In today’s new compilation video, I’ve gathered my best flirting advice from over the years, giving you a total of 19 flirty ideas that can help spark chemistry on your next date . . . or get you to date #1 in the first place!

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Matthew:

He’s single. She’s single. Both think the other one is attractive, and then they walk straight past each other and neither does anything about it.

“Hey Jason, it was so lovely speaking to you.” That would’ve been fine, but it wouldn’t have been flirting. Flirting is nuanced. Flirting is like putting a little bit of bait on the tackle and throwing it out there on the line to see who grabs at it.

Every day, people walk past each other in the street. He’s single, she’s single. Both think the other one is attractive and then they walk straight past each other and neither does anything about it. I had a woman recently at my event in Chicago, she told me that she keeps meeting guys online and that they don’t turn into dates and she ends up incessantly in a texting conversation with them. And I said, “Well, why don’t you get out there in the real world? Why don’t you meet people there?” And she seized up a little because for most people the idea of actually meeting people in real life is scary, but it doesn’t have to be so scary. If we don’t take ourselves as seriously, if we stop censoring ourselves and if we actually get a little more free and easy with the interactions we have. So to get out of this paralysis of playing it safe and not flirting with people, I’m going to give you three simple things you can do to flirt more with the guys you like.

Number one, look more. I know what women do. They go out, they look at a guy once, then they look back at their friends and they say, “OK, he knows.” Ladies, I’ll let you in on a little secret, we don’t know. So as a general rule, I want you to look four times more than you think you need to.

Strategy number two, mouth the word, “Hi.” Whether you’re walking past someone or you’re standing next to them in a line and you catch their eye for the first time, you doing more than making eye contact and actually mouthing the word, “Hi.” It doesn’t even have to be audible. In fact, it might even be more cute if it’s not audible, but that moment shows that you are sweet and warm and kind and inviting and like the first example, just gives a guy that extra license to start talking to you.

Number three, when you have a date with someone, express that you are looking forward to seeing them. Be honest about that. So on the day of the day, if it’s the first date, text him and say, “I’m looking forward to meeting you tonight.” Or if it’s your second or third date and you have a bit more of a bond or a connection by now, text him and say, “Not going to lie, I’m excited to see you tonight.” Those moments of not only flirtation but warmth and sweetness as something that elevate your character.

Flirting is interest plus challenge. I’m going to give you three specific real world examples to prove this. Now, let’s say in the first one, you go out tonight, you see a guy across the bar that you think is attractive. Now, if you were just demonstrating interest, you might look at him, stare endlessly, have three more drinks, then stumble over to him, half drunk, and by the time you get there, say, “You’re really hot.”

Now, if she was showing interest and challenge, she could start by simply looking at him until he sees her. Then when they catch eyes, she could look away as if she’s just been caught out. Then she could look again and start building that tension a little bit. Now you may say, “What is she actually doing in that moment to be challenging?” But the challenge is inbuilt. All she needs to do is show a little interest because he has the challenge of having to walk over there and do something. Think about it, for a guy at that point, he’s got to have the courage to think of something to say and then walk across the room and open his mouth to this woman.

Example number two, let’s fast-forward this night. He’s now asked for her number and they have parted ways. An hour later he texts her saying, “Hey, it’s Jason.”

She says, “Who?” He’s like, “Jason from the bar.” She says, “Hmm I don’t recall. Unless you’re that handsome guy with the nice shoes,” winky, tongue face. Love that winky tongue face.

Now look, it would’ve been fine if he said, “Hey, it’s Jason,” and she said, “Hey Jason, it was so lovely speaking to you.” That would’ve been fine, but it wouldn’t have been flirting. Flirting is that moment when she pretends not to know him and then all of a sudden, just as he is off balance, she swoops him with a compliment about him being handsome and having nice shoes. I was once told attraction is about keeping someone just a little off balance.

And so we come to real world example number three, let’s flash forward a couple of weeks in their relationship. They’ve been seeing each other, they’re having a good time. She’s at work one day and she comes out of a meeting and texts him.

“I just finished a meeting and I definitely wasn’t thinking about you most of the time. OK bye.” Now again, if all she’d texted him was, “Thinking of you,” that would’ve been fine. It would’ve been a perfectly reasonable thing to say and it would have worked. But if we want to turn this from a compliment into a flirtation, now we use this message because that moment where she says, “I definitely wasn’t thinking about you most of the time,” it’s a coy way of saying, “I’m reluctant to admit to you that I was thinking about you the whole time. I’m being playful about that right now. I’m giving you a compliment, but I’m not at the same time.” And then when I say, “OK bye,” it’s like, “I’m out of here. You’ve had enough. I’ve said too much already. I’m out.” When she does this, she’s taking a regular compliment and adding flavor to it, and it’s that flavor that often makes someone excited and energized. It keeps them wanting more.

Are you sick and tired of situations that never go anywhere? Texts that never become dates, dates that never become relationships, it all just feels exhausting. I have a program called The Momentum Texts that shows you practically how you can take any situation in early dating and progress it so that it actually leads to a relationship. Go check it out at MomentumTexts.com. It’s also $7, so it’s a really easy decision to make and it is the most practical program you will find for early dating. I’ll see you over there and let’s get back to the video.

The idea of showing that we like someone is death to so many people. It’s like swimming with sharks. I’m just going to jump into the water and get eaten. But here’s the problem with that. It shows a misunderstanding of what flirting actually is because flirting isn’t just running up to somebody and saying, “Hey, I like you. We should be together.” That’s not what flirting is.

Flirting is much more subtle than that. Flirting is nuanced. Flirting is like putting a little bit of bait on the tackle and throwing it out there on the line to see who grabs at it.

Let me give you an example of this. Let’s say that you like a guy at work. I’m not endorsing you going into work right now and ruining your work life, by the way, by making it awkward, but let’s just run through this example.

Throwing yourself headfirst is doing this: You walk into the office one day and you see him over there, Dan, his name is, you see him by the coffee machine. He’s making himself a lovely little espresso. You look over at Dan and you think, this is my moment and all of my friends have told me honesty is the best policy. I just need to show him that I like him and let him know.

So you walk over there to Dan and you say, “Dan, emm. . . . I’ve been developing feelings for you over the last few weeks and well, I guess I like you a lot and I think we should go out sometime.”

Dan looks at you and it’s tricky for Dan right now because he either has to say yes to the date to be polite or he has to be like, “No, I’m good. I’m going to go do some accounting now at my desk.”

Now let’s look at the second example where you just throw out a little bit of bait. Dan’s over at the espresso machine. You walk over there and maybe you even start with something flirtatious where you say, “Why are you always hogging the coffee machine when I come to make myself a coffee?” And Dan says something flirtatious back because he’s a bit of a smoothie and he’s like, “Well, maybe you are the one following me to the coffee machine. Had you ever considered that?”

And you’re like, “I’m not following you. Just get out of the way so I can make my coffee.”

Lovely little flirtation right now, by the way. This isn’t even my main line, but that’s a nice little bit of flirtation right off the bat, and you created it when you went over there and said, “You are hogging the coffee machine.” Then as you’re walking away you say, “You know what? It’s a good thing me and you are colleagues, we would be so much trouble for each other,” and then you leave. Now, this is a beautiful little flirtatious line. This is the bait in the water because, firstly, you’re disqualifying Dan. You’re saying, “Listen, you and I can’t be together because, you know, we’re colleagues and that’s a problem, so we can’t have any funny business.” But you’re also saying, “But if we did, we’d be trouble.”

Dan, in his male brain, all he hears is, “Trouble, you say,” because men love trouble. When you throw out this bait, it’s really low effort, low risk for you because you can sit back and drink a beer on the side of the riverbank and just throw out your line and just wait. That’s what flirting is. That’s why when people get so scared to flirt, they’re forgetting that although flirting is a vulnerable act, it’s not jumping in with the sharks because you can throw out just a little bit of bait and see if someone bites. If they don’t bite, that’s fine. You throw out another bit of bait either for that person or for somebody else.

OK, let’s just get down to business. Five ways to make him want to kiss you.

Number one, touch him. Now, I don’t mean his groinal region, I just mean touch him somewhere, even innocently on the arm, “That actually looks good what that guy has over there.”

Because on a date when two people haven’t even touched, made physical contact for the entire date and then all of a sudden, one of them has got to think about leaning in and kissing the other one. That feels like going from zero to 60 miles an hour, but if you’ve been introducing light and carefree touch throughout the date, kissing is a much more natural progression.

Number two, take a sip. When you take a sip of your drink, it engages your lips so it draws attention to them, but at the same time, if you look away, it has the added benefit of giving him a moment to look at you and take you in without you staring right back at him. “That is too funny, monkey.”

That is something that we actually don’t get to do that frequently on a date and when someone is looking at us, that’s when they get a chance to really get attracted.

Number three, glance at his lips. Now, the more slowly you do this, the more seductive it’s going to be, but if you take a moment to look into his eyes and then look down at his lips and then back up at his eyes, that moment becomes a very seductive moment. Even if it’s unconscious, even if he doesn’t know that you are actually looking at his lips, he registers that you’re taking him in a different way.

“So what part of the jungle were you in when that happened?”

Number four, when he looks at you in a certain sexy way, maybe he smiles with it. I want you to say to him, “You can’t look at me like that.”

The words, “You can’t,” followed by looking away creates this real tension in the moment you’re telling him something he can’t do. Always very sexy when done playfully, and in that moment when you look away, there’s that vulnerability to it too. It’s like he’s doing something to you that he shouldn’t be. “Monkey, you can’t look at me like that.”

Number five, do the cute act. Choose a moment when he’s teasing you to give him a serious face, when he thinks you should be laughing and say, “Don’t be mean to me.”

And for those of you thinking that this plays into some sort of weird gender stereotype, the cute act is available to anyone. I do it all the time, “Don’t be mean to me.” And when someone’s being cute and adorable, you just want to grab them and kiss them. That’s the effect we’re going for.

Pace is a very important thing on a date. I’m not just talking about eye contact here. I’m talking about how slowly you speak at certain times, how slowly you move at certain times. When you think of someone confident and sexy, there’s a pace to that that slows down. When I go beyond confident and I say seductive, it starts to get even more slow, doesn’t it? Well, you can mimic that on a date in certain moments. The way you look at someone when you take a sip of your drink or when they take a sip of theirs, when someone is telling you a story passionately and you have that little . . . You ever have that moment where someone gets really passionate about something and you see that their eyes light up, you see that glint in them, and all of a sudden you get that little hit of, oh, this person’s attractive. In that moment, slow down.

Look at them a little more slowly. You can even look from their eyes to their mouth and back to their eyes. These things start to create that element of seduction. If you are constantly making points and moving around a lot and gesturing a lot and in that kind of jittery mode and everything you say is really fast sentences and so on, there’s no seduction to that pace. Slow it down. Did you slow it down?

Test number three, did you give him a desire-based compliment? There’s platonic language and there’s desire language. There’s also a platonic tone and a desire tone. You can use either. Platonic language would be, “That looks nice.” Desire language would be, “That looks hot.” Platonic tone would be, “You look good in that jacket.” Desire tone would be, “You look good in that jacket.” Subtle differences, but one of them says, “We are going to be friends,” and the other one says, “We are not going to be friends.”

Number four, did you hug them like you liked them? There’s a big difference in hugging someone as if they’re a friend and the way we hug someone when we feel comfortable with them and we like them, we let it linger for just a half second longer. We almost become a bit more vulnerable. You ever hugged someone where it felt like, just for a brief moment, they were sort of melting into you? Didn’t it feel amazing? Didn’t it make you feel connected to that person? Didn’t it make you feel more comfortable with that person? Didn’t it create the moment of electricity? Are you creating that with other people or are you leaning over and giving them your shoulder and the rest of your body retreats and it feels like they’re hugging a coat hanger? Allow that hug to be a little more vulnerable and to last just a little longer than you would if you were trying to get away.

Number five, did you give them a couple of opportunities to just observe you? You know that moment where someone leaves the date or leaves the table and goes to the bathroom and it’s the one moment you’ve had to just watch them, you catch a different angle than you’ve had so far, you can look at them without worrying that they’re looking back at you, looking at them and you can just take them in. This is a moment where you get to showcase yourself, walking a little sexy, having a little strutt, having a nice little moment with your hair. Looking at the menu, you are deep in the menu so they can look at you. Or going to the restroom or just being over here, checking something out, which allows them to check you out. People need moments where they can take you in without feeling like you are watching them.

Number six, did you tease them in a playful manner? Playfully teasing someone could be that you think your order was better than his, and then you look at that person and you go, “I won. I have the best order.” Or it might be that they say that your food doesn’t look as good as theirs and you can go, “Rude.” Got like a little flirtatious vibe to it.

Tension is often born out of a playful friction, right? Playful friction allows you both to step into a role play where you’re having a little thing, you’re odds over something and that creates a spark. It could be that there’s a pool table over there and you go, “We can’t play pool. I can’t have us fighting on our first date.” That creates this little mini arrgh, this mini competition like, oh, it’s not so friendly anymore. There’s a frisson to it.

Number seven, did you make use of the post-date, sexy, subtle subtext text? If you just send someone a message that says, “I had a really nice time tonight. I hope you didn’t have to wait too long for your Uber.” That’s a nice text, but it’s so literal. There’s no subtext whatsoever, but what if you just said this, “Tonight was really fun…” And then maybe you throw in a little blushing emoji. Firstly, it’s not many words. I like it for that reason. I’m not saying you have to send few words, but something about this message really works because it’s few words. It’s not overly thought out. The ellipsis is what says there’s things I’m not saying right now and the word fun, that’s desire language that says, “We could have more fun together.” The emoji is both a signal of warmth at the end of this message, but there’s also a little suggestiveness to that too, right?

It’s the ability to blush. It’s the ability to be made to feel something. There’s a vulnerability about that. It’s like you’re thinking about how fun the night was and maybe you’re even thinking about other things and you’re blushing as a result. This is a message that immediately when someone receives it after a date, they say, “Oh, there’s something there. This person is attracted to me. This person didn’t just have a nice time.” And the great irony is that when we feel someone is slightly attracted to us, even if it’s just in what they don’t say, not even what they do say, we are more likely to be attracted to them because we take our mind out of the friend zone and into the desire zone. Now I know what you’re thinking. “Fine, I’ll do those seven things. Then what?” Well, I have the answer for you.

I have a program. It’s called The Momentum Texts. In this program are 67 specific text messages that you can use to take it from a very early stage all the way to some serious investments so that your dating life doesn’t keep drifting into a state of limbo. It actually goes somewhere with someone. I don’t think we’ve ever released a more nuts and bolts practical program of things that you can literally just grab and send. It’s really good. It took us ages to make. It’ll take you seconds to use. How much were we offering this for before, Jameson?

Jameson:

$7.

Matthew:

Seven. We adjusted the price, didn’t we?

Jameson:

No. $7.

Matthew:

What about inflation? Surely it should be about $1,000 by now. Have you seen gas?

Jameson:

We’re sticking to seven.

Matthew:

You can’t even get a pumpkin spice latte for that. I couldn’t even get a pumpkin spice latte for that. That’s mental. Check it out. I’ll see you over there. MomentumTexts.com.

The post 19 PRACTICAL Ways to Flirt and Create Chemistry in Early Dating appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

Instead of feeling insecure and waiting for someone to come to you and meet your unspoken needs, watch this week’s video and break free from the self-doubt and anxiety cycle. 

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Matthew:

A confident mindset has us asking the question, “Is this enough for me?” Not simply, “Do I need to work on myself because this affects me?” “Is this enough for me?”

Someone recently asked me a question. She said, “In the early stages of dating when you’re exclusive with someone, if someone doesn’t text me for a couple of days, should I be okay with that?” What she said was, “I read somewhere that if someone doesn’t text you for a couple of days and you have a problem with it, then you need to do some inner work. You need to work on your anxiety.” Have you ever been in a situation like this where maybe you’re in one right now, someone’s not texting you as much as you would like? Maybe there’s been a period of time where you haven’t heard from them, and you find yourself asking, “Is my anxiety the problem here? Am I asking too much? Am I just acting out of my own trauma, my own fears? Do I need to do work on myself so that this doesn’t affect me? Or is it legitimate that this is affecting me?”

I want to make a key distinction here that I made to her. There is a big difference between anxiety and needs. Anxiety is when our thoughts go in all sorts of sometimes irrational and mutated directions. Someone doesn’t text us for a couple of hours and all of a sudden we think they’re cheating. We message someone and they don’t text back within five minutes and we go, “They don’t love me as much as I love them.” We go in all of these directions that may not necessarily be true, may have no basis in reality, but that’s what anxiety does. It makes things that are often improbable or irrational, seem like they’re vivid and real. Anxiety has to be separated from our core needs. Our needs in a relationship are what’s the base level of affection or communication or love that I need and need to feel in order to be happy.

So from that point of view, instead of asking yourself, do I need to work on myself because I want texts more frequently than every 48 hours, ask yourself, what do I actually need from my intimate relationship? Would I like someone who texts me every day? And of course, there are limits, and that’s where we have to explore where is anxiety playing a part? Because if I’m expecting someone to text me every five minutes, then my anxiety is probably playing a massive part here. But in the average relationship, connecting each day is not abnormal. And if you speak to many people in healthy relationships, they will tell you that’s not abnormal. Now, are there some healthy relationships where people go longer periods of time without speaking? Of course, there are, but this is where you have to ask the question when it comes to your needs, what’s right for me? Self-awareness, know thyself, what’s right for me?

I know that for me, my partner, not texting for 48 hours wouldn’t be enough. I know that I like more communication than that. So for me, that would not be right. But I don’t think of that through the lens of anxiety. I think of it through the lens of how connected I want to be to someone. So I want us to start to make that distinction: anxiety and needs. And when it comes to our needs in life, we all have to make decisions about where to put our time and energy. In a relationship, we’re going to put a lot of time and energy into one person, and that one person is going to be responsible, perhaps solely for meeting our needs for that romantic intimacy. We’re not going to get them from anywhere else because that would be a betrayal, at least within the context of a monogamous relationship. This one relationship needs to meet those needs. Otherwise, why are we going to put so much energy and time into it? The stakes are pretty high.

A confident mindset has us asking the question, “Is this enough for me?” Not simply, “Do I need to work on myself because this affects me?” “Is this enough for me?” See, if we’re in a place of anxiety and someone doesn’t text us for two days, our thoughts go to, “I’m not enough.” But if we’re coming from a confident place and someone doesn’t text us for two days, we say, “Oh, this person might not be my person. This person might not be right for me because they have such a radically different style of communication to me. It doesn’t make them wrong, but it might make them wrong for me.”

And by the way, confidence goes one step further than asking the question, are they enough for me? Is their behavior what I need in my life? Confidence is creating the culture where that’s possible. Insecurity goes into every relationship, following the lead of somebody else. Confidence goes into every relationship attempting to create the culture that you actually want. So if you’re coming from a confident place, you don’t sit there for 48 hours waiting for someone to text you and then being anxious that they didn’t. Confidence is, I’m going to reach out to you because I want to teach that culture that that’s what I want in this relationship. And if I find that it’s always me who’s leading, then sooner or later, I’m going to get out. But right now, I’m going to be bold and create the culture that I want. And if we’re confidently reaching out to someone, we of course want to do it in a way that gives value.

Anxious communication is: “I’m going to reach out to you to try to get value from you. I’m going to reach out to you to get approval, to get validation, to get reassurance, to feel whole again.” Confident communication is: “I’m going to reach out to you to create value.”

Now, I know when you’re coming from an anxious place, it can be very hard to create that value. And for many of us who have never learned what that actually looks like, we’ve got no model, no examples for doing it. I put together 67 different ways that you can reach out to someone that create value, that don’t come from an anxious place, but a confident place, that creates the culture of communication that you want to have. It’s called the Momentum Texts, and it’s only $7, but it gives you the 67 messages that create value and create momentum and the culture that you want to have in your relationship. It practically shows you how to do what I’m talking about here in this video.

But no matter what, don’t just ask the question, “Am I being too much? Or do I need to work on myself?” “Do I need to work on myself?” is a valuable question. But there’s another valuable question to be asking. “Is this person right for me?” Because one way to be miserable and anxious your whole life is to stay with someone who can’t actually give you what you need. And it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them having a style that is not compatible with yours. So go check out the Momentum Texts when you get a chance, momentumtexts.com is the link. I will see you over there and thank you as always for watching the video.

The post Want MORE From Someone . . . DO THIS Now appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

In today’s new video, I’ll show you the best strategy to give yourself the maximum chance of salvaging the relationship (or help you move on to find the RIGHT person for you).

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Matthew:

Have you felt someone in recent memory or very recently in your life pull away? What was your reaction to them pulling away? In fact, what do you feel was the reason that they pulled away in the first place?

In today’s video, I’m going to tell you a quick story about someone who came to me about someone pulling away and what they did, and I’m going to show you a very, very common three-part pattern that happens in situations like these. And as I go through each of these three parts, I want you to just see where you might be able to see your own pattern aligning with that because it might be that you see exactly this pattern show up frequently in your life.

The woman who came to me told me a story of a marriage that she had recently left, an eight-year marriage, which for five of those eight years had become devoid of passion, there was no sex, there was no real intimacy or romance. It was essentially a relationship of two roommates. And she left that relationship, went back out there into the dating scene, and then met a guy that she felt an intense chemistry with. Now, in feeling all of this chemistry and the excitement of it and how important that felt, she suddenly started to give an awful lot to this situation, and she said herself that the text messages from her got longer and longer and his messages got shorter and shorter. There was a strong initial interest from him, but it started to fade. And as it faded, as she felt him pulling away, she felt this urge to make it work. Then when she happened to see that he was hanging out with another woman, she tried to reach out and assert a boundary and say that she wasn’t comfortable with that.

He said, “That’s way too much control for me at this stage.” He wasn’t willing to oblige and then suggested they go their separate ways. This is the point at which I entered the dynamic. And she said, “Matthew, what do I do here? I really like this guy. I feel something extraordinary with him that I didn’t feel in my marriage. Why did this happen when he showed all of this initial interest and then faded away? And what did I do wrong in trying to assert my boundary about this other woman that he was hanging out with?” Now, let me explain the three-part pattern that this aligns perfectly with that happens to so many people when they feel an intense chemistry.

The first part is that we overvalue something in the situation. Now, let’s take her story. She was in a marriage for eight years where for a very long time she was not feeling that chemistry and they weren’t having sex. So now the first person that she really meets and connects with, when she feels an intense chemistry, it feels like the most important thing in the world, that this is exactly what was missing in my marriage. Now, when we feel like we’ve been missing something for a long time, we can hyper focus on that thing and not all of the things that perhaps a marriage is important for and provides. In other words, when we find someone new, we still have to have the good parts of that marriage, the teamwork, the mutual respect, the thinking about each other, all of the ways we show up for each other, the consistency, the stability. We still need all of those things. It’s just that we were missing a very, very important component of a long-term relationship, which is intimacy.

But when she felt chemistry, it made her forget about all of these other things someone would need to have and massively overvalue that chemistry. So that’s part one, and that happens to so many of us when we meet someone. There is something they have that we overvalue. And because we overvalue it, we put them and the possible relationship that may emerge with them on a pedestal. 

The second part of the pattern is this. When we overvalue something, based on that overvaluation, we begin to give way too much. So for her, her effort that she was putting into this was effort that corresponded with how important she thought it was because of the chemistry she was feeling. It did not correspond to how important he was making it or how important it really was. She had just decided that because she was feeling something intense, this was a really important thing to hold onto, and she gave in accordance with that. That made him feel like he was getting way too much for what he was giving.

And I’m not suggesting that this person would’ve been capable of a real relationship had she given the appropriate amount, but what is guaranteed is that he got way more than he was giving, and that only lowers her value in his eyes, that this effort is cheap. I don’t need to do much to get this amount of investment. And what was the investment based on? It wasn’t based on real qualities. It wasn’t based on character. It wasn’t based on how much he was investing. It was based on some attention that he’d given her that had resulted in some chemistry. I see this pattern a lot where someone says, “But Matthew, he seemed to really like me. In the beginning, he was giving a lot.” And we have to almost stop thinking of someone liking us as meaning one thing. Someone liking us can be they really like having sex with us because we’re good in bed.

Someone liking us can mean they like not feeling alone. They like the feeling they get when they have companionship around us. Someone liking us can be that they like that we’re a really great person, but maybe they don’t feel romantically about us, but they do like being around us because we have great values and they feel secure around us. Someone liking us can mean they’re just having a great time right now, the same great time they’re having with five other people. So what does liking us really mean? Not a lot on its own. Liking us just gets us some of a person’s attention, but attention is not intention. It’s not the intention to have a relationship with us, the intention to build something with us, the intention to be a permanent feature in our life, and even intention doesn’t mean real investment because not everyone who has the good intentions can back it up with real investment over time.

In her case, she didn’t have intention or investment. She just had attention, attention that she was vastly overvaluing, and that overvaluation was making her give way too much. 

Now, here’s the third part in this pattern. Her giving so much and him realizing, “Oh, I really don’t need to do a lot to get this amount of investment,” which naturally makes someone go, “Well, maybe I can give a little less. Oh, I still get the investment. Maybe I’ll give a little less. Oh, I still get the investment.” When he feels that, he’s giving less, and she’s feeling more and more out of control. So in response to feeling out of control, the third part of the pattern is: “I now try to exert control in the wrong way because I don’t feel in control of how much this person is giving, but I can be in control of trying to tell them I’m not happy with them hanging out with this person in this case.” So we try and exert control there.

The problem with exerting control in a way like that is that, A, it doesn’t show control over the right things. It doesn’t show that I’m just simply controlling whether my perception of whether you are right for me, or I’m controlling how much I give to this situation. Those are higher-value ways of controlling, but a low-frequency way of controlling is, “You can’t do that. I don’t feel powerful right now. I feel like I’m trying to get you, and I can’t get you, so I’m going to try and control you in this way.” Often when we do that, and it’s coming from a place of desperation and insecurity, we are trying to make a demand at a time where we don’t have leverage. In life, when we ask for something, we usually need some form of leverage. In dating, if I say, “You have to commit to me,” I have to have some form of leverage. And I know that may sound like a crude way of looking at it, but what makes someone commit?

I don’t want to spend time without you. I don’t want to lose you. I want this to continue. You represent so much importance in my life that I couldn’t have you not in my life. I really like you, or I love you. That’s a form of leverage. We don’t think about it like that because it sounds too kind of manipulative almost. But the truth is, we ask when we have leverage. It’s the same as in anything in life. In business, if you are asking someone to pay for something, the leverage is that you really want that thing. If you ask someone to pay for something they don’t want, there’s no leverage there. In her case, what I gather from this situation is this is kind of a charming guy enjoying himself, enjoying creating chemistry, maybe doing it with multiple people, enjoying that freedom. And the fact that he had chemistry with her wasn’t enough leverage on its own, but she was treating it like it was.

In order to make an ask, someone has to really want us in that moment. They have to be asking for something. The right time to say, “Hey, something’s making me uncomfortable,” is when that person is actually asking to see you again, when that person is asking for more of your energy, when that person wants to keep dating you. That’s a great time to say, “Hey, I’d love to keep dating you too, but there’s something that’s making me a little uncomfortable, or I just want us to establish the rules going forward of what we are not going to do or what we are going to do.” Those are the right times to ask for something. But if we don’t have leverage, there’s no point asking. In that moment, what could she have done differently? Well, ultimately, if she feels like she’s texting more and more and more and him less and less, that’s a good time to step back. And the next time he reaches out to her, she shouldn’t ratchet up the energy she gives him until she feels a ratcheting up from his side.

So there should be a reduction in her energy, a reduction in her investment. And if he questions that reduction like, “What’s going on?” That’s the time to say, “Well, I felt like there wasn’t any progression with you, and because there was no progression, I just kind of felt like . . . I didn’t feel excited in giving much more to this.” 

He could at that point say, “Oh my God, but I want to keep seeing you.” 

“Well, if you want to keep seeing me, you need to show me.” 

And if he does show her, then she can increase her energy in accordance with that. But what was happening instead was he was decreasing his energy. And right as he was lowering his energy, she came in and said, “And here’s what I want,” and he’s saying, “But I’m not even asking for anything from you right now and you’re telling me what to do.”

No leverage to three parts to that pattern that people fall into. If we ever want a shot at pulling them closer, we have to reverse this pattern, value appropriately, give appropriate to the investment that I’m getting, and then make our asks at times when I have real leverage because this person is seeing me as someone they want in their life more, but what I’m showing them is that there’s a price to having me in your life more. 

How to do this in reality, because I’m giving you a conceptual model here, but what we need is, “Okay, how do I actually apply that? Like, walk me through from the moment I meet someone on a dating app, to getting on a date, to what I do after a date, between date one and date two, what do I do when I don’t hear from them for a week after date two, how do I communicate with them at each juncture, when I do ask for more, what’s a great way of doing it in a powerful, confident way?

These are all things that I’ve created for years of my life now in very practical ways that are easy to follow, and I’ve put them in a program called The Momentum Texts. And The Momentum Texts is 67 specific ways to increase momentum in the early stages of dating so that a situation like this doesn’t happen, so that when you apply energy to your dating life it actually goes somewhere instead of always petering out, instead of always fading out. And by the way, a copy of The Momentum Texts is seven bucks, so it’s a very, very accessible program. There’s no excuse for everyone not to have their hands on this. To get your copy, go to MomentumTexts.com. Whether you are on day one of texting someone, or you’re on month six of seeing someone, this program will give you something for every part of the dating process. Go check it out, and thank you as always for watching the video.

The post They’ve Pulled Away?? AVOID THIS MISTAKE appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Matthew:

I was coaching a woman in my love life coaching group recently who told me, “Matthew, I always date avoidants.” These people just break my heart every time. They don’t want a relationship. They make up excuses as to why they can’t have one. Now, avoidant is a word that is used often in attachment theory. The idea of an avoidant being someone who is potentially afraid of commitment or even commitment-phobic. It could be characterized by someone who is easily suffocated or finds that they have a need for space that people who are anxiously attached don’t. It can also be a kind of person that often finds rationalizations for why they can’t be intimate or have a relationship. Now, of course, there’s a whole spectrum of avoidants and not every avoidant is incapable of a relationship. Many people are in relationships with avoidants, even successful ones, but there is a kind of avoidant person who will willingly waste your time and becomes a very dangerous person in your life, not just for time but for your heart too.

So I want to talk about what it is that was going on with this person and see if you can relate, if you know that you keep going for the kinds of people that ultimately break your heart. This is a woman who had talked about having done this many times. “I have a pattern of going for people who are avoidant and who eventually hurt me.” When she told me her story, she said that a typical line she gets from guys is, “You’re too good for me.” And I suppose we should start by saying that anyone who says you are too good for me, that’s guy language for, “I feel guilty because I know I’m stringing you along and I know it’s going to hurt you, and I know that our goals are different and I’m being willfully ignorant of that. And I’m going to continue to try to see you and use you for my own ends even though I know this is going to hurt you.

I feel guilty about that, so I’m going to say, you are too good for me because it somehow makes me look like the wounded soldier in all of this and that’s a sympathetic role to play rather than the perpetrator of your pain. You’re too good for me.” That’s that rationalization, isn’t it? “I can’t be deeply connected to you. I can’t really commit to you because you’re too good for me.” Often what you’ll find, by the way with avoidants, is that the rationalizations they use for why they can’t be too close or why they can’t commit will make them seem in some way either heroic or sympathetic. In other words, whatever they say will often make them somehow come off smelling of roses and you more confused than ever. In this particular woman’s case, she was currently engaged in a situation with a guy where he said to her in a conversation when she tried to bring up what it was or what they were heading towards. He actually said, “I really enjoy the relationship that we are having together, but I don’t want to talk about the relationship we’re having together.

I don’t enjoy having conversations about it.” And that again, is like a hallmark avoidant thing to say because what you’re really saying is, “I’m enjoying what this is giving me. I’m enjoying existing in the moment with this thing. I’m enjoying using it to meet my needs. But anytime you talk about what this actually is, anytime it comes with any form of commitment or a vision for where this might be going,” which is a perfectly reasonable thing to want from somebody, “I am freaked out. I am scared. I don’t want to have that conversation.” Now, that’s fine if someone doesn’t want to do that, but what we have to ask ourselves is if I am someone who wants to meet someone who is a teammate with me, who has a vision with me, it feels like we’re on a mission together. It feels like we’re excited to build together, and those conversations are exciting to me, but to this person, they’re nothing but negative.

Why is it I am still hanging around after a long time? It may be one thing if in the very beginning someone is saying that because they’re saying, “Hey, I certainly want to see where this is going, but I also want to make sure we go at an organic pace and I’m still getting to know you.” That’s fair enough that if you’ve been seeing someone for many months and they’re still phobic of any conversation about what the two of you are or where you are headed, that is a sign of an avoidant and we have to ask ourselves, why is it I keep entertaining this kind of person? The thing I like saying to people is, I don’t want you to become a serious person all of the time. Who is constantly trying to scope out who’s looking for something serious and you’re grilling people with your questions to get to the bottom of it, and there’s no playfulness or sense of humor or romance in the process.

I don’t want you to become a serious person. I think the lighter, more playful parts of ourselves is some of the most attractive, but I do believe that we need to get serious about what it is we’re actually looking for. And if we know that what’s important to us right now is to find a meaningful, committed relationship, then I need to have a really strong internal compass that either says, “Yes, this person is a green light because I can see that they’re showing signs they’re in the same place as me” or “This is the wrong way.” So why is it we keep saying yes to avoidants? Firstly, I want us to exercise a little self-compassion, if you identify with this. The woman that I was working with in reality had had four or five relationships with avoidants. If you actually look at it over the context of a lifetime and all of the growth work she had done, which she had done a lot. She had come a long way.

She was self-aware, she was introspective. She had clearly done a lot to build her confidence. There was an enormous amount for her to be proud of in her progress in life, but what she saw was, “I’m 43 and the relationships I’ve had have all been relationships with avoidants who eventually left me or just moved onto somebody else. I am a failure and there’s something wrong with me. I must be broken in some way because I keep repeating this.” The thing I said to her is, you didn’t make a mistake every night. You’ve not been going out and making a mistake on every date you go on and that you’re just making a thousand mistakes over the course of your lifetime. When you really look at these relationships you’ve had, they amount to four or five mistakes that cost a lot of time and energy. And I say that because I think sometimes we overstate when someone says, “I always do this.”

When I really look at it, for a lot of people, we’re not talking about that many instances. We’re not saying they had a hundred relationships and every single one of them was like this. We’re talking about a small number of relationships that had an out sized impact on their life, that created a disproportionate amount of pain. And when relationships like that do create that much pain, they imprint on us in a way that makes us feel like our whole dating life, our whole mission to find love has been a global failure. That we are a failure. Instead of actually seeing it like, you know what, if this was a scientific study, this wouldn’t be that much data. This would be a very small data set, so we should exercise compassion towards ourselves. If you identify with continually picking the wrong people, take a moment right now as you’re watching this video to just acknowledge how far you’ve come.

Maybe there are instances where you feel like you’re continuing to make some of those same mistakes. Maybe you feel like you’re still drawn to some of those things that aren’t good for you, but where have you made progress? What standards of yours have increased? What self-awareness have you gained in recent years? That means you are a different person today than you were five years ago or even a year ago. What about 10 years ago? This is really important because the story we have that I am this person who does this creates this identity that is this constant identity we’re just saddled with. Instead of saying, “No, no, no, all of this is operating on a continuum.” If I’ve been consistently growing sometimes maybe in undetectable ways, sometimes only by half a percent or 1%, that’s still growth. And every 1% shift I get towards a higher standard for myself or what treatment I will allow or more self-awareness of my patterns or more awareness of what’s wrong when other people do it.

Every 1% shift is getting me closer to a point where my behaviors, my actions and what I accept will change. So take a moment. Even if you don’t see the results of your love life having changed, take a moment to exercise gratitude and compassion towards yourself for how far you have actually moved in terms of progress along that continuum. The next thing I want to say is this. I want you to ask yourself why is it I keep going for these kinds of people that demonstrate often very early on that they don’t want what I want and I don’t say that from a place of judgment. This isn’t a video about condemning avoidance. It’s not a video about saying that people who don’t want a relationship are bad in any way. It’s a video about why it is we go for people where the goals are completely misaligned.

Now, often people will cite chemistry, connection. We had something really special. When we spend time together, it feels amazing. We have a really good thing, everything is there. People often say things like that to me. It’s all there, everything that should be there is there. But for this one tiny pesky detail that they don’t actually want to be with me, we talk about that as if it’s a detail when that’s actually the story. The story isn’t all of these ways that we align and all of the great conversation we have and all of the great chemistry we have. The real story is this person is not in a place where they can give me what I want. They do not want for themselves a relationship. So right now in this person’s current form, this is a non-starter. But why do we keep doing this? Why do we give someone like this more time and energy? And I believe at the heart of this for so many people is this embedded fear that’s sort of derived from a deep sense of insecurity and scarcity.

“This attention I’m getting is valuable. It’s sacred. It doesn’t come along very often, and I don’t know when it’s going to come around again, if I let go of this.” And this is especially true if we’ve been single for some time and if we haven’t felt any attention in a while. Especially you may have felt attention from people you don’t want, but you haven’t felt any attention from someone where you feel like the attraction is mutual. And from that place you look at this thing and you go, “I can’t let this go. Yes, there’s that one detail that they don’t actually seem to want a relationship with me, but the real story is that I have finally found someone with whom I have a connection, with whom I have chemistry, where the conversation flows, where it feels like real attraction and I don’t want to let that go. Because who knows when someone will want me again in this way, and especially if it’s someone I’m attracted to in return.” I want to get something clear because this all comes from this real sense of scarcity.

I can’t afford to lose this thing. What we fail to recognize when we’re in that mindset is that we didn’t get lucky for someone to be attracted to us. If someone’s attracted to you, that’s because there’s something attractive about you. There’s something about you that was compelling or sexy or fun or great to be around. You see, when this woman told me that this avoidant guy said to her, “I love being around you. I really enjoy your company. I really enjoy seeing you. I’ll miss you if we stop seeing each other. I just don’t want to be with you in a relationship.” I don’t think he was lying about those other things. I think he’s telling the truth, but he’s also telling the truth when he says, “I don’t want a relationship.” The reason that that’s important is because all of those things that he’s attracted to in her, she’s responsible for those.

He’s not. He’s just seeing someone who has attractive qualities and he’s drawn to that, so she’s not lucky. If there’s someone who wants to spend time with you, who enjoys being around you, who finds you attractive, who enjoys your company, who wants to talk to you for hours on end, you didn’t get lucky, you are great. There are wonderful things about you. There are attractive things about you, and if that person found you great, and if the last three people you dated found you attractive or found that there was something compelling about you, then that means thousands of people will feel that way. Those are just the four you met. Those were just the four that you happened to have that moment with that you happened to date. Many, many more people can feel that way about you. We have to stop being in this mindset that we won the lottery, that someone found us and is attracted to us.

No, the reality is many people will be attracted to us. What we have to do is free ourselves up to find the people who are attracted to us, who are actually worthy of what we are willing to give. Now, if I gave you 300,000 people, let’s say 200,000 of them are avoidants who are going to make your life miserable, that leaves 100,000. Of those, there’ll be 70,000 that are just wrong for you or you’re not really attracted to at all. That leaves 30,000. Let’s say 20,000 of them you’re kind of attracted to, but on the fence about and 10,000 of them you are really attracted to and they’d also be great for a relationship. That’s your pull. Now, the point is, in order to meet one of those 10,000, you can’t be preoccupied with one of the other 290,000 because those people who are right for you cannot find you when you are hung up on somebody else. They cannot find you when there’s no space in your life.

They cannot find you, when you are too anxious and torn up and in pain over somebody who is consistently breaking your heart in small ways. They can’t even make eye contact with you. If your head is down, in your phone texting someone who’s a dead end, you will find the right person sooner if you form the habit of saying no to the wrong people more quickly. The reason we don’t say no to the wrong people is because there is some part of us that thinks that the right people are scarce. Not that the person we’re entertaining could possibly be the right person anyway, but we’re also afraid of time. That we’re in a rush, that we’re running out of time, that we have to make something happen now, and if I’ve got someone that I have chemistry with and connection with and we have great conversation and there’s attraction, I should just go for it.

I should just try to make this work. And so we try to force something that is only going to hurt us and most importantly, in some ways, it’s going to waste incredible amounts of our time. And there’s such an irony to it because time is the thing that we’re scared of. We’re lonely. We want to meet someone, and we’re afraid that the whole time we’re feeling lonely and have that gnawing feeling of, “I just want to meet someone. I’ve got no one to share my life with.” We’re worried about time running out. The great irony is that time runs out a hundred times faster for people who say yes to the wrong people. The thing that we should be panicked about is not running out of time being single, but running out of time saying yes to people who are all too willing to waste it. Being patient, saying no to the wrong people so that you can say yes to the right people.

That expands your time, that gives you time. The danger, the thing that makes your time, your life collapse in on itself, another six-month painful relationship. There goes a two-year painful relationship. Here’s another three-year or a four-year or a five-year who was never serious. When you start adding those up, those are the time killers. Remember, you have time. You didn’t get lucky that someone wanted you. You are someone people will want and you’ll find the right person sooner if you say no to the wrong person quicker.

Before you go, if you are serious about no longer stagnating in your love life. If when you meet someone that you like, you want it to actually go somewhere. Go pick up a copy of The Momentum Texts. It is all about how to get momentum in your dating life instead of stalling with time wasters. By the way, it’s $7 so you don’t have to think too hard about it. Go check it out. Momentumtexts.com.

The post How to AVOID Dating Time Wasters appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

In today’s brand-new video, I give you the tools you need to move on for good from this kind of ghosting, including a text message you can send . . . not to get closure from them but to give yourself the closure you need.

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Matthew:

So we recently did an episode on the podcast, the Love.Life. podcast for those of you who don’t listen already, Jameson, let’s throw something up so people can find the podcast.

Jameson:

There’s nothing to throw up, just search Love Life podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Matthew:

There was an episode we did episode 181, the title of which was “How to Deal with the Pain of Not Getting Closure.” And there was someone who emailed a reply to this podcast. She said, “Hi all, I just wanted to say that I really did enjoy your last podcast. I adore all of you guys. The banter you have is awesome. And I do agree with everything you said. However, I have a feeling you missed out on one reason why it is so important to get closure. I am now actually trying to deal with that pain of not getting closure. But the reason why I want to get closure, and I believe I wouldn’t be alone in this, is not necessarily to get any constructive criticism that I can improve, it’s neither because I can’t help but scratch the wound.

Why I need it is because this guy simply ghosted me out of nowhere. He reads my Facebook texts but stopped responding to them. We only met two months ago and have already been through some misunderstandings. But we didn’t recently argue or anything. So now I find myself left with this uncertainty over whether it’s only temporary, like he’s just struggling and needs to think about our situationship. Or we’re done for good. I simply want to get out of this limbo, get this level of certainty to close that chapter and move on. Thank you and can’t wait for the next episode.”

Well, and I’m going to call this person . . . Name?

Jameson:

Oprah.

Audrey:

Deborah.

Jameson:

Maybe let’s just go with Deborah.

Matthew:

I’m going to go with Deborah. It’s funny because whenever I read a message like this, I read certain contradictions. On one hand, Deborah says, “I’m not simply thinking about this to scratch a wound. I’m just trying to get certainty.” But then when I hear this person say, “I’m struggling because I have this uncertainty,” are they just struggling with the situationship and thinking about it and they don’t know what to say. Or is it actually over? That kind of rumination is a way of scratching the wound. It’s a way of continuing to invest in the situation.

Now, let’s rewind for a moment because ghosting itself is incredibly painful. It’s incredibly painful because it can make us feel worthless. It can make us feel like we’re not even worthy of an explanation. We’re not even worthy of someone messaging us back when we’ve reached out to them. And I think it’s worth stating that there are different versions of ghosting. There’s the version of ghosting where we reach out to someone we’ve been seeing and they don’t text us back. And then because we feel like that’s a massive rejection, we don’t reach out to them again. Now, that’s not to say that’s okay, but that’s a much more common version of ghosting than the version of ghosting where you reach out to someone, they don’t reach back out and then you decide to go back to them and say, “Hey, is everything okay? I haven’t heard from you.” When you reach back out with a message like that, if someone then ignores that ask for information then that, for me, is a much more severe form of ghosting. Neither are great, but the latter requires a very conscious ignorance of someone’s confusion.

Now, I don’t know if Deborah reached out again to get that clarity because that is one form of closure you can have. I actually think if you’re right now, anyone out there is in a situation where there is someone that has ghosted you. And you find yourself in the same place Deborah is, where you are confused, you don’t know what’s going on. Are they thinking about me? Did something happen to them? Are they just done with me? What is happening? A good step for yourself maybe to reach out to that person and to say, “Hey, I have been very confused by the fact that I haven’t heard from you. Is everything okay? It seems strange because we were consistently communicating and dating and now I haven’t heard from you at all.”

That to me seems to be a worthwhile message to send if for no other reason than once you’ve sent that you now can rest going, “Well, I asked for clarity.” And if they don’t text you back to that, or if they don’t come back to that at all with a phone call, then you know, oh, this is a person that is willfully dismissive of my confusion, of what can be causing me pain. And they’ve decided that the best course of action is literally just to ignore me.

If you are able to go on Instagram and see that they’re still living their life and that they’re not dead, then you have your answer about this person. That should be a moment where you actually can set them aside. That should be a moment where continuing to agonize over the situation and follow the thoughts of, “But what happened? Why did they suddenly ghost me? Why aren’t they getting back to me? What could I have done so wrong?” That is a form of rumination that is simply scratching the wound.

Our mind can, in situations like that, look for story, you see it in Deborah’s message, she’s looking for that story. Maybe is he struggling with our situationship? Is he thinking about it and there’s something holding him back? That’s attributing story to a situation that doesn’t need to be that complicated. Occam’s razor, the idea that the explanation that requires the least variables is the most likely explanation. In other words, the simplest explanation is the one you should go with.

In this case, the simplest explanation is that this person, for whatever reason, decided that they don’t want to continue, or that they’re not interested, or that they can’t give you what you want. And in that moment, instead of communicating with you about that, decided to take the easiest possible way out that had no regard for your feelings. That’s the simple explanation. It doesn’t need more thought than that.

When you’re going into that place of I must be worthless because how could someone do that to me? How could someone that I was having a great time with, or that it felt like there was some kind of important relationship building with, how could someone just drop off the face of the earth as far as I’m concerned and yet, they’re still here living their life? That unworthiness that we feel should actually start to dissolve when we realize that we’re dealing with a person whose opinion should be devalued in the first place because they’ve shown us that’s how they conduct themselves. That’s how they treat people.

I would go as far as to say, if this person really liked you, it still wouldn’t matter. They’d still be a terrible person to be with because if the person that’s capable of ghosting you like that really liked you, that would still be a trait they have. It would still be a way they react when they’re not interested. Do you see that? So even if you got your wish and this person really liked you and went after you in the way that you wanted them to, the likelihood is that would just blind you to this quality that they have when they’re not interested. That would still make them a terrible person for you to be with because that person is a very dangerous person to be with.

You don’t get loyalty with those people. You can’t build trust with those people. You don’t get consistency with those people. You certainly don’t get good treatment when that person sees you as no longer valuable to them. What you are really seeing in that moment is what does someone do when they’ve decided you’re no longer valuable to them, or when they don’t need you, or when something different comes along that arrests their attention? What happens to you? What happens to anyone? Forget you. What happens to anyone in a situation like that that’s in their life?

And that’s really good information, that’s important information to know. You almost have to remove the you from it because the I is the ego in it. How could they do this to me? How could we go from having the connection we had to suddenly, I am not even worthy of an explanation? The me in it, the I it that’s all the ego. But what we have to do is go, “Oh no, what this really is a representation of how this person treats people.” And that should be an incredible turnoff, should be seen as a dodged bullet. It should be seen as in itself a form of closure because I would never want to be with a person who is able to do this, or who’s in a stage of their life where they can’t see that this is really distasteful and bad behavior.

And I’m going to push back here, Deborah. And you sent me a message with love, I’m going to send you a message back with love, but it’s going to be a tough message. I think that your email to me was a bit of a cop-out. I think it was your way of giving yourself a license to keep thinking about this person that doesn’t deserve for you to keep thinking about them. When you start to entertain, but could it be this, and could it be that? I just don’t know. I’m so confused. Matt, it’s really hard when you just don’t get an explanation. And when you’re so confused, then you can’t let go. Yes, you can. You don’t need to be coming up with all of those explanations.

The righteous explanation we give someone, which you alluded to in your email, the one where we say, but maybe they’re really confused that’s a way of packaging that person in a more positive way than the behavior they’ve given you suggests. And the reason your mind packages them in a more positive way is because then you can hold onto them. Then, you can actually keep thinking about it. You can keep ruminating. It introduces doubt, it introduces hope, it introduces uncertainty. And all of the confusion that keeps you trying to work out a riddle that has already been solved.

What is the best use of your time and your precious life? We are here for a very short period of time and one of the decisions that we have to make during this life of ours is who do we want to spend time with, and who do we want to give our energy to? It’s absolutely one of the most important decisions we can possibly make. It might be the most important decision we can possibly make. Are we going to spend our lives around positive people, or negative people? Do we want to be around people who are great teammates, or people who let us down constantly?

Life is full of these decisions about who to spend our time with and who to give our energy to. And this right here is an example of someone who I would argue is a really poor use of your life. This life, you have this bar and it’s not very long, it’s not very big. And every hour of it is precious. So who are you choosing to give your time to? Deborah, you said you had a two-month relationship, two months. And you said there was some misunderstandings along the way. Who knows if it was even a relationship from what you’ve said. But there was someone that was on your radar for two months. And then, they ghosted you and now they’re still on your radar in a big way. Enough for you to email me about this person because you’re in pain and the confusion of it.

This, to me, is not someone that’s worth your life. But you’re making them worthy of it. And the more we go down the rabbit holes of discussing these people, and having conversations about what their intentions are, and what did they really mean when they ghosted us and what are they thinking right now, the more we’re just invest . . . It’s a form of investment. Do you understand that? It’s a form of investment in that person. When we invest and invest and invest like that psychologically we care about it more. But this is one story. And it’s a story that’s not even interesting. Life offers you so many different stories with so many different people. There are more stories available to you to begin in this next chapter of your life than you possibly have time for.

It’s one of the great tragedies of life. There are so many stories you can engage in. There’s a story where you move to India and you live out this whole adventure, doing something you’ve never done before there. There’s a story where you begin a new business. There’s a story where you go and meet the great love of your life in a different city. There’s a story where you have an amazing friendship. There’s a story where you have four more amazing relationships in your life. There are so many stories you could be living, the real tragedy is when we are continuing to play out this story that’s not interesting that has finished, by the way, there’s your closure. It finished. We made a video recently on the nine confusing things men say and what they really mean. Well, of all the confusing things men say, ghosting isn’t one of them. Ghosting is pretty obvious. It’s pretty direct, it’s pretty clear-cut. Our job is to give ourselves the closure so that we can go and live one of those other interesting stories.

The reason I say that what you said is a cop-out is because you’ve made this person responsible for your ability to move on. You’ve given them that power, I can’t move on until I get some kind of explanation and figure this out. Life isn’t that simple. We don’t always get the closure that we want. In fact, a lot of life doesn’t give us the closure that we want. How many people out there watching this video have a parent, nevermind a parent that died that they never felt they got closure from? How many people watching this video have a parent who’s still alive that they get no closure from? A parent, that they don’t feel seen by? A parent that will never truly understand them? Or they’ll never have that great turnaround that you always wished they would have? How many people watching this video will never get that closure? Life is like that.

There are so many situations that don’t have a happy ending where we don’t get to have closure, not in the form that we’re seeking it. The closure is the closure we give ourselves where we say, “Ah, my happiness does not reside here. My closure is reinventing my happiness somewhere where it’s actually possible. My closure is beginning a new path and saying, ‘Oh, the way that parent treated me, or the way that person was in my life, I never want to be like that.’ The closure I’m going to give myself is being better than what I see over here. The closure may be that I get to treat people better than I’ve been treated.”

One of the greatest ways to be unhappy in life, one of the easiest ways to be unhappy in life is to look for closure where closure will not be found. And you’re stalling Deborah, and you’re waiting for this person to give you closure that you’re going to have to give yourself. And, by the way, you’re going to have to give it to yourself in many other ways in life yet. This is not the last time you’re going to have to give yourself closure. But you’re stalling and waiting for it is a way to be really unhappy. And it’s a way to just run out the clock on your own life. And there are no prizes for that waiting. No one waits at the end of your life with a medal that says, “Look how long you held out waiting for closure. You get the medal for being the most resilient day, after day, after day holding out for that closure.” There is no trophy for that later on, there’s only how much you lived.

Your job is now to go and live to set whatever energy you were going to use to put into this, use that energy to actually go out there and live. And that starts by having a different standard to the kind of person that right now you’re looking for closure from. And you may say, “I already do have a higher standard. I would never do that to someone.” So in that sense you do. But you also have to have a standard for whose opinions you’re looking for in life. You have to have a standard for who you listen to. A standard for who you give time to. And right now you’re not having a standard for that.

You’re choosing to give time to someone who’s giving no time to you. Give energy to someone who’s giving no energy to you. And try to figure out what the opinions are and what the story is of someone whose opinion shouldn’t be valued that highly in the first place based on their actions, which aren’t suggestive of someone who you’d want to model in your life.

Thank you so much for watching. Leave me a comment, let me know what you thought of this. Let me know if it helped you with a particular person in your life right now that you’ve been holding onto and seeking closure from when you shouldn’t. Be it a romantic person, a family member, a friend, or anyone in your life. I’d love to hear from you. How has this helped you with the closure in your life, and how has this video affected you?

Did you know, before you go, that I’ve been doing this for 15 years now? And over those 15 years, I’ve created an entire buffet of programs that are designed to help you with whatever stage of dating and relationships you’re at. And did you further know that there is a place you can go to get the best one recommended for you based on what you are going through right now? If you go to YourDatingSolution.com, you can tell this tool on my website what your particular challenge is, and it will recommend you the best solution from the suite of solutions that I’ve created over my entire adult life so far. Go check it out at YourDatingSolution.com. And I’ll see you next time.

The post How to Get Over the Pain of Being Ghosted appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

If you’ve asked yourself this question long enough, you might be starting to feel like finding love is simply a matter of luck.

If you’re struggling to figure out why you’re still single, in this week’s video, I give you 5 honest reasons why, plus some quick changes you can make to attract the right relationship faster.

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Matthew:

I wanted to make a video that was a counterintuitive answer to the question that I have received ad nauseum for 15 years now, which is “Matthew, why am I still single? Why have I not met anybody?” And often people are looking for very direct answers that must relate to their love life, must relate to something that they are doing wrong in their interactions, or some flirting tip that they don’t know about. But the truth of why so many people are single is actually more structural and indirect than that. John Kay wrote a book called, “Obliquity.” And the idea of this book was that the results we want to achieve in life are best achieved indirectly. So, if you want to be a millionaire, don’t focus on becoming rich. Focus on creating an amazing product that meets people’s needs. Focus on your leadership skills. Focus on your ability to build an amazing team and get them on board with your vision so that they can help you get there.

These are indirect things that have nothing to do with money, but money becomes the byproduct. Well, the same is true in our love lives. There are things that have nothing to do with our love lives, that if we get those right, produce an amazing love life, produce more opportunities, might lead to the relationship you have always wanted. And so, what I wanted to do in this video was highlight five things that when I was thinking, what are the reasons people are single that have nothing to do with their love life, were the first things that came to my mind. So, I’m going to read these out and I want you to tell me which ones you resonate with. Leave me a comment, and let me know which one are you like, “Oh, wow. That’s mine. That’s exactly me.” And by the end of the video, are there any you feel I’ve left out?

If so, leave me a comment and let me know.

Reason number one you may be single that has nothing to do with love. You have friendships, but not communities. There are a lot of people that will say to me, “Matt, I have a social life. I have great friends.” I know that when they say they have great friends, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re part of any communities. What’s the difference? Well, a friend might be someone that I go to dinner with every week. I get social connection from them. I get this feeling of connection and intimacy and vulnerability and friendship.

All of that is good, obviously. That’s wonderful. But it’s not community, not in a way that introduces me to a new pool of people. And one of the great antidotes to online dating and burning out through dating apps is to have communities in real life. If someone invites me somewhere, and it’s not someone I know really well, it’s more of an acquaintance or someone who’s on the way to becoming a friend, but they invite me somewhere. They invite me to a party they’re going to or a social event, they’re running. If I go there, I’m probably going to meet 99%, if not 100%, new people. That gives me a shot at becoming part of a new community, especially if I get invited two or three times and I become a new staple part of that group.

If I join a running club, I am going to be exposed to a new community of people that I wouldn’t otherwise have met. Most of us spend our lives in the exact same communities we’ve always been in. And so, once we’ve exhausted those pools and realize there’s no one there for us, our opportunities stop there, apart from online dating. The antidote to that is not spending more time with your existing friends. It’s two things. Say yes to people you don’t normally say yes to that can expose you to brand new pools of people, and go do things you are interested in in community. Because you could just put your headphones in and go for a run on the street. But when you do it as part of a running club, you are in a community doing it.

And that gives you the added benefit that you’re going to meet people there, some of whom will be new friends that will invite you to new communities again. And if you hit the jackpot, one of whom might actually be the love you’ve been looking for.

The second reason you might be single that has nothing to do with love is that you work from home. So many more people will relate to this now over the last couple of years because, for many of you, COVID has meant you’re now working from home. This is something that I have experienced for nearly 15 years of my life because, for as long as I’ve been doing what I do, I’ve always worked from home.

And I know that working from home has always meant that I have had to be incredibly intentional about getting out there and meeting people because it’s very easy to stay in my pajamas, to work through the day, and at the end of the day say. “I’m exhausted. I’m not going anywhere.” It’s always easier not to leave the house. When you go to a place of work, you might bump into someone on public transport on the way, you might bump into someone in the building you work in, you might bump into someone at lunch or at happy hour that someone is holding from your office after work. These are all opportunities to collide with another person. You can sometimes end up in a relationship by accident that way. Some of you have because you worked somewhere and that being somewhere meant that you collided with someone at some point. You ended up in a relationship that could not have happened if you worked from home that day.

So, what this means is it doesn’t make working from home a bad thing. For so many of us, it’s changed our lives. But what it does mean is that if you work from home, you’re going to have to be really intentional about creating opportunities to go and be in the world, to be in spaces, where you can collide with other people, whether it’s occasionally working from a busy coffee shop so that you’re around people, whether it’s going to the gym in the evening so that you’re part of a class there and you can meet people there, or whether it’s simply going to the grocery store. Anywhere that you can bump into someone is a plus and a moment where an opportunity could arise. Don’t use working from home as an excuse to be passive.

The third reason you may be single that has nothing to do with love is that you live in the middle of nowhere.

Now, this will apply to some of you and not others. But for those of you it does apply to, you know who you are. Living in a city has its drawbacks. Everyone has their favorite excuse about why it’s hard to find love in New York or LA or London or Dubai. The one thing you can say about those places is that there are people around. And if you truly live in a place where there’s this many people, it’s going to be harder. You don’t get to play the odds in the same way. If dating is partly a numbers game, the numbers are not stacked in your favor. And there are people that I’ve known that have decided at a time in their life where I know they really want to meet someone to move out to the middle of the countryside. And I think to myself, “Wait, no. This is going to make it exponentially more difficult for you to meet somebody.” You’re hoping, I guess, to meet somebody out of the five people that go to the local pub near you, and it’s the same five people every day of the week?

It’s harder. Now, I know that there’s going to be a part of this that might inflame people because the idea of, “So what are you saying? I have to move? There’s a big deal. That’s costly. And by the way, I have my sick mother that I’m looking after where I am. I can’t just up and go.” The way that I’ll say it is this, because hopefully this can be a pressure valve in what I’m saying. I remember a brief stage of my life where me and my family were living a decent amount of distance away from the closest town. And I remember, as James Aker would put it in “The Happiness Advantage,” the activation energy required to go to the nearest town to see a movie, to get a meal, was so high that most nights I just decided to do nothing because it was just too much effort.

We have to ask ourselves, if I live in “the middle of nowhere,” is there any way that I could try to lower the activation energy that it would take to meet people, to have interactions, to go on dates? One of those ways might just be, “I’m going to have several reasons to go into town or into the nearest city. I’m going to make it so that I’m able to be there for a day or two a week. If I create multiple wins out of that so that it’s not like I’m just going into the city to hope that I bump into somebody that’s attractive,” because you’re going to hate that. You’re going to go home just demoralized and depressed every time you’re like, “I drove a fucking hour to come here and just to hang out and meet no one, and then come home again?”

“I would’ve rather stayed at home and read a good book, watched TV shows.” If we’re going to remain where we live right now, we have to create multiple wins that we’ll get from going to the nearest place where there are people. What are the four reasons that you could be going into the city that you can combine on a single day or on a weekend? Go do that, and make sure that while you’re there, you attend something social or you meet up with someone or you just go hang somewhere and work for a couple of hours in a busy spot. Or you go on dating apps, and you line up a date while you’re there. Or you may look at something a little more drastic. You may look at your choice in life to live where you live and say, “Does it work with my key priorities?”

“If one of my key priorities is I really want to meet someone, do I want to live a little closer to the action? Is it worth it? Is it possible? If it’s more expensive to live there, could I take a smaller space to go and live there so that I can have the possibility of a different kind of social life that might bring more opportunities for love?” Or, “If I’m looking after my sick mother where I am, do I need to be one minute from her? Or could I be 20 minutes from her and 20 minutes from the nearest place where there’s lots of people, instead of one minute from her and 40 minutes from the nearest civilization?” These are all options. I’m not here to put any judgment on what you’re doing right now or to tell you you should do anything. But they’re questions worth asking.

Life is all about choices. It’s all about priorities. And if we have a setup right now of where we live that’s making it disproportionately difficult to meet someone, something has to give somewhere, and we need to find where that give is.

The fourth reason we may be single that has nothing to do with love is that we’re not proud of ourselves. And more specifically, we’re not taking pride in ourselves and our appearance right now. Training is one of those things that can make us feel great about our bodies. It can make us feel good. I’m not talking about getting to some figure that looks like a magazine. I’m talking about something that makes you feel proud of yourself, something that makes you feel sexy. And that doesn’t have to just be training. It could be throwing on an outfit we really enjoy.

It could be getting up and getting ready in the morning and feeling good. It could be doing our hair or makeup. What are those things that make you feel sexy? Because when we go out, we’re either one of two people. We’re either going out and hiding. And I have had many days where I’m going out and I’m hiding from people. I want my coffee, but I don’t want to be seen. I don’t want to make eye contact with everyone. I want to look at the floor the whole time because I just don’t feel good in myself in that moment. And there are other times where I go out and I feel like the shit. I feel great. I’m wearing shoes that I like. I’m wearing an outfit that’s new and crisp. My hair’s done, my skin feels good. And in that moment I’m open to the world. I’m looking around. My head is up. I’m ready for interactions. I’m going to make eye contact with the person serving me my coffee.

I might have a bit of banter. I’m open to the world. And that energy produces a whole different world of opportunities. There is one face that we have that tells the world to go away, that tells opportunity to go in a different direction. And there’s another face we have that invites everything into our lives. The difference is when we leave, do we feel that energy that makes us proud to take ourselves out? Do I feel good? Do I feel like I’m taking myself on a date right now? And am I doing the things that make me feel that? A small thing for me is getting ready first thing in the morning. Showering and making myself look as good as possible in the morning so that I feel like that for the rest of the day. That cheesy cliche, “If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready,” right? When you go out and you just feel ready, then anything can happen.

You could be in a grocery store and see someone attractive, and you might actually do something about it. You might actually say something. You might actually hold eye contact for a second longer. And that one second longer might be the thing that brings them over to you. So, is your head up? Are you open to the world? And are you doing the things for yourself, your presentation, your image that make you feel like doing those things? Are you taking yourself out on a date each day? Because if you are, other people will want to date you.

The fifth reason you may be single that has nothing to do with love is you’re too freaking tired. And I would combine this with you don’t have time. Time and energy are two things that are very connected. In fact, I would go as far as to say energy is time because most people have some kind of time.

Most people find time to watch the latest Netflix show, regardless of how busy they are. They somehow have still seen the episodes that we’re all talking about when we say, “Have you seen this?” So, they have some time. But time without energy is redundant. If you don’t have the energy to reach out to somebody, to flirt, to go out and be where people are, to be on a date with great energy, then it doesn’t matter how much time you have. You’re just exhausted. You’re never going to be able to do it. So, we have to look at our lives and say, “If I’m getting real with myself, what needs to happen for me to have more time and perhaps, even more importantly, more energy to actually invest in creating opportunities in my love life?” And I say this humbly, knowing that there are those of you who are working multiple jobs, who are looking after sick relatives, who have children that you’re raising on your own, that are dealing with all manner of issues in your life. You may be dealing with your own health issues.

There are so many plates you are spinning that at the end of the day, you have nothing left to give and barely any time. And to that, I would say, if you are watching this video, then there must be some part of you that really wants to find love. And you may decide, “Based on what Matt just said, I just don’t have time right now, and I’m going to take a step back and I’m going to do this in another chapter of my life.” Or you may say, “This is always going to be my life to some extent. I’m always going to be busy. I’m always going to have multiple plates spinning. That’s who I am. I have a lot of responsibility. I have a lot going on. I have a lot of people that rely on me. I better figure out what needs to happen for me to have time and energy for me in this area.”

And that might involve recalibrating. Who do I need to start saying no to? Who do I keep making more important than me? And they shouldn’t be anywhere near the top of that list. Where do I need to have more boundaries? Where am I doing too much people pleasing in my life? Where am I taking on responsibilities that aren’t my responsibilities? Where do I need to start putting myself first? What help and support could I get? And how do I start to crowbar, albeit imperfectly, time for my love life into my week? Whether it’s time to go and join a community where I might have a hope of meeting somebody, or whether it’s time to go on a date. I need to find that time. If it’s as important to me as I say it is. There may be areas I need to pull back, but if it’s important, I’ll find a way.

When you do these things, it’s not just about giving you more time because, by the way, if you’re honest with yourself, you might already have some time. But it may be more about where do I need to pull back so that I have more energy? Because energy is ultimately going to be the thing that allows me to start to be enthusiastic and more optimistic about this area again.

Oh, hello. Look, now it’s light outside. Now, I’m wearing a green t-shirt, not a white one. But I wanted to give you something that’s going to help you before you leave. If you are out there texting people in the early stages of dating, and you want to know what to do in a challenging situation where someone sends you something you don’t quite know what to reply in order to keep the conversation going or to maintain attraction.

Or maybe someone got sexual too quickly, and you’re like, “Whoa, I like this person, but I don’t like this tone. I don’t like this rhythm. What do I actually do to get this back on track?” I have a free guide for you at WhatToTextNext.com. Go over there now. It’s a video training on how to move things in the direction you want them to go in in early dating. Especially if you just met someone from the Wild West that is dating apps. So, go check it out. WhatToTextNext.com, and it’s free. Did I mention it’s free, Jameson?

Jameson:

Nope.

Matthew:

It’s free.

The post 5 Reasons You’re Still Single (That Have Nothing To Do With Love) appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

Together we’ll walk through 9 of the top excuses so you know how to spot them in the future and avoid unnecessary pain.

Cut Through the Confusion & Text With Confidence
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Matthew:

Welcome to another one of my videos. Today we are going to be talking about the confusing things that men say, but men, before in the comments you say that women are confusing too. Maybe we’ll do a future episode on the confusing things that women say, but we did put out the word on my Instagram @thematthewhussey, for those of you who aren’t following me yet. We put out the word and said, what’s something confusing a man has said to you? So we’re going to read you some of these things today. In fact, the wonderful Audrey is going to read us some of these things and I am going to be attempting to dissect them, which Lord knows isn’t easy. All right, let’s go. What’s the first one?

Audrey:

“You’re the kind of girl you marry, not the kind of girl you date.”

Matthew:

Well, it’s flattering you, isn’t it? Firstly, it’s saying there are qualities about you that one would look for in a long-term partner, but it’s also kind of… I don’t know. I don’t know what he said after that, but I feel like I’m not the only one in the room who thinks that that came with some kind of excuse about him not being ready. When you say, “No, you’re the kind of person you marry, not the kind of person you date,” that to me is a way of saying, “And I’m the kind of person who’s only willing to date right now, and therefore I can’t proceed with you.” It might also, if I’m being really honest, be a kind of cue that this person isn’t sexually attracted. “You have wonderful qualities, but I don’t feel that chemistry with you. Otherwise, I’d be trying to jump you right now.”

Audrey:

Number two, we have, “I like you too much to be with you.”

Matthew:

I like you too much to be with you. So I like you too much to be with you. That says to me, “I am absolutely 100% going to hurt you.” I like you too much to be with you is a way of saying, “I’m not really looking for anything serious, so I’m not going to invest in you in any real way, but I do like you. I like you enough that we should probably keep having sex, but I don’t want to go any further than that with you.” But it’s also, again, notice the pattern here, the flattery. “I like you too much to be with you.” Notice it’s flattery, but it’s confusing flattery. If you think about it, it’s quite clever because it says, I’m flattering you. I’m dazzling you with a compliment at the same time as telling you that I can’t give you any more than I’m giving you right now. So I’m simultaneously piquing your interest and giving you a reason to keep trying with me while excusing myself from trying it all with you.

Audrey:

Number three, we have, “‘I haven’t loved you these past two years. I was lying to both of us.’ They then ended things and two weeks later he came back and said, ‘I need you in my life. I love you. Let’s try again.'”

Matthew:

Okay, well, that to me is, I used the analogy recently of he jumped ship. He decided that this ship wasn’t one that he wanted to be on anymore. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to be on it for a long time, but he finally got up the courage to leave. Maybe he never felt the way he really wanted to feel deep down, or maybe he’s confused about what love actually is, and there’s this grass is greener scenario where he thinks that there’s some elusive feeling out there that he doesn’t feel in here and so he jumped ship and then he realized he couldn’t swim.

Now, it might be that he thought that another boat was going to come by and it was going to be a better boat, and there were a bunch of boats that came by, but none of them felt better. None of them felt like the thing he was looking for. There was some rusty tugboat that came along and he thought, “I don’t want to get on that.” There’s a boat full of pirates. Or maybe it was just open water and he just found himself treading water. But he realized, “I’m not a strong enough swimmer to do this.” Because of course when we leave a relationship, we have to learn how to… Other than just jumping on another boat, which usually isn’t a good idea, we have to learn how to swim, how to be okay on our own. And I think he realized… He panicked. I think he got in the water, it was a bit cold, and I think his legs got a bit tired and he thought, “Oh no, I can’t do this.” And I don’t think he went back out of love. I think he went back out of fear and told you it was love.

The problem with what he said is he said, “For two years I’ve been lying to you and myself.” So now you’ve got in your head that for two years you’ve not been living the same reality as me. How do you recover from that in two weeks? Has he done all the healing necessary in the space of two weeks? I don’t think so. I think he panicked. I think nothing has changed on his side and someone like that, if they are let back in, should be let back in incredibly slowly.

Audrey:

Number four, “Let’s just take it day by day.”

Matthew:

Let’s just take it day by day. Well, look, firstly, that’s the sort of thing that sounds completely rational. It sounds like the voice of reason at the very beginning of dating. If someone at the end of a date two said, “So what are we?” You might be justified in saying, “Let’s just take it day by day for now and see where we are in a few dates. We’ve only been on two dates.” That would be a reasonable thing to say. But if at the point where you are starting to, or there’s this sort of expectation that you behave like a girlfriend, and that means seeing them regularly, it means comforting them on bad days, it means coming over on a sick day and bringing this person soup, it means meeting each other’s friends or family, it means being involved on a consistent basis in each other’s lives. And when you try to ask where this is going, that person says, “Let’s just take it day by day,” that is someone who wants you very much to live in the present because the present is all they can offer you. They are not looking for a relationship. They are looking for an experience.

Audrey:

Number five, “We aren’t really dating, dating.”

Matthew:

We’re not really dating, dating. We’re not? I thought we were dating, dating, dating. We’re not really dating, dating. I mean, that means what you and I are doing is we are exchanging messages with the goal of being in the same room at the same time where we can take our clothes off. Dating, dating means it’s progressing. Dating, dating means that there’s some intention behind this. There’s no intention…. Oh god, no. There’s no intention behind this. This is just you and me getting to a place, getting to a room where it’s appropriate for us to take our clothes off.

Audrey:

Number six, “You’re too independent.”

Matthew:

You’re too independent. That says to me, “I am used to feeling important by being with someone who is in need, whether it’s financially, whether it’s psychologically, they’ve got some kind of issue or challenge in their life, and I have some kind of power by what I can give, and that’s what makes me feel important. That’s what feeds my ego. That’s what makes me feel safe and indispensable. And the fact that you have your shit together, the fact that you don’t seem to need me, the fact that you have things going on in your life means that I don’t have my ego fed in that way and I don’t know how to get my significance from a more nutritional internal source, and therefore I’m worried that because I have no power over you in the way that I’m used to, I don’t have leverage over you in the way that I’m used to, that I am leavable, that I am dispensable and that makes me feel unsafe and therefore the stakes feel too high in this situation. I need to go to a place where I can feel important and powerful again.”

Audrey:

Number seven, “I can’t get away with bullshit with you. You’re too smart.”

Matthew:

Firstly, I think it’s hilarious that this person has admitted in this sentence that they’re a bullshitter in the first place. How low does he think or assume her standards are, that she’s going to be interested by the end of this sentence, having just expressed that his normal M.O. is to bullshit people? And it’s also a great kind of way of saying you’re in control when she’s not really in control. It’s a way of pandering. “Look how smart you are. I can’t even get away with my bullshit with you.” But it’s a way of making her feel like he’s naked in front of her when in fact, of course, there will be so much more bullshit she doesn’t know about, but it’s a way of saying, “Look at you. You’ve got me all figured out,” while over here I continue to bullshit you.

Number eight.

Audrey:

“I can’t give you a title, but I act like your boyfriend. Aren’t actions enough for you?”

Matthew:

We used to say all the time, and I still believe this, watch someone’s actions, not their words. If someone treats you really badly all the time but says, “I love you,” their actions are what matter. You say you love me, but you treat me horribly. That’s what matters. But there is an addendum to that. When someone is giving you the treatment you think you want, but their words say something undesirable, especially if that undesirable thing they’re saying should hurt their chances of getting a good result with you, you should believe that thing. And what he said falls into that latter category. He said, “I can’t give you a title, but I act like your boyfriend. Aren’t actions enough for you?” This is him playing on the logic that actions mean more than words, but in this case, his words mean everything because his words give away his true intentions.

If someone says to you, “I don’t want to give us a title,” well, that might upset you. That might even drive you away. And if I say something that could upset you or drive you away, but I’ve said it anyway, then that thing is much more likely to be true. That thing is much more likely to be trustworthy because what motive could I have for saying it? Other than that, I feel like I need to. When this person says, “I don’t want to give us a title,” what they’re saying is, “I want to experience being in a relationship, but I don’t want any of the commitment of being in one, and I want to make sure that I can leave this easily at any time because I don’t actually want anything with you in the future.” At worst, “I want to be able to sleep with other people. And I think by not giving us a title, I can still do that.” At best, “I’m being monogamous with you, but I have a deep-seated aversion to any real commitment or any real idea of building something. So I am liable to hurt you down the line when I realize that this is all too much.”

So this is one of those rare instances where you have to pay attention to exactly what they’re saying because what they’re saying is inconvenient for them to say. It doesn’t help their chances of winning you over. It doesn’t make them more likable. It doesn’t increase the odds of them having sex with you tonight or you still being around a month from now. It could actually push you away. And if someone is saying something that is to their own detriment and inconvenience, that thing is actually much more likely to be true.

Audrey:

And last but not least, we have the old faithful, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

Matthew:

It’s not you, it’s me. A lot of the things we’ve heard today are kind of in that vein. “It’s not you, it’s me. I’m complicated. There’s something going on with me.” When you create that impression, the person goes, “Well, if there’s nothing wrong with me, then you must like me. And if you like me, then there’s hope. And if there’s something going on with you, then we can fix that.” Then it’s not you, it’s me logic can actually get us trapped in a cycle of trying with someone we shouldn’t be trying with.

Any time someone acts really complicated, for good or bad reason, remember that for the worst kinds of people, or even just for the kind of lightly manipulative people, or the people that are just kind of selfish, being complicated actually works because if I think you’re amazing. You’re just so great. I just can’t. You’re perfect. You’re marriage material, you’re incredible. I like you so much. I just can’t because of blah, blah, blah. Complication, complication, complication. Remember that people who give you complications, people who confuse you, they are achieving something very often with that confusion. It’s a bit like if I give you a riddle, you’re so distracted by the riddle and how to figure that out, how to get past this confusion that I’m feeling, or this hurt that I’ve been through in my life, or these complications in my feelings. If you’re busy with that, then you’re not paying attention to how little I’m actually giving you. And for a lot of people, that’s exactly what they’re trying to achieve. Let me distract you from how little I’m giving you by giving you this complicated scenario that your mind is now going to go to work on.

We have to always remember this, and I’ve said it many times. Someone will give you their reasons. You need to stick to your reality. And if your reality is that this person isn’t committing, they’re not giving you very much, they’re not showing up for you, they’re confusing you constantly, that’s your reality. Regardless of whether their reasons for being confusing and complicated are malicious or sympathetic, it doesn’t change your reality.

Before you go, I have something very cool to tell you about. Some of you know that I have a program called The Momentum Texts. Some of you also know that program is only seven dollars. So on any day of the year, everyone should get this program, but there is a special reason to get it right now. Over the holidays, we are doing a special where not only are you getting The Momentum Texts, which is a program that shows you how to get your casual interactions to take a more serious turn so that you stop the endless cycle of casual dating, but it comes with four special bonuses right now, which are all audios that I’ve recorded to help you in situations where you need the most support.

So one of those situations is when you’re anxiously waiting for a text from someone and it’s ruining the peace in your day, you’ll be able to listen to me in your ears talking you through that moment so that you can get back to a confident mindset and give yourself peace again. Another audio I’ve got is to help you feel confident. Another one is to stop you from texting an ex in the very moment where you’re about to text someone you shouldn’t be texting. And the last one is an audio you can listen to when you feel like you’ve sent the wrong thing or said the wrong thing and you’re beating yourself up and getting yourself into an anxious state as a result. They’re really cool. They’re really practical. They’re like these beautiful empowering meditations that you can listen to when you need them the most, and they only are available with the holiday special of The Momentum Texts. It’s only available for a few days. Go check it out now at momentumtexts.com and I’ll see you next time.

The post 9 Confusing Things Men Say (DECODED) appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

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Matthew:

I think there is a common misconception when it comes to attraction, that if someone said they had a good time, that means they’re going to call. The problem with “I had a good time” is that we can feel we had a good time in lots of different situations. I’ve sat with people, strangers, having a conversation and thought that was nice, but I didn’t want to go out with them afterwards. It was just a, it was nice, and it’s also a polite thing to say at the end of a date, isn’t it? “I had a good time. That was really nice. See you soon.” You ever done that, see you soon? Audrey said that recently to someone, she called a wrong number and they went, “Okay, it’s no problem.” And she said, “All right, speak to you soon.” And put down the phone.

Audrey:

Leave me alone.

Matthew:

You said, “Speak to you soon” to a wrong number. So can we trust anything in life? Because Audrey’s the most honest person I know. I actually think there is a way to get rid of this mystery. Of course, there’s always a number of reasons someone might not call or text you. Maybe they got back with their ex three days later. You never know. Maybe they got unbelievably busy with work. Maybe they left the country and went on holiday. Who knows why things didn’t pan out? But there is one very common reason why date one doesn’t turn into date two, and that is a lack of chemistry. So you can be on a date with someone and build connection through good conversation. You can even enjoy someone’s company. That doesn’t mean that there’s chemistry. That doesn’t mean you feel that spark. And the truth is, the thing that carries most people from one date to the next is not a really nice connection.

It’s real fiery chemistry. That’s the thing that makes us go, “I must see this person again. What are you doing tomorrow?” That’s the thing. That’s the fuel. And too many of us aren’t generating that kind of fuel because we are relying too much on just nice conversation. So I wanted to give you today seven tests to know if you created enough chemistry to get you from one date to another.

Jameson, I feel like this is a bit of an old-school video. I feel like this is a back to basics, fundamentals. I felt like I could have been making this in my tiny little studio apartment we were shooting in, in the early days. Can we cut to that real quick, just show everyone? As we go through it, I’m going to dissect it and tell you what I love about it, but now we are here.

Audrey:

Can you make it the hula-hooping clip?

Matthew:

Don’t make it the hula-hooping clip.

Anyone who can do like a really good hula hoop motion that’s sexy. Jameson, you can Photoshop the hula hoop in right? I’m not just going to be humping the air.

You told me you deleted the hula-hooping clip.

Jameson:

Oh no, I did definitely.

Matthew:

Test number one. Did you touch?

Touch is one of those catalysts for attraction if we use it right. Of course, we don’t want to be constantly touching someone throughout a date, that would be uncomfortable. And of course there are areas to touch someone on a date, the inside of a leg Jameson, that would be too much. I said that like Jameson’s guilty of that all the time. A little arm graze, you laugh and you touch someone’s arm. You say, “Do you want a menu? Okay, let me grab you one.” And as you grab the menu, you just touch their arm lightly or maybe they tease you and you give them a little push. All these moments create touch. It could even be, you’re sat at a bar with someone having some food and a couple of cocktails, and then you stand up and go to the bathroom and on the way to the bathroom you sort of just shuffle past them and put your arms on their back as you shuffle past them.

And by the way, I think this is better in the direction of woman to man than man to woman. I think men, you have to be a little more careful with this. But women, you can do some of these things that create just a moment of connection through touch. Ask yourself at the end of the day, at any point on that date, did I actually touch the person?

Test number two, did you make at any point on the date, slow, seductive, eye contact?

Pace is a very important thing on a date. I’m not just talking about eye contact here. I’m talking about how slowly you speak at certain times, how slowly you move at certain times. When you think of someone confident and sexy, there’s a pace to that, that slows down. When I go beyond confident and I say seductive, it starts to get even more slow, doesn’t it?

Well, you can mimic that on a date in certain moments. The way you look at someone when you take a sip of your drink or when they take a sip of theirs, when someone is telling you a story passionately and you have that little moment, you ever have that moment where someone gets really passionate about something and you see that their eyes light up, you see that glint in them, and all of a sudden you get that little hit of, “Ooh, this person’s attractive.” In that moment, slow down, look at them a little more slowly. You can even look from their eyes to their mouth and back to their eyes. These things start to create that element of seduction. If you are constantly making points and moving around a lot and gesturing a lot and in that kind of jittery mode and everything you say is really fast sentences and so on, there’s no seduction to that pace. Slow it down. Did you slow it down?

Test number three, did you give him a desire-based compliment?

There’s platonic language and there’s desire language. There’s also a platonic tone and a desire tone, you can use either. Platonic language would be “That looks nice.” Desire language would be “That looks hot.” Platonic tone would be “You look good in that jacket.” Desire tone would be, “You look good in that jacket.” Subtle differences, but one of them says, we’re going to be friends, and the other one says, we’re not going to be friends.

Number four, did you hug them like you liked them?

There’s a big difference in hugging someone as if they’re a friend and the way we hug someone when we feel comfortable with them and we like them, we let it linger for just a half second longer. We almost become a bit more vulnerable. You ever hugged someone where it felt like just for a brief moment, they were sort of melting into you? Didn’t it feel amazing? Didn’t it make you feel connected to that person? Didn’t it make you feel more comfortable with that person? Didn’t it create the moment of electricity? Are you creating that with other people? Or are you leaning over and giving them your shoulder and the rest of your body retreats and it feels like they’re hugging a coat hanger? Allow that hug to be a little more vulnerable and to last just a little longer than you would if you were trying to get away.

Number five, did you give them a couple of opportunities to just observe you?

You know that moment where someone leaves the date or leaves the table and goes to the bathroom and it’s the one moment you’ve had to just watch them. You catch a different angle than you’ve had so far, you can look at them without worrying that they’re looking back at you looking at them, and you can just take them in. This is a moment where you get to showcase yourself. Walking a little sexy, having a little strut, having a nice little moment with your hair, looking at the menu. You’re deep in the menu so they can look at you. Or going to the restroom, or just being over here, checking something out, which allows them to check you out. People need moments where they can take you in without feeling like you are watching them.

Number six, did you tease them in a playful manner?

Playfully teasing someone could be that you think your order was better than his, and then you look at that person and you go, “I won. I have the best order.” Or it might be that they say that your food doesn’t look as good as theirs and you can go, “Ugh, rude.” Got like a little flirtatious vibe to it. Tension is often born out of a playful friction. Playful friction allows you both to step into a role play where you’re having a little thing, you’re at odds over something and that creates a spark. It could be that there’s a pool table over there and you go, “We can’t play pool. I can’t have us fighting on our first date.” That creates this little like mini-competition. Like, oh, it’s not so friendly anymore, there’s a frisson to it.

Number seven, did you make use of the post-date sexy, subtle, subtext text?

If you just send someone a message that says, “I had a really nice time tonight. I hope you didn’t have to wait too long for your Uber.” That’s a nice text, but it’s so literal. There’s no subtext whatsoever. But what if you just said this “Tonight was really fun…” And then maybe you throw in a little blushing emoji. Firstly, it’s not many words. I kind of like it for that reason. I’m not saying you have to send few words, but something about this message really works because it’s few words. It’s not overly thought out. The ellipsis is what says there’s things I’m not saying right now. And the word fun, that’s desire language that says we could have more fun together.

The emoji is both a signal of warmth at the end of this message, but there’s also a little suggestiveness to that too, right? It’s the ability to blush. It’s the ability to be made to feel something. There’s a vulnerability about that. It’s like you’re thinking about how fun the night was and maybe you’re even thinking about other things and you’re blushing as a result. This is a message that immediately when someone receives it after a date, they say, ooh, there’s something there. This person is attracted to me. This person didn’t just have a nice time. And the great irony is that when we feel someone is slightly attracted to us, even if it’s just in what they don’t say, not even what they do say, we are more likely to be attracted to them because we take our mind out of the friend zone and into the desire zone.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Fine, I’ll do those seven things. Then what?

Well I have the answer for you. I have a program. It’s called the Momentum Texts. In this program are 67 specific text messages that you can use to take it from a very early stage all the way to some serious investments so that your dating life doesn’t keep drifting into a state of limbo. It actually goes somewhere with someone. I don’t think we’ve ever released a more nuts and bolts practical program of things that you can literally just grab and send. It’s really good. It took us ages to make. It’ll take you seconds to use. How much were we offering this for before Jameson?

Jameson:

$7.

Matthew:

Seven, we adjusted the price, didn’t we?

Jameson:

No, $7.

Matthew:

What about inflation? Surely it should be about a thousand dollars by now. Have you seen gas?

Jameson:

We’re sticking to seven.

Matthew:

You can’t even get a pumpkin spice latte for that. I couldn’t even get a pumpkin spice latte for that. That’s mental. Check it out. I’ll see you over there. MomentumTexts.com,

Jameson. Just Photoshop that in somehow. You could probably do that in After Effects, can’t you? Yeah. Otherwise, it just looks like I’m humping the air.

The post 7 Easy Ways to Flirt That Make You Irresistible appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

What can you do when you’re sick of the excuses and deep down want to see them more? Well, you can watch this week’s brand-new video, in which I’ll share with you how to avoid the most common mistake in this scenario and finally get things moving again. 

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I’m going to read you a question that was asked to me from one of my Love Life Club members, and there was a part of this question that I immediately called bullshit on. I want you to see if you pick up on what part that was. And I will tell you, and you can see if you were right. “I travel a lot and there’s this guy I started seeing a month and a half ago. Because of our travel schedules, we’ve only seen each other every couple of weeks with texting in between. When you have an intense schedule, how do you continue to deepen a relationship? With this guy, it feels like there will be these moments of momentum, then things stop. How do you keep it going?” OK, which part did you say was BS? The part that I called out was when she said, “When you have an intense schedule, how do you continue to deepen a relationship?”

Here’s what I said to her in the moment, “Is that really what you think? Do you really feel like right now the relationship isn’t progressing because you have such an intense schedule?” And she looked at me and started smiling. I said, “Let me ask you this. Could you text him more? Would you like to?” To both of these questions, she said yes. So what I said to her is, “Then this isn’t your excuse. It’s his excuse and you’ve appropriated it.” He has a very busy schedule and has an intense travel schedule, blah, blah, blah. And by the way, so does she. It’s not not true that she has an intense schedule, but he uses it as an excuse as to why he can’t give more, and she now has adopted the royal we around that excuse.

It’s a bit like being with someone who says, “I’m a really zen person. I just like to kind of go with the flow and I’m very chill and I don’t know. I don’t like to make plans about what this is and where this is going and put a label on it. I’m just more of a spontaneous person.” And then when you go and describe the situation to your friends and they say, “Hey, how’s it going with that guy you’re seeing?” You go, “We’re just both really chill and just kind of seeing where things are going and just not putting any labels on it right now. Just enjoying being spontaneous and just kind of taking it as it comes.” I see this happen all the time. If I were to put a true vulnerability filter on the question that she asked me, here’s what I would translate it to.

I travel a lot and there’s a guy I started seeing a month and a half ago. Vulnerability filter, I travel a lot and I’m also ready for a real relationship in my life where I prioritize someone and there’s a guy I started seeing a month and a half ago that I’ve actually come to quite like. When you have an intense schedule, how do you continue to deepen a relationship? I have an intense schedule, but that doesn’t change the fact that I want to deepen this relationship. So how do I do that without getting brutally rejected by someone who actually doesn’t want the same things as me? With this guy, it feels like there will be these moments of momentum, which get me excited and hopeful, then things stop, which makes me sad and is hurtful. Look, I get it. I get exactly where this woman is. She’s three dates in with a guy. She’s a month and a half into knowing him, and that naturally feels, especially in a world that feels so casual all the time about dating, that feels like a time where we’re not entitled to make our demands.

We don’t want to come on too strong. We don’t want to scare someone off, and so we feel like we’re in this no man’s land of not being able to demand anything, but at the same time, knowing that we want more. So what do we do in that moment? Is this a time to lay down your standards? Because that’s something that can easily come across as too aggressive. Why is this person yelling at me? We’ve only known each other a month and a half and we’re both busy and we have a lot going on. What is this? We’re afraid of creating that reaction. So this isn’t a time for laying down the law. He’s been so disrespectful, but we also want to communicate something of our intentions. Well, I believe that a wonderful gateway to conversations about what we want, standards, boundaries down the line is vulnerability today about how we feel.

Let me give you an example, because I always believe that I can give you all of the psychology in the world, but if I align it to an actual phrase, an actual message, or a way of having a conversation, that’s the most useful thing I can give you because you’ll hear it and you’ll go, “Oh, that’s how that sounds.” So imagine for a moment that they spoke on a Monday or a Tuesday, he disappeared for the rest of the week, and then the following Monday he reaches out to her and says, “How was your weekend?” Here’s what she could send back. “I had an amazing weekend, a little disappointed I didn’t hear from you though… How have you been?” Now, the nuances in this message are important. The fact that when you say, “I had an amazing weekend,” and then you put little blushy face emoji, warms up the message, right?

And it also says, “I had a great time.” I was not not having was having a great time because you didn’t reach out to me. But then comes the vulnerability, “A little disappointed I didn’t hear from you though…” The dot dot dot is an invitation for him to actually respond to that. Then you say, “How have you been?” Which is still warm and you’re still making conversation. There’s no bitterness about this message. There’s no edge. In fact, the whole point of this is that it’s coming from a place of just … there’s a pureness to it. It’s just vulnerability. I’m just sharing, bravely I should add, something that I feel. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t hear from you. What this does is it immediately changes someone’s perception of you from two dimensions to three dimensions. You become human. You’re not just some thing to be experienced for someone’s enjoyment when they want to reappear.

You’re someone with feelings and things that you would like in life, and you’re affected by things. So now someone sees you in your humanity and they get to decide how to respond to that. Now, they may want to progress things with you or they may not, but what they can’t do is pretend your humanity doesn’t exist. Vulnerability is like a beautiful loophole at a time where you don’t feel entitled to make demands of somebody. And of course, the fact that you’ve expressed a vulnerability means that later down the line you’ve paved the way for a more honest conversation if the sporadic communication continues. And that’s what this message does, it makes you more likely to be taken seriously for a real relationship. It makes it harder for someone to pretend that their actions are having no effect and it allows you to own your needs and where you actually are in your life, which is not in the same place as this person who may be just working relentlessly and traveling and only have time for casual on the side.

That’s not where you are. Where you are is a person who’s busy and excited about a relationship and willing to prioritize it if you find the right person for it. When you know that about yourself and you own it, then you start to communicate it and when you can communicate it, you get taken more seriously by the people you encounter. Now, so many people find that the most useful part of a video like this is the part where I actually wrote out what to say because it’s different when you hear it. It’s one thing for me to say be confident. It’s another thing for me to go, “This is a confident conversation in action. This is what a really confident message looks like. This is how to start to assert a boundary in a very gentle way that doesn’t scare someone away.”

These things are incredibly helpful, which is why I created an entire program full of very specific scripts that you can use in dating called How to Talk to Men. It’s one of my most popular programs, and today I wanted to give you something free from that program, which is a chapter from the program that you can download right now. It’s free. It’s over at GettheFreeChapter.com. Go over there now and check it out before you leave this video and I will see you over there. The link again is GetTheFreeChapter.com.

The post Afraid It’s Not Going Anywhere? AVOID THIS MISTAKE appeared first on Matthew Hussey.

If your tendency is toward anxiety, you’ll go to great lengths just to restore the peace and get things “back to normal” as quickly as possible.

If any of this sounds familiar, you will not want to miss the 3 tips I share in today’s video.

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Do you say sorry too much in your relationships? I think a good indicator of whether you do say sorry too much is whether you feel taken for granted where you feel like the other person doesn’t respect you. When I say “Do you say sorry too much?” what I mean is do you find yourself always saying whatever needs to be said in order to keep the peace? 

It’s always going to be the case that when we have a standard it will inevitably at certain points mean pointing out something that somebody else did that we didn’t like and of course when we do that there’s a natural friction or attention that gets created.

Many of us aren’t comfortable with that tension. For many of us tension in a relationship means anxiety and for people that struggle with anxiety in relationships they’re always looking for peace. They have a very low tolerance for tension. 

Now the danger is that if you have a low tolerance for tension and somebody else has a high tolerance for tension or a different way of putting that is there’s nothing more important than their pride or there’s nothing more important than winning an argument. This person may gladly freeze you out or withdraw love as a result of them feeling bruised, wounded, insecure, unhappy with something you said. And if you find yourself in a relationship with someone like that, then in a game of chicken where it’s who moves first, you’re always going to move first. They’re always going to win because they’re happy to sit there and endure this tension. Whereas you are not. You will do anything to keep the peace. Even if it means apologizing for somebody else’s mistakes because your apologies essentially become code for I don’t want to fight anymore. I just want to move past this with you. I just want us to be back where we were. And apologizing I want to say is a good thing in situations where we need to take ownership. The ability to apologize is a wonderful sign of someone who takes ownership. But apologies can’t be at the expense of having a standard. 

And when we apologize in order to just keep the peace because we want to move on, we enable the very behaviors in somebody else that have upset us in the first place. Not only do we enable them but we rob the other person of the opportunity to feel the consequences of breaking our standards in that area. 

So what they begin to learn is that in any argument, you will always be the one to blink first and they never actually have to change. And when someone realizes they never have to change, consciously or unconsciously, they begin to feel like they can walk all over you. They begin to feel like you’re always be the one who remolds yourself to the situation and then they start to lose respect for you and it’s clear when someone starts to lose respect for us if we say we want more or less of something they just ignore it. They’ll do things with us that you know, they wouldn’t do with somebody else that they respect more.

We begin to feel truly taken for granted and we feel like our good nature is stretched to its limits. 

Now the next time you’re in a situation like this, I want you to be aware of something. Firstly, are you even pointing out something that’s upset you? Or do you find that you’re afraid to even bring it up? Because you know, there may be consequences and those consequences we can label as tension.

Or if you do bring something up are you capable of sitting back and saying I’ve brought up something I’m not happy with, now it’s their move? Or do you bring up something you’re not happy with do you try to assert a standard and then because the tension that follows from that, is so untenable for you, do you go, “Oh, it’s my move again.”

The person who’s anxious will start making all the moves while the other person just stands still. 

There are three things you can do when you feel the tension and it creates anxiety. 

Number one: Have a breaker switch.

I always think it’s important to, if you trend towards anxiety to have an ultimate breaker switch that says if I really need to I can lose this person and I’ll be OK.

Because what is, at that anxiety that we feel at tension, what is it at its core?

It’s a profound fear of losing someone and it’s attached to this idea that we won’t be OK. If we lose them now, I won’t be able to bear it. That being abandoned would be the worst possible thing.

But we should remind ourselves that we have lost people in the past and somehow we survived that and that regardless of how close to us someone is, if we have to we can lose this person and we will be OK. 

So always have that breaker switch that says I can lose this person because if you do not have that you do not have power when you go to the negotiating table.

You always have to be prepared to walk away. 

Number two a great way to make that breaker switch more accessible to yourself, is to remind yourself that if this relationship can’t meet your fundamental standards for self-respect and dignity, and what creates peace for you, then it’s not a relationship worth having. And if you bringing up your standards and the things that you aren’t happy about is something that is met with fury or disdain or indifference or someone threatening to leave. Then you don’t have a relationship in the sense that you want one. You have an emotional hostage situation because that’s what that is when you’re afraid to talk to someone you’re a hostage. Now, you can’t always blame that on the other person because sometimes we’re a hostage of our own making. Because we’re afraid of losing someone we make ourselves a hostage to that person and their desires their wants. What we have to do is break free of that by saying the only way for me to truly know what I have with somebody, which might surprise me in the best possible way, by the way, but the only way to know what I have is to speak up about what’s important to me and to see whether the relationship can handle it.

If it can’t then I will never find peace in this relationship and that’s good to know and I can look for that piece elsewhere.

If it can handle it, then we’ll realize that  we haven’t been giving this relationship enough credit all along.

Number three: Go do something else. If you’re feeling the anxiety of someone being off with you or being at odds with somebody, go do something else. Go work out, go see a friend. Go have a meeting about a project that’s important to you. Because when you put your focus on something else the world gets bigger again. And when the world gets bigger you realize, OK, I’ve been telling myself that this is everything, but it’s not. 

Your anxiety wants you to laser in on this thing that you’re afraid of and make it everything.

It wants you to curl up in a ball in bed and wait until it gets better but not just wait and ruminate the whole time about the situation until it’s resolved.

That’s what your anxiety wants you to do and you have to rebel against that instinct. You have to say I’m not gonna give this my focus all day every day. Yes, there’s tension with this person right now. Yes, we’re at odds right now. I’ve said my peace. I’ve said what I need, it’s their move. I’m not gonna make a move out of anxiety and I’m also not going to sit back and just ruminate about this and obsess over it in a way that tortures me until it’s better.

I am going to go and lose myself in something else that’s important in my life. And when I do that I’m reminded about how rich life is and that’s a pressure valve for this thing that I’m anxious about in the first place. And when you have that pressure valve when you breathe differently, when you go back to that situation, you have a completely different level of power.

Because you’re not coming from a place of scarcity, you’re coming from a place of abundance. 

None of this by the way is about playing some kind of game with somebody. You have to ask yourself, am I seeking appeasement or am I seeking peace? If you seek appeasement you’ll do anything to appease this person in the present.

You’ll create peace at any cost. Even if it means losing your boundaries, your standards, losing your own dignity. If it means losing someone else’s respect for you because you’re always willing to bend for whatever they need or want. 

But if you want long-term, peace, you’ll actually be willing to endure tension in the present so that you can have peace later. Because if someone understands that this is important to you, and you’re coming from a kind place you’re coming from a compassionate place, but this thing is important to you and you’re not going to make a move when it’s their move, then one of two thing will happen. They will either start to raise their game in the relationship or you will discover that they’re not capable of doing that and you’ll go find peace elsewhere. Sacrifice short-term appeasement for long-term peace. 

Let me know what you think about this in the comments. Don’t forget to like subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don’t miss the next video. 

I also want to tell you that from the 11th to the 13th of November I’m running my Virtual Retreat.

If you’re listening to this video and you’re realizing this is the deepest stuff that I need. these patterns are always affecting me in my life. I need more than dating tips. I need to look at the way that I am wired and how it is hurting me, the VirtualRetreat is where we do that much much deeper work, and let’s face it, it’s the most important work we could do. What could be more important than looking at the patterns that lead us constantly down a path of pain and could if we reorient them to more healthy wiring lead us to so much peace and so much happiness in the future?

I hope you come and join us. The link is MHVirtualRetreat.com. Come check it out and spend three days of immersive coaching with me and my team. I’ll see you over there.

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