5 Behaviors That Push People Away (Without You Realizing)

Do you know one of the things that I value most in my life? Peace. All of the little ways that I get to construct this world of calm and equanimity that makes me feel relaxed. But when people are dating, it's really hard to maintain this because there are so many things that rob us of our peace when we are looking for love. One of those things is when we go on a date with someone, we like them, it seems as if it might be going well, and then they fade. Maybe they stop texting us back as much. Maybe they stop asking us out even if they do text us back. Whatever is the case, it becomes clear that this person that we had hopes for has lost interest. Now, some of the time, maybe even a lot of the time, that has everything to do with them and not with us. But occasionally it's worth asking the question, is there anything I might be doing that could be pushing someone away? I'm Matthew Hussey and today we are going to be talking about the five behaviors that can push someone away without us realizing it and stop it from ever reaching its full potential. Number one, we run the risk of pushing people away when we over share. Oversharing is incredibly common. And by definition, oversharing happens at a time when the amount of information we've given someone is inorganic to our relationship with them at that point. In other words, when we say things to someone who is essentially a perfect stranger that they shouldn't be privy to, Now, what does this actually look like? Well, it can look like talking about our insecurities very early in the process. You know, I just hate when people ask me about my height or talk about my height because I've never liked my height. I'm, you know, I've always felt like I'm too tall or I've always felt like I'm too short. That's oversharing about an insecurity we have at a time when someone else is just beginning to form their own opinions on us. I always think when we dump our insecurities onto someone else, We're telling them what to think about us instead of allowing them to decide what they think about us. Oversharing can look like telling someone about deep traumas we've experienced and how we've worked through them, which may be beautiful and courageous and amazing, but is not information that someone who just met you needs to know or even necessarily knows what to do with. This isn't a therapy session. It's a date. Oversharing can look like dumping on someone from our past, no matter how awful that person was, who hurt you, who destroyed your life, who made you miserable. This person in front of you doesn't need to know all of that right now. They don't need to know how badly you've been hurt in a previous relationship. You can allude to the fact that you've had a challenging relationship, but they don't need to know the details. And we don't come off well talking horribly about someone they know when they're just getting to know us. It might even leave them wondering, what are they going to be saying about me one day to a perfect stranger? Now, look, why do we overshare? We overshare because we're anxious. And when we get anxious, we just start saying things. And then afterwards we go, why did I say that? What was I even thinking when I said that? That was so stupid. So when we get anxious, we overshare. we sometimes overshare because we're avoidant. If I can give you all of these reasons to reject me before you find them out, then it's almost like I'm owning the rejection. If I say all of this about myself and you don't want me, well, screw you. This is me. So it's almost a kind of hedging against future rejection. Some people overshare because they're too trusting, because they forget that information is power and that someone shouldn't have all of that information on you right now because it can be used against you and you don't really know if you can trust this person. Some people overshare because they've been living in a certain world for a long time, like therapy, and it's very normal for them to talk about their traumas and the way they're healing and they don't realize that this is a different context. This is a date. not a therapy session or their best friend who they're talking about their therapy session with. So we overshare for all sorts of different reasons, but the effects of oversharing can be universally damaging. They give people information that makes them uncomfortable, that they don't know what to do with. It brings them into a world of intimacy they haven't earned. So they start asking themselves, why do I have this level of intimacy with this person right now? This doesn't feel normal. This doesn't feel organic. It not only gives too much information to someone we don't trust, sometimes it breaks the bond of trust from their side because they see that we have no boundaries around the information that's stored in our minds. So, oversharing can become one of these invisible ways that we push someone away without ever realizing it. I mean, whoever, when they fade out of our lives, puts in a call to us at the end of it all and says, Just so you know, I'm fading because you overshared. No one ever. So it's not like this is feedback we're ever going to get from anyone, but it is having an effect nonetheless. And unfortunately, when it comes to oversharing, it's often worn as a virtue by the people that do it. I'm just being me. I'm just being honest. I'm just being authentic. But oversharing? is not the same as authenticity. The second way we push people away without realizing it is through negativity. Now, I want to make something very clear. I'm not when I talk about negativity being a bad thing, advocating for endless, relentless positivity that finds its way into every conversation, no matter what someone says. We have been going through the wildfires here in Los Angeles, and a very helpful video my friend Dr. Ramani put up during these wildfires was advice on how to support people who are going through the wildfires. And she said, if you're speaking to someone who has lost their home, talking to them about how lucky they are to still be alive and to have their family, and that's what's important, might not be the best place to go for someone who's just lost in their mind everything. That, as she describes it, is a form of toxic positivity.

Right?

So, positivity all the time is not necessarily what is called for, especially when we're trying to connect with people in the things that they're going through. But I think of negativity more broadly. as the way that we leave people feeling after we've left them. When they leave us, do they feel like life is a little better? Do they feel a little happier? Do they feel a little lighter? Or do they feel like their lens of the world is dimmer? You know, sometimes negativity takes the form of saying deeply negative things. Other times, negativity can look really innocuous on the surface. It's being the person that every time someone meets up with us and asks us how we are, we say, oh my God, I'm just so busy. There's just so much going on. It's just like, I don't know. I can't catch my breath right now. If that's the energy we bring to someone every time we meet them, at some point that's going to have an effect. It's also true that positivity doesn't mean always finding the bright side. Positivity can just mean bringing a certain kind of energy to a situation. I was reminded of this during the wildfires here in LA when a friend of mine, John Turtle Tub, a movie director whose movies many of you will have seen and love, was being interviewed outside his house, which was literally one of the only houses still standing in the neighborhood by the grace of a neighbor who had fought the fires all night to protect it. And amidst this chaos and tragedy and him and his family worrying that they had lost everything or were going to lose everything, there was still a chance that their house was going to catch fire. They were not out of it and in the clear. He gave an interview because there was a cameraman nearby and an anchor who ran up to him and was like, Can we get your thoughts? And amidst all of this sadness, he not only expressed how hard it all was and how terrible it all was, he also managed to make the people behind the camera and in front of the camera laugh. And he did this because he saw that there was something behind the camera that the cameraman should be shooting and wasn't. And as a movie director, he was quick to point out what the cameraman should be doing. Check this out.

Can you believe that houses are still going up right now?

It's crazy. I think it's amazing there's anything left. What happens is they're gone. And then if you look over there, that just started that new flame coming over there. I know he doesn't want to pan over, doesn't he? I'm a movie director, and I'm telling.

You, pan over is pretty great.

It is. It is. Pretty great there. We are seeing some flames right there. John, you can speak as we're looking at those flames right now.

Now that clip was shot by John's family watching the TV going through one of the worst times of their life and laughing at the energy that John was expressing in that moment. What I love about this example is that John left people better than he found them by the end of that interview. By all rights, that should have just been an incredibly sad interview. But John being John is experiencing one of the worst moments of his life with his family and has a moment of lightness. And that moment of lightness does not come from him talking about the bright side of what they're all going through. It comes from John injecting his playfulness and his wit into a situation where no one expected it. It came from him leading. And by leading with that energy, he made the guy holding the microphone laugh. He made the cameraman laugh. He made his family who were going through the worst time of their lives laugh watching him on TV. and it made the rest of us who were watching that interview laugh in a moment where so many people were crying. So he led with his energy, and that's the part that it's worth all of us looking at ourselves and saying, am I default negative energy or default positive energy? Am I leaving people better than I found them? And I find that, by the way, much more descriptive in some ways than am I a positive person? Because when we think positive, we think we have to say positive things all the time or always show people how to look on the bright side. But when I think of leaving people better than I found them, I simply think of the energy that I bring sometimes without words at all that leaves someone better off. By the way, before we get on to point number three, you'll notice that so much of this is about how we choose to connect with another person that we hope to build a relationship with. And there are lots of wrong ways to connect and some really amazing ways to connect that maybe aren't our default right now. So before I get onto point number three, four and five, I want to tell you that if you want better ways to connect and you're wondering what do those look like for me, I have a tool for you that you can use right now is called Matthew AI and you can go and ask it. any question you want about dating, about love, about how you come across, you can role play things. You can literally ask Matthew AI any question you want for free right now at askmh.com and get some immediate answers. It's not easy to work this stuff out on our own, but when we have the help of that mentor, which really Matthew AI is me because it has all of my information, everything I've said up until today downloaded into it, you're getting the best advice and personal tailored advice for your situation. In fact, I literally had someone send me this email just a couple of days ago. I wanted to drop you a message about Matthew AI. I had a truly awful experience with a man I'd been chatting to intensely for several weeks before we met. I sought comfort in lots of friends, but also reached out to Matthew AI. The response was brilliant. It's a very clever tool and it actually did make me think more positively after. I was blown away at how clever it is and how it actually really did make me feel less rubbish about myself. So thank you. You've clearly put a lot of effort and Minecraft into it and it has paid off. Well done. So if you haven't tried Matthew AI yet, go check it out at ask. mh.com, you can text it or call it whatever suits you. All right, let's move on to number three. The third way that we can unknowingly push people away is by drinking too much. This one is going to be a pretty short point, but it is so common to have one too many drinks on a date because we're trying to calm our nerves or just because we're in the habit of doing that. or because it feels like the thing to do, or because we're trying to keep up with someone else who we shouldn't be trying to keep up with. And somewhere between drink one and four, we become a different version of ourselves. And that version of ourselves isn't necessarily the most attractive version of ourselves. Now, I'm not suggesting that we judge ourselves for the way that we are once we've had a couple of drinks. But I am saying that even though sometimes it feels like our best self when we're drinking, it rarely is. And I don't say this as someone who has any kind of righteousness about drinking. Audrey and I consumed more than our fair share of beers in Japan when we went there a few months ago. So I have no dog in this fight of whether you should or shouldn't drink. But what I will say is that when it comes to dating, it really can take us off our game in unhelpful ways. It can make us less composed. It can make us say things we otherwise wouldn't. We lose a sense of control over our ability to articulate and connect. And for somebody else watching us, it can quickly become something that turns them off when they see it. So be aware of how much alcohol you consume when you're on a date. And it's a great advertisement for having daytime dates where you don't have that pressure to drink unless you live somewhere like London where people are just pirates who drink all day in pubs, especially if the sun is shining. But even then, You know, you could do something else. The fourth way we push people away without realizing it is by having too much intensity. Now, there's different types of being too intense in dating. Let's explore a couple of them. The first one is with excessive neediness. you know, following up with someone, do you miss me? Why haven't you texted me back? I haven't heard from you. What's going on? Demanding a level of attention and investment from someone that we barely know based on this idea of where we want it to go. In a way, it's kind of like we're not really reading the situation or measuring the true nature of the situation. Instead, we're chasing after something that we want to happen. And in the process, we become the intense one who is doing the chasing. Another kind of intensity is over familiarity. This is when someone that we don't know, we place at a level of proximity and comfort and intimacy that they haven't really earned. Audrey was telling me about a time when she experienced this kind of over familiar intensity where after a single date that she'd had with someone, he started calling her baby. And that for her felt really weird and unearned and it just made her feel uncomfortable and like there was almost something to back away from. So, you know, pet names for someone that hasn't earned a pet name, good way to be too intense through over-familiarity. There's the kind of intensity where we over-invest emotionally or supportively to someone. For example, you may say, how are you? And someone may say, I've had a bit of a crummy day at work. My boss has just been a nightmare. And you know what? Honestly, it doesn't matter. It just my boss is being really difficult. Now, a nice response might be, oh, that sucks. I'm so sorry. How about I take you for some tacos to make you feel better? Compare that with the intense response, which might look like, well, that's because they have no idea how valuable you are. The last kind of intensity is what I call self-help intensity, which usually involves some mix of reading a lot into a situation, using one's intuition and giving unsolicited advice. And it looks a little something like this. You know, I can't help but notice when you talk about this, it seems like there's more there. Have you explored this at all? Have you tried trauma informed therapy? I know that made a big difference for me. I mean, when I learned to love myself, all of those old childhood beliefs that I know you're struggling with, they just just evaporate. you know? Oh, no, I definitely. I was just saying that I didn't enjoy Wicked as much as everybody else seemed to. But no, I should try that. Intensity is scary.

Ha.

Here's the thing. A lot of intensity in the early stages comes from A story that we've been telling ourselves in our head that doesn't correspond with reality. A story about who another person is or what they need. A story about how important the relationship is at a time when you can't possibly know how important it is. A story about how perfect you are for a person or how perfect they are for you at a time when you don't really know each other. The answer to intensity is presence. Because when we actually get present with the person in front of us and the stage that we're at, our words and our actions will be a direct mirror of what's actually going on, not the story we've told ourselves. The fifth and final, yes, we've made it to the final one in this video, thing that pushes people away without our noticing is when we don't listen. this is such an obvious point that it feels like it doesn't even need to be said. And yet the true art of listening is lost on so many of us, including me, when we're in conversation with people. And it's lost for a number of reasons. It can be lost because of anxiety, because we're waiting for our turn to speak, not out of any sense of not caring, but out of a sense of, oh, my God, am I going to say the right thing? Am I keeping this person interested? Am I engaging right now? Am I doing a good job? and when we're in our head thinking of those things, we live on the outside of the conversation looking in instead of being in the conversation with somebody else. Of course, we can also be a bad listener through ignorance, through having no empathy for the experience of the other person in the conversation. We can also be poor listeners due to arrogance, that I can't learn anything from anyone else. What everyone else has to say isn't interesting. I'm not truly interested in their story. I've already drawn all of my conclusions. about this person, this situation. So I'm just going to talk. And of course, not listening can also be a sign in some cases of narcissism. The only words that need to be heard here are mine. And the only thing that's really important to me is impressing you with how great I am. And I can't do that when you're speaking. In any case, not listening becomes this ultimate barrier to connection. It is what has someone leaving a date feeling like they never really connected with us. They don't really feel seen by us. They don't feel understood by us. us, the question is, how can we become better listeners? And there's so much advice on listening out there, but I want to draw your attention to something I read literally this week. I've been reading this book by Haruki Murakami, the famous fiction writer out of Japan, called Novelist as a Vocation. And it's essentially a book of advice and musings for people who are aspiring novelists. of which I had not, but I enjoyed reading the book very much. There was something he said that really stuck with me, which is that in a somewhat self-deprecating way, he talks about how he's not bright enough or quick enough to draw fast conclusions about things, and that he just sort of has a way of observing the world without coming to conclusions, and that that that behavior, that way of going through life actually serves him as a novelist because if you were to come to conclusions too quickly that would make a bad novel. But a great novel is one where conclusions are arrived at somewhat slowly at a different pace. And he says this, I want to read this to you. Next, before you start writing your own stuff, make a habit of looking at things and events in more detail. Observe what is going on around you and the people you encounter as closely and as deeply as you can reflect on what you see. Remember though that to reflect is not to rush to determine the rights and wrongs and merits and demerits of what and whom you are observing. Try to consciously refrain from value judgments. Conclusions can come later. What's important is not arriving at clear conclusions but retaining the specifics of a certain situation. in other words, your material as fully as you can. It strikes me that that is really great advice for a date too. Of course, there are certain conclusions we come to privately in our own mind during or after the date that make us say, Yes, I'd like another date with this person. Or, no, I don't want to go anywhere near this person again. But when it comes to the art of conversation, drawing conclusions quickly becomes a barrier to getting to know someone. For example, if someone tells you about time they went through last year because of something that happened in their life. And immediately your thought is, oh, I know that pattern. They did that because they're this kind of person who has lived this life and that's drawn them to the place they are today. And now you start assuming all these things about this person that may be right or wrong, but certainly, even if you're right, aren't gonna make that person feel heard. Curiosity and continuing to listen and actively ask questions is what makes another person feel heard, is what makes them feel like you are discovering them, perhaps in a more intricate way than anyone else has recently because no one else has been this great at doing this excavation instead of just rushing to conclusions. There's a great moment, I just want to read you this real quick. He says, let's say you know someone who for no apparent reason starts sneezing when they get really angry. Once the sneezing fit begins, it goes on and on. Now, I don't know anyone like that, but for the sake of argument, let's say you do. What you wonder explains this pattern. One approach would be to try to come up with a tentative theory physiological, perhaps, or psychological to analyze their behavior. My brain, however, doesn't work that way. I think, Wow, people like that exist. and leave it at that. Now, I'm suggesting you go one step further in the little novel that you're writing on a date and suggest that the character in front of you is gonna give you some information. Great listening is not assuming everything about what that information means, but continuing to encourage the arc of that story, of that character, to a point where, A, you get to know them much better as a result, which allows you to decide whether to go on another date with that person, and B makes them feel truly listened to, which is one of the most miraculous things in helping you stand out. So what about you? Having heard these five things, is there something that you've either done yourself or seen in your friends and family that unconsciously pushes people away in dating and ends things before they need to end? leave a comment, let me know. I'd be curious to know what you would add to this list. And do not forget to check out Matthew AI. You can ask it questions like, what should I do on a first date? What are the kinds of conversations that make for really attractive conversations? You can even ask it for specific scripts or ask, what can I do to recover the attraction after a date if it seems like it's been lost? You can ask it literally any question you could conceive of, go there now and check it out. And by the way, if you're wondering what prompts you could ask Matthew AI, in the description below, I've got a little list of prompts to get your mind working on the ways that you could make it valuable to you. So check those out in the description below and go to askmh.com to ask your question now. Thank you so much for watching. As always, it's been a pleasure. I will see you next time. Oh, wait, before you go, if you want a video that will pair extremely well with this one, like a fine cheese, then you need to go here next. He doesn't want to pan over, does he? David, I am telling you, I'm a very well-known YouTuber. You need to pan over.