The episode opens with sponsorship ads for Regain Couples Therapy and SoFi Personal Loans before transitioning to Matthew Hussey’s monologue on how to maintain momentum in early dating through effective texting. He outlines five common texting mistakes: (1) playing games by delaying replies, which kills conversational momentum; (2) relying solely on text and not varying communication mediums, recommending pictures, voice memos, or video calls to keep the "energy bar" fresh; (3) being one‑note—always polite or sweet—versus switching tones (bossy, flirty, sexual) to show versatility; (4) talking about everything except yourself, urging the inclusion of personal stories and vulnerability; and (5) excessive passivity, introducing the concept of "gracious impatience" to ask directly for a date or next step. Hussey then promotes his "Momentum Texts" program, a curated set of 60‑70 numbered text templates that map to stages of a relationship (from first contact to serious commitment), designed to help listeners sustain or regain momentum. The episode ends with a brief pitch for the program, priced at the cost of a latte.
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NMLS 696891. In the middle of a text conversation when you feel like it's getting a little dry, send someone a voice memo instead. If they're teasing you, shake it up by sending a voice memo back saying: you:'re so mean. Welcome to the Love Life Podcast. It's me, Matthew Hussey. Enjoy this classic clip from our archives. And if you want to let me know what you think or how this podcast is helping you, don't forget to leave me a review on iTunes under the Love Life Podcast. Enjoy. Mistake number one, playing games about when to text back. Now let's say Monkey receives a text. Huh, it's from George. But instead of texting George back and having a conversation, Monkey thinks, no, I am gonna wait. And George is gonna see how busy I am, how important I am, and how attractive I am. But the problem is, George is by his phone right now. She could have had a message with him and carried on the momentum and ridden that wave. Instead, she waited five or six hours to text back George, who incidentally was no longer curious. Now look, I'm not saying that when someone texts you, you should always be by your phone waiting to text them back, but if someone happens to text you in a moment where you're not doing anything and it's organic to reply to them right away, why not use the momentum of that moment and have a conversation? If five, 10 minutes later you need to go, that's fine. That's where you can be busy in an authentic way. But don't play games of making someone wait just to look cool. Number two, obsessively sticking to text as the form of communication. I think of different mediums, whether they're texts, pictures, voice memos, phone calls, FaceTimes, all as having a kind of energy bar. And the more you do them, the more that energy bar gets depleted. And we start to get diminishing returns. from that thing. If we over text, it doesn't matter how quirky or fun or witty we are by text, it begins to wear thin. And most people have had that experience. It's like, okay, I need a different stimuli now. I need something else. That's when it pays to send someone a picture and just say, you know, the view from where I am right now. If you happen to be looking out on a beautiful view, or if you happen to be sitting in bed with a dessert in front of you, in front of the TV, take a picture of the dessert and be like, the view from where I am right now. Check out my view right now. In that moment, you're changing up the medium. The same can be done with a voice memo. In the middle of a text conversation, when you feel like it's getting a little dry, send someone a voice memo instead. If they're teasing you, shake it up by sending a voice memo back saying, you,'re so mean. It's cute, it's playful, but it's a pattern break that suddenly injects new life into the conversation because the energy bar of voice is not depleted in the way that your texting has. Mistake number three, being one note. What gets someone really attracted to us is not when we're one energy, but when we're able to be versatile between different energies. If you find yourself always being very polite and sweet, today be a little bossy. Say to someone, are you gonna call me tonight or what? If you find yourself sending lots of nice, friendly messages to someone, Amp up the sexual tension today. Tell him you look really hot in that picture you posted today. Those are things that show that you can be many things. So think of the energy you normally have, the one you're most comfortable with, and do the inverse of that today. Mistake number four, talking about everything except yourself. People truly fall for you when they hear your story because your story is what makes you different from everybody else. So the next time you have a conversation with someone, myself this. Am I only describing here what I've been doing or am I actually revealing who I am and what I'm thinking about? Here's an example because I know this sounds a little abstract. If someone asked you, what did you do last night? You say, I cooked ribs for the first time last night. Now that's not a bad text. It's still a conversation starter, but it's still only talking about what you did. What we want to do is add on to that a bit about who you are. If you wanted to do even better than that in telling your story, you could say, I made ribs for the first time for my family last night. I'm a little late to this cooking thing, to be honest, but I'm actually really enjoying learning about it. Now someone sees a hint of vulnerability, what you're learning about right now and how you feel about it. Mistake number five, being too passive. Almost everybody has had the experience of something moving way too slowly, of someone who keeps drifting back and forth giving you kind of mixed signals. They're not asking you out but they do keep reaching out by text. You don't know where it's going. It feels totally ambiguous. This is where I like to apply what I call Gracious Impatience which means warmly, politely being more upfront about what you actually want. So let's say Monkey wants to progress things with George. Now they've been texting back and forth for a few weeks but It seems like the momentum isn't carrying them to the next stage. Why doesn't he ask me out on a date? Why doesn't he at least pick up the phone? Here I am just texting away. What am I gonna text myself into an early shallow monkey grave? Sorry. Well, the passive response would be to be texting George and to be like, Yes, like I think that is true as well, George. Bye George, we'll do the same thing again tomorrow. or monkey can be graciously impatient. The next time George messages her, she can say, yeah, that's a real funny joke, George. You're a real funny guy there. So anyway, mister, are you actually gonna ask me out or can I just expect a how's your week for the rest of my life? Now, I know this sounds like a simple message, but there is a lot that is right with this message. When you say so, mister, there's a little bit of an authoritative almost sexy tone to that. You're being demanding, you're being a little bossy. Then you give the standard, are you gonna ask me out? That's what you want. You're actually saying what you want. Or can I just expect a how's your week for the rest of my life? That's you being intentionally hyperbolic and dramatic to create a playfulness around something that you're also kind of not playing about. People never get any momentum. they don't get from a first conversation to FaceTime or an actual date, or they don't get from date one to date two, or they had momentum and they lost it and they don't know how to get it back again with that person. I wanted to create something that showed people how to get momentum in the early stages of dating someone and then keep it so that it actually turned into a relationship. And the way that I've chosen to do that is to create a texting program that shows you, I think there's like 60 or 70 different text messages in the program that you can use to create, to sustain, or to regain momentum with the person you're dating. And I did something even more unique because I created a numbering system whereby it went from one to five. Number one being, you just met this person, very first message. And number five being you actually feel seriously about this person. And I assigned each one of the text messages I give you in the program a number so that you know when to send the message and when not to send the message. So I've called it the Momentum Texts. I'm very proud of it. It's like a cool little program. It's not a big program. It's really quick to digest. It's the price of two lattes or one and a half lattes if you live in Los Angeles. Between one and a half and two lattes, depending on where you get your lattes. Go check it out. I'll see you there.
