DO THESE 6 Things To Get Him ADDICTED To You Forever! | Matthew Hussey

People, I think, don't go into relationships with a healthy view of what is required over the long term.

If we're in a situation where our partner isn't showing empathy for us, if you feel they're not trying to, that's a problem.

One quality can make you really attractive, but it won't keep someone.

If you are looking to find the perfect partner and relationship, then make sure to watch this video with Matthew Hussey breaking down the steps you need to thrive in in your next relationship. Why is it you have the credibility to give so many women advice? You're only 27, right? And why should they listen to you when you're a man? Should they even trust you? You're not married, right?

No. No.

And you're currently single, I believe, right?

Single.

So why should they believe what you're saying has Well, validity.

Firstly, that you're right in the sense that being a man gives me no extra credibility whatsoever. I always cringe when a journalist says to me, well, this is so great because you're a guy, so you can give them insight into guys. I think what a stupid argument that is. It's like saying you're a woman, so you know all women.

Right.

How many women are exactly the same?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, how many women do you get in a room and they agree on everything? The same is true of men. I'm not here to speak on behalf of all men.

Sure.

I might be here to relay a message that I constantly get from men or something that I observe with an enormous number of men. I mean, I say to women, I only started working with women A, because they asked me to. I didn't, when I was a coaching guy, I coached nearly 10,000 guys and women were saying, When are you gonna do the same thing for us? And I said, I don't know, because I don't really know you. I know men. 'Cause I've not 'cause I'm a guy, but 'cause I've just coached 10,000 of them over the last three years. I said, so I have something to say about men. I said, but I don't know you. And they said, Don't worry, we don't want to know more about us. We don't want to know about men. So I said, well, that I can do. And I sat down and I started talking about some things that felt obvious to me based on what I'd learnt from men, but weren't obvious to them. You know, a very simple thing would be, that there were so many women out there that were saying, well, I want a guy who has the balls to make a move on me.

Right?

And if he's interested, he's already coming over to me. And there were certain, there were massive dating books out there for women that would say this, like, if he's not coming over to you, don't bother going up to him, because if he wanted to be there, he would be. This defied everything that I'd ever seen, not just from every man I'd ever coached, but from growing up. around men and what, and, and, and even for myself, this is an area where my personal experience does relate to that lesson. I was terrified. I was terrified. The idea of walking up to a woman and saying, I like you or I think you're cute. I got brought up by my mum to be a gentleman, right? That, that was, I was brought up to, you know, buy flowers, buy the meal, don't, don't ever let her pay, don't ever let her carry her bag, open her door. So at school, as a teenager, I got mauled by women for being that way. You know, I got walked all over. They liked me, they thought I was a nice guy, but I was the one holding their bag while they got with that guy. So it didn't translate. And I knew as a guy, as a teenager, something wasn't clicking. And something about what I'd been taught about attraction by my mum, who taught me to treat every woman like a princess, something about that advice wasn't translating and wasn't working. Now, then when I started hearing from these books written for women, if he likes you, he's already talking to you, I looked at that and I thought, God, you know what? I'm not a loser. I'm not someone who's got everything going wrong in their life and is like, oh, that's why he hasn't got the confidence. No, I was like a guy who had some great things going for him and yet still, I would look over there and go, no way. Yeah, I'm not doing it man terrifying so so you know, I started to say to women listen Firstly guys is even even the guys you want are nervous about coming over to you so you might have to do a little more yeah to make this a possibility.

To make feel good about themselves comfortable.

To come on and women will say well, no, that's not true Matt cuz you know There are there are these guys who always hit on me when I go out yeah, but it's the same 5% every time. Yes, right there's there's five to ten percent of guys who will hit on everybody who walks in the room.

Yeah. Right.

But that's not representative.

And they're not getting the girls.

Right. Very often they're not. They're not. There's a, there's a percentage of those who are like players who are good at it.

Yeah.

Who know how to do it. But the game, actually, most guys aren't in that mode. Most guys aren't good at doing that and, and actually don't wish to do that because they don't want to be sleazy and they don't want to seem like that guy. So I started saying, women, you might have to do a little bit more and don't assume, because in a seminar Any woman who comes to my seminar will see this. I'll say, put your hand up if at some point or another you've said or thought, well if he doesn't have the balls to come and approach me, I don't think he's my type of guy anyway. And like 90% of the hands go up. So I say, here's the thing. As a guy, when you live in a city, you probably see 30 women a day that you're attracted to.

Yes. Right?

You can't go up to every one of them.

You can't go up to every one of them. Nor would you wish to, nor is it convenient to. And sometimes you just see a woman standing with her friend and you're like, Do I really want to go and approach her in front of her friend and have the possibility that she's got a boyfriend and I'm gonna have to do it again?

You don't want to go do it again.

It's horrible. Yeah.

So, so I would like, I would say to them, if out of those 30 women that a guy sees in a day, he's going to approach the one that makes it slightly easier for him to approach her than the other 29.

One that says, It's okay for you to talk to me.

Correct. However she chooses to do that. And that doesn't mean you making some big grand move. It just means, I call it, you know, I call it dropping the handkerchief. When you, you know, women who say, I'm old-fashioned, I don't make the first move. I always say, then you're not old-fashioned because a hundred years ago, a woman would walk past a guy, drop her handkerchief and keep walking. The guy would see it. He'd say, this is an extraordinary opportunity to be a man. He'd pick up the handkerchief, rescue the girl, walk it over to her and.

Say, Madam, you dropped this.

And she'd say, did I? And they'd now have a conversation. Now, he thought it was his idea. Yes. And she was clumsy. She chose him. so I say to women, listen, this isn't about reversing roles here and you suddenly doing the guy's job. It's about you doing what women have always done and dropping the handkerchief. You just need to know how to do it in 2015.

Wow.

So, so that's.

So what are some ways to do it? What are two, two or three ways that a woman could do this to create an opportunity for a conversation to happen?

Right.

So one, one of them is really, really simple. There was a, there was actually a book written. by a guy called, I think, Richard Wiseman. It was called 59 seconds. But one of the studies in the book that wasn't done by him, it was done by, I think, Jekka and Landy, was about the psychology of favors. And what they found years ago when they did this study, they were looking for the obvious, right? If I do you a favor, you'll like me more.

Yes.

What they actually found was, if I do you a favor, I'll like you more, because we like people that were able to help. in some small way. The only caveat was that the favor couldn't be something that was difficult to perform. If you ask me something that's difficult, I could get annoyed, right? And frustrated. If you ask me something that's easy for me to do and I get to help you in some way, I actually end up liking you more. So the, the psychology, when, when done in the direction of woman to man to woman is much more powerful because men have these two instincts, provide and protect. So now when a woman so when someone comes up and asks for a favor, he immediately gets to, gets to cater to those two male instincts that make him feel important. So the, the advice goes like this. If you walk up to a guy and you say, use this one first line and it will work time and time again, you say, I could really use your help with something. That one line is going to have Nine out of ten guys immediately receptive to whatever you say.

'Cause they wanna provide and protect.

Yeah, anything. Tell me how I can feel important right now.

I remember.

So I could really use your help with something now.

It could be answering a question, it could be directions.

But let's say you're in a bar and you say, Could you hold my jacket for two seconds while I give these drinks to my friends? I'm running out of hands here. You then take your drinks, you give them to your friends, you come back, you take your jacket and you say, Thank you so much, you're a gentleman. How's your evening going anyway? Now, the beauty of this is rather than having to go up to him randomly and saying, how's your evening going? Which makes it feel like you've really chosen him. In this example, he's doing you the favor. You're just politely asking how his evening is going after he's already done the favor for you. So that's an easy way for women to drop the handkerchief in any environment and never have, they never have to risk rejection with that because there's nothing for him to reject. It's just a simple favor.

Wow, okay, so that's number one. So that's maybe one more.

That's number one. Let's think of a good one here. This kind of goes alongside it. I mean, you could ask a guy's opinion, for example. You could say, you know. No, in fact, here's a good one. When you're with your friends and you see a group of guys, simply walk up to them and say, We're trying to guess what people's jobs are by what they're wearing. That's cool. And then start guessing. Everyone loves this game because you have fun guessing. And again, you can start in a funny way and say, you,'re a spy. But whatever it is, play with it a little. But then the nice thing is they immediately know how to carry on that conversation because they're gonna do it back.

Now for guys who are experiencing this and they see a woman who creates an opportunity to talk to them, and now it's their responsibility to kind of continue the conversation, right? And to show that, okay, now I am interested.

So this is a really important part. This is really important because there is a mistake people make here. And I realized this early on because I was giving women this way to go and be proactive with guys in a way that they hadn't been before. But they were making the mistake of staying in there too long.

Oh, right. So don't stick around.

No, no, no. There's a, Think of it this way. In order to give someone the opportunity to hit on you in the first place, you need to close the gap. So when a woman goes in and says, I mean, there's another one I'll give you. If you're, you know, this one's always pay attention to what's going on around you. And if nothing else, say the obvious. So you could be in a bar, you know, lining up for a drink and you say to the guy next to you, oh my God, it's so busy in here. All right, that's it. By the way, you're not saying it's so busy in here. you're saying it's okay for you to talk to me. That's really what you're saying. So in that moment, again, if you wanted to make it more flirtatious, you'd say, oh my god, it's so busy in here. It's you with your big shoulders move. And then you'd push him. And then you immediately you're gonna have some great tension. He's gonna feel manly. But the key thing is don't then stay in there. I was in LA recently and there were, I was with two buddies and three women came over. and started talking to us. Now, I can't fault that because that's why I help people to do that. I think it's important. I think they did the right thing. But what they could have changed is when they came over to speak to us, they stood facing us with their feet pointed towards us in a circle, and then there was no sign of them leaving ever.

They were just committed to being there.

You know when someone's body language says, I'm not going anywhere.

Yeah.

And it immediately makes you nervous because you sort of think, Oh, you're like, how am I gonna get out of this?

You're not interested in them. You don't wanna be in it.

And a woman knows this feeling much better than a man, because when a woman is approached by a guy, she can't even concentrate on whether she's attracted to him if he's too much in her space to begin with. He needs to give her space to observe him and decide she's attracted to him before he keeps just going and going and going. So these women would have been better off to maybe a minute in, just turn and talk to each other again. They don't have to go to the other side of the room and make things difficult, but just turn and talk to each other. Or, God forbid, there's another person there that they turn to and ask something of. What they've done is close the gap, but then recreated space. So the second step of recreating space is very, very important because when they recreate space, it gives us a chance to observe them, a chance to miss them, I had a chance to think, oh, how do we get them back over here? So now when we go over there and say, by the way, I was thinking about what you said just now and keep talking for them. It's like, ah, okay, that's like now they've made a move. Now. Now they've chosen to be in the situation instead of us just choosing to be there and never knowing if they were really attracted.

And that's what needs to happen for women, is they need to feel chosen as well.

Correct.

Right?

Correct. So it's kind of like you, you're choosing him to begin with so that you're not just randomly choosing from the pool of guys that are brave enough or obnoxious enough to run up to you. But at the same time, you're not, you're giving it space so that he can choose you and you can be confident in that process.

Hey, it's Lewis here, and I would love to connect directly with you. Text me the word YouTube to my number 614-350-1234. 3960 to receive weekly inspirational messages from me. What's it gonna take for us to not react to a situation where we feel hurt or like we, our expectation wasn't met from our partner and come from that place?

God, it's so difficult.

Because why do we react so much?

Sometimes it's just space. Like how I need to take them a moment to process something so that I can say, I can have a more evolved response.

And not react. It's funny, I've been, you know, the relationship I've been in, which is newer in the last five months, I want to talk about something right away and address it. She doesn't want to talk. She wants to have space so she doesn't react.

Yeah.

So she's, and she'll say, like, I don't want to get angry at you. I don't want to yell at you. That's not the type of person I want to be. So I'd rather just not talk. And then I'm in limbo and I'm like, I just want to like get to resolve this thing. Let's at least communicate and then we can move on as opposed to holding on to something for half a day or a few hours.

Here's the thing, space is easy when you get a text you don't like. Or when you see something you don't like from afar and you're not going to see that person for a few hours or till tomorrow. Now you have space to go through, you know, I'm angry, you know, I'm really, really angry. I'm upset. I'm sad.

I'm hurt.

I feel rejected. I don't feel enough. I, you know, you can kind of cycle through those and then have a couple of sensible conversations with people whose opinions you respect. You and I have done this.

Yeah, we'd be like, it's not that big a deal. Take a break.

You go, okay. This thing, I'm feeling this and I'm hurt and I'm this and I'm that and I'm that. And you have a couple of smart voices either that come from in here.

Which is hard to do.

Which is very hard to get that objectivity and or that come, you know, from just one or two people whose opinions you really respect who aren't gonna tell you what you wanna hear. Yeah. Who aren't gonna tell you, you're so right to feel that way.

Get angry.

Yeah. You need someone who is brave enough and close enough to you and smart enough sometimes to recognize, I'm concerned that you're overreacting to this. And that this reaction is not going to serve you. And I think you need to bring this energy to the conversation. That is extremely valuable. What's hard is when you get information in real time and you're with the person and you're in the same room, And now you're dealing with trying to process and create that, you know, okay, I need to, I'm trying to get to a more positive place here. Yeah. While being asked to communicate in real time. Well, real time elicits reflex responses. And reflex responses are often very harmful to a relationship. It's the reflex responses are often based on instinct. Yeah. And instinct is very dangerous.

False instinct.

You're so often told, you know, trust your instincts. And that's just not often great advice.

If you're not emotionally intelligent and if you're jealous all the time, then having a jealous instinct isn't necessarily the best thing.

But some of these instincts are kind of hardwired, right? What we're doing with a lot of our better nature is overcoming certain programming that we have. you know, in a Riptide, you get pulled out to sea. Your instinct tells you in that moment to swim back to shore against the current. Ignore the Riptide. I just need to get back to shore. Which is stronger? You or the current?

The current.

And it will drown you. You will exhaust and drown before you get back.

True. So, until it washes you to shore, just like that.

Right, so in that moment, fighting harder won't save you. Thinking clearer will. And thinking more clearly means I need to swim sideways. I need to swim parallel. Let it take me out, swim further or swim parallel. Because I'm giving myself a longer journey. But then when I'm out of the current, Then I can swim back to shore. Yeah, that's true. Now that's not, instinct won't get you to do that, because that requires thinking clearly. Instinct will drown you in that moment. And in a relationship, in dating, your instincts will get you killed.

That's true.

You know, your instinct says, a woman goes on a date with a guy and has a great time, and says, your instinct says, clear the calendar for the next three months. We found it. We did it, guys.

We had an amazing night.

Clear the schedule.

We were connected on every level.

He's awesome.

We have a great connection. Clear the calendar. This is what we're doing now.

Wow.

Even if I'm not even saying someone hates the rest of their life, you can like your job and still be so caught up in the chemical rush of this was amazing that this is all you want to do now, right? Well, this isn't good for what you want to happen here. What do you want to happen? Well, you want to get to know this person better. Spend more time with them. Invest at an organic Pace based on the level of investment that's going on. Right. Thing I've said for years, don't invest in someone based on how much you like them. Invest on based on how much they invest in you. People don't do that. People invest on instinct. I really like them. And my investment is proportionate to how much I like them, not how much I'm seeing there's a mutual investment. Can I tell you about the castle?

More castle.

All right. This is, you're gonna like this. So I was thinking about this whole idea of investing.

Like buying a castle?

Well, that's the thing. You can't buy a castle. for a relationship. I see, to me the relationship is the castle. Right. When you meet someone you have a connection. 'acausee I'm always you know me, I do seminars all over the world, where have thousands of women come and join us, and the thing that there's always someone who puts their hand up and says, It starts the story with Matt, I have this incredible connection with this guy.

So they're already in?

No? No, offten not? Now I know we have a problem. when someone's justifying whatever they're about to say next with what an incredible connection they have with someone. An incredible connection is like you meet someone, you connect and you have a great plot of land. This plot of land could be great because it's in the middle of a forest, could be great because it's on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. It's a beautiful place to build.

That's the connection.

Still just a connection, but it's still just a plot of land. All right, let's see it for what it is. It's potential. Still just a plot of land. Now what you need is two Builders, two people who are going to build something here. And that requires two people who show up each day and lay brick. after brick, after brick, after brick and slowly but surely create a castle. Most people have the experience of someone who joins them on that plot of land and they both look at it and they're like, isn't this great? Look at the ocean. This is great. Look at the view we have here. Look at the trees.

This is amazing.

And they get real excited. Now, one of them might be willing to build. One of them might be a builder. The other one might just really like the potential of this plot of land. And then you have someone who's there building every day. They're doing the investment. I have the woman come to me who's building and a guy who's left the construction site. I don't know where he is. He's at home. He's binge watching his favorite show. He's out on another. He's looking at another plot of land. You know, and then three weeks later he calls in and says, he sends a text to her after three weeks of ghosting her or just disappearing or just patchy communication and says, thinking of you. That's a builder who started building, then left the building site for three weeks and called him from home and went, how's the castle going? Meanwhile, she's over there building the castle on her own. you can't build on your own. And the problem we have right now is there are too many people who value the connection instead of the castle. Castle is where it's at. And if you don't have a true builder who over time is going to build, that's what a relationship is. A castle. This is why love at first sight is to me.

Doesn't work.

It's just whatever.

It takes time.

It's infatuation.

It's you.

She's hot. He's hot. You know, there's. some connection there that's based on the fact you like this and I like this. Oh my god, we're supposed to be together. This is only part of the equation. A castle becomes a castle because two people work on it and it becomes unique and ornate and there are secret passageways only the two of you know about and there's an argument that knocks down a wall and then you build it up and fortify that wall and it makes it even stronger and you know the weather over time weathers the stone on the castle in a unique way that makes it your castle. There's other castles in the world, but this one is uniquely yours. It's been built by the two of you. It's been hard won, you know? That's a relationship. That's why, you know, a 20-year relationship or marriage or 30-year relationship or marriage is special. It's because two people have had to go through shit together.

Yeah.

They've done things together. This isn't fantasy. This isn't building a castle in the sky. The idea of love. The idea of what we could be. The one-day wager. I call it the one-day wager. One day, I'm making a wager that one day you'll be what I want you to be. One day you'll invest in me the way I want you to. One day you'll change. The one day wager is the most dangerous wager you can possibly make in your love life. The real shit is what's going on now. Is someone trying? Do they want to be here? Are they focused on the little shit, not just the big shit? Because anyone can go and have a, like, people say, but when it's great, it's great. It's amazing. Yeah. When we go, like, we go, we've been on some amazing dates or, We did that vacation. We had the best time. It was amazing. Of course you were on fucking vacation. Anyone can go to Disney World and have a great time. It's Disney World.

Right?

That's the job of the place, is to make sure you have a great time no matter who you're with. Right. Right. But... You know what? When I was 13, I had a.

Like.

When I was, I think I was 12 or 13, my parents took me to America for the first time. And we came to Florida. And where do you think we went? We went to Disney World. And I was massively excited, you know, I was. I was so excited. I was excited to be in America. I was excited to see the things I'd seen on TV. Excited to see the references to movies I'd seen. excited for the rides. We go into Disney World and I learned something very interesting about myself there. This is gonna sound profound for a trip to Disney World.

13.

Yeah, I. But I realized something about myself because, of course, I go in there. It's magical. It's. Oh, my God, this is crazy. It's huge.

Taking a photo with Mickey.

Yeah.

There's Mickey there. There's all dazzling attractions. But it was something that stood out to me even more than Space Mountain, even more than the big ride. And it was the trash cans.

Oh, yeah.

On some level that maybe I couldn't fully articulate at that age, I saw the trash cans and I was moved by it. I said, Someone cared enough about this place to theme the trash cans. The trash can in Tomorrowland is a futuristic trash can. The trash can in, you know, Indiana Jones Land or whatever it's called is a tiki bamboo trash can. the trash cans were different depending on where you were.

It's amazing.

Someone cared so much about the detail of that world that they styled and themed the trash cans. It moved me. Yeah. I've never forgotten that. Wow. The trash cans in life. And I've thought about that endlessly in my business. When I do retreat, I just got back from my retreat. And, you know, someone came, I told this story on the retreat, someone came to me at the end of the retreat because of all the little details we put on the retreat, you know, the little, it's not just a seminar, an event, it's we hold parties and inside experience. It's an immersive world. It's like it's, we like to think we've created the immersive theater of the self-development world.

Mm-.

And Someone came up to me at the end of this retreat and said, you, achieved trash can status. Mmm. And it... That's big. The 13 year old in me wanted to cry.

Wow, that's amazing.

Right? And it moved me again and I thought, that's what I want. And I thought about this even today as I was coming here and I was like, you, know what? This absolutely applies to relationships too. often in a, you know, in a breakup, often when people are going through difficult times with their partner or whatever, the thing they go back to is we had that amazing trip, but we had those amazing times. They go to these highlights. They go to the Space Mountain of their relationship. Remember when we met Mickey? It's that, right? The, the meeting Mickey moment of their relationship. But relationships are about the trash cans, man. It's the trash cans. Yeah. Because guess what? In a day at Disney, you ride Space Mountain once, maybe twice. How many times do you use the trash cans?

Every day. All the time.

Every 20 minutes, every 30 minutes. It's the trash cans. And what will define your relationship? is the trash cans, not Space Mountain. The lower moments, the messy moments that are barely noticeable. The moments, the micro attractions. The moment where we do something sweet, where we think of our partner when we didn't need to, and we worry about the day they had or support them or. Even just support them silently or in private, you know, or support them by what we don't bring to them. It's that, it's the detail. It's the detail. And that's what's gonna determine how great your life is. And my concern is, and we've all been there, my concern is the number of people out there who are staying in the wrong thing because of the Space Mountain. of the relationship.

A few moments that were magical.

Or they're spending too much time grieving the loss of the wrong thing because all they remember is Space Mountain.

Interesting.

But they don't think of how shitty the trash cans were. And the trash cans, that's the stuff. That's the day to day. Yeah. How good was it day to day? This is the difference between being in love and being happy.

What is the difference between love and happiness?

You can be in love and be really unhappy.

Be suffering inside and be in love.

You can have constant being in love and be having a relationship that's causing you constant anxiety, constant heartache, constant pain, feeling overlooked, not feeling important. You can be in love and all of those things still be true. How crazy is that? We think that love is this thing where it's like, It's rational, like, I'm gonna love, I'm gonna be in love with this person who brings me joy. Not true. And we need to start worrying more about happiness, because if someone isn't building with you, if someone isn't committing to actually building the castle with you, that's the quality of your life. Yeah. Not how in love you are.

You might love certain things about them. You might have loved the date you went on. You might have loved them.

Space Mountain or certain characteristics they had.

Sex was incredible.

How charming they were, how charismatic, how whatever. It didn't, but maybe it doesn't mean that you're happy day to day. It's a big difference, right?

When do you know, I love this analogy, and it made me want to ask you about when do you know you're ready for a committed, intimate relationship? When do you know you're ready for it? As opposed to you just feel alone and you want to have someone in your life?

I guess when you're ready to build. When you're ready to build. When it's not you're going there because the fantasy of it all is exciting to you. But when you're actually ready to build. And that doesn't mean that you're not looking... See, the castle analogy is cool because When we were talking earlier about this idea of giving without expectation, well, you do expect something in a relationship, right? It's overly simplistic. We do expect things. We expect respect, loyalty defined on whatever terms loyalty means to us. Love, appreciation, all of that to be seen. We have a lot of expectations in a relationship. So it's not a relationship where we we just, we give without expectation. But that to me is where the building thing is really interesting to me because you want to work damn hard as a builder in your relationship, but you want someone else who's building too, right? That's where the expectation comes in. I'm gonna, I'm gonna work hard to build this thing and I'm gonna build it at a really high standard. I'm not gonna look at your work and go, well, if you missed out some of the grouting there, then I'm gonna, you know, like skip it on my end. No, this is my standard. I'm gonna build to a really high standard.

What if the person you've been with for a year isn't building to your standard?

That's a conversation. That's a real conversation. Like, here's what I need. Here's the kind of relationship I want to have.

When do you start to just say, well, it's okay if they do half the job that I do?

Is the job they're doing half-ass one you really need them to do well, or is it one that can be done half-ass? You know, sometimes I think there are certain things we let go in a relationship. That's where the compromise comes in. That's where the sacrifice comes in. There are certain things I'm okay with you not doing as well as I once thought I needed someone to do them. I thought this thing was really important.

It's not.

It's not that important. I love you. What are we doing? I'm not worried. It's not that big of a deal. And we've all done that. We've all seen those things that once were important to us and we let them, we say, you know what? This, I was at an age where I thought that was really important and it's no longer as important or significant as I made it. And then there are things that never stop being important or they become more important, you know, the ability to communicate well. I think as you get older, those things become more important. Yeah. The ability for someone to have genuine empathy to the, the ability for someone in, let's say, an argument to to not jump to saying a spiteful thing that's hard to then forget. Someone who doesn't try and do damage in an argument but tries to build, tries to figure out, let's figure this out together. We may both be hurt, but let's come to this in a loving way.

I really want to cover three main, I guess, distinctions or experiences that I think people are in right now during this episode in this interview. One is living with someone and being in a relationship while being quarantined. Two is being in a relationship long distance during this time. And three is looking for love but unable to put yourself out there physically and meet people in person. And I want to start with people in relationships who are in a small space or feel like they're confined or trapped and can't get out. And some people might be thriving in this time, but I'm hearing a lot of people who are dming me, and I'm sure you're getting a lot of private messages from people saying, this is not the person I thought it was that I got in a relationship or married, especially the marriages. This, you know, I feel like I can't communicate with this person. This person is grumpy every day. They're unable to open.

Up.

It was hard for them to show their emotions before. Now they won't even show anything. What do you say to people that feel like, man, I feel like this is a test, a big test for us, whether we're going to make it or break it. Should people be so quick to ending something if they can't figure out this time of adversity? Or do we give people a pass because everyone's stressed out? What's your thoughts on living with someone right now? and it's going really bad.

It's weird, isn't it? Because on, on one level, we're experiencing just more of who our partner actually is.

Right.

So just seeing, you know, we don't see that side. There's this funny twit, this funny tweet that went around, and it was some. It was from a woman. I. Sorry, I can't credit this person. I can't remember. But she said something like, you know, she heard her husband say something on the phone, like, let's Circle back. and she was like, I had no idea my husband was a let's circle back guy.

Because she'd never heard him on the phone before. He's always at work.

Yeah, and that's kind of perfect because you are seeing a dimension of your partner that you don't normally see. And that can be quite surprising for people. For some people it will be sexy because it's like all of a sudden my partner's at home and I see them on a business call and I'm like, oh, that was Kind of a turn on seeing my partner like in their element, powerful doing their thing. Other people will cringe.

I'll circle back on that, Jerry.

And then there's going to be a lot of, you know, people who just, there are sides of their partners that they find in heavy doses are quite unmanageable. And normally, They're only getting that in 30% of their day or 20% of their day. How many relationships survive because people only get each other for 20% of the day? Think about it in terms of long distance. If you look at the extreme end of the spectrum, normally, how many long-distance relationships survive? Because those two people aren't in the same place. And then the moment they come to the same city, not even perhaps to live together, but they come to move to the same city, it all falls apart. There's a line that my boxing trainer said to me once. He said, or he said, like I was talking to him about someone, he said, Are you in love with this person's presence or are you in love with their absence? And I said, Phoof, like, because some of us, we're in love, but what we're really in love with is the absent version of them. The version of them we can talk about, we can think about, the version of them we can fantasy. yeah, we could project something onto them. Are you in love with their absence or their presence? And a lot of people are finding out they're not in love with the presence of their partner. Right.

You know, the thing you're saying right here, yo-yo Ma, I think he said this quote, that music happens between the notes. And I know the power of being with your partner and separating, having space, coming back together. That's where the music happens when you've got that separation and you come back to. It's like. breath in and out. So how do you create music in your relationship if there's no in between?

You're with each other.

How do you create intimacy and distance and date nights and missing someone when you're always around?

Beautifully put, Louis. And of course, our friend Esther Perel would, you know, she has plenty to say on this too, in terms of, she always talks about desire existing in the space between people. And if there's no space, then how can desire exist? Look, there are different, there are different extremes people are going through right now. If you live in a big house with somebody and you can disappear to your side of the house and they theirs, that's that you're already in a luxurious position compared to many people. Yeah. Who are living now in a studio apartment with someone in a, you know, 600 foot studio apartment and they're, The bed is the desk and you could basically fry up your eggs from the bed. Yeah, so close. That's a tough situation to be in right now. What we're going to have to do there is engineer space, quote, there are different forms of space. There's physical space, there's emotional space, psychological space, there's all sorts of different versions of space. We're going to have to engineer space even in extremely intimate and close environments. It might be like, I think one of the most valuable devices you have right now is your headphones. I honestly think your headphones are like those you should be stocked up on at least three pairs if you live with someone in a one-bedroom flat. Because in that situation, it's not rude to go into your own world and to say, what we have to do is communicate with our partners So when we want space, but we've got to be a bit careful how we do that, because it can easily come across like, I'm sick of you, right? I want space from you. Now, there may be some truth in it, but we all have to articulate ourselves in helpful rather than hurtful ways.

So something someone could say if they know they need space, but when I say I need space, it really means I'm sick of you in this moment. What's a conversation starter that's loving, I would enough to, to queue that up.

I'd reverse engineer it. So I'd start by talking about a piece of quality time you want to spend with them. So, for example, you say to them, can we have a, like, full-on movie night tonight? Like, dinner, movie, massage, everything, like, let's. Light candles, let's turn our living room into a cinema and make it, let's.

Have a real- Surround sound.

Yeah, have a real movie night tonight. Let's lose ourselves in it and pretend we're at the movies. Or, and that could apply to anything. Let's have you and me time, like a real dinner tonight. Let's do this tonight. Whatever, whatever's your thing. Once you've agreed that time, it almost takes to the pressure off because you're communicating to someone, I'm, I'm, I want this time with you. Then you can say to someone, okay, deal. I'm gonna, like, disappear into my work for the next few hours, so that we can enjoy that time together. Or, you know, I'm gonna do this project for the next few hours. I'm gonna do this for a little while. And sometimes I think it's important to give a time period for it rather than saying like, you know, just putting your headphones in and doing that. And then you have the anxiety of, are they hot, are they hoping that I'll take my headphones out any minute? And pay them attention again or whatever, saying to them like, all right, I'm gonna focus on this for a little while and then giving them a kiss. It's almost like you are giving them a kiss to kiss them goodbye for work. Like, you know, even if you're just turning to put your headphones in, all right, I'm gonna do this for a little while. I want to get this done so we can enjoy tonight. All right, let's go. It's like you're signaling something. And then, by the way, an hour later or something, if you take a quick break for a coffee or whatever, say, reinforce it. Say to them, I am so excited about our movie night tonight. Okay, gotta go. Yeah. And then, you know, like, you're. You're making sure that you communicate. That time is really special. That I want that to be special. But then you have to honor that. You've got to. Then in the times where you. You say you're gonna show up to spend really mindful time together, you gotta then. Show up for that. I know that I've been in situations in my life where I felt when when we had too much time apart me and whatever relationship I was in I would I would feel bad or I would feel unloved or anxious not necessarily because we were apart but because I didn't even feel close when we parted so we'd wake up in the morning and that person would go off for the day or I'd go off for my day. And it's not that we were apart for the day that would really bother me. Because if we felt close first thing in the morning, I'd be like, see you later. Like, I'm excited about mine, too. But if you are starting the day from a position of not feeling close and then you part ways for the.

Day, you feel more disconnected.

Yeah. Or even more disconnected. Someone might feel anxiety that they're not loved, that they're not important, that they're not. So it compounds it. You earn the ability to take space or to go off and go into your own world by actually giving that person or sharing meaningful moments with that person before you do it.

It's not the amount of time, it's the quality of the time and the presence of your quality of time. That I find, which is most powerful, at least in my relationship, where I may only have a half hour to an hour of time a day, certain days, maybe right now, but my phone is not anywhere near me. I am looking in her eyes the whole time. I'm engaged asking questions. How's your mom? How's your family? How's this? What can I do for you? Can we play a game right now? Can we do something fun? Can we dance a little? It's the presence to the quality of time. And I'm sure the more time you have better, but it's got to be quality time from my personal experience. Are you finding that that's what But I guess women and men want as well when you're coaching people.

Oh, these issues go both ways. Yeah. You know, men can have the same insecurities as women can in these situations. And it comes down to which partner might feel busier, which one has got more to do right now. It could be like, it's a tough situation if one person in a relationship right now and they're living under the same roof feels like they've got tons to do and tons of purpose and tons, you know, like I can lose myself in my mission what I'm doing right now on their partner.

And be fine. And your partner has lost a job or lost this or.

Right. Or I haven't figured out what my thing is yet. I don't know what, you know, you have your mission. I don't know what, like, what I'm saying.

What do I do?

I'm waiting for you to come home every day. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

I'm sitting here picking random hobbies out of thin air because I feel like everyone keeps telling me now's the time.

To learn a hobby. So I'm like, should I learn guitar? Should I.

Right. Or.

Or worse. I'm on social media watching everyone else's perfect relationship and everyone else thriving and I feel less than.

Yeah, exactly. And that, by the way, that's really, we've got to be really careful of that right now. We're used to comparing ourselves to others on social media through the lens of, you know, we're seeing their highlight reel of their life, you know, oh, they're traveling now, look at them sitting on a beach on the cocktail, look at them doing this skydive, look at, we're seeing the highlight reel of their life. I think now we're seeing the highlight real of people's emotions. So in quarantine, people don't have that life, right? We've not got all of these activities that we could be doing, but we're all of a sudden seeing that moment where someone's just finished their yoga workout and they post and they're like, you know, I'm, you know, I got this quarantine, just did my yoga, blah, blah, blah.

And you're like, on the day.

Exactly. But exactly. But you're not seeing like Matthew Hussey in the moment where he's like super grumpy and like irritable and just like today is not, this is not my day and I'm not feeling it today and I don't want to make a video today and I've made a point of saying things like that out loud because I think it's important that people get the full spectrum of what other people are going through because guess what? Other people are going to dark places. Other people are having their freakouts. Other people are having those moments of depression or deep melancholy. People are having those, but it's not necessarily the things that they're posting about, especially in the worlds that we operate in, Louis, where there's a hell of a lot of people wanting to show how well they're doing under circumstances, how positive they're being and so on.

What's the biggest mistake people find today when trying to find their love or find someone that they, you know, their soulmate?

Oh my god.

What's the biggest mistake? Is it being yourself?

I think there's something of a sense of entitlement that most of us have, or that most people have when they're going out to date where they somehow feel like they're just owed the love of their life, that it shouldn't be difficult, that, that they don't have to do anything, that it's enough that they are just them. You know, it's the, you know that there's, I don't know if you've ever seen Bridget Jones, but there's a, there's a line in Bridget Jones where, forget his name, Colin Firth, I think it is. He's, he's looking at Bridget and he's, I think he says, I love exactly how you are. I love you. Like, no changes, nothing. I. I love you exactly how you are. And it. Sometimes we feel like we're owed that, and it kind of becomes an excuse again. Not lazy to grow, not to, you know, I. I don't. Frankly, I. It doesn't really matter what you think you're owed in love. Yeah, no one cares.

I think it's the same thing with work and so many people are entitled and they think they should just get a job. Yeah.

And so the biggest criticism I get all the time, which I'm happy with as a criticism of my advice, is, well, why do you need to do all of this stuff? Why can't you just, you know, go through life and, you know, when the time is right, you'll know. Why do you have to do all of these techniques? I'm happy with that criticism. If you, if you, if that's what you think, you're not my audience. because my audience are the same people that go to a business seminar to make more money. They're the same people that say, you know what? If I want to start a business, I might actually need to know what the hell I'm doing. It's not enough to have confidence in life. You have to have competence.

Yeah.

You have to actually know what you're doing. And, and that's what a lot of people don't know in their love lives. If you, for example, there's, there's something I come, I came to understand. I was, I remember once having a breakup. It was the most painful breakup I've ever had. I was really, really in a bad way over it. And a while later, I spoke to this woman on the phone and I had said to her in a brave moment on the phone, I said, why did you want to break up? Because by the way, you talked to.

The one you were dating?

Yeah, the one that had- Later on the phone. Later, like a year or two later. It was less raw.

I was feeling a little more.

How long was the relationship for?

A couple of years.

Okay, wow.

And.

And I was, I was pretty caught up about it. Now, the funny thing was, to make a long story short, she had actually done something I didn't like and that I thought was inappropriate and disrespectful. And I remember going to her the next day and saying, I think we need to break up.

During the relationship, she did this.

Yeah. Yeah.

And, she then said to me, okay. That was when I knew she was breaking up with me. It wasn't, it wasn't, you know, when you, you think you're breaking up with them.

No, she was already doing it.

She was breaking up with me. And it was, what was so painful about it is that she was, she didn't mind. I thought she might get upset. I thought, no, she didn't mind. And that was the most painful part about it. And I, you, should even fake it.

You know, most women would fake it. I can't believe this, but they're really, I know.

I know she looked like she was okay. This is a good decision. So I, So I remember a while later we were on the phone and we became friends today. We're very good friends in fact. And I had said to her on the phone, why did we break up? I said, what was it for you that I wasn't doing? And I braced myself for the answer. She said, Do you really want to know?

Honest feedback.

And I said, I literally thought to myself, Wait, do I really want to know? And I said, I gritted my teeth and I went, yeah, I want to know. She said, you, were boring. And, wow. It was so much worse than I thought it would be. Do you know what I mean? Like, not just like, oh, well, you know, it was just I was young and I was then, you know, wanting to be free. No, you were boring. It was really cutting. And I remember resisting the urge to bite back. And I said, that wasn't boring. Yeah, exactly. I said, no, you're shut up, idiot. You asked the question. So now, listen. So I said, why was I boring? She said, you. She said, when I first met you, you were the most ambitious person I'd ever met. And she's, I never met someone with such an ability to decide they want something and then get it. And she said it was so sexy. She said, but as we went into our relationship, the more time went on, the more that was all you were. you were super ambitious. You knew how to get what you want, but it. You were so one-dimensional you know, it was all you did. Even in our free time, you were just. You were on the phone, you were on your laptop, you would talk about your business, you were always talking shop. There was never anything else you had to talk about. We didn't do anything spontaneous. We never went and had Adventures. It was just all one track. And she said it got boring.

Yeah. I said, wow, it's.

She was right. She was right. There was nothing I could argue with. And I realized something in that moment. The thing that makes that one quality can make you really attractive, right? But it won't keep someone.

Can make you get the person.

Right.

It can make you sexy. It can make you intriguing, mysterious.

Right.

But it can even for a time make someone worship or idolize you. One quality, but one quality will not hold someone because the reality was there was a flip side to ambition which would have made it eminently more attractive. And there are a few, right? If you pair ambition, say, with an ability to enjoy life, now that person is really sexy. You combine ambition with a sense of spontaneity. adventure, for example. Very, very sexy.

Yes.

Ambition on its own is when you look at it from afar, very, very attractive. You go, women will say, I want an ambitious man.

I like that.

But when they get up close, if it's only one side to a coin, it quickly becomes unattractive. The, someone I'm a big fan of, or unfortunately, has passed, but Christopher Hitchens, he, he once said about love, the, the challenges in not allowing your strengths to negate themselves.

Wow.

And that's a very powerful statement because my ambition was my greatest strength that also had the ability to be the thing that crippled me. Because what happens is when you get good at something and you get validation from it, you keep doing it and.

Get better at it.

And it becomes if you're not careful, a muscle that you that you train to the point of mutation.

Mm-.

And then every other part of you is not working, is atrophied. So now you have a complete imbalance. It's like, you know, I remember working out at the gym once in my trainer, I was doing pull-ups and was trying to work out my back. My back was fine, I could keep going. And then all of a sudden, my forearms gave up while I was trying to pull myself up. And I said, this is so annoying. We're trying to work my back, but my back's fine, but my forearms have given up. He said, you,'re only as strong as your weakest link. if your, if your forearms aren't, aren't there, you're not gonna be able to train your back as well as you could. Yeah. So, so here's the, the point about this, which I find very interesting about dating, to your point of what's the biggest mistake people make? Apart from, of course, the entitlement, it's over Reliance on a key strength that they have come to rely on as their source. validation, success, confidence. Right. Over reliance on that. I had come to over rely on essentially being ahead of the curve for my age.

Yeah.

That was like the thing that I was always based my confidence on was I am way ahead of the curve for people my age.

My business is going great.

Correct. The people I grew up with in my age group are not where I am.

Still living at home. But guess what?

That alone is boring. It's boring and it doesn't make an interesting, rounded, sexy person. But when you combine it with something else, it becomes what I call unique pairing. It's a bit like if I wanted to really get a woman attracted tonight, not me, but like send a guy out to get a woman attracted, I could literally, if he went in and he was a little cocky and teasing, but in the right way, not arrogant, obnoxious, but just he knew how to play with her. and then a couple of hours in later, you know, maybe it's getting late. He comes out of the restroom and after being teasing and playful and silly, he says, you know what? It's getting late. I called you a car. I don't want you walking outside. And he says, I have to go as well. I have to get up early. He takes her outside. He gives her a little kiss. He says, all jokes aside, I've had the best night. with you tonight. I'll call you later this week. Puts her in the car, car drives away. That woman will be going, oh, crap. I like this guy. Now, the reason wasn't because he was a gentleman. And it wasn't because he was cocky and teasing. It was because he was both. Yeah, it's the.

And if he does just one thing, it's not interesting enough because you can.

Replace the cocky guy like that.

Yes.

Women know that.

Yes.

They can go out tonight and meet a cocky guy in Hollywood any night of the week. They can go out the next, they don't even have to go out the next night. They can turn to their left and meet another one straight away. By the way, even though people complain about chivalry is dead, you can go out and meet a gentleman. You can go out and meet lots of nice guys. That's all they are.

Right.

Incredibly boring. Women will never, they don't hold a woman.

Right?

So, but now you find like what seems to be a good man, but with an edge. That's a unique pairing.

Yes.

And that's someone that becomes not an attraction but an addiction.

Ooh.

And there's a big, big difference. So I believe that we will actually, I believe these pairings already exist within us, but we've overtrained certain muscles. We've overtrained certain qualities that we've gotten used to as habit. For some people it's being funny. For other people it's being intellectual and they're the person that knows everything about everything. They've read every book. They can always quote so and so for others it's being seductive. That's the thing they got really good at. So they're really good at, you know, getting someone into bed or getting someone sexually attracted, but they're never the person you want to eat pizza with the next day. You know, so it's like it's finding those combinations that make you go, oh my God, the person I was with last night, they were this and they were this. It's the and the and is where.

I wonder what else they could do.

Exactly.

And you and by the way, that's what makes makes it so hard. I say this to everybody. If you want to know why you found it so hard to get over a certain ex, look for the unique pairing.

Because they had multiple things.

There was some unique pairing that made you feel like they were difficult to replace. Oh, and that's what scares us. The more unique pairings you have, the more you become a rare bird in the dating marketplace. Right. And when you become rare, people get really terrified of losing you. And that's always the case. Whenever you think of someone you've lost and you think, like, your heart aches for having lost them.

Like, months and months.

Yeah, you, it's because you go, it's not because you go, they were good in bed. It's because you go, they were good in bed and they made me laugh. Like, like, I never find that. I'm so nice to my parents. And I took them home and she was a sweetheart to my, like, this, there's those moments where you go, God, I can't find this person again. And that terrifies you. So again, to be more positive about it, Be the person that has the unique pairings that other people are terrified of losing.

Yeah.

You know, I like this because I feel like, well, I don't feel like, but the statistics show that the divorce rate is up higher than ever right now, right? Isn't it something like 50%?

I don't know if you hear these numbers. I hear 50% banded around. How accurate it is, I don't know.

But it seems like people are getting married multiple times. and they're easy to get out of relationships. They're, you know, and I'll speak for myself, and I am a lot of fears about long-term commitments. You know, most of my relationships are a year, maybe longer, but usually about a year. And then I'm like either bored or I get scared because I have my own walls and I still get to grow and learn. I'm curious, why do you think so many people Bail in relationships? And why do you think so many people are getting divorced more than ever now?

Oh man, that's a big question.

I.

Well, there are, I think there are a number of things. I can have a stab at this. I think firstly, there is less of a stigma now than there has ever been about divorce.

It's okay now, right?

Right.

Not, you know, and it is certainly there are parts of the world where it's not, and there are certain religions and cultures where it's not, But certainly less than ever.

Let's speak in America at least. Right.

There's less of a stigma about divorce. We don't feel like complete failures in the same way that we might once have. Or we wouldn't have, there would have been a time where we would have been outcast from society for it. So there's that. I think there's also a greater sense of entitlement these days where people feel like they're owed, you know, marriage is, you've met the right person, so it's supposed to all feel great. And when it doesn't feel great and when it's not all working, there must be something wrong with this person. Not with me, not with the amount of effort I'm investing into this relationship. There must be something wrong with this person. Ah, it turns out they're not the one after all. I thought they were, but they're not. The search continues.

So.

So the entitlement has people believing that it. It shouldn't be effort. And that's a very dangerous way to think of relationships. If you really want to see who someone is in their relationship, talk to them about sex and passion and desire in their long-term relationship and you'll get some very heated answers because some people will say it's absolutely paramount. You have to maintain that passion. You have to find new ways to excite each other. Me and my partner, we're always searching searching. We're always exploring each other. We're always trying to figure out, like, what's going to turn you on tomorrow? What's the, like, how, how do I, how do I do something that's, that you didn't predict? Or how do I get you to know me a little less so that you get desire again? You know, whatever it is, other people, and I've had hosts on TV, get very, very uptight and, and, and upset over this issue, and it's usually they're overplaying their hand when they do. They'll say, well, Matt, it's different when you're in a marriage, when you're, when you have kids, when you're in those situations, it's different, right? You, you don't, you, you can't just think of it like that. You don't, Matt, think other things become more important. And, and I always know who they are in their relationship when those things happen because it, people, I think, don't go into relationships with a healthy view of what is required over the long.

Term and what is required.

Well, there's a woman who is a great authority on this called Esther Perel, and she talks about the difference between love and desire. And I'm a big fan of her work, and I think she articulates it very, very well that in relationships you have to have both love and desire. Love isn't enough. Love is the thing that makes me want to get close to you when I feel things for you. I want to know your mind. I want to know everything there is to know about you. I want to know what your thinking. I want to know what you're doing tonight. I want to know who your friends are. I want to become friends with them. I want to get close to your mom. I want like all these things. That's love. The desire to almost become merged. But desire exists in the space between two people. So you feel desire when there's a void and when there's some mystery and when you're still getting to know someone. So desire, ironically, is the thing that ends up creating love because desire is like, I want to get close to you because I don't have you. And then when I get close, we feel feelings of love but not desire now.

Right.

So how do you keep that for years and years? And that's a great question. And it's a big one. I think there are many answers and I think they change depending on the couple.

So you've got to see what you're saying first before you answer is you've got to have both love and desire throughout the relationship. In order for it to be a successful one, let's say.

Yeah. In order to maintain, in order to satisfy your needs along the way. Because the, I think many people get divorced because, not because there's a lack of love. I mean, sometimes that's true, you know? Sometimes it's true that two people don't give each other enough love. They don't act as a team. And there are problems with that. Right. But it's the fact that people spend.

Too much time together.

It's because of lack of love. A lot of people, it's because of lack of desire. that lead that create, you know, these weird moments in relationships where sometimes people cheat or they, maybe it's not going as far as cheating, but they realize that they're having all of these thoughts that they're not proud of. Maybe they just have to leave because they think there's something wrong with them because they're bored. You know, I got a question on the Today Show recently. I mean, I mean, it was on the Today Show recently. I mean, Kathy Lee, you know, got heated over this issue because You know, there was a guy on there whose question was, my kids have just gone off to university. How do, you know, we're now basically what he was saying is the kids have all left. So now it's just me and my wife. So how do me and my wife now keep it fresh? And there's a great quote by Proust when he says, I think it's the journey of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in seeing with new eyes. It's very interesting when applied to a relationship.

Because you're not seeing a new landscape, you're seeing the same landscape over and over and over every moment.

So you better get good at seeing with new eyes. Right now, the landscape, of course, can the landscape can change because that person, their job is to be to make themselves less predictable. And you don't do that by, like, Playing hard to get with your partner necessarily. But what you do is you you grow you develop new skills you learn new things and you develop yourself in ways that keep your partner guessing about you because they're like oh my god I have to keep up. Yes, I have to keep up with this because they keep evolving. Yes, and that in itself you can start to desire your partner more because you feel like you know them a little less not because they're now hiding things from you but because They're developing and when someone develops and grows, you're like, oh my god, I don't know this side of you. I need to learn it and it sparks attraction again. So there's that whole thing. But I said to this guy, you know, I said, I know everyone's gonna tell you, now your kids have gone off to university, now you have all this time to spend together. I said, but the problem is you're gonna have nothing to talk about. Because you've said it all.

You've said it all and you've been.

Together this whole time. There's nothing new to talk about. I said, I'm gonna give you a kind of strange piece of advice. advice. I think you should use this time to spend some time apart. Wow. Like, go, like, she go on holiday and you go on holiday and then come back and tell each other about it. You know, do have, have that some space so that when you come back together, there's a little mystery to it. You know that this won't, it will be scary. And this is, this is why people get very emotional about this and they get upset because they're like, what do you mean, get to know my husband less? What do you mean? like spend time apart. We are supposed to be like this the whole time. But what they don't realize is A, you never know your partner as well as you think you do. So the idea that you're like this and you know everything about them is a complete illusion. And secondly, you doing that is death to the relationship. So if you really care and if you really are a team, you'll be able to trust each other, but you'll be able to give each other space to create that desire again.

Otherwise you're suffocating each other.

Yeah, absolutely. So again, I think that's another thing that people don't anticipate when they're in the feelings of love and desire all mixed together early on and they decide to get married, they don't anticipate that over the long term. And I think many of us are out there making promises that we cannot keep.

But what do you think of the 3 or 5 components to a foundation of a relationship that has the potential to really thrive long term? Committed for decades? What are like... It needs to have these 3 or these 5 things. Otherwise, it's going to be really challenging to be to sustain this type of love and joy and happiness.

I mean a couple of Simple ones, I guess, are I need to, I need to show up for my partner in ways that they need me to, not just ways that are comfortable to me. In other words, pay attention to what your partner actually needs. Because it's really easy to say, you know, I'm gonna bring them lunch every day. that's. That's like, I. I'm a really good cook, and I'm really, you know, I want to slave away every morning to bring them lunch every day because, you know, that's me giving. Maybe they don't care. They don't care. Bring you lunch every day. Like, maybe they don't care. Maybe what would mean the most to them is you. Them getting home and you really being.

Interested in their day. Do you think love languages is an important part of this where it's like understanding someone's love language and giving them. their top priorities?

I think it's an interesting framework and it's been for a lot of people a very successful framework. I think any framework that just allows you to kind of, you know, create a little structure for things that gives you some simplicity around it can be valuable.

Sure.

You know, it doesn't mean it's the only framework you can apply, but it's a valuable model to work from.

So it's showing up in ways that.

You'Re not what do I want to give? But what do they actually need?

I think that's a lot of conflict in relationships because I think you need to understand, do I want to do something that's uncomfortable every day that's not foreign to me or that's foreign to me? Or do I want to find a partner that enjoys the things that I like to give?

Well, that's an interesting question.

I might be attracted to you.

Any relationship is going to be a bit of both, but sometimes it works. even without like that's a kind of compatibility issue. I think it even works outside of that in day-to-day stuff because you might say the thing I want to give to my partner is an awesome, you know, night together. But maybe what they need is an awesome night with their friends. And maybe the most loving thing you can do is say, hey, I know you haven't seen this person in a while. You should go and see them. I know that relationship is important to you. You should go and hang out with your mum tonight. Recognizing not what's easy for me to give, but what might be less comfortable for me to give, but is actually what would mean the world to them. And I think if you really want to make yourself irreplaceable to someone, it's recognizing that. Because no one else is going to do that for them. I mean, you know what I mean? It's some maybe, but it's really rare to find someone who who is willing to do that for you.

Okay, so that's number one.

The key thing is to work on yourself.

Yep.

And to say, I'm responsible for me. My partner isn't responsible for me. I need to do the work to be the most loving, confident person I can be in this world.

What are those?

Fulfilled, has their own purpose, has things that drive them. to me is very, very important. If...

What's the first thing people should do to do work on themselves? Because you threw a few things out there, but what's like...

I mean, firstly, do you have... Maybe here's an interesting question you can ask yourself. If I had 10 hours free right now, what would I do with them?

Interesting.

If you can't give a good answer to that question, you might already be describing one of the weaknesses of your relationship.

And binge watching a series is not the best use of your time.

It's, you know, that if the answer is, oh my god, well I have my purpose, the thing I love getting stuck into, or it doesn't even have to be some grand purpose. Not everyone has found like their life's calling, but it could be, I really want to learn this language, or I really want to see this friend, or I really want to go and, you know, whatever it is, read this book or learn take care of my health. Yeah, I can't wait to get to the gym. If you should be able to answer the question of my partner canceled on me today, what would I do with that day now? And if you can't that then you begin to describe the person who's sitting there waiting for their partner to text them, waiting for their partner to make them feel good enough.

That's not attractive.

It's not and it's not fair to our partners.

It's a lot of pressure.

It's a lot of pressure. And by the way, people put a lot of pressure on their partners by expecting their partner to put a band-aid on all sorts of things for them. You know, if they're feeling like there's a lot of rhetoric about vulnerability right now. Now, I think vulnerability is huge. I think the work that people like Brené Brown are doing and so on is huge. It's massively important. Vulnerability is absolutely an act of courage and we should encourage it more. both sexes all the time. But his vulnerability is something's making me insecure and I'm going to share it with you because you're my partner and I love you and I tell you things, right?

But you don't want to hear it every day.

Vulnerability if an hour from now I tell you, oh, God, I'm feeling insecure again. And then an hour from now, that thing's affecting me again. and this tonight, because now in a way what we're doing is instead of sharing, we're dumping. I'm asking you now to fix it for me, to put a band-aid on it for me.

Make it feel better, yeah.

Of course, it's part of our part, a loving partner will support you and will do everything in their power to make you feel loved and to make you feel safe and to make you feel secure. and it's absolutely true that sometimes what we're feeling as insecurity is because our partner isn't doing their job in those things. That's true.

They're not building.

They're not building. They're doing things that are proactively making us feel insecure. There's minor betrayals, minor neglects, all of that. But sometimes we have to say, okay, what part of this am I responsible for? And it's my It's my partner's responsibility. It's our responsibility in life together to share the load, to work towards things together. But it's not your job to carry the load for me. To carry my problems, to put the band-aid on every day.

I need to... Maybe once in a blue moon.

Yeah. Of course, of course. And we're all gonna do that. We're all gonna have days, weeks, times where we're going through something really serious and our partner's job is to show up.

Yeah.

You know, but a friend of mine who's kind of blunt said to me, some days or weeks you get to be needy and difficult and high maintenance and boring and, you know, insecure and then you don't. And I thought, yeah, like we get to be those things for a time. until we don't, until it gets too much for somebody else. Because we need to be, at the very least, we need to show our partner we're committed to our own growth. Yeah. So the, you know, the first one, what did we have? Show up in ways they need, not just ways you want to show up. The second one's work on yourself.

Yep.

I think, I guess the third one It... To me, teamwork is everything. Like being a genuine team is huge. Really looking at each other as teammates as opposed to you're there to meet my needs or I'm competing with you in some way.

Man, I've done that before.

Like we're an actual team. I saw, you know, one of the things I loved most about Chris Rock recent stand-up, Tambourine.

I haven't seen it yet.

Such a genius name. The whole concept is, you know, about the idea that he couldn't in his last marriage play the tambourine. He couldn't play the backup instrument, right? Right. And I thought it was such a great, great metaphor because in a good relationship, in a really genuinely mutually supportive relationship. Some days you play tambourine, some days you're their teammate. You can't, you know, the way he says it, her success is your success and vice versa. You're in this together. And some days that person's the lead and you're on tambourine and a lot of people have never learned how to play tambourine. There's the other thing, I don't remember where it comes from, but every relationship has a flower and a gardener, right? Most people don't want to be in a relationship where they're always the gardener.

They want to be the flower.

Never the flower, right?

Blooming all the time.

Yes, and sometimes you have to be the gardener, no matter how long you've played the flower. Right, right. You and I have played flowers a lot in our lives, right? We've been used to being a certain you know, having a leader role and having these kind of big lives and big worlds and whatever. And then you go to a relationship and the relationship doesn't give a fuck. You know what I mean?

What about you?

No.

Yeah.

I don't care that you're the flower. You know that you're the flower out there in the world. Sometimes in our relationship, you have to be the gardener. Sometimes you've got to play tambourine, even if to everyone else, you are the. The constant flower. yeah, right. Movie reference.

Constant Gardener. Well, you can't.

You can't be the constant flower, right? You can't. You might be in your business in some way, but the relationship is different. You can't. Now you're coming as two equals. And so it's so much of it's checking your own damn ego and being like, I'm in this to. To be with you as a teammate, not this or this. This. This.

When do you know you found your match for life or your potential match for life or you think this could be the match?

By the way, these are much harder.

Questions than the first interview we did.

You know, is it when you see these three things after a period of time and you feel convinced that the bricks are being laid equally in a certain way?

Yeah.

When you say, I'm ready to be committed all in.

I think there are four stages to a relationship.

Okay, stage one.

Stage one is admiration. That's when you don't have a relationship with this person.

You admire, like, I look at you.

And I'm like, this person's hot, they have something about them, I like their qualities, I like their energy.

They have a good potential.

Yeah.

Okay.

And by the way, that doesn't even mean they have good potential for you right now. It just means this is a person of high potential in some way.

You admire them, yeah.

The second stage is connection. And you could, I think in a sense, connection and chemistry are both relevant to this stage. Because you have this person where there's a mutual like, I like things about you, you like things about me, I think you're attractive, you think I'm attractive. We share some common ideas, common grounds in life, our outlook, whatever.

Beliefs.

Yeah. Yeah. That could be found on a great date. Right. Doesn't really mean much. Still. This is the plot of land. Yeah.

You can have great sex. There'd be chemistry. You can make out all night.

None of this means you're gonna have a great relationship.

Okay.

The third stage is commitment that says, I want to do this with you. I am committed. building with you and you are committed to building with me. That's a really great stage to be at. It's very important. You can't have a relationship without that. Any relationship without that or that's one-sided is unrequired love by definition. There are a ton of people out there right now who say, I'm just, you know, I created a program recently called Attraction to commitment, which literally dealt with why people keep getting stuck in limbo. Yeah. Why they keep getting stuck in the casual phases and it never gets to a relationship. One of the things that fascinates me is how long we stay with something that's just casual that isn't a real relationship on the hope that it will change. Unrequired love, you know, certainly unrequired commitment.

Yeah, it's a nice time when you're like 23, right? Right.

That's stage three. Stage four is compatibility. And the hard thing I think for a lot of people is I used to question this one myself. Like if you know the idea love conquers all, right?

It doesn't. It does not.

I wish. I like it. I like that phrase.

It's an amazing.

I love the phrase. I love the sentiment of it.

Amazing bumper sticker, you know?

And there's nothing, you know, what is more powerful in the world than love.

And all you need is love.

Yeah, apparently not. We need a little more. You can have love without commitment, right?

And.

You can have commitment without compatibility.

Interesting.

And this is where things get, I used to think, well, maybe commitment is enough and maybe Issues with compatibility can be overcome as long as two people are truly committed to each other. I don't believe that anymore. I think that it goes beyond commitment to truly last. You have to have two people who are really compatible. Like, okay, let's say we got commitment. Two people want to be together.

They admire each other. They have chemistry.

Right.

They say, I'm committed to you.

But one person's sex drive is here, and the other ones is here.

Not compatible.

This is going to be difficult.

One person likes to spend a lot of money, another person wants to save all the money. One person believes in a certain religion, another person doesn't believe in that.

One person wants to spend five days a week together, the other person is happy with one night a week together.

One person wants their family to move in, the other person wants their space.

These are serious, serious issues. that often end relationships. And so to me, you want to say, how do you know when you found your match?

All four.

Four stages. All four. I admire this person. We have connection and chemistry. We have genuine mutual commitment. And we're compatible. Yeah. really curious about how people can start to see that, okay, it might not be your fault that you're not meeting a lot of people, because it's not just tied into your dating life, it's tied into everything. How hard you're working or how much exhaustion you experience working, you would never imagine actually has a tremendous impact on your ability and your dating life. in your ability to flirt, in your ability to go and take on new activities.

Because you don't have the energy.

No, you don't.

Now you have the creative energy to go out and say, okay, I'm gonna approach this person online and do a special FaceTime.

That's that.

And then do something creative.

The irony is right now people have more energy to date, but it's harder to date because they're high. John Kay wrote this book called obliquity about how results are achieved indirectly. So if you want to get rich, don't focus on making money. Focus on all the things that provide a valuable service, that add something to the world, that give you time to think. And that's what makes you, quote, rich financially. It's not focusing on getting rich. And the same is true of our dating lives. It's all of those things that we don't even associate with our dating lives that have a tremendous impact on our dating lives, whether it's you know, reading books and now you have something to talk about on a date. Who would know that reading Bertrand Russell's essay on Empraise of Idleness would have an impact on how interesting you are on a date? Well, it does because now you can have, this is a date, right? We're on a date, we're having a conversation, we've got plenty to talk about.

Because I read a book this week. Because I'm making myself more interesting by.

Learning, by practicing something. And who would think that reducing your workload or that saying no to more is going to have an impact on whether you meet the love of your life? not through any direct reason, but indirectly because saying no to more means you have more energy, which means you have more time for active leisure, which means you're putting yourself in more situations where you might meet someone. You do join that running club. You do go to that evening lecture. You do join that cooking course where you just happen to meet someone.

Yeah, I think Tony Robbins was the one who said this, that the key to a successful relationship is creativity and caring. And it's the amount of your creativity and the amount of your caring towards someone else and focusing on them, their needs, being creative towards it. And hopefully that will be reciprocated so that they're caring and creative with your needs and your attention and your time. It's the ability to do both. And if you are not, if you're caring, but you're not creative, you're eventually going to lose that spark, energy, intimacy, desire. It takes both. And, and you're the expert. So I don't know if it takes more than that as well, but obviously, I think you've got to be creative when you're trying to find some of the data. If you're not creative, why would they date you just on how you look?

No. One of the most valuable things I did this year was to go with you to Poland, which you very kindly invited me to, to be part of that little Tribe. And it was one of the most valuable things, not for the obvious reasons that people would think that, look, you're overcoming something tremendously difficult by doing this immersion work in the cold, in the ice and snow. It was one of the most valuable things I did, because at the beginning of the year, instead of racing into my work, instead of racing into all of these, the treadmill of another year, I, we took a week, put the phones away, and we just had time to think, to talk, to listen to other people with other businesses, with other points of view, and to do something that was different to anything I would normally do. That sparks creativity like nothing else. And one of the reasons that we get stuck in business is because all we do is our business. Yeah. One of the reasons we get stuck in our relationship is because we're not doing anything new. We're not actually, we're not, it's not like you need to shake things up. No, it's not about shaking things up. It's just about giving yourself like something, something new to engage a part of your brain that you don't normally engage. It's why a couple that decides to like go dancing for the night who normally would think that's embarrassing and awkward and wouldn't normally do it, find that it changes something. It changes something in the relationship for a couple of days. We don't give ourselves new things to think about enough. And we're traversing between business and love and everything here, but I think your audience, I know they love that, as I do as well. I, for many years, Louis, I was in, you know, I would say no to many, many things outside of the direct scope of my company because I would see that as me being laser focused on growing this thing that I really cared about. And I would see anything else that wasn't to do with that as a distraction. I had a very utilitarian approach. And meanwhile, I've seen my brothers painting and cooking and doing, you know, doing other things like writing. And they would explore other interests. And I, it's not that I, I didn't for one second look down on that. I just thought, oh, I, but I need to focus myself a thousand percent on this. If I'm gonna get to where I want to be, I've come to look at that as Focus is a, is a strength, but it can also be a weakness because It stops you from doing other things that would actually give you a different level of creativity in that core thing that's really interesting to you. And if you never do anything outside the scope of what you do, you're gonna find quickly you don't have a lot to say. And that's a problem. Sometimes you have to do something new. It doesn't even matter what it is necessarily. It just matters that it takes your brain to a different train of thought, a different idea, a different moment. I had a hamster when I was a kid and my dad once, I used to keep his cage all neat and tidy, right? And it was the only pet I had. I think I was like nine years old or something. It was the only pet I had because my dad was allergic to everything else. And I had this hamster, I used to keep his cage really tidy. And my dad, one day I come home from school and the hamster wheel was just just turned on its side and the hamster's just standing there staring at it. And I looked over at my dad and I was like, why is his wheel like that? I was kind of annoyed. I was like, that's his wheel. He's supposed to run on it. Why is it on its side? And my dad said, oh, I turned it up. I turned it on its side. Why? Why'd you do that? He goes, Give him something to think about. And I thought, he goes, he literally said, he's in his cage. My dad doesn't like any kind, I today feel the same way, but even back then, my dad was like, why is he in a cage? Why do we have these things in cages or whatever? My dad said, he's in his cage all day. He has nothing else to do. It's the same wheel, same thing, same f***. Everything's the same. I gave him something to think about today. I, at the time, I didn't get it. I look back down and I laugh, but it's, we're not like sometimes we're so used to getting our house exactly the way we know it all the time and having the wheel just turning the same way. Sometimes turning the wheel on its side and giving yourself something else to think about is one of the most valuable things you could do for your life, for your relationship, for your mental health, for your creativity, for everything.

And if you enjoyed this video, make sure to click the like button below, subscribe and turn on that notification bell. And if you want to learn more about mastering relationships, then make sure to check out this video right here.

I was in a relationship in which.

When I did one thing bad, it was so overblown and I felt like.

Everything else was being disregarded.

That's a sign of a distressed relationship.