Love Life with Matthew Hussey - Will People Still Love You If You Stop Putting Them First? | Rewind

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

One of the hardest things about people-pleasing is the fear of what might happen if you stop.What if someone gets upset? What if they pull away? What if the relationship changes?In this episode, Matthew, Audrey, and Stephen explore why so many of us struggle to set boundaries, speak honestly about our needs, and tolerate conflict in our relationships. They discuss how people-pleasing often begins as a way of feeling safe, loved, and accepted, and why it can become such a difficult pattern to break.The conversation explores the hidden costs of constantly keeping the peace, the surprising rewards of disappointing people, and why authenticity tends to attract healthier relationships while exposing the ones that depend on your compliance.At the heart of the episode is a powerful question:Who is in your life because you always please them, and who is in your life because they genuinely love you?If you've ever struggled to say no, worried about letting people down, or felt responsible for everyone else's happiness, this episode is for you.---►► Matthew Hussey’s free Three Relationships newsletter isn’t just about dating—it’s about creating a life you love. Get practical advice and heartfelt wisdom delivered to your inbox every Friday. Sign up for free at TheThreeRelationships.com►► Try Matthew AI for 24/7 coaching and advice anytime at AskMH.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well, we put a post out on Instagram. Would you call yourself a people, please, sir? And we ask them to leave a comment below and describe how that shows up in their lives if they relate to that statement. I love it. Stephanie says, it sometimes shows up as being inauthentic with how I actually feel in order to make everyone around me feel comfortable and content. But it doesn't do any favors on my self-worth and inner connection. and somebody called Sarah made a very similar point, which I'm going to read out because I feel like, you know, we can answer both of them at the same time. Sarah says, it stops me from being honest and sharing my true thoughts and feelings due to the feeling that I will disappoint people or cause conflict.

Yeah, I can relate to both of those. Almost part of me is like, I don't want to create a bad thing for everyone or create a problem or have someone think, oh no, Steve's upset, you know, because I think in a way, it's like, I'll feel bad that I've made them feel bad. I would argue, Steve, and you correct me if I'm wrong, but I would argue that that's a, it's, I don't want to upset people because I don't like how it makes me feel when other people are upset. Right. Right. So then there's like a, it's worth almost assessing our relationship with other people being upset and where does it come from? Why, why does it, upset me or why does it distress me when other people are upset? Is it because, and I think the answers

to those questions get really interesting because once you just follow them to their logical conclusions, I actually think you arrive in a much more empowering place. The problem is we don't follow them to their logical conclusions in the right way. So if you say, I'm afraid someone's going to be upset with me because they'll no longer love me, then you can follow that to its logical conclusion and go, well, if me disagreeing with someone means they don't love me anymore, then that relationship isn't nearly as valuable as I think it is in the first place. And if it's not nearly as valuable as I think it is, then my upset is misplaced. Or we come to the conclusion that, oh, no, this relationship is robust and this person can be upset with me and we make up. In fact, they have been upset with me

before and we make up. Or we could follow the logical conclusion that if they're upset, it's because they're learning a hard truth about themselves. But learning a hard truth about themselves actually is the thing that's going to allow them to improve. Any time I've ever had to learn a hard truth about myself, it's given me a genuine opportunity to grow and improve. But when people around me who love me, deny me a hard truth about myself, because they don't want to hurt. my feelings, they're actually denying me the opportunity to grow. So that conflict actually is a form of kindness in helping that other person to grow. I think what happens though is if we have learned at certain points in our lives that being around someone and pointing something out

just does more harm than good, if we have learned that all it does is make our lives more difficult and that that person doesn't change and maybe just puts it back on us and nothing shifts, then we begin to think we don't have any power in the situation and that anything we do is only going to make our lives worse, not better. And I think when we learn that lesson around certain key people, then we develop that instinct to either mold myself to the situation to keep the peace or just remove myself so that I can keep my peace while not having to stay in the situation, which makes it impossible for me to stay unruffled. I think it's super important to know where people pleasing comes from for the most part.

And I was in a session recently with somebody who really, really suffers from the fact that she's a people pleaser and as a result doesn't have a lot of boundaries, doesn't know how to say no and stand her ground. And, you know, it was really clear from speaking with her that it came from, it was a behaviour learnt from childhood that had kept her safe. and people pleasing tends to come from to our childhood, teenage years, traumatic events where we have learned that if we make sure that we are agreeable and pandering to people around us, we will feel safe and loved and accepted.

We can feel resentful of people pleasing, but it's really important to remember that it is, for the most part, it tends to be a behavior that's, you know, we've learned along the way to keep ourselves safe, So trying to unlearn it, we have to be a bit compassionate with ourselves for how difficult that is, because it's really counterintuitive to our survival when we're trying to do something like that. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I want everyone to know that I agree.

And I think, Audrey, it's always important that, you know, you always come in with this preternatural, beautiful compassion that is the basis of self-acceptance and grace and understanding why we are the way we are and to not blame ourselves for that it's really important because if you're coming if you're starting anything from a place of incredible of huge amounts of blame then it's hard to even do the things that would lift you out of that situation situation because you're taking all of your energy and directing it at self-hatred and self-loathing instead of moving forward. So that realization and that compassion for what may have contributed to you being this way in life is essential to the self-acceptance that provides the foundation for

growth. I do, however. Good way of saying but. I do, however, I do, however, feel it's extremely important that the, you know, Jurassic Park, Dr. Hammond says, I don't blame people for their mistakes, but I do ask that they pay for them. Now, I always found that line really interesting because we don't and shouldn't have to sit here constantly blaming ourselves for things. It's not productive. But in a sense, We, unfortunately, we do all have to pay the price for the things that we do, for the behaviors that we have. No one can argue that's not true. We all pay the price for the way that we are.

If you're a people pleaser, regardless of whether it's your, you were the original one to blame for why, you're a people pleaser, you're the one who's paying the price. Through all of the consequences in your life that you're experiencing right now, you're not getting promoted. you're not getting the recognition that you deserve. You're not getting treated the way that you should be in your relationship. You're not getting respect from people. People aren't changing around you in appropriate ways when they do things wrong. They're not apologizing. All of these things are the price that we pay for this behavior that we've at some point adopted.

So if we're the ones paying the price, we better be the ones to take ownership for change. changing it because no one else is going to. Why would anyone else be motivated to own that problem for us? They're not paying the price for it. We are. So we have to own that problem for ourselves and own that responsibility for changing it. And then the next question obviously is, well, how do I, how do I do that? I've been doing this for so long. This is a hardwired pattern for me that feels so ingrained. and so reflexive that it's my go-to any time. I mean, for many people in this situation, and I count myself among them, it's visceral.

It's visceral. There's a feeling that you get when there's confrontation. There's a, it creeps into some part of your body. It's very recognizable. You know it when you feel it. It feels like an involuntary biological reaction to someone yelling or to something not being, quite right in the room or sensing that someone's in need of something. And that's something that

we have to break the cycle of consistently for us to start making a new pathway. The trouble is to make a new pathway like that requires a kind of leap in the first place. It requires us to do something outside of the well-worn groove that we've been doing over and over and over again our whole lives. I think that the phrase that keeps coming up in my mind for this is that you have to at some point decide to live dangerously. And living dangerously is all relative. If you're mad at me and that makes me deeply uncomfortable and I want to fix it. Living dangerously is me not fixing it. That's living dangerously. Living dangerously is I'm going to take the risk that this relationship is going to be okay without me fixing this or that I'm going to be okay even if this relationship

isn't okay. If I'm in a romantic relationship and I'm a people pleaser who's constantly trying to do everything for my partner because I'm worried they won't love me if I don't do everything for them and I don't make myself indispensable with acts of service, living dangerously is risking that you'll still love me if I don't do this for you this week. Now, logically, we may know. that they'll still be there. But emotionally we don't. And there's a big difference. Emotionally, we don't believe that's true. Our trauma tells us that's not true. This person will disappear. Living dangerously is saying, I'm going to take the risk anyway. I'm going to risk that you not liking me right now will continue if I don't do this thing. I'm going to take that leap of faith.

And to me, that requires a jump off a ledge that we're not used to jumping off of. But I have found in my life that these kinds of daredevil experiments reap really interesting rewards and often unexpected rewards. Because when, by the way you do this and you get the unexpected, someone stays, or God forbid, they actually give you more respect. or you lose a relationship and suddenly you feel more peaceful because you lost a relationship that was robbing you of your peace anyway, it starts to give you reference points. And those reference points start to actually encourage you to do more of that thing. It becomes this kind of, you almost start to get excited about it because you go, whoa, there's this whole other world out there where I don't do this and other possibilities occur. And that, I've found that it becomes an exceptional.

citing addiction once you actually get used to living dangerously in that way. And when you live dangerously enough in that way, it actually starts to become a new form and a higher quality form of safety. You know, if you start standing up for yourself and being your true authentic self, you will attract, you will repel and sort of eliminate relationships in your life that are one-sided and probably a little bit toxic actually. And it's an overused word. But I think that's fair to say. It's also just important to say that you'll also be surprised by the relationships that respond well. Literally what I was going to say, I was going to say you also the moment you do that, you become a magnet for people who actually respect your true self and respect that self and that

person who stands up for themselves and go, oh, I really like this person. This person's got a bit of edge to them. They're not going to let me get away with things because it's human nature. You know, and I think it's such an important point to make, regardless of how much of an amazing person you are, we are all constantly pushing the boundaries with everyone in our lives all the time. Some people are more or less aware of this, but we're all doing it. And I think that by having strong boundaries being true to yourself and calling people out or, you know, when they're doing something wrong or speaking up when you're not happy about something and not people pleasing, you do become a magnet for people who respect that authenticity and that truth. I know that that's something that almost feels counterintuitive. You end up repelling people who just want to walk all over you and have a sort of slave master relationship

and an imbalance in your relationship, whether it be friendship or romantic. And you attract people who are looking for a relationship of equals. And I think that's one of the most powerful shifts you can make. But it is really difficult. So I have a lot of, you're going to laugh, but I do have a lot of compassion for it. Here's what I think, don't you want to know?

don't you want to know which relationships in your life are founded on mutual respect and a sense of equality of effort versus the ones that are only using you and only interested in you for as long as you agree with them don't you want to know i want to know i want to know i want to know who in my life is here because i always pleased them and who in my life is here and who in my life is here because they love me. That's worth knowing. It takes guts to want to know that, but I want to know. And the more, the irony, the great irony is that the more you are the person who's willing to find out, the more people love you. So true. Because they just want to be around someone with that kind of integrity in life and that kind of courage and that kind of confidence.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Before you go, make sure that you do this one thing today. I promise you that every week you are missing out by not doing what I'm about to say. I send a private email to a group of people who have registered for it every single Friday. The email is called the three relationships and every email is packed with advice on how you can improve in the three core areas of life, your relationship with other people, your relationship with yourself and your relationship with life itself. People really look forward to this email. It's not the kind of email people skip. People look forward to it in their inbox every Friday. Go over to the3relationships.com to sign up for that email for free. By the way, the three in that domain is the number three, not the word three. So the three relationships.com.

And I will see you in your inbox this Friday. Thank you for listening, everyone. I'll see you in the next episode. be well and love life.