Love Life with Matthew Hussey - (Matt Monday): “When a Relationship’s Right, It’s Easy” . . . WRONG!

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

What makes a relationship truly great? Does it have to be hard to be meaningful? In today’s video, I speak with Rob Dial, host of The Mindset Mentor podcast, to find answers. We talk about the difference between the kind of “hard” that strengthens a relationship and the kind that drains it. From navigating challenges as a team to recognizing when effort becomes sacrifice in the wrong ways, this conversation will leave you with a fresh perspective on what it means to build a lasting, fulfilling connection. If you’ve ever wondered how to create a relationship where both people feel understood and safe, you can’t miss this! --- ►► Get FREE access to my personal 3-step system to regain emotional control (expiring on August 20th): InsideTheRetreat.com   ►►  Grab your in-person or virtual ticket to the Weekend Retreat: MHRetreat.com   ►► Join the Love Life Club: JoinLoveLife.com

Me and my wife Audrey, we were long distance for a good two years. If we'd have told ourselves, you know, if it's the right thing, it should be easy. We would have missed out on the love of our lives. earlier was when you're around somebody, you can feel like, oh, you're more peaceful. And I was over at Lewis's house, Lewis's house the other day. And a few years ago, we were together and he was on my podcast. And then after we were talking about relationships, and I could tell, like, there was some chaos and stuff, right? Like, he was just, he was saying it to me, but there was an underlying energy. And then when I just saw him this pastime a couple days ago, I said,

man like you feel different like your energy feels different not like there's anything wrong before you weren't say anything wrong but like you just feel more peaceful in general and um he's like yeah man I just feel more peaceful like there's not you know it's not like everything in business was great but then there's chaos and relationships and um I think that's a really big point that that's interesting for me of like I always hear that relationships have to be hard and we had this conversation Lewis and I, and I'm curious, your thoughts on it. Do you feel like a good relationship has to be hard? Because any time I hear someone's been together for 40, 50 years, like,

oh, yeah, it was so hard, it was so much work. Not saying that it wasn't, but it doesn't require effort. But do you think that a great relationship has to be hard? Like, that's a prerequisite? Firstly, it's so funny you say that about Lewis, because he, I actually, when I was talking about that idea of going home for Christmas and, you know, people around you notice your mom. more peaceful. I had Lewis in my mind. Really? Because we went to a mastermind last year and there was

just a very similar vibe of people just really admiring the peace that, the energy that he brought. So he was so funny, you had the same experience. That's immediately who popped into my head and he said peaceful. He's way more peaceful now. 100%. And by the way, when you see that, the first thing you ask Lewis is, what did you do? What have you been doing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not a lover of the phrase when it's right, it's easy. Because I think it can get applied in the wrong way. It can make us feel like there's something wrong if we're having an argument. There's something wrong if we're really butting heads over something.

There's something wrong if we're struggling through something together. and there are you know some of the best relationships i've ever known have those people have struggled through some really difficult things together and not just facing a challenge outwardly together but facing a challenge towards you know within them right for the relationship i suppose it depends on what kind of hard exists right the the if you goes back to the teamwork point if you have two people who are a team and they're like wow we really don't agree on this but i love you and let's figure this out i'm really struggling with you right now but i love you and let's figure this out what can we do and we both really are seeking to solve this problem together

that's one thing but when you're in a relationship i was with um Dr. Romney last night, the world-leading expert on narcissism, who just wrote a book called It's Not You. And I was moderating her book event here in Los Angeles. And one of the things she was talking about was this idea of love as sacrifice, compromise, and accommodation, you know, the belief that love is giving you're all. is something that takes a very dark turn in narcissistic relationships. Because if you're relentless propensity to give

and to accommodate and to compromise for someone and to sacrifice for someone meets a force that endlessly takes, then in a relationship, like that it's not one day i'll give enough that they'll finally see my value one day i'll compromise enough that they'll finally compromise to that they'll finally reciprocate it's just a vacuum and it will devour you it's like um who's the there's a woman who wrote the book on the opioid crisis I wish I could remember her name but she said you know the with with opioids people think there's a like the typical thing with drug addiction is that there's a rock bottom when you hit that rock bottom you ricochet back up but with opioids there is no rock bottom there's you find out that rock bottom has a trap door and that trapdoor has a basement and it just keeps going and and that that is the same in these kinds of relationships yeah there is no there is no

rock bottom this person will destroy your life so some beautiful relationships are very hard at times because life is very hard and there we all come and get up against situations where life offers challenges to our relationship. You two really love each other and you want to be together. But you know, you've got a while that you have to do long distance before you can be in the same place. You know, me and my wife, Audrey, we were long distance for a good two years. Her being in London and me being in Los Angeles. Nothing about that was easy. It was hard. But it was a hard that we were willing to do together. So if we'd have told ourselves if it's, you know, if it's the right thing it should be easy it we would have missed out on the love of our lives but what's the hard

and do you approach whether the hard is out there or in here and between each other how do you approach the hard do you approach it as a team do you approach it with a growth mindset because if you do i think that hard becomes it because it actually ends up becoming the thing that you look at as a representation of how strong the relationship is without that hard you often never really know for as long as it's just plain sailing yeah if you're anything like me your brain is not one that is naturally just calm you get triggered life if you're not careful can turn into a bit of an emotional roller coaster and then we become reactive we make mistakes We do things we wish we hadn't done.

Not to mention, we just find that life is a lot less enjoyable. We feel tortured. We feel unable to enjoy our day or be present. I've had that feeling so many times in my life where I'm not able to really enjoy the moment in what I'm doing because I'm just spiraling emotionally. It's because of this that I created a concept I call emotional buttons.

And this is more than a concept. It's a set of tools that I use in my life every single day. I couldn't be more passionate about this particular subject because it's one of the tools that I found most useful in my life for controlling my emotions and for being able to put an end to negative emotions when I feel them and bring about really positive, beautiful states. I'm saying this because over the last 17 years, I have. been teaching a session on my retreat program all about emotional buttons as a tool and how to use it. And so many of you have DM'd me over the years saying that you struggle with anxiety, many struggle with depression, many struggle with self-doubt, and don't know how to get out of those states. So I wanted to do something for a limited amount of time where I took my session from the retreat on emotional buttons and shared part of it with you free of charge so that you can

just experience this toll for yourself. Whether or not you get to a retreat, I want you to be able to experience this tool. Of course, my hope is that you come and join me on the retreat because it's truly a life-changing program and this is one of many tools I give you. People fly from all over the world to experience it and you can experience part of that literally right now. by going to inside the retreat.com, which is where I have put this session temporarily for you to go and experience it. So maybe you're in an emotion like that right now and you want to change it, then perfect. The timing is amazing. Or maybe you just know you have a pattern of being on these emotional cycles in your life and you know you're going to need it again an hour from now and

tomorrow and the next day, in which case you can watch it multiple times before it disappears. go watch it while it's there it's at inside the retreat dot com and you'll see what i mean when i say that this toll has changed the lives of thousands of people who have been to a retreat who are now out there using it in their daily lives it's good because it doesn't have to be easy it doesn't have to be hard but the main thing i keep hearing behind everything that you're saying is there needs to be somebody who's on your team it needs to be a joint venture and you've both got to be willing to put in the effort when the effort is needed and I think what's really important about that is you know I think one of the things that holds a lot of

people back in relationships is is communication and vulnerability I think that a lot of relationships that I had in the past that I was a part of a ruining was me not being able to open up because of you know childhood trauma that I had you know I had I kind of had this subconscious feeling of like if someone loved you, they're probably going to leave you just because of patterns with my dad. And so that was something that I had to really work on with my wife. And being like, she's not leaving. This is crazy. But she loves me. She's still here. And it was like a, like you're saying, it was like a repatterning of me, actually more than anything else, repattering my nervous system to be like feeling safe in

non-caotic situations, which doesn't seem like you would need it. But I think a lot of people do need it. And I'm really curious your perspective on it with people who are out there. And I'm thinking specifically about someone that I know who is going through relationship, problems, you know, the husband emotionally cheated on her with somebody else. And they want to work on it, but they're still not opening up and communicating. And it's really interesting because they are, they're married, but they're not getting themselves to a place so they can communicate. And they're not communicating at the level

that they could communicate. And I think a lot of people are really afraid of being vulnerable even with someone they've been with for like 10 or 15 years. Like thinking themselves, but if they really knew me, like they'd probably want to leave me.

Do you find that pretty often with people? Even if people have been in relationships for a while, like if they only really truly knew me, they probably would leave me. And so there's like, you kind of know me 90% of the way, but you don't know that 10%. and I found that me communicating that 10% took a lot like a lot to get out of me

but we think someone's going to leave me when they don't you go oh holy shit I am safe do you find that that a lot of people are holding back in their their closest relationships and do you find if somebody really does allow themselves to go to 100% that it it makes them I want to say the phrase lock in or last because whoever knows what's going to happen but do you feel like it makes that that bond tighter well i want to commend you on saying what you just said firstly rob because it's really that's really really powerful what you just articulated and your audience is very lucky to have you in that respect because that's a very healing thing what you just said and it's so it's so honest and it's so vulnerable and it's so human and it's that there aren't enough

especially men out there let alone women who are willing to say those things not not least in front of a giant audience hundreds of thousand people yeah no genuinely i'm really that's really just impressive thank you i had the same thing yeah your wife's giggling in the background that's the best part she knows this all too well no i i i the truth is rob i always thought i was a vulnerable guy i never i never associated with not being vulnerable you know i i guess i would hear brine brown stuff and i'd be like yeah awesome yeah yeah it's great i don't i think that it's taken me a long long time to to truly be vulnerable it both publicly and privately you know i think i spent my 20s trying to feel like i

knew it all or at least trying to portray that image of knowing it all yeah and And it wasn't that I was, you know, what I was doing, I was very aware that what I was doing was helping a lot of people, but I just also knew that there were parts of me that I was worried the audience wouldn't like me or love me anymore if they knew those things. Of course, if I showed those weaknesses and those flaws. And I also didn't realize the extent to which I was doing that in my personal life.

I think that what I was always telling, stories about myself and thought I was opening up when I did that. But we can all tell stories that make us look great. Of course, yeah. You know, like it's sort of the funny, it's kind of the funny thing about a lot of self-development, right, is that our stories just, they're all a hero's journey story. They're not a story of, I've got this deep, dark thing that I think makes me weak or pathetic or hideous. And if I tell you, I don't know if you're going to still be it's not that it's always like you know i was struggling and now i'm doing great yeah here's how i developed the habits that i made me a millionaire yeah exactly but here's how how bad i was back then

it's always back then right you know so that that that's not real that's not vulnerability right that's i'm awesome look what i've done vulnerability is so much you know vulnerability because it's scary when you do it. You don't know how it's going to go. You hope it's going to go the way you want, but you don't know. You're just, you're just allowing yourself to be seen. And that took me time. I remember it early on in our relationship. We, you know, I remember getting like at the very beginning of our relationship, getting jealous about something and picking a fight over it. There was, I can tell you right now, Rob, there was no vulnerability in the way I had this fight. Yeah.

It was just my worst side coming out. Right. It was me being judgmental and a little controlling and a little, um, uh, and just hot-headed. And, and I just, I look back on it and I'm just like, if I look back on that guy in that moment, it's just a scared person. Right. Or it's a person that feels like in that moment, they're not enough. But they're threatened. Their safety is threatened.

And God forbid you know any of that about me. Because if you knew that, you'd think I was pathetic and weak and ugly and, you know, and yuck. You know, and I don't want that. By the way, I'd even had that in the past. I'd revealed something vulnerable in a situation just like that. And the, the irony is, I had tried being a little more vulnerable, and it backfired. I, someone literally looked at me and told me that it made me unattractive. Really?

And it's even worse. And it really, for a minute there, it really messed up my, it took the most scared part of me, and it rewarded its belief that if you let this stuff out, this is going to go horribly for you. Right. People say they want vulnerability. No, they want great. They want strong. They want, I'm a warrior who cries in sad movies sometimes. And I am never doing that again. That is the last time, you know. And so it, that, that unfortunately kind of rewounded me in that area. in that area and it I had to learn that with my wife in when we were dating that I could be more honest about something that had hurt me or scared me and that she wouldn't not just she wouldn't run away but she wouldn't stay and now think that I was unattractive because that was a

in some ways just as big a just as big of fear right you'll you'll still be with me but now you'll be looking at everyone else is more exciting than me yeah you'll lose respect for me in some way and now the outside world other men will remain mysterious and attractive strong strong from a distance and i'm the weakling that you know you know like that's the the core of this thing and and if i'm that then it confirms everything i think about not being good enough and you won't think I'm enough and you'll eventually have contempt for me and you'll leave me or you'll cheat on me or you'll flirt with other people or what there's a whole thousand teenage feelings yeah of course in there and and I I had to bit by bit learn to allow myself

to actually be seen and to understand that by being seen for those I want to say darker parts of me but not just darker in the negative sense but just those those more raw and vulnerable parts of me I had to learn that it she wouldn't just stay but that it wouldn't erase

all of the other things she saw me as it wouldn't erase all of the times I had actually been very sure of myself or confident or, you know, playful or sexy or, you know, bold. It wouldn't suddenly make her go, no, none of those things are true now that I've seen this. It would just be a way of her fully holistically seeing me and integrating all of that. You know, it's work that there are psychologists out there doing with people. you know shadow work that helps them integrate their darker parts into themselves right so that

when I look back on that thing that I did that I feel shame for or regret for instead of detaching myself from that and fracturing myself I can view that holistically and I can view it as part of me and integrate it I can see what was going on behind that that led to the action that I now regret or despise or don't you know can't stand to associate with but I see the me behind that and what was really going on and I can integrate that part of me and still find a way to love and have compassion for that part of me. Well, what if you applied that to your partner too? What if you gave them the opportunity to fully integrate all of you into their vision of you and the relationship and who they see you as and to truly view you

holistically? What I learned was that rather than make me, rather than this one thing that came out that moment becoming the truth of who I am like oh oh she found out yeah instead it was oh no i saw it's like i have this you know object and i turned it and it shined differently on this side and if i turn it again it shines there and oh this is all of you it didn't erase the other parts it just allows me to see you for the whole that you are and and love you even more and when she extended compassion even to the parts of me that I was at the time unable to extend compassion to myself for that for me was an extremely healing thing and it makes me sad to think of the version of me that never experienced that you know if there was a world where I never came across the person

the learnings the tools to do that and went through life thinking that I was having these kind of open vulnerable relationships but never really getting to the good stuff never feeling totally seen never feeling totally accepted it makes me feel so sad for that version of me and and i feel sad for that in other people who are in marriages who feel like god if you if you only knew you would hate me or you would despise me or you i wouldn't be good enough for you anymore if we can start to encourage people to first try to make peace with those parts of themselves so that they can begin to view themselves holistically instead of allowing this thing to be the one truth of who they are and even to have compassion for the thing that was behind

that action and where that came from if we could do that for ourselves first and for many people they're able to do that through therapy, then it also allows them to bring that to their partner in a way that your partner's still some of that, they're going to have a reaction to. And let's face it, some of us have done things in relationships that would hurt our partner to know. Or it would, you know, it's like even more difficult

when it's like the thing that I am judging myself for is something that, could damage our relationship or will damage our relationship. But the danger is that we spend our whole lives having fractured ourselves and never giving our partner the chance to see who we really are. And the irony, we could do a whole other episode on this, but the irony is that when someone, when we're able to truly be vulnerable, not just I did this,

or this is something in my past, but this is all of me that was behind that. And this is where I believe it comes from for me. And this is what I'm scared of. And this is what I'm still scared of today. And this is then it allows our partner to actually start to contextualize some of the things that we have done in our life that we have maybe hated ourselves for

or regretted or felt shame over for a very long time. but with greater context someone else can help us also to offer some compassion to ourselves yeah that's so fucking good just like because because when you actually sit and think about it it's like what we're all looking for is love and what we're really looking for most of the time is just love from ourselves and i think a part of that is just acceptance of all parts but sometimes we need someone to mirror, to be our mirror. And I think that maybe one of the highest, maybe one of the most important parts of being in a real deep intimate relationship that nobody actually ever talks about is that if you can get yourself to the point where you can speak

vulnerability, fully 100%, the parts that you don't love and accept, if you can see that person love and accept that part of you it allows you to get the healing that you are never able to get to yourself yeah yeah we do have to do a whole of that episode you're you're you're you're exactly right that's that's exactly right and really all that person is doing is is mirroring the kind of corrective relationship that has to happen within right yourself but they become a kind of representation of that and and it's you know it's a bit of a chicken egg thing right because we we don't always have the luxury of having someone like that in front of us at this moment which is where i think you know therapy or coaching can be really

valuable because that can that can kind of be an interim before having found a relationship with someone that beautiful in spirit um um but it can come, I think it's one of those things that can come from either direction. You can start from the inside out. You can offer yourself the possibility of it happening from the outside in, but you can't give yourself that opportunity unless you're prepared to be brave in the first place. Yeah, we're going to have to do another episode, everybody. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. And don't forget, if you were struggling with the things that we have talked about in this episode, the session that I'm sharing with you on emotional buttons is

one of the great master keys to overcoming that. The toll that I give you in this session is something that I use every single day of my life. I cannot stress that enough. And it has helped so many people that I've taught it to. You can get it by going to inside the retreat.com, which is where I'm sharing this session. So make sure to go and get it now while it's there inside the retreat.com is the link. Thank you and we'll see you next time. A Bhopi, Bhopi,

Bhopi, B. We're... Thank you.