are versions of this that happen the other way around. Firstly, there are relationships where the guy ends up playing the caretaker role and the woman exhibits those qualities that I just talked about in men. So, and I, by the way, I have friends like that. I know people like that where the guy is the shock absorber in the relationship, where he is not the one calling the shots, where he is not the one being taken care of,

where he is the one doing all of the things, taking care of the home, you know, taking on the stress for the both of them, constantly managing her feelings and so on. So this is not exclusive to women. There is also a category among men that I think relate to this feeling intensely, who will be listening to this. And by the way, when I think about myself in the relationship I said was really hard, I count myself among these men. There are a certain man that when they find themselves in a relationship where they're anxiously attached,

either because they're afraid to be alone or because they're afraid that, you know, they'll never do better than this person. They're thinking that, you know, I've found this incredible woman who's better than I am, who's better looking, who's out of my league, who's so charming, who's so charismatic, who everyone wants to be with. a lot of men who feel like they're out of their depth or out of their league end up becoming anxiously attached in those relationships, even if they haven't been anxiously attached before in that way or their anxious attachment hasn't been triggered in previous relationships where they've felt safe. These guys can fall into the exact same category of spending all of their time with the invisible labor of thinking about her feelings, trying to do everything possible to impress her, worrying about whether they're good enough, going to the gym to try and prove

themselves, working insanely hard in their careers, trying to create opportunities because they don't think they'll hold on to this person unless they can keep growing and getting more impressive and matching some expectation that they think she has. So, and end up abandoning themselves, abandoning their own life, abandoning their, their, you know, social life, their hobbies, their passions, the things that make them, them abandoning space, time they get with themselves, all in service of trying to hold on to and impress the woman in front of them. So with that in mind,

I want to talk about why for all of us, men and women, this happens. And what we can do about it. Because I think the great tragedy, when I read this thread on Reddit, to me, the great tragedy was that there are people who could find incredibly happy relationships who are now closed off to them because of the pain they've experienced in the past in relation to an ex where they gave too much and their propensity for giving mutated or got taken advantage of.

Or they're going to end up in relationships where they no longer are the givers that they once were because they've been burned so badly. They're not willing to give up on a relationship because they want a relationship, but now they've been burned. Every relationship they go into now, it's I'm putting my foot down,

I'm drawing a line. I'm not doing this for anyone ever again. I'm not, I'm never doing that for someone again. I'm never, and all of a sudden they become these very brittle, uncompromising, hardened partners in relationships that lose a lot of that beauty that they had, or at least that beauty gets hidden. So why does this happen? For one, we've already talked about we want to give. Many of us have gone into relationships in our lives, in the spirit of giving. And I see this as the most, and I say this not in the pejorative sense. I see this as the most innocent, beautiful, untouched part of us that is going into relationships with all these beautiful visions of what a relationship is and how much we can give to the person we love and how much we should give to the

person we love. And I think that is, That being in service and wanting to show up for someone because we love them is gorgeous. Unfortunately, it gets taken advantage of by the wrong people or it can do. But I think that's a gorgeous part of us and it's something we should never ever lose. But it's one of the reasons that we can end up subjugating our needs in a relationship so badly that we end up feeling like we have to swear off having a relationship altogether. Let's look at some other reasons, because that's the really positive reason that we get ourselves into these situations that are unhealthy. Another reason is that we actually don't believe that we're worthy of someone's love and attention unless we're doing things for them.

Unless we're going out of our way for them, unless we are constantly compromising in their favor, unless it's always their way. many of us who at one time or another have felt insecure, especially in relationships where someone feels particularly shiny and special and exciting and triggers us on some level because we think they're out of our league, that insecurity that gets triggered tells us something subtly very dangerous, which is this person is worth more than me. So now there's an imbalance in the scales. And because I don't believe I'm enough, we have lots of noise today, by the way, with planes, construction outside, all sorts of things. So if you hear these things on the mic, I'm just going to keep going today. We'll embrace the imperfection of these things. But the

imbalance that gets created tells us that because I'm not as good as this person, because I'm not as worthy as this person, the only way that I'm actually entitled to this person is if I do more for them than they do for me. Because if I were to ask for the same from them as I give, I would lose them because the scales would remain imbalanced. I would remain. I would remain you know, they would remain more important. The weight of their appeal would be greater than mine. So I need to compensate by doing more for that person. Also, many of us have been taught in our lives that our needs are less important than other people's. Many of us grew up that way. If you grew up around parents who, you know, made you feel invisible or constantly prioritized,

their own needs, who didn't actually tend to your needs, who didn't make your needs feel valid, your feelings feel valid, then you can grow up learning, my needs don't actually matter. And that love is a situation where I, you know, like the one I had with my parents, where I'm with somebody who is there, I'm always a bit worried they're going to leave, but as long as I keep quiet and as long as I go along with what they want to do, And as long as I keep showing up and making them happy, and as long as I keep tending to them, they won't leave.

And sometimes they'll give me lots of love. A lot of the time I'll feel ignored, overlooked, not good enough, taken for granted. I'll feel like I'm starving for my needs to get met. But they'll still be there. And sometimes they'll give me lots of love. And I'll live for those moments where I get lots of love. love. Some of us have learned that there's the fear that I won't be okay if they leave. So that keeps us

in a cycle of giving and giving and giving and giving and constantly compromising because we think maybe this is the best I'll ever do or maybe I'm too old to ever find anyone else or maybe I'm too unattractive to ever find anybody else. Maybe no one else will ever want me. Maybe I'll never find someone as good as this again. So we have this fear that if they leave, I won't be okay. And that keeps us stuck in that cycle. And the last reason, and it ties into some of the other reasons, but the last reason is that we're trying to get something. We are giving in order to achieve a certain result. We think that if we continue to bend to meet this person's needs to make them happy, we will find this sense of control.

Because if I don't feel good enough, or if I don't know how to get love another way, and my default is to rely on staying quiet, not voicing my needs, not asking for things, constantly going along with their plan and ignoring what I would like to do. If I do that, then I'm in control

because I'm controlling their emotions. I know how to, keep them happy and docile by doing this. I don't necessarily know how to eliminate tension if I'm responsible for tension by actually voicing what I want. And now all of a sudden there's going to be a clash of wills. Am I going to have to navigate that? Am I going to have to figure out who's compromising this time? And how do our needs fit together as opposed to the way we fit together is just I don't have needs and I serve yours. So it can feel like a sense of control to give a lot in a relationship, which gives us a feeling of safety. Sometimes it extends as far as

I'm controlling this situation by making this person dependent on me because if I clean up after them and if I, you know, pay the bills and if I go out of my way for them all the time, if I'm constantly soothing them, taking care of their stress, doing, if I'm doing all of these things, I'm so indispensable, they'll never be able to leave me. And often, by the way, people who fall into that category are quite shocked to learn that that idea

that they couldn't live without me and that's my safety, even that wasn't true. And the real bombshell is when those people see the person that they devoted themselves to for years, who they assumed would never survive without them, let alone thrive, suddenly goes and meet someone else. And we're like, how did they do that? How was I that replaceable after everything I did for them? But what we learn with enough time and insight is that what they did was they simply found another person who was willing to do all of that for them. So it wasn't that they found the, you know, like if we suddenly stood up for ourselves

or said, this is what I need from you and the relationship fell apart. What we're really saying is my standards went up for what I expect in a relationship. And the relationship fell apart because you decided to suddenly have needs or to honor your needs. What they then did is they said, oh, this person's standards have gotten too high for me. I'm going to go find a different person who has low standards, who doesn't ask for anything. So in a way, they're looking for you from years ago. And that's the cycle. So the safety that we're trying to achieve is a false safety. And I think that that in itself is a powerful realization because it should teach us that next time around, if we ever feel an urge to default to that old wiring of giving too much, that

that doesn't, even that doesn't guarantee our safety. So you might as well choose to have needs. You might as well enjoy having needs and sharing them and being honest about them because there's no security either way. I would actually argue there's far more security when you honor your needs and respect to yourself because when you get someone's respect, they're a lot more likely to not just stick around, but they're much more likely to actually have a productive relationship with you and give you more. But giving with no discretion is not a route to safety. It's not a route to It's just a root to resentment. I'm not saying that our giving in a relationship doesn't come often from a good place.

We've talked about all of the ways that I think it's stunning and beautiful. But our fear, our fear or our desire for a sense of control is what allows our giving to be weaponized against us. Sometimes by malicious people, truly toxic people, and other times by people who are just kind of adolescence. You know, adolescence, teenagers, they're not bad people, but they're pretty fucking selfish. And a lot of the time you find yourself in adult life dating someone with the mind of an adolescent and they're taking what they can get. They're not even think, you know, go, oh, they're so malicious. No, they're not even thinking about it. They're not even considering that you're doing more.

They're just, mom came and tidied their room and they're like, oh, I guess my room gets tidied. They're not even thinking about it. It doesn't speak highly of them, of course. It doesn't make them a bad person. It doesn't make them a bad human. But it does make it very dangerous to assume that these people will suddenly one day just come good and be everything that we want them to be.

the part that I want to maybe help correct a little for people. And by the way, anyone who decides genuinely that peace lies for them in the direction of no longer looking for a relationship, of never dating again and being by themselves in the romantic sense, as far as a long-term relationship goes, more power to you. I don't judge that. I don't think that it's wrong. I'm not someone who simply evangelizes about, you know, I'm an evangelist for relationships in life. I think relationships are life-saving. I think that they are the best part about life. I think love is the best part about life. I, you know, I, the love of each other, of friendships, of families, of partners. But I don't, I'm not someone who just sneers at anyone who says, I'm never, I'm never going to look for love again. That's a personal choice and that's a perfectly fine choice to make.

But where I get sad for people is when I think that that choice has been made based on a false association that's been created. And the association is that all relationships equal pain. That the reason I'm never dating again is because a relationship of equals, a relationship of givers doesn't exist. The only relationship that exists is the relationship. of being taken for granted, being taken advantage of losing yourself, losing your space, never being able to be your own person again, the invisible labor of a relationship. I think that that's where

the pain or the the wound goes too far. And I think that it's incredibly important to draw the right conclusions from these moments, that there are people who are willing to give more, that recognizing our own needs and being willing to share them and being willing ultimately to walk away if someone shows they don't care about our needs is actually a way to encourage people to give more. And many people, when they come across someone like that, actually give more. When we say, I'm never having a relationship again, I think that that's often a reflection, not of the fact that there are no relationships in existence where you will meet someone who will give and not take advantage. I think it's often a reflection of our lack of trust in ourselves

when it comes to getting into another relationship. In other words, we don't trust ourselves to not repeat the past. We have this belief that if I like someone again, I might do the same thing all over again. I might give myself over to this person and get sucked into doing so much for them and never prioritizing my needs. And to that, I want to,

I want to say something important. You have already proven once. If you're having, if you're thinking this now and you're single again after a difficult relationship or a difficult string of relationships, you've already proven that you can leave a relationship like that. You've already proven that you can do just fine without a relationship. So in many ways, your worst. fear, you've already proven is false, that you don't actually need that energy in your life

and that you're able to walk away from it. Okay, I don't care if you are, if you did it after a month or if you did it after 10 years or 20 years or 30 years, if eventually you got to a point where you said, I reject this, then you're proving that you've already proven you could reject it. And if you've broken free of that once, you can do it again. And you can do it a lot faster next time around. Nowhere is it written that you have to take 10 years to say no again. You can take 10 minutes or 10 hours or 10 days or 10 weeks or whatever moment you decide the relationship is unequal and you're not getting enough to make this relationship interesting or it's not going to be good for your health, you can walk away.

And if we realize that, what I hope for all of us is when we go into our next relationship, we give, because that's who we are, and it's a beautiful thing. And we don't want to lose that. We don't want to go into a relationship saying, I'll never do this again and I'll never do that again, and you'll never get this from me because someone got that from me before and they took advantage of me when they got that. and so that's punishing this person who's in front of us for something somebody else did. Instead, what I believe in is bringing that same beauty that inspired us to give in the first place.

Think back to your most innocent relationship where you just went in feeling like you wanted to give and feeling like you just wanted to love someone. Hold on to that. but also recognize that today the superpower, the secret weapon that that innocent, beautiful part of you has is this, call it what you will, adult, bodyguard, protector, warrior, whatever you want to call it, that is willing to come in at any time, and say to the other person, you don't get any more of this beauty. Or we're not, we're, we're, we're,

we're gonna hold on that beauty for now because we're not getting enough from you because you're not showing up the right way or because I don't feel you really respect this, this person, my friend, my beautiful friend. I don't feel you respect this person. I don't feel like you're really, you're really, you're really, appreciating how special and beautiful this is. So at any point, that protector can come along and say,

no, thank you. And when you know you have that, you don't need to be stingy with your beauty, with that giving impulse. What you need is to have good standards around it. Let me know what you think of this, how it affects you. Podcast at Matthewhussie.com is the And just a reminder this month for anyone who is looking to make a clean start in their love life, who maybe realizes that you don't want to spend the rest of your life shielding yourself from every possible bad relationship, but instead proactively opening yourself up to the right people and the right relationship and putting them firmly on your radar. I'm going to be working with people this January to do exactly.

that in 2026. It's an event, a free event called The Year of Love. If you're not signed up yet, you can sign up for free at mh yearoflove.com. That's mh yearoflove.com. This podcast can be just the beginning of your journey in 2026. If you feel like it was in any way a little bit healing, you're going to be stunned by the journey that we're going to go on this year. So come join us at my free event, the Year of Love, thousands of people across the world are doing it with us and I really hope you join us too. Thank you for listening as always and I'll see you in the next episode of Love Life.