Love Life with Matthew Hussey - Are Coffee Dates a Bad Idea?

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

Today’s episode is a proper grab bag—in the best way. If you’ve been feeling stuck on where you can actually meet people in real life, it explores the kinds of places that don’t just give you “options,” but actually help you grow as a person (and why that matters more than ever).  It also tackles one of the most painful relationship realities: where there’s real love, the relationship is good . . . but one incompatibility makes it impossible. What do you do with that kind of heartbreak when no one is the villain?---►► Want to be featured on the podcast? Send a voice note to [e-mail] with your question.►► It’s not too late to join Matthew’s free online Year of Love event. Sign up in 5 seconds at MHYearOfLove.com►► Give the gift of comfort that lasts beyond the holidays and into a truly cozy New Year. Head to cozyearth.com and use my code LOVELIFE for up to 20% off. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Love Life. Today is an assortment of interesting topics. We're all over the place today. We talk about where you can go to meet people if you're struggling to meet people. We talk about what to do when a relationship is one where you love each other, but there's one incompatibility that means that it can't work. We talk about two month intense relationships that break your heart at the end of them and what to do and how to not blame yourself. We have a Love Life line caller. There's all sorts of interesting. things in this episode. I think you're really going to enjoy it. And if you haven't already, make sure you go and sign up to my Year of Love live event. It's completely free this event. We have thousands of people from all over the world joining. You can sign up now at mh yearoflove.com. That link again is mh year of love.com. Welcome back to the Love Live podcast with me, Matthew Hussie. We are going to, I'm calling this episode, I haven't found a pithy, name for it. Matt's grab bag. Is that good enough? It's, it's, it's going to be an assortment of things that we have found scouring the internet questions you have sent in a love life line where we, uh, you know,

deal with a question in real time. So there's going to be lots of things. David, the producer is over to my right and is going to be bringing me a couple of things that he feels are pertinent. So here we go. David, will you play the, the voice note for love life line? If you want, want to ever send us a question to be answered on Love Life line, you can email podcast at Matthew Hussie.com. And if you are one of our Love Life members, we skip you right to the front of the queue there. So Love Life members, make sure you send in your voice notes. This one is from Morrow. Hi, so I'm 25. My current ex is 24. We have both been divorced before. We both have pretty traumatic pasts. We started dating two months ago. Things got very intense and passionate

and deep very quickly. After 10 days of dating, she told me she loved me. And I could feel that she actually meant it. She was open to being vulnerable with me when she normally hadn't and avoided that. She went from not wanting to get married again or have kids to talking about us getting married and having kids. I had been bottling things up my whole life just to get through my days. She told me, she saw that in me. She told me to stop doing that. In me processing that, I started acting out of insecurity and anxiousness rather than communicating about it. The situation became too overwhelming for her, especially with her being in college, and she broke things off. I'm hoping that she'll reach out. We've been no contact, but in the meantime,

I've been trying to work on myself to be better for myself, and so that should she reach out, we can reconcile in a healthy way. Just wanted your advice and opinion. Thanks. Well, thanks, Mauro. I, uh, okay, that there's a lot happening there. I, so you've both been married and divorced. You're 25, she's 24, she's still in college. I was trying to get down all of the details as you were saying them. Uh, you said you've both had traumatic pasts. And, uh, then you start dating this person a couple of months ago. 10 days in, she says, I love you. That to me is already, it gives me huge pause.

And anyone who is taking relationships seriously and being intentional about them, it kind of should raise an eyebrow when someone 10 days in says, I love you. it is a huge thing to say to someone. And either you spend every minute of the day together for 10 days. And at the end of those 10 days, someone felt, you know, so strongly that they know what they want in life. They know who they're looking for. They know you're it. And, you know, they love you, which is a stretch.

But, you know, maybe you could give a bit more. latitude if someone had another, you know, 20 years on her, you know, and she was 44 saying this and had been around and dated and had relationships and, you know, seen more of life. And then you might argue, but this may not necessarily be true even then, but you might argue that there's a kind of more of a maturity to that statement, or at least it's more qualified. I hate to say it, but for someone who's 24, saying that after 10 days is a huge leap and probably speaks more to an intensity of feeling than any kind of genuine understanding of you on a deeper level or any kind of a statement of intent. You know, I think that often we hear

someone say I love you as a statement of intent as opposed to an expression of feeling and that's a very dangerous uh that's a very dangerous mistake to make you probably took that more as a statement of intention than an expression of feeling and that's why after two months and it all falling apart you're like what happened we were so great together we you know there was something huge happening here and you know then I think you said that she suddenly you know you know you She told you that you made her feel like she was ready for marriage again, even though she said she wouldn't do that, something to that effect,

that she wasn't interested in getting married again, and now she's met you, and now she's feeling those things. And it's a huge, that's a huge thing to say to someone in that time. And I think that, you know, honestly, I think it probably speaks to a lack of maturity about relationships. you know, you're only just beginning to know someone in the first two months. So it may have, you might date someone in the first two months expressed that you feel

much more open again since dating them because you're having such a great time and it's kind of like excited you about, you know, about romance again. And, you know, you, but if you're mature about relationships, you're careful with your language there. What you don't say after 10 days is I love you. And what you don't say within two months is you made me think about marriage again and having a future and kids. And those are huge, huge statements. What I'm saying is actually made worse by the fact in some ways that you bottle things up and don't share a lot. And that means that she was only just beginning to get to know you. And what you voiced, What I heard when you spoke was that you started to actually share and what you were sharing,

okay, fine, you shared some insecure things and maybe there was an anxiety that came out there and that's something that, you know, that's something to look at and something to work on and to ask yourself, okay, where's that coming from for me? When I'm not bottling things up, what spills out is anxiety or what spills out is insecurity. that's the stuff that I need to work on. So I'm not suggesting that there's not things to work on there, but outside of that, this sounds like someone who is still profoundly immature when it comes to relationships.

And I think once you understand that, you can understand that this person might have made you feel an awful lot. When someone is saying big things like that to us, we're attracted to them and we you know we want to see potential with them my god is it seductive it's incredibly compelling and we want to you know we're kind of a biased judge who wants to take what they're saying at face value and wants to say they mean it because it you know it feels incredibly overwhelming in a good sense you know it's wow they feel this about me and i must be so special and you know this is amazing and and so we

And so we get sucked into that world with them, but it's a world of feeling and drama and emotion and, you know, passion. But it's not the grounded, calm, centered place from which a relationship, a true relationship springs. And so that, that to me is what probably has ended up hurting you an awful lot, is that someone has said some really, really big things to you. And when you combine someone who. you find attractive with they're saying all of these incredibly big statements that make me feel

very, very special and chosen and make me suddenly start picturing a future very prematurely, I should say. It's that that is a recipe for heartbreak, even in a very short space of time because now they've, they're on a roller coaster. They've put us on the roller coaster. are with them. And now when it all goes away, and by the way, pay attention, it came around quickly and it went away quickly, right? Because there wasn't depth to this in that way. I'm not saying you might have had a beautiful connection. There might have been a depth to some of the conversations you had. But in terms of your knowledge of each other, there wasn't a depth there. In terms of true commitment, there wasn't a depth there. In terms of someone being concerned.

and being a person of their word, there wasn't a depth there. But your brain got tricked. Your brain got tricked into thinking that this was the real thing. And what it was, it wasn't the real thing in terms of the great relationship of your life. What it was was a explosive set of, like an explosive, like crucible of feelings that left you feeling really shattered at the end of it, is my guess. So I'm really sorry that you went through that. I think it's really important that you,

I pay attention to what was triggering about that, what about that situation was very triggering for you because something also, you know, was triggering for your anxiety in that situation. So what was it? What was triggering all of that insecurity for you? That's worth exploring. And it's also worth taking the lesson that you know what next time, no matter how,

no matter what someone says to me on day 10, I'm going to take my time with someone because I can't, it may be lovely to hear certain things, but I want someone, I need someone, my nervous system needs someone who is approaching relationships with the maturity. My ego and my insecurity may want to hear all of those things on day one, but my wiser, cooler, calmer head knows that what I really need is someone who's gotten incredibly grounded and mature approach to relationships, because that's actually what's going to help calm my nervous system, is the stability of someone who means what they say.

And that person actually might be the person who says, romantic things on day one but is still there on day 101. So thank you so much, Melro, for leaving that. Could I actually get your read on something in particular with this question that I thought was kind of interesting? Did you notice like the transition in the question, which was like she told me to not bottle up my feelings and to let them go? But then also he describes that he handled that situation with anxiety or with, you know,

and that this somehow perturbed the relationship enough to where it was too overwhelming for her. But it kind of seems like a mixed message there. From her. Transition seems a little weird. Like it's like, you told me to not bottle up my feelings. and then I had some amount of display of feelings, and then it was too overwhelming. I was wondering in that particular spot, did you sense anything that was off there? To me, when I heard that, it spoke once again to the immaturity.

Because there's a profound immaturity to going in, saying I love you on day 10, saying you've made me want to have marriage and kids all over again and do it with you within the first two months. I don't know what day that came. But and then also, you know, you really shouldn't bottle things. Now I'm being your therapist because I know, I know what I'm doing and I know what I'm talking about and I'm wise and, you know, and you shouldn't, you really shouldn't bottle things up. You know, that's not, that's not the thing to do. And so it's kind of like coming from, to me, there's a, again, it's like the immaturity of like, I also am now going to give you a therapy, a therapy on what you should be doing differently. But then actually when it when the when it becomes in any way real,

when actually he starts voicing, you know, some of the things on his mind, all of a sudden it's like, oof, I'm, I'm out. I wonder if you see a pattern with this, because I think I see this sometimes with, you know, listening to the podcast questions that get sent sent in. A lot of people with a lot of like empathetic, emotional intelligence end up being able to success, fully talk themselves into that it was their behavior that caused this, oh, because I understand, I can kind of, I can act, you know, with anxiety, I can kind of like do these things. And then they justify kind of events in such a way that I'm wondering if you recognize this pattern.

I kind of see it in this, too, of like, this person explaining that it was their fault for why that this precipitated when yeah do you do you see that sometimes in these yeah well i think the the you know it's kind of a perfect set up for it's my fault because someone says you should really stop bottling up your feelings and of course i'm already worried that if i actually say my feelings then i'm going to get burnt for it and then of course i do speak my feelings and i get burnt for it and so it's it's like perfectly set up for me to then go away blaming myself saying, see, stupid, idiot. This is why we don't say these things. And if you'd have just kept your mouth shut, you would have still come across as confident and you wouldn't have come

across as insecure and all of this. And, you know, the reality is, and this is why I say, there's two things going on here. One is for Mauro, there may be something about this situation that was quite triggering. Like, it may be, I don't know, maybe she's very beautiful. maybe he you know he finds her really attractive or she fits some stereotype of the kind of person he thinks he should be with and you know all of a sudden that kind of person is really into him and he's like oh my god this is wow and but now when i start saying my feelings they're coming across as insecure because i've already kind of put this person on a pedestal and i'm afraid to lose them and so now you know i don't know maybe there's that but there's there's you know it's worth

exploring what was it about this whole situation that made me feel insecure or anxious. But it's not, I don't believe that that's why it, when I hear the rest of the story, if I'd have heard she was incredibly measured and mature in the way she entered this relationship. And, you know, he, she encouraged him to share more over the two months. And the more he shared, the more she felt like, wow, there's a lot of stuff going on here with this guy. I don't know. I'm not sure if this is for me. But even then, a mature person might have had more of a conversation about that. Like, it feels, you know, they might have actually spoke to him about it and shared how it made them feel or whatever.

And maybe he wouldn't feel so kind of in the dark right now. So even that speaks to a lack of emotional maturity and willingness to have an honest, like a genuine relationship. It all feels very performative. You know, I love you. I want to marry you. You've made me think of marriage again. You should really open up more. Oh, you're insecure.

Okay, I'm out. That to me is, but you're right. When you're in your own head and you're already feeling insecure and then someone leaves after you've shared more, that's precisely the thing that makes you think, I can't share again. I've been in that situation. I've shared in a relationship and then regretted it. But when I look back, I regretted it because of the reaction of the person I was with. And the reaction of the person I was with made me feel really horrible and insecure for having shared an insecurity.

So, yeah. Do you think, like, somebody who has a pattern of going, maybe if there's someone out there that's listening that has a pattern of justifying the way things ended and they are looking back at these, you know, instances where maybe they have kind of blamed themselves in their psychology. I know I've done that. I'm really good at doing that. What's something that you could do to kind of like very like, there are definitely faults that we make in our relationships. But what's something that you could do if you're like kind of looking back and being like, wow, I've justified a lot of people's not good behavior towards me by my own, you know, problems. Is there any advice you could give to someone to widen the lens, like allow both things to be true. When I look back on the relationship that

I'm talking about, where I shared insecurities and it felt like it really backfired, when I look back at that whole relationship, I can very clearly see moments where I must have actually appeared to be very insecure or anxious and where that may not have been attractive. And maybe I did it too many times in a row where it became, it like wore this person down. So it's not that I see no moments where I go, you know, I should probably, I wouldn't want to repeat that in relationship after relationship. But it can be true that that's the case. And it can also, there are many other things that can also be true, which is, oh, this person wasn't, we weren't on the same page. This person wasn't as committed as I was, and that had nothing to do with my insecurity.

This person wasn't ready for what I was ready for. This person wasn't, like, I was willing to give more than this person was. There was part of why I was insecure was the relationship. And in a different relationship, I wouldn't be that insecure, which is, by the way, absolutely true. It turned out to be absolutely true. So I think that it part of the our brain won't allow us to come up with like bullshit logic. Like I did nothing wrong.

I said nothing insecure. I didn't like no, there may well have been things that on our best day we would not have done or said. But it doesn't negate everything else. I'm not coming along saying Mauro didn't do anything. anything that could have in any way affected the relationship because I can't possibly know that. There may have been things that he said that were detrimental. However, I'm also seeing a portrait of a person who seems to me to be profoundly immature when it comes to relationships. And you can't not, you can't see that and go, I was the reason it ended. You have to look at it and go,

I also was with a person who almost certainly isn't emotionally ready for a genuine relationship. And even if I'd been the most secure version of myself, I'd put money on the fact that that relationship still wouldn't have worked. But thank you, Mauro, for sending us this. We really appreciate it. I'm sorry that you're going through this. And someone better is coming. I'm telling you. Someone better is coming. This feels important right now. The only thing that will wind up being important about this person is the lesson you learned from the relationship with her. That is the only thing that will wind up being important about this to your life. So there's good things ahead.

We've got lots of things in this grab bag of an episode today. There was one here that David, you sent over from Reddit from the dating advice subreddit. The title being New York dating is a dumpster fire. I am done with $25 cocktails and ghosting. This is a 42 year old male who says, listen, I work 70 hours a week in finance. I don't have the bandwidth. So even then, I think like, why do, I'm not, by the way, this is not me. I don't, I'm not just tearing this apart for the, for the sake. of it, but I think it's worth saying. If you start with I work 70 hours a week in finance, you're already, there's an identification thing here that suggests this kind of entitlement.

Like, I work 70 hours a week in finance. I don't have the bandwidth to go to a bar in the lower east side, buy a girl three drinks, hear about her ex for two hours, and then get ghosted. I'm exhausted. I decided to outsource my emotional life, L.O.L. Used communication platform while waiting for the L train. Why would someone say communication platform instead of the platform? Is that a Reddit thing or? Okay, so used communication platform while waiting for the L train. Matched with a girl in London. We have have this agreement, we just rant to each other. I complain about Wall Street, she complains about her boss, we note back and forth on my commute. I'm not flying to Heathrow, she's not coming to

JFK, we both know it. But honestly, it's the most stable relationship I've had in years. It's quote, low maintenance intimacy. Am I turning into a robot or is this just efficient? Anyone else prefer a digital connection over the headache of a real one? There were some comments from people saying they thought this was like. The comments is why I included this one. Why? Why did you? What intrigued you about the comments?

Well, just like first off, somebody being like, to be honest, that relationship sounds pretty awesome. Like what the, the, just ranting on your commute to someone who's an ocean away. And somebody has a similar question to you. Seriously, what platform is that? And can I join? Let's,

you got to let us know what communication platform you're using. This is where we've gotten to that this is apparently a, advertisement for something great. For communication platform, yeah. I find there to be a lot about this that is kind of, I'm not sure. I don't have the bandwidth to go to a bar. Okay. Do you have the bandwidth to go to a coffee shop?

Do you have the bandwidth to, you know, go for a walk around the park and grab an ice cream? Like what that, I mean, that sounds like I don't have the bandwidth to date. You then say buying a girl three drinks. I mean, you don't have to go out on a date drinking. Hear about her ex for two hours. I mean, that's not, you know, if someone talks about their ex for two hours, that's not, you know, that's not ideal. Something tells me that that might be slightly exaggerated.

It does sound exaggerated. Or when he says, girl, he's referring to a 21. year old who is talking about her ex for two hours and you know she's 21 so I don't know but it's that does sound excessive and then get ghosted I'm exhausted I mean maybe you know partly it might be the case that is worth actually trying to chat to these people a bit more before you go on a date with them or don't go on dates that make you resentful. I think that that's a big thing. Like, don't take people on dates that make you resent them at the end of them if it doesn't go well. You know, it's kind of the same as sex. Like,

if you're going to have sex with someone and then be resentful, be deeply resentful about the fact that afterwards it didn't turn into a relationship, don't have sex with that person. You know, go on a date because you want to go on a date and go on the kind of date that if someone doesn't call you back afterwards, you're not like, oh my God, I would. I would. never have done that if I'd have known. So what is that kind of a date for you? And if you say, well, women in New York, they all expect you to take them for cocktails and whatever. Really? All of them? I mean, no one wants to go and grab a coffee and just take a walk and hang out. Like I, if someone, I've seen, by the way, some of the, I've seen some of the stuff online about, you know,

women, there's certain women on TikTok and places like that saying like, if I, if a guy invites you to coffee, don't date him. He's trying to give you a low investment. date. So don't, you know, unless he's taking you out to, I don't know if they said drinks or dinner or whatever, but unless they're like taking you out for the evening, don't bother. I can tell you right now, that person who has that mindset would, I would not have dated them. That would be completely uninteresting to me is the person who thinks that there's no, who thinks that the idea of going for coffee is like speaks to low, of course it speaks to low investment. we don't know each other.

It's a one, that's the whole point is that we don't want to overinvest right now because I don't know you and you don't know me. So if a guy thinks that he has to compensate for something by taking you to a nice dinner for a first date, that you might worry more about that guy and what that says about him versus the person who doesn't feel like they have anything to prove and says, yeah, let's go, let's go grab a coffee, let's go grab a smoothie, let's hang out for an hour. that to me is much more attractive as opposed to low investment if you want to frame it like that and if I reverse that and say for this guy who's saying you know almost making it sound like he has to go and

take someone for three drinks by the way not everyone even drinks let alone has three drinks but for this guy if you're saying if you're thinking you have to do that you don't have to do that and if you think you have to do that that's either an insecurity in your mind or it speaks to the kinds of people that you're trying to attract right now. And it might be that the reason you're so resentful is you're trying to attract someone or a certain kind of person from some wound yourself. Like, I need to date the cheerleader. I need to date the person who's the model. I need to date the person who's, uh, you know, uh, insanely objectively attractive and clearly has tons of options and is super young in New York City and is having a party all the time.

like that's the person I need to prove I can get. Well, okay, but then you're going to get that person, you're going to meet lots and lots of people who will go on a date with you, have three drinks, talk about their ex, and then never call you again. But you're selecting for that. So we have to start taking some responsibility for this stuff. We have to start taking some responsibility for the reason we're burnt out in dating. is because of the kinds of people we're choosing to date.

And there has to be some personal accountability for that. And I don't personally, if what you're enjoying is the low maintenance intimacy of speaking to someone across the pond and ranting about your life, which even that is like, I like the idea that it's not even like you've got this sort of, you know, pen pal that you enjoy like chatting with

where it's positive. and you just enjoy chatting and talking about your day and your dreams and your hopes. Even the low-maintenance version is this, it's basically just a void that you scream your troubles and your frustrations into. That, to me, is it speaks of a kind of generalized negativity that is an attractive in the first place. So to me, it's not just the way you're talking about dating that speaks of, wreaks of, negativity. It's also the thing that you've settled for is just a place to be negative, which doesn't make, you know, that speaks to your energy, not just the energy of dating itself.

On that point, though, I do, I don't want to come across like I was chiding this individual at all, because I actually think that the relationship that they found that is this digital one that they've outsourced is like, that's a big part of a stable relationship where you both are listening to each other's problems, maybe even a large part of people's relationships. And like, I feel like that this individual has found a key to what is good about having a stable relationship with someone that is like, you're equal. You both listen to each other's problems. You both communicate about, you know, the tough stuff in your life and you are actively

there for them to hear those things. You are being very generous. How so? Well, if it was like, you know, we rant to each other, I ran about my work and they ran about this. Because he, and then, and then, and, you know, in the course of that, we found that we were making each other laugh. So I'm going more rom-com with this, maybe, or like, no, I'm saying if that's what he said, like, in all of this ranting, we just, we, we make each other laugh. And we brighten each other's day. And fine.

But what he says is, matched with a girl in London, another girl, we have this agreement. We just rant to each other. I complain about Wall Street. She complains about her boss. We note back and forth on my commute. It's not exactly like rom-com territory. I like to think that this is some kind of grizzled New Yorker kind of pastime that is like, actually like, I am rom-coma-coma-farm. buying it a little bit. Like in my head, it's like they're perfect for each other.

Well, listen, I think I took it in my mind. Stay up to date with that forum, with that thread. Yeah, I'll check back in there. You let me know if one of them ends up paying the other one a visit. There was, uh, someone wrote a comment on the recent podcast we did, the five counterintuitive ways to transform your love life in 2026. Uh, Kay Cluster says, I would love to know of places to go and meet people, but are also great experiences for me to grow as a person. Since COVID, there aren't a lot of places to go. Also, I want to meet real people face to face and not online. Do we, do you agree that since COVID, there aren't a lot of places to go? That's an interesting statement. I do. Well, there is like, you know, a general commentary on the US that there aren't third places.

anymore. You know, like, yeah, like that those are in decline, a place that is not for either eating or sleeping. It's, it's for, like, it's a third place. And maybe that's what's being referred to. I'm trying to think what counts as third places. Like a park, I guess, is a third place or like. Like, where do nightclubs fall in that?

I think not that they exist anymore. Not a third place. It's like, I think it's supposed to be, I might be completely off on my definition, but a public place. It says third place is an informal, neutral, social spaces outside of home, which is first place and work second place, where people gather for relaxation, socialization, and community building. Like cafes, I mean, there's more cafes than I've ever seen.

I don't think we've got cafes coming out of our bloody years. Parks, I don't think those have gone away. Libraries, very few people are going to the library, I feel like. The good ones are. Yeah, yeah. The good ones are. These are cool. Or pubs.

Yeah. Fostering a sense of belonging, connection, connection and civic life through casual interaction and shared experiences. I don't know. I suppose. Maybe it's a decline in people's engagement in these third places. Maybe people are just leaving the house less, you know, more people doing things at home, staying in, watching Netflix.

So you want to know where you can go to meet real people face to face and not online is what this person says, but also a great experience is for you to grow as a person. So, look, I think, firstly, just stating that intention is really important, stating that I want to find more activities in my life. I want to get out and do more things, be in spaces with other people. There's a part of our brain called the RAS, the reticular activating system. And it basically is the part of our brain that is noticing what's important based on what we're we have decided is important. So, you know, this is the classic example is if I decided I wanted to buy a, I don't know, a BMW. I would start seeing BMWs everywhere because, and not because, you know,

of some law of attraction thing that all of a sudden the world is bringing me BMWs, but because my brain is now noticing all of the BMWs that were previously already there, but I wasn't noticing before because they weren't on my radar because they weren't important to me. If your reticular activating system is trained to notice opportunities to engage with other human beings, you're going to start noticing opportunities to socialize far more often. So when someone you don't know very well invites you somewhere, I just had this. I just had someone that I know I've met them once or twice. we're not close but they invited me to this event and it's a small event but it sounds really really cool it's an event where a bunch of people are getting together they're listening to a symphony

a piece of music and then discussing its connections to Nietzsche and it I have no idea by the way I'm not sitting here trying to sound smart I have no idea what that means I have no idea what that means I'm going to have to brush up and learn what is meant by that. But the reason I said yes is because I thought, what an interesting thing that doesn't come up very often. Like, that's not, that's the first time anyone's invited me to anything like that in a long time. That feels like really intellectual and interesting and cerebral.

And I thought, fun. Like, I'll go to that and just see what happens. See who I meet. See what I learn. and I'm sure I'm going to come away from that feeling like, that was really interesting. I'm really glad I went to that. Or I'll come away from it going, not really for me, but that's fine.

But either way, it's not the kind of thing that I get invited to every day. You know, my life isn't filled with those invitations. So I said, yes, you may not have one of those invitations in your life right now, but I promise you, if you're stating this intention of finding places to go and meet people that are also great experiences for you to grow as a person, your brain's going to start noticing them. Your job is not to be a perfectionist and shut down anything that feels like it's not perfect. Like, I read something about travel the other day. In fact, I saved it on my phone because I thought it was kind of a good, it was a good, like, tip for travel.

It said, it was like one of these posts that had like seven raw. but the rule number seven was when it comes to travel, go, even when it's imperfect. Most people wait for the right time, the right group to go with, and the perfect destination. And then they never go. Don't wait for perfect. Go alone. Go broke. Go to the wrong place.

Go anyway. And I thought, that's really good advice in general. And it's good advice for you who wrote this comment, K-Cluster. that don't be, don't be someone who shuts down opportunities because it's like, well, I wouldn't normally hang out with that group of people. Or, oh, I don't know anything about Nietzsche. I'm not interested in that. Oh, the art world isn't really my scene. Oh, like, don't shut things down. Just be really, really expansive and be like, yeah, fine, I'll go. Like, let's just see. Have that mindset right now. And I'm not saying, like, don't, the other mistake people make is they start thinking,

I'm going to fill my diary with three new things a week. I'm going to go to every gallery exhibition, art gallery opening, social event, this, that, cafe, whatever. And you're going to burn out real fast that way. So it's not about doing everything all the time. It's about picking your moments, but saying yes without being a perfectionist. Those are the things that are going to help you grow, because new people that you don't normally hang out with will help you grow.

New situations will help you grow. going and learning about something you don't know anything about. That's like picking up a book off the shelf that you wouldn't normally read. It's going to force you into new ways of thinking. You're going to get different information than you normally get. Most of us spend our whole lives reading the exact same genre of books. And we never really grow. It's like someone who only reads self-help books. You know, it's like someone can say, I read a lot. And okay, you might read a lot, but you read a lot in a very narrow area from the exact same part of the bookstore every single time you go. go and that's going to condition your brain into a certain groove. We have to get out of our well-worn grooves. A couple of other, I have loads of things for this. You know what? I could literally spend another hour on this. I won't because I'm doing an event this month.

I spoke about it at the beginning of the episode. It is called The Year of Love. I'm doing it this month and only this month. But the whole event is designed to help people realize that forget dating. If you want to find love, you need to create a lifestyle that attracts love into your life. And what does that look like? And how do you get out of your own way? How do you live as an invitation for love to come into your life? This is some of the things we're going to be talking about as well as attraction and a whole bunch of other things. But it's going to be

a great one for anyone who's like, I really want to guarantee or as close to guarantee as possible that I find love this year. If you haven't signed up yet, it's completely free. You can sign up now at mh yearoflove.com. That link again is mh yearoflove.com. This comment came through from Arnordell on the episode we did. If the breakup hurts too much, watch this. So if you are struggling with a breakup, go back and watch or listen to that episode. So Arnord says, I'd really love to see one for breakups where you still loved each other deeply,

but you broke up because your life paths were incompatible. For example, only one of you wanted children. Look, those are, it feels tragic, right? I talk about this in the four levels of importance of an inner relationship. The first level is admiration. The second level is mutual attraction. The third level is commitment and the fourth level is compatibility. It feels tragic when we love each other.

There's admiration, there's mutual attraction. We were committed to each other, but now we're really struggling at that fourth level, which is compatibility. And we really suffer a lot thinking back to the relationships where we loved each other deeply, but they just didn't work because of compatibility issues. And to be sure, those are much harder to get over

than relationships where you loved someone but it was really toxic or they broke your heart or they betrayed you you know it's it's really hard to live with the fact that there just seemed to be one detail that was misaligned and that was the reason we didn't work out but we end up being quite flippant about these things you know like it was just that it was the wrong time or it was just that they didn't want kids and I did or, but those things aren't small things. They're actually really, really big things. In fact, they were big enough to break up to people who loved each other deeply. And I think that there are, firstly, there are plenty of examples of people who love each other so deeply that they figure out those incompatibilities and they make it work anyway.

But there are some incompatibilities that are just too great. This all comes down to how you define who's the right person for you? How do you define who should be your life partner? And I define the right person for us, our soulmate, as someone who's more than someone we love, and who loves us. I define our life partner as the person who's actually willing to go on the journey with us

and who going on the journey together is a possibility because we are actually compatible. We're not the same person. We have different preferences in some areas. We may have different interests. We may have different ways of seeing the world sometimes. But fundamentally, our differences don't get in the way of living a happy life together. And what you're describing is an incompatibility that actually gets in the way of you having a happy life together, which is that one of you wants children and the other one doesn't. So that's an extraordinary really big incompatibility and it's one that actually denies you the ability to be happy together.

In my book, that's the wrong person for you. So I really don't agree with this idea of they were the right person, but to me there is no but. They weren't the right person. The right person has to be more than someone you love. The right person is the person you can actually make it work with. And that doesn't obviously take away the pain of the disappointment that a future didn't materialize with that person, but it does take away the exquisite, ongoing chronic pain and grief of thinking that that was our right person and they are out there living their life, perhaps with somebody else, walking the earth, and we're not with them. I simply don't believe that that person can be the right person.

And by the way, this kind of links to a different question that came through or a different comment, a frustrated comment that came through after someone listened to my conversation with Jay Shetty. We released this clip on the podcast. It was called Get Over the One that Got Away and Heal with Jay Shetty. And Jay was interviewing me. And I guess he asked me about right person wrong time. And I talked about this message that I just shared with you that, you know, there is no such thing as right person wrong. time. There might have been person I love wrong time. Incredible connection, wrong time. Amazing love wrong time. But there's not right person wrong time because the right person is the

person you can make it work with. Anyway, to that effect, someone wrote in Katie Kingster and said, Matthew, I feel like you continue to miss a huge opportunity in your podcasts to touch upon the fact that at one point you were the wrong time person for Audrey. I would love to hear how you apply that because it's easy enough for you to say right person wrong time is science fiction, which is the way I described it in that interview, when in fact that's the literal story of your marriage. And as an avid listener, I'm always hearing what you say and then thinking, yes, but what about your situation and how that turned out and you never address it. I'm not sure why you don't because you draw on all sorts of other personal experiences. I'd like to see a full video where you of you saying all that you said

in this one and then applying that to what you would have told Audrey back when you were fading and disappeared from her life. So this person is referring to the fact that early on when me and Audrey were dating, I moved back to LA or actually I never moved from LA. We met when we were in London when I happened to be back for the holidays in December one year. And we dated for a few weeks. And then I went back to LA. And, you know, the distance wasn't something that I was ready to kind of sign up for and commit to. And so I faded.

And, you know, I tell stories of the way that Audrey showed her standards during that time. Because I may have faded, but I still reached out to Audrey. after I'd faded and she was having none of it, David. She still doesn't. She still doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. No, I had somehow, I ended up married with a child.

So she clearly was having none of that business of me coming in and out of her life. But I was very quickly met with a standard from Audrey that essentially, you know, in her very elegant, eloquent, attractive way, which I've said, you know, in different forums. She essentially said, you know, this business of you fading and then coming back and sending me a sweet message isn't going to work. Oh, boy. And and so I then backed off. And that was that. And this person is obviously saying, you were, you know, if she had gone away and said, I had this amazing connection with this guy in London and it was amazing. We, you know, we were so into each other. And then, you know, he went back to LA and it's just so sad because I really feel like had he lived in London,

this would have been the right relationship for me and so on and so on and so on. What you're saying is that the advice I would have given her back then, if I were approaching it as a coach, would have been to say, hey, he can't be the right person. If he was the right person, it would work. If he was the right person, it, you know, you'd either figure it out or, you know, he would be living in London or you'd be living in LA, but it's not, you can't say that the person who disappears back to LA and then fades is the right person. That's the wrong person. And this person is obviously saying that that's incompatible with the fact that we did actually end up getting married. And of course, that could confuse a lot of people in the logic that I

present because they could say, well, then maybe I'll just keep trying with this person because, you know, you can have this person who it's not working with who turns out to be your person. But let me just state my logic very clearly here. At the time that I was fading, I was the wrong person for Audrey. I wasn't the right person. And it was only because we ended up reconnecting when I was back in London the next time. And during that reconnection, she basically said to me, hey, look, just so you know,

I'm really enjoying, like, seeing you again. It's so lovely, you know. But unless, if you're going to go back to L.A. this time and not be interested in actually having a relationship, then let's not do this again. let's make this the last time that we do this because it's been really fun but I'm not doing that again. And that forced me to assess how important is this to me. And, you know, what do I think of this? And I found it extremely attractive that she had that

standard. And it, you know, I kind of had this moment where I said, I'd be an idiot not to give this a go. and you know she helped me like reframe that with her language as well which is again we can talk about it at the event in January that I'm doing but it's you know she my point is she had standards she didn't chase me she didn't keep trying to make it work what she did was she restated her position and I was the one who came closer and it was only because I came closer that she She actually said, okay, I'm willing to give you a bit more. Because every time someone makes a move in the right direction, it's almost like the dial shifts more in the direction of right person.

But every time they fade, every time they say, oh, it's not going to work because I'm not ready. I don't want kids. I'm not ready for marriage. I don't want to live in this part of the world. I am too busy. I have a business that takes up all of my time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Every time someone makes an excuse, the dial swivel.

to wrong person. I didn't start as the right person for Audrey. I became the right person for Audrey. And I think that the point that perhaps you've missed in what I'm saying in all of this is that right person or wrong person is not a static concept. Someone could move away and not be with you for five years and nothing happens and you both date other people. And in that time, they're absolutely the wrong person for you. You can't tell yourself that's my person. They're not your person. If by the way life would have it, they ended up moving back into your town and you hit it off and you ended up having a relationship and that became the person you spent the rest of your life with, then they became the right person.

That didn't mean they were the right person five years before when they moved away. Or that if they'd have stayed moved away, that they would have ever been the right person. they became the right person because it worked it's very easy it's really really simple the right person is the one it works with it's really really simple um the right person is never the person it doesn't work with i don't this i don't believe that you know you're i don't believe i was the right person for Audrey when I was not willing to invest at the very beginning. I don't believe I was the right person. I think I got really, really, really fucking lucky that our paths crossed again and that

I got another shot at that relationship. But I don't think that I was the right person back then. And ultimately what you do when someone, if that in that example I gave where someone moves away for five years and then they come back, when they came back, you began a relationship with the right person. You didn't like, it's not like they were always the right person all along and now you've resumed your wonderful right relationship. It's like, no, they were not right for you back when they weren't valuing the relationship

or when they moved away and it was incompatible. That wasn't the right, they weren't your person. But now they are. Now they are. That's how I handle that. So hopefully that clears it up. Thank you for writing in. I hope I've finally answered that for you. Let me know what you think. Podcast at Matthew Hussie.com on any of the things that we have talked about today.

Do not forget to go and sign up now for free to the Year of Love live event. I'm doing this January. M.H. Year of Love.com is that link where you can go and sign up for free. That's mh yearoflove.com. Make sure you go and do it now before you forget. Once this event is done, it's done. It is not happening again at any point this year. So make sure you join it because this is going to set you up for the rest of 2026. And it's absolutely vital if you know that, you know, the one of the things that's most important, maybe the most important thing that you want to get right for your future is who you end up with. And you want to find it sooner rather than later.

Thank you so much for listening. This has been a fun episode. Enjoyed kind of darting around these different subjects. Let's know what you want us to do next time. And I'll see you in the next episode of Love Life.