Do you have the heartbreaking feeling that you lost “The One”? Maybe you’re haunted by a mistake you made, or something you said, or just a feeling that you could have done something differently to save the relationship.

Here’s the good news: There is a path out of this pain. In today’s video, I’ll show you 5 ways you can recover after (what you feel was) a love life mistake. Whether you’re mentally beating yourself up or just can’t seem to move on, I’ll show you how to feel better instantly, and what you can do when you see that person again.

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MATTHEW HUSSEY

Do you feel like recently, you made a mistake, or in a past dating situation or relationship, you made a mistake that screwed things up, and you can’t get it off of your mind because there is this feeling you have that the relationship could have been so great. This maybe could have even been your person and that this mistake, whatever it was you did, really messed it up, and you’ve been ruminating over that, beating yourself up for it, wondering, “Is there anything I can do to remedy the situation? Is there anything I can do still to get that person back?”

So today, I’m going to give you five keys to feeling better if you are beating yourself up for a mistake you made that’s cost you, especially in the realm of dating. And the fifth point is going to be about what you can do if this has happened. Is there a way to re-engage someone, and if you do re-engage them, and I’ll give you a specific text that you can send that for, what do you do when you actually see them?

So, that’s Point number 5, but it’s very important that you watch Points 1 to 4 because those are going to help you feel better instantly.

And by the way, I’m going to illustrate this video with a question around this subject that came in from one of my Love Life members. Before we get into that question, I have something free that can help you if you’re out there looking for love right now, wanting to meet someone. It is a guide I created around practical things that you can say to spark up a conversation and connect with someone new. It’s called Spark and Connect. Go over to WhatToSayNext.com to download that guide for free right now. If you’re out there dating right now, if you’re looking for love, this is a very easy and quick way to start getting more results.

And if you like this video, don’t forget to like it, subscribe to the channel, so that you never miss a video, and don’t forget to hit the notification bell. I get so many comments from people saying, “Oh, my god. I wish I got this video three weeks ago. It would have saved me from making this mistake or doing this wrong.” To make sure that never happens to you, hit that notification bell, and when I release a video, you will get it immediately.

Okay, so I want to read you this question from one of my members. To keep things anonymous, I will call her Dana, and Dana says, “I was dating this amazing guy for about four months. And unfortunately, I pushed him away with my insecurities. I’m aware of my attachment style and issues, and I’ve done a lot of work in that department, including therapy and studying relationships. Everything was smooth and consistent until we were about to get into an actual relationship. For some reason, I freaked out and instead of expressing my concerns and communicating in a healthy way, I just lashed out and bombarded him with assumptions. I’m 99% sure these were just my fears talking. I ended things and blocked him without even giving him a chance to reply. I know that that was a huge red flag to him and extremely immature. It even feels irreparable.”

“That’s not me. I had this one moment and it ruined everything. The next day, I approached him, expressed how sorry I was, and tried a healthy communication I should have done initially. Needless to say, he didn’t want to hear from me as any healthy and mature person would.”

“Matthew always teaches us not to waste time on the wrong person. And that’s exactly what he’s doing. But I’m the one on the other end and I want to repair and do better. So, my question is, can this be fixed? How do I get the possibility to repair things with him?”

I have a lot to say about this. Firstly, if you can relate to this in any way, if you feel like you screwed something up, and to Dana, who wrote this, let’s all just start by taking a deep breath. And as you do that, know that all the opportunities you could ever need in your life are still ahead of you. When we go through a situation like this, it gets to the heart of our anxieties and triggers a lot of self-loathing. “I could have had a shot with this person. I did have a shot with this person and I screwed it up.” And then our brain goes to the story of, “And because I screwed it up, I’m never going to find anything that great again. And it’s all my fault.”

I want you to notice some of the language before I even get into the five keys. She says, “I ended things and blocked him without even giving him a chance to reply. I know that was a huge red flag and extremely immature.”

I’m all for ownership and I think it’s really important. I love the fact that Dana was owning what she sees as a mistake but there’s very extreme language in this and it’s very down on herself.

“That’s not me. I had this one moment and it ruined everything.” Now, comes the catastrophizing. “I had this one moment and then I ruined everything.”

She says, “Needless to say, he didn’t want to hear from me as any healthy and mature person would.”

So now, it’s again, this person is being painted as this paragon of maturity and health and she is the extremely immature one who messed it all up. And, “I don’t even blame him for not wanting to talk to me anymore, for wanting to cut me off.” There’s a real self-admonishment that’s happening here and she goes on to say, “Matthew always teaches us not to waste time on the wrong person and that’s what he is doing.” In other words, “I’m the wrong person and he’s only following Matthew’s advice to not give any time and attention to the wrong person which is me because at this moment, I made that mistake.”

So, I just want you to notice all of this and notice if in looking at any of this language, you maybe see yourself and some of the things that you tell yourself in moments like this, some of the ways that you speak to yourself the extremes, the catastrophizing, the very vicious language towards yourself, and the way you paint yourself.

Let’s dive into these five things that can help. 

Number one, instead of shaming yourself for the mistake, give love to the part of you that created the mistake.

This is a moment where we deserve to give ourselves self-compassion. We made a mistake. Who hasn’t? Who hasn’t been in a relationship or been dating someone and said or done something that they regret in a moment of jealousy, insecurity, in a moment of anxiety, in a moment where our past entered our mind and merged with the present we accused someone of something that they hadn’t done? These moments can produce immense amounts of shame. But we deserve self-compassion because we’re only doing what people do. We mess up.

So, instead of making this so personal towards yourself, recognize that these kinds of mistakes are something that everyone makes at some point.

I would argue that if you haven’t made that mistake then, then you probably just would have made it on another occasion. We have this idea that if we could go back and change history, we would go back and not make that mistake in that moment. And if we haven’t made that mistake in that moment, it doesn’t mean that the thing that triggered that way that you acted out wouldn’t have triggered you a month later or six months later or a year later. There was something that got activated in you. And that may have been dormant for a lot of those four months that you were together, but something happened in month four that awoke that part of you. That trauma, that fear, that insecurity, and you then acted out. If it hadn’t triggered you that day, it would have been a different day.

We have this idea that so much of our history rests on these moments where we could have gone right but instead, we went left. But in reality, maybe, okay, if we go back and do something different, we go right, then maybe we just take the same left but a few hours later or a day later or a week later. Don’t create a version of history where if you just remove that one moment, everything changes. Because whatever was in you that came out in that moment was there and was probably going to come out some other time.

So, instead of shaming ourselves for the moment that it came out, let’s give ourselves compassion and love for the part of ourselves that was laying dormant, that was already wounded, that was already in pain or feeling not good enough, or feeling insecure and unsafe that was just waiting to be activated. Give that part of you love. You didn’t choose for it to be there. It’s just pain, a wound, that was there. Stop shaming the mistake and start giving love to the part of you that gave rise to the mistake.

The second key to feeling better is not to simplify life. In the story that Dana is telling, there are two eventualities. There’s the one where she blew it all and there’s the one where she didn’t, and as a result, they lived happily ever after.

We have to remind ourselves that that is an absurd representation of life. Because life is so much more complex than that. There are seemingly infinite possibilities of what happens next if Dana didn’t make that mistake. Maybe a month later, he decided he didn’t want to continue anyway. Maybe six months later, she realized that there was a lot about the relationship she didn’t like. Maybe they get married and get divorced in three years. Or maybe they get married and he cheats on her in seven years. Or maybe they never get married because in year two, he starts showing issues around commitment and strings her along for the next ten years of her life, always saying he’s not quite ready. Or maybe that he’s not ready for kids and she ends up spending many years with him, suffering because she wants a family, and he doesn’t but not knowing what to do.

There are so many different eventualities. Even what I just said is an oversimplification because I just gave four or five, right? The possibilities are endless. Our anxiety is responsible for the story that if we hadn’t made that mistake, it would have kept going and getting better and better forever and ever and becoming everything we wanted it to become. And then we die, happy.

That’s our anxiety talking. Our anxiety and especially when our anxiety latches on to self-loathing, to self-criticism, that’s when we invent the story that “You’re an idiot who ruined your life. Because if you hadn’t done that, this would have been the great love of our lives, this would have been the great relationship of our lives, and you blew it.” In other words, the grandiosity of the story about what it all would have been actually becomes the rod for your own back. That becomes the way that you punish yourself. Notice that. Notice the way in which you’re looking for a way to punish yourself, you’re looking for a way to be down on yourself, and the way to punish ourselves even more is to create a whole story about how amazing it almost certainly would have been. Don’t allow your anxiety and your self-criticism to simplify life.

Key number 3, don’t glorify the person you made the mistake with. Again, our anxiety and our self-criticism looks at this person, and in order to be negative towards ourselves, and in order to really punish ourselves, we start telling a story of how amazing that person is, in order to create this contrast between how awful we are. “I was so immature. I was so in the wrong. Of course, he didn’t want to waste any more time with someone like me who is clearly the wrong person.”

But all the language is also serving to highlight how righteous and wonderful and perfect this person is. That they are extremely healthy and put together and weren’t making any mistakes and were doing everything right, and we’re the one who came along and screwed it up.

Just remember no matter what your anxiety tells you, no matter what your moments of low self-esteem tell you, everyone’s not better than you. People make mistakes. We all do. And the person that you’re putting on this pedestal as this angel has made their own mistakes. They have done things that are less than admirable, not righteous, and they will make more of those mistakes in their life. Just because you don’t know about them after four months, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It doesn’t mean that person has a perfect record. Yes, you made a mistake. But don’t allow that mistake to make you think you’re worse than everybody else, especially this person that you’ve now used your mistake to elevate to this angel-like status. Don’t use your mistake to glorify the person. Remember, after four months, you don’t know someone that well. You don’t know what they would be like after ten years deep into a relationship. You don’t know all of their flaws. You don’t know all of their vulnerabilities. You don’t know the things that make them difficult to do life with. Don’t use this mistake to demonize yourself and turn them into a perfect angel.

Oh, and by the way, in Dana’s case, she actually owned the mistake. She said that the next day, she recognized that how she was wasn’t okay, and she went back to him and explained that she was sorry, and that that was out of character. She even took accountability for it.

That’s a sign of character. That could be a very beautiful moment in a relationship. I mean, think about it, how many people have experienced someone doing something negative and then never owning it? When all of a sudden, someone comes along and says, “Hey, that thing I did yesterday, I know that wasn’t okay. I’ll do better,” that can be a breath of fresh air for someone who’s had nothing but relationships with people who don’t take ownership, who don’t take accountability. So, in that case, Dana actually immediately self-corrected. He didn’t want to know. And that’s fair enough. He’s entitled to say, “You know what? No. I’m not interested in going any further.” But there will be other people in life who, when you make a mistake and then own it in that way, see that as a very beautiful thing and could actually extend compassion to it because they can say, “Wow. I’ve done that before. I’ve screwed up or acted insecure or been jealous and said something I shouldn’t and felt awful about it afterwards. The fact that person is admitting that and taking ownership of it, you know? Okay. As long as they don’t keep doing it, I’m going to give them another chance.”

There would be plenty of people who would say that in that situation. So, Dana, this is, in my mind, another way that you’re being extremely harsh on yourself because you did self-correct, and that took guts and character.

Number four, yay, you paid the pain tax and there are prizes coming for that. I believe that most of the lessons we learn in life come with some kind of pain tax. We screw up, we make a mistake, we wreck something, we lose something, we hurt ourselves, we hurt someone else, and we feel awful about it. We do something that causes pain, and that pain becomes the tax for the learning. If this didn’t make you feel any pain, you wouldn’t change any of the things that you’ve changed since then. You wouldn’t have that feeling of, “Oh, the next time this part of me gets awakened, I’m not going to react in that way that I did before because in that moment, it drove someone away. It hurt me. So, I’m not going to do that again.”

Tell me, Dana, how do you get to that realization without feeling some kind of loss? How do you get there for free?

I don’t think you do. You out there who’s watching this, think about the changes you’ve made in your life. Were they free or was there a pain tax you had to pay in order to get that realization? Ways that you are sophisticated in relationships now, ways that you argue better, ways that you show up in a more evolved way, ways that you do life better. Wasn’t there a mistake in your past, something that caused you pain, that gave way to that listen? That was your pain tax.

There is actually a way to get grateful for this loss. And by the way, this is not me validating the idea that a) this person was as amazing as we may be making them out to be and all of our catastrophizing of what we’ve lost, and b) if we haven’t made that mistake, it would have all turned out perfectly, which I don’t think is true. It’s a huge assumption at the very least. But it is me saying that perceiving something as a loss, seeing that we’ve cost ourselves something can actually be the most valuable thing about a mistake. That if we felt no pain, we’d make no change.

And Dana, haven’t you learned things from this mistake about what you would do differently next time? What if what you would do differently next time is not just responsible in part for why it will work next time or why someone will decide to keep going with you next time? But what if it’s responsible for why the relationship itself ends up being so great? And by the way, in that next relationship, here’s the spoiler, you’re going to make mistakes there too, and so will they.

A relationship is two people evolving together through their mistakes.

The wish for a clean slate is a folly. We are evolving creatures and ultimately, we need someone we can evolve with, not someone we arrive as the finished package to.

Number five, now, this is the part where I’m going to answer the specific question that Dana asked. “Can this be fixed? How do I get the possibility to repair things with him?

This is the part that I don’t want you to overthink “What’s the exact strategy for me to reconnect with this person and the perfect way to do it?”

I want you to get all of that out of your mind. That’s just another example of the perfectionist mindset at work, trying to tell you that you now need to do this perfect tap dance to make it work this time around. That thought by the way is responsible for all the pain you’re causing yourself right now over anxiously worrying you messed up the best thing ever.

So, instead, I want you to take a deep breath again and say, let me keep this really simple. If I want to send this person a message, I can simply say, “Hey, I hope life is amazing for you right now. I was thinking of you and I’d love to reconnect if you’d be open to it.” Put a little smiley face at the end of whatever you want, something warm.

That’s as complicated as it needs to get. You don’t need to send a big message because I know what our anxiety is doing is saying, “I need to send a message and I need to acknowledge the way I was in the past. I’m just so sorry. I feel like back then—”

Now look, if you never felt like you addressed any of that, then you can say something like that. It shouldn’t be an essay necessarily. But you can say, “I’ve taken time to reflect on the way I showed up in that relationship or when we were dating. And you know, I’ve made some important changes because that’s not how I want to show up in any relationship. So, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that and to let you know I’d love to reconnect if you’d be open to it.”

In Dana’s case, she doesn’t actually need to say that because she already said it the day after she made the mistake. But simply sending a message like this can be the gateway to another meeting. And when you have that meeting, I want you to remember this, and this is really my title for point number 5, the strongest message you can send is who you’ve become.

When you do meet up, it’s not about groveling or over-apologizing, which isn’t to say if you feel like you haven’t said your piece that you can’t. Of course, you can, just like we did in that message just then. You can explain that you aren’t proud of the way you were back then or how you showed up, and you’ve made a lot of changes since, or you’ve made some key changes since.

You can say those things and that you’re sorry for any pain you caused. If you feel you haven’t got that off your chest, you can. But after that, what’s really important is that you show up with an energy that is attractive, that allows someone to have a great time with you, an energy that shows that you have forgiven yourself in the time you’ve been apart, that you’ve given yourself self-compassion in that time, that while you’re able to look at that and say, “I wouldn’t do that again,” or, “I’m certainly going to do better than that in the future,” you’re not dwelling there.

Remember what attracted this person to you in the first place. It wasn’t you coming from a place of looking up and groveling and trying to please them. It was you and your beautiful energy, the way you showed up when you were at your best.

So, focus on showing up at your best. Conduct yourself as a happy person looking to attract good things into your life because you are a good thing. The best message, the strongest message that you can send someone is who you’ve become since that mistake, since that moment. Let them see, let them feel the evolution in you.

We can sense it, can’t we, without someone even saying it when we meet up with an old friend or someone that maybe we had a tumultuous relationship with in some way. And we sense that there’s a peace within them, that there’s a presence there that something in them has shifted. They don’t need to tell us, “I’ve done all this work on myself.” They don’t need to tell us, “I’ve come to all these realizations.” We just feel that there’s something different about them. Maybe there’s a glow to them. Maybe there’s a lightness to them. Maybe there’s a happiness to them. Maybe there’s a generosity to the way that they are complimenting us or asking us questions and not making it about them. Maybe there’s just a sense of calm about them. But you sense something has shifted. And with that shift comes a curiosity from our side. We want to know what changed, what happened, how did they become this powerful person that sits in front of us. There’s something, a degree of mystery there, isn’t there? There’s a new curiosity.

When we’ve made mistakes, we’re often so preoccupied with the way that we conducted ourselves back then. We spend our whole time with someone trying to reclaim some kind of identity we had before that mistake happened, trying to get back to before the mistake, instead of realizing that actually, the power of the relationship going forward can be the in the new energy and the new curiosity that someone feels in feeling and witnessing a change in you.

Dana, I would argue that the greatest power you can have now is not in your constant berating of yourself for how immature you acted then and how you showed yourself to be the wrong person for someone to invest time in. I would say all of your power actually lies in the self-compassion that I’m talking about in this video. In the shift to a place of peace and calm that I’m talking about in this video.

When we’re kinder to ourselves and we’re able to love that part of us, that was responsible for the mistake and take our focus away from shaming the mistake itself, when we can stop putting this person on a pedestal, or the future of this person in simple terms, like “The only inevitable outcome if I never made this mistake was that we’d up together.” And instead, realize that nobody is perfect, that no future is certain, either way, and that there are many, many opportunities for you to be happy in love and 99.99999999% of them have nothing to do with this person you’re fretting about and you start to breathe differently. And when you breathe differently, you show up differently. And when you show up differently, someone starts to pay attention. And if you never get a chance for another meet with this person, go back and watch everything I have said in this video, and you’ll realize that doesn’t actually matter because all of the opportunities you’ll ever need are ahead of you.

Thank you so much for watching. I want to say to anyone out there who enjoys me as a coach, who wants to work with me more closely as a coach, that in September, I am running my Retreat from the 9th until the 15th in Florida. It’s going to be in-person. We’re all going to be in a room together for six days. It is the deepest work that I do with people. The work that I do on YouTube is something I’m very, very proud of. But no matter how hard I try, it cannot compare to six days together in the most immersive coaching setting. And if you’d like to experience that with me, we still have a handful of spots left. So, feel free to go learn more if you’re interested at MHRetreat.com.

I can’t stress enough that this event is a live event, so there are literally only a certain number of seats in the room. Once those seats are gone, they’re gone, and you’ll be waiting a very long time for another Retreat. So, if you know that this is something that feels right for you, do jump on board while those seats are available.

And if you liked this video and you want a video that would go well with this video to watch next, then check this one out because we have hand-picked this video for you to watch as a sequel to the video you’ve just seen.

Thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate you being here. Be well and love life. And leave me a comment because I like reading. And I will see you in the next video.