In this video Matthew Hussey introduces a four‑level framework for evaluating romantic dynamics and explains why many people chase the wrong thing. Level 1 – Admiration – is a prerequisite, a distant appreciation that does not constitute a relationship. Level 2 – Mutual Attraction – is also a prerequisite but is often over‑valued; Hussey likens it to fireworks, a brief, hopeful burst of impact that can trap people in a ‘hope‑fuelled’ cycle. He warns against mistaking impact for character and stresses that the hope attached to mutual attraction can create unnecessary grief. Level 3 – Commitment – is the point where two people say “yes” to each other, which many perceive as rare because they spend too much time at level 2. He introduces the “investment gap” – the mismatch in early‑dating effort – and offers a free “Casual to Committed” training to bridge it. Level 4 – Compatibility – goes beyond saying yes; it requires aligned life visions, morals, and the ability to resolve surface incompatibilities through values such as curiosity, teamwork, empathy, compassion, and generosity. Hussey also discusses grief, distinguishing mourning the loss of an illusion (the fireworks) from mourning the loss of a true partner, citing grief expert David Kessler. Throughout, he uses vivid analogies (Pandora’s box, fireworks, New Year’s Eve) and practical advice, concluding that when all four levels are met, a relationship becomes truly worth cherishing.
One of the big reasons why people struggle to find love is that we're constantly chasing the wrong things. And so I put together this four levels model to help us understand whether we're chasing the right things or the wrong things. The first level of importance in any dynamic with a person is admiration, which is to say, by the way, this isn't really important. It's a prerequisite for a successful relationship, but it's not important on its own because admiration is just. You can see someone across the hall and think they're gorgeous or charismatic or interesting or intriguing or there's something about them and that's. You, like, have this kind of, like, distant admiration for them or I want to get to know that person better. I'd like to ask that person out on its own. It doesn't mean anything. By the way, like, so many unrequited love stories are written about people who longed for someone who didn't know they existed. Right? That's just admiration. And it's a story, by the way, we've built up in our head about how important someone is. How can they be that important? You can think they're impressive, but how can they be that important? The person who's important is the person who you know is a great partner to you. That's important. That's someone that you're. It's justifiable to be afraid to lose someone who's an amazing partner to you. But someone who's not even your partner, how can that be important? It's just a feeling. So admiration is level one, not important. Level two is mutual attraction also not that important, really. It's a prerequisite. You don't want to be in any relationship where there's not mutual attraction, but on its own, right? Not important. My inbox is littered with people writing to me about a situation where there has been mutual attraction, but it's not going anywhere. And so this is where you have chemistry or a connection, or you both like each other, or you've, at the very least, you've both shown that you're attracted to each other. And people get very hung up on mutual attraction. Like, that was the thing, you know? And why do we get hung up on it? Because A, we're afraid we're never going to find it and that we're not going to find love or we're not going to find love in time. And B, because we feel like mutual attraction is hard to find. A lot of us, a lot of people rarely like someone. And so when they like Someone and that person seems to like them back or show them some interest, it feels like the most important thing in the world. So now when I feel like there's the hope of something, that's a really, there's a. In the story of Pandora, when she opens the box and all of these afflictions fly out. You know, disease and fear and hunger and shame and all of these different horrible afflictions fly out. She closes the box because she's horrified. And the only thing that doesn't escape from the box is hope. And there is this interesting idea that hope that there was almost. There's a. I think it was Nietzsche had this idea that the fact that hope didn't get out was actually the one bit of grace. Because hope is the worst of all the afflictions. Because the, the real terrible thing for mankind is the idea of hoping for it and it not getting any better. And so when you take hope and you add it into mutual attraction, it can fuel every kind of hell that you end up in because you keep riding on this idea that there's something there, there's something there, there's something there, even though that thing isn't giving you what you really need or want. And there will be so many people watching this right now whose situation this describes. That's the thing that is in many ways the most dangerous phase of importance. Because it's actually has relatively little importance, but our body, everything about us gives it the maximum possible importance. And I said someone recently who said I had a three month relationship with someone who then decided that he wanted to go travel at the end of it. And I'm devastated because I just feel like this was my person. And I don't believe your person, by the way, can ever be someone who doesn't choose you. I don't believe your person can ever be someone who has like got different. Like they see their future as flying solo around the world. And you see your future in a committed relationship that cannot be your person by definition, right? So when I say on this book, find your person, I'm not talking about the person who wants completely different things from you. So. But she in her mind had decided this. I had such an amazing three months with this person, this is my person. And I said three months is nothing. Three months is. You can perform for three months. Three months. You're not talking about someone's character, you're talking about their impact. Very different thing. Character can only be seen over time. Impact is something you can feel on a first date. And so many People mistake impact for character on date one. Like you don't understand. I felt amazing. I felt I went home and I just felt so connected to this person. I felt like they understood me. I felt like we come from similar places. I felt like they're with their family how I am with mine. And it just feels like this whole picture you haven't seen anything about this person's character. All you've seen is their impact. You don't know anything about this person.
If you are watching this and there's someone you have in mind who you don't just like that you really want a relationship with and you want it to progress to the point of a relationship. I have a free training called Casual to Committed that you can watch@getcommitment.com which is a perfect free training video for you to go to after this one. It gives you the granular things that you can do that take a situation from being someone you're just dating to someone you're actually in an exclusive long term relationship with. Check it out@get commitment.com.
I had someone recently talk to me about how, you know, a guy sent her videos in week one of like, you know, they just met and he was sending videos of him with his family and she was like, I really feel like he's with his family how I am with mine. My mind went to why is he sending you videos of him with his family in week one? I'm not saying there was anything underhanded about it, although the way it went, it turned out it wasn't great. But I look at that and I go, this is impact. You can't possibly know who this person is with their family from what they've shown you. You don't really know that because you don't know this person. So when this, when my client came to me and said, I've been seeing someone for three months and now he's disappeared, but oh my God, he's my person, I'm like, no, he was fireworks. Fireworks is a very different thing. Fireworks is. You know what do fireworks need to be special?
They need a flame like a match lit to it. They need to be loud, right. They need to be almost blinding with how bright they are.
Yep. And there's one more ingredient.
Oh God, what am I missing?
They need to finish.
That's true.
Imagine fireworks that just went on for hour after hour after hour after hour. Now when fireworks go on for 10 minutes, 15 max, we hold each other's hands and we look up dreamy eyed and they're magical. We love them. But I guarantee you, if those fireworks kept going for another 45 minutes, there'd be a point where we'd start looking at our watch. We'd be, like, kind of ready now for, like, these. It wouldn't last. Fireworks need that. Like, they need nighttime and they need to end. And that's what makes them so special for us, is like, oh. Oh, my God. Oh, wow, they're over. Oh, but weren't they amazing? That's what so many of the early relationships are like, that we value our life. Isn't fireworks on New Year's Eve when we see the fireworks? We watch the fireworks every year at New Year's Eve, right? The London fireworks. Unbelievable. They're incredible. They're so special. But those fireworks aren't our life. Our life is at the end of the fireworks. Who's our company? Where are we going home to? How much do we like that home when we wake up tomorrow? How much do I like the job that I'm going to? How much do I like the things that I have to do now in the new year? That's my life. My life isn't the fireworks on New Year's Eve. My fireworks is my life on New Year's Day. So that's the mistake we make at the mutual attraction phase. So then you say, okay, fine, not important. What's level three? Level three is commitment. Two people who aren't just mutually attracted, but they actually say yes to each other. Now, that's something that feels to many people like it's becoming increasingly rare these days. People who actually want commitment, people who actually want to be in a relationship. And one of the reasons I believe it feels. Feels so rare for so many people is because they're giving so much time to people at level two who are not showing any signs of going to level three. And if you stay with the person at level two and you keep doing that dance with them over and over and over again, using up months or years of your life, then you'll take this person who is your wall, and you'll start to think it's the world. So you'll say, no one wants to commit anymore. But the reason why that feels like a global belief, even though there are people committing, is because we've spent so much time with people who won't and we've started to believe them, that this is what people are like. This is just what life is like. People don't want real relationships. People don't want to commit. So the third level of importance is commitment. But commitment on its own isn't enough either. You have to have the fourth level, which is compatibility. And compatibility is not just, how are we saying yes to each other. It's do we have the same ideas about how we would like to live our life, what we would like to build? Do we agree on a sense of morality together? If I lie all the time and you believe in telling the truth, we might have said yes to each other for a relationship, but we're grossly incompatible. You know, if I think it's fine to show up an hour late for everything I do, and you like to be on time, and I show up an hour late for every date we go on, or for every vacation or for every. Then there's an incompatibility there. So you have to have a sense of compatibility. By the way, one of the values that helps you overcome incompatibility is curiosity, teamwork, empathy, compassion, generosity. Because when you have those values, you see someone who's different from you, but you say, well, how do we solve this difference together? Or we say, you know what? I'm gonna sacrifice on this one? Cause I know it means a lot to you, so this is important to you. I'm gonna make it important to me because I'm generous with my energy, Because I want to make space for what's important to you. When you have a team player, you can overcome lots of areas of incompatibility. Not perhaps on the deepest, deepest level, like, if you're fundamentally morally incompatible, that's a real problem. But if in lots of different surface ways or just behavioral ways, there's little incompatibilities, teamwork can overcome a lot of that. Which is why I say to people, if you're in a relationship with someone where you're saying, I need things to be different for this to work, you better check whether teamwork is important to your partner. Because if you're trying to overcome those incompatibilities and they're not, then there's just no way. It's hard enough when both of you are trying to solve the problem. But when there's one person trying to solve the problem and the other person isn't, that's a real problem. So those are the. That's the way that I structure it in the book is admiration, mutual attraction, commitment, and compatibility. And when you have those four levels, then you have something really worth crying about. If it ends, if that person, God forbid, gets taken from you, you know, then it's like there's a. There's a deep Deep, deep sense of tragedy about that. Not one that you cannot overcome, but a tragedy nonetheless. What I try to caution people against is creating too many tragedies at level two, mutual attraction.
And you see that one a lot, all the time.
It feels to people like it's a tragedy that they lost someone who, while they're saying it's such a great tragedy that the love of my life is not with me, that person's, you know, buying a phone case on Amazon. They're still here. They're not. It's not. They're not gone, and they're not no longer of this world. They're two streets over, deciding they don't want to be in the relationship, that it's still something to grief. You know, my friend David Kessler said he's a foremost expert on grief in the world. He said grief is a change you didn't want to. So interesting way of looking at grief. Grief is a change you didn't want. And when David Kessler said that to me, I thought of all of the relationships or situationships that end where people do feel a real sense of grief. There's no shame in that. There's no shame in being heartbroken over someone that you only knew for a month because you had really felt like there was something amazing there. But we have to be clear about what we're grieving. I am grieving, yes. But I'm not grieving the tragedy of losing my person. I'm grieving the loss of the thing that I thought it was, but it wasn't. And that's a big, big difference.
Guys, one of the most challenging things about modern dating is not just finding someone that we like, which can be challenging all by itself, but even once we have and we find someone who.
Likes us back, it still feels so.
Difficult to get to the point of actually having a real committed relationship with that person. That's because of something called the investment gap. It is the time in early dating where we are are willing to give and invest and commit more than the other person is. I have put together a free training called From Casual to Committed, where I talk about how to overcome the investment gap. It is one of the most common things in the world right now. And I show you very specific things that you can do and say that actually start to progress the relationship in an intentional way that leads to real commitment. And I know of what I speak in this area not just because I've been coaching people in this area for two decades of my life, but also because in the beginning of my relationship with my wife Audrey. I was the one who is having some fears around commitment and some of.
The things I talk about in this.
Training are things that she literally said and did with me that made all the difference to my ability to commit. It's amazing what the right language and the right actions can do in creating a relationship that actually goes the distance. I want to show you what they are in casual to committed, which you can watch for free right now@getcommitment.com that link again is getcommitment.com.
