Is Love Still Possible in 2020?

Oh, my lordy Lou listeners, is it time already for another episode of the love life podcast? Well, according to my watch, it is. I am your host, Stephen Hussey, and today we are talking about the very future of love itself. It's no secret that we have been ushered in, kicking and screaming, into a new decade where the scourge of COVID-19 has changed the way we're thinking currently about work, about family, about friendship, and of course about our romantic lives. And lots of people are asking the question, what is this going to mean for me meeting someone? And what risks can and should I take? And how should I justify them? And what kind of conversations am I going to have with a potential new partner? And how is this going to change, you know, the future of monogamy or casual dating? And so I'm gonna jump to a clip of Matt talking on these big meaty issues. Before I do, just tiny bits of housekeeping. You can of course subscribe to the podcast if you don't already. If you'd like two brand new episodes a week tickling your ears, you can do that on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher. Go subscribe and if you're feeling extra kind and generous, please leave us a lovely review on iTunes. It does help people Find the Show. And you can also email us on podcast@matthewhussie.com with any of your comments, thoughts, musings, things you like about a particular episode, suggestions for questions to tackle on a future episode, podcast@matthewhussie.com, send your feedback our way. And finally, you know, some people I notice in the inbox, I am getting sometimes very detailed, specific questions about people's own love lives and the scenarios they're facing. Obviously, I am unable to rummage through the whole inbox and give long, detailed answers to specific love life questions. If you are interested in diving deeper with us and actually joining us for live sessions where we do exactly that kind of thing, where we actually take people's specific scenarios or questions or issues they're struggling with in their own love life and try and tackle them step by step. You can join our exclusive members area if you go to askmh.com, just go there, input your details, follow the path, and you can start on your way to actually becoming one of our exclusive members. And we have live webinars, we have Specific sessions with different focus on whether it's meeting people or relationships or, you know, specific communication issues people are facing, getting back with an ex and all those kind of questions. So that's askmh.com and you can go start on your way to becoming one of our exclusive members. That is it from me. I'm gonna hand over to the big guy himself, Matthew Hussey, right now. I'll see you on the other side of the podcast.

So recently I was asked to do an interview where I was part of a panel with an anthropologist, an epidemiologist, and then there was I, the love apologist. We were there to talk about the impact that all of this is going to have, not just on dating and love now, but on the future of dating. The epidemiologist was asked what constitutes safe when we're out there dating right now, and her answers amounted to there's no way to know, that you're safe if you were to meet someone in person right now. And that's going to be the case until we have a vaccine. So on behalf of single people everywhere, I volunteered the question, are you talking about us being celibate until there's a vaccine? And she said, well, no, you might be able to meet up with someone in person if you are able to really trust that that person hasn't been around lots of other people, hasn't been to any events, any gatherings. At that point, maybe you might meet up with that person and be six feet apart, which then of course begs another question, which is at what point do you decrease the distance from six feet to something more romantic? We are now introduced, aren't we, to a different layer of complexity in dating as single people. The complexity before was how do I discern someone's intentions? Do they want a relationship? Do they not? Are they looking for the same thing as me? Are they just looking to play around? Well, now we're not just trying to discern intentions, we're trying to discern the state of someone's health. Whether they are a carrier or not. That is a difficult thing to think about. We used to think about that and still do, of course, in the context of sex. At the point of sleeping with someone, we would, of course, want to know whether they had any STDs that we needed to be concerned about. We'd use protection. Now, we're not talking about it at that intimate stage. We're having to figure out certain things about each other before we even go on a date. Have you been around people? Think about that. Not have you slept with anyone unprotected, have you been around people? In which case, I'm more concerned about meeting up with you. So what happens as things begin to open up again and we start trying to figure out how to navigate our dating lives? It's a time when it's gonna be even more confusing because people are gonna have all sorts of different standards about this. We're already seeing this not just between cities and states because that gets stereotyped, doesn't it? This state is behaving really badly. This state's doing a really good job. This state's taking it too seriously. there's all of that side of it. But even within neighborhoods, door to door, people have different beliefs. I don't know if you've had the experience of talking to a neighbor or someone who's close to you and realizing that person has a completely different belief system about this whole thing than you do. We don't date a city or a state, we date door to door. We date the person who lives in that house or that house who might have a different opinion on what safe is or how necessary it is to even worry about any of the guidelines that are given given to us. That's the part we're going to have to navigate when we talk about what have you been up to? How have you been spending your time in quarantine? Have you been around lots of people? Are you still seeing friends? When things open up and you decide you do feel comfortable enough with the way somebody else has been acting in their own life that you want to meet up with them in person, there will be a moment where the two of you see each other on that date and you may have decided for yourself, I'm not going to hug this person right now. You know, I'm going to have a six feet apart date, in which case, That could potentially be an awkward moment, but it doesn't have to be. Communicating your standards is something that can be done elegantly in a charming and warm way. You could see that person walk through the door and say, I would normally hug you, but I'm trying to be careful right now, and I'm close to my family, and I live with them, or I see them often, so I'm being super careful. But just know that I would normally be hugging you, and you look very handsome. in that shirt. Now, in that, you're doing many things. You're saying, I'm close to my family and therefore look what a kind and caring person I am, that I'm worried about them too and I'm being safe for their purposes. You're saying, I have a standard that I'm bold enough and confident enough to communicate to you without dancing around it or making things awkward. And I'm also giving you a compliment. I'm telling you you look handsome just in case you thought that I didn't find you attractive. If we've decided what our standard is right now or what we're okay with and what we're not okay with, which ideally we should decide ahead of time, not on the spot arbitrarily simply based on how handsome the person in front of you is, we can have made a decision about what we're gonna do without trying to be right. Just because you've made a decision, It doesn't mean you need to be right. I think we're living in a time where everyone is trying to be right about the decision they've made instead of accepting that I've decided something for now based to the best of my ability on the information that I've gotten. I don't know if I'm right. I don't know if three months from now I'm going to look back on the things that I did to be safe today and think that was overkill. That was way too much. I don't know. I might. But this is the decision I'm making right now. I don't know if me not hugging You has really protected my mum, but I care about my mum and based on what I've heard, this is what I'm gonna do right now. We don't have to be right to have made a decision for now. And all of us can reserve the right to look back on that decision and think it was too much or too little or to change our mind about that decision at any point in time. That's our prerogative at any point. So a little humility will actually help a lot of this because instead of me defending my position and saying, well, I can't believe you're doing this and I can't believe you're doing that, we can simply say, this is what I've chosen to do for me. This is what I've chosen to do for the people around me. That stops something from becoming dogma, from becoming a political position that we take against somebody else and instead allows us to communicate about those things while still respecting our own boundaries. You know what I think is gonna happen? Firstly, people are still gonna find a way of sleeping with other people. There will be a disproportionate bias towards known entities, the people that you already know, the people you've already slept with, your ex, the person you've been on a few dates with, the person you already trust. Even if that person hurt you before, even if that person was not right for you, you'll find a way to justify going back to that person because the activation energy for going back to that person will be lower. It will simply be easier to go back to that person than to go online, meet someone new, develop enough trust to meet up with that person in person, because you now believe that they have been pretty careful. So now you're with them, and now sleeping with them feels like a kind of a decision, kind of a you know, oh, I'm really making a decision here. If I kiss you or sleep with you, I'm almost committed to whatever you have or don't have. But it seems like more of a decision. So I do think that there'll be a propensity to go for the people we already know. And where people don't have someone they already know that they can go to, I think that in the near future of dating, as people date, there may be inclinAtion towards less promiscuity. There may be an inherent squeamishness against sleeping with multiple people and it might frankly become more selective. Do I really like you? Do I really want to take the risk with you? There'll also of course be differences in people's situations. You know, people who are who have weakened immune systems or prior conditions are going to have to be more careful when they date. People who live with their parents might find themselves having to be more careful than in a data who lives alone and has no one to worry about but themselves. All these things are going to play into it. And of course there will be certain people who disregard all of it and simply do what they want to do when they want to do it. I think those people will reveal themselves pretty quickly. The person who meets you online today and then says, shall we get together? Do you want to do something tomorrow? But also says, I don't normally do this. It's kind of like the person who sleeps with us in five seconds and says, I never do this. and you go, Was I really that great in the first five seconds? Could I really have been that charming in the first hour of meeting you that you're just sleeping with me right now? It's the same thing. I think we're gonna know fairly quickly if someone is very liberal about meeting up with lots of people. But if you do want some encouragement, consider this. There are many, many, many, many, many, many, many wonderful single people just like you who also want to find a relationship and find themselves stuck at home figuring out where that next right person is going to come from. The single people of the world did not vanish. They are still there and they want to meet you. And a lot of people who were in relationships a few months ago are now broken up because they've realized that the person they're with is a nightmare to live with. So they're on the market too.

That is it from us today listeners. Thank you so much and once again if you are interested in going deeper with us and joining our exclusive members area where you get exclusive content released every week and we have webinars where we have live sessions where we take people's actual dating, love life problems and troubleshoot them in real time. Go to askmh.com, send your question there and you can start on the path to becoming one of our members. That's it from your old pal Stevie today. I'm heading out. and I will see you this weekend with another hot off the oven podcast, as always. All right, you take care of yourself. Bye-bye.

I see the blog sites. Ooky-wooky got a new wife. Shorty got a new boo. Yeah, love beautiful. I'm looking for love.