Have you ever stayed with someone in spite of them saying they weren’t interested in something serious? We’ve all heard of situations where someone did just need a bit of time to change their mind about commitment, so how can we tell a dead-end situation from one that actually has potential?

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Matthew:

Recently I was sent a clip from Lisa Bilyeu, Women of Impact podcast, which I appeared on where I went on a bit of a rant it seems about a very confusing thing that men often say early on in dating. This clip got over a million views, so I thought, let’s revisit it and see what I have to think about it now.

Video Clip of Matthew:

It’s not them saying, “By the way, I’m not sure I know you well enough yet.” That’s fine. Let’s get to know each other better then.

Lisa Bilyeu:

Yeah.

Video Clip of Matthew:

If they’re saying, “I’m not sure I’m ready for a relationship,” that is a giant red flag. They are . . . 

Matthew:

Okay, heating up.

Video Clip of Matthew:

. . . telling you today, “I am going to hurt you. In case you didn’t hear, I am going to hurt you.” They’re telling you to your face that you are going to get your heart broken here.

So you have to make a decision with that. Do I want to continue to invest in someone who says they’re not sure they’re ready for a relationship? Do you . . .

Matthew:

Okay, so this is the rant. Now I am ranting.

Video Clip of Matthew:

Do you really want to do that? Now, you may say if you’re 25 and you’re like, “Well, whatever.”

Lisa Bilyeu:

Yeah.

Video Clip of Matthew:

Now I’m just going to have fun and we’ll see where this goes. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not judging that.

Lisa Bilyeu:

Right.

Video Clip of Matthew:

But if you find yourself at a stage in your life where you know you are ready for something real and you’re excited about that and you’ve got someone in front of you who isn’t just assessing whether you are right for them, but is assessing whether a relationship is even exciting to them, why get into that situation? Why bother? Why spend the time. It’s like someone on the street. It is hard enough to sell someone a car who wants a car.

Matthew:

Now, this is a good metaphor.

Video Clip of Matthew:

Because they have options. You want a car. While I’m in the Honda dealership, I’m trying to convince you that you want a Honda. Don’t go to Ford. Hondas are great.

This is going to last you forever and it’s safe and I’m going to take . . . That’s a hard enough job as it is. I’m already competing with every other car manufacturer in the world. And I’m not just competing with those. I’m competing with all the other dealers.

Lisa Bilyeu:

Right. They sell same car.

Video Clip of Matthew:

I need my commission. Exactly. But imagine walking up to someone on the street and trying to sell them a car when they don’t even want a car. You’re trying to sell them a Honda and they’re going, “But I don’t want to drive. I’m not sure I even want to drive. I really like my bike.” All your work is ahead of you just to get them to want a car. Now you’ve got to convince them to want a Honda.

Matthew:

People often say, I’m the master of the metaphor, don’t they? Jameson?

Jameson:

Matthew is the master of the metaphor.

Audrey:

Blink twice if you’re in danger.

Matthew:

It’s funny because sometimes I watch a moment like that and I’m like, “Why was I so mad that day?” or “What was I feeling so energized about on this point?” But I know that where it comes from is seeing people just bang their head against the wall over and over again over the years. And there’s always some logic we tell ourselves about why we should keep trying with someone. There’s always a story we have of a friend it worked out for when they persisted with someone who wasn’t ready.

I wanted to add some nuance to this whole point because really what this comes down to for me is, and this doesn’t just pertain to your love life, it pertains to every part of life. There is a kind of flow, not to sound too heady, but there is a kind of flow to success in any area. There are moments where we, to quote Matthew McConaughey in his book, which I’ve been reading, Greenlights, there are moments where we hit a red light. And if we keep trying to persist with that, it’s like we’re not going with the waves. We’re not surfing anymore. We’re just going to get hurt.

When someone says, “I’m in,” that’s a green light. When we find that the more energy we put into someone, the more we get back, that’s a green light. And too often what I’ve seen over 15 years of doing this now in people’s love lives is that they persist on a red light.

One of the things I’ve learned in business is there are times where I might reach out to someone and have done over the years because I’d like to interview that person, I’d like them to join us on the podcast, I’d like to make a connection, and that person doesn’t respond, or maybe they initially respond and we have a nice exchange, and I get excited because I’m like, “Oh, this is great. This person responded,” and then they just go off the radar. My next message to them or my next email doesn’t get a response.

There was a time in my life where I might have taken that very personally, and I might have made it about me and I’ve done something wrong, I shouldn’t have said that, or there’s some I’m not worthy, I’m not good enough, that’s why they didn’t respond. And these days I really start to see it more in terms of just flow like, oh, I’m this river that’s just moving, right? I’m always just moving forward. And along the way I sometimes hit a rock. And instead of personalizing the rock and what the rock thinks of the water, I instead just see it as a rock. “Oh, there’s a,” as Matthew McConaughey I would say, “there’s a red light there.” Instead of obsessing over that, I might actually just say, “Well, okay, this is representing a stop right now. I’m going to move around this.”

That distinction, although it’s a very, very simple one when you hear it, is one that a lot of us aren’t making emotionally. We’re not making it in our behaviors. We are exhausting ourselves trying to move on a red light. In the process we end up resenting the person, we end up resenting how much time we’re losing, how much energy was wasted, and how much pain was created.

What I want to encourage you to do is you don’t have to, my energy in that interview was a little bit like, “When someone says they’re not ready, don’t waste your time in that person.” I wouldn’t actually encourage you to have that energy in your dating life.

A beautiful kind of energy is a relaxed energy, it’s one where you can go into a situation and you can feel resistance from someone. You’re still able to meet that person with kindness, compassion, warmth, charisma, your charm, but at the same time not choose to buy what they’re selling, which might be a casual relationship. It might be coming in and out of your life with weeks of silence in between. It might be a friends-with-benefits situation over the long term where they never actually decide to commit to a real relationship or exclusivity.

When you see that, you can meet that with total calm and even warmth so that that person continues to see your value as a person, your personality, and how wonderful you are, but it’s about redirecting your energy. I feel like when I say this, there’s almost that question in people’s minds of, “But when should I persist? How do I know the right time to persist instead of just giving my energy to somebody else? Because I do know people who said they weren’t ready in the beginning and my friend persisted and they ended up being ready.”

Well, firstly, we have to look at how stable any situation is, where we have to convince someone through sheer persistence. There is a good chance that when we just sort of this battering ram at the door of a relationship that just keeps going and going and going, that once that person’s actually in a relationship with you, it’s only a matter of time before they realize, “Oh, I didn’t really want this. I’ve just relented.”

We don’t want someone who’s in a relationship with us because they just relented at a certain point because their old wiring will reassert itself once things stabilize and once they get their bearings. And we also don’t want to waste that much energy. For someone who isn’t sure whether they want a relationship, the best route is for them to have seen your value and for that value to go elsewhere.

In attraction persistence with one person doesn’t equal attraction. That’s not how attraction works. People don’t get more attracted when we try harder. People tend to get more attracted when they see more value in us. And someone is much more likely to see the value in you when they realize that that value comes at a real price, price of investment, someone who has the door open to something more meaningful to building something.

So you can be persistent by absolutely be persistent. Persistence is not giving up. Persistence is saying, I would like to find love and I’m not going to settle until I find the love I’m looking for in life. That’s a form of persistence. But persistence can look like saying, “No, I’m not going to buy what you are selling me. I’m going to keep looking.”

Persistence can look like someone coming to you for a date who hasn’t reached out in three weeks, and you being honest with them and saying that the fact that they went off the radar made you feel like they weren’t interested, and now you’re kind of not really sure about whether you should go on another date because you don’t know where you stand with them. Persistence can be the opposite of what we think it looks like.

In fact, quitting can look like going back to someone simply because they want to pick you up again. Quitting can look like sleeping with someone regularly who’s not giving you what you want because you just want to be close to them. That’s not persistence. That’s not I’m going to keep trying with this person. That’s a form of quitting. That’s a form of relenting.

Persistence is allegiance to your goal, your North Star, what you are actually looking for. And I have Matthew McConaughey in my head all the time right now because I’m reading this book and every time something good in my life happens or that’s a signal to keep going with something, I always hear “Green light” in Matthew McConaughey’s voice in my head. But when someone says to you, “I’m not sure,” that to me it is a green light to go in a different direction. It’s not a green light to keep persisting with that person, with that rock. Be water. When a rock appears, you flow around it and you keep moving forward.

When someone says that they’re not ready for a relationship, that’s not just a red flag about that person, it’s a green light in another direction, it’s a signal that you should take your persistence, take your energy, take the drive to find a love that is worthy of your investment and direct that in more productive ways to people that actually have potential.

And by the way, I’m not saying that when you do that, this person isn’t going to have some kind of a turnaround and see your value and start trying harder. In fact, my point is that you have much more chance of that happening by using their resistance as a green light for another direction than using their resistance as a mandate for your persistence. You like that Jameson? Stage poetry, right Jameson?

Jameson:

Yeah. Yeah, Matthew’s a master of poetry.

Audrey:

Right, master of poetry.

Matthew:

I want to thank you by the way before you go for joining me in these videos every week. This channel has never been bigger than it is today, and it’s because you share the content, you tell your friends, you tell your family, and it means so very much to me. Thank you for engaging with the work that we are putting out there.

I also want to say to you, if you want to join us, not just on YouTube, but in something much more immersive, the Love Life Club is a brand new membership I have launched where I coach people every month, have masterclass, interviews with experts, an entire community that you can access of like-minded people in an app on your phone. It’s an amazing place to be right now, and it’s for anyone who wants to improve their confidence, find love, get a community, and enhance their love for life.

There’s a 14-day free trial on offer for you right now. All you need to do is go to JoinLoveLife.com. You can set up your free profile. It’s quick, it’s easy, and you can come and engage with me on a whole different level. It’s at JoinLoveLife.com. I’ll see you over there and thank you again for watching this video.

I will throw this pillow in your eye.