Navigate Modern Dating & Create A Healthy Love Life: Relationship Coach Matthew Hussey on Breaking Destructive Cycles, Attracting Authentic Connections & More

30:48I went to my room and I shut the door and for the rest of the day, I was like told everyone to go away like leave me alone and I was upset but I couldn't tell anyone I was upset that was too vulnerable so I just shut everyone out and I remember at the end of that day my brothers coming up to me and saying my friend Alex was over we're all going to Alex's house now we're going to go and have this like sleep over there and take it to their house and watch movies and play games. I told them all to go. One by one, everyone tried to get me to come and I told them to go. They all left. The next day, I remember my brothers coming home and telling me how great of a time they had.

31:32And I remember thinking to myself, even though I couldn't admit it, I felt sick with the idea that there was this amazing time that happened. No one in that amazing time was my enemy. Everyone loved me. and yet I shut myself in my room to punish everybody else. No one left out but me. It's shame and embarrassment over a perception of an event that actually didn't matter to anybody except yourself and the ways in which those negative emotions shut you off from connecting with other people. And that fear, it creates that avoidant tendency, right? That can show up later in relationships. But how is that tied to the jealousy piece?

32:16are those things related because to me it was the exact same thing of something made me feel threatened and upset and what i did was essentially shut myself in my room you know i wouldn't talk to her about it froze her out like just couldn't say i got hurt just now instead just became combative and that feeling of i don't feel safe i can't just be vulnerable or if I am vulnerable, it's going to make me too weak or undesirable or unattractive. And I think for me, a huge part of the process has been learning to accept parts of myself, learning to not shame myself, because clearly I've done a lot of shaming of myself in my life, and learning that those things didn't make me unlovable.

33:09You know, I was a whole person. These were just parts of me. and for me early in my relationship having a partner that modeled acceptance for me was a very very powerful thing like her accepting me in those moments and saying to me like hey you saying this because when I eventually did say hey this is how it really made me feel her saying you telling me this doesn't make me see you as less of a man it doesn't make you suddenly unattractive to me I still think all of the sexy things about you are sexy I still think all of the confident things about you're amazing. It just allows me to know you better.

33:45And I love knowing you better. That for me was like very healing. Because I was like, oh my God. Like I really, at first I didn't quite believe her. But the more I was able to bring more of myself forward and realize it didn't turn her off. It didn't suddenly make me someone that wasn't attractive anymore. I didn't have to perform as this heroic version of myself all the time. The more I realized I had something very special and that these things didn't make me inherently unlovable.

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37:46Communicating with vulnerability in an open and honest way is always the path to freedom ultimately, but it is contingent upon trust and having a safe space in which to do it. And I think, you know, I'm always trying to model and advocate for men in particular to, you know, be more open about their emotions and to kind of lean into vulnerability. But there's a time and a place and there's a context for it, right? I think a lot of men are terrified that if they demonstrate vulnerability, particularly in the early stages of a relationship, that it's going to be weaponized against them. And that would be a context in which that trust hasn't been adequately built to such a sufficient extent that there can be a place where it will be received in the spirit in which it's granted.

38:36Yeah, or that person is, they themselves are looking for a two-dimensional heroic version of a man, and they're not capable of viewing you holistically. Right. And women like want men to be vulnerable, but there's that thing in the back of your mind. It's like, do they really like, do they really want the real vulnerable version of me? Like if I actually shared that, then it's game over. I was in a relationship where I had a moment of saying something I didn't think I should say because I was afraid that it would make me unlovable. And I decided to talk about an insecurity I had. and what was said back to me was, that's really unattractive.

39:25I just find that really unattractive. And it crushed me at the time. Like it really, really affected me. In my head, I was like, already, basically what was said to me was my greatest fear. Your fear, right. So you're not going to be quick to make that mistake again. I was like, what? I wasn't even mad at this person. I was mad at myself. I was like, why did you do that? You knew that was a stupid thing to do. Why did you say that out loud? You've wrecked it. Like you've just shown yourself to be unattractive and unlovable. And this person now feels this way about you. This is now going to be the truth of who you are to this person.

40:02So I was mad at myself for even saying the, for letting the words escape my mouth. When in my mind, I was like, I knew better. And it's very easy. I think a lot of guys, when they go through something like that, they learn a lesson that can be a very dangerous lesson to learn and they don't give up that lesson for a very long time if ever and I feel you know fortunate I suppose in my life to have been able to let go of the original lesson I learned when that happened it's like a lesson that could take you to the dark side you know it's like this is the beginning of me becoming this other person and to instead go the other way.

40:44But it took me a minute because at the time, I just, I like many guys in that position go this vulnerability stuff. Everyone loves talking about it. Yeah. People say they want it. Exactly. But this doesn't understand the context of being a man and being, but I do think that, um, an experience like that can also have us stereotyping women in a way that is unfortunately we then end up embarking on a road where we think everyone's like that and strangely it's like we then start attracting more of it i really think that i really believe the more you we have to be very careful in life that idea of you know the race car tip that mario andretti said don't look at the wall the car will go where your eyes go.

41:36There's something so profound about that because when we focus on, oh, see, this is what women are like, or this is what men are like, or this, it ends up becoming - You'll cultivate that in your life. It's the wall we keep crashing into because we're just looking for that everywhere. And then we go online and we seek out other people who have similar stories to tell and we, you know, indulge in all of those stories and it gets our blood up even more. And we start to cultivate this reality, but it's not the only reality. Right, right, right, right. One of the things that I've had to work a lot on, and I think maybe you might be able to relate to this on some level, is contingencies around my innate lovability.

42:16Like I have this burden to bear that I've had to do a lot of work on, which is that I'm only lovable to the extent that I am achieving things or accomplishing things because I learned early and often as a young person through reward that I felt love when I did something good or won a race or got a good grade or whatever. And that math gets hardwired into your brain. And there's that sense that you're not lovable just for who you are, that your lovability is calibrated to the extent that you can go and do things that make people take notice of you. You know, that then crashes up against your ability to be honest, open, and vulnerable, because that would be considered, you know, a weakness that would undermine your innate ability to receive love.

43:13To what extent do you feel like you've been able to move past that? on a scale of one to 10, I would give myself, well, I have good days and bad days. I'm still definitely a striver and I have ambitions and it's still a challenge. You know, I think, oh, if I just do this thing or I accomplish this goal or I blah, blah, blah, then, you know, it's like in the back of my, oh, my dad will say this. Am I, you know, still chasing that. I'm turning 58 this year, Matthew, you know, and it doesn't control me in the way that it used to, because I have self-awareness around it and I have tools, but it still comes up.

43:53You know, it still comes up. And when I find myself in a workaholic state or, you know, really buckled down or kind of out of sorts about a goal that I'm chasing, you know, I have to do like a whole inventory around that. And its ability to persist is quite astonishing. I found the same thing. I really related. I was listening to you in the last few months, one of your podcasts where you were talking about the kind of PTSD of how hard you work and how hard that is to truly let go of. I really relate to that. One of the things I have been coaching for many years, I talk about it in the book, is this idea of there being three levels of confidence.

44:41The surface level is how we come across to other people how we're perceived the second level which is deeper is the identity level and i see that as like a matrix of squares like a tic-tac-toe box of squares which each square represents an area that we derive confidence from and for so many people when i get them to draw out their matrix, even crudely in the space of five minutes, like where do you get most of your sense of identity, significance, value from? The squares never look uniform. What tends to happen is there's this big square that dwarfs other squares and in their mind, it's their greatest asset, but it's simultaneously their greatest vulnerability.

45:36And it's the square that if something happens to that, has the potential to kind of dissolve their identity overnight. And there's also a deeper level of confidence, which is the core, but on the identity level, at least, diversifying our sources of confidence and where we get our sense of significance and worth, I think is really, really valuable. I started putting stock just in my ability to just write. Like I thought, you know what, this is a really cool skill. It can never go away. I can keep using it or maybe it could go away if my brain deteriorates. But, you know, long past the point of looks fading, I can just sit with a pen and paper and I can write.

46:24I can, you know, my body can break down and I can write. But it might be something else. You know, it might be my relationships with my family and my friends to what extent do i look at those and think this is one of the great assets if not the great asset of my life is these relationships i think so much of our kind of myopia when it comes to where we think our value comes from comes from not kind of shining a light on these other things that in many cases are already in existence in our life that have tremendous value, but we've not focused on the value that they bring. Or even if we don't have those other squares right now, I always encourage people to say, what would diversification look like if you started today?

47:13If you said a year from now, I want there to be one or two squares more in my matrix that are a significant source of confidence outside of this thing that I've come to rely on for 90 % of my worth, what would that diversification look like? How could I start investing in a couple of squares that maybe don't exist right now? To me, it's fascinating. Once people start to, even just the awareness that there is this square in your life that has become this mutated muscle that you've, you are working to the point of, you know, it breaking down. and it's also become your greatest liability because if anything happens to that muscle, there's no other support system around it to uphold it.

48:00So how are you doing that in your own life? Like what is the reflection that you've had for yourself around this? Getting married. Yeah, getting married. Yeah, the relationship expert finally got married, says the guy who's been with his wife for 23 years. That was a really big one for me. is like I think really knowing there's this home to come back to in this human being that I love sharing life with that we're together regardless of what I achieve or how well this book does or how well the next YouTube video does or you know that there's someone who doesn't care and there's a situation that really isn't aside from our ability to eat doesn't rely on any of those things.

48:46Even outside of that, I try to take pleasure in other things that really don't have anything to do with this. Or frankly, even if you just took it in like a business context, it comes down to, you know, how do I measure my success? Because it might be the old way was, you know, how big is everything? How big is that YouTube video? How many views am I accumulating? How many followers do I have? How many people are in this program? But what was driving me with this book when I was sitting in a room and writing it on my own was something very different. Like for me, I was like, I am, this isn't going to be me trying to create a YouTube video this week because the schedule says I have to create a YouTube video this week.

49:32And so I have to, I have to figure out an idea, something I think is going to help people and then get it out there. and maybe it's okay, it's good enough, but I don't love it. This was my chance to sit and do something where I went, oh, I'm just going to make something that I'm intensely proud of. And regardless of how well it does, and of course I want to do well, of course I have an ego about it, but at the heart of it was I want to make something that I'm truly proud of. So I think you can diversify your matrix even within your biggest square in a way that robs that of its power in the same way.

50:11Yeah, I think for me, it's really detaching from the connection itself between what I do professionally and how I feel about myself or how that relates in any way to my deservability around love. And I think what it's done, admitting that it is like a superpower, it's also this Achilles heel, to your point, it's prevented me from growing in other areas of my life. It's interfered with my friendships. It makes me say no to experiences that I would have enjoyed or would have been nourishing to my life. Or it's undermined... the very thing that it's set up to seek, which is greater connection with other people.

51:00And I can rationalize it and justify it because a couple of times a week, I come here and I sit across from someone like yourself and I have something that's deeply connective. And I have my marriage and my kids and those relationships are the most important thing to me. And I spend a lot of time nurturing them, et cetera. But I think that allows me to then persist in a level of denial around the other experiences that I'm missing because of this default setting. Yeah. I relate to that so much because that's my autopilot too. I have a journal that I keep and it's both a kind of physical journal.

51:43It's also a note in my phone. It's also a note on my computer. It lives in all different places. But I have what I call my truths. And like right now, I'm having the best time. Like right now, I'm having a great time with Rich Roll having an amazing conversation. And I don't care about anything else right now. I don't care. I'm not thinking of whether things are growing or how things are doing. I just am really enjoying this. and to me that gives me access to a kind of truth it's like oh this is what matters to me it's like beyond all of the stuff that my ego gets involved in when it hijacks everything it's like this is this is what really matters this is what really brings me meaning this is the kind of thing i really love doing and that truth if i can lock into it and write it down somewhere where I can access it regularly, it becomes a kind of instructional manual for living a better life.

52:44There is a Winston Churchill quote that goes, people occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing happens. It's a really good line because I think about that with all kinds of like truths in our life. I do this with all sorts of things. I went on a hike with my brother like two weeks ago and my brother just moved to LA. I haven't seen enough of him. I've been in the middle of this book craziness. And we were like, let's just go for a hike. So we got up in the morning, went for a hike. At the end of it, I had this moment of, oh my God, what I just did for the last two hours ticked so many boxes.

53:20It was conversation. The two of us weren't distracted by our phones. We were spending quality time. We were in the sunshine. That felt good. We were moving our bodies. That felt good. We were in nature. That felt good. It was like it ticked all of these boxes. And for me in that moment, I go, okay, I'm going to write that down as a truth, as specific as this. Me seeing a friend while hiking is one of the most rewarding things I can do. But it's insane that you have to write that down. Yeah, but I don't trust my brain. Maybe it's too derogatory a way to say it, but I kind of like make peace with how pathetic I can be, where I like need these like very specific things to remind me of my operating system and how Matthew works and what makes him work really well and what doesn't because the truth is anytime rich that I've not done that and I go on to some kind of autopilot of like where is my brain taking me well probably the discover feed on Instagram like probably some place that just makes me feel bad after an hour of doing it.

54:26Like I do need those things that remind me and maybe not everyone does, but for me, those truths that I have, have become like a, an operating manual for the kind of life that makes me feel really, really good. Yeah. I like that. That's good. We were talking earlier about the fundamental precepts or the foundational elements that are important to establishing a healthy relationship. And I was thinking about what happens in the early stages of a romantic relationship where it's nothing but projection. Both parties are showing up, they're shining the best version of who they are or some facsimile of who they actually are because, you know, they want it to work and they are trying to say the things that they think are going to make the most positive impact on the other person.

55:20And there's a certain, you know, half-life to that experience before it all kind of falls away. And these two people discover who they're actually in a relationship with. So for somebody who is in that kind of halo period where everything is very heightened and there isn't necessarily the level of candor and veracity that you're going to find in a real relationship down the line, how can somebody look for those important things like trust, honesty, accountability that you were talking earlier about? Firstly, by experiencing more contexts with that person, I think we have to slow down a little bit the way we make our mind up about things in dating because it is very easy to be on a date with someone that person has a massive effect on you just being around them and then you go away and the way you feel becomes the barometer of how important this thing is which is really dangerous because there are many people who will be really bad for your life that can make you feel the greatest feelings.

56:31It's always important to remember on a date, we're not measuring someone's character, we're measuring their impact. Character is consistent and consistency can only be seen over time, over multiple contexts. So at the very least as a baseline, ask yourself, how many contexts have I seen this person in? How many different experiences have I had with them? You know, are we always at dinner together? Have we done something? Have we just hung out regularly? What's it been like after a stressful day at work? How do we connect in that moment? How has it been when I've not been on my A game or they haven't been on theirs?

57:10You know, do we have patience with that version of each other? Is that version of each other tolerable. Looking at whether we can handle each other on our worst, you know, days. I think it's a falsely attributed quote, but there's a quote attributed to Marilyn Monroe, which is, if you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best, which I always felt like was a mandate for abuse because there are people that at their worst are truly terrible. Right. It's basically saying like, you need to be able to manage me when I'm horrible. right you can't do that then you don't deserve me when i'm nice yeah it's not that's not a great message it's not a great message but in a way relationships are defined by how do we show up when we're at our worst when i'm struggling can i still find a way to be kind or to apologize if i haven't been um are we still good at negotiating those moments together um what's the half-life of an argument when we have one.

58:13You know, do we go cold on each other for a week? That's not sustainable. How do we resolve things together? I think so much of it is paying attention to those moments and to not decide someone is the be all end all that this person is like the person you're supposed to be with. If all of these moments are showing you the wrong things, if you had five great dates and then they disappeared for a month. That should adjust the story of how perfect they are. But for a lot of people, there's no recalibration that happens. This person remains the right person for them. It's just that they haven't contacted me for a month.

58:51But I would look at that and go, well, this is by definition, the person who's right for us is the person who has a consistent presence in our life, is the person who's still there in a meaningful way that makes our life better six months from now. If someone is failing that test, then what's happening with us that we are still deciding that this is the right person for us if only they could realize it? Conversely, that person might be signaling to you something that you need to look at within yourself. Like if that person suddenly stops calling you back, Instead of projecting onto that person, they're bad or here we go again or what have you, maybe look within and try to do an inventory of what might have led to that.

59:43I think a lot of people, and you're the expert, so you tell me, get involved with other people in relationship or seek out partners because they think that person is going to solve some problem that they have with who they are. They're trying to up-level. They're aiming higher. And if I can just get with that person, then I will be okay, or this problem that I have will disappear. And that gets projected onto the other person as if this person is the salvation or the cure to the thing that ails that person. And a lot of people go throughout their entire lives, like repeating this pattern time and time again, and then end up alone and disillusioned and depressed because they couldn't square that equation.

1:00:31And they never look within and say, if I want to get that person that I aspire to be with, maybe I should become the kind of person that would want to be with that type of person. Yes. I had someone say to me just this morning, what was the question? It was, what can I do? with this person that keeps hiding their feelings for me. they they have apparently they have these feelings but they keep hiding these feelings the avoidant personality type i suppose that's what this this person was getting at is that this person is an avoidant who who hides their feelings but that introspection you're talking about would turn the lens back on us and say what is what is happening with you that you see that as a green light that someone who's hiding their feelings not you didn't say the person's a little bit shy and so I need to come forward a little more.

1:01:27But this person is hiding their feelings from you. They have really strong feelings, but they're hiding them. Why is that in any way interesting to you? Why doesn't that signal to you, oh, this person is emotionally unavailable in some respect. This isn't what I'm looking for. I'm looking for someone who is very much available. And that's the question we often don't ask ourselves. You know, we talk about a relationship that we were, you know, spent two years in and we were anxious the whole time and it made us really unhappy. And, you know, usually the first thing people do when they go to therapy or a coach after that is say, why was this person like this?

1:02:04But at some point, the question always comes back. Why did you stay in a relationship for two years that was it about you that is attracted to this archetype? Yeah. Why did you never check in with your feelings and go, this really feels awful to me? Why, why would I be in a situation that consistently feels awful to me? Notwithstanding what you said, that sometimes we do have to look at ourselves and say, what's, is there something in my behavior that is unproductive? And I think one of the hardest things about life in general is that it's really, really hard to get that vantage point on yourself.

1:02:42Unless you've got friends or people in your life brave enough to tell you like, this is how you're coming across or, hey, this behavior is hurting you. You know, I had recently someone who was upset that someone didn't give them attention the night before, basically wanted to punish that person for the next three days by, you know, saying, I'll see them in four days time, given the way they were the other night. And my response is that pattern right there, the kind of like, I want to punish this person for that. That's hurting you because there's a complete lack of vulnerability in that. It's certainly not communicating anything you want to communicate to this person.

1:03:30It's not bringing you closer. The punishing them that you're doing for a healthy person, they're going to run a mile if they feel punished because they were a bit quiet last night. So of course you keep attracting unhealthy people and pushing away healthy people with that behavior, but it's hard to get that vantage point on ourselves because we feel so validated in pushing something. Yeah. I mean, look, listen, no one wants to look inward and do the heavy lifting of trying to understand why they keep doing some stupid thing time and time again. It's much easier and more fun to point the finger at the other person and say, look what a dirtbag that person is, right?

1:04:07Without thinking, well, why am I once again involved with a dirtbag? But red flags, I think are easy to rationalize and hard to truly understand when you're in the throes of the intoxication phase of an early romantic relationship. Red flags might be popping up here and there. Oh, danger zone, maybe I shouldn't do this. but the intoxication. There's so many other things that are alluring about this person that you're willing to overlook those things. So what do you say to the person who is prone to that? Like how many red flags do they have to see? Which red flags are important? When is it worth pursuing anyway?

1:04:52And when do you need to kind of pick up sticks and run? I'm convinced that our obsession with spotting red flags is our inability to trust ourselves. What do you mean by that? If we trust ourselves to get out when we see something that truly is bad and not to get wrapped up with someone to the extent that we now never get out, because that's what a lot of people are afraid of is, if I get in too deep, if I get past that point where I really like someone I know myself, I will stay and I will masochistically endure all forms of torture in this relationship. So it's like, I don't even trust myself to like get too close because when I do, I get steamrolled.

1:05:41So I am going to try from a distance to spot any possible threat before it even occurs. As a defense mechanism that then insulates you from any kind of real intimacy. Yeah. And it stops you from getting to the level of intimacy where you no longer trust that you'll be able to get out. And so we have to be able to trust ourselves to be able to get out when we need to. I also think that we don't trust ourselves to have hard conversations with people, to like actually speak our mind about things. So if we can just spot red flags from a distance and talk to our friends and they go, yeah, that's a red flag, then we never really have to have a conversation with anybody.

1:06:24I like to, apart from the particularly egregious things that just are a sign of abuse or serious disrespect or bad behavior, a lot of things that show up as like possible red flags, I almost like to see as amber lights. Like the only way that you really know what it is, is by treating it as an amber light, an invitation to a conversation. What happens when you bring up the fact that what they did made you feel strange? Or you got a little nervous because of this? Or it made you feel uncomfortable because of that? What happens when you do that? You're going to learn a lot about the person, the relationship, their intentions, even just their ability to handle you saying something like that.

1:07:10How do they handle negative feedback? Are they going to gaslight you? Are they going to tell you you're wrong? Are they going to own it? Or are they going to say, thank you, let's have that conversation. That's interesting that you felt that way. How did I make you feel? What could I do differently that would prevent you from feeling that way? Or I did that thing and I didn't realize that it had that impact on you. 100%. You know, you can always say to someone, look, maybe it's partly my stuff because I've had a lot of, you know, pain in this area. And you can bring them. You can bring balance to it.

1:07:40but the ability to have that conversation is really going to determine you know if they do gaslight you if they do shame you for even saying that thing like i can't believe you even said that or you know why are you making it so difficult or whatever it is amber goes red amber goes red or amber goes green if you're like oh that was actually a productive conversation so in general I really believe we all need to get better at having difficult conversations. They're hard conversations for a reason. It's just excruciating.

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1:09:57So let's talk a little bit about how to do that. How do you have those hard conversations? What are some strategies around healthy, open communication? In essence, like how do you have a fight? Like how do you fight in a healthy way or disagree or argue? Like if you're going to be in it for the long haul with someone, there will be conflict. I think there's this idea like, oh, if you have arguments like there's something wrong with your relationship, like if you're really in an honest thing with another human being, there's going to be flare ups. You guys are going to disagree and you got to have a strategy or a way or a construct for how you manage those disagreements so that you can get to the other side and move forward.

1:10:39I think the starting point is to have a different framing for difficult conversations in your own mind. one of them can be, I don't really know what I have with anybody until we have our first fight. Like, I don't know the strength of this relationship. I don't know how robust it is. You don't have to say fight. You could say challenging conversation, whatever it may be, area of disagreement. But that's a universal truth. I feel like even when we hire someone in our company, I feel like until we have our first moment of like, I don't like how you showed up today or that thing you did wasn't okay.

1:11:14Until we have our first moment like that, I might know that they're great at their job, but as a relationship, people can be great at their jobs in a company, but the relationship isn't robust. The relationship isn't going to stand the test of time. You have a very talented person that the first sign there's a flare up is going to be out the door. You just don't know. Until you can have that moment, you have no idea how safe either of you are in that relationship. And the same is true the other way around. You don't know how safe you are with your boss until your boss kicks your ass over something and you realize that the next day it's water under the bridge and everyone's moved on already.

1:11:53And you go, oh, that wasn't a sign I was about to get fired. My anxiety just flared up and told me that my whole career is on the line now. But actually, no, it was just someone who cares enough, to be honest with me. So that framing of my relationships are going to get better if I can do this and understanding that there are going to be short term consequences to that. Now, firstly, I think it's pointing to the behavior or the challenges, the issue as opposed to them and their character. And I think the less you can bring ego into an argument, the better. You know, look, rightly or wrongly, this is how what you did made me feel.

1:12:33I could be wrong about that maybe you didn't intend it but this thing you did upset me and let me tell you why I think taking it out of the realm of you're a bad person you know this is a sign that you're selfish it's the behavior it's not the person yeah and then recognize that any time you have a hard conversation with someone with anyone in your life sometimes it's glorious that person's just really good with feedback they hear you they adapt they everything's just great and other times when you show up differently in a relationship there will be a what i think of as a teething period and that's something that often someone will kind of test whatever standard or boundary you've put in place to see if it's real and a lot of us when we have a boundary or a standard that's tested it makes us freak out it makes us scared it makes us feel vulnerable or rejected or it's confrontation and we don't like confrontation so we revert back to whatever we were okay with yesterday and that's the part we have to get through is the teething period the way we do that is whatever hard conversation we're having with someone it can't be a tactic that we're coming to try to like get you, I'm trying to employ a tactic to get you to do something different.

1:13:58It has to be a standard of a kind of culture that we're trying to create for our relationship, our business, our friendship. That is really, really important to us. And the culture is the thing you're fighting for. You're not fighting this person. You're coming to them with a culture that's really important to you. I want this to be the culture of our relationship. That has to be a standard because the standard is what keeps you strong. Otherwise, you'll never get through the teething period. Someone will resist you and you'll revert back. I'm trying to understand what this idea of a standard is.

1:14:34What would be an example of that? It could be that you're constantly saying yes to what someone's asking of you. You've fallen into people pleaser mode with someone where you're constantly giving more than they're giving. and in that moment it's become apparent to you that this isn't making you feel good maybe you realize this is a pattern in your life that you go into people pleasing mode and this is true i mean people are going to resonate with this with long-term family members the first time you say hey i don't want to do that today or no i'm not going to do that that is going to meet some kind of resistance especially from someone who's known you a long time because you're taking away something they're used to.

1:15:17And when you're taking away something someone's used to, usually the first response is not, okay, let me adapt. The first response is, can I make you go back? Sure. Sure. But you have to take ownership of the level at which you were complicit in creating that paradigm, right? You were the people pleaser. So you established this pattern. So you can't be angry when you say, I don't want to do that anymore because the other person has, you know, acclimated to that, right? So I think when you come into a conflict zone or you need to have that kind of hard conversation, I've always found it helpful to first do an inventory of your own behavior so you can kind of own your side of the street and identify like what things that you did that created this situation that you're uncomfortable with.

1:16:09And I think when you lead with that in a hard conversation, it tends to deflate the intensity of it and depersonalize it to say, hey, listen, we need to talk about this. Here's what I've done to create this. I'm not blaming you. I'm taking ownership for my side of the dynamic that is now problematic that I want to address and talk about. I love that. Yeah. I think it's tremendously important what you just said. One thing that my wife and I are very good at is not leaving the room until we've come to some kind of resolution. And we're really good with a short half-life. Like even if tempers flare and we get into it or whatever, we're able to reset really quickly.

1:16:54And I think that's a huge piece in why we've been able to stay together. Like we don't hang on to any of it. Like we work through it. But I also know other people for whom staying in the room until you get to the other side of it becomes counterproductive. Like they need to retreat to their corners to, you know, kind of collect themselves or get into a better frame of mind before they can return to the conversation and address it in a more productive way. So this must come up in your counseling. Yeah. I think that's about knowing yourself. I think what are the things that allow me to calm down my nervous system in that situation because it just gets hijacked.

1:17:37And then once it gets hijacked, you're off to the right. It's a roller coaster to disaster, right? It's what do I need in these moments to take myself away from the edge? And I think we don't often do enough of communicating that to the person we're with in general. Like, hey, just so you know, one of the reasons I found it really hard to calm down yesterday is because of this. And when I get in those modes, I know then I'm not thinking straight, hey, even if you just reach out and grab my hand, like just in those moments, it helps bring me out of that place. I think sometimes we don't give each other enough of an instruction manual for what we need ahead of time so that that person knows.

1:18:21Because there's tons about all of us that's irrational. Like sometimes we just need someone to come and do something that helps take us, break our state. telling them what that is, is really, really valuable. Also recognizing what are the things our partner needs to do in that moment. Like it, they may need to go for a five minute walk. And if you're an anxious type in the beginning, someone saying to you at the peak of an argument, I need to go for a five minute walk. Yeah. You're not going to want to let them go. No, that's like for you, that's the worst thing they could do. The discomfort of this not being resolved is overwhelming.

1:18:58Yeah. But I think if they come back and they help you feel safe when they come back and your body starts to learn like, oh, the five minute walk doesn't mean they're going to come back and break up with me. It actually is just they're different to me. So much of this tracks back to being clear about what your needs are and being able to articulate those to the person you're in a relationship with in a capsule in which it's received with respect, like it's understood. But like, here are the things that like set me off and here are the needs that are important to me that I need you to think about and meet.

1:19:39And likewise, the other person doing the same. And the more you can keep those needs top of mind and understand their valence for that other person, I think that's a huge piece in establishing a dynamic that's conducive to healthy conflict resolution. and especially if you're doing all of that in a context where you're you're communicating all of that in the context of safety like i'm not going anywhere yeah i'm not leaving i'm not packing my bag right yeah these are just things that really help me and i think one of the most beautiful things that any of us can do in our relationships is anticipate each other's needs the more you know about them if you've got a partner that you know needs some alone time it's like masterful if certain days you can be like, hey, you haven't had any alone time in a minute.

1:20:32Like, why don't I go and see my friends today? And like, you can just chill and do catch up and do some reading or do the things you want to do. Like that ability to not only know each other's needs, but anticipate them, I think is one of the most beautiful things you can ever do for a person. What do you think men miss about women and women miss or misunderstand about men? Have you distilled any wisdom? I've noticed that women underestimate how sensitive men are. There is, I think, a perception that men don't feel they don't get hurt the way that women do. So a lot of women will complain about a guy that ghosts or a guy that fades or doesn't text them back and how hurtful that is.

1:21:22but if they do the same thing to a guy they don't realize that it's it's hurting him the same way that it's would hurt her in that situation and I think there's a lot behind that but I do think women often underestimate how sensitive guys are and how much they get hurt you know what's really an amazing cathartic moment is when I get a guy at one of my events stand up and ask a question that every woman in that event has asked at some point. And the women are sometimes blown away by the fact that, oh my God, that question was our question. And they're like, I didn't realize guys even felt that.

1:22:02So I think that's a misconception sometimes. From the male side, what comes to mind immediately is just, and actually this is something that happens on both sides, but men, once certain guys who have been hurt get an idea in their head about what women are like, suddenly it's like women are this amorphous blob that all behave and act the same way. Yeah. You know, they all just want a guy who's powerful and they all just want a guy who has money and they all just want a guy who's six feet tall and it's such an uninteresting way of looking at the world. and it's such a... The reductive evolutionary argument.

1:22:46They want a high net worth person who they feel safe with, that they could mate with, etc. Like all of those kind of tropes. And they want all these forms of traditional masculinity and strength and can you beat someone up? It's like it just so ignores huge numbers of fascinating people out there who don't fall into any of those molds on an individual level. But it drives a lot of men to pursue those goals because of that, you know, very idea, right? It's so interesting and confusing this dating world, which I'm not part of and haven't been for a very long time. From the male perspective, I talked to a lot of men and a lot of friends of mine who are in the dating pool who find themselves confused around how to behave.

1:23:39Like, I know I need to be, I should be strong, but I should be vulnerable. And like, is it okay? Like how much, like how do I approach a woman without being creepy, especially in 2024 and make them feel safe and do it in a way that's gentlemanly without, you know, it's like all these sort of very fine lines that need to be parsed around behavior that I think confuse and derail a lot of men. Meanwhile, I know a ton of just amazing women who are very successful and cool and beautiful and just to me are incredibly desirable people and they complain they can't find any decent guys out there. I mean, you must skip this question all the time all the time i think often those ideas like some of the things you said on the male side i think they're kind of misnomers like there are people out there you don't need to tread on eggshells around trying to be this kind of ideal of what women want in a man.

1:24:47In a sense, what you want to avoid is people who want that ideal of a man, because I would argue that they themselves have a lot of work to do in making space for what men are actually like, and how complex they really are, and how much acceptance goes into learning who a man really is, and how many vulnerabilities and flaws and weaknesses he has. I think it's probably true that by a decent number of men, I'm accused of being naive when it comes to the male side, because I've spent so much time working with women that I'm kind of not seeing all the bad behavior that goes on on the female side as well.

1:25:27And there's probably some truth to that. But look, I'll give you an example. This wasn't bad behavior, but it was a funny example. I was on a radio show recently and the host was telling me about a guy that she met on a dating app who she said what did she say he invited her for coffee and then she was like yeah and until that point it was all going well and then she said yeah let's go for coffee and he said and pancakes and she was like uh let's just go for coffee and he i guess he said it again like and pancakes maybe he thought he was being funny like right he was making a stupid joke that didn't land right But that was like from her side, she was like, this guy's a weirdo.

1:26:11I'm out. And I was like, but wait, like until that point, it's not like he had done anything egregious. It's not like he had done anything terribly wrong. It just in that moment, it's like he did something that just for her was like, look, maybe that's female intuition. And she knew and there was no point going any further. But I have to look at that and go, that kind of thing is responsible for why a lot of guys feel like if I just send one text wrong. Well, everything's so loaded, right? So that was in text, not in conversation. Had they met in person, maybe the inflection on the voice or something like that, it wouldn't have landed in the same way.

1:26:49But it is loaded in that sense. And when you say, well, the men should sort of be who they are and kind of this is what they're looking for. All of that has to be communicated in an instant on a dating app so that the person hesitates before they swipe. So that has to be represented visually and in some kind of brief text form that's going to land with the person who's seeing it. So it's a setup, really. Like who can actually accomplish that? And the more intentional you are about accomplishing that, the further you are from the goal of being authentic, right? Like, I don't know how, you know, one can successfully navigate like these apps and try to, you know, find real people behind the veneer of how they present themselves.

1:27:39And I think it's tough all the way around. I mean, I had Scott Galloway in here the other day, and he's run these statistics where he's discovered that the bottom 80 % of male Tinder users are competing for the bottom 22 % of women, that males between 18 and 30 are reporting no sex in the last year. That stat has gone from 10 % up to 28%. And I know a lot of men who complain that are not like high net worth and ballers or whatever. And they sort of complain like, well, the women have really no incentive to choose them. Of course, they're looking at that 1 % with perhaps a level of entitlement that they shouldn't have.

1:28:21Like, well, shouldn't I be able to date that person? And it's like, well, that person is never going to choose me. And they have an endless rotation of men who are always ready. So those people are not incentivized to invest in any one particular person. They're just going to scroll forever searching for some idealized perfection. Yes. So this is the dynamic, right? Yeah. If I describe that accurately, I'm sure there's a lot more to it, of course. And I've been on various kind of podcasts where people who have delved much more into that have like, you know, I hear all these things. When you listen to enough of it, it can present what feels like a hopeless picture.

1:29:01There's people out there who believe that women only date across and above. And if you look at that over time, if you were to take that as true and look at that over time, then you would have a hopeless picture. If you look at the fact that women are earning more and more and more, rising up the food chain in companies or at the top of the food chain in companies. And if the guys aren't keeping pace, then all of a sudden there's, if I'm going across and up, there's going to be less and less people across and up. When I look around on an empirical level at people I know, I know plenty of people who are in incredibly happy relationships where she earns more than he does, where she's got a more power-powered job.

1:29:53It's not that the guy doesn't have any of the quality, you know, what we associate with typical kind of masculine traits. He's just not looking at her going, she earns more money than me, therefore I can't be in this relationship. So I just don't think the world is that simple. I do think that that entitlement thing factors into it of like, how come I can't get the person who's at the very, you know, who is the most desirable on this platform of, you know, tens of millions of people. And then I'm mad because that person's being as hierarchical about this as I am. Right. There's a duplicity in the whole thing.

1:30:36People miss the hypocrisy in that all the time. I get to be hypocritical, but they can't, right? Yeah. So we have to say, if someone's got all these choices, then what has us breaking through? And I also can't help but think, I'd be scared if money or power was the thing that enabled me to break through. I don't want that to be the thing that would allow me to break through in any relationship. If that's what meant that you thought I was something or that you thought I was worthy of a relationship, then we're starting on grounds that I don't like in the first place so I sometimes think we should look at these things as like these reverse filters of if you're dating in LA and someone excluded you because you don't have enough followers then as far as I'm concerned you dodged a bullet it was a gift right but we don't see it that way we because we're we feel some sense of deficit about who we are or what we haven't achieved or where we're not in life, we're then projecting that onto, you know, someone else.

1:31:44And I'm not saying there aren't really people out there who are measuring those things. Of course there are. I wouldn't want one of those people to begin with. Yeah. And anybody who is pursuing power and material wealth for the sole purpose of escalating the pyramid of the dating paradigm is not going to be somebody that you're going to want to be with either, right? Like if that's their primary motivation. Like if they're earning money so that they can be more attractive. Right. So they can flash the watch on the dating profile. And you see that. You see how people value themselves by the things they post, by the pictures they post.

1:32:22You can very visually see what someone's biggest square in their identity matrix is by what they talk most about, what they post most about, what they represent the most visually. Those things really stand out. When we come to things from an insecure place, we look at all of those things and we just think they're really desirable. Instead of when we come from a place of having really strong values, looking at those things and going, this is maybe indicative of a person who doesn't share my values. Yeah. On that point about the endless scroll in search of perfection, like implicit in that is this idea that there is that one person who exists and I'm not going to settle until I find that person.

1:33:10And it reminds me of something that this woman, Ellen Langer said on the podcast, who's a professor of psychology at Harvard. And she talks a lot about letting go of making the right decision. In other words, make a decision and stop spending a lot of time on regret. Oh, should I have done this? Should I have done that? Would have been better if I'd done this. And instead, be decisive and then make the decision right. And I think that that overlaps with something that you talk a lot about, which is there is no one perfect person. Ultimately, you know, you want to invest in somebody and make that person the person, right?

1:33:51Like you need to choose wisely. Like the person you decide to life partner with is the most important decision you might ever make. but once you're all in then it's up to the two of you to you know create the best version of what that relationship can look like someone has to have in a sense the kind of raw materials as do we for making a great relationship and those are some of the things we talked about earlier the values that we bring to the relationship and the way we show up our ability to have conversations that we really enjoy and you know It's not like we're going and expecting them three months later to have a personality transplant.

1:34:33But if we have those raw materials with someone, then it has the ability to become something truly extraordinary. But it doesn't start that way necessarily. And that I think is the mistake. The language of settling is really interesting language because we often think of settling as like settling for something. like being short-changed. We think of it in a negative sense. But if you talk about settling on something, it has a very different connotation. Settling on, there's something empowering and decisive about that. You've made a decision. There's agency in that. A decision, a commitment. Commitment is an interesting word.

1:35:16There's two definitions of commitment. One is obligation that restricts freedom of action, which can describe a lot of avoidant people all have subscribed to that definition of commitment. But another definition of commitment is dedication to a cause. And there's something about settling on that implies the latter definition of commitment, a dedication to a cause. And settling on something and really leaning into it is what gives it the potential to be something truly great. Unlike any relationship you've ever had, not necessarily because this person is a thousand times better than any person you've ever been with.

1:35:55They may well be, you know, for you, by the way you define it on another level, but what's going to take it to a whole different level again is what you build together. And I sometimes think it's useful to take it outside of the context of relationships where it feels very charged. And we have all of that romantic notion around love at first sight and finding someone and just feeling it and knowing. I think those are really damaging concepts as well. whenever we hear from people like, no, when you know, you know, you just have that, you know, a lot of people don't have that immediately for any number of reasons, but it doesn't mean they're not going to create something extraordinary with this person.

1:36:33But if you take it measure the current state of their relationship that's been going on for a while against that intoxicating state of the early romance period. Yeah. Which is really, really dangerous and deeply unfair to the person you're with is to measure desire that arises out of a sense of mystery for someone that you inherently are incredibly familiar with. And that is the natural course of a relationship is that you become incredibly familiar. But if you take a career, who has a career that starts as just extraordinary? Usually you have something that's kind of interesting. And then by these accretions, it grows into something.

1:37:21You keep sculpting it into something that's more and more like the thing that you want it to be. When I walked in here, I walked in and I was like, wow, this studio is amazing. But you didn't start in this studio. You know, you've over time turned this into something that's more and more like the thing that you're like, this is amazing. And you'll keep doing that and it'll keep getting better for that reason. But we think relationships, it's like we find something that's extraordinary and then we just have to keep it. I think that's also the reason a lot of people are really unhappy in their careers is because they think that a job is supposed to feel like that on day one instead of something that you sculpt over time.

1:38:00And of course, the right job is the one that you can keep sculpting and making better over time, not one that keeps you unhappy and never gets better. That's not to say you should start an unhappy relationship. Yeah, no. I mean, I think that's a really intriguing lens. I hadn't thought about that, like the analogy with a job. I think that that's quite apt. And, you know, I can't help but reflect on my own marriage and my relationship, which is, you know, we're going on, we've been together for like 23 years. And like all relationships, there's highs and lows and ebbs and flows and all that kind of stuff.

1:38:33But I think one of the things that has held us together is this understanding or appreciation that it's not static. Like it's not something we're holding onto or a thing that exists. It's like a living, breathing entity that needs nourishment. And, you know, after a number of years, it's like, do we still have to work? And it's like, I don't always wanna like work on my relationship, you know? Like, can I just kick back? But I'm of the age where, you know, I would say most of my friends are divorced or on their second or third marriage. And I wanna stay married, you know? And I don't like the idea that people say, oh, it's work or it's hard or whatever, but it is a commitment.

1:39:17And that commitment demands that you're investing energy into it. And that means sometimes you gotta do stuff that you ordinarily, you know, rather not or whatever. But short of that, you will be depriving it of the nutrition that it needs and it will die and decay. But one of the things that, you know, we've had to kind of navigate and experience is the fact that we're very different people and that's part of what is interesting about our relationship. But we're not looking to the other person to like complete us in that like Jerry Maguire sense. Like we're both very independent and self-sufficient in our own ways.

1:39:58And we're also on different trajectories when it comes to like growth and change. And I think this is a piece that derails a lot of relationships, right? Somebody becomes really interested in evolution and growth and the other partner is disinterested and suddenly, you know, they're on different trajectories altogether until they can't even communicate. We're both on our own evolutionary kind of arcs and those arcs are different from each other and it requires a kind of mutual respect for each other's process with all of that. But that's part of the sort of shared value set, right? But the value of growth is there.

1:40:38It's just taking you in different directions in a sense. And I would say that my wife's probably more enthusiastic about it than I am. I have to be, you know, sort of cattle prodded into it more often than not. Because, you know, I don't, it's like, there's other things I'd rather do, you know, to be honest. Like you mean in deep growth, like work? I see you as someone who's like endlessly wanting to - I mean, I'm flipping about it. But, you know, in truth, I am very committed to that. But I think that she is so devoted to her path and her kind of spiritual practice in an inspiring way. You know, it inspires me to be better and to show up better.

1:41:13But these things are kind of different. But to your point, yes, there is a shared like we're here to grow. We're here to evolve. We're here to do it together. We're here to do it as individuals. And then we're here to come together, you know, to kind of co-create as well. But I think that idea of you two both having your own kind of path in that respect, it gives you both something to bring to the relationship. You're able to bring different things and you're able to keep feeding new ideas in together. I always think that separation and like on a small level, if Audrey reads a book that I'm not reading, it's like she's bringing ideas into the relationship that I'm not.

1:41:51and I think over time two people doing that you know the classic question is like how do you maintain mystery in a relationship where you're together all the time or you're together over the long term and you know everything about each other but one of the antidotes to that is that you keep growing is that you both keep absorbing new ideas and to that extent you kind of end up realizing I can't just assume I know everything about this person today because they do keep growing and they do keep changing. And I think that's healthy. What do you say to the couple that have found themselves in that predicament where they've taken their foot off the gas for too long and suddenly they're looking at each other like they're strangers and they love each other, but they might not be in love with each other in that moment.

1:42:44It's tough. Yeah. It's tough. Like, is there a road back? Like apathy is the ultimate enemy, right? I feel like when two people have, when they talk about that as an issue, but the truth is there is no, there's no desire to bring it back. I think that's, that in some senses, that's the biggest challenge to overcome. I think the same is true when one partner is like, I am trying to bring it back and this other person doesn't feel like anything needs to change. There's a mismatch on the willingness front. Yeah. I think that's really, really tough. But I think with two people who actually want to, I think they do have a shot.

1:43:27But it's about relearning each other to some extent. Like if you've ignored your partner in every other way except occupying the same bit of carpet for a long time i think it can be scary to get to know them again to ask them who they are today and what they're into and what they're interested in exploring and because it could be quite threatening you have to kind of have the stomach for it because you might find they've shifted or changed or developed in ways that you don't know how to handle anymore or that you're going to have to adapt to to get comfortable with and you're going to have to grow in order to be able to provide that and that's a that's not for the faint of heart but i think sometimes the price of maintaining attraction is living a little more dangerously in a sense if you take like the anxious pattern for a lot of anxious people there's a desire to get someone and then the moment you've got them put them in their pajamas and keep them in their pajamas for the rest of time and what do you mean by that like infantilize them like no like keep them where i feel safe i know i know you i know the you that's you and me sitting cozily watching a movie under a blanket it.

1:44:58And we want that at first because we want to feel safe. It's kind of natural in dating to want to feel safe and to want to feel like, you know, we're doing this, aren't we? You're not about to run off or date someone else. There's a natural safety that we crave. But I think over time, you know, when I see people who say, you know, I know couples who struggle to let their partner to go on a trip without them as if they're kind of afraid of what would happen on that trip or and look it's excluding the situations where there's genuine trust issues because of someone's past behavior but there are people who want to control things so much that they end up sort of neutering the relationship and taking it out of any kind of context of newness or mystery and i I think that we sometimes have to be a little more brave in encouraging our partner's growth, their independence, their separation in all of the right ways, in all of the healthy ways.

1:46:02And doing the same for ourself and then being able to bring all that back into the relationship. But I think for two people who have emotionally grown apart, that getting to know each other again part, it can be quite scary. Yeah, because you've established a routine and a pattern that's been going on for a long time. And it's easy to just go another day and kick it with Netflix or whatever the habit is. And pretend to yourself that they are today who they were five years ago. Yeah, exactly. And to your point about being a little bit more dangerous and letting go and allowing that person their individuality, I think a way to reflect on that is to remember that what excited you about them in the beginning was they were living an independent life without you, right?

1:46:49Like it was, that's what drew you to them. And now you've constrained that or the, not to point fingers, but like the dynamic has suffocated that individuality for the sake of some perception of security or safety to treat your anxiety or whatever it is. But, you know, I think there's great strength and empowerment in encouraging the individuality of your partner. And it's exciting to see them go in the world and be themselves. And there's something really sexy about that, right? We were just coming back from our book tour to L.A. And I was grabbing the bags off the belt, but they were like kind of on the other side of the belt.

1:47:32And I went and grabbed them on the other side of the belt. And I came back and Audrey looked at me kind of in a different way. than she had looked at me in a few days or maybe weeks. And she was like, I just got to take you in as a man just now. Like just a sexy man who was going and picking up our bags from the carousel. And we had this conversation afterwards that was like, how often do we get that glimpse of getting to just view our partner as a stranger or getting to see their face the way we would interpret their face if they had just shown up at our door for the first time? it's not an easy thing to engineer but i do think that there are ways to get those moments you know even even just newness in terms of you know when you go to a social event and you get to just watch your partner interacting in a group and you're not in it and you just get to see them engaging with other people you can get that moment then you get to see how other people are listening to what they're saying how they're being looked at how they're being received you know you get to observe them from a distance.

1:48:36And again, I think that takes a little bravery. It also takes, frankly, just a little proactivity to break with routine sometimes so that we're in an environment where we can observe our partner at a distance and not in the exact same contexts we always observe them in that have come to be wrote for us. Even if one day that thing was impressive, you know, the first time you ever saw your partner on a business call, the first time you ever saw that, it might have been an impressive moment or you might have heard them talking fluently about a subject that you don't know and gone, wow, it's kind of hot watching them on that call.

1:49:11They've now had 10 ,000 of those calls in front of you. It's no longer impressive, but is there a way to kind of re-engineer some of that newness? What is the biggest challenge that you confront in your own relationship? Like what comes up? Been married, what, a year now? mm-hmm two things come to mind one is that work is crazy for both of us she is she heads up our entire content division she's the creative director for the whole company so it so your lives are completely integrated yes or professionally and they they are but our working days are pretty much spent in different rooms in the house because she's on meetings all day with other people and I'm doing my own thing so we're not too enmeshed in that sense or as much as people might think but we are both so busy and it's been so crazy for a while now that we're both looking at it going if we don't start engineering quality time then we're going to suffer so like that's a big focus right now is just engineering time and also having rules about not talking shop you know so that that doesn't just bleed into everything.

1:50:26It's so easy to fall into that. My wife and I now, like we're sort of, we have some separation because she has projects that she does and I have, you know, and we come together and we do stuff together, but we used to do a lot more together. And then on top of that, four kids. So it's very easy to fall into a paradigm where every conversation is logistical or transactional around how you're running the household or how you're managing some project that you guys are working on. How did you solve that? You have to be incredibly intentional about it. And sometimes we're better than others. Like sometimes it's just, you know, the pressure's on, things have to get done.

1:51:02You know, this kid has to go here, that kid has to go, did you pay that? Like a lot of that starts to happen. And if you don't catch it early and often and create kind of a reflex or a muscle around making sure that not every interaction that you're having is oriented around that, you can head for trouble pretty quickly. You're like, I'm with my partner all day long. Like, what are you talking about? We're totally connected. But are you, right? It's always in this one context. Yeah. Yeah. And it's easy to like hide from anything else that you really need to talk about because you're managing some, you know, daily project that you're involved in.

1:51:42And so you feel like, well, I've done enough communicating with my partner for the day. Yeah, you just struck on something that for me, that feeling of there's never a great time to talk, when it's something that's not to do with like solving those immediate work challenges or logistical challenges, when it's just something emotional, like making time, because especially... But you don't want to be foisting it on your partner at the wrong time either. Like you have to have an understanding or communication around what the appropriate time and context is for it also but i think that goes hand in hand with creating the time because we where we get to the end of the day and we're often so exhausted by work that the best we can do is like comatose watch a netflix show and then the weekend comes around and the week's been so full-on and so long and so taxing that it's like the last thing that we want to do now is have a conversation about something.

1:52:49Like now we're just like, we just need to put some energy back in the tank. I get it, man. I get it. But here's the thing. That's never going to change. Your life is never going to arrive at some place where everything is going to be a lot smoother and more chill. Maybe, but you can't assume that to be the case. I think we think, oh, it's crazy right now. But when this all settles down, then we'll have time and we'll do this. And in my experience, you never really get to that point. You didn't find like a better rhythm? Well, things ebb and flow. There's going to be sometimes that are busier than others, but I know enough about you to know that like you're going to create intensity no matter what.

1:53:28That's the part. That's the part I'm interested in. You need to find a way to make sure that you're building in the intimacy and the communication in the midst of that, not when this ends and then there's an opening and I feel good because I've rested and I got enough sleep and I ate a good meal. You know, you can't wait for the universe to line up to create the perfect circumstance for you to have that conversation. You have to be able to have it in the midst of, you know, stress and chaos and anxiety and pressure and, you know, everything else that visits you when you are in those intense moments.

1:54:04It has to be lived in the middle. But when you say no matter what, like, is there no hope for that? I mean, I just met you today. day. So I don't, you know, I'm not saying... I get what you're saying. You know, I've read Berkman's work, 4 ,000 Weeks and Cal Newport's books. And I gravitate towards books of that nature because I see in those books, something I want to be more of or have more of and something to aspire to. But do you think that that intensity, there's just something in the wiring that's always... Like for you, I know you can't speak to me, but like, do you think you can give up on that intensity?

1:54:43Or do you think it is just in your bones and that a quieter, more peaceful life is not available to you? It's available to me, but it's not something that will come naturally. It will be produced through great intention only because I am wired to be a certain way. And part of that wiring serves me well. And other parts of it, I'm reluctant to let go of. And other parts I have let go of and I have gotten better. What would you say are the parts you've let go of? A lot of control issues, a lot of issues around perfectionism and that idea like I'm the only one who can do this and I have to have my fingerprints on everything.

1:55:26I've let go of a lot of things, but I still hold on too much to a lot of other things in a way that I think doesn't serve me. And I still find myself with a schedule that leaves me feeling more overwhelmed than I would prefer, despite constantly saying like, I'm not going to say yes to these things. I still find myself with a schedule that's overbooked. So is there a sustainable... fix for that is there hope that propensity to no matter what find space fill it you know over schedule, take on too many things. I have had that my whole life. I keep telling myself, like, I'm working on that. I'm working on that.

1:56:08I'm going to be more intentional. Right. Now that this book's over, now it's a new phrase. The proof is now in the pudding, right? Like, you can read all the books you want, but what are you actually putting into practice in your life? And, you know, it's a struggle for me as well. And like I said, I have made improvements. But I think the solution for me is finding some kind of middle path. Like, you know, I've read both those books also and they both offer very practical and helpful solutions, but on some level, perhaps a bit too extreme given, you know, how I wanna live my life. But what wisdom in them can be applied?

1:56:46Like I could be a lot better at saying no to things. I could be a lot more intentional about what I'm willing to, you know, tolerate and not tolerate. I could hire more people. I could delegate better. I could delegate more. You know, there's lots of things that you can do. But I think identifying the internal pattern, like what is the wounding that's leading you to like do this thing? Like untangling that, I think getting to the source of what's driving the whole thing is a more worthy investment of your time and energy than dealing with the symptomology of it. Which is like, I got a phone call and asked to do this thing.

1:57:22I'm going to say no to that. And that's a win. Yeah, it's a win. but you're going to keep having this issue until you kind of unravel whatever not it is that, you know, on a psychological level that's driving that compulsion. What makes it so deeply uncomfortable to say no to in the first place. Yeah. I mean, how terrifying is it for you if you were to take your foot off the gas and disappear and like not upload anything or talk to anybody on social media for a certain period of time or to close your social media account? Like what comes up for you? Like what is the fear? Like the fear of sudden irrelevance or the fear that like your whole thing that you've worked so hard to create is going to collapse on top of itself and disappear and all the good things in your life will vanish?

1:58:03Like what is it? Yeah. And then dissecting that, like what's behind that? Yeah. I think for me it's more the latter. It's more that relevance doesn't bother me anywhere near to the extent of safety, like that feeling of things going away. and then having to fight for my life. And so what is behind the fear of things going away? It's this sense of unworthiness that short of the constant pressure that you're applying or your foot always on the gas, that if you were to take a break or let go for a moment, that it would be withdrawn from you because they would find out that you weren't actually worthy of the role that you're playing.

1:58:54Hmm. Don't you think so much of it is we've been brainwashed into, well, maybe not even just brainwashed. The reality is that algorithmically we get punished for taking our foot off the gas. Is that true? Do you think? Or is that an illusion? Here's an interesting thing. I ran into this friend of mine, Joshua Fields Milber. Do you know this guy from The Minimalists? You know The Minimalists, these guys? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I ran into him at the grocery store the other day and him and his co-host on their podcast decided that they were going to get off social media, like all their accounts. And they're running a podcast and they have all kinds of stuff just like you, like out in the world, like this is how they make their living.

1:59:37And they did it thinking, well, we're going to take a hit. Like we're going to get, you know, less listens or downloads and patrons and all that kind of stuff. Right. So the only thing they left up was their podcast? Yeah, they do their podcast, but there's no sharing of anything on any social media. They're not on Instagram, they're not on Facebook. It's all off, all inactive across the board. And they did that thinking, well, we're going to take a hit, but we're doing this as an experiment and on behalf of our sanity. And they're like, I don't know, three or four months into this thing. And they've actually like, their show has grown.

2:00:14I don't know why. He's like, I don't know why. He's like, maybe it's because of something else. I have no idea, but we assumed it would take a big dip and it didn't. Are they not kind of hypothesizing that that's because they've now been able to truly focus on it and give it like more love and that the audience is feeling that and sharing it more? Perhaps, you know, I'm sure there's a number of variables at play, but the reason I brought it up is simply to disabuse us of the assumption or presumption that if we do something a little bit differently, that it's all going to like come crashing down.

2:00:47But what do you make of, I know we're going on to a lot different conversation here, but I'm just saying, I've got rich role in front of me. We got to wind it down, but go ahead. When you look at someone like Gary Vaynerchuk who's saying do it all and you're crazy if you're not doing it all, how do you fit those two models together? I don't know. I think you have to do what feels right for you to do. And I think you need to divorce yourself from the kind of vicissitudes of the immediate trends and focus more on doing quality work and a structure that you can sustain over time. Because those trends are constantly changing.

2:01:27And I think this pressure that you have to be everywhere on all places all the time is a recipe for insanity and burnout. And some people are up for it and others aren't. And I think you have to figure out who you are, what your energy levels are, how much you wanna commit to whatever it is you're trying to express and find a way that is workable and sustainable. And I think there's seasons to these things too. There's growth phases and there's other times where you're just trying to sustain what you're doing and lifestyle is more important. But I think being flexible and malleable, But ultimately, it goes back always, in my opinion, to playing the long game.

2:02:06And when you're playing the long game, quality is always king. Like, is the thing that you're doing at the level of value that you're capable of doing it at? And if there's room for improvement, that's where you should focus your improvement. And everything else is like noise. It's beautifully said. But, you know, that's at the cost of, you know, immediate short term, you know, kind of growth hacking. But, you know, listen, I've been doing this a long time. So have you. And like, I, there's other things that I'm more interested in than getting all caught up in whatever the algorithm wants you to do on a particular day.

2:02:47yeah to bring it full circle i think it's funny the parallels between what you're saying here and what i see in people's love lives which is that we over index on the things that don't matter or don't make us happy because we haven't really decided what our path is like what's the quality relationship i want what are the values that really matter to me and when you say all of this in a career context it makes me want to go away and make sure that I've really properly defined what my values are in terms of my work and what I want to create and the level of my work the same is true in people's relationships you know when we're constantly chasing the wrong things or chasing what everyone else is telling us to chase or you know the person we bring home we're excited about because we know our friends are going to be impressed by them or our family is going to be impressed by them but they're not someone who actually is compatible with us or has the same values, that's where unhappiness comes from.

2:03:46So yeah, I love this conversation, man. We've gone in so many different times. I like how you brought it back to relationships. I wasn't sure how I was going to do that. I can always bring it back. Yeah. But there's so many parallels. Yeah, there's always a parallel to relationships. Always. I think why that's so difficult is most of us don't have models for how you have those types of conversations. Like, how do you language that? Like we didn't learn how to do that. Or maybe we didn't have a parent or, you know, a mentor or somebody in our life who showed us how to have difficult conversations and how to, you know, language these things with respect and honesty and openness.

2:04:26Yeah. It is a language. And if, if no one has ever taught you that language, it's, that's where self-compassion comes in because you, how would you know? How would you know how to have a productive conversation about your needs or about, you know, what you want from the relationship or what's making you unhappy or without someone actually modeling it for you. It's amazing that language matters. My wife, Audrey, when we were dating, I sent her a text saying, I miss you after weeks of not communicating. We were like long distance at the time. We weren't in a like official relationship. We were just dating, but I had started to fade.

2:05:06And then after a couple of weeks of not saying anything, I said, I miss you. And her text back to me was like, extraordinary. She sent me a message and said, Hey, I hope you're well. To be honest, I'm not really sure what to respond to that. She said, I feel like we haven't been that close for a while now. And rightly or wrongly, this message comes off as a bid for attention. That you want to talk about language, like everything about that text is pitch perfect. It still has a warmth to it, even though she's absolutely calling out. There's a bluntness to it too. Truly. And the rightly or wrongly is very powerful because it's like, look, rightly or wrongly, this is how it comes across.

2:05:45But she's not pointing the finger at me and saying, you're an asshole. She's just rightly or wrongly. This is how this is coming across. And honestly, I don't know what to say because this is out of sync with the dynamic that I've seen from you in the last few weeks. That is a very powerful message. And when people hear that, a lot of people who are in that very same situation will see how the message they have sent or would have sent would be very different. They might find that someone texts them, I miss you after two weeks of ignoring them. They may go, well, I'm just not going to text them back, which is fine.

2:06:24It feels like holding onto our power, but it's also not communicating anything. It's not saying if you want to continue to text me, this is what needs to change. It's just us going cold and making ourselves tough to read at this point. Some people will go, well, I just text back in a way that's kind of indifferent and be like, oh, thanks. So anyway, I'm just seeing my friends today. What are you up to? And they're like, oh, I'm holding on to my power by not saying anything, by showing that this person's not affected me. but that language matters and that authenticity that ability to communicate our authenticity in an elegant way is one of the most powerful things we can learn to do in life harder even to do in text very hard yeah be so easily miss misread or mistaken yeah Yeah.

2:07:17Brutal. We got to round this down. So perhaps we can end this with just some advice, general advice from the book about how to rethink our relationships or perhaps some strategies for improving the quality of the relationships we're already in. I mean, we talked about it already, but if there's anything that was left uncovered. look I think in terms of improving the quality of the relationships we're already in it helps to start from a place of being really connected to what's what you're already grateful for in the relationship like if you woke up tomorrow morning and you just took five minutes to write down the complaints you don't have because your partner is who they are it wouldn't be such a bad way to start because there's all these complaints we don't have because of the person we're with.

2:08:13Complaints that maybe we've forgotten about, that we experienced in the three partners we had before them, that maybe it was so long ago that - That's like a weird spin on a gratitude list. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're really good at magnifying what's frustrating us about someone, especially over time. And we start to develop this kind of amnesia for the complaints we've had in the past because the past gets further and further in the rear view mirror. So now all of our reference points are the last 10 years with this person and it is very easy to take for granted the complaints we don't have as a result and to look around and go well if i was in this situation look what i'd get over here and look but what complaints don't you have and then i think an honest assessment of what what needs do i know my partner well enough to know they have that i'm probably not doing a great job of meeting right now you know how could i really show up and anticipate those needs and if I don't know what those needs are it's time to find out or to learn what they are today because let me not assume I know them today what's exciting to you now or what goals do you have that I don't even know about what what are the things you'd like to learn that I don't know about what are the things you'd like to do that you haven't told me and then I think doing it you know kind of looking at ourselves and going what's what do I feel I like more of that I haven't communicated, you know, that I've done a poor job of really being vulnerable about what would make me happy or excited or feel alive that I've been keeping to myself and making it, frankly, impossible for my partner to support me.

2:09:50Yeah. They can't meet that need or, you know, show up for that, you know, interest or experience if they're not aware of it. Meanwhile, you're slowly chewing on a resentment because they're not meeting this thing because why can't they read my mind and why do I have to have the conversation? Don't they just know? Exactly. Yeah. And for anyone out there who's not in a relationship, you know, a big part of this book is really acknowledging what that is like for people. There's a lot of shame out there around people wanting to find love. It's like this thing that we all want that we feel like we can't admit to really wanting because it feels desperate.

2:10:27It feels like, oh, I don't want to show people that I'm really on the hunt for love. You know, I have to pretend that I'm kind of indifferent to it. If it happens, it happens, you know, but I'm fine when for a lot of people not finding love is like a kind of chronic emotional pain that doesn't go away. Loneliness is like a chronic ache that doesn't go away for a lot of people. And a huge part of this book is about normalizing the feelings that we have when we are struggling because we thought we would have met our person by now. we thought we'd be in the relationship we always wanted to be in by now and we haven't found that person or we thought we did and we lost them and now we find ourselves out there again and the terrain of my life does not map the blueprint of what i thought my life would be at this stage it creates a lot of fear it creates a lot of self-loathing a lot of regret a lot of shaming ourselves for decisions we've made and leaving it so long and not taking enough risks or blowing it with that person or self-sabotaging or cheating on that person and ruining our life because now we haven't got out person anymore.

2:11:33You know, whatever it is we've done starts to become the kind of way that we shame ourselves for getting ourselves into this position. And this book is really about helping people to begin their lives again fresh, starting today and to realize that whatever stories have already happened for you, they're a story in your life, but they're not the great narrative of your life. There's so many stories available to you whose beginnings can be located precisely where your feet are now. And the danger of holding onto heartbreak or loss or the story that we've had for a long time, for too long, is that we start thinking that's the truth of our life.

2:12:22It's really not. Maybe it's a sad movie in your life, but there's many movies in your life. And a new one can begin right now if you can actually lift your gaze up to see it. And the fact that you're even listening to this conversation right now means that you're still here. You know, those stories are still available to you. One of my favorite words from the point of view of possibility in life is curiosity because I think it's very hard for all of us when we have been a certain way all our lives when we have felt like we've been unable to change our lives have always gone a certain way we've always felt broken we've always felt like we're unattractive or it's never worked out it's easy to start to think that that's just us or that's just the way life is or that we are just broken.

2:13:17And I think a lot of self-development is quite damaging in the sense that the insinuation is you just have to believe something new. And I've never been able to do that. I've never been able to like go to the buffet of good beliefs and just select which ones I want for myself. Shift your mindset. Yeah. I have found that any new belief I've had to, as evidenced by our conversation today about the things I'm still working on. It is a war of attrition against my old beliefs. And it's very hard, but curiosity is a gateway to new beliefs. If you can just have the humility to say the way that I've been living is not the only way to live.

2:13:59The results I've gotten so far in my life are not a reflection of what's available to me. They're just a reflection of the way I've been doing things for a very long time, there are actually these kind of modest 1 % shifts I can make in my life that if I do, if I kind of treat my own life like a bit of a social experiment, what happens when instead of when normally getting angry, I show up and get vulnerable? What if when I normally run away, I lean in? What happens when those things happen? Oh, I get a slightly different result. And that slightly different result to me is like inception. It's like at the very least, You may not get a new result you really want, but at the very least, you learn that a new result is possible.

2:14:39And when you learn a new result is possible, it kind of shakes you out of this world you've been living in where you think that your world is the only world. And that becomes the gateway to new beliefs. So that's kind of, in some ways, the essence of this book applied through the lens of people's love lives. It is designed to be a co-pilot for anyone who wants to find love. But it's kind of, it's more than that. It's a model for managing pain in our lives, a model for improving our confidence, a way to realize that even before we found the thing that we really want, there is actually a way to be happy enough.

2:15:15And I choose that language very intentionally. The final chapter of the book is called Happy Enough, Not Happiness. Because I think happy enough is a superpower. If you can learn to be happy enough today before you've got what you want, that to me is where real invincibility comes from. But it's not happiness, which is intimidating. Happy enough is possible. There's a compassion in the book, I think. And there's a lot of compassion in what you just shared. Like I think compassion lives at the center of like your animating force. I think there's something really beautiful about your sensitivity to those that struggle to find love.

2:15:59And I think this is a very worthy investment of your chi, your life energy. And this is really cool, Matt. Thank you. I appreciate it. I loved it. Thank you for having me. The book is called Love Life for anyone who would like a copy. How to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what. and it's available wherever you get your books. And if people want to learn more about what you're about and the other things that you're up to, all the programming, et cetera. MatthewHussey.com is where all things, our organization live from our programs to our live events. So we welcome anyone who wants to come in and work with us.

2:16:41All right, fantastic, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. That was wonderful. I really enjoyed meeting you. Thank you. Me too. Thanks for having me. Cheers. Peace.

2:17:03That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change and the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment.

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