Love Life with Matthew Hussey - How To Flirt Effortlessly in Everyday Life | Matt Monday

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

More and more people are saying the same thing: they're tired of the apps and want to meet someone in real life. The problem is that after years of outsourcing the earliest stages of dating to our phones, many of us have lost our flirting muscle.We're worried about looking awkward. We overthink what to say. We wait for the perfect moment that never comes. And we've become so focused on avoiding rejection that we often miss opportunities right in front of us. That's why, in this week's episode, I share 5 principles that can make flirting feel less overwhelming and a lot more natural.Not clever lines. Not manipulative tactics. Just small shifts that can help you create more opportunities in your everyday life. If you've ever felt rusty, awkward, or unsure of yourself when meeting someone you like, this episode is for you. By the way, I'd love to know: What's the hardest part of flirting in real life?---►► Try Matthew AI for 24/7 coaching and advice anytime at AskMH.com►► Join the Love Life community and get monthly coaching at JoinLoveLife.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I have never heard so many people say that they want to get offline and meet people the way we used to. In person. You know, the thing I have been talking about on this channel for nearly two decades. The problem is that for a while now, en masse, we have been outsourcing the earliest stages of our dating life to the dating apps. The apps have made us lose our flirting muscle by stealing the little ways we used to flirt with each other to create real possibility. Today, many of us are more socially awkward and anxious than ever. We don't know how to connect or start a conversation or do the things that will let someone know that we like them. We hate the idea of looking cringe and there is no sign over everyone's heads saying whether they're single and what they are looking for.

But if you are serious about creating more opportunities in the real world, I want to help you feel more confident in bringing a little flirtation back into your everyday life. And to do that, we have to find a way to make the whole thing less overwhelming. In this video, I'm going to give you five principles on the psychology of flirting and why certain things just work. And by the way, at the end of the video, stay tuned. Because I'm going to give you a line I came up with recently that I think is one of the best lines I have come up with in years. Number one, start small. Too often flirting is seen as trying to figure out the wittiest, most attractive.

thing possible that you could do or say. The apps have not helped. They have fed a culture where it feels like we only have a very short window to stand out before someone is onto the next person. But you can breathe because real life doesn't actually work like that. In a normal social situation, someone coming over to you and saying the perfect thing isn't necessarily going to be the thing that grabs you. It's the warmth and how comfortable someone makes us. Unfortunately, these days there are so many ideas out there that prevent people, especially women, from feeling like they can do anything. Black cat energy, women don't chase, vulnerability is weak, showing interest makes them run, all concepts based on the idea that showing your cards or

being vulnerable in any way lowers your value. Whatever you believe, I promise you, more opportunities will come to you if you take small steps to engage people, take yourself a little less seriously and stop thinking of flirting as this thing that you have to smoothly and perfectly execute. The night I met Audrey, my wife, I was standing at a TV in a bar watching a boxing match and she was the one who spoke to me first. She didn't say some brilliant line and she didn't come out with some overt compliment like from the look of your biceps. You must be a boxer yourself. She said, how does it work? I mean she didn't literally say how does it work. She gave me some, it was something like how many rounds are there in a fight or something.

It was some version of how does boxing work. And by the way, the fact that I can't remember exactly what she asked me about the boxing is kind of the point. It's not that important. What is important is that something begins. It all starts with that very first interaction, with someone getting comfortable enough to have a conversation with you. Don't think of talking to people as your.

way of going around and hitting on people. That will scare you and you'll never do it. Think of talking to people as your way of increasing your approachability. When you start small like I'm talking about here, you don't need to obsess about avoiding rejection because the rejections at this stage are tiny. You're just running little experiments. And if someone doesn't keep the conversation going, no big deal. But my flirting fish. Oh, hi. I didn't even even realize you noticed me. No, no, not. Sorry, married, flirting fish. Ah. But those biceps, I thought you were a boxer. Go on. But when we do this, there is a huge and very common flirting mistake that we need to avoid, which if we don't, can make someone so uncomfortable that they can't

actually focus on how great we are. Making someone scared that we are. Making someone scared that we are never going to leave. Which is why our second principle for flirting today is create space. Any time we start talking to someone, one of the most important things we can indicate early on is that we are not going to stick around forever. Warmth shouldn't mean intensity. Because the moment someone thinks that they're not going to be able to get away, their brain gets hijacked and they can't actually focus on enjoying the moment anymore. is a simple rule. If in the first two minutes of talking to someone, your feet are pointed directly at them, you are in danger of making them focus on how to get away. I'm not saying this is a rule

that you have to obsessively apply 100% at the time, but it's a pretty good indicator. What you can do instead is find a way to angle your body away from someone while you're initially engaging them. This was natural when me and Audrey met because we were standing side by side. commenting on what was going on on a TV screen in front of us. There was a semi-external focus. You can think of it the same way as if you were sat on a bar stall and you engaged someone next to you at a bar. You wouldn't suddenly, just because you started talking to them,

stand up and turn your stall to face them. Instead, what you would do is you would just turn the top part of your body towards them in the moments you were speaking to them, which could easily turn back to face forward. Another thing you can do to create space is break away from the conversation to do something else. So if you're in a coffee shop, go back to reading your book for a bit. If you're in a social situation, maybe you're at a party or a get-together, don't be afraid to engage someone else in the room or even bring someone else into the conversation with you and this

person. When you demonstrate the ability to break away from someone, you're showing that you're not needy, that you're independent, that you have the social ability to move between. people. And here's the important point. It leaves someone wondering if you're going to come back and talk to them rather than how they are going to get away. Our third principle for flirting is called indirect flirting or what I like to sometimes call the drive-by compliment. Too often we go in overly direct with people, letting them know how attractive we think they are in a very overt way. And it kind of makes it look like that's the focus for us.

Sometimes it can feel overly sincere or intense. But we do want to let someone know that we find them attractive or appealing because that's part of showing someone that there's something beyond the platonic here. The question is how do we do that in a way that feels a little more unfazed, a little lighter, a little more playful? How do we do it in a way that feels like flirting? We do it indirectly. So you might be having a really great conversation with someone

where it's really flowing, you can tell both of you are having a good time, and then you say to that person, you're really easy to talk to, even if I am occasionally a little distracted by your eyes. Ah, thank you. I knew you liked me. Fish, please, please. It would never have worked between us.

Hmm. The thing I like about this is you're introducing this like little bolt of electricity into the interaction. You can be quite matter of fact when you're being indirect in this way and you can just move on with the conversation. So the moment you've said the comment about that person's eyes, immediately you can say, anyway, the thing I wanted to say about that movie is, and then you keep going. And by the way, you don't even need to think as literally with compliments as I'm going to comment on this person's looks like you're so good looking. You can say something like, wow, that's so interesting. Yeah, I hadn't thought about it like that. I really agree with that.

That's a compliment. You're complimenting someone's brain and it's gonna make someone feel really good. Again, with flirting, this is a very important point. Not everything has to be so literal. Nothing needs to be overtly sexual or even connected to obvious sexual tension in order for it to be flirting.

If you want more ideas, is on how to flirt with people. Maybe you're texting someone right now and you're wondering, it feels nice, it feels fine, but it doesn't feel like it's got that chemistry or that bolt of electricity going through it. What could I send next that's more flirtatious?

Or I've got a date tonight. How do I show up with a more flirtatious energy? What are some ideas for conversation topics or things I could say or do? Go ask your question of Matthew A.I. It is designed specifically to help you with the most specific tailored situations that you find yourself in. So whether this is someone you've just met on an app, whether it's someone you've been dating for the last three weeks, but you want to bring a more flirtatious energy to it and you're not quite sure how to do that.

Ask Matthew A.I. How to do it. It will give you very practical advice on what you can do and you can even ask a couple of free questions if you have never used it before. So go check it out at askmh.com. The fourth principle for flirting is go slow. Look, these stakes feel so high in some of these conversations. We really want to find love. And when we meet someone we like, it's natural to get nervous. But when we get nervous, we speed up.

Speed is often a result of anxiety, of being too aware of ourselves. But seduction, sensuality, flirting, all of these things exist in the slower moments, in the pauses, in the things that remain unsaid. What pulls us in is this kind of ebb and flow in our speed. Here's one of the most important things you can learn for this, the ability to control your breathing. This is something a boxing trainer of mine, Martin Snow taught me. He even taught it to a group of women live on my retreat. Check out what he said. your spine, period. It's an animal instinct. That's it. You hold your breath to protect your spine.

Your lungs fill up with air to protect your spine, right? I want to change that, all right? Now, I do this. I do a punch. What'd you do? You blink. Why? You protect it in your eyes. Everything else is exposed. I want you to control your breath. Control your breathing. It doesn't matter how hard you work out small you are. It's guts, all right? And do you have guts? Absolutely. Because you wouldn't have come here if you didn't. All right. In position. Now, I think I'm better than you, right? Jab, jab, jack. Cross. But twist that foot.

Cross, cross, cross. And you're better than me. The other thing that allows us to play on pace is becoming really aware and present with what the other person is actually saying. Because when we slow down and we become aware of what they're saying, it creates space for flirting to occur. Awareness is what allows you to look at some. someone, make eye contact, and when they say, what? You say, I don't know, I just wasn't expecting

you to say that. I really like that. That's flirting and it comes from changing the pace. So leave room for pauses, moments of eye contact and just smiling. You can even take a beat and look at someone and just be like, this is fun. Those are the moments that linger and create genuine chemistry between to people. Our fifth principle for flirting is more mystery. Mo mystery, less problems. Mo mystery, mo mystery, mo problem. There is this culture in dating today of just staying too much, of thinking that when we meet in dating today, we're doing so for the purposes of giving all of this information about ourselves. This is my last relationship. We haven't talked in, because blah blah blah blah and now there's the added issue that when we meet people on the

apps or when we meet someone in person there is this tendency to think that we need to add each other on our social media that we need to tell them our Instagram so now they haven't just met us for five minutes they've instantly gained access to 10 years of your history being mysterious means not letting on everything about ourselves all in one go think about it this way less is more in the beginning That doesn't mean you're being inauthentic. It simply means that you're distributing information about yourself at an organic pace to a perfect stranger.

We don't have to tell someone all of the impressive things about us out of the gate. We can instead just live in the moment of what's actually going on right now rather than the energy of who we are and what we've done and what we've achieved. It's more about showing up authentically where you really connect with the person in front of you. be less focused on impressing and more focused on connecting. I think the self-development world is partly responsible for the oversharing we do. We feel like we need to share our truth about our life or about our feelings on things on date one. But no one needs to know all of these things on date one.

They don't need to know our trauma. They don't need to know what our therapist said in our last session or how your last relationship was. What they need to know is whether they have a good time. with you. Why do we watch an entire season of a TV series? We get to know a character a little bit in the first episode. Really, we just see them in a situation. And there's something about that character that keeps us watching. There's something about them that's captivating. That's what keeps us watching is that we're contextualizing that character as we go. But we didn't start episode one by having full context for why that character was.

was the way they was. And in the same fashion, you do not have to worry about contextualizing yourself on date one. Your job is to be a character that someone wants to go on date two with, and then as you go on more dates, you bring in more information that contextualizes the person they are now intrigued by. Alright, before you go, I said I would do this. There is a line that I came up with recently. On the fly, I might add, when I was at an event of mine, love, life, New York. This was an event I did for my members. If you want to become a member, I'll leave a link in the

description. But I did a private event for these members and one of them came up to me and said, Matthew, I have a situation where I don't know what to do. I'm trying to be more proactive. I'm trying to talk to more people. I'm pretty good at it in general. But sometimes I'm on the subway in New York and I see a guy and we're making eye contact and I do go over there and talk to them and it turns into something. She said, but sometimes it just doesn't work out that way. We're between stops. It's hard for me to go over there without worrying. I'm going to embarrass myself in front of everybody. Or it's only one more stop before I have to go or they have to go. And we've been making eye contact with each other. What do I do if my stop is the next stop and I don't want to miss the moment with someone who is clearly giving me signs?

I said, write your name and your number on a piece of paper. And there's one more line I want you to add to that piece of paper that is going to move. make it flirtatious that's going to create this confident, sexy vibe. And that line is this. One of us had to. Then as you're getting off the train, you give that piece of paper to them. I think this line is brilliant. One of us had to.

By the way, I think that could be used in a whole bunch of different situations. Don't forget to go check out from casual to committed. If you're seeing someone right now and you want more from them. You can find that at get commitment. leave me a comment. Let me know what you thought of this video. I love reading your comments and I'm going to respond to as many as I can and I will see you in next week's video.