Don't Get Into A Relationship Before You Hear This...(Or: How To Be Single)

This is an ad by Regain Couples Therapy and features real testimonials.

This was our first time trying therapy, and honestly, it was long overdue. Looking back, we just wish we had started sooner.

Regain's qualified therapists help couples when they can't get there on their own. We thought it was intimacy issues, but.

Andrea helped us uncover a deeper root cause we hadn't even realized was there.

Visit regain.com/couplespod to get 10% off your first month. Regain Couples Therapy that Works.

High-interest debt is one of the toughest opponents you'll face. Unless you power up with a SoFi Personal Loan. A SoFi Personal Loan could repackage your bad debt into one low fixed-rate monthly payment. It's even got super speed, since you could get the funds as soon as.

The same day you sign.

Visit sofi.com/power to learn more. That's S-O-F-I dot com slash P-O-W-E-R. Loans originated by SoFi Bank, N.A. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply.

NMLS 696891. hello there, podcast listeners, and welcome back to the Love Life podcast with your host, silly old Stephen Hussey. How are you? Settle in, get cozy. We've got a good one for you today because I'm gonna talk about being single. And maybe you've noticed that the title song, which is hotly requested from people who send in emails, the title song for this podcast is called Team Single. And I want to Discuss one of my super popular articles on the blog. And that's not my words. This one got a lot of comments, a lot of feedback. People seem to really be into it, so I wanted to talk about it here. And the article title is Don't get into a relationship before you read this. So I'm calling this Don't get into a relationship before you listen to this. brackets or how to be single. So I'm going to do what I've done on a few of these podcasts and talk through my article and maybe intersperse with a little commentary here and there. But I feel this is something that has to be addressed. I think the state of the way singledom is perceived by society, by the wider world, by people's friends and family can put an immense pressure on people and it's time to correct that balance. So I'm going to begin from the beginning of the article. Let's start. Single, dating, friends with benefits, coupled. People like to tell us that one state is desirable over another. And yet 10 years of working people in their relationships has taught me that it's possible to feel wildly fulfilled or totally miserable in just about any state between flying solo and being in a committed relationship. But that's not what we're told. The cultural story tells us your life will finally make total sense when you meet the right person. Actually, it's even worse than that. It says get a relationship or else your life won't have meaning. Yikes. This is why being single can be extra tricky, especially for women who face far greater pressure to prove their worth by locking down a steady relationship by around age 30. The cultural narrative tells us that all roads must eventually lead to a relationship, rendering singledom as a kind of purgatory abound with lonely humanoid atoms hovering past one another until they finally get paired up and can live the rest of their lives in blissful duality. Well, I say, fuck that. I don't have a dog in this fight. Being in a relationship can expand your capacity for true connection, allow you to experience love, companionship, and the feeling of sharing your life with someone. But being single also has undeniable benefits that get totally taken for granted. the sense of unbounded adventure, the total independence and ability to pursue your own path, the sense of freedom that comes with being able to decide your own schedule and build the life you really want for yourself. But to do single right, you need to avoid the traps that lead to dating burnout, bitterness, or a feeling like you're simply waiting in limbo for a connection to come and finally give your life purpose. Here's how. Number one, stop forcing dating. The greatest tyrannical mantra of singles is this: I must find someone else to merge with as soon as possible. Says who? Unfortunately, a lot of people say so. Even as a 30-something year old man, despite not being subject to the same pressures as women, Every year I get older, I find people have a bemused expression if I tell them I've recently been happy single and pretty much out of the dating game. It's strange, but it seems to render people genuinely incredulous when you tell them you're enjoying not having a relationship and don't plan to have one for a while. Their loss. Let them assume you're hiding or that you need to grow up. or pay someone to give you extensive therapy and delve into all the reasons you may be burying a terrifying fear of intimacy. Now, I'm not saying that getting into a relationship is an unworthy goal. I'm saying that once you learn how to love being single and squeeze the juice out of it, you won't care about finding a relationship unless it already adds to your bountiful, exuberant, jolly, freedom-filled, single fun-fest. Think Homer Simpson skipping through the land of chocolate and you'll get a picture of where I'm at on this. And the epiphany comes when you realize just because I'm single, I don't have to date. Suddenly everything gets easier. You can switch off from all the dating anxiety and throw yourself into all your passions guilt-free and love every second of it. You get piles of precious free time. You can actually read books. You can go fly to your college friend who lives six hours away because you've always felt like seeing Budapest. It's a pretty damn enviable position. And whether or not you have dating aspirations, once you realize you can let that go and enjoy this chunk of time, huh, relief. Number two. Listen to your gut. Okay, but what if you are single and you are also out there trying, dating, looking to meet someone? Then you need to be smart about it. Too many people in the single world waste time and emotion pursuing terrible leads. They date men and women who don't invest in them. They spend hours waiting for texts back only to get one word answers. and they chase intimacy from people who only want attention or sex or validation. So, if you're single and looking and want to actually enjoy it, i.e. keep your self-esteem, self-respect, not get burnt out with people in general, you need to listen to your gut more than you listen to what you'd like to be true. I'll say that one more time. You need to listen to your gut more than you listen to what you'd like to be true. I've written many times about how to decide whether you should stay or go when it comes to a serious relationship. But let's make it super simple. Ask yourself if you're dating these four questions. Am I really, really attracted to them? Do I really, really like them and respect the way they live? Do they treat me really, really well and make me feel wanted and desired? And finally, do we really, really want the same thing in the next 5 to 10 years? Or at least in the next couple of years? Your gut knows the answers to all of these. Or at least it should if you're seeing someone and getting in any meaningful way to know who they are. If it doesn't, then you're still avoiding an important conversation you need to have with this person. So listen to your gut and have it now. Once you start listening to your gut, then comes the difficult part, following it. In relationships, it knows where you need to go. Unfortunately, what it has to say is sometimes very unpleasant and you want to punch it, especially when it says, Now I need you to go and break it off with that person you have amazing sex with because they clearly treat you as an afterthought and trying to win them will waste years of your life and turn you into a ball of misery and resentment. Ultimately though, your gut is your friend. It will help you drop the wrong people faster so you have space for the right person when they eventually cross your path. Be open about whom you meet but be picky about whom you invest in. This one idea changed my entire life. Why? Because I've seen 10,000 single people do this the opposite way around. Most single people do dating like this. They open up a dating app, they swipe through profiles, they go to parties, they attend single events, and in their head is a constant no monkey telling them all the reasons they don't want to talk to that person. The no monkey says things like, He wears those shorts with that t-shirt? She's into that stupid book? His smile seems kind of cocky, I don't know. or I don't like people who wear beanies. She's probably an annoying hipster. And so on and so on. Hey, you have standards. Great. But maybe also that monkey who keeps telling you a thousand excuses not to meet people hasn't always got your best interests at heart. Because here's what happens when that monkey kicks up a fuss and you dismiss everyone. You stop meeting anybody. In fact, you meet so few people that the next time you finally bump into even one guy you actually like, your monkey looks at him as if he's a magical, never-ending banana tree and screams at you, pick him, oh my god, he's amazing, HIM! Ignoring the fact that those bananas often disappear for three weeks, stop texting back, and then reappear kind of moldy later, saying, hey, you up? bananas can talk in this flimsy metaphor I'm creating here. So, the smart way to date is to flip this around. Be very open-minded about whom you talk to, even if it's for five minutes, but be super picky about who you invest emotion in. That way, you train your monkey to examine the tree a bit more to see if it actually has strong roots. I.E. If these bananas are the real deal or just a clever mirage. Yeah, we're back on bananas again, by the way. The bananas are the guy, you know, you want a good banana, not a bad banana. Banana might not have been the best word here because of the image it conjures up. Yeah, you know, I'll think out my metaphors a bit better in future. Number four, have some adventures. People always want to know if they should be on the quote hunt when they're single. As I said in point number one, if you don't want to date right now, don't date. This is a golden opportunity. And look, you can enjoy it now before your brain wrecks it all by falling in love and then you have to take a whole other human being's needs and desires into account. You know, that sort of thing you have to do in relationships, right? So put simply, now is your time, guilt-free, to go on adventures. Obviously, this hopefully applies whether you're coupled up or not. But when you're single, now is actually the optimum window to take advantage of your relative freedom and seek out unusual activities, fun places, solo travel. Generally, you can enjoy the fact that you can show up to parties and leave exactly when you get bored. You're a free agent. Basically, you get to dive into as many things as they want, and when they suck, you can say screw it and spend a weekend binge watching those Seinfeld episodes you'd never seen as you sip an oat milk latte while pondering maybe I'll go for an afternoon walk later and treat myself to some new books or go and just do a little bit of shopping because hey, you're single and who else do you need to spend the time and the money on? and as most people who are in long-term relationships will tell you, you kind of don't get that time back. That window could close pretty quickly, especially if you do meet someone in the next month or six months. So you might as well embrace and enjoy this moment. Now, instead of being the person who constantly bemoans singledom, be the other person who's having so many fun Adventures that they have to be convinced to finally bring someone else along for the ride. Number five, be willing to totally change what you thought yesterday. One danger of being single or being in any position for too long is that you can become stubborn. You can easily get set in your ways, certain that you know everything, or you build up some idealized story of why you're single in your head and you never want a relationship. It's easy to rationalize any situation and cling to a narrative that's no longer true. Which is why I've always loved the saying have having strong opinions loosely held. In other words, be willing to let go of any belief that stops serving you at any time. Maybe being single is working for you today and it's amazing, but life goes through phases and it doesn't always have to be an all or nothing scenario. Some of our beliefs that make us single now may not be true tomorrow. For example, we might think I'm happier alone than I am with someone. Maybe. But that could also be a belief we've adopted after a couple of not so great relationships and we feel a bit burnt and bruised and being open to the right person coming that makes us feel fulfilled in a way that suddenly feels easy and doesn't feel like a struggle could completely change that belief and maybe we think oh wow, I am happy with someone it just needed to be the right person all along. Or we might tell ourselves a story, I don't have time for a relationship. Maybe. Or maybe we just have other priorities right now. And maybe right now we are focusing hard on our career, our friends, our hobbies, and in time we'd be better off trying to make some more time to carve out for a partner and someone who would serve and support our goals and be open to that process and dip our toe in the water with dating and see how it feels. Or we might tell ourselves, I can't find someone who really gets me. Maybe, but maybe that also just takes time and it's worth being open to new people and being surprised by what might happen because life tends to work in funny ways and you want to be ready for the day when someone amazing does walk into your world. And if we live in a very dismissive way where we think, I'm looking for a unicorn and no one can fulfill my great standards, Then we kind of lose that wonderful possibility of serendipity and someone who really does fit us well coming along. So for the record, once again, I have no dog in this fight. I have been happy single. I have been happy in relationships. But I do know the danger of clinging hard to one position and using it to justify whatever we're currently choosing. Just look at the couples you know who rationalize why they're staying in a crappy relationship for the last 10 years and you'll know what I mean. It's a beautiful fact of life that the philosophy we followed yesterday can turn out to be completely wrong for who we are today. Meet someone, break up, stay together, go solo all can be happy roads if chosen for the right reasons. Okay, that is all for that article. I know there's a lot to chew on there. I would love to hear your thoughts on this if it's changed your mind about being single, if you've realized there are many things to appreciate about it, if you found it hard to appreciate being single in the past. I'm a big, big champion for this idea because like I said, the societal narrative is so damn strong in the direction that Everyone needs to be in a couple or constantly moving towards the state of finding someone. Like people ask you about it, have you found someone yet? Are you looking for a relationship? That's weird that you're not looking for one. And again, relationships can be great. But this idea that everyone needs to be pushing themselves towards one at all times, I think is very, very dangerous. And I think it causes people a lot of pain and unnecessary suffering. when they could be really, really enjoying this time of their lives, having a blast and actually choosing what's right for them and deciding when it's right for them to get in a relationship, whenever, if ever that is. So, that's my two cents. If you've got thoughts, send me your emails at podcast@matthewhussie.com I would love to hear from you any thoughts for or against Send them away and I'll try and get back to some of you. I'll try and read a couple on a future episode. And if you feel that you do struggle with being confident on your own, having self-worth, being the kind of person who can love yourself outside a relationship so that you don't end up choosing bad relationships just so you can be with someone and try and cover up those feelings. consider reserving a spot on our next retreat program, because that is where we take people who do feel that they don't have that internal self-worth. They look externally for that in their career, their, you know, hobbies, their relationships. They define themselves by the things they have instead of looking inwardly to be able to build themselves up to a place where they have incredible strength with or without those things. And once you're in that position, It creates a feeling of fearlessness that is unmatched by anything else because suddenly you feel like you are choosing from a position of power. And that is a completely different state of mind when you go into trying to find love, when you go into dating, you have a completely different attitude to people who don't meet your standards, to people who treat you the wrong way, to people who aren't going to give you what you really deserve. And when you're coming from that place of confidence, you won't even recognize yourself and it's an incredible feeling and if you want to do that for yourself you can go and check out our retreat at mhretreat@home.com mhretreat@home.com and you can go and get started on the process alrighty my pickles, puddings and pears that is it from old Stevie today I have said white enough, you go and whether you are happily coupled up like two very snuggled peas in a pod or single and free as a daisy right now, go and knock the hell out of it. I will see you on the next episode. Have a week.