Modern Wisdom - #625 - Matthew Hussey - #1 Dating Coach Reveals The Red Flags Everyone Should Know

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

Matthew Hussey is the world's best known female dating coach,  aYouTuber, public speaker and an author. Choosing your ideal romantic partner is one of the most important choices you will make. However, men and women seriously struggle to understand each other, perhaps more than ever. Thankfully Matthew has spent 15 years coaching millions of women through their relationship struggles. Expect to learn what the women Matthew coaches actually want in a man, whether the dating landscape has actually changed that much over the last 15 years, how to build deep and lasting attraction, why more women are opting to not have children,  what men often misunderstand about women's mindsets, whether men should be more vulnerable with their partners, how to present your best self on your online dating profile and much more...  Sponsors: Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and more from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/wisdom (discount automatically applied) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://manscaped.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Check out Matthew's website - https://www.howtogettheguy.com/ Subscribe to Matthew's YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9HGzFGt7BLmWDqooUbWGBg  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Matthew Hussey, he's the world's best known female dating coach, a YouTuber, public speaker and an author. Choosing your ideal romantic partner is one of the most important choices you'll make. However, men and women seriously struggle to understand each other, and perhaps now more than ever. Thankfully Matthew has spent 15 years coaching millions of women through their relationship struggles. So perhaps he can give us some insight. Expect to learn what the women Matthew coaches actually want in a man, whether the dating

landscape has actually changed that much over the last 15 years, how to build deep and lasting attraction, why more women are opting to not have children, what men often misunderstand about women's mindsets, whether men should be more vulnerable with their partners, how to present your best self on your online dating profile and much more. Matthew is an absolute legend of this world and to be able to hear from someone

who has had a front row seat to what's happened in an incredibly rapidly changing environment is pretty cool. He did that super viral should men split the check, would you expect a man to pay for the first date? Video, like over a decade ago in front of a room of women that you might be familiar with, and he has just gone from strength to strength since then. Don't forget that you might be listening but not subscribed, and that means that you're going to miss episodes when they go up and you do not want that to happen, it would be treas bad. So go and press subscribe on Spotify or Apple podcasts, or wherever you are

listening, it really supports the show and it makes me very happy indeed. Matthew Hussey You are one of the best known dating coaches on the planet. How many clients have you worked with? Well, worked with, I don't know, it must be hundreds of thousands, but millions online. I think I've got about 8 million people that follow and half a billion views now on YouTube. Okay. It's crazy. Lots. So you mostly work with women because of that, if anybody has an insight into the psychology of females in the modern dating market,

that should be you. Given that you've been doing this for 15 years, what are the biggest changes that you have seen in what women want during that time? In what women want, I suppose I don't think a lot changes about what people want. But I suppose if I were to make a cultural observation, it would be, it would come up for people that how do I find someone who's either playing at my level, playing at my level or someone who accepts my level, whether it's financially or what I've achieved in my life, the work that I do, that's something that you know is obviously a modern day thing and I think a lot of people are asking how do I find someone who's not intimidated by where I am in my life.

What do you mean by that? Be specific. The I earn more potentially as a woman. As a woman. That I have a high status job, not everyone, but there's a decent amount of that of people worrying that they're either going to intimidate someone or they're proactively looking for someone that is playing at their level. It's hard sometimes to say whether that's because they want they genuinely want someone who's playing at their level. Or because they're just worried that if they find someone who's not playing at their level that person is going to have an issue with it.

You know what I mean? What's the, are women struggling to be attracted to guys that don't have that level of education, don't have that level of employment, that they do, are they struggling to date down, so to speak? From an attraction point of view? Yes. I mean, look, there has to be some. I know that I've spoken to very successful groups of business women who are really playing at a high level.

And sometimes in those circles, which by the way, I don't think the ultra, ultra high achieving, like Taipei, you're in in that like, you know, made millions of dot like, that's a unique group of people. But I have experience being in those circles where one of the first things I get asked is, well, how do I find someone who is also, you know, playing at this level. And I always feel like saying at that point, isn't surely the reason to achieve all of this is so that you can choose anyone you want, not so that you can kind of go, now that I'm in this top 0.5%, I need to find someone in that top 5% in a socioeconomic sphere. I always think that's a, to me, the reason to make money, the reason to build something or to just have a job that

takes care of you and your family potentially, is so that you never need that from another person. And then you're free. Then you can really go, who is it I actually want? Who do I admire? Who shows up powerfully in my life? And I think that, you know, sometimes I've seen people too narrowly define what they see as powerful. Yeah, an attraction. Well, fundamentally, there are certain elements of attraction for men and for women. Women tends to be status and resources. For men, it tends to be youth and fertility and looks. These things aren't completely un-malleable. You can change these things.

You can nudge your preferences. But yeah, I can see how increasing female achievement would mean that they do have that reduced pool of men. So if those are the things with regards to what women want, what else has changed? What have been the biggest changes from when you've been interacting with your clients, the dating landscape generally that have happened from when you started until now? Look, when I started 15 years ago, the apps weren't a thing. Dating sites were, but it was still, there was a kind of almost, you didn't want people to know you were on a dating site.

You might have been on one, but you didn't talk about it. That's gone. No one's worried. People hate dating apps a lot of the time. They're burned out on them. They don't want to necessarily be there, but there's not the shame that goes with like, I'm on him, I'm on Tinder, I'm on, it's just, it's like this thing I have to do and I sort of resent having to do it. That's how, there's a lot of people's relationship with it. So that's changed. The relationship with it is not I'm hiding it. It's how there's a lot of people's relationship with it. So that's changed.

The relationship with it is not I'm hiding it. It's just, I don't want to have to do it. What I think is newer, because I, you know, I've thought about this. I've thought, is there anything new to add to the conversation of what's changed in dating? but the looks aspect might have changed. Never have we been so capable of having the tools to change how we look online, on our Instagram, on our profiles. That is like, we, so there were some people that maybe years ago were really quite adept at making themselves look their best. In person. In when they were posting pictures even, like, oh well, both in person and in their dating

profiles. But I remember match.com back years ago, I don't know if they still say it, but they used to say, you know, I think they had like 18 slots for uploading photos. And their whole thing was the more photos you upload, the more trust you're building and people will really essentially get a good look at you and it's gonna result in more matches. And the less you have, the more it's like people are like, wait, how do they look and do they?

I don't know that that holds true anymore because these days someone can have an entire Instagram profile, man or woman, and you just don't know what they look like until you meet them in person. We have so many tools now to change how we look. And that has different implications. For one, it's sort of homogenized looks. So if everyone is trying to look, if like we've decided that this is what the fashionable look is right now, then everyone sort of starts molding or not everyone,

but a lot of people start molding themselves to look like that. So this is kind of in the same way that globalization meant that every town you showed up to had a Starbucks and a this and a that and every town started looking the same. I feel like that's happened with people online with this like a globalization of looks. It also means that we have this standard, not just we have more insecurity about ourselves and our looks because we're looking at everyone else going, I don't look like that, but

it's also created this crazy standard when it comes to what we're looking for and who we're looking for. Because we are now looking, we're like chasing this image that isn't even that person. And I find it's true of everything in life now. It's like true of Santorini. Like Santorini can't compete with Instagram Santorini. I saw pictures yesterday on Instagram of New England in the fall. Now, Audrey and I have, like we're excited

to go to New England in the fall. I've been here a long time, Audrey's newer to the States, and I wanna like show her the East Coast in the fall time. And I was about to show her these photos of New England in the fall. And then I was like, something doesn't look right about these photos.

There were these pinks that were insane. I was like, they can't, and then I started looking at the comments and there were just so many people going, I live in New England and it is beautiful in the fall, but it looks nothing like this. Not a big pinks, I don't know where they've come from. Yeah, and so when you look at that, you go, oh, that's a real shame, because if you're going

to New England and now you're kind of looking for this version of New England that doesn't exist, and you're sort of deflated or disappointed, even though New England is stunning in the fall, that's a bad situation to be in. So I feel like there's a kind of correction we have to do with ourselves these days, especially if we live a lot online for reality versus what we're seeing. Otherwise, we're gonna go, we're not just gonna go around insecure

that we don't live up to something. We're gonna go around super entitled that someone else doesn't live up to this impossible thing. Obviously, do you think that online dating profiles Instagram has skewed expectations of what people think that they should get in a relationship? Yeah, I think so. I think so. You sing this with your clients? I don't know. I don't know if I have a lot of anecdotal evidence for that explicitly, but I just think the more it can't not be true on some level. The more we all see, because it's true on things outside of romance,

the more we see people driving crazy cars and they look like they're on vacation all the time and we don't know when they work because they always seem to be by a pool somewhere sipping a cocktail. The more you think there must be something wrong with your life, you know, why aren't I getting that much vacation, or why am I not enjoying that life? And I think there must be, so we feel entitled to that life where we're not working really hard to get there and whatever, because no one's showing that, there has to be a romantic equivalent to that. What do you think that men misunderstand

about what women want right now? Hmm. If men, I suppose the more men are chasing these ideas of I suppose the more men are chasing these ideas of Fleshiness or you know, they see Instagram accounts that are like always some guy opposing by a car or a plane or some amazing lifestyle whatever I Kind of think the more people just become indoctrinated with that idea that these are symbols of what's attractive.

And it's true for a group of people. There are some people that that's true for, so that validates it. And especially when you're seeing those guys with women that are beautiful and that might be considered like the most desirable people, then you'll think, oh, that must be what's attractive. But I think that becomes this, becomes a sort of rabbit hole you can go down where you spend a life impressing or trying to impress, living to impress someone that is going to like ultimately make you incredibly

unhappy. And I think that's, that is going to ultimately make you incredibly unhappy. And I think that is the disconnect, I think, that happens for a lot of guys. It's a bit like the vulnerability conversation. That when a guy, I've been vulnerable in my life before with the wrong people. And it backfired. I've been vulnerable where I've stressed in a relationship and insecurity. And I'm thinking this is you know this is me being real, this is me being raw, this is me saying something that's upset me or made me jealous or made me insecure. And I've gone into that thinking this is good,

this is the kind of relationship that I'm told we should be having a vulnerable one and honest one. And I've had it really backfire in my life, where it was quite clear that the person saw me as less attractive after having said the thing than they did before. And at the time, I wasn't in my stage of evolution as a man today. At the time, it just made me go, never again. I am never being that honest again. That was too much. She didn't want that level of honesty. She wanted a cute version of vulnerability,

an endearing version, a kind of crying in the movie version of vulnerability, but not like I'm actually insecure about something. But I learned the wrong lesson that day because it was wrong for that person. They weren't ready for that. They were still in a mindset of not looking for a complete person. That was them. I wasn't strong enough in my own frame at the time to be like, oh, that means this person is not right for me. Instead I went, oh my God, I'm hideous. Deficient. Yeah.

And I'll never say that stuff again. But these days, when I look at my relationship now, one of the things I'm most grateful for is that I really can be me. I truly, the things that I thought, no, that's too shameful. Now, that's too, that's like, you know, that is definitely on the opposite end of masculine, strong guy. Like, those things are celebrated as much as the rest of me. And that has been like a that has been a life-changing thing for me. So I think that guys don't just get it wrong from

what's portrayed. They get it wrong from experiences they've had with people that they should never have ended up with or with someone that wasn't ready in their life. Someone is showing vulnerability unattractive. Is men showing vulnerability to women unattractive? How do women perceive this balance of confidence and vulnerability? Well I think it's attractive to the right women. I truly believe that. I think that no one wants, there's a distinction to be made. There's the vulnerability of, I have something that I struggle with, and I'm being open with

you about that. That's vulnerability. Telling someone 10 times a day, but do you think this and do you think that? That's ceases to be vulnerability. That's just what I think of as like dumping. Needs us. It's just, it's a, it's a kind of mutation. Because vulnerability is like a form of openness.

I'm letting you in. I'm letting you into my mind. I'm letting you into the things that I struggle with. I'm letting you into the battles that I fight. But when we're kind of dumping on someone, we're making them responsible for solving it for us. And that ceases to be vulnerability. That's kind of an abdication of responsibility. I actually think it's an incredibly attractive thing for anyone in a relationship, man or woman

to be like, I struggle with this, and it's something that I'm working on. Because then you're taking ownership of it. It may be from something you didn't create. It might be from a childhood wound. It might be from trauma you suffered growing up. It might be from any of those things. It might not be your fault that you have that thought pattern or that wiring, but there's a different,

you can say something's not my fault and still say I'm going to own it and I'm going to work on dealing with this because it's mine to deal with. When you do that in a relationship, I think that's a very powerful thing, but I think people confuse the two. It can't be except me at any cost. It can't be, I can make your life miserable with all of the things that I'm struggling with all the time, and if you don't tolerate that, the problem is you."

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are that you'll love it. Head to drinklmnt.com-modern-wisdom to get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. Do you find your clients saying that they wish that men opened up more or less on average? Do you think more? 100% more. There's a real yearning for men to talk more, to be more open, to be more vulnerable, to actually communicate more. What about to the men who say, I've heard stories like your one where a woman says that they love the idea of me opening up in the second that they do, they see me as the beat-a-mail underling, that I've always feared that they might do, it maybe confirms my concerns that I have

about being insufficient, therefore I'm going to lock this away. Or I say these things and they think I'm awful. There's things that I'm going to say to you that I don't normally say because I think they're a part of my past that I don't like. And you're going to now think I'm villainous. There's that too's that too. And there's, that's 100% gonna happen with some people. 100% there are gonna be people you come up against, too, you tell them something from your past and they go, you're awful. Who doesn't have something that they look back on

and go, I really was a shit to someone. I really was mean to someone. I really, I shit to someone. I really was mean to someone. I really, I regret that deeply. I should never have done this. I should never have done that. But what we want is to be able to meet someone in life who can make space for those parts of us. And to the guys that say, there are women who say they want vulnerability and then as soon as I actually cry not cute cry They're out. I I don't think there's someone who is capable of having a real relationship I don't think that's I think that's a woman who says that she wants a real relationship But is hasn't grown enough to truly understand men and

Truly understanding men might be understanding that there are some things you will or won't like. And also that there are parts of him that are very much not different from you at all. And if you're looking for someone who's bulletproof and strong all the time, then there's some growing up to do. Well, there will be men out there that are like that. The bulletproof? Yeah, there are men out there. I have a number of friends that range from totally emotional to completely unemotional.

And the ones, some of them that are completely unemotional, I believe that that's actually how they are, that there is a degree of ease with their emotions. They just don't seem to hold on to things. Things don't seem to affect them in as deep of a way as the sum of my other friends. So I suppose that there is a market for each different type of person. If you're a guy who is super emotional,

if you're one who has vulnerabilities issues from your past, you need to work on finding a partner who is going to be able to accept that. Well, that, yeah, I mean, that's kind of the whole game of dating and relationships is what kind of person you actually want. Whatever society is telling you as attractive or whatever your friends are telling you as attractive, you can find someone who makes you incredibly happy and your friends are like, really? I don't get it.

You know, like, I don't really, and that, unless you have a strong sense of self and of what you're looking for, that could throw you off. That could make you go, oh yeah, you're right, I guess this person isn't great. But five minutes ago, you thought they were awesome because they were right for you. And okay, fine, if there's someone that's, if there's a guy that's kind of like that, don't show emotion and doesn't need to indulge emotions and whatever, that's okay, but if you're a woman dating that guy, you better be damn sure that you don't want the kind of relationship that has a lot of emotional intimacy. That's really what it comes down to. When you talk about a guy like that,

I go, that's a guy I've never be close friends with because I'm not like that. I'm like a, you know, I'm a cryer. I'm someone who, I cry at everything. Weeper. Yeah, I am. But that's who I am. And so I like being,

oh, if you look at the pattern of all of my male friendships, they're all people that we can sit together one on one and have really meaningful, open conversations. So if you're a woman looking for that, as a man I know I'm looking for that. If you're a woman looking for that, then you have to look at that from the beginning and say, have I seen any evidence in the first three weeks of the fact that I'm talking with someone who can relate on that level? Or is it

just someone who's hot? And successful and charismatic or whatever. And I've said on the eligible bachelor test, this person ticks every box because that's a big thing. That there's a big thing around, are there super eligible? And then you have to step back and go, what does that mean? When you say they're eligible, a lot of the time when someone says someone's eligible,

they mean that they're single, that they're age appropriate, that they are successful or at the very least are successful in their world or in whatever they do, and that they're attractive. That's what eligible means. None of those things, barring being able to be a take care of oneself. None of those things have any bearing on how great the relationship's going to be. And yet, people in early dating invest based on these markers of eligibility, and it blinds them to all of these things they don't have, like, for example, emotional

vulnerability or communication. What are the most common traits that people find attractive or optimized for on the front end that don't have predictive power at making a relationship work long term in your opinion. Hmm. Hmm. I won't say it has no predictive power, but chemistry is wildly overrated. What's chemistry? Well, that's the point.

It's not easy to put your finger on, but for people who will describe it as, it's, you know, this feeling I get when I'm with them, this attraction, this spark, this connection, this... Sometimes when people are talking about chemistry, they're talking about animal attraction. Other times when people talk about chemistry, they're talking about this just deep sense of feeling really connected to someone. But the point is those things that are really hard to describe, they can be describing a lot of different things.

And chemistry may be necessary. It might be a box you need to tick. In other words, I have a sexual attraction to this person. There's a box you need to tick if you want real, a long term romantic relationship. But it's not a good indicator of whether it's going anywhere, whether someone has the same intentions as you, whether someone has the same vision as you, whether they'd make a great partner, and all of those things are the big things. Attraction or let's say attention, because when you have chemistry, you get someone's attention. Attention is not intention, and that is a big mistake that people make. We have the most amazing time together.

We're so connected. When we're together, sparks are flying. That says nothing about that person's intention with you. What are they actually looking for? What's their goal here? And intention, even when there's aligned intentions, intention doesn't equal investment. You can have someone who says all the right things. And I really want to be with you and but they can't back it up when it comes to actually being consistent when it comes to progressing things with you when it comes to making any kind of sacrifice when it comes to exclusivity, they can't deliver and that we make so many mistakes in early dating by thinking that we have all three of those things, when actually all we have is someone's attention and usually for sporadic moments. What are the most common complaints that you're hearing from the women that you coach about the men that they're dating?

What are the issues that they're coming up against most frequently. I suppose they're not ready. They don't want to commit. I want something meaningful. I want something that's actually going to go somewhere and this person is just kind of stringing me along or they can't seem to. A lot of people wouldn't frame it like this person stringing me along because that kind of, there's a hard thing to admit, but they may say this person keeps saying they're not ready and they're just not quite there yet and they're not sure. So I think the indecisiveness of men and the inability to actually commit is, that's got to be the top one, I would say. Well, that would run counter a little bit to a lot of what you hear about on the internet,

which would be that most men are struggling to find a date, that they can't get attention from women, that women are actually looking for attention from the top man as much as possible. And in my experience, this, you know, I've stood on the front door of a thousand events and met a million people across my entire life. You know, 18 to 21-year-olds, guys and girls aren't exactly known for their maturity, especially not in the UK, especially not when they're drunk.

And yet, in my experience, most of the girls, even at that age, were looking for, maybe it wasn't particularly mute mature form of commitment, but they were looking for commitment. They're looking for a guy that they could hold hands with and go away to a little summer vacation with and do Christmas markets in December. It seems to me that a lot of the concerns that guys have around what women want and the issues that they're facing don't seem to match up massively. What are the concerns that guys have? I think that the big ones are that they're not going to be found attractive, that they're going to be seen as creepy if they approach them, that if they try to do online dating, that they're not going to be responded to, if they try to approach them in the real world, that they're going to be seen as some Me Too predator, that she is going to trade up

because there is an endless hierarchy of guys that could fly her out to Dubai. There's some shake on the other side of Instagram that's going to DM her and put her on a five-star flight to take her out to Dubai. And this is the world that we live in now that girls have more opportunities than ever before because it's been afforded by social media, which means that the top few guys are going to eat

and everybody else is going to starve. I sympathize with guys on all of those things. I really touches me when you say it because I think that there is... It's a really hard thing for anyone to feel invisible. And what's more to feel like even if I'm briefly visible, I will become invisible again the moment this person comes across someone with more. And when I hear that, I come to two immediate conclusions. One is choose well, choose someone as a man who truly is, you know, one of the phrases Audrey used all the time when we were dating and getting to know each other, she kept saying as a philosophy for her life, I just believe in chasing the right things. That you will always be kind of punished, but life will always like give you its comeuppance if you chase the wrong things. And you'll always have to end up at some

point circling back to the right thing. It's just when you just decide to do it. And I've come to look at that as like one of my key mantras for life. I look at all the time, am I chasing the right thing or the wrong thing here? And I think that a lot of guys are struggling because they're chasing the wrong thing. They themselves, you know, it's, there is an entitlement among a lot of guys that I should have this. And the funny thing about dating is that we end up accusing each other

of exactly the thing that we're doing. And we really hate the other side for doing it. But it is exactly what we're doing. It's one community saying it's disgraceful how shallow they are. I have to be a certain height for them to even pay attention to me. And meanwhile, they're going, why don't I have the top one percent of women? You're going, what are you talking about? You just did exactly the same thing. You just said there was a top one percent and you're not interested in the rest.

That there is a hypocr- on both sides, there is a hypocrisy there that I really struggle with. And I think the more we can get to a point where we go, what are the counter-cultural compromises that I am willing to make in order to actually live a happy life? Not a life that everyone else says is so impressive. Not a life where I finally go, look, I made it, I'm dating the cheerleader. A life that's actually making you happy because you've selected for the right things. What countercultural compromises will you have to make for that? We talked earlier about, because I know, for me, I'm all about looking at that on both sides. We talked earlier about women who might say, well, I want to date someone who's at my level.

And I want to go, well, let's redefine what you classes your level. Do you mean your level for kindness? Your level for generosity, your level for empathy, your level for being loyal? Or do you mean your level of income? Because the things I said first will make you far happier. This thing doesn't really matter, but you've told yourself it matters. Now, could you make a compromise that goes against the grain? Because that is what... If we go online and we look at all of these communities, it's everyone arguing to me that's from the outside,

because I'm not deep in these things, but I know... It's like I hear second hand all the time, so you can always correct me if I'm getting it wrong on what people are saying out there. But when I look at it, I feel like so much debate is being had at the macro level. Of, here's how men are, here's how women are and here are all the things we can't stand

about the cultural norm right now. And when I look at that, I'm like, this feels to me, like if it was the business equivalent, it's like, I want to start a sandwich shop. And I spend all my time watching the news and the economy and the macro statistics and saying, this is why I shouldn't start sandwich shop. This is why you can't start sandwich shop today. Look at it. I'm watching the news all day and it's terrible.

Or the banking system's going to collapse soon. You know that, right? No point starting a sandwich shop now. Or constantly arguing about politics and who's in government. Oh, it's the Democrat. Oh, it's not business friendly. Oh, you don't want to be in California. It's not business friendly, right?

I'm not going to start a business in California. Like, does that mindset? And I have always, one of the reasons that I've always loved studying things from a place of curiosity. And that's what you do. You're a person, you're a curious person who's fascinated by how things work and why things are happening.

So I get that part I understand, but when people are complaining constantly about the macro of it all and that becomes their excuse, I always just think, do you realize that your life changes by what you do in the micro? If you're a woman and you're saying, men are always intimidated by me. I say in the macro, you're 100% right that there is an awful lot of men. If you're a high owner, if you're high status, if you've done a lot in your life, oh,

there's going to be a lot of men who are intimidated by you. That's 100% true. So I would never want to invalidate that. But on the micro, if you're telling me that men are always intimidated by you, something's going wrong. Well, who's the common denominator between all of these men? Right, now you could say men,

the gender is the common denominator is men. Men have a problem with this. None of my female friends have a problem with men, men have a problem with this. None of my female friends have a problem with this, men have a problem with this. But I look at that and I go, there is a way to either you're going for a certain kind of guy all the time, or you're going in with that as your kind of power

and that as your value, and that's the thing you talk about all the time. No one wants to go out with a rich person who talks about how much money they have. No one. No one wants to go out with a celebrity who talks about how famous they are. You want to go out with someone who has a conversation with you and gets to know you and is interested in you and is impressed by you. That's one of the most attractive things in the world.

Is you go on a world. People should go on a date asking themselves, how could I be impressed by this person? If you do that, and there was a writer friend of mine who used to write, I think he wrote for the Hollywood reporter or someone, but he used to say, when he would interview celebrities, the goal for himself so that he could write a good piece was always to go because he didn't care, he'd been doing it so long. It was for him, it was like just another person coming through the door with a movie. It long passed the point of having any novelty for him. But he would say, could I, by the end of this interview, could I get to a place of feeling grateful for having been here?

And he knew that the key to accessing that gratitude was fine, feeling like by the end of the time with that person, they had taught him something. They had given him some kind of life perspective or told him their story in a way that made him feel like, wow, I'm actually really grateful I got to sit with this person. He said, if I could achieve that gratitude, I knew that the article I would write would convey that. I knew it would be a good piece. I think that we could approach dating that way. But so many people go on a date and it's like, here's what's impressive about me. Here's why you should feel

a little intimidated by me. Instead of going, how can I show I'm impressed by you or how can I show that there's something about you that just, wow, that's really interesting, although I have a unique understanding of you by the end of the day. That's super attractive. It makes someone feel seen. That, taking, go back to our example, if you're someone who, let's say, is real, you have a job that intimidates people. You also have immense leverage in being able to reverse that, by the way that you are on a date with someone. And so that to me is always, for me, on the front lines of dating where I'm constantly helping people to actually go out there and find love, I always want to say to them, forget the news. Look at what's what are the things you could do to transform your dating life,

and it's it's wild how much you can do to transform your dating life, and it doesn't matter what's going on out there. There's a phrase that a doctor friend of mine used when it came to diseases in hospitals. He says, statistics don't matter to the individual. If you get a one in a thousand disease, it doesn't matter to you that it's one in a thousand. You have the disease. But I actually, from a dating perspective, like to put a positive spin on that. The regardless of how grim things seem out there, the statistic doesn't matter to the individual. If you as an individual learn how to be more proactive in your love life, you learn how to be a beautiful presence on a date. You learn how to attract someone.

Those statistics are not going to be the primary thing affecting your love life. We'll get back to talking to Matthew in one minute, but first I need to tell you about a product I've used every single day for three years now to help support my health and my nutrition, and that's AG1 by Athletic Greens. Even with the best of intentions, I don't get enough fruit and vegetables in my diet. I don't know if anybody does. An AG1 helps to fill those nutritional gaps and just make me feel more confident that every single day I'm covering all of my bases.

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five free travel packs and more. That's athleticgreens.com slash wisdom. Remember as well that at the moment, the same news, the same macro weather report is being absorbed by a lot of other people that are in the dating market. So this is a mental model I learned from David Goggins and he was saying it's so easy to be great nowadays because most people are weak and Dana White said something similar which was he advises his sons, if you are even remotely a savage you will run these people over because the bar is set so low. So think about the fact that there are some challenging times and some turbulence in the

dating market, which causes a lot of people to have a sense of abandon any personal agency that they have. I can't affect this. I'm at the mercy of the weather and it's going to blow me around. Okay. Reverse that and think the bar is set so low because almost everybody else believes this. So if I put a tiny nanogram of effort into what I do, I will separate myself out from the pack.

It's the same thing with guys that are struggling with attraction. I'm like, if you go to the gym three times a week for a year, you are probably in the top percentile of all men on the planet with regards to fitness. 180 minutes a week for you. Like, the bar is set so low for this stuff, and it is easy for you to separate yourself out from the pack, if that's the case. So you can use the concerns, you can use that as a litmus test to think, well, okay, those are the things to avoid doing. I know that if I do something that's even marginally different to that, if I do show up differently on a date, if I do take care of my appearance, if I do try and be kind and compassionate, because apparently women

say that that's something that they're struggling for at the moment, let's stress test this for myself. And another thing is that because people have retreated into online dating so much and so few people are going out and actually having interactions in the real world, where's any evidence to stress test any of the ideas that you've learned from the stuff that you've heard on the internet? Like the most egregious stories, the ones that are terrifying and make you worried about the dating market, quite rightly are the ones that get 100,000 upvotes on Reddit because they're insane, they're egregious, incredible and terrifying. Okay, well, has that ever happened in your life?

Do you ever know anyone that it's happened to? Apart from that person that's on Reddit, that person doesn't count. Like anyone that you know personally, and there will be some people that stories come from somewhere, some people will know that guy. Not many people. And lots and lots and lots of people. Very few of them have encountered any of the nightmare scenarios that has spoken about, but people use the stories

that they hear on the internet as representative for what they can expect in the real world of dating. Yeah, and that's very dangerous. I, you know, when you talk about that kind of, that whole group of guys that feel invisible, feel overlooked, I always think, what game is someone playing? What's the outcome? If the outcome is, I want to sleep with as many people as possible and I want to be the life and soul of the party. I want to be the person that has the most animal attraction.

Then you're going to struggle because not everyone gets to have that. But if your goal is I actually want to meet someone who's awesome. I want to meet someone I can have an amazing life with. I want to meet someone I can build with. It doesn't actually matter how many people find you attractive. It matters that you find someone who thinks you're awesome. Now, if you come from a place where you're so busy focused on how shallow some women are, or how much some women will only date up or will only date across all of it, if you're focused on that, that is going to dictate your whole life

because you're going to be miserable, you're going to be resentful, you're going to be bitter. If instead you go, you know what, there are people for whom someone showing, someone showing up with confidence, with kindness, with a boldness, because you don't have to be, being bold doesn't mean having money. It doesn't mean being successful outwardly. Being bold can just be, I'm bold in life. You're someone who has a level of courage. You're someone who has a really beautiful level of loyalty. I know there are guys who are going to listen to everything I'm saying right now,

I know there are guys who are going to listen to everything I'm saying right now, and they're going to roll their eyes because they're going to be like, try dating, try actually going out there and dating if you're, there will be those people, but I actually believe that, I really believe that, I really believe that, you know, there are people in my company that if they left tomorrow, might be able to go and get paid more somewhere. I can't stop that. I can't stop a bigger, more attractive company coming along and going, we're going to pay you double and give you more of this and more of that. I can't stop it and I can't compete with it. I cannot. I can't be the sexiest company in the world. But...

I just in my bones believe that... the people that... I'm supposed to work with long term are the people that see how much I love them, how loyal I am to them, how much I actually care about them? That I mean it when I say something, that when I say I'm serious about long term relationship

with them, I mean it. I know they could go to another company tomorrow and that person promises them the world and then six months later they kicked out. Because that's how that company is like yeah we'll give you the world but. We're also going to get rid of you if you don't live up to every single one of these. I know that so. I can't play the game of being the sexiest company in the world.

I can play the game of attracting people with the values that I have, that they will value. And the people that I want working for me long term are the people that whose values actually match with mine. Dating is no different. You may not be Apple in the dating world. I'm not Apple in the dating world. I'm not Apple in the business world. But your values, they really,

with the right people, they will be the thing that makes someone go, yeah, of course I could be with a guy with more money. Of course I could be with a guy who's taller. Of course I could be what I'd be insane to give that up for what I get with you. And there will be some guys who listen to that and go, oh, so I'm the consolation because they'd rather be with this tool that blot, that's insecurity talking because no one has everything, no one.

And that's you coming from the frame of reference that that guy's height matters more than the values you have, as you coming from the frame of reference that that guy's money matters more than the values you have, you've bought into that. And that's why it bothers you. That's why you feel like you're the consolation prize because you believe it. So you have to stop believing that. And I'm not talking, this isn't like, I want people to understand this.

I'm not talking about some isn't like, I want people to understand this. I'm not talking about some soft, like believing yourself mindset. I'm really saying that this to me is the real stuff. This is, this to me is like, you're tall inside. You have a tall personality. You have tall values. When someone feels that from you, and they feel that that energy is real, it's crazy how

much for so many people, what they thought they cared about yesterday starts to actually disintegrate. So, what if you started going through life instead of being the person that confirms everyone's suspicions, that those things matter more, What have you with a person that made them disintegrate? Because meeting you was like this, like, change someone's paradigm on what's actually important. And that is a thing that anyone can do, anyone, but you have to actually live by those values that I'm talking about. And you might have to make peace with playing a longer game

because it can take time for people to realize how important those things are. You someone tall, heart and handsome or whatever doesn't sneak up on you. They walk through the door and a lot of people go, okay, this seems like you someone I'd wanna talk to. But some of the things I'm talking about, they sneak up on you.

But when they land, it can change someone's world. I have in my own life started to, in the last few years, really just let go of, you know, whatever, the kind of comparisons that I might have made in the past or the thing for myself where I thought I didn't live up to that or I wasn't there so I wasn't, I'm an introvert, I'm not life and soul of the party,

I'm life and soul when I'm standing on stage because I'm good at public speaking. But put me in a party, I'm no longer life and soul. I never, I never have been, I'm never going to be. It's not who I am. There was a time when that bothered me. I was like, I should probably learn some more social skills that make me the life and soul of the party. I want to be that guy who can like, at a certain point in my life, I said, I don't care. I just don't care. And the kind of person that wants me to be that, for me to be in their lives, that's not my, that really isn't my, it's not my friend, it's not my male friend.

And I started to learn that I'm appreciated for other things, things that I maybe never registered were important, or things that I never thought were important about me. I started to realize, oh, that's it. Those are the things. Let me focus on that because spending all this time focusing on you know, it's a better-looking guy going to walk in the room. Is someone with more going to walk in the room, is someone you can play that game forever. And there always will be, by the way. There'll always be a Chris Williamson

who shows up with bigger biceps. You know, it's like, it's just the way it is. But when your worth is not rooted in that, it's the most liberating thing in the world. I wonder how much of this is related to age. I kind of get the sense that a lot of the rules that the internet works off get aged out and that people mature out of them and they learn a lot of lessons. So I need to make a little bit of an admission because for the last 18 months or so I have been

parroting some data from GSS that said between 2008 and 2018 the number of men between 18 and 30 that haven't had sex in the last year tripled from 8% to 28% and this is true, this was true. GSS data has continued to come out. Last week I found the 2021 data. found the 2021 data. From 2018, 28% of men hadn't had sex in the last year. In 2022, at 2021, that had dropped down to 17% of men. The number of women that hadn't had sex in the last year aged 18 to 30 was 28%. In 2021, now this changes the story as far as I can see about what's going on because the presumption is if young men aren't having sex, this is because they're not being chosen. Men tend to be the sexual protagonists, women tend to be the sexual gatekeepers, therefore if men aren't having sex it's because they want it but they can't get it. If women aren't having sex, presumably it's because they

can get it, but maybe they don't want it. So what's going on there? Why do you think it could be the case that both young men and young women are struggling to have sex, but particularly the young women, 28% of 18 to 30 year old women didn't have sex during 2021. Do you have a theory? I'm just curious. My current working theory for a lot of this stuff is that there's generalized risk a version disorder, grad, which is something I've completely made up, but that a world where Netflix, Amazon Prime, Uber Eats, DoorDash, social media, video games,

porn for men specifically, has turned down the amount of risk and discomfort that most people face in their everyday lives. That means that stepping out of the house to maybe go to a party, well, you've got the competition of the new season of succession on HBO to compete with, you know, it's pretty high bar. That's quite a thing to compete.

Fucking good season. I don't want to compete with succession. No, me neither. So, okay, well, first off, I'm probably going to leave the house less. Secondly, if I do go to a party, I'm going to be on my phone more, which makes me less approachable. Thirdly, if I am there, I don't have the social skills to be interpersonally interesting and leave the cues, the very subtle

cues that you need to in order to be able to get people to come speak to you. Fourthly, while you're there, if you do begin to flirt, it's an incredibly delicate dance that you've got to do. It's push and pull, it's tees, it's leaving sort of wistful intrigue and playing and all that stuff. It's a very delicate thing to do. It's very skillful. It requires a lot of skill to do. None of these things are being developed at the moment. And the reason that I could see that women particularly, especially in 2021, to put my evolutionary psychologists

hat on, I would say increased pathology, a pathogen aversion. So women's disgust threshold is lower than men's because they are more fragile from a physicality standpoint, which means that they tend to be more easily disgusted, especially by the presence of disease. And there was a... I didn't know that, is that real?

That's a thing. Of course, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That women, I mean, think about it. Like, you know, how many girls get grossed out by films compared with guys? Like, if you just took 100 guys and 100 girls, you would presume that more girls

would get grossed out by the same thing. I just thought that was because men are more disgusting. Perhaps, that could also be it. Yeah, I didn't consider that. But just, I think that there's definitely a little bit of hangover from COVID. One of the other sex, so all of the stuff that I mentioned there about, you know, the social media, the introversion, this sort of time that you spend sat on the couch watching the TV.

None of that would explain a sex difference. The pathogen thing would do. I wonder how much of a post-MeToo world girls are becoming increasingly worried about being intimate with a guy. I wonder whether we're facing a bit of an intimacy crisis, whether girls' fire alarms are maybe being triggered unnecessarily. In some regards, there are a lot of stories from all over the world about what happens if you end up being alone with a guy and it's concerning and so on and so forth, which might just cause girls to check out of the dating market generally. It's possible I'm contributing to the problem. Why? Why? What are you doing? It's creeping

women out. No, I think, no, I mean, I'm joking because I'm a drop in the ocean, but I, you know, I mean, I'm joking because I'm a drop in the ocean, but I, you know, I don't think this is true, but I'd almost like to believe that more women are being honest with themselves about what they are actually looking for and when they are presented with something that doesn't represent that. And that's not to say, you know, in the age group we're talking about, there'll be plenty of women who are just having fun and doing their thing, but, you know, for women looking for a relationship, there's a lot of sex had by people looking for a relationship that isn't going anywhere. And I like to believe that there's an evolution happening where people are saying no to things

that don't represent any actual, I don't think that's's an evolution happening where people are saying no to things that don't represent any actual, I don't think that's true by the way. No, but I like it would be nice to think that a lot more people are saying you know what, you don't want the same thing as me. So I'm not gonna keep sleeping with you just because you're charismatic even though ultimately I'm gonna end up hurt at the end of this. Okay, so if the bar is raised for what women expect from a partner, especially if it's a casual partner, especially if it's when they're young, this would cause them to not just decide to do it because, well, I'm lonely or because well, he's good-looking or because well, whatever.

Yeah, if they were, and I don't think that's true, but if, if, if people said to themselves, you know what, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna focus on my north star. What I want right now is, like I made a video recently about someone, I forget what the age gap was, but it was a woman in her 30s who met a guy in like 10 years younger. He's in his early 20s. And this person was like, I really want a family, I want marriage, I, you know, but this guy's amazing. And I just remember thinking you've completely lost touch with your North Star.

You, the chances of, no, I don't care how much of an old head this person has on his shoulders. He's 21. There's the chances of this person blossoming into a long term committed relationship of marriage and kids is minuscule. So this just feels like you're betraying your own goals. And that happens a lot. That is one of the most common things that happens, is people lowering their standards for something that feels good in the moment, but does absolutely doesn't align with their goals. And a lot of the time people are lying to themselves about the fact that it doesn't align with their goals.

Because they're just happy to have something that feels good right now. And one of the problems of dating is that especially if you haven't had anyone come along in a while that has excited you. When someone does come along, but they're in the complete wrong package, you'll just, you become the most biased judge in the world. You're like, ah, you know, and you start figuring out a way. You have to do the dishes. You'd love to say, I'm going to make a fantastic dad. Meanwhile, he's never once suggested that he even likes kids. Yeah, if he actively pushes them into open traffic. So, I mean, the bottom line, man, is that with that data, and this is the first time

that I've spoken about it on the show, and it's a big deal to reverse that trend from, you know, guys being the ones that were having less sex, 18 to 30 to girls. 2022 will be fascinating, I think we'll be out the other side of the COVID stuff. But the bottom line is that that's what the GSS data says, and it's pretty reliable. And everybody, every single person, was totally happy to accept when it was guys that were on the receiving end of this sexlessness crisis. But it seems like, you know, in 2021, 83% of guys aged 18 to 30 did have sex at some point during that year.

So we need to concede, okay, that something is going on, something has changed, and it's it's women that are being averse to this. I really don't know what's going on, but one of the things that we've spoken about so much has been online dating, somewhere around between 14-60% of relationships now begin online. What are you hearing from women about their experiences with online dating and messaging and guys demeanor and what they're getting right and wrong. I think that you could caricature things a little and say that there's an enormous number of guys

who go to dating apps for sex and that it's less likely that on mass and it depends on age group, obviously. But an age where people tend to start looking for relationships and women start to really seriously think about why, I do actually really want a relationship. I'm not saying men don't get to the same point,

but I believe that there's more guys who are on dating apps just going, I'm just here because I want to hook up. And that, that I think results in a lot of just people are just completely misaligned when they're talking in those places. There's a lot of guys, there's a lot of bad behavior from guys who are hiding behind the screen. We know that. And that's because they're able to do things that would never dare do out there in the world.

How's that affecting women? How's that affecting their behavior, their view of men in relationship? I think it's skews their perception of what guys are actually like. Because they're getting that from a decent proportion of guys, and it's making them think, well, there are no decent guys. Like this is just horrendous, but there are decent guys. And they may be, those guys, unfortunately, some of them, at least, will feel completely overlooked in those places, but there's an awful

lot of women, I think, that come away with a really tarnished view of what men are like. And I also think, like, for some guys, I mean, maybe for all, but what they do in that environment when they feel like no one is, there's no repercussions, I feel like that's indicative of how they actually feel about women, or how they, you know, there's no repercussions. I feel like that's indicative of how they actually feel about women or how they, you know, that's indicative of their deeper relationship with women. Because all, or an ignorance, it could just be an ignorance too, that they're not educated, they've never been taught. This is, this is what it's like to be on the receiving end of this. Like, this is what that experience actually is be on the receiving end of this.

This is what that experience actually is. I don't think most men actually have any bearing on that when they're doing it. And it's not all men, but the men that do it. I think they're not connected to the effects of that. Okay, so step into the guys who are struggling with dating online. What should they be doing if they want to be effective at convincing a girl that they are in this for the right reasons, that they are a guy of value and virtue. What should they be doing when they're texting, making an attractive dating

profile, communicating backward and forward? I mean, for me, I think the ultimate thing is that there's a sense of decisiveness when it comes to progression. You know, instead of being the guy that texts back and forth with someone for two weeks, and there's playing chicken, with like who's gonna ask who to do something and actually meet in real life. Be the person who actually advances it. I'm not saying in ways that suddenly make us seem desperate, but you know, be the person that suggests getting on the phone or meeting up for a quick coffee.

That's a pretty, that shows in 10. What was your first date? Idea. Some of the favorite ones. I like anything where you are not sitting, kind of facing each other. I don't think... Roll a coaster. Yeah, I remember saying this at an event and just, I go, I go, you know, a good day is like park bench style, like anywhere where you could sort of

face out into the world and turn to each other when you want to talk. And I just heard a voice in the crowd go, sushi. It was like the guy had just like, he really got it. He was like, he was just really connected with, that's where I'm going to do next. Sushi, they really cracked me up. But you know, anything that, I like, if you're going to go to a restaurant on a date, sit at the bar. It's a much better thing that going to a table is awkward, sitting across from each other

and you're staring at each other the whole time, go sit at the bar because then you can chat with the bartender, you can turn and say something, but you don't have to position your entire body towards someone. But what it allows to happen is a more natural kind of,

if you look at attraction and seduction, it kind of we start facing away from each other, we become aware of each other, like a sort of side eye eye, I'm aware of you, and then eventually we turn into each other. And I think that a date can almost kind of, you've already got the, we know each other part unless you're just approaching someone out there in the world. But a date where you can start pointed at something and the more rapport you build and the more comfort you build,

you end up turning inwards. That's a pretty good date. So walking is a good date. Like walking somewhere with someone. I think there's a guy you have to, you have to also bear in mind that for women's safety is a big thing. So being somewhere where they feel like, where they actually feel safe with you. So not walking in a dark alleyway. No, no dark alleyways. So for zero dark alleyway, first date policy. Okay, fine. Cool. Yeah, those are, those are, and also not, don't be afraid to have a short date.

You know, if you can lower the stakes for someone going into a date. Thirty minute walk in a coffee. Yeah, like even, you know, I have to be in this part of town later in the day, but I'm, you know, I'm over here, do you want to meet up for a coffee? Like, that just says to someone, I don't have to worry. I don't have to think about whether I want to spend an entire evening with this person right now. The more you can lower the stakes, you only have to think of regular social interactions.

If you make a new friend, you kind of want to build up to things because it's hard to hang out with a new friend. It takes effort and you don't have that comfort where you're just like, let's just hang out with a new friend. It takes effort and you don't have that comfort where you're just like, let's just hang out on the sofa for a few hours and chill. But if you say, let's grab a coffee, let's grab a juice, whatever, and there's an out, you're more likely to have half an hour with a new friend and that half hour can be the making of a new friendship. But you've got to get, you know, as Sean Acre would put it in the happiness advantage, you have to lower the activation energy required, and that can apply for dating

too. What have you seen with regards to online dating profiles? Good ones, bad ones. Oh, man. I'm so not close to dating profiles, but for me, show don't tell is an important rule in dating profiles. Whenever we say where something, we're telling, if I say I'm funny, I'm not saying you I'm not saying anything that's funny, I'm just telling you I'm funny. Or when we're just saying what we, like listing things we want in a person,

like I want someone who's funny, that's, it becomes vanilla very quickly because sort of isn't everybody. I think that real estate is space to actually show something about your personality or who, the way that you think. There was a great dating profile that I once came across. And this woman said, the prompt was something like, what's your biggest disappointment? And she said that my future kids will never get the experience of walking around blockbuster video

and choosing a movie for the night. I always thought that was such a great thing to say because that firstly she was showing like that was endearing, it was like a it showed a nice part of her personality. She also managed to say that she wanted kids in a completely relaxed way. Not don't message me if you don't want to be serious. Like no casual, you know, when people put like no casual hookups, it's like you don't need to say that. You, you can just somewhat that intention of yours will announce itself as you start to talk to someone if they behave badly, you don't need to say it upfront. You don't want an ax murderer either, but you're not saying that.

Why are you not saying that? Because you've been burned in the past by someone who just wanted a casual hookup with you. So now all you're putting in someone's mind is that you're frustrated by the amount of casual hookups that you've had to have in the past because you wanted more and they didn't. Like that's not what you had to have in the past because you wanted more and they didn't.

That's not what you want to put in someone's mind is the things you're frustrated with in dating. So what she did was she just very elegantly said, yeah, I want a family. My kids are in my future. But I don't read that and go, because there's no edge to it. It's the same. I had a course years ago. And there were back years ago when I started, I actually

used to send people out for the night, women out for the night and have them practice things. I don't do that anymore. There's too many people in it. It was 2000 people in an event. We can't send, have them dissent on the city. But back when it was small groups, we actually like encouraged people. Go out for the evening and try this stuff. And it was really interesting. There were two single moms who came in the next day. single mums who came in the next day. And one of them said, how do I communicate to someone that I am a single mum? There was a lot of like, felt heavy to her.

She saw it as baggage. There was another story where a woman stood up and she goes, so I was talking to this guy. And I liked him so I was started initially, like I immediately started flirting with him. And the first thing I said when I spoke to him was, your chin dimple is really adorable. It's not quite as adorable as my daughter's cheek dimples,

but it's pretty adorable. She had managed in the first line to communicate that she was a mum and have it be flirtatious, whereas someone else in the room was going, how do I communicate that I'm a single mother? Like she had Darth Vader waiting at home when a guy was gonna come over.

That to me is fascinating. And I think dating profiles are a great place. They're a great kind of revealer of what's our current mindset, how playful are we, how likely can we take ourselves, how likely can we take our own baggage. These are a lot can be communicated in a few words that way. We'll get back to talking to Matthew in one minute, but first I need to tell you about Manscaped. Manscaped, lawnmower 4.0 is the best ball and body hair trimmer ever created. It's got a cutting edge ceramic blade, to reduce grooming accidents and 90 minute battery

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not having children. Is this something that you're noticing? A woman saying that they don't intend on having families that are in the groups that you work with? I don't see that, but I have to assume that has to be true on some level. If you take a society where it's less, I won't say it's not frowned upon at all because there's a kind of no matter how far we've come, there's always going to be families and

societies in which women have to deal with the fact that something Must be wrong with you if you don't want to have kids something must be wrong with you If that's not in your path or that hasn't happened for you They're always going to face that from somewhere But to a far lesser extent than before and if it's to a far lesser extent than before then naturally You're going to have people who never wanted kids or don't feel like they want to be, that's not their path, who are going to feel more comfortable actually following that. So I have no doubt that number must have risen, but you know, a huge proportion of my audience

are people who would like to find a relationship and part of what they want and their dream is to find someone that they love to have kids with. I think probably I don't have data on this, but I would imagine that because women are pushing it later, which can either be, which is a kind of combination of pursuing careers, societal expectations, not being the same or being looser and even just the availability of egg freezing and other methods that there's a kind of feeling of, I can delay this. kind of feeling of, I can delay this. But I know from first-hand experience with not only women, but on my podcast, Love Life, we had two fertility doctors who came on and talked about this, that there are a lot of people who just kind of, there's almost a feeling of, oh, I'll get to it.

But so we all know that in life, that when we just decide we're now gonna do something, life doesn't always cooperate. And if we're leaving the time until later, if women especially are leaving the time until later, where they suddenly decide like, okay, now I'm gonna do this, and they haven't met someone yet, and they've

got to go through three more guys that don't pan out to get to the one that does that, that can, I've seen, I've seen a lot, a lot, a lot of people end up grieving as a result of that. And by the way, the same is true of a lot of men who assume mistakenly that they're good. I'm good. I can wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and then it comes down to it and their sperm count is too low or you know, what's the, I don't know what the medical term is for slow swimmers, but you know, they're not in a place of fertility where their sperm is viable in the way that they thought it would be.

They thought, oh, I'm the dumb, deal part of this equation. Or they have more complications because they waited a long time. Which is the reality. That seems to reflect the data that I've seen. So a very, very large chunk of women who make it to adulthood, break through their fertility window and don't have kids didn't intend to not have kids. So around about eight out of 10 women

who end up being childless that didn't intend to be childless, run about 10% of women physiologically incapable, incapable, run about 10% of women intended to not have kids, which leaves four out of five that didn't. And the word grief, which is what you used is precisely correct, that they grief for families that they never had. And the support groups Jody Day, who runs one of the biggest in the world, is coming on the show

in a couple of weeks time. And it's, it's, it's wild. And one of the concerns that I do have at the moment is this current trend that we're seeing of demonizing motherhood, I would say, in some regard, that the newly acquired liberation that women have had to be able to go and achieve a career and get education and employment and status and all of this stuff is phenomenal. But to see that as if you choose to be a mother, that's you settling. You're choosing to be a second-class citizen in some regard. And for every culture, there is a counter-culture movement. For every patriarchal staying in the kitchen, you're not supposed to go and go to university

college and get a career. There is now a movement. I mean, Chelsea Handler, I don't know whether you've seen the videos that she's been putting out, the trending online, is a video of like what it's like to be a woman in her 50s who doesn't have a family. And for Chelsea Handler, she very well may be the right person. She may have made the complete right life choice. But she talks about how she's going to get on Rhea, find a guy for tonight, smoke weed, masturbate, fall back asleep, fly to Paris by a croissant. And I'm like, is this really the fucking future that most women aspire to have?

Masterbation and croissant? Yeah, it was blazed out of your mind. She did a clap back video a couple of days ago where she was pouring an entire bottle of grey goose into what looked like a massive nutribullet flask. I was thinking to myself, you're an adult infant. You're the same as the man-child that you would accuse men of being. And my concern is that given the fact that we know the largest metronautists that's ever been done, said eight out of ten women who end up not having kids, didn't intend to not have kids. We're already fighting against slow life strategy, which is what you mentioned, sort of pushing that fertility window out. We're already making it, it's difficult to, you may need to cycle

through a number of partners before you can find the right person to end up settling down and having kids with. I don't disagree that some dystopian fucking hand-made tale-esque scenario where you're forcing women into the bedroom so that they can pump out babies, that's wrong. But given the fact that eight out of ten women say that they wanted to have kids and couldn't, it's also really wrong to tell women that they shouldn't be having kids, or that having kids is settling, or that they become a domestic prostitute if they choose to do that. And this is a trend that is really, really picking up steam. There's a TikTok called Girl with a List. You've seen this? Girl who printed out a list of 350 reasons as to why she didn't want to have

kids. And it goes all the way from can't wear cute heels anymore to baby is literally a parasite inside of me, to all manner of like, and it's got millions and millions and millions of tags and plays on TikTok. And I'm like, I don't disagree that this is interesting content that's gonna grab attention and headlines. But the real world outcome of this in 15 years' time, when the 28 year old girls that are watching this

are a bit older is concerning. To me what I hear in all of this is it's a kind of version of what men go through in a different way, where if we're not careful, we're we're sold the life that we should have. And if you take, you know, we talked about the percentage of guys that feel overlooked. If you take the opposite end of the spectrum, the guys that have an enormous amount of choice, many of them will be sold culturally on this idea that if you can, you should sleep with as many people as possible,

you should live it up, you should just don't set or anytime soon, delay, delay, delay. And that... And that... You have to be a pretty strong person to go, I don't think that's the answer. Just because I can. It doesn't mean I should. And I'm not even saying that from a moral or ethical place.

I'm for myself selfishly, just because I can. It doesn't mean that's going to make me happy. And women will, you know, they already do find themselves in a place where they're having to really get in touch with what they want and try to shut out the noise. And I find out the noise. And I find myself, I find myself very conflicted on this because there's nothing I, there's nothing I hate more than the idea of a woman who doesn't have the independence herself to be able to walk away because I've seen that and I've seen the utter destruction of lives where women don't have enough financial independence or the ability to continue with a job or a business. And so that man has something he's holding over her the whole time.

And it is the mandate for abuse, those relationships. So on one hand, the idea of, you know, kind of saying, motherhood should be celebrated, I agree with. But I know if I had a daughter, I would want her to never be in a position where she needed a man financially, where she was always going to be okay on her own, because that's power. Pass that point, that's when you have to start getting really honest with yourself and saying, do I need more? If I've already got my independence and now I can choose for love and I can stay for love instead of staying out of fear, it is more necessary and everyone faces that at some

point in their life. I mean, guys face that all the time. It's getting in touch with yourself and going, what do I actually want in my life? You could just keep going and going and going and going and going. You have the potential, you have the ability, you have everything, you've got a winning hand. You could just keep going. It's an interesting question. We all have to ask at some point, which is

what does, what's good for me? What kind of life do I actually want? Because of course I could keep going. More is all available, always available, but more time isn't. And I think that's when I look at, when I look at women in motherhood, I just think it's trying to quiet the noise, going, what is it I actually want with my life? I've had to do that. Me and Audrey have had to really think about what do we want with our lives? Like what's what kind of life are we looking for? How much does that involve us working?

What's going to make us happier at the end of the day? I, it's no secret. Like when I thought, I, for most of my life, when I thought about kids, I was like, sweating. Just, oh my God, this is terrifying. I don't know. Like, I've got friends of mine who, from the age of 22, male friends of mine who are like, I want kids. I know it. I want to be, I spoke to Matthew McConaughey a week ago, and he was like I always know my biggest dream was to be a dad I cannot relate. But when Audrey and I sit down we're like we look at all of it and we go. Yeah like this feels right feels right to do this I don't know when like we'll figure that out. That's between us, but this feels like something,

this feels like it's really important to us, even if it costs us in other ways. And it will cost us in other ways. But those are like really adult calculations. And I think everyone has to make them, and that demonization of people is a bad thing, of course. I'd love to understand your framework of how deep blasting attraction works.

Say that we've managed to get through all of the hurdles that we've spoken about so far and that somebody wants to get into a relationship which has deep blasting attraction. You've got a way to break the very large behemoth that is being attracted to somebody into component parts. Well I always said that attraction is perceived, attraction is chemistry, plus perceived value, plus perceived challenge, plus connection. Right? So physical, you can exchange physical attraction for chemistry, but you know, physical attraction,

perceived value, perceived challenge and connection. Haven't said it in a while, but I really think those four things are, they're pretty reliable as the components for attraction. You need some physical attraction. This person needs to bring value to your life and that can come in a number of ways. So that's perceived value.

And perceived is an important word because if you can be valuable, we all are, but if you don't know how to market your value, then no one's gonna see it. If you don't know how to put forward your best for people who are not gonna know how great you are, it's no one's job to like excavate how great you are. You have to be able to actually show someone.

So perceived value, perceived challenge is making sure that value isn't free. There actually is a price to pay for that value. Why is that important? Because we don't value what we don't have to invest in. If something, if you went on a first date and based on her picture or her pictures and you thought she was so gorgeous, you showed up with a brand new car for her on the first date and said, I bought you a car. It would freak her out. She'd think this person's mental. And the reason she'd think that is because she had done nothing to earn that amount of value. And that's when we say someone seems over eager or desperate, what we're really saying is that they're giving an unearned amount of value. They are showing up for me in ways that it's not appropriate to show up for me, given how much I'm giving to them. And that's the classic

people, please, I'm suddenly doing all of falling over myself to try to serve this person who I really isn't doing anything to earn that. There's not an equivalent exchange in value. So perceived, perceived challenge makes us value someone's value because we realize that they have standards around it. And having standards around your value is essential. Otherwise, you'd have no time in life, you'd have no energy, you're just bleeding out everywhere all the time. And when someone realizes you're bleeding out for them exclusively,

because they're just so hot or they're so charismatic or they're so something, our value goes down in their eyes. Because we go, oh, they must not, this person must not have a lot of value because look what they're doing for me. I'm not doing that for them. I'm not doing the equivalent. I haven't even thought about them in the last two weeks, but look at what they're doing for me. Now we lower their value in our eyes. So we at least question it. So that's perceived challenge and connection is, okay, we have animal attraction, but do we actually have a shared world view? Do we, you know, is there a compatibility here that is going to make us last? So the question is, how do you maintain all of those things

over time? And that's what Esther Parell has obviously written great books about this. She talks about the difference between love and desire. Desire is, love is the coming together of two people, desire exists in the space between two people. So if you are just constantly like this and there's never a space between you, then that mystery that fuels desire is no longer allowed to, it doesn't have the oxygen to breathe. And that's the, to me, that's the great, that is the great challenge of a long-term relationship.

I actually think that we kind of pathologize familiarity. That's the curse, being familiarity breeds contempt. But familiarity, if it's done right, can breed enormous richness. You can really get to, like anyone who's really had a successful marriage will say that they're just getting, one of the great joys has been year after year, getting to know even more about their partner, their unique facets that other people don't see,

don't know about, they've built a bond that is extraordinary. Now, that alone won't give you the animal desire that is also needed for a long-term sexual relationship, but it will give you a level of connection with someone that is just so weighty that the idea of giving it up is the equation always is weighted on the side of staying. As far as physical attraction goes, I think that there is a... On one hand, you have to do the things that allow you to maintain it on some level. That's different for every couple and it certainly isn't limited to Cosmos articles on, try this new sex position

as a way of, like, it's a lot more nuanced than that. You know, maintaining attraction on that level, desire on that level could be that we haven't been out to an event with each other in the last three months or all of COVID. And we go out to an event with each other in the last three months or all of COVID. And we go out to an event together and I actually watch you go over and talk to other people and I get to observe you again and I observe the way other people receive you and how you make other people laugh

or how you're looked at by other people and they go, oh yeah, she's a sexy person in the world. I'd forgotten living at home for a year and a half with someone like that. That's what happened to a lot of people. And I think the other side of that is to say, I need to rob myself of a kind of this expectation that I have, that everything is supposed to stay the same, and that you

have to remind yourself of how much being single sucked a long time ago. Like there was a time when you were single and you maybe could sleep around or did sleep around and it probably didn't live up to your expectations either. Like that wasn't some unbelievable, you know, you, you were living this unbelievable life. And even if you were, even if you were a rock star, and you were living this extraordinary life of sleeping with a different person every other night, I, I, I haven't met many people, especially ones that feel anything like me, who tell me happy tales about that. Like after a while, they either get anxious because it's like, I just feel weird and I'm going

to get someone pregnant. This is going to happen. That's going to, they're just freaked out. Or they're in a place where it's just boring because they go, oh, yeah, it's just another body. Ultimately, that's all this ends up being. It's, there's no Nav body. Ultimately, that's all this ends up being. There's no Navanna on the other side of this.

So I think the longer we get away from something like that, the more we glorify it, and the more we think, oh, remember that type of like. Grass is always greener. Yeah, and it wasn't even that green then. I give probably wasn't. You know, maybe you had a heyday, but I guarantee you that heyday had a shelf life and

At least with this situation this you can point to unbelievable things that you like I'm a I'm not someone who says everyone should be in a relationship, but I am positive in my life of how much better my life is in my relationship, like how much it brings to me, that that equation is one decisively every single time

by what I get out of being in this relationship. And I think when people lose connection to that, that's when they get in trouble. So it's as much about connecting to that as well. How can you stay grateful for the things that a relationship is bringing you? Because any of us, especially type A people who are all about optimization and what's the next thing,

we are really good at getting to a level that at one point was like our dream or not even conceivable, no, 15 year old Chris wouldn't conceive, I bet, of where you are today. But you're probably also a great normalizer. And if you're a great normalizer, that is not a useful skill and business.

Cause you just, you never get to impressed with yourself when you just keep going. In a relationship, there's a really dangerous part of people like that. And I count myself as one of them because there can be this done. I did that part. And you know, so what's the optimization from here?

But the optimization now is a vision that you build together. It's not like I'm optimizing still for the person. I think people optimize too long for the person actually. Talking about that from a personal standpoint, your growth now, millions and millions of clients that you've worked with in this illustrious career of internet work and exposure and plays and all the rest of it. How are you personally avoiding getting caught up in external metrics of success? And what have you learned about where sort of genuine happiness and success fulfillment comes from?

I, my, like the word that I just keep coming back to in my life now is simplicity. And me and my partner say it all the time, we're just like simplicity. I, what, what's going to complicate our life for very little gain? And what's going to simplify it in a way that just keeps reducing our life to this juice of where all the good stuff is. And for me, the good stuff is my relationships with my family, my relationship with Audrey. It's doing work that I feel passionate about

instead of work that just gets me ahead. That's a big one. Let's get you ahead. You know, there was a time when for me, it was about survival. It was about like, I need to feel secure because I don't feel secure, you know? I actually. Yeah, when I was growing up, we were not secure. It was a, you know, it was a difficult situation at times. So for me, I, so much of my life was about trying

to feel safe. And, and it's a hard transition to make actually between trying to feel safe and then now trying to feel fulfilled because it's that engine if you're not careful, just keeps going and going and going. But I these days, I just I want to do work that I'm really, really, really passionate about. I want to be connected to it. It's one of the reasons why I like in my work now. If you look at a lot of my videos in the last year or two, they have a dating wrapper on them. So much of it is about trauma. So much of it is about overcoming the wiring that we have that makes us unhappy or makes us anxious or makes us stressed or makes us

continually go for the wrong people or stay in toxic situations. I talk about that because not because it's popular, I talk about it because I feel it's really, really important and helping people in their mental health that way is important to me. So for me, that's what's important. And I'm not going to say I don't get drawn in to the metrics because that's a constant on I have to have a very firm compass that I connect to every morning That reminds me and connects me to this is this is the stuff that actually matters because otherwise that part of me that that massacres he will take over and make all of our lives miserable. Because I caught that part of me that stresses and is anxious and is feeling like Rome's burning,

even when Rome hasn't been burning for a while, that part of me is not just bad for me. It's like, I'm not good company. When I'm like that, I'm not good to the people I love. I'm not like a calming presence for people. I'm not someone who I'm not able to access the best parts of me, the most generous parts of me because I'm just, it's a loop of fear and anxiety and all of that. And that's been a really, it's been a big thing in my life. And I've had to really work on that for myself. I continue to work on that for myself

because it disconnects me from everything that's actually important. And living in LA or Austin or any of these places, not good for it. Cause you're around people who are doing awesome things. And there's always someone who's doing more. And there's always someone who's eclipsed whatever you've done. And it takes a lot to be like, that doesn't, takes a lot to leave the party where someone

just told you something awesome they're doing and go, yeah, I don't want to do that. How do you stop that external comparison game? Well, I'm fortunate to be in a place in my life where I've, it's not worked enough times, that I realize, oh, it's not, if I was doing that, it wouldn't change anything. It would make me any happier. Do you mean that you've seen a mountain that you thought was good to summit,

got to the top of it and realized? Yeah, you know, I came, when I first came to LA 10 years ago, I came for a TV show called Ready for Love. And it was a huge deal, huge TV show executive produced by Eva Longoria. It was like, this was going to be the show. And it got cancelled after three episodes. Was that your fault? I think I was the best part of the show. I salvaged it, it was going to be one episode. I, but it got cancelled and I, a year of my life

that was spent working on this thing that was supposed to be huge, just kind of, and there were all these people that wanted to know me for the time that it was big, and you know, when it was like everyone was coming out, managers and agents and this and that. And I really got the full, I got the full Hollywood experience. You're so important. And then no one's picking up the phone. I like, I went through that whole thing in a, in a space of a year and a half and it was, it was great. It was like the best thing that could have happened to me at 25 when that happened. It was so great.

Thank God it wasn't a hit. Because it wouldn't have been good for me. It absolutely wouldn't have been good for me. I might have blown my life up. I just couldn't trust myself at 25 to handle that. And so I look back now and I'm just like, but when I was up there, it didn't make any difference. It was just like, it was exhilarating in certain moments,

just like anything has that drug effect and then it's nothing. It's a relevant thing. But being on Love Island, that I did the first season, first person through the doors of season one, and it was ten times bigger season two, and then ten times bigger than that season three, and then ten times even bigger than that season four. So I basically did a full production, fully broadcast dress rehearsal for all of the remaining ones that were actually successful. But I'm so grateful for the fact that I came off and there was 5,000 more followers than when I went on. No one had about show. Nobody gave a shit. No one gave a shit about it because if I had managed to find success doing reality TV, I would have ended up being

pigeonholed into a life of, that is how you got success, replicate that formula to achieve more. But because it wasn't something that I generated, it was something that had been given to me, like, make no mistake, but every single person out there to think that going on reality TV is the answer to their problems. You are basically like the mockingbird, the mocking J fucking, whew, whew, whew. Like that's what you're hoping for.

You're hoping to be plucked out of the lottery and gifted status on the top of a hill. But it's not you, you're not manifesting you forward. You're being squeezed into the shape that is prefabricated because the show knows what it needs. It TV2 knows what they need out of this show. The same as your thing when you came to LA and the same as whatever else it is. If it's not completely generated by you and that's not to say that people can't go on

these shows and enact themselves forward and be interesting and whatever, but for the most part, you're being very heavily squeezed into a odd shape that you have to fill. And if you've been taught through life experience, oh, well, that's how you get success. Not rinsing and repeating that is going to be very, very difficult not to do. So I, I, I couldn't be more grateful that my season of love Island was a failure. Yeah. Well, because what you're talking about is that in life, you can do things that give you these spikes. But those spikes, they correct themselves, right? It's over and then you're kind of back to your life and being you. And even if you back to your life,

but with more money or more something, you're still waking up every morning going, what do I do today? And that's real life. Real life isn't you won the lottery and now your whole life is different forever. No, real life is you still have to wake up tomorrow and decide what to do. And if you, I think one of the, to me at least one of the great secrets is if you can just find something that, that when you really connect to it, you realize I could do this for a long time. Like this is, I could keep doing this. I think what I do now, and I don't mean the intensity of it, because I could say I could stand to lose a couple of projects, if I'm honest, but what I do now in terms of every

week on YouTube, I make a video, and I have courses and live retreats and all of that, and that's an unbelievable part of my world, but just reaching people and saying things that make them feel better and help them, that I could just do forever. I know that would be a life well lived for me. And I think if you can find something like that, forget the spikes, forget the spikes, play the long game with that. There's this guy, this is embarrassing, but there's this guy called, I'm a bit of a Disney geek, didn't see that coming.

I grew up, like, when I first time I went to one of the Disney parks, I was like, just blown away by it. And it's just never left me. I, the man I am today with all of my diverse interests, I'm still one of my favorite things to do is to go and walk around the parks. There's this guy that his name is, his YouTube name is Mr. Morro.

And he just walks around the Disney parks and block and like video blocks about his experience going around the parks. And I spoke to him on the phone because he was such an example to me of someone who just, he figured out something he really loved. And he was working at Denys. Fine establishment. There's some good items. Fine establishment. I didn't know that Denny's was uncool and I started wanting to go there for dinner

with my friends and when I said, can we go Denny's, they looked at me like I'd suggested that we go and kill somebody. I lived for a long time in LA opposite the IHOP on sunset Boulevard, which is a particularly sort of, it's right in the middle of Hollywood, so it's quite a... Booji eye hop. No, no, no, there's a lot of characters. It's like a bit of a, like, you know, it's just a bit grimy. And I lived right there and I used to go to that eye hop every morning for breakfast at like 5am when I was like going to... Because I didn't want to work in my little apartment. So I used to go Starbucks right after I'm work

and just eat in that eye hop. So I can slum it with you at Denny's any time you like. But he used to work at Denny's and then he started filming these videos just going around the parks. And I spoke to him on the phone, because I was like, at one point, I really wanted him to come and speak at one of my events,

because I was like, you've just figured it out. I can tell, you've figured something out. You've figured out something you love, and now you do it for a living, and you're not, you're just so grateful all the time. You don't strike me as someone who's just looking for more, more, more, and I spoke to him on the phone, and he just was the most,

he was just a sweetest guy. And he said to me, I just, he was, there was no, there was no one there to see it, this conversation. He just said, if I could just do this every day and just keep doing this. And I've got a couple of friends here in Florida that, you know, I've made and I walk around the parks and I film and a couple of friends here in Florida that you know I've made and I walk

around the parks and I film and people really like them. He said I would just be so happy. And that I I was I welled up when he said it. I literally got goose bumps and welled up because of something about it was so pure. And I just thought that he's figured it out. He's figured something maybe he hasn't figured all of just thought that he's figured it out. He's figured something, maybe he hasn't figured all of life out, but he's figured something out, something that most people will never figure out in their lifetimes. What can I just keep doing? But if this is as good as it gets, I'm good. That's pretty special. I've heard you say in the past that you felt like you were on the outside of your own life

looking in. Yeah. Yeah. I felt like that for a while. I think I hit like 27 and I just, I didn't, I couldn't connect. It was like struggle. I was trying to figure out what's, what's going on, like why am I not, I know this is all great, but I don't feel connected to it. I just felt very disconnected. I didn't use that word at the time, but I look back now and I was just unhappy. I hadn't... I hadn't... I had done... You know, there's, as you well know, there's levels in life.

And depending on your circumstances, growing up or at school or whatever level one for you might be survive or do something that means you don't have to fear. And so you kill yourself trying to do something that means you don't have to fear anymore or you can take care of people that you love. And that was it for me. Like early on it was just like take care of people, like the people who are the people I love, let me take care of them, let me take, let me make it so that I'm secure there secure and let's, and I kill, like doing that. I said no to so much in my 20s. And one of the things I said no to that, I didn't really realize was just, I suppose true introspection, like really under,

I didn't, I was just, it's not like I kept saying there's all this bad stuff that I need to process or like let me save that till later. I didn't, I just didn't, I didn't even connect to that. So when I started not feeling right, I didn't know why. I just, it was just, I've just freaked out. I was just scared because I thought,

oh, why, what is going on? Why am I numb? Like why am I not, I'm helping a lot of people. I know I'm root, you know, people were so grateful for the work that I was doing. I was independent. I was able to take care of people. I love it should have been awesome. And it just wasn't. I just had a lot of things. I had a lot of work that I hadn't done. I didn't even realize was work to be done. For me, the idea of therapy was for someone else. It's for a different kind of person.

I'm killing it. You know, like everything's going, I work hard, I have no problem with ambition. I'm like, driving forward in my life, I'm helping people, I'm doing what I like. Like, it didn't, it just felt like, oh, that sort of thing other people do. And I've been very, very humbled by life, you know, over the last eight years in just realizing there's always another level. There's always something you've kind of not figured out yet or not worked out. And I praise, I applaud great therapists. Not every therapist is a great therapist, but the ones who are really good, I applaud them because that work that they do with people, if you can, is it, you know, the hardest thing in the world is when you have someone in your life that you love

and you see them unhappy or you see them disconnected and you're like, you really need to go and do this work. Was that the difference then from being on the outside of your own life to actually feeling it was mostly therapy? I think it was a number of things. I think it was therapy, but it took my life, it took sort of things happening that affected me immensely, or it took an immense amount of pain for me to do that. Like it wasn't something I was gonna do just because, like, oh, let's just add this into the portfolio. I was always, I was always someone who took courses. I was always someone who did self-development.

I was always, like, that was just me, but it was all Taipei stuff, you know what I mean? It was all like, optimization and getting ahead and learning. It was never like going inwards. And that's because I was so focused on that feeling of getting out of danger all the time. I was like, let me just get somewhere secure, let me just get somewhere where I can control things, where we have enough money, where we have enough. The inward work didn't feel like it had any return. What I'm going to sit in therapy for hours and hours and hours, like what's the return on that? And I think that that happens to a lot of people.

There's no obvious ROI on that. So it's like, I'll save that. Like I could do that later. Which is why in some ways, for some people, it's actually, I want to be careful how I say this. for some people, it's actually, I want to be careful how I say this, but it's unfortunate in a way that if they never really get punched in the face by life, because if you don't hit a certain pain threshold and you're the kind of person that thinks you've always got it together and you can always function, which is

how I was, I was like highly functioning. If something doesn't bring you to your knees, then you may never make that decision to do that work. And you may always live in a disconnected way that deprives you of how rich and how beautiful life can really be. I love life. I always have loved life. But there were times where I couldn't connect to that love. And so, you know, for me, it was just realizing, oh, I'm not something's not right. And I'm not going to be able to deal with this unless I do something about it. And it forced me to slow down. It forced me to say that hour that I take away from work today to go and sit in someone's office and do this is more important than anything else.

Was there a single moment that brought you to that? I mean, multiple. I, you know, having that realization that I didn't feel, like truly having that realization, like that was a moment. I, I dealt with chronic physical pain for a long time, which is still a part of my life. I, it's not like it's fully eliminated, but it's, I had a, I had a long time

dealing with chronic pain in my head that that I'm pretty convinced was a rose out of not dealing with stuff and not dealing with stress and not like I'm pretty, I'm not someone who used to be a big believer and you, I think spent enough time with me to hear I'm a pretty rational person. I need logic to make sense for me to get on board. But I've had enough experiences now to realize, oh, you can really do a number on yourself. If you don't figure certain things out, if something's like creating tension in you, if you're not processing something or dealing with something,

then your life, your body, something will find a way. Aaron Alexander is nodding his head along to this at the moment. Right. Something will happen. And for me, it was a throbbing pain in my head that just never went away. And, and, and other symptoms too, which I, I won't mention just because it's the kind of thing that people, once you say it, everyone wants to give you a thing you should do, you know, you should drink celery juice, you should take ice baths, you should do this, you should do acupuncture, you should, like, I've been on that entire journey for years, so it's not, I don't need suggestions,

but it was so bad, it was so bad. It was so bad. I'm not talking like it kind of intruded on my life. It took over my life. And it robbed me of my joy. It really couldn't figure out how am I ever going to be happy again. Like I really even said at one point to the therapist that I was seeing. I came in one day and I was like, I've come to the conclusion that for as long as this

pain exists, I'm never going to be happy because I can't sleep properly. I can't experience any of the good stuff in my life. I can't focus. It is just there 24-7 and it, I've come to the realization that I may never be able to be happy again. So I'm just going to live for other people. I'm going to live for my family. I'm going to live for the people that I'm helping. I'm going to live like, and I he just looked at me and he went, that is. It's not, he, the first sentence he said is that is hallmark depression, but he said it's not, it's a circumstantial depression. It's a rising out of chronic physical pain, but what you just said is real depression.

And that, that's language I would never have used about myself. I didn't relate to anxiety or depression. Like, they weren't words in my vocabulary, And yet, I came to realize in my life, I've always had anxiety. And depression was something I was experiencing then in a really serious way. And when something is taking over your life to the point where you go, it's not like I was having

suicidal ideation. But when you kind of have a thought that I don't know how I'm gonna do this I don't know how I'm gonna if this stays this way for the next 50 years of my life I don't know what I'm gonna do and that That's was terrifying for me, truly terrifying.

And it felt to me like becoming an adult in a weird way. I'd been an adult for a long time and I'd had to handle my stuff, my own life for a long time. I'd had to rely on myself for a long time. But it felt like a time in my life where it was like the truest realization that no one is coming. My family would look at me in so much pain and feeling so depressed and not know how, what do I do? This person I love so much is hurting so badly and they're like a zombie

What do I do and when the people that love you the most are throwing their hands up because they're so helpless? To be able to help you you you realize like oh my god no one's coming This is and it and it was my first, I tried everything, and it was my first brush with something where my type A. I can't fix this. I've always been able to outwork any problem, and this is not working on this one. And it, I went through all this day, I went through panic, like sheer panic to, you know, grief to my life is over to, I went through all of that. And I'm not talking six months, I'm talking like for years this went on.

And I just functioned really, really well through it all. But the more I worked on my own piece, like truly worked on my own piece, the more it started to sort of like ease up. It was almost like tension went away and it started to ease up. And it's gotten to a place now where I'm like, you don't understand, I couldn't have had this conversation with you before. This is not something I would have said to anyone.

This would have made great content to talk about this for the years that it was going on. It would made great content to talk about this for the years that it was going on. It would have been amazing to talk about this vulnerable. I couldn't speak about it to anyone publicly. The only people that I talked to about it were my friends and family, because I couldn't trust that information in the world and people, I couldn't trust anyone in the street coming up to me and talking to me about it and that I would be able to handle that. So me talking about it now is like I still don't want everyone coming and talking to me about it really. You know, it's still there's a part of me that's like I don't even want to talk about this because I don't want it to be a topic of conversation.

I don't want it to be a topic of conversation. It's a very personal thing to me, but I'm able to talk about it because I've managed to find a completely different level of peace in my life. And what I've learned through this whole process in life is that everything that we're struggling with has a very, you know, my pain, my physical pain, has a very real component to it, right? There's a portion of it that's just physiological. It sucks. But my emotional relationship with that was making it a thousand times worse. And once I had to run that, I had to truly go through that journey, which is for me,

I suppose I'm not a person who uses the word spiritual very much, but it was the most spiritual journey of my life to have to learn to come to terms with that and make peace and coexist with it and build a relationship with it that was positive instead of negative, but the more I did it, the more I realized that 80% could be, I could figure it out. And if I could figure it out, if I could bring it down to like a six or a five or a four, then I could have a different life with it. And I think that's true of all of our stuff, is that we, we encounter problems in life and we think, we think the problem is this like, immovable object.

Then it might be, it literally might be something you can't do anything about, but the people don't understand what leverage they have with what the 80% is their relationship, their emotional relationship with that problem. And now teaching that for me, teaching that to other people on things that they're struggling with is one of the most, it's one of the things that brings me the most joy on my retreats where people come and spend six days with me. It's like it drives me because I know that people's lives can be so much better than they're experiencing right now. By changing the story that they tell themselves

about the things that are happening to them. Changing the story is absolutely one of them. A different story will give you a different emotional relationship with it. Having a different mindset around it, even just understanding that you can modulate something. When I started to learn, I can modulate this. If I can bring this to a night from a 9 to a 7, I can actually enjoy my day more. I can live more. If I could get a peaceful 5 minutes, maybe I can make that 10 or an hour, even.

I didn't think about my pain for the last half hour. Why was that? What was I doing? What happened? Was I enjoying myself? Was I distracted? Did I have a bigger problem? Like what? Just I was studying it. And what I came to learn is everything, everything changes, everything. We have things in our life that we think I'll never get over this, it'll never change. Whether it's heartbreak, physical condition, someone dies, something happens in your business, you'll never get over this. Everything changes. It modulates. And you don't know how you'll feel about this thing in five years.

And you have to be very careful, at my worst I honestly was like checked out of life. It's like I can't do this. And part of what made it, part of what turned it from a already painful experience to one that was intolerable was when I told myself it'll be this way forever. Then I was like I freaked, it's panic panic, you can't live in for too long. Your body can't take, your mind can't take it. So you like, it's like you short circuit. And panic just goes to numbness, just disconnection. For me, one of the greatest lessons of my life is that you just, you just don't know how this is going to change. And if it doesn't change, you don't know yet, you're not an expert on how your relationship with it is going to change.

And either way, that can produce a completely different life for you. And I know this is probably off-subject for what we were talking about today, but I just think for anyone out there who's really struggling right now. If that can offer not just hope, but because hope can, like hope itself can be really miserable, right? When you keep hoping that it's going to get better and it doesn't. If instead you just sort of settle in, like if it sucks right now, whatever part of life sucks, if you just settle in and just strap in and right now, whatever part of life sucks, if you just settle in and just strap in and just go, okay, it sucks right now. But I don't know how much

it's going to suck in five years. It might, I might feel differently about this. I, this might change or I might change the way I see it. Everything changes. If you can understand that, then you suddenly have a kind of mental formula for just strapping in. So I was just strapping for now. I didn't do Jitsu. There was a, when I started out, I was rolling for like three minutes and then I couldn't breathe. And I remember my professor saying to me, you know, you know, some of the guys when we're here, after you, we'll roll for an hour, nonstop. We like set time for an hour and we just roll for an hour for this like marathon. And I was like, what are you talking about? How is that even possible? And he said,

you know, when you realize that it's going to go on for a whole hour, you kind of just, you stop breathing differently because you just realize, why I can't keep going like this. Like, I just have to settle in. And suddenly when you settle in, it's a different experience. Then when I'm going for three minutes, and I'm like, like 10, 10, 10, 100%, you settle in. And I think that's a pretty good, a pretty good way of approaching life in general. If you're anxious in early dating,

and you go, are they gonna text me back? Are they gonna tell yourself, if this is gonna work out, I'm gonna be with this person for the next 60 years. Do I want to breathe like this the whole time? Is this the energy I want to have the whole time? Could I do this for 60 years? All right, then settle in.

Matthew Hussey, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to check out the stuff that you do online, where should they go? Well, I suppose there's three places. If someone wants something that's just easy and free every week, my YouTube channel, you can find me there on my Instagram or Facebook. If you're a woman looking for dating advice, I have a link called your dating solution where you can literally input your challenge and it will give you my best solution for what you're going through. That's at yourdatingsolution.com. And if you're a man or a woman and you're looking for a bigger journey and bigger life change, not just your love life, but your whole psychology and getting the most out of your life, I have a virtual retreat that's coming up. There's a three day event for men and women

and they can find all of the information about that at mhvirtualretreat.com. Now if you really appreciate you, man, I appreciate the fact that you've done the work. I think that it is very cool to see someone go through this trajectory over time of coming out here of achieving success, of failing of success, the darker side of what's going on, while

it's publicly still having it all together and privately going through all of this turmoil. I think it's a very compelling story. I really appreciate the work that you do. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do next. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. I appreciate the work you do as well. Your curiosity is really inspiring. You and I, I think, have probably had a lot of similar influences over time. I, you know, the people that you and I are thinking our 20s started to gravitate to, the Hitchens and the Harris's and the Murray's. You know, I think you and I have been inspired by a lot of similar people and it's fun to

watch your mind work. Here's to the next 10 years. Cheers, man. Here's to the next 10 years. Thank you very much for tuning in. Don't forget if you're listening you should have also got a copy of the Modern Wisdom Reading List. It is one hundred of the most life-changing and impactful books that I've ever read and you can go and get your copy right now for free by going to chriswillx.com slash books. That's chriswillx.com slash books. And I will see you next time.