Love Life with Matthew Hussey - The Most Vulnerable Chapter of My Life So Far

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

This week’s episode started as a quick 12-minute video about becoming a new dad . . . and became something way more raw. In it, Matthew talks about what surprised him, what scared him, and what fatherhood actually feels like in real time—messy routines, intense emotions, and a vulnerability he didn’t see coming.But this podcast isn’t just about having a baby. It’s about responsibility without resentment, how choosing the right partner suddenly matters in a completely different way, and that strange shift that happens when your “highest self” stops being an abstract idea and becomes someone you actually want to make proud.If you’ve ever felt the weight of a big life decision—or the pressure to get it all right—this one’s for you.---►► If finding love really matters to you this year, the Year of Love replay will give you a calmer, clearer way to think about what actually moves the needle. You can still watch it (for a limited time!) at MHYearOfLove.com►► For Love Life listeners, Cure is offering 20% off your first order! Stay hydrated and feel your best by visiting curehydration.com/LOVELIFE and using promo code LOVELIFE at checkout! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So this episode was not entirely planned. It came out of a YouTube video that I was trying to shoot about being a new dad. And I had all these points I wanted to make and things I wanted to say and share with you. And it was supposed to be like a 12 minute video. And at 27 minutes in, David stopped me and said, hey, we're nearly half an hour into what is supposed to be a 12 minute video. And we didn't know how to cut it down. Like we deliberated over it. My YouTube producer got involved and we called her and she was just like, you know what?

People are going to want to hear all of this. Make it a podcast. And so this is that podcast. It's more rough and ready than usual. It's more personal than usual. I go deep about my own life. And for anyone out there who is, wondering about what fatherhood has been like for me.

This is that podcast. So enjoy. Let me know what you think. And I do want to offer a kind of, I don't know the right way to say this. I want to offer a precursor to this episode to say that I have spent nearly 20 years of my life now, predominantly with women, but increasingly with men as well. but in the course of all of that coaching, I have worked with an extraordinary number of women

who really want to have a family of their own, who want to have their own child biologically. And some of them are in a place where fear has set in, that it might never happen. For some, they're in a place of panic, that they feel like their biologically. biological window is closing for that to happen. Others are in a state of extraordinary confusion about whether to do it on their own, whether to

adopt, whether to, you know, do IVF. There are so many questions that people have around whether they should continue to pursue that dream even if it's not happening in the way they originally intended. And of course, I work with many, many people for whom that window has already passed. and who are either in the middle of grieving the loss of that future that they had in mind for themselves or are on the other side of that grief in some cases and have already processed that. But I feel it's important for me to say if you're someone who fits into one of those groups that I've just mentioned and listening to a video of me talking about my experience of going through pregnancy with Audrey,

having a child and my early experience of having a new baby, if you feel that that would be activating for you, if you feel that it would trigger a lot of grief, anxiety, upset, that please feel free to not listen to this episode. You know, I'm so acutely aware of the sensitivities around different groups of people on this subject. And, you know, I don't intend now that I have a son to spend every video or episode of the podcast or YouTube

or every seminar I give in, you know, live talking about the fact that I have children. It, you know, I'm focused on serving you. So if you don't feel this episode will serve you to listen to emotionally, and you want to skip it and wait for the next one, I welcome that. And I want you to do what feels good to you. If you'd enjoy listening to me, talk about this and you feel you'd get something from it, regardless of whether you're interested in having children or not, or whether you already have,

or whether that part of your life has passed, if you just feel you'd enjoy listening, then wonderful. Either way, I'm just always happy you're here. I am so happy to be on this journey with you over the years, and I look forward to being on this journey with you for many more years. So thank you for listening. Enjoy it this episode.

And if you have not already, please go back and watch the replay of the major event I did this month called The Year of Love. This event was for anybody, anywhere in the world, who wanted to join me online for a free event where I really show you how to design a 2026 that sets you up to find the love you're looking for. If you are sitting here in January thinking, I really want to find love. It is the thing that I know would have the biggest effect on my happiness, my contentment. It would be this whole new part of my life that I would celebrate and have always looked forward to. But you're tired of what dating presents you.

You're tired of all of the heartbreaks of dating and the pain of dealing with the nonsense that comes up in modern dating. this event is an absolute must for you. So please come and watch the replay while it's still up. It's not up for much longer, just a couple of days. And I promise you it's going to set you up for an amazing year of joy and love in 2026. The link to go and watch it is mhyear of love.com. So at the end of last year, I went through what is maybe the most profound moment of my life? My wife and I welcomed our son into the world. Now, many people speak in nothing

but positive terms about having a child saying that it is the greatest experience, the greatest thing they've ever done. Other people can't wait to tell you about how hard it is. When we're in the pregnancy stage, we're wanting to strangle the 100th person who said to us, enjoy your sleep while you can. But what has it really been like? Where was my younger self correct to be terrified about having a child? And where was he completely wrong? How has my relationship with my wife changed because of this? How has it changed the advice that I have given for years

about how you should choose a partner? And most importantly, do I regret it? I'm kidding. For those of you who have kids, you might find it interesting to compare notes with what I say. For those who haven't, maybe you'll find it an interesting window into, one person's life experience who is extremely early in the process and for anyone who has fears about

what having children will mean maybe this video will be a pressure valve when it comes to the last point i make i have no idea whether any of you are going to relate because it's a little strange but we'll see i have been someone who for a lot of my life was scared of the really big commitments marriage and children being the two biggest i spent i think most of my life focused seeing on things that felt like they opened doors, whether it was like getting my driver's license at 17 and feeling like I could go anywhere or building an organization that seemed to open a lot of doors

or getting a visa to work in America and feeling like that let up a whole new part of the map for me in life. These things all felt like they opened doors. They didn't necessarily feel like they closed doors. And I had this very negative association with marriage, that marriage felt like closing doors. It felt like I was saying no to, well, in a sense, I was. saying no to every other person in the world except one.

And that that one was for life. And that felt really, really scary to me. And children even more so. You know, you can decide to get a divorce. You can't decide to no longer have children. So I was quite scared of these things. And, you know, I remember when I met Audrey, the marriage thing changed for me

because I found someone who I just at that point thought, well, I don't want to go through the rest of my life, not having my ups and downs without you. You are the ultimate teammate. I can't imagine doing life without you. And so at that point, marriage felt like a very natural thing, even for someone who never thought that they needed to get married and didn't have particularly positive associations with marriage. But even when we got married, the idea of kids was still scary to me.

I, you know, people would always say to me, you'd make such a great dad. And I always thought, yeah, but that can't be the reason I have kids. You know, it didn't really make sense to me as a reason to have kids. I thought that I need to have kids if I really want to have kids. Because if I don't really want to have kids, I'm not going to do a good job of it, regardless of how much of a hypothetical good dad I'm going to be. And at the time, I had lived with so much responsibility in my life for such a long time that I felt I couldn't take one more responsibility, least of all what felt like.

like the biggest responsibility of all is caring for another life. I felt I could not breathe with the idea of like having that as another thing in terms, you know, I had grown up taking care of my family in many ways and, you know, not having any safety net. And it just, I had so much responsibility in my whole life that I just couldn't take the idea of more. And I remember a therapist saying to me at one time, I don't think that you really know whether you could enjoy being a dad until you create space in your life. You can't connect to the joy of this.

He said, and he said to me, you're such, you're one of the most loving people I've ever met. You are so affectionate, you care so much about family. I believe that it would be an extraordinary experience for you to have a child, but you can't connect to that because your life is so full and there is no space for anything. There's not even space for enough of your joy, let alone for you to connect to the joy of somebody else being in your life. And this conversation was one that kind of precipitated me taking that creation of space seriously. I ended up canceling a tour that I was planning to do events all over the world. I started drastically reducing my travel.

I focused with Audrey on creating a more rooted life. And I became very, very conscious of who and what projects I gave my time to. And what it did was it gave me a little bit, not a lot, because I don't want to paint this picture like I took such a great step back that I had all this time. I didn't. But it allowed me just enough space. for some new feelings to emerge about what I wanted. And they were feelings that I think were previously submerged

under this like thick ice sheet of overwhelm and anxiety. And as it was told to me, you know, anxiety is an emotion killer. It had me constantly in fight, fight or flight as opposed to being able to connect to this sort of beautiful, deeply felt loving father mode that, you know, allowed to, me to even project all the ways that I might enjoy having a child. The other thing that helped me was Oliver Bergman's whole philosophy of imperfectionism, you know, not feeling like you have to

wait for the perfect time in things. There never will be a perfect time. David White, the British poet, talking about the idea of Nel Metso in the middle, that we're always beginning life in the middle. There is no such thing as like beginning again, you know, a clean break. It's life is all. Life is always happening in the middle. And that kind of allowed me to shed this idea that this should happen at a time when I have ultimate space and everything is lined up perfectly because that time would never come. I also think it's important to say to people that the nine months where somebody is pregnant is actually a good amount of time to get used to the idea that you're going to have a child. It's not like Amazon Prime where you place an order and, you know, it's three days.

later or tomorrow it's going to be here. You have nine months to kind of adjust and that nine months was actually really important to me. Of course in my typical Taipei way, I treated it like it was, you know, it became the deadline for all of these things that I wanted to do and ways I wanted to create more space in my life so that I could enjoy things when the baby arrived. Surprise, I did not do all of those things and I did not create all of the space that I wanted to by the time the baby arrived, which was just another lesson in imperfectionism and that idea of Nelmetso life is always just happening in the middle. You know, I now have a son in the middle of trying to create more space in my life

to have a son. That's reality. One of the things that I was anxious about before he came along was this feeling of, am I going to feel what I am supposed to feel? And I was quite scared of that. You know, I know myself and I know how loving I am and I know how I connect to people and how much things mean to me.

But I almost, I don't know. I had this feeling of like, what if he comes and then I don't feel all of these things that I'm supposed to feel? That would be terrifying. And of course, you hear stories from men who say like, the baby came and I didn't really connect at first and it took me a few weeks or months until the

baby started like, you know, doing things and smiling and laughing and giving me something, which I always think is a funny commentary on men. It's like, it was only when the baby really started to give me something back that I started to connect. But, you know, I also heard from a male friend of mine that he struggled a little bit in the beginning because he had this idea of all of these things he would do with his son when he came along. And then he realized that when his son came along, he wasn't able to do any of those things for a long time. It wasn't going to come out of the womb and then start throwing around football. He was just a ball of mush. And so people, obviously, for different reasons, can struggle to connect. And I, you know, I know there's no judgment there.

I think people, everyone has their own experience of that men and women. But I realized when when he first came, I had nothing to worry about in that department because the moment he came out and the doctors held him up, I just wept like uncontrollably. I was wearing like meta glasses filming at the time and I wasn't, you know, I wasn't filming the gory stuff but I just filmed the moment when the baby came out because I didn't want to be holding a phone and not be in the moment for that. And the whole video is just, the soundtrack to it is just me crying when the baby came out. So I felt an instant connection. And I think what I realize is there's a huge difference between biologically becoming a dad and

emotionally becoming a dad. And I was very relieved to discover that. that I emotionally became a dad extremely quick. I mean like that as soon as I saw him. And the interesting thing is all of those fears that I had prior to having a baby about, can I take one more giant responsibility in my life? Can I really bear it? And I was genuinely terrified of that.

That was a huge, I had to do therapy to work through that. I realized the surprising lightness of what is now the biggest responsibility of my life. I know it's a strange thing to say, but paradoxically it does feel like the most natural thing in the world to have this responsibility because he's mine.

It's a very bizarre feeling. I know how much how big it is and I know how much weight it is and I know it's the, biggest thing I've ever been responsible for. And yet, I don't mind. One thing I feel is important to say in this video is that my experience is my experience. I'm very careful not to start talking to people about what they should or shouldn't do. I think it's tempting to be on the other side of something in a blissful state saying it's the best thing ever. Everyone should do this who can. And I

am acutely aware, I mean, aside from the fact that so many people cannot do this or can't do it in the original way they planned or at all, I'm also acutely aware that I am one or two levels of support away from finding this much more detrimental to my mental health. You know, it's, it's not hard for me to see how someone could break under the weight of having a child. So I don't think any two situations are the same and I don't think anyone should recommend having children without a whole heap of caveats about their own personal situation with it. What is clear to me from the last two months of being a dad but also the last nine months of my wife Audrey being pregnant is it's never been more clear to me how important it is to choose the right partner

it's also clear to me that it would be so easy for me and Audrey to fight during this time because everything is heightened. You know, all those ways that you get frustrated with each other in normal life, you're now doing it under the conditions of being, you know, sleep deprived and not having eaten the last meal because you skipped it because you were changing the baby and now he's in a nap and you didn't get the chance. And it, like, there's all these things that heighten your frustration or your stress or your, you know, irritability or even just a feeling of overwhelm that mean that when you have something that you're not happy about with the other person's behavior, it, you're that close to the edge already. So I feel very fortunate to be in a relationship where we're really, really good at being conscious in those moments.

But it's not just heightened because of the conditions, it's also heightened because the stakes on everything feel really high. It could be during pregnancy and you're pregnant and you think that it's not the end of the world once in a while to have a very small glass of wine on a special occasion and your partner thinks that you shouldn't touch a drop of alcohol while you're pregnant. That has the potential to be a huge problem between you. If when the baby is born, one of you believes in circumcision and the other one doesn't. One of you believes in handling them this way and the other one doesn't. One of you believes in a sleep schedule and the other one doesn't. All of those things have major implications in that moment.

And now we're not just fighting about us. We're fighting over what to do with this person that we both care about more than anything. So if you're not aligned in these areas, this has the potential to be an absolute mindfield. It's why it's so important to have lots and lots of conversations about all of these things before you even decide to have a child with someone. I think. I'm not saying me and Audrey did had every possible conversation we could have. I think we probably skipped some important ones, but that's because we kind of know that we're on the same page about things anyway. I also think all of these things is why it's so important to think about

what it would really be like to have a child with someone while you're with them, because I think it actually ends up being a really important litmus test for whether you're in the right relationship, almost regardless of whether you have children or not. I think one of the most important questions you can ask in a relationship is one that no one ever asks,

and it's this, if we had kids together And I died, would I be happy with the way that my kids will be raised by this person? The values, the lessons, the outlook, the habits, would I feel at peace with the way that little person I care about more than anything in the world would be raised? and if the answer is no, that's a very damning thing, because it means the relationship is only working right now because of a whole bunch of things that you're ignoring. It also means, by the way, you're subjecting yourself to a whole bunch of values and habits

and things that you wouldn't want your child subjected to. And I sometimes think, well, if you wouldn't want your child subjected to all of those things, why would you want yourself subjected to all of those things? But there's a very, very important test question you can ask yourself in any relationship. For me, having a child with Audrey has just made me fall more in love with her because I've seen the way, you know, she handled pregnancy. I've seen the champion, the warrior that she was in childbirth. I've seen her as a mother in these last couple of months in, you know, show up in ways that I just could not respect more. And that's such a special thing, isn't it?

when you get to see your partner in a context, you've not seen them in before. And it just adds to the love that you feel in your relationship. I wanna talk about routine, because when I was making this video, someone on my team pointed out to me that not long ago, only a couple of years ago or whenever it was, I did an interview

with Ali Abdal, a friend of mine, and he asked me about kids. And I said to him that I was really afraid to have kids because of what it would do to my carefully constructed routines. And I was, this person on my team said, you should say what you think about that now because she said it confused me to learn, you know, you guys were having a baby when I had heard you not long ago say you were terrified about what having a baby would do to your routines. And anyone who knows me knows I'm big on routine.

I'm big on the things that keep me sane that I do each day and each week. So to anyone out there who feels this, who has this worry, including the many women who will relate to this because it takes so much out of a woman to be a mum, what would I tell you? You're right. You're right to worry about your routines. Your routines are not just at risk, but in severe, severe peril. Oliver Berkman, the writer of 4,000 weeks, said that whenever he hears a productivity expert in their 20s talking about morning routines, he always looks to whether they have kids. And if they don't have kids, he said at that point, their morning routine means nothing to me. because it's an ideal that I can't possibly try to live to as a person with kids. And that's one of the things I've just in the last couple of months learned is that my neat lines, my neat lines for how I construct my life and my days and my hours have gone out the window.

As have my neat shirts, I have realized that the concept of an uncreased shirt is history. That I hold him all the time and every T-shirt I get that's freshly ironed is immediately creased so I've given up on that standard. I have barely seen friends the last couple of months. I have once seen the inside of a gym

and it was a very average workout. I have had to learn what I imagine many dads have had to learn in their lives and moms that my carefully curated routines and processes need more give, because if they remain as brittle as they always have been in my life, I will break, not just my routines, my sanity will break. So what has helped me in this area is lowering my standards.

You know, I've had to make peace with, let's say, my workouts not being what they once were. I've had to focus on consistency over intensity and be like, if I just do something, that's better than doing nothing. You know, last Sunday I had a pizza for lunch, and then in the nighttime, I had a big, fatty steak with two really giant delicious cookies for dinner. And then I woke up on Monday, and I had a bit of a food hangover, and I did not wake up as early as I used to. And I was like, let me just do something. So I went out on a run for a couple of miles, and then I did some push-ups when I got back to the house. It was not anything close to my normal workout.

It wasn't super intense, but I am learning to be saved by consistency where intensity fails me. This is also part of learning to adjust something instead of quitting it altogether. There's a great example James Clear gives back when he had his newsletter that took him like, I think he said it took him like 12 hours a week to write this lengthy newsletter. and when he had a child, he decided to start writing a newsletter that took him a tenth of the time. But he set himself the challenge. Could I write a better newsletter in a tenth of the time?

And if so, what would that mean? So sometimes it's adjusting instead of quitting. And sometimes it's just quitting. Like, I've stopped doing jiu-jitsu. For now, that one's temporary. But I've stopped doing jiu-jitsu because it's just not working right now. I'm not finding the time to be able to do it. And also, I don't want to roll around with a bunch of guys and get sick at the moment and then get him sick.

So it's, there are certain things I've just stopped. I have had to be more agile in my life about how I meet my own needs. And the key lesson I've learned in all of this is to be loyal to what's most important to me right now in my life. instead of being blindly loyal to a previous set of standards I set for myself. So right now, if I get a choice between spending an hour working out or spending an hour with my son, I'm spending an hour with my son. And when I'm not with my son, I'm being focused on being ultra efficient with my time. One thing I've noticed about myself is I just have so much less time for bullshit.

If things are too slow or if I feel like time's being wasted, speed things up because I know I want to get back to him. Leave me a comment. I'm really curious at this point in the video. What is your greatest fear when it comes to marriage or kids? And if you're already at that stage, let me know in the comments if your fear that you used to have turned out to be legitimate or if you discovered you had nothing to worry about. Or if you want to email us here at the podcast directly, instead of leaving a comment, you can email us podcast at matthewhussy.com. I can't wait to read them. One of the things that has become immensely apparent to me is that support is a lifeline. Audrey and I are in the position that I know so many people find themselves in these days

when they have a baby is our family are all very, very far away. You know, we live in Los Angeles. Our family are all back in England and that part has been really hard. We were super fortunate that our moms came out for the birth and they stayed for some time. And it was so evident how much easier it was when they were in town and when they were with us. You know, we, we have really noticed how much harder it is when family isn't around. And it's also different when it's family. You know, it's so there's that inbuilt level of, at least for us, there's that inbuilt level of trust. and it's certainly easier for all I've said about not being able to stick with routines

it's a hell of a lot easier to stick with routines when support is there and when it's not that's where it all kind of quickly falls apart so it's then this is what I mean again by we have to be very careful in who you know who we take advice from about whether to do things or not because people telling us you should absolutely do that. You should absolutely have kids. You should absolutely, like, it very much depends. Your experience is going to be your experience. It's not necessarily going to be the same as somebody else

who has levels of support or safety nets that you don't. And we've certainly missed having family close to us during this time. It's like the one thing. I think the one big open question in mine and Audrey's lives is where do we? end up. And that used to be a question that felt like it was a few years, you know, like maybe a decade away. And now it kind of feels like it's, you know, I don't know. Is it seven years away? Is it five years away? I don't know. But it's that question of where we end up or where we end up,

do we end up splitting our time more with England? The family equation makes that just a much more difficult and complex question. What we've learned to do and what we're trying to do, I should say, in real time, is stay very present with the moment and say that we don't need to decide all of these things today. I don't know if there's anything like that in your life where you kind of stay up at night wondering, what do we do about that situation? What do we do? You know, am I going to live here? Am I going to do that? Am I going to change careers? I think that we can keep ourselves up with questions that we can't actually answer right now. You know, that gentleman I've mentioned a couple of times in this episode, Oliver Berkman,

one of the chapters from his book, Meditation for Mortals, that I really, really enjoyed, was the idea of crossing the bridge when you come to it, which is such a trite phrase, of course. We all know that phrase, and we've heard it a million times. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. But the way he describes it is he had a real moment in his life where he realized what, with this kind of profound realization of just how important that phrase actually is, the potency of that phrase, that there is nothing to be done right now.

You'll wait until you cross that bridge, if you ever cross that bridge, because half the things we worry about never even happen. But if you ever actually get to that bridge, when you get to that bridge, you will summon all of the resources that you summon at any other time of your life where you have a challenge to deal with it in that moment.

But the bridge cannot be crossed right now. So there is nothing to do. And Audrey and I remind ourselves of that, rather than sitting anxiously questioning what we're going to do, we go, whatever we're going to do, we're not going to do it today anyway. So there's no, we don't have to really ask this. We don't have to sit here and ruminate about this right now.

We can cross that bridge when we come to it. and that becomes a great recipe for actually existing in the moment right now. The part that I have found interesting is that even in times where we have support, I think that if you're a person who is prone to guilt, if you're engineered for massive amounts of affection and closeness, which I am, I'm prone to guilt and I'm engineered for affectionate. and deep bonding and closeness, it actually makes it a bit more complicated

than thinking that you can just, you know, get support as a way of, you know, mitigating all of the difficulties of having a child while experiencing all of the best parts. Because for me, I have this kind of ongoing feeling that I've had to manage. Anytime I'm working,

anytime I'm doing anything else, that I really want to be with him. And, you know, I've had all this fomo of moments when Audrey's with him and I'm not and I really want to be there and I want to be experiencing every moment and I don't want to be missing any bonding time. And, you know, I don't, you can't outsource bonding. You can't outsource love that, you know, you can't outsource your own love, I should say. And so I have found that even in times where like I know, we've got it covered because my mum's here and she's taking care of the baby. And when she's not, Audrey, is I still have this feeling like I'm missing out or I'm not bonding.

And that guilt has been, that guilt, not just guilt, it's not just guilt. It's like guilt and fomo. But the combination of those two things have been really potent for me. And I know that we hear a lot about mum guilt where moms are prone to feeling guilty that they can't give 100 people. to their child if they have a career or they can't give 100% to their career if they have a child. But I can tell you that I as a man have experienced both of those things, like feeling like I'm guilty because I'm not working. And then when I'm working, I'm guilty because I'm not with my son. So I don't know if we have any male listeners who have experienced this too,

but this is a very real thing for me right now that I am attempting to navigate. By the way, email if you have any interesting thoughts about any of this email podcast at matthewhussy.com and let me know I would love to hear from you. I'm also soaking up all of the wisdom I can around this subject and ways to do it better if you have any wisdom to share with me life experience I'd love to hear it or if this is an episode that's helping you with some things that are on your mind you may not even the subject of children may not be relevant or even interesting to you, but maybe as you're listening to this episode, you have had some realizations of your own about a different part of your life or a challenge that you're facing. The other thing I found really difficult was just going

back to work because I felt like in the first month, I was so enjoying in the first two weeks, I was so enjoying just being in this like sacred little cozy bubble of me, Audrey and our son that I didn't want to leave it. I didn't want to go back to work. And that was a weird experience because I've, you know, I'm usually someone who's kind of excited to get back to it and do things. And this time round I was just like, but I just want to be a dad right now. I don't want to do anything else. And I'm so fortunate that I get to work from home. Like that is. I'm one of the ways I've been squaring it in my mind is I'm so, so fortunate to get to work a few rooms away from him so that if I, you know, ever want to go and just see him, I can.

But it, I still, I miss him. When I'm in work mode and I'm doing my thing, I still miss him. And that's the hard part, you know. This last point I want to make is a bit of a strange one, I think. I don't know how many people will relate to this or not. I have this strange feeling like he didn't choose to be here. I and Audrey chose for him to be here. We decided to create him. And that means that I feel this responsibility to give him the best experience of life possible because I kind of feel like, you know, he's here now.

because of us. He's not here because he, you know, he like went to the life shop and said, yeah, I want to be alive. And I feel this almost existential guilt because I know how painful life can be. I know how hard life can be and how much suffering life can entail. I worry about the state of the world. I feel the weight of having brought a conscious being into this world who will feel the tragedy and the hardship that is inherent in any life, no matter what the advantages someone gets or how much you try to, you know, bubble wrap someone, you can't protect them from all of life. I know that there is so much beauty in life and I, you know, I've had this conversation with Audrey and she was like, well, aren't you glad that you got to be alive? Like, don't you think that's,

and I'm like, yeah, I'm so glad that I got to be alive. Like I, I'm so happy that I was born and that I got to, I'm getting to experience this amazing life. But I also know that I've experienced a lot of pain in life. And I know, you know, I work with so many people who have experienced so much pain. And so I, it's hard not to feel as responsible for the pain. And I, it's hard not to feel as responsible for the pain that someone is going to go through as I do for the good times that someone is going to go through and maybe you have to not think you're responsible for either but you kind of are because you decided to make this person so I don't know I I guess I'm saying this because I feel this enormous responsibility to give him the best opportunity I can to enjoy life I want to

I know that he's going to have his own struggles no matter what but I want to set him up to have an amazing life both while I'm here and afterwards. And part of this is, I think of as future planning. You know, in my family growing up and, you know, things were always very much like in the moment. And there was always this sense that we were fighting immediate fires. I don't know if you can relate to that in your family or not. But, you know, in my life, I've, you know, in my life, I've many a time looked at people who have a safety net, you know, whose families planned all sorts of fail safes for the future and felt a tinge of envy. And I know that there are some people who will maybe look at me and be like, yeah, but the fact that you had no safety net is what

made you great, you know, or something like that. And I heard it said recently by the comedian and Jimmy Carr, that you don't get to have an easy life and great character. You know, that going through hard things is what gives you character. But I don't want his life to be hard in the same ways that mine was. So I really want to plan for a future for him where his life has safety nets that ours did, or that me and my families didn't. And it's not just future planning I'm thinking about and working hard on.

I'm working hard on the energy that I'm bringing him now. I am so aware that mine and Audrey's nervous system, how happy, joyful or sad and anxious, irritable, arguing, you know, I'm so aware that our nervous system, is shaping his nervous system in real time. And, you know, there's obviously that idea that when kids are older, they're not learning nearly as much from what we say to them as they are from what we're doing.

But right now, when he's a baby, in a way, feels like the purest representation of that that there could ever be because he literally can't understand what we're saying. The only thing he feels is our energy. And so it's a constant practice of asking myself, what energy am I bringing him today? What is my nervous system teaching his nervous system today? What is it modeling for him? What is the energy between me and Audrey teaching his nervous system today? And it's funny because that's not just affecting me when I'm with him.

It's even affecting me when I'm not with him. He's affecting my behavior when he's not even there. because now I find myself in my life asking questions. Like, would he be okay? Or would I be okay, rather, with him hearing what I'm saying right now? You know, in this conversation with this person. Is this my highest self? Would he be proud of the man that I'm being right now?

And I don't mean right right now because I know he's a baby. It doesn't understand anything. But when I, that just a simple concept of having a son that I want to be proud of me, it has already begun to shape what I'm doing and you know create that that question that gives me constant like a mainline to my higher self so I kind of I'm curious to know your thoughts on this episode I hope it helped I hope it didn't feel too you know I I try to usually make episodes more instructive and you know, advice driven where I can.

This one I'm concerned is a little bit more indulgent. I hope you enjoyed it. I think to sum up everything I've said in this episode, I've never felt more vulnerable than I feel right now in my life. I feel intensely vulnerable and that vulnerability, it's terrifying, is living outside of me,

his own person. But I feel way more vulnerable. to the world and the conditions of it. And just to, you know, what happens with him, I feel way more responsibility in my life, but I don't mind, which is a wonderful feeling that I couldn't really understand before it happened.

I am getting overwhelmed sometimes, so it's something I'm having to manage. You know, there's, I feel this constant tension between my work, responsibilities, my responsibilities as a partner, as a brother, as a son, as a friend, and now as a father who wants to spend every waking hour being present with his new son. But the tensions between all of those things are very conscious tensions that I'm tending to in real time. And to me, there will be things that clash and there will be things

that get thrown out of balance. But as long as the imbalance, are conscious and I'm aware of them, then I know that I won't sleepwalk into regret later on about who or what I didn't give enough attention to. I was right to think that my routines would change, they have, but I've also mellowed to a point where I don't feel like I'm a prisoner to the plans that I've made in the past. So I'm much more comfortable adjusting in real time than I used to be. I know that a younger me would have had many more meltdowns along the way, when his perfect schedule was, you know, just smashed to pieces. Lastly, what I know is that I'm doing a lot of living right now.

That's like at the heart of what I'm feeling, is that regardless of how challenging it may be or how overwhelming it can be at times or how messy it can all feel, I'm doing a lot of living. And at the end of my life, one of the things that I would like to be able to say is that I did.

a lot of living. So that's it from me today. Thank you for listening or watching if you watch this on YouTube. Let me know what you think in the comments or emailing podcast at Matthewhussy.com. And I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. It is my pleasure to be with you here every week. Leave me a comment. And don't forget to go and check out the replay of the Year of Love while it's still available just for the next couple of days. Again, that link to go and watch it while it's still up is mh yearoflove.com. That's mh yearoflove.com. I'll see you there.