The School of Greatness - Why You Keep Attracting the Wrong Person | Matthew Hussey

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

Matthew Hussey reveals the hidden patterns keeping you stuck in unfulfilling relationships. He exposes why trying to impress someone on a first date actually pushes connection away and how most people unknowingly attract partners who mirror their deepest insecurities. You'll discover why being truly vulnerable means something completely different than what you think, and how showing your authentic self, quirks and all, is the only path to being deeply known and loved. Matthew shares the specific moment when you need to stop using your "magic tricks" to attract attention and start revealing the real you, even when it terrifies you. This conversation cuts through surface-level dating advice and gets to the core of what it means to build a relationship where you can finally be yourself.Matthew’s book:Get the GuyLove LifeMatthew on YouTubeIn this episode you will:Discover why connecting with someone's humanity matters more than impressing them with your achievementsTransform your approach to vulnerability by understanding the difference between sharing your hero's journey and revealing who you really areUncover the hidden patterns that keep you attracting the wrong people by relying on superficial qualities instead of authentic connectionMaster the art of being truly seen by allowing silence, sharing your needs, and letting go of the fear that honesty will push people awayBreak free from dopamine-driven relationships and rewire your nervous system to appreciate the deeper satisfaction of genuine partnershipFor more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1865For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Esther PerelBaya VoceLewis Howes & Martha Higareda Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome back, everyone at the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guests. We have the inspiring Matthew Hussie in the house, my man. Good to see you, brother. It's good to see you. I'm excited, man. This is our first ever interview in the, I don't know what I'm going to call this yet. The greatness basement.

I don't know what this is. The Dungeon of Greatness, something like that, you know. I like it. It's very cozy. Yeah, it's nice, right? Yeah. So welcome to my home and to my home studio. Very excited about this.

It's so nice to be, I always think it's funny speaking to you like this because we have for every one conversation we have on the air, so to speak. We have like 200 off. So many. We travel the world together at different things. We've been all the place together. We've known each other for what, I don't know, eight or nine years maybe, you think? Yeah, long time.

It must be 10, closer to 10. 10 years. It's crazy. Closer to 10. And it's fun because for me, I get to see you like, I get to, step back into your world where you're a master and just watch you experience you doing your thing. You see me doing this with you every time we hang out. We're just asking each other questions and trying to understand the meaning of life and how we've ruined ourselves in previous

relationships and why we put ourselves in these situations, which is what I'm excited to talk about because you've got a new book you've been working on for really 10 years since your last book. This is called Love Life, How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person, and Live Happily, No Matter what. not happily ever after, which is pretty cool. And you and I are now finally in healthy, conscious, loving, abundant relationships that bring us a lot of joy and peace. But we, you know, we went through different challenges of trying to discover who we are, how we can build ourselves up to really attract and learn how to choose the right person for us.

It took us both a long time, but we did it. So congratulations. Congratulations. Yeah, you were, of course, at my wedding to Audrey or with Audrey on back at the end of last year. It was amazing, which is amazing, it's amazing, man. So what I want to ask you about today is, is how do we become the person that we need to be to attract the right person in a relationship to become happily, happy no matter what?

And I think a lot of the things I want to talk about today is, one, becoming the person you need to be to attract the right person. What do we need to do to become that person? However, when you become that person, you create a lot of opportunities. You start to attract a lot of interesting people in your life when you become more of a high value human being, right? When you build your confidence, when you develop clearer boundaries and values for yourself, when you're taking care of your health, when you're clear on your mission or the career you want to go after, when you're full of love and energy and passion, you start to become very attractive.

you attract a lot of opportunities. It's almost like people just reach out to you and say they want to go out with you. They'll message you online. Like this will just start to unfold when you really take care of self first. So that'll be step one. How do you build yourself up to attract the ultimate person for you in your future self? And then step two, how do you in a sea of opportunities of individuals that are now in front of you because you have developed yourself as a high value human for a relationship,

how do you know when to choose and who to choose when there could be so many great people in front of you that you might be dating or meeting? How can you actually make the choice that you know is going to be great for you for the next 10, 20, 50 years potentially in an intimate relationship? That's part two. And also I want to ask you, you've coached, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of women online through your coaching program,

your live events, millions in your social media in your YouTube. And I'm also curious, have you ever met women who have been in multiple relationships at the same time who are actually happy and fulfilled with their life? I'm going to ask you that as well later.

So have you ever met women who are like, I'm in an open relationship, I've got four boyfriends and one main boyfriend and my life is amazing over a span of 5, 10, 20 years. I don't even know if that's possible. So curious, I'm going to wait for you to answer that one. But first off, how do we become the person we need to be to attract the right person for us in love? I want to challenge first the idea that when we become the person that we want to need to become

in order to attract the lover that we want, that we attract many more people. Oh. Because my experience has been that often in order to attract what you really need, you have to give something up. And often the thing that you have to give up is the kind of attention that you have been used to. we all have our favorite way of getting attention in life right we our thing our trick our thing

yeah it's like our magic trick what's our magic trick i got a six pack let me be shirtless and post that uh you know i make a lot of money let me show the money that i have in certain ways or i'm funny let me be funny or whatever it is right that's exactly right and and that becomes our kind of known way of guaranteeing a certain level of attention. And different people can do it to different degrees. You know, some people have a very easy time getting attention. Other people have a hard time getting attention. But the principle holds across people. We have our favorite way of getting attention. And like you said, for some people it's physical. For some people, it's their sense of humor. For other people, it's their achievements in life. Interlect or whatever.

Yeah. And we tend to display the thing that we know guarantees us a certain level of attention. And that often becomes the thing that we end up complaining about. Because while it works to get us attention, we often resent in the end the kind of attention we're getting. I don't want people who just think that I am funny and don't really see me for who I am. You know, that robs me of a real connection. I don't want someone who just wants me for my looks or just wants me for sex or just wants me because I earn a lot of money. So we end up resenting the situation that in some way we construct for ourselves. And at a certain point, it becomes about deciding what we really want. What's the thing I'm trying to get? Am I trying to serve my ego in love? am I trying to serve my soul?

Am I trying to, you know, have quantity, or am I trying to have quality of connection, of love, of teamwork? You know, what is it I'm really looking for? And I think because a lot of us haven't truly decided that we are still doing the thing that gets us the easiest or most obvious result, the one we know how to get. still going broad of trying to get like a lot of attention from as many people as possible as opposed to focusing on being intentional about the type of person we want to attract yeah exactly and by the way the person some people listening to this might not relate to

using their you know magic trick to and of course it's not a trick is that that thing you're showing may be a very attractive quality that you have but it's not all of you and you don't necessarily want to bring someone in just on that thing because now you're engineering your love life to get just people who value that thing and that thing might not really be you or it might be something that is quite superficial or it might attract very superficial people so it's interesting it's you know some people won't relate to going broad in the sense of like I love how much attention this thing gets me it might be more fundamental than that which is that I'm afraid that if I stop using this thing, I'll be invisible.

They might feel like the only attention they get is for this thing. And if I were to sacrifice that, I don't know if I'll ever attract anyone again. Wow. And so that speaks to a much braver approach that at some point we might have to take in our love life, which is laying down the weapons that we know how to use. Right. So that we can start to attract someone who sees us for who we really are, who loves us or likes us initially without all of that, who is open to a relationship. It's like a, you know, a guy who complains about always attracting people who want him for his money.

And why on a first date do you keep going to five-star restaurants? Or you go to the like family-run ramen joint down the street. sure like it's just the food's amazing why do you know what do you what do you why do you know I've I've had impressed with that that magic treat yeah and some people will say well that's because that's what I like to do I like to go to nice restaurants and I like and that's fine but you don't have to do that you could do that every other night of the week you don't have to do it on a first date and if you feel like you have to do it on a first date then you have to suspect yourself why do I feel the need to lead with this the same is true if you find yourself

within five to ten minutes of a date you've already slipped in some humble brag about your career why did you feel the need to do that it's worth exploring we all do it I'm there's no judgment we all do it we you know but but why did I feel the need to do that why didn't I just connect with this person there's a big difference between impressing and connecting yes and what is the difference between impressing and connecting well I think impressing is this it's often about ego sometimes it comes from an insecure place. I think it comes from a place of thinking that this thing that makes me impressive is what makes me valuable.

It's what makes me worthy. And so I want to make sure that you know that I am this thing or I have this thing or I've achieved this thing or I'm capable of this thing. And so we lead with that. But impressing is really about us, isn't it? It's not about them. It's about us. I want you to see me in a certain way.

Whereas connecting is really about them. Connecting is when we genuinely, we don't just relate to someone else, but we make ourselves relatable to them. There's a book called On Writing Well, called by William Zinser, a very famous book on writing. And he, and it's actually a book about tips for writing non-fiction. And he says that whenever he reads a writer, he often finds that in the first paragraph, it's just them trying to impress. It's just them wanting to like be clever, have this very wordy, flowery, you know, show their vocab, show this amazing sentence structure. And he says, but buried like three paragraphs in, he'll often find a deep.

detail or something that writer says that makes him go, aha, a human. And he said, it lands as good writing the moment he gets that feeling of, aha, a human. And if you think about the way we connect with people, if you think all the way back to the beginning of your relationship or any date you go on, it really a connection is born the moment that someone else feels has that moment it's like you're speaking is uh what did christopher hitchin say he said like speaking is publishing in real time you're always publishing while you're speaking and so when you're with someone and they say something and you just almost breathe us like that sigh of relief of going oh i get you oh i've felt that before oh i know what that's like oh that's like

how i think or feel or relate to the to life or the world then we go, aha, a human. And when we feel that, we connect. And connecting takes us away from impressing. Impressing sounds like trying to be perfect, whereas connecting sounds like trying to be real and authentic. Yes, exactly. I think connecting comes from being real and authentic. And impressing is what we do when we go in like we have something to prove. And if you go, if you approach anyone less from a place of I've got something to prove and more from a place of I want to find the human in you and I want to show the human in me and if we do that then we're just going to enjoy each other's company and that's like the highest goal is that we enjoy being around each other

not that I have some kind of power over you by impressing you so now I could you've put me on a pedestal and now from that pedestal I feel like I'm in control and I can control the dynamic here Because that's what so much of that is, isn't it? It's like, if I'm impressive, then it gives me a sense of control. But if instead I come to connect, it's like we're really relating to each other. And the power isn't my power over you. The power of the situation is that we really enjoy spending time together. You and I have friends.

And the reason we love spending time together is not because, you know, we come over to each other's houses and impress each other. Right, right, right. It's with friends because we, when we hang out, we're enjoying each other's company. And that comes from connecting. And I think actually our love lives would be served more by bringing the connection part forward. And the impressing part can, that will happen. Sure.

All the things that are wonderful about you, don't worry. They're going to figure it out. And by the way, how much more powerful when someone figures out something that's awesome about you and you didn't scream about it, it's even more impressive. Very impressive. It's really powerful because you go, if they didn't feel the need to make that the headline, what else do I not know about this person?

It's interesting you say that because I can't remember what it was in the last month, but Martha was like, oh, I didn't know you did this like 10 years ago. Like she just found out something that I did in the past, but she was like, I never knew you interviewed this person or you did this thing. That's really cool. You did that. And just allowing someone to discover things about you, I think, is impressive. that you didn't shout it at the rooftops in the beginning, the first date or something.

And that doesn't mean that you have to artificially hide things either from a place of humility. If organically certain things about your life come up, that's fine. But it's, I think it's questioning our intention going into a situation. I think about, look, like I'm out there talking about a book right now and talking to lots of amazing people and people who on the surface are very intimidating, big shut. whether it's podcasts like yourself, whether it's TV, whatever. It's like you're in some high stakes environments. And if I go into those things thinking, I need to impress everybody here,

then I'm already in danger of losing the thing that actually makes people connect with me. Because I'm trying to now be something. I'm trying to wear something and where there's back. of look how great I am. When someone is, I guess when someone is connecting with another person at the first meeting, first date or first interaction, what is the biggest mistake they could make you think in pushing that person away from actually wanting to be curious about them and wanting to learn more about them?

What is the biggest mistake that a guy could do and a woman can do in their first interaction of a date? I mean something that I think there's a real deficit of these days is actual vulnerability not like there's sort of fake vulnerability there's a lot of fake vulnerability there's a lot of people telling like their hero's journey you know what I mean like we all have one of those stories right we all have the story of when we weren't doing so well and we when our back was against the wall and the odds were against us and we were in a really bad spot in life and then we came through. But those aren't necessarily vulnerable stories because you're the hero of that story. It's like look how hard it was and look how awesome I am that I was

able to get out of that. There's no shame on doing that. It's just I don't think that that's the same thing as as connecting with who you really are and what you think about and that's like a very you know we have these very well scripted heroes journey stories of our life that make us sound really impressive but i don't think that's the same thing as really connecting and i think and being vulnerable and so i think one of the way the one of the mistakes i suppose that people make early on is never really being vulnerable and vulnerability isn't. I always remember I did a TV show in Australia and before anyone who doesn't know me watching this thinks that that must mean I'm Australian. I am not. I'm English. I feel like everyone in America always still thinks

I'm Australian. But I was doing confusingly. I was doing a TV show in Australia and did they know you were British in Australia? Yeah, they know, they know. But I remember this woman that I was coaching on this show. She kept going on to every date. She went on this date and I was supposed to give feedback, watching them on the dates and seeing how they did and what they could do to kind of improve next time around. And one of the things I kept noticing was like throughout the date, she was just

really laughing hard at everything this guy said and at the end of the date I said to her he's he wasn't that funny like you were laughing like constantly but he wasn't very funny it doesn't mean you couldn't have politely laughed now and again you know his attempts to be funny but it but the way that you were laughing all the way through the day it was sort of inauthentic it wasn't that wasn't really you because i know you i know you didn't find all of those things funny and by the way you were laughing hysterically even when he wasn't trying to be you know like it sure so i said that in itself was an absence of vulnerability because instead of just connecting as you were and sitting into the day and maybe occasionally allowing there to be a

breath without filling every silence and that would have been even that would have been a more authentic So I said to her, the next day you go on with the guy, I want you to just share a little more, you know, because you also asked him a lot of questions. That's another version of not being vulnerable is when we just ask someone else lots and lots of questions and keep them talking. Yes. And we don't ever share anything. And I coach a lot of people who are like, you know, especially a lot of women I work with are like, men don't ask questions. And I know that if you were to watch a lot of them, by the way, that's true. A lot of guys aren't asking questions. They're all too happy to just take the floor and talk about themselves.

But we play in, if we're in a insecure place of not wanting to be vulnerable ourselves, we play into that dynamic because we keep setting them up. We ask another question and when they finish talking, instead of vulnerably allowing there to be a silence for that person to have to now come in and ask you a question, you feel it again. and you ask another question and then that person says okay me again and then they start talking and telling you another story so we you know that we actually precipitate that dynamic yes by never taking the floor for ourselves and telling a story or sharing so anyway for me her

version of just asking questions and laughing was a form of lacking vulnerability not really sharing yeah so I said the next day I want you to go on I want you to be a more authentic version of yourself and i want you to share and this is darkly funny but do you are you understand the context in which this was funny she went on the date and she told a story of a horrible car accident her father had had oh my gosh that changed his life forever and you know i just remember being tickled by it because it was obviously a very this was a big story in her life. This is like one of the most tragic moments in hers and her dad's life. This was not like a second date. Right.

Like this is how to like if when I said be vulnerable, I didn't mean go and tell the most tragic story of your life. Yes. There's other ways to be vulnerable because not everyone deserves to know at the beginning of our connection with them, all of our flaws, everything we're insecure about, everything we worry about on our worst days, all of the things are struggling Like you don't necessarily trust someone enough with you don't feel safe with them enough to share all of those things But there's other ways to be vulnerable if you if you share with someone something that you're passionate about That's vulnerable yeah like if you because often what we're passionate about isn't popular or it's not cool It's weird it's nerdy it's some unique hobby it's weird yeah it's like our thing and it's and it's a little bit like it's very

us whatever that thing is very often or why we like it is very us and and so sharing something whether it's a tv show or a song that you listen to a lot that you like if it came on your like Spotify shuffle it would like it would embarrass you that it came on in a room and that was on your show the shuffle gods really screwed you by playing that while everyone else was around that sharing those things and the things you're into that that itself is an act the vulnerability because you're sort of allowing yourself to be seen a little bit. So, you know, I think these are all ways that people can be on a date with us or be in a room with us and go, aha, a person.

And it's worth asking ourselves, how did I create any of those moments on this date? Or was I constantly tight and tense and censoring myself and anything that was really me and asking them lots of questions, which is a, it feels. like connecting when you're only ever asking someone else questions because you're like, I'm doing it all right. I'm told to be a great listener and I'm told to be curious. And I was doing that. I was being really, really curious. But there's a point where that goes past. Too much. Yeah, because now there's not a connection here. No, it's anything about you. Yeah, exactly. Now, here's something I'm curious about. What is it that women actually want today in a relationship?

And I'll give you context. I was watching this video online recently of some guy on the street. asking a woman, like, what's your biggest turnoff in a man? And the woman said, she was probably in her late 20s, the woman said, when a man is nice to me. She goes, I know I probably shouldn't be saying this, but when he's too nice to me, it's a turnoff. And then turns into another video of a guy holding flowers at a restaurant

who's taking a selfie video saying, I just got stood up by my date. You know, we were having a good, conversation online when we were connecting. You know, I was taking the lead by choosing a restaurant that I thought she might be interested in by doing research on her profile and making suggestions. We were having great interactions. I was being very kind and generous with my attention. I brought flowers. I was on time and she stood me up. And I'm trying to be a thoughtful, generous, kind man. And I got stood up.

for it. So what is it that women actually want today, do you think? You know, and I know, and maybe this is just this one woman that was interviewed saying, when a guy's too nice to me, it's a turnoff. But why is it sometimes it seems like when men are actually trying to be good leaders, trying to be providers, trying to show up and do a nice gesture, here's some flowers, pick the restaurant, you know, show up well dressed and grooms. Why is that a turnoff for some women. Okay. I feel like there's a lot to say about this. Let's firstly can we talk about the spent a lot of time looking at her profile figuring out what she might like picking a restaurant for the day, bringing flowers. Like that raises a lot of questions for me. Okay. Well,

let's say it was all good intentions though. Let's say it was like, no, no, but those are good those might be good intentions. Let's just take it that they were good intentions. It's still like I don't know if that's nice I don't know if that's nice I think that that's like a there's that it's like trying too hard or I mean you know

if you've just been talking to someone and you haven't even been on a date with them yet I mean it's different if you were long distance talking with someone for a month and you were having an amazing time with them and you were like having great phone conversations and FaceTimes and then you show up

like finally you get to meet in person and you've picked a restaurant you know they'll like because they've told you what food they're into and you've brought flowers because you know what flowers they like at this stage and you know you're you're bringing them as because it's it represents a connection that you already have then all of that feels more appropriate to me sure sure but that feels like a kind of a bit of a victimized a guy victimizing himself by saying look at everything I did for a person who's sort of going to show up to that date and go, why did you do all of this? We don't even, we haven't even been on like a date

before. We don't even really know we like each other. Why, why are you buying me flowers on a first date? It feels a bit like, I don't know a lot of people that would show up to a first date having put in all of that effort. And I would worry that anyone who puts in all of that effort for someone that they're just meeting up with to see if they like each other. I would worry about that person coming across a little bit creepy. Interesting. Okay. So I think that that's a, And look, we're talking about a YouTube video, so, you know, it's quite possible that someone did all of those things. And they said, look, women say they want a nice guy. And then I brought flowers on a date. And, but let's, but let's rewind for a second. Because you said the, the woman saying, I, yeah. Now, look, I think that's, I think that's very honest. And she was like, I shouldn't be saying this, but when he's too nice to me, it's kind of a turnoff. Yes. Now, there's versions. Now, okay. There's the version of it. I just said, which I think does indicate to a person, like, there's something a bit off here

about how hard you're trying at this stage. Sure. I get that. It could be too creepy. I shouldn't get, I shouldn't be getting this amount of effort at this stage. And by the way, if I am getting this amount of effort at this stage, here's what I know about you. This isn't really about me.

Because you don't know me. Interesting. So if you suddenly, it's like a guy. It's like love bombing almost. Yeah. And we, you know, love bombing is often. There's can be a more manipulative or sinister aspect of love bombing that I kind of know what I'm doing when I love. I think there's a very dark end of the spectrum with love bombing and there's a much more naive end of the spectrum with love bombing.

The sort of dark end of the spectrum is someone who's really trying to get you to move faster than you would organically move so that they can extract a lot of attention and value and love from you very, very quickly. But the more naive end of the love bombing spectrum, I think, happens with people who, you know, fall for someone very quickly and then because they've fallen for this person that they don't even know, they are now trying on a level that is completely unjustified because they're responding to the story they've created in their head, not the person they actually have in front of them. And when someone feels that, they are, they can sense that there's something off about this, that you don't really know me. We've exchanged texts. Yeah. You don't know who I am. You don't know what I'm into on a deeper level.

You don't know what I'm like. You don't, you shouldn't really know that you like me this much yet. So given this kind of flowers and poetry and whatever and this doesn't, this doesn't, this is actually a sign that you're projecting right now. And I don't like that you're projecting. It makes me feel strange because you're not really seeing me. And so, and if by the way, if you could be feeling this about me right now based on how little you know me, what it says to me is you could be feeling this about anybody next week. Interesting. So this is about you. It's not about me. So I, so, but I do want to go back to the, to the women, you know, saying they want a nice guy thing because, or that they

might get turned off by someone who's too nice. So I think that's one version of being turned off because someone's too nice. We sense that their niceness is false. Gotcha. But what if someone is genuinely nice? They're just maybe not mean to them. They're not showing them poetry and flowers, but they're just attentive, kind. That's a sign of, look, that's a sign of an unhealthy person in, if it's a woman saying it, it's a sign of an unhealthy woman. If it's a man saying, it's a sign of an unhealthy man. What is a woman saying? What are they, what is a woman truly saying if they say, I don't like nice guys. They're saying that my nervous system does not produce the effect that I call love around people who do not send it into some kind of fight or flight response. Wow. It's there,

there are, when I am met with someone who does not make me chase, when I, I am met with someone who doesn't make me feel I have to earn their love, when I am met with someone who doesn't play games, doesn't give me anxiety by being consistent for three days and then dropping off the radar for five or a week, when I am with someone who doesn't do those things, it doesn't feel like love to me. It does not feel like passion. It doesn't feel like fireworks. It doesn't feel like the thing that I think I'm supposed to feel.

Wow. And, you know, there's obviously so much knowledge now on where those things come from and that there are old patterns in how we related to our caregivers or our parents or how they related to us that gets us used to a certain pattern. And we get this nervous system imprint that is created at a very early point in life. And we spend the rest of our lives replicating that if we're not careful. So the great kind of challenge, I think, for all of us. And this is true, by the way, of men too, right?

How many men relentlessly chase after women who don't seem to want them? right who reject them reject them who treat them like they're disposable yeah how many guys are playing the friend to a woman oh man for years on end who picks them up and puts them down whenever it suits her and they're doing it for years on end this is not just a female pattern this is a people pattern why is it that we respond to people who treat us poorly why do we think we do because there is something about it that is known to us it's familiar it's it's familiar and we don't realize it we think it's we think we hate it i hate that this person doesn't want me and if i could just get this person to want me i'd feel good again but it what people often find is if that person

truly turned around to meet you and gave you everything that you wanted from the beginning it would have felt strange that there's something in this dynamic that is in a weird way safe to you. Yes. It doesn't make you feel safe, but there's some kind of safety in the familiar. And that's not our fault. We should exercise compassion towards ourselves for that because it's not our fault that these really damaging and destructive patterns are things that we chase because that this was created at a time when we weren't deciding our response systems. to things it was we were in survival mode and you know there's a um i spoke to a woman recently

i did a show recently where the host of the show said i really struggled to have hard conversations with people like if i have to have a hard and a big part of this book is like i have a whole section on how to have hard conversations because by the way every relationship is shaped is made in the crucible of hard conversations, right? Can you have the difficult conversation? Can you say the thing you're afraid to say? And can you express your need without fearing that if you do, something bad will happen? And so many of the times people end up in painful relationships or not even relationships,

they end up in painful dynamics or they end up in limbo with someone where it never ends up as a relationship is always casual is because they're afraid to have the hard conversations there was this woman that was one of the hosts of the show and it was and she said to me I really struggled to have hard conversations and I don't know why I just you know every time I go to have a hard conversation it's like I break out in sweats and I panic and I'm you know she said it's just it wasn't that in my family like no one's really ever had hard conversation. She said, and she didn't realize what she was saying as she said it, but she said, you know, I mean, it's like my dad, for example, if I try to have a hard conversation with him,

he just leaves the room. Right. And I, and she kept going, but she didn't realize what she had said, which is your entire life, because that wasn't a pattern your dad started yesterday, right? Your dad's most likely been like that since the day you were born. So what you learned is that if you tried to have a hard conversation with your father, he would leave the room. He would abandon you. So now you have what therapists call a core abandonment wound, right? That's a, this is something that's now with you. And you wonder why with this person that you're on date three with, who shouldn't even be

that important to you, why it feels hard to articulate that, you know, you are, you, a disappointed that they showed up half hour late to the day or that they didn't text you for a week and then all of a sudden like reached out out of nowhere to say do you want to do something in one hour and then you went without expressing that like hey we had two great dates and then you were like I didn't hear from you for a week and now you're like are you ready in an hour the reason she didn't express that is and the reason it made her so terrified to express it un irrationally terrified is because in her world it's been perfectly rational it's not this is where compassion comes in because we're very good at calling ourselves crazy like I feel crazy why

am I so scared of having this conversation or we get called crazy by other people that's a favorite thing to call people she was crazy oh they're crazy like you can't believe what they tried to do or what they said to me. They're not crazy. Something happened. They experienced something in their world at a time when it was their reality. It was her reality growing up. And I'm, you know, I'm extrapolating here.

But like I said, if she's saying that about her dad, almost certainly her dad didn't start doing that last week. Right. He's been doing it her whole life. it was real for her that there was a time in her life where if she tried to express a need with her father or tell him something that she wasn't happy with or something that she'd like him to do more of or less of or a way that he'd hurt her he would not be able to have the conversation and he would leave that when you're a child that's that poses a real threat to you yes so what she's feeling now is

rational for her in her world based on where she came from. We look at it from the outside and go, I can't believe that she would be so afraid to say this thing. And she's going to end up in a two-year relationship with someone who never meets any of her needs, who doesn't even know what her needs are, who she resents deep down because it's like he never thinks of me. Yeah. But she's terrified to have that conversation because for her, if she has a hard conversation, it means abandonment. And abandonment means on an emotional level not a logical level she might not survive yes and so when someone says i struggle i find it a turn off when someone is nice they are articulating a deep deep pattern that has been there for a long time in their life that they didn't choose and that they may

not even be aware of and most likely it sounds like maybe their father probably was either rude to their mother or rude to them as a child or maybe had some, you know, behavioral patterns that caused them to feel rude at different times. Yeah, or they, you know, were neglected and they felt like they, in order to get attention, they had to do a lot or they had to be, you know, the golden child or they had to, you know, meet everyone's needs. They had to go out of their way all the time to make someone happy. And so, you know, and then they'd get like, you know, whether it's from the father or the mother, they get like a hit of love. And all of a sudden, it's like, I feel calm. I feel safe. Oh, this feels so good. And then, of course, it's right back to, you know, the next day

they're cold again. And you have to fight for that next hit. And so if you've experienced that and now you're out there looking for love, you may very well have developed the association that love is something you have to earn. Love is something that comes in fits and starts. Love is something that you're grateful when you get a hit of it and then you have to endure these periods of someone being cold in order to get the next hit. And of course, that's, you know, what's known as the trauma bond. But it's, that's really what someone is saying. When someone says, I'm, I get turned off by people who are nice and I get turned on by people who, you know, give me and we have all sorts of euphemistic terms for it like the bad boy or the person who like you know is is super bold or the

person who is has an edge or whatever but a lot of the time what we're talking about is I'm trauma bonded to people who are hot and cold inconsistent make me have to earn their love their attention take it away from me and then give me it back again and that by the way makes that woman who said that a perfect target for abusive people it makes them a perfect target for people who forget like whether they're abusive because they're narcissists or because they're you know sociopathic it's it makes you a perfect target for someone who's in even just a selfish phase of their life because someone who's in a selfish phrase of their life takes what they can get it's intermittent as up and down. It's hot and cold. They're glad to be around someone who doesn't ask a lot of them.

Yeah. So even if you don't get someone who's truly toxic and abusive, you're still going to attract people who are selfish. Yes. And those people are going to waste your time and your energy because they're not where you're at, but you never test the relationship because you, this is on some level what you're looking for. This is what's familiar to you. So, I mean, I can relate to this because in previous, you know, previous seasons of life, I really struggled of having the hard conversations. Like, I dreaded it. So, you know, looking back, I can say, man, you're, that's crazy.

Just have the conversation and whatever, just deal with it. But in the moment, you know, when I didn't have the tools or the, the nervous system to feel safe myself, and I needed the approval of someone else to, to feel safe, or I needed someone else to be okay with the hard conversation that was having, and when they weren't okay with it or they would explode or they would cry or they would scream or they would not speak to me

for two days or something because they were upset of what I wanted to talk about or they avoided it it would make me feel like oh I'm really insecure and I always had the fear of like I guess it was being alone

or it was like the person not loving me in return or me not being good enough or something like that there was probably a combination of insecurities or fears that caused me to be afraid of having difficult conversations and just saying what I really wanted to say. And then I remember having like, you know, throat clenching and like heart palpitations over like years

of being in these different relationships where I never felt like I was able to speak up. And I can't blame the other person. You know, we can never blame the other person for our decision to not communicate, not set standards, you know, not say the things we need to say. We can't blame the other person. But it always felt like, oh, this person isn't willing to accept me for who I am

if I say the full truth or if I talk about the things that I'm uncomfortable with. If I don't like this situation, they will not accept me. And they didn't, they didn't accept me for my authentic conversations or my truth. But I was afraid of losing them for them not accepting me for who I was. and therefore it was never going to work out. And it wasn't until I started to really understand that and become aware of it and start to heal that process. A lot of things changed with Martha because I was like, wow, this is an incredible

human being in front of me that I'm starting to date and connect with and meet. Wow, she's pretty special. But I got to the point where I was like, but I can't be willing to lose myself in order to try to have someone want to stay with me. I cannot go down this path again, which I do. done five or six times in 20 years in different relationships where I lost myself to try to please someone else so that they'd want to like and love me. And therefore hating myself in return, resenting myself, resenting the person, resenting the relationship, feeling guilty of why

I wasted all this time and energy being in this relationship, fighting for it while all the while I was losing myself and losing myself respect in that process. And it wasn't until Martha, I was like, oh man, I'm going to have the uncomfortable conversations pretty early on, right, in the first few months. I'm going to talk about these are my standards. These are my values. This is what I want. This is what I'm not willing to deal with in a relationship and be willing to say maybe this isn't the right fit. If you don't have the same or similar standards and if you aren't willing to fully accept all of me, my past, my shames, my insecurities, et cetera, then maybe we're not the right fit but that means I might not be with a great person in front of me and that's a scary thing well

but it was scary but I'd also set me free when I made the decision like okay I'd rather be free and be fully myself authentic to myself than trying to please and change who I am to be with someone to have them like and love me and that set me free to say all the conversations I wanted to And it was like the more honest and hard conversations I had is like the more she fell in love with me. Well, this is the interesting thing. This is the tragedy of giving into those patterns because I think I think this is a really important thing for everyone to hear is that the past does not have to equal the future when it comes to these patterns, right? Our nervous system may have gotten wired in this way at a time when we didn't choose for it to be wired that way. It just happened to us because that's what we needed to do.

to survive but it doesn't mean that it's not a it's not a life sentence once you become more aware of those patterns you do have the power to have an enormous impact on changing them or even just how you relate to those patterns you know i i relate to what you're saying because i i know that one of the things that I have come to enjoy in my life is just moments of being able to sit and read a book. Yeah. Just to sit and read and to do it. And, you know, it doesn't matter if my wife Audrey is there, but just to feel like it's the same as if I was only on my own. In other words, I just feel like I'm in my own company and able to fully relax doing that without feeling the need to entertain somebody else.

And that, even what I just said is my stuff. They used to scare you in the past. It's a feeling of being responsible for somebody else's emotions. And their happiness or their joy, yeah. And so it would make me, I real, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was afraid to speak up about what I needed about really silly little things, you know? I was afraid to say, I really,

could use just a night to myself or I could really use just a few hours to just read like just something simple like I love on a Sunday I love just reading or spending a few hours just catching up on like the news and because it's not something I do on the weekdays I like once a week I like to sit down and just look at like everything that's going on and just feel like I'm doing it at a leisurely pace and and not responsible for someone else's like are they having are they having a good Sunday Now, what did it used to be like in the past? I wouldn't, I just wouldn't say anything. And then I would become less of myself in the relationship.

And, you know, there would be resentment from my side. But I'd also be a worse version of myself because they would feel me kind of frustrated. Frustrated on some level. Was there something you, like, did you try to communicate this in previous relationships? No, it was all my fault. Oh, really? It was all my fault. She never tried to even say it and someone was mad at you.

No, I, I think. For wanting like two hours. yourself. No, because it pre, even if that was true, it predated anyone I dated. It's like this deep feeling from childhood of feeling like I'm responsible for, probably, and you know, I, I, I think in my family dynamic, I felt responsible a lot for people's emotions. And, and so it, it carried over into my relationships. And with Audrey, I would notice that something that she'd be more than happy to give me. I was afraid to say. And even when I did say it, I would then feel anxious having said it. Really? Yeah, because I would feel like I've upset you. I've now like, I feel like,

you know, are you mad at me? Is there like, is everything okay? Are you happy? Is it, is this? And it almost like in my head, there was this subconscious feeling that there was going to be this weird comeuppance for it like you know you took your two hours of a lone time now I'm gonna get you something or like yeah or like I'm gonna go and do something really fun that you would have wanted to do not gonna invite you yeah like it's just my brain my brain was doing all of these weird things and I had to pay attention to that and go hey it's look what you said is what you said is absolutely true that if you play if you keep doing that. It's a very similar pattern to yours. It might have different origins, but there's a

similarity in being unwilling to speak up about your needs and what you want. And what you said is true that if you didn't learn to speak up about those things, then you could be really unhappy in a relationship. And we tend to focus on that side of it, that I never want to be that unhappy again like I was in the past when I was in a relationship and none of my needs were met. But we also often don't give enough focus to the inverse of that, which is that imagine how great your relationship could become when you're with someone who truly knows you. Like when someone gets to see all of those little idiosyncrasies about you and who you are. Like Audrey, my wife makes fun of me all the time.

Really? Yeah, she's constantly making it. fun of me because she's like you're so particular and you need like when you wake up in the morning she makes fun of me because she's like when you wake up in the morning you really like those like couple of hours before I wake up where you get to just like do all your little rituals and the things you want to do and like she doesn't she makes fun of me for it but she loves me for it because it's like that's you I know you I know who you are and the more she knows who I am the more she can actually be a teammate in supporting

that and so now she's such an incredible partner that she'll she'll say to me hey do you want like she'll she might say to me proactively do you want some time this weekend to yourself or do you honest and so because i'm honest about the things that that i would like which requires bravery and courage because again it's like old wounds and old things like i feel like it's going to go something's going to go wrong if i do this i've i've given her her the gift of showing who I really am. I've given myself the gift of truly feeling seen and accepted for who I am. And I've also given myself the gift and her the gift of her knowing how to support me

better, which is a beautiful thing because she wants to support me. She wants to be the best partner. She can be for me and vice versa. And we can only do that if we know each other. And so that, that we, we've both worked on that together. And it's, and that's another form of vulnerability, by the way, is sharing those things. And it's, this is like beyond any relationship I've ever had in my life because of those moments, not just, you know, me and Audrey have the most extraordinary connection and, and, you know, chemistry and all of those things, like these amazing things. but we also just, I've never, I've never felt so seen and accepted and loved.

And that's because, and she would say the same. And it's because both of us have been more brave than we were in previous relationships. How do we, but how do we learn the skill of expressing our needs and having a hard conversation without the fear of some blow up or backlash happening? How do we, if we've never done that before, had hard conversations, how do we learn to have them without the fear of something bad happening? A couple of things. I think that there's, I think first just noticing, I'm a huge fan of Nicola Perra's work because, you know, so much of her focus is on understanding that there is a, there is a nervous system response. and therefore bodily sensations that we feel that that you have to detach from the story that goes with them right so if you start thinking about having a conversation with someone

your body starts to react as if there's danger if that's your version of danger from your past. Yes. And when your body starts to react, we try to kind of logic ourselves out of it by it's very common. Self development is, it's very common in self development to come up with reframes, right? Like, oh, but, you know, if you have this hard conversation, it could actually improve the relationship or it could. And reframes are really important. I love, reframing is something I use all the time in my life. But one of the things Nicole said to me recently, that I really loved was that until you can

regulate your nervous system and the sensations that are going on, you might not have access to a better story. Because that's what a reframe is, right? It's a more powerful story. You know, for example, someone came to me some time ago about a hard conversation

they needed to have with their boss. And a reframe that I gave was that you're treating this hard conversation like it's the be all end or hard conversation that you have to have. And actually, this is like the first of the next 10,000 hard conversations you're going to have in your life. This is like one of so many hard conversations you're going to have in your lifetime. So instead of seeing this, like this big epic moment where you have to have a hard conversation, actually see it as practice for the next hard conversation you have to have because you're going to have many in your life. And your ability to

have hard conversations is going to determine the quality of your life. So instead of seeing this as really high stakes, see, this hard conversation is practiced for the next hard conversation you're going to have to have with him or with somebody, with anybody. Anyone, yeah. That's a reframe. But when our body goes into a true, like, nervous system response, when we go into fight or flight or when we go into freeze, for example, it can be extremely difficult to even have access to a better story. So hard. Someone can tell you, it's like a heartbreak.

Someone can come along and say to you, you know, some story. Like what is, there's plenty more fish in the sea is a story. It's like, it's a reframe. Oh, there's more people out there. That's a reframe. And you're trying to give someone a more empowering story. But in their state of heartbreak, which has physiologically overcome their body, they don't have access to the truth of the story you're telling them, even if it's

true. So regulating your nervous system first, whether it's through, and you and I have done so much of this together, right? When we went to Poland with Wim Hof, what did we do every single morning? We regulated our nervous system. We did like 45 minutes of breathing, but you don't need to do 45 minutes of breathing. You could do five minutes of breathing. You can find a way to slow yourself down, whether it's through meditation, whether it's through losing yourself in a different task. We could even be calling a friend and having a nice conversation before revisiting this hard conversation you need to have. It's taking your body out of that state by regulating. And then when you've regulated, like I feel it, I do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. At the end of an,

whatever problem is making me anxious at the beginning of a session of rolling, at the end of an hour of rolling on the mats I have access to a better story and you can communicate it better yeah because my I've burnt I've burnt off a lot of anxious energy I've been forced you know any kind of like sport like that forces presence

so you're not thinking about the problem it's like being it's like when Wim says like being in the ice being in the in the in the in the in the ice and being in a frozen lake or whatever for him was the thing that, you know, took his, it was the first time he wasn't thinking about the greatest tragedy of his life was when he was in the ice. It's true.

Because his, all his focus was just on the feeling, the shock, the pain of being in the ice. And for me, I get that from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu where I'm, it's forced presence for me. And then at the end of it, when I'm laying on the mat, I'm like, that thing doesn't feel as scary to me or I feel like I've access to a deeper truth or something better. So the start is regulating your nervous system first and then to start to look at what are some, what are some better stories that I could tell myself here. For example, I have this story in my head that if I am honest with someone about what my needs are, they're going to leave me. but what if firstly let me remind myself that in the beginning when i haven't done this it's been a special kind of hell like i've that the relationship where i didn't get my needs met

was miserable it was hell it made me so and i i've been in those relationships and i know that people around me at the time who loved me were like oh my god he's he's he's in a dark place. I'd much rather be single than in a relationship with intermittent love where my needs are not met. And knowing that is a power. Because if you've never experienced that pain before, then you're liable to get to go back to it.

But if you have had it and if you connect to that pain, then all of a sudden you go, well, nothing is worse than that. so I can't go back there. And then there might be also a very positive story that if I think of my dream relationship, if I think of the kind of connection, and I don't mean dream relationship in that you find the perfect partner. I mean, if I think of the kind of connection, the kind of team that I want to be a part of, what, that's a place where I really feel seen.

And if I want that, then I have to allow myself. to be seen. And that means me sharing. You might also tell yourself that, hey, this, me sharing this stuff also gives them permission to do the same. And my end of the bargain, by the way, I think this is really important. We talk a lot, you know, there's a lot of like Instagramable content out there now of like getting your needs met but you're also in a relationship with a person who has needs on the other side we know it's popular to talk about when our needs aren't being met but what about when their needs aren't being met what about the things that would make them really happy there's not nearly as much content around that stuff how to be how to serve your partner at the highest level

yeah now now the reason there's not is i believe is because the those posts are usually created by people who have experienced the pain of overgiving and and never being vulnerable enough or brave enough or confident enough to receive and to ask for what they want to receive but the other end of the bargain is when someone when in finding you're looking for someone who sees you and your needs and wants to show up as a teammate in meeting those needs but the thing that often gives someone the sense of safety that they can do that is when you're also taking care of their needs. People don't feel safe to meet our needs when they're worried that they've got to watch their own and vice versa. When we're, it's like when I said,

when Audrey is anticipates my need, it actually frees up my energy because now I don't need to be worried about my needs. I'm like, oh, she's got me. She's got me. It frees up energy to go, what does she need? Like, what's the thing? She just asked me the most beautiful question in the world. She said, what do you need? How can I be better for you this week? How can I support you this week? That frees me up, frees up mental bandwidth to go, hang on, have I done anything that awesome for her this week? Like, this is someone who really has my back. Who else in my life is asking me that question? That's unbelievable.

This is the greatest teammate in the world. I'm so lucky. I'm so grateful. And from that place, you're like, I better be showing up for this person in the same way. Like, what does she need? How can I be there for you? Like, what are you missing?

What am I not doing enough of that would mean a lot to you? So it's a two-way street. 100%. And if you're giving and giving, and you don't feel like your needs are being met, then you probably need to communicate, hey, I need some time for my needs as well, or here's what I need,

you know, and make a request. Is this something you can provide? And notice if you are giving and giving and feeling resentful, because that has nothing to do with them. They, they, it may come from the fact that they're giving less than you are. But you have an expectation then too.

Why you're, well, but the fact that you're resenting it and you haven't said anything, That's on you. That's your pattern. That's your work to do because there's something, I bet you that pattern doesn't just show up with this person. I bet it shows up with other people in your life too. I bet it's shown up with people in the past.

So we have to suspect ourselves. When we have the same resentments all the time, it's suggestive of the fact that there is a pattern that requires healing within us, that healing that could hold the key to the relationship you've always wanted because by the way you'll never like I said by changing these patterns and healing these wounds you will find yourself in a place where better and better relationships are available to you because people will start to see you you'll start to attract a different quality of person you'll start to attract someone who sees that you respect yourself you'll start to sculpt the kind of relationship that you want but but but

we deny ourselves these relationships and we wonder why it is I keep running into people who take me for granted. This is something I used to do in relationships. I used to think that everyone in the world thought the same way as me, essentially, that if I'm attracting this person, they must think similar to me. They must want to give like me. They may want to be thinking about me the way I think about them. They may want to be generous the way I'm trying to be generous. And therefore, thinking they're going to be similar with their generosity like me. But when it wouldn't happen, I would get frustrated and be like,

huh, why aren't they giving the way that I'm giving? So I had an expectation, right? And this expectation left me feeling frustrated, resentful, confused, whatever it may be. And because I lacked the ability to communicate my standards through hard conversations, the relationships never worked. I'm sure there's many other flaws that I had why those relationships didn't work. But that was one thing that left me feeling frustrated,

not only in intimacy, but also in friendships or business relationships where I was like, I'm going to show up a certain way and I have an expectation that other people show up a certain way. Or if I'm going to be generous in one way, I have an expectation that if, you know, I do something for someone else,

that they would be just thoughtful in similar ways and be as generous. And when some people did that, but not everyone. And so it left me feeling frustrated more times and not because I had an expectation. As opposed to just communicating, okay, here's what I'm all about and here's what I value. Here's my values, here's my standards, or not having any expectations at all. And being the generous person and not having being resentful if there's not a standard met in return and being okay with that.

And so I've had to learn the hard way of like making sure that I either don't have expectations in certain friendships, business relationships, intimacy. or communicate with hard conversations and see if someone can meet that standard. And that's the interesting thing. That's where romantic relationships hold this strange sort of space of their own. Because there's things you can do with other relationships that take all of that pressure out of it. With business relationships or certain friendships, maybe you're not your very closest friends, but with people who are kind of on the outskirts of your core circle, you can have few expectations.

Because you say, when I'm with this person, I have a great time. They don't really show up for me in meaningful ways in my life, but they're fun company when we get to have it. And that's okay because I got other people. I've got a handful of core people in my life that really do show up when it matters. I don't need that from this person. so I don't have to have any expectations. And if I give to this person, I'm just going to know the deal that I'm going to give to this person,

but I'm going to expect nothing back because I know that probably I won't get it back for this person. Our intimate relationships hold a special place of power in our lives because they're the tend to be the person we have the most proximity to on a daily basis. it's the person that we expect the most from and it's the person that you know we can't we can't meet certain needs elsewhere right it's not like sexually you go well if this person doesn't meet all of my needs I'll go elsewhere and you know I'll mix it up and spread it around like it's not like that so we have certain rules in place for most you know monogamous relationships that say that there are certain things that it's inappropriate for me to get elsewhere.

And even if that's not the case, because that's not the case with many of our needs, it's still the case that this is the person I'm going to invest the most time and energy into and the most love into and the most of myself into. And so if that's the case, by definition, is the relationship that has to come with the most reciprocity. yes it can't be a one-sided thing because of how much i am required to give to this relationship how much i'm prepared to give to this relationship so that's why you've got to communicate the hard the hard things express them you you have to and and look you're right there's people are

different we're not all the same in relationships and you might really like this and she really likes that and they're different but it's why i think compromise is important where might we be able to give each other a bit more of what we want but it's also uh the thing that i think people failed to do a lot is view their romantic relationships holistically so i might not get this thing as much as i want but you know it's it's like if you really like if you really like phone calls right and your partner when they go on a trip you don't really hear from them because it's just not like For them sitting on the phone, it just doesn't lend itself to their communication style. So they'll text you, but like being away and then sitting on the phone for an hour just isn't, it's just not their natural thing.

So you can try and force it, but most times it just feels a bit forced. Yes. Well, if that person in every other way, it's an incredible partner. And when they're with you, they are so present. and they text you they you know it's not like they leave you they they don't ghost you on texts there's a back and forth through texts they'll send you pictures of where they are and what they're up to you know they might leave you a loving voice no and big and you're in a relationship that's not long distance in other words the majority of the time you're together it just so happens that

sometimes they have to take trips without you for work or whatever then it's like this is all right i'm loved yeah of course i feel loved in this relationship i don't need them to try to be good at this thing that they're not good at or they don't feel natural because i get my needs met on the whole i do get my needs met would it would it be nice if they enjoyed sitting on the phone as long as i did maybe but it's okay yeah if there's now start adding in variables and you can quickly see how justifying that can become a problem. Let's say that this person also isn't good at texting. Let's say that this person's work takes them away for half the time. Now you might have a real problem because

you're not together 50% of the time. You're someone who values closeness. Phone calls were a way that you felt close, but fine, you would have settled for messages and pictures and just feeling a little bit involved in their day, but you don't even feel that. And are they away half the time? You're going to be miserable. Yeah. So it's viewing these things holistically. No one is ever going to be a hundred percent of everything you needed a person to be. And they're always going to be differences. So when we, when we ignore the fact that our needs are getting met less of the time than you know they're not being met more of the time than they are and you're ignoring that then then you're unhappy yeah in your book love life uh how to raise your standards find

your person and live happily no matter what you talk about there's a quote from your book that said i made a big miscalculation i underestimated people's ability to make poor choices in their love life even when they had an abundance of choice how when we have an abundance of choice of opportunities, maybe great men in front of us or great women in front of us and we're going on lots of dates and we're like, wow, there's so many inspiring people

where most people are struggling to find one person that they're interested in, but now you have an opportunity with lots of people. How do we choose properly when you have an abundance of choices with the potential partners? How do you know the person you're going to choose for the next 20, 30, 50 years potentially

is the one for you. Look, I think a very simple place to start is who do I feel most at home with? Like, who when I spend time with them makes me feel most like myself? And I think when we listen to that, we are listening to, do I want to say my heart?

you know we're listening to our heart we're not listening to our ego because i think ego drives us a lot in our love lives you know we chase after people who seem impressive on the surface people who look a certain way people who have a certain life people that we think are going to look good to our friends and family and they're going to be celebrated by the people around us everyone's going to go they're amazing they're you know and and by the way the person that all of your friends and family initially say is the most amazing is not necessarily the best person for you that it you know that so true how many people have gotten married by saying oh but my family loves this person yeah and and by the way your family

aren't all the greatest judge of character yeah and they're not spending 24 7 with this person they're not they're getting is an advertisement yeah two hours on a weekend or something you know how many How many of us have ever spent a few hours with someone, a day with someone, and thought they were the greatest person ever? And then weeks or months later, we look back and we realize, oh, this was a very charismatic person who really knew how to be endearing and was very charming. And I just, when I met them, I just felt so good around them. And I felt like, oh, my God, they're like, they're so, you know, you just. felt this amazing thing but later on you realize like this person's like actually kind of like there was no friendship there at all this is just a person who's really good at making people like

them and some people are like that with your family and friends it's like it it's now by the way that's not me saying if all of your family and friends think someone is bad news you should not listen to that because if the people you trust the most are like I don't I don't I this doesn't something doesn't feel right you should hear that and if and again if the people that trust you trust the most it's almost like on that level it's more important that the people you trust the most feel like oh this person's a really good fit for you like I can see that this person is like that you two go really well together like they get you as opposed to this person is really amazing.

Like, if, that's a bit different. You should be thinking of, like, does this person bring the best out of you? Correct. And if your family sees that the person you're with, maybe he doesn't make as much money or have the job that I think I'd want him to have or whatever,

he's not there yet in life. But if you are a happier human being in general, if you shine more consistently, if you bring out the best aspects of yourself, because of this relationship, then that's something that people should approve of. That's exactly right. Do they bring out the best in you?

Are you sad constantly? Exactly. Are you constantly having the conversation of problems with this relationship, right? And everyone's experienced a friend or a family member who is terribly anxious and unhappy in a relationship that they are desperately clinging onto, thinking it's the most important thing in the world.

And the rest of us from the outside are going, this shouldn't be the most important thing in the world. unhappy right you know so i i think someone we feel at home with someone who makes us feel like the most like ourselves look for the areas where ego seems to be driving you know i and ego is often driving when you have a poor answer to why you like someone oh yeah why do you when you're asked the question why do you love this person and you don't have a good response no that's a red flag it's for Sure. For sure. I know, you know, Dr. Romney, our mutual friend, who's the leading expert on narcissism, says one of the surest signs that something is up is when she asks why someone loves someone and they do not have a good answer. The answer approximates to there's just something about them. Yeah. That's not a good answer. And saying there's great sex isn't a great answer either. No. We just have great explosive sex. No. And there's some prerequisites for a great relationship, right? Chemistry is important.

It's not that you can say, oh, just, you know, be with someone who's nice to you, even if you have no chemistry. That also isn't going to work. So you have to have chemistry. But chemistry is a prerequisite. It's not like the thing you have to go, like, I'm trying to get the greatest chemistry. anyone could ever have. It's just that you need chemistry. Yes. There's a moment in the book where I say don't comparison shop for chemistry. Right. Right. Instead, see it as a beautiful thing. If you've found someone who's an incredible teammate, who's all of these things you really want, values that you are important to you, and there's chemistry, that's an amazing thing. So am I coming from ego or am I coming from a place of what actually makes me happy is a huge, huge, huge decision.

And sometimes we don't learn that until we have spent time with people that are less familiar to us, but make us feel really good. Yeah. You know, your ego might flare up in some way or another and or you might be like, oh, but do I still want, do I want to like do this? maybe I could have someone with this or that or whatever. Like, there's a lot of that in the world. And it creates massive confusion instead of just going,

this feels unfamiliar, but there's something about this that feels really good. I love your definition of like when you should, when you know that you're choosing the right person as someone who makes you feel most at home. I love that idea. And Martha, my fiance, she's always like, man, I wish I would have to. have met you like 10 years ago. We would have had so much fun, like over these last 10, 15 years being together.

And I keep saying to her, you know, I wouldn't have been ready for you. Because if I would have met you 10 years ago, I'd have looked at you and I would have not have had the same level of, I don't know if you would call it attraction or just like curiosity to be in a relationship. Because my nervous system wasn't built for you. It wasn't built to feel safe and accepted for who I was.

It wasn't. I still needed to learn how to regulate my nervous system, heal, reflect, and really go through a growth period emotionally and physically, really, to feel familiar with safety and feel and feel familiar with peace because I didn't have the familiar, I didn't understand that that was safe. No, and when you're in that, I think for a lot of people, especially those who are playing the field and experiencing different people and whatever there is a kind of being single is this dopaminergenic cycle and it and it's hard to get off that cycle because you're kind of wire you're

wired for it now you're wired for instant gratification you're wired for variety and excitement and what next and the dramas of the first few weeks of knowing someone and the romance of like just figuring each other out and all of that is like and texts and phone buzzing and you know this and that and this person's now called and it's like a frantic sort of dopamine engine that that you get stuck in and at a certain point you have to come to value something else more because otherwise and this happens of course routinely is people get locked into that cycle and it was clear to me at a certain point oh this happiness doesn't lie here for me anxiety lies here for me uncertainty uncertainty is having an effect on on the way

I see the world or myself or this is not this is not going to serve me long term but that doesn't just because you realize that it doesn't mean that you it means that you it means have an appreciation of what the other thing is or that you even know what it looks like or what package it comes in or you don't know any of those things and so you you know there's a whole chapter i wrote i wrote in this book that i'm really insanely proud of because i think it's so on the money of what's happening for so many people it's called never satisfied and that i think is the feeling i explain the steps of why it is we struggle to be satisfied and the next chapter is how to rewire your brain so that you can actually rewire yourself

for happiness because I know for a long time I was that never satisfied in relationships or just yeah my love life I think in life too right right right but in in my love life I was just chasing chasing chasing chasing dopamine dopamine I'm not happy I need to get out of this relationship. I'm single. Dopamine, dopamine, I'm not happy here. I knew, you know, like there must be some perfect person who's going to make me feel differently about this whole thing and I'm going to feel different when I meet that person and that person didn't come because it wasn't really about that. Something was going on with me. I was in that cycle and it and it, the other thing that is available to you is so, I don't want to, this isn't a, this isn't a lecture on whether someone

should be single or in a relationship. So I, I don't want to become that person. Sure, sure. But I, what is so amazing about a healthy relationship is not available to you until you come to value something different. It's like someone who's been used to doing drugs every day. And then the day that you get them to quit drugs, you sit them outside their house in front of a beautiful field and you say, appreciate the sunset. Yeah. There's no dopamine rush anymore. A sunset is a mate. Like a sunset is an awe-inspiring, unbelievable thing. It is something that's mind-blowing. Why do we all go on holiday and everyone at the same time goes out onto the beach? and watches the sunset because there's something stunning and magical about a sunset. But for the person who's been doing drugs every day, that's not the day you can appreciate a sunset. You are coming out of all of those feelings that you've been addicted to and all of that, like, instant gratification, dopamine.

So it's about, like, again, it's nervous system stuff, right? It's retraining my nervous system. And this is some of the stuff we talk about and how to rewire your brain, but you have to orient yourself towards a different goal. And in the beginning, you can't expect the new thing

to feel like the old thing. Because it's not, it's not going to feel like the old thing. But the more you lean into the new thing, you develop an appreciation for how much better it actually feels. and that's like a kind of stunning and eye-opening realisation. And I feel really passionate about this

because I see a lot of really unhappy people. I was one of them, by the way, who are stuck in those cycles. And I think there's a lot of people who get stuck in optimization cycles in their love life where it's like, especially Taipei people, not everyone does, but a lot of people do where it's like, I'm trying to find the perfect thing and I'm trying to, and if someone's missing this thing, I'm going to optimize and go for another person who's like got all the good things about this person, but and also that thing. And it's like, people don't work like that. You exchange one basket of ingredients for another basket of ingredients. And you'll get new good stuff and new bad stuff and challenging stuff. And it, you I'm a huge believer.

I think the settling is a word that has a really unfairly negative connotation. And it shouldn't. Is there something amazing about that word? You can change the meaning of that depending on the word that goes after it. So if you say, if you tell someone you have to settle for something that feels immediately negative, right? Like settling down. Yeah, because I feel like I'm being short. changed. But if you say settling on something, it changes it because you, Lewis, settled on

a particular business and brand. You're such a capable person. You could have done a hundred different things in this lifetime and you would have been a success at them. Right. So how the hell do you decide which one you should do? You found one that scratched the itch in a bunch of different ways it allowed you to be creative, it allowed you to broadcast, which is something you're really good at. It allowed you to connect, which is something you're really good at.

It allowed you to, you know, harness all of these relationships, which is something you're really great at, as relationships. It allowed you to put to work your strategy mind. It allowed you to be competitive, which is something that's in your bones. And so this business,

it ticked a lot of boxes for you. But it's not the only business that would have ticked boxes for you. There are other things you could have done that would have ticked boxes, but you settled on greatness. Yes. And you said, I'm going to go all in on this and I'm going to keep going on this. And the thing that has made what you do so great and what you have done is extraordinary,

what you've built, the audience you've built, the platforms you've built, the body of work you've built, it's extraordinary. But it's not extraordinary because you found an extraordinary thing. You didn't find the word greatness. And, and like, you know, you just went, I've got the, if you'd have said to me like 15 years ago, we didn't know each other then. But when you started, if you'd have said to me, Matt, I've got the greatest idea. I am going to take the word greatness and I am going to just own that world and word and build a brand out of it and do all of the, I would have been like, that's not an idea. Right, right, right.

So you've taken a common word in the English language. Yeah, yeah. You talk about it. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? But that's not what's made this extraordinary. What's made this extraordinary is that you have settled on it and you take this thing to another level every year.

And people who are looking at you going, you've got a lot of, I've walked with you in the street in Vegas, on holiday in places, when we've traveled, you have people coming up to you everywhere you go. And you're a hero to so many people and so many people want to create what you've created. I want to be where you are. But you didn't, you didn't start with this really special thing.

You spent year after year after year making a really special thing. And every year I see you take the same core thing and stick with it again. Yeah. Not go, you know what now what I really want to do is now I really want to do real estate. Yeah, I'm over this. I'm going to move on. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not, that's not it for you. You're like, I'm going to make this thing even better. I think that's how people should have propped relationships. And that's my point is that you settle when the thing that makes a relationship the greatest relationship of your life is that you take someone who ticks the boxes for you. And that's the starting point. But then based on the values you each bring and I think there are some very powerful values for a relationship like being growth oriented like teamwork, like like work,

like loyalty like prioritizing the vision of the relationship i think when you take those things and you put those two people like that together what they start with is not nearly as interesting as what they will create together and and you can only create that if you settle on a person but you will never settle on a person as long as you are looking for the perfect person as a starting point because the perfect relationship doesn't exist at the beginning. But the perfect relationship for you can exist over time if you settle on someone and you resolve to make that relationship as good as it can possibly be. And that's why I get so excited about my relationship because I'm like, it's amazing right now. It's going to be even better in six months.

Right. Because we're building something together. Martha says that to me all the time. She's like, how do I love you even more today? than I did, you know, last week. And I think it's because we're both focused on growing ourselves individually and growing the relationship together. And I'm sure there's going to be adversities and challenges we face, but us facing it together

makes us even more connected and appreciate each other even more. And there's something even fun about that. When you know you're an amazing team, there's even something fun about knowing that there's going to be challenges and how you're going to solve those as a team because you're a killer team. Absolutely. like that's even that there's something exciting about it absolutely so i you know i think we we almost have to pay attention to some of these ideas we have about love and relationships is what you know the way we use words like settling is are you settling for someone or are you settling on

someone that will change if you settle for someone you'll become passive and resentful in that relationship if you see it like you settled on someone of any choice you could have made you chose this person. And because you chose it, you're going to lean into it and you're going to make it as great as it can possibly be, that relationship that will change the way you approach relationships. The same is true of the word commitment. This is amazing.

This is such a fantastic example of the point I'm making. If you look up, I think it's in Apple dictionary, I don't know how it's reflected in the Oxford dictionary, but if you go on your Mac and you type in the word commitment, there are two different definitions that come out. Really, what is say? One is a, I think it reads and people can go and look for themselves and get the exact wording right. But one of them says roughly a obligation that restricts freedom of action.

Wow. Right. Now, if you give me someone that has that as their definition of commitment and I'll show you someone who has a hard time ever being in a relationship. but there's another definition of commitment under that one and it says commitment dedication to a cause now when you think of dedication to a cause it creates a completely different energy in your body i'm dedicated to this cause i'll fight for this cause i'll do anything for this cause like there is a there's something heroic about that i'm dedicated to the cause of our relationship, of our future, of our vision, of where we're going.

There's something stunningly beautiful about that. Dedication to a cause, an obligation that restricts freedom. One is about shrinking your world and the other one enlarges it. There are so many people out there struggling with the idea of committing, whether it's to a business, an idea, a path, a country, a person, a new sport. And your definitions around these words, the way you choose to see them is going to determine your ability to stay with something, to invest in something. And I think that's so fascinating. I really do. Yeah. This is big, man.

There's so many more questions I want to ask you, but I want people to get the book because I know you're going to answer a lot of these questions in here as well. Love Life, how to raise your standards, find your person, and live happily no matter what. So make sure you guys get a few copies. If you have a friend who's been struggling in relationships,

get them a copy as well. If you know someone that just went through a breakup, get them a copy. If you know someone who's in a healthy relationship, get them a copy so they can still use these tools to improve their relationship as well. Love life. There's so many great concepts in here. Again, how to rewire your brain. I love the chapter in here about if you know you want to leave, but you don't know how to leave.

It teaches people how to get out of a relationship the right way. Yeah, there's a lot of talk in there. That's a big chapter on anyone who's in a toxic, abusive, or narcissistic relationship. And you can apply that, by the way, across the board, not just to your love life, but if there's family relationships that you're struggling with and you don't know what to do about them that's a very hard hitting chapter there's chapters on confidence in there which is why this has mass appeal i i want to say this just to just to because i think it's important for people to hear i have come to believe that there are three relationships we are all in in life one is our relationship with other people the second is our relationship with ourselves

and the third is our relationship with life itself and these are three relationships that you can't get out of you're for as long as you're here on this planet you are in these three relationships and these relationships the quality of them will determine your happiness in this world so we better focus on those relationships and that's in many ways this book is designed not just to be a book for people who are looking to find love but a book for people who are looking to improve those relationships and uh i talk about my own journey. Even I talk about some times where I fell out of love with life because I was, you know, handed some difficult cards along the way and struggled. And, you know, maybe we could

talk about it on another episode, but, you know, was in a very dark place and a very depressed place. And I talk in the book about how I improved the tools that I used to improve my relationship with life in the hardest times of my life. And that, you know, that's why the double meaning in the title of this book is so important to me. This isn't just about your love life. It's about your love for life. And it's why that last line, you know, how to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what, was really, really important to me. So I don't think this is just a book about finding love.

This is a, I believe that this is a book that will get passed around for people who are struggling with all sorts of things in their lives. That's cool, man. And again, if you don't have a good relationship. relationship with life, you're probably not going to have a good relationship with yourself. And if you don't have a good relationship with yourself, how are you going to find someone that you can actually love and appreciate without being jaded on them trying to hurt you in some way? So you need to have a healthy relationship on all three areas, or those first two, at least, if you want to have a healthy relationship with someone else and trusting them in your

life and opening your heart to them. So I want to get the book, lovelifebook.com to get that special event with Matthew Hussie. We're going to do another episode here in a moment. So I want people to check out part two, a separate episode, you know, make sure to subscribe so you can watch this and listen to this as well for part two coming up here soon. But I'm going to ask you some of those questions you just talked about there. But to wrap up this interview, I wanted to ask you about, I've asked you these a bunch

of questions at the end before. You've been on this show many times. but I want to ask you a question about if you could give your 18-year-old self three pieces of advice about love. Scout on my pen. You know, if you could give your 18-year-old self, three pieces of advice about love, knowing everything you know now from being in multiple different relationships, going through breakups, being in challenging situations in love, being single and dating

a bunch of people over the years, you know, now being married. if you could give your 18-year-old self three pieces of advice about love that you wish you would have known then that you know now, what would those three things be? Okay, I think I got it. Three on the spot is hard, by the way.

Imagine... I got it, though. 18-year-old Matthew sitting in front of you, saying, I just want to find love and I just want to feel loved and I want to find a great, I want to have a family and be married one day

and you get to sit in front of him with all the wisdom that you have now and all the heartache and all the pain and all the love that you've experienced. What are you going to say to your younger self? I think the first thing I would say is that it's not,

this is going to sound cheesy, but I really mean it. I would start by saying it's not your fault that you are the way you are that these things that you think are a sign that you're broken whether it's your shyness or your anxiety or feeling like you're terrified of rejection or that you're not good enough you know these things are either they've either been part of you from the beginning or they are a response to things that have happened in your life you know i'm not

saying everything is nurture some of some of it is just our DNA right yes our brain but either way you know these things that you keep judging yourself for and telling yourself that you're broken for they they deserve compassion because they're not you didn't choose them you know And the reason I think that's important from a love life context is because the, what I lacked for so much of my life was self-compassion. I thought I wasn't good enough. I thought that, you know, deep down, I was shameful. I was ugly.

I was unlovable. I was bad. Like, not a good person. You know, I was just like just not, you know, like, just not, you know, like, If people really knew who I was, they would think I was disgusting and pathetic and weak and unlovable. And I'm not saying all of this was always conscious, but it was on some level, this must have been how I was feeling because I was really deeply afraid to be seen. yes and so I would have I would have said it's okay that you're like you're you're okay you're like the way you are you didn't it's not because you're broken or that you made choices to be

it's that you're responding to something and that would that would give me self-compassion wow and the second thing I would say to myself is is share those things now I don't know how well it would have gone for me at 18 to share those things with with girls my age but in general I would have said as a lesson for life share those things because that everyone else is also in all the ways you fear you're broken everyone else is too and if you can share that with other people you that is going to be your ultimate power I spent my 20s Lewis you know I was coaching people and I was lucky enough like you to be quite known relatively speaking you know as a 25 year old I you know made a bit of a name for myself

and a lot of people knew who I was and and I never really allowed myself to truly just be myself because I was trying to be something else I was trying to like be impressive and these days I'm much more focused on connecting yeah with people so you and I would never have had this interview 10 years ago. Right. The first every, past too much or yeah. Yeah, the first,

I'm sure the first interview we did together was, was strong because it's fun sometimes when someone is being impressive, right? We get to watch someone, you know, do their thing. But this, this now, this wouldn't happen 10 years ago because I wasn't sharing myself in that way. So I would say share yourself because that's the route to real connection, real friendships, real love.

and the third thing I would say to myself is have compassion for these flaws in other people because you know I spent way too much of my life writing people off or judging people for things that they were struggling with you know and things I didn't like about the way they did this or that or the way that insecurity showed up or the way and and oh like honestly man i i i look back on it now and i'm like they were me they were me like i i they only didn't know that that was me because i wasn't being vulnerable with them for you know i didn't even offer them the ability to have compassion with my deeper flaws or my insecurity or my vulnerabilities because I never shared them.

He didn't reveal them. No, because I didn't, I judge those things in myself. And when you judge them in yourself, you judge them in other people. And the more in my life, I've developed space for myself and who I am, the more compassionate I've become with myself, the more compassionate I've become with other people, the great in my capacity to love other people for who they really are is. And I think that's such a, there's such a big point to me. You know, in one of the comments that I read a lot in self-development circles is like,

it's really hard to meet someone when you've upped your game in life and you now are someone who, you know, is growth-oriented and you're doing this and you're doing that and whatever. And it's like, your pull shrinks because you're just so awesome and everyone else sucks. You're so cautious and everyone else is unconscious. That's basically sort of the subtext is that why is it so hard now that everyone sucks and I'm great? And I have to say, I have found a slightly different experience to be true. I have found it easier to love other people, the more that I have learned to love myself.

And the more compassion I've developed for my own complexities and the things that make me are difficult and complicated and somewhat damaged. and whatever person. It's made me able to love other people more because now that I'm making more space for myself, I also make space for the way that other people are and the things that those things on the surface that are easy to judge, the things that the deeper wounds

that those things represent that they're struggling with. It makes me emotional, as I say it, because I think that that's, I have found it easier to love. And I think that having, having that compassion for yourself breeds compassion for other people. So I would say have stopped judging other people so much and have compassion for who they are because they're you. This is a beautiful, man.

Make sure you guys get a copy of the book, Love Lifebook.com. Check it out. Matthew Ozzy. Thanks, brother. Appreciate you, man. Thanks, man. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey forward's greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a run-ne-

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over at greatness.com slash newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.