Keeping the Attraction Alive in A Relationship | Rewind

Our instincts tell us you should not go to work for the next week.

You should just- who needs income anyway?

Right, I have love. Welcome everybody to the Love Life Podcast. I am Matthew Hussey and this is a clip that I think is really going to help you accelerate your love life today. Check it out and I'll speak to you at the end of the episode. The second thing people listed is one of the top four reasons why they're most drawn to their partner. is when they are away, when we are apart and then reunite. So the idea of being apart and then reuniting some cliches, perhaps all cliches, are a cliche for a reason. The cliche of absence makes the heart grow fonder. I've thought a lot about that. phrase. What does it actually mean? Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Well, when we get space from someone, we have the ability to A, experience what it's like when their light isn't shining on us, which means two things. One, we're feeling the absence of that light. we're feeling the absence of that energy in our life. So there's a loss there, but there's also the knowing that it's going somewhere else, that something or someone else or many other people are getting that light. And that in some way makes us want to reclaim that light, albeit, you know, there's unhealthy ways of looking at that, but there's also just a healthy way of like, oh, I wanna, you know, the person I'm with, their light is going everywhere else but me. I want to reclaim it. I both miss it and there's at times a hint of jealousy or of, oh, I want it, you know, I want that light to be on me again. Again, I'm talking in a healthy way. I'm not talking about unhealthy attachment here. I'm talking about a hint of it that can create some tension and excitement, but it also gives us a chance to newly appreciate and and think about our partner in ways that are hard to think about them when they're around. In other words, when our partner is with us, we we are experiencing the moment we're in with them. Now, that's not to say we're not in our head about something or other or the past or the future. We can be, but But we're so busy being in the conversation we're in with them in that moment, watching the movie, we're watching, having dinner with them, experiencing the actual moment we're in, that we don't actually have time to think about them abstractly, to think about them from the outside. And when we can think about someone from the outside and not in their presence, We're able to think about the full context of time, past moments we've had with them, especially when we miss them. We might start to think about past moments we've had. We might start to think about memories that we get nostalgic about, things that we want to recreate. We may get excited about the future with them in a way that we don't always think about when we're being busy in the moment. with them or when just the responsibilities of being together, you know, are taking center stage. Oh, we need to do this. Oh, we need to pay that bill. Oh, we need to make that phone call we said we'd make. When we're apart, we just get to think about that person as a person and think about our moments with them or the moments we wanna have, the moments we haven't had yet. We get to think about all of the qualities we really appreciate about them, especially with the loss of them in that moment, we do really connect to them. So I am interested, Steve, in the context of a relationship, this means to me that it is important to engineer time away from your partner. Now, that doesn't have to be weeks or months. It could be a weekend. It could be a day. It could be a couple of hours where you go and see your friends. It can even be an hour when you're in the next room making a phone call or having something, you know, having a conversation or being lost in an activity that has nothing to do with them. Sometimes you could be in the same house as someone all day, but if they're in the other room doing their thing absorbed in their own world, When you see them again, you feel like you're reuniting at a certain point in the day.

Yeah, yeah.

What I'm curious about is how you feel, Steve, about this in early stage dating. I have my thoughts, but what do you think about how this applies to the early stages of dating?

I think there's a thing we've written about before that I think is relevant here, where we talked about the difference between being an everyday movie or the exciting one-off show, like a concert, you know, that you're excited to go to.

So explain what that means, Steve.

So the everyday movie is the thing that's always there. You can go anytime. You can just stroll down to the cinema and go and see that movie because it's got, like, 10 showings today. And the one-off concert is.

So this would, this would be, this would be like James Bond has just come out in the cinema and. it's playing 10 times a day. And if you missed this showing, you can literally go to the next one. If you missed that one, you can go to the next one. And if work is really dragging on today, you could just keep pushing it back and back and back until you're ready for it, knowing that whenever you're available, that movie will be available.

Exactly. I know Batman is out right now. The Robert Pattinson one. I know I want to see it, but I just keep every day goes by. I'm like, it's there. It's there whenever.

And by the way, Steve, that gets, that effect is even more pronounced once it leaves the cinema and goes to streaming because once there are movies I desperately have, I've, like, said to Jameson, we have to go and see that movie while it's out of the cinema. And then as soon as it goes to streaming, like a year can pass. Right. And I don't watch it because it suddenly loses a bit of its It loses a bit of its shine knowing that, well, I can literally just watch it anytime now that it's on Amazon or Netflix or whatever. There's no rush.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So this would, just to clarify, that would be the equivalent, Stephen, of someone who, anytime you pick up the phone, anytime you want to see them, anytime you at the very last minute say, Are you around right now? you're met with someone who's just always available. So you come to learn in the dating process that they are just available whenever you want them.

Yeah, exactly.

And in that being the case, you lose any sense of urgency about seeing them, right? Yeah.

And maybe they just don't make any other plans at all. Whenever you're together, they just, you know, that's all you do. And they drop other plans for you. And this isn't about game playing or manipulation or engineering certain fake situations, but I think just the sense of feeling like there's times where because they've got their life and I've got mine, they're going to be doing their thing. They're going to, even if they were like, I'm going to go to a coffee shop and do some work for two hours and you were doing something else, you would miss them and you would then enjoy the fact that like, but we're going to get together for dinner later or afterwards. So I'll see you in a couple of hours. You would look forward to that reuniting already. And just knowing that it's just seeing that there's a value to their time. It's seeing that it means something that they're spending time with you. You know, they have other things they care about. They have other things that, you know, take their attention now and then. But then, you know, when you're spending your great time together, you appreciate it even more. You enjoy the ebb and flow of They're gone. I missed them for two hours now, and now I get to hear from them again.

Well, this is one of those areas where it really is important to be wary of your instincts. We're always told to trust our instincts, but our instincts can be very dangerous. When we're in the early stages of dating and we really like someone, when we're really smitten and we're having a great time, Our instincts tell us you should not go to work for the next week. You should just stay in bed with this person for the next seven days.

Who needs income anyway?

Right, I have love.

I don't need any of that shit anymore.

Yeah, yeah.

Why do I need to buy a virtual reality headset? Why do I need that money? Why do I need rent and food?

And friends. Friends suddenly feel so overrated. I have everything I need in these four walls. As long as we have access to some kind of food delivery service, we have everything we could ever want. Now, that is a very real feeling. It's a very real impulse. and we've all felt it. What's important is that we look at what's good for the relationship that I would like this to become, not what feels good in the moment all the time. That's not to say that you can't enjoy what feels good in the moment. It's just that Sometimes what you believe would be best for the relationship you'd like this to become has to take precedent over doing what feels best right now because they're not always the same thing. And anyone who just says, Matt, I just don't want to do that. I'm a kind of follow my heart kind of person. If it feels good, I want to do it. Well, you don't apply that to working out, do you? Right? I. Most days, I do not feel like going to the gym or. Or Jiu Jitsu. I just don't. Most days, as I'm about to leave, my brain is looking for excuses. It will take. And it will try to take anything. Anything. It'll be like, oh, I. I. you know, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. I don't know if this is a good idea, come to think of it. Like, it'll really. My brain is a heat seeking missile for anything that can allow me to do what feels best in the moment. Now, I know what's ultimately going to feel best is the feeling I get when I leave the gym. But what feels best right now is to not do it. to stay at home. So we don't, we know that there are areas of our life where, as Jordan Peterson put it, we can trade with reality, right? We get to trade with reality, which I think is kind of a nice phrase. We get to trade comfort today for fulfillment tomorrow as one example. And we also get to trade the drug-fueled euphoria of being in someone's company for the third night in a row, tomorrow night, for a little bit of mystery that gets created by seeing our friends on that third night or by going and doing a class that we already missed yesterday because we were seeing this person. I hope you enjoyed that episode. Before you go, feel free to join me for live coaching on your biggest dating questions by going to askmh.com this is where you can sign up for a 14-day free trial to my members club, the Love Life Club. If you want coaching from me, if you wanna be in an exclusive group of people that works with me every month on their confidence and their love lives. This is the place where we do it. Go to askmh.com to become a part of it.