Have you ever dated someone who’s so hard to stay away from EVEN THOUGH they’re not interested in a relationship and you know you should keep your distance? When you’re in this vulnerable position, the hope that they may change and that things could be different is what drags you back in.

So how can you break this cycle once and for all? Don’t miss today’s brand-new video! 

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Matthew:

Before we get into the video, I wanted to let you know the 30-Day Confidence Challenge is happening in just a couple of days. So this is your last chance to sign up. Go over to MHChallenge.com to sign up for free. Literally put it in your browser right now while I’m talking. Type in MHChallenge.com and sign up for free now, and I will see you this coming Thursday on the 13th for our live coaching kickoff call. Now onto the video.

“Matt, the person I’ve fallen for says they’re not ready, but they keep wanting to stay in touch and won’t let me go. I’m naturally anxiously attached and I’m suffering every day having him in my life, but knowing he doesn’t want a relationship with me. I’ve tried doing no contact and staying away, but it never lasts. I end up reaching out to him or replying to his messages to me, and everything gets rekindled. Help.”

So let’s start with some important fundamentals about this. You’re in a situation where the other person’s vision is different from yours. In this case, his vision is, “I don’t want a relationship right now. I’m not ready.” And yours is that you absolutely do want a relationship. Now, that immediately puts you on someone else’s timeline, not on your own. So we have to start by seeing that for what it is. It’s a departure from what you want for yourself by keeping this person in your life or by allowing them to keep you in theirs.

Now, the fact that this person doesn’t want a relationship or doesn’t feel ready doesn’t make them a bad person. In fact, it would probably be easier if this was a bad person. It would make things more clear-cut, but when someone isn’t a bad person, they just want something different from you, it’s very tempting to keep them in your life. When they say, “I don’t want to give you up,” because that’s what happens a lot of the time, right? When someone says they’re not ready, they say, “But I don’t want to lose you. Can we stay in touch? Can we still talk? Can we still be friends?” And all of that just keeps this person in our life. And if you are anxiously attached, then that anxious attachment is going to be on fire during that time because you are close to someone who you’re just suffering all the time because they’re there, but you don’t quite have them. And that part of you that wants to feel secure cannot feel secure in that environment.

See, I believe that whether you are avoidant attachment style or whether you are anxious, you can actually come more to the middle. You may never be the other side of the pendulum, but you can actually come more to the center to that secure attachment style, with the right person. If you are in a safe environment, psychologically, emotionally, if you feel like you’re in an environment where you can heal, then you can be anxiously attached and start to actually feel more secure, and then your best self is going to come out.

I define the right person as the person who by being with them, you actually get the safety whereby you can start to heal some of those things in yourself. The wrong people are the people that take us in the worst possible way to the extreme of our attachment style. Those are the people that I don’t necessarily think they’re bad people, but those are people who are wrong for us because by being with them, they’re going to bring out our worst tendencies at the extreme level.

Now, if you’re anxiously attached, a situation where someone is telling you they’re not ready for a relationship is going to send you to the extreme. So now you are going to be in a situation where you feel like you can’t breathe, where you can’t sleep at night, where your day times are just complete distraction as your attention is monopolized by thoughts and feelings about this person. You’ll struggle to even do some of the most basic things in your day because you’re thinking about them all the time and you’re trying to solve an equation that can’t be solved, which is, “How can I feel safe in an environment that is inherently unsafe?”

That’s the sad part about it is you may be anxiously attached, but you are in an environment where your anxiety isn’t even your fault because this person is telling you, “I’m not ready for a relationship.” They are telling you that, “I’m going to continue to hurt you.” So trying to achieve security and beating yourself up when you don’t feel it, “I wish I felt more confident. I wish I didn’t feel so anxious all the time.” That’s masochism because this person isn’t giving you a reason to feel safe.

Now, I’m not taking away responsibility for the work that we have to do ourselves to make ourselves feel more secure, but what we have to do is accept that there are certain environments in which that is an extraordinarily difficult mission to put ourselves through unnecessarily difficult. So your number one priority right now should be, “I need to create an environment of safety for myself where I can learn to heal, to feel more secure, to breathe again.” Now, you can achieve that safety with someone or without someone, but if it’s going to be with someone, they have to meet your basic needs for safety.

In this example of the woman who asked this question, this man is not meeting her basic needs for safety. So the conversation has to be the next time this person reaches out, “Hey, I can’t be in contact with you for as long as you are confused. If one day, day you’re not confused and I’m still around, let’s talk. But as long as you are confused about what you want with me, because I know what I want, but as long as you are confused about what you want, we can’t be in touch. I can’t have you in my life.” When you say that it’s the beginning of giving yourself that safety.

Now, when you do leave or when you cut that person off in that way and actually have no contact, you’re going to grieve. There’s going to be a period of pain, but you’ll have grief and a growing sense of safety, not just on its own. You will get a sense of relief. You can have grief and relief at the same time when you remove yourself from someone and you stop hoping, but safety isn’t automatic. Safety is something that has to be worked on. We have to work on feeling safe in our bodies. We have to work on being around people that we feel are the kinds of people that give us that sense of security, friends, family, and people we trust. We have to learn to trust ourselves. We have to learn to be okay in our own company. We have to do all the things that are going to make us feel good in our lives and bring us a sense of peace internally.

Like I said, that can still come with a feeling of grief. I lost this person. I’m sad about that unrealized potential that I thought was there. You can grieve, but grieving and safety is so much better than staying with a person who doesn’t really want what you want and having hope and anxiety. The hope is false. The grieving is temporary. When you leave, you will feel some grief, but you’ll also have a growing sense of safety. If you stay, you’ll be staying on hope and you’ll be filled with anxiety, and here’s what I want you to tell yourself. Grief and safety is much, much better than hope and anxiety. Why? Because the hope is false and you will stay in anxiety, but the grief is temporary and you will achieve safety if you do the right things. And not only that, you’ll open up the door to the person that you can experience that safety with in the context of a relationship. It will never happen with someone who tells you they’re not ready, they don’t want a relationship, they’re not sure about you.

Now, the moments where we usually decide enough is enough is when someone has hurt us today, when we’ve realized based on some conversation we’ve had today that they are not changing. We’ve had it for the 100th time, we’ve stood in front of them. We’ve just maybe had an amazing three months with them. We thought everything was changing, and then they turned around and once again told us they’re not ready for something more. And when we experience that, it’s almost like this little thing goes off in our mind that says, “Oh my God, nothing has shifted.” And we access a bit of truth in that moment because despite the beautiful times we’ve just had with them and the fact that we thought we were getting closer and we thought we were making progress and we thought it was finally heading in the direction we want, we suddenly realize that progress hasn’t been made, that fundamentally this person is still where they were the last time they hurt us.

And so when we feel that, the pain of staying there suddenly gets greater than the fear of leaving, and when the scales tip in that direction, we leave, there’s a resoluteness to that. “No more, I cannot do this. I have hit this brick wall for the last time.” Now, here’s what happens, and this is why this particular woman is struggling so much with breaking off from this person, why she keeps going back to him, rekindling things any opportunity she gets, after a couple of weeks or a month is because with distance from the person, from the situation, the scales start to tip in the other direction.

Gradually missing this person, their love, their companionship, their personality, the connection and chemistry we feel with them, that starts to increase. And what decreases is our connection to that truth, the truth of the brick wall, that nothing has actually changed. With distance from the wall, we start to get hope again. We no longer see it as a brick wall. We see it as a possibility. “Maybe, just maybe, maybe this time will be different.” And when the scales tip back in favor of hope, now when we get a message from that person, we’re liable to respond. How do we deal with this?

Here’s a key strategy you can take away with you today. In life, sometimes we connect to a truth, a moment where we connect to what’s real, not hope, not just emotion. We connect to something that’s real. And in that moment where you hit the brick wall and you connect to the fact that this situation is not progressing, that regardless of your connection and your chemistry with this person or even your history with this person, this person does not represent a viable option for your love life, for your time. When you hit that brick wall, that’s like a moment of truth and that moment of truth makes you say, “Enough.”

What we need to do is capture that moment. In that moment where you feel that visceral truth, write it down. Write down what you feel in that moment. Write down your reasons for leaving. Write down what you know to be true. This person has done this yet again, this is where they are in life. This is who they are. This is their level of development and nothing has changed and nothing is about to change. “This is why I’m leaving.” Now when you connect to that and you write it down, it’s like you’re giving yourself the ability to go back to that emotion when you need it, so that when you feel disconnected from that and when you get some distance, you have a way of going back there.

And that’s what’s necessary because just because time has elapsed and just because the emotion of missing someone is heightened, it doesn’t mean that brick wall has changed at all. And that’s the distinction we have to start making, losing the amnesia of the pain, of the suffering, of the immovable wall by connecting to the truth anytime we need it. So the next time you find yourself in that place of truth, record it, write it down so that you can come back to it. And remember, in all of this, you have to start making your time the most prized asset you have because relationships, potential partners are replaceable, but life is not. Your life is irreplaceable and it needs to be treated as such.

I want to take a moment with you before you go anywhere because today’s concept is profoundly important, and you may have had an epiphany right now, a realization about what you need to do, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have weak moments. It doesn’t mean you won’t be tempted to go back in certain moments, to betray yourself because you feel drawn to someone again, even if they’re the wrong person or it’s the wrong behavior. I want to make you strong enough that no matter what, you can stay true to what’s important to you, to your actual vision for your life. Time is your most precious asset, and if in a moment of weakness you go back, you can lose months or years of your life, and that can deprive you from meeting the right person.

Confidence is a muscle we have to strengthen. My goal with you is to get you to a point where you’re so certain of what you deserve, so certain of what your needs are, so certain of what you want, that that compass is always taking you in the right direction regardless of the temptation. One of the ways I can do that with you is something that I am putting on right now in the next few days, which is the 30-Day Confidence Challenge. My aim is to get you to a place in those 30 days where you are strong enough to make or stick to a decision like this, or whatever it is you want to achieve in your life right now. You have that certainty that makes you drive after what you want, or finally, say no to what you don’t want.

On April the 13th, this Thursday, we’re going to have a live kickoff call. I’m going to give you five missions to do over 30 days, and then we’re all going to do them together as part of a live community. It’s going to be an incredible experience. Anyone can take part in this. This is completely free. So if you’ve ever wondered, “Matt, is there something I can take part in that won’t cost me anything, or it’s just easy for me to try out as an actual coaching experience outside of YouTube?” This is your moment.

Come over to MHChallenge.com, sign up for free, and I will see you on the 13th of April. When you do sign up, I’ll send you all of the information for how to access both the live session and the community that we have for this, which is a private community, and we’ll get going together in just a few days. I can’t wait to see you there, MHChallenge.com is the link. Thank you, and I’ll see you soon.