“4 Things They Notice (and Fall for) in the First 30 Days” | Matt Monday

You're gonna build your forever home and you find a place that feels like the perfect place to build it. But what you don't do at that point is start picking out furniture as if it's already built. We are going to be talking about how to be more attractive in the first four weeks of knowing someone. And we're going to give four different ways. Number one, learn to move the story forward. One of the things that I get asked a lot is how do I keep someone engaged when I'm messaging with them in early dating? Well, one of the ways that we lose people is by the communication becoming monotonous. We send the same kinds of text messages. Hey, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Not bad. What are you up to? Oh, I've just been working and stuff. What about you? And then it goes on and on like that. Texts stay the same length. We wait the same amount of time before we message someone back. It never really progresses beyond the superficial. And then someone loses interest because it just becomes white noise. Moving the story forward is about actually progressing things. And one of the ways we do that is by breaking the pattern in our communication. So let's say you've just been texting back and forth and it's been the same, the three different times that you've exchanged texts. Instead, send a picture, send a meme. It may sound like a small thing, but what it does is it interrupts that pattern of communication and takes you to a different beat. or it might be sending a picture of what you're up to. If you say, I'm bowling with my friends when someone says, what are you up to? Sending them a picture upgrades it. It brings them into your day. It allows them to actually see where you are and place you. You can even go a step further and send a voice note. We all know that experience when someone sends us a voice note and all of a sudden there's that feeling of, oh, it feels like they're in the room with me. It feels more intimate. We can hear their inflection. We hear that nervous little laugh in the middle of the sentence that's endearing. It makes them into a human being and that's what we have to be in dating today. If you watched a TV show and nothing ever changed, it was the same every single time, there were no moments that surprised you, there were no moments that moved the story forward, you would stop watching that TV show. We keep watching a TV show because we don't know what's around the corner and our communication in subtle ways has to do the same thing. Move the story forward. The second way we can increase how attractive we are in the first four weeks is by seeing dating as an exploration, not a commitment. If you haven't really heard that much from someone after a first date, or you have heard from them but it still hasn't materialized into a second date, don't stop texting other people in your life. If someone else asks you on a date, don't feel like you have to say no because you happened to have a great time on that first date with this person. It shouldn't work like that. What this allows us to do is truly discern who is the right candidate for us, who is actually investing in us, who is proving not to just be someone we like or had a good time with, but someone where the ball is actually moving forward. There's progression. If we've just decided that because we had a great date, we're now going all in on this person, we've immediately lost our power. Someone can feel that we are waiting for the next time that they're gonna ask us out. They feel it by the way we respond when they do ask us out. It's like we can't get on that date quickly enough because I really like you and I've been waiting for you to ask. There's a different energy when you're not waiting around for someone. There's a different energy when you're exploring your options. Dating is not a commitment, it is an exploration. Number three, if we want to be more attractive in the first four weeks, we have to balance our romantic self with our rational self. Our romantic self wants to get carried away, and that's not surprising, 'cause we live in a culture that constantly celebrates stories of certainty. We love this story when we ask a friend who's been married 10 years, you know, tell me about the beginning. And they're like, oh, well, I knew after date one that they were the person I was going to marry. And we think, oh, that's so lovely. That's what I want for myself. And then we go on a first date with someone and we feel really strongly about them. And we go home and we're like, this is the feeling. This is it. This is the intensity that I've been looking for. But this is the problem because now we go into this very high stakes mode of trying to impress someone, of trying to make it work when we haven't even got to the point of knowing whether this relationship can work. Think of it like building a house. You're gonna build your forever home and you find a place that feels like the perfect place to build it. But what you don't do at that point is start picking out furniture as if it's already built. You now have to lay the foundations for that home. You have to actually build a structure that has real structural integrity. Lay the brickwork. This has to be done in stages. We can't just jump to hanging pictures on the walls in some sentimental fashion. When we decide we like someone, all of our work is still ahead of us. The romantic in us can be ready to leave our entire life behind as we know it and go riding off into the sunset with this person. But the rational part of us knows that that's not really how relationships are built. And when we realize that, we all of a sudden start slowing down. And that's what brings a calmer, more grounded version of ourselves to the table. It's also something that raises our value because what someone realizes is you're not measuring the importance of this person by the strength of their initial impact. You're going to measure their importance by what happens next and what happens after that. and after that and after that. In other words, while the romantic part of us is already decorating the halls, the rational part of us realizes there's still a house to be built. By the way, if this video is bringing up for you a very specific dating situation in your life, a question you want to ask about something that feels really unique to what you're going through, I want you to go and ask that question of Matthew AI at askmh.com this is my digital mind where you can get instant answers to any question that you have in your love life. And they are my answers because it is trained on nearly two decades of my content. So you can ask it what to say, what to do, what something means, what you should do next, or use it to get through something emotionally if you're struggling with anxiety about somebody, sadness or heartbreak, whatever you're going through, I promise you it is Ultimate Coach on demand to get you through it. You can ask a question of it right now at askmh.com and you even get a few free minutes and free questions if you've never used it before. Go check it out, see what it can do for you. This is blowing people's minds. So many people are telling me right now that Matthew AI is changing their lives, legitimately changing their lives. Go to askmh.com and ask your question right now. Also, quick announcement, guys. Many of you already know this. I have a live weekend retreat happening once only this year in Miami, Florida on October the 18th and the 19th. Tickets are on sale right now at mhretreat.com We have also just re-released the online tickets. So if you can't get there to Miami in person, you can watch it from wherever you are in the world. This is the ultimate coaching event of the year. It's the best of what I do. It's the deepest work I do. you cannot afford to miss it. So whether you come and join us in person or do it online, get your ticket at www.mhretreat.com and the fourth way that we can be more attractive in the first four weeks is by showing non-verbal boundaries. A lot of people find that they never get to the point of real connection and commitment with someone because they are very good at protecting themselves by having boundaries But the way that they have boundaries protects themselves all the way out of things ever going anywhere. I hear from people a lot who say, I have great boundaries. I haven't had a relationship in 10 years. Leave me a comment if you relate to some version of that. That now you have boundaries, it feels like nothing ever happens. A lot of us go through this cycle in our love lives. We started in life by having no boundaries. We got walked all over. We got our hearts broken. We got hurt. And so eventually we learned to stand up for ourselves. But a lot of us then, in the way that we stand up for ourselves, lose the ability to attractively influence someone into wanting to give us more and wanting to be around us more. And one of the ways we do that in the first few weeks is not through verbal boundaries, but non-verbal boundaries. I'll give you an example. When me and my wife were first dating, she wanted me to meet her on her side of town for a date. We had already met on my side of town a couple of times, and now it was my turn. Except, I assumed, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I assumed she would come meet me again. And I said to her, I'm doing something over in this side of town. I'm with my family right now. Why don't you come meet me afterwards? Now, she wasn't going to do that. That was her boundary. If this is to be a relationship of, or, you know, at least a dating of equals, It's your turn to come to me. But she didn't have to spell that out verbally by saying, I'm really annoyed that you're inviting me to your side of town again when I've been over there the last two times and now it's your turn. She didn't need to do that. Instead, I said, why don't you come meet me over here? And she said, I'd love to do something in my side of town tonight. There's a bar I really want to show you. I think you'll really love it. That was a non-verbal boundary. Now, I pushed against that a little bit. I know, I know, I'm sorry. I did. And I was like, oh, do you think you could come over this way tonight? Because, you know, my family's here right now. It's hard for me to get away. Excuse, excuse, excuse. She then said, you, know what? It's totally fine. We can do something another night. So she just took the offer off the table. She's like, I'd love to see you, but no worries. We can do something another night. That wasn't her saying, I'm really upset with you. And here's why. That was just her saying, oh, okay, if you're gonna cross that line, then there's nothing waiting for you there. That was a boundary. A friend of mine, David Kessler, he put it in a great way himself. He said, if you tell someone, Hey, I'm going to be in bed by 10, but I would love to speak to you if you give me a call before then. If someone calls you at 11:00 PM, having a boundary is not picking up the phone and chewing them out for calling you at 11:00 PM. Having a boundary is not picking up the phone at 11:00 PM. That's the boundary. The boundary is that there's no reward over here for this behaviour, but there's plenty of reward over here for this behaviour. You're teaching someone how to show up for you. You're teaching someone where the reward lies with you. That's how you remain attractive because you avoid turning the first four weeks into a therapy session with someone you barely know. and instead just teach people what you're worth. Before you go anywhere, I wanted to just give you a little update from our lives and what's happening over the next couple of weeks. We have been very settled this year. Me and Audrey, my wife made a pact at the beginning of the year that we weren't going to travel a lot this year. We were going to try and be much more grounded. We felt like we needed it after a crazy year last year with the release of my new book, Love Life, which is back there. And it's been great, but over the next couple of weeks, we are doing a decent amount of travel. Tomorrow we go to Mexico for a audience of 5, 000 people, most of them 16 to 18 year olds who I'm going to coach on confidence and making an impact and how they come across their communication, which is going to be really, really fun. We then go to Dallas, where I'm going to be joining Jay Shetty, my friend on stage for his tour event, which should be awesome. I'm excited about that. Then we go to New York for a couple of days, and then we go to Boston for a weekend retreat in Cape Cod, which is something I'm doing as an exclusive getaway for a group of people called Club 320, which is my most private, intimate program. I have. I started it two or three years ago now, and it's become one of the things I enjoy the most, aside from working with me as a group of about 50 people over the course of an entire year. We go away and have an adventure once a year. And this year we're going to Cape Cod on the east coast of America. We're going to be staying in Airstreams on a campsite and getting out in nature and having quality time together. It's going to be so fun. I'll share some of that if I can. I'll share as much as I can with you. By the way, for anyone who is interested in the Club 320 program, we don't have any spaces right now. but we do have a waiting list. I'll leave a link in the description below. Right now the program is completely full. Every time we've done it, it has sold out literally in a matter of minutes because there's only 50 spots. But when we do have a space, if you're on the wait list, you'll be the first to be notified. So if you want to join that wait list and be one of that very exclusive group to work with me for a year and come on those adventures, sign up on the wait list in the description below. Thank you so much for watching and It means a lot to me that you're here. I know some of you are still newly discovering me, which is so much fun. Others have been watching me for a very long time and you've been growing with me over the years, which is a very, very special thing for me. And thank you for continuing to follow. I'll see you soon. Leave me a comment. I'd love to hear from you.