Responding To YOUR Biggest Dating Mistakes...

So when we are choosing our flawed person, we better make sure that the things we're choosing are things that create long-term happiness, not things that just create short-term thrills. Welcome, everybody, to the Love Live podcast with me, Matthew Hussey. We've got the whole gang here today, Steven Jameson and Audrey.

Hi.

Hey.

Wow.

Why did we go so cheesy then?

I don't know, I quite liked it.

It wasn't even harmonious.

We are so excited about today's episode. We've got a question that we put out on Instagram. What was that question, Audrey?

It was, do you have a pattern or a reoccurring mistake in your love life that you want to work on?

And we had a lot of response. So we're gonna be reading some of those responses. We have some great content coming up in today's episode. A bit of housekeeping before we get started. This October, from the 9th to the 15th, our live retreat is happening again in Florida, Fort Lauderdale. The dates have been released. We have over 200 tickets already sold. We actually don't have that many left. This time before a retreat, we normally have a lot more than this available. And this year we have had an enormous amount of early signups. So not too many left now if you do wanna come and join us in person, in the flesh. For six days in October in Florida by the beach, we are going to be spending six days working on your confidence, your ability to navigate the difficult times in your life, your emotions, your love life, and just the person that you're becoming in the upcoming years. Because if we don't grow consciously, then the things that frustrate us, plague us, make us unhappy today, make us anxious, make us stressed, they simply continue. They are ingrained patterns. So this is a program that helps you heal, become the most confident version of yourself and work on the patterns that stop us from being happy, many of which have been there for years and years. We would love you to join us. And if you want to apply, go to mhrtrtreat.com to find out all about this wonderful program. And maybe We will see you in October in Florida. All right, let's get going. Audrey, why don't you give us a couple of the responses to the question we put out on Instagram?

Yeah, for sure. So obviously this was asking people whether they had patterns that kept happening in their love lives that were kind of getting in the way and sabotaging their results. And it was honestly quite overwhelming to choose which ones to read out because there were so many unbelievably relatable and interesting ones. Some of them were actually kind of sad and it was quite hard to read them. But I'll kick things off with one which was from somebody called Miss Ruby and she said that her pattern was choosing unavailable partners and then not being able to leave them.

Yeah, yeah. Choosing unavailable partners. Why do we choose unavailable partners? It's worth exploring some of the cocktail of reasons that we actually do that. Because of course, the being unable to leave thing, it's, there are things that make it harder for us to leave when we have a certain attachment style or we don't think we're worth more. But also just when you allow yourself to get closer to someone, naturally it's hard to leave. So it's worth exploring why we even get close to people like this in the first place and make it hard for ourselves to leave. So one of the reasons is scarcity. We have a scarcity mindset in our love lives. We are in a place where maybe we've been single for a long time, where nothing's worked out so far. where we are scared that we're not going to meet someone we like. And so when we meet someone who has certain qualities that make them likable, that especially when those qualities include chemistry, you know, we have chemistry with this person, we find ourselves very quickly attaching a lot of value to someone regardless of the things that make them a bad candidate for a long-term relationship, which might include they openly say they don't want a long-term relationship, might include them being someone who from the beginning seems there's something off about them, or you catch them in a lie. It might be someone who doesn't text you for days or weeks on end, and then all of a sudden wants your time in a very, kind of extreme and intense way. When we see these things, we ignore them when we feel something and we just, we're glad to be feeling something. Now, how often does that happen? We're just happy to be feeling something. We're just happy to have something.

And the thing is, I think that sounds, it's a beautiful thing to want companionship, but in a weird way, this comes back to a thing Audrey says a lot about chasing the wrong things. But you can sometimes just chase a singular thing too much, like companionship. And you've put in the furniture of the room of what's important to you, you've put companionship as the centerpiece. But you've forgot all these other things or you shrunk them like my integrity, my feeling of feeling nourished and loved, my feeling of being able to have the kind of team and partnership that I've dreamed of. And that all shrinks because you go, companionship though, I'm with someone, it gives me validation, it looks good on the outside because someone goes, oh, you're with that person, that's good. And I think it's like you've misallocated. You've got one thing that's taking up too much space, which is just, oh, I'm with someone, I don't feel lonely anymore. which is why we do so much work on making you feel amazing and nourished being single, because that is the key to being able to let go of those things. I think it's Guy Winch who says when you're trying to get over a breakup, you gotta emphasize all the things you're gaining by not being with that person and all the things you were losing by staying with them.

Well, this person, I think both of these things come from just fear. to me where, you know, choosing someone, an unavailable partner, it's like that's a way to just never really fully feel like you need to put yourself out there. It's like, well, they're not really available anyways, so it's not, it's not me if they're, if I get rejected. And the same thing with leaving, well, it's like, well, it's not really a, it's just sort of like in limbo. You're putting yourself in limbo there and you're, it's coming from a place of just, I'm not gonna need to really do anything. I'm kind of gonna stay in the middle here where someone's kind of unavailable. I'm gonna kind of stay. I'm gonna kind of not go. And I'm just not gonna be truly vulnerable with this person in front of me. Or I'm not gonna be truly vulnerable, not with the person, but just with love life in general.

I've got a question. When people say emotionally unavailable, do they just mean someone who won't commit, or is there something else people are referring to?

I think they mean someone who won't commit. I think it's not being ready and not able to give what is required in order to be in a relationship. You know, I think we're forgetting one big crucial piece, which is self-esteem and the sort of economics of someone not wanting to be with you and what that makes you feel in terms of your worth versus their worth. I think that that's a huge part of why we kind of end up chasing people who don't want us because by the default of them not wanting us, their stock rises, their value rises, and we just end up kind of, it reaffirms the fact that if we're not able to get that person, then we're not worthy. And people who kind of turn around to meet us and actually want to be with us, we almost go, well, if you want to be with me, there must be sort of like, you know, your value must not be as high as I think it is because I don't think that I'm worthy of love. It's a very deep reason, but I think it's actually probably one of the main reasons why we because healthy people with healthy sense of self and healthy kind of, what's the word? Healthy self-worth, I suppose, find people who don't want them to be kind of like, oh, well, that's a dead end and that's not very attractive. I want to be with someone who actually wants to be with me. and I think when people really chase after people who don't want them, that tends to be that, you know, they're probably trying to close a loop that is, you know, predates that person and is very, very deep and very old.

It's like a mistaken perception of the value of Love being in acquiring a prize instead of the value of it is what you both are gonna build together.

And maybe that's actually to do with also movies and stuff like that, where all of Love stories are always about kind of overcoming this major obstacle or taming the beast or making sure that somebody, like making somebody love you, rather than like what happens after people get together and you're just in a relationship, in a normal, regular relationship, and that part's never really glamorized in the same way. So the peaks are the things that we almost chase after because we think that's love and we recognize that as passion. And maybe then emotionally unavailable people as a result feel like the epitome of that and it be epitome of acquiring love.

Yeah.

No, that's right. There's an intensity to chasing someone that feels unavailable and then the feeling you get when they give you a little bit of attention. It feels like a rush. You know, it's exciting, it's euphoric, it's this huge release. It's not a normal feeling that you have in a stable relationship. So if you live your life chasing that feeling, you're gonna have to keep going and getting those highs in people like that, where it's push-pull all the time. It's not, there's no sense of just, oh, there's a peace to this. Peace doesn't necessarily feel exciting. And if exciting is what you're always driving towards, if that's the thing you value the most, then you'll be attracted to situations that create those kinds of feelings.

Absolutely. We have another comment from Akiya who said, I feel anxious when I don't have constant attention and I have a hard time communicating my needs. I think that's incredibly common also.

It's a tough combo. Anxious and also trouble communicating that they're anxious. So it probably manifests in like this really anxious attachment or anxious avoidant attachment where it's like, I'm pissed off and angry and now I'm gonna like run off and not explain why.

Yeah, I think they go hand in hand a lot of the time because if you're anxious anytime someone leaves your side or isn't giving you attention, There's, you know, you're also, you're not just anxiously trying to get attention. You're anxious that you're gonna lose it. You're anxious that they're gonna abandon you. And what you don't wanna do is give them more reasons to abandon you than you think they already have. And expressing your vulnerability and the things you're, you know, the needs you have is something that you might think is gonna make you seem high maintenance. It might make you seem weak. It might make you seem unattractive. And so the last thing you want to do is give them more reasons to find you unattractive or to not want you or to ask for things because you're worried that if you ask again, that anxiety is, I'm not worthy, right? I don't want to... If I ask for something, then I might be too much for you. I'm only worthy when I'm doing everything you want, not when I ask for things I want. So that feeling of I'm anxious anytime they're not around or not texting me, but I'm too afraid to say it is all part of the same thing.

Do you think in a way you can need less attention the more you get comfortable with just asking for what you want? Is the attention like a substitute for you just needing to feel what certainty? But in a way, if you can ask calmly for this is what I'd like or I'd like us to talk for, half an hour each night or whatever. Maybe you need less in between that because you've been able to just communicate solidly. This is my expectation. This is what I want. And now I don't have to feel so kind of like, if you know.

If you know dinner's coming tonight, you don't need to worry about, like, where, like, constantly fretting about your hunger.

Right.

It's always about food, isn't it? Always. Always. You know, actually, the holistic psychologist said something. to that. She said, what showing love to anxiously attached people looks like. And it was a message which was like, you know, hey, I'm really busy with work today, but just so you know, that's all it is. I'm not ignoring you and I'll message you at four o'clock when I get out. And I think you're totally right. It's that sort of like, if you can exist, if you have these parameters in which, you know, this person isn't. Because I think it's the story you build in your head when you're not getting the communication, which essentially is, I'm gonna get left. I'm not worthy. They don't love me. They were someone else, whatever it might be. Whereas if you know that during this time it's nothing to do with you, they're just living their life and their other obligations and their other kind of commitments, then yeah, you worry less about it. And I think there's a lot to that. And being able to effectively communicate that is super important, right?

Yeah, yeah. I have the other issue where I'm often worried about people intruding too much on my space. And I know I can let a lot of that anxiety go away of, oh, I'm feeling trapped. I don't... If I am able to go, Hey, I'd really love to have space to do this tonight or this... Then I'm not like so jittery and freaked out. Like, someone's gonna come and monopolize all my time or someone's gonna come and like try and trap me and make me do things I don't want to do. If I'm had to be like, I'd like this morning to do this, and then we will go and do that this afternoon.

I think you sent that message a bunch, that holistic psychology. You just copy and paste that to everybody. I think you sent me that this morning. That was pretty rude.

It's kind of funny though, isn't it? Because you could be avoidant and still not having those conversations. And if you say, why does an avoidant not have those conversations? Like in the past, when you were in a place in your life where you wouldn't have that conversation. Why do you think that was?

Um, partly some kind of learnt people-pleasing tendency and some nervousness that it would be taken as a kind of act of, just coldness or unkindness.

But what's the thing you're afraid of in, like, what was the result that could happen because of those things that you were afraid of?

I suppose it was thinking, oh, now they're gonna feel upset or angry all day and, like, it's gonna create a tension that we're gonna then have to address. Like, it's gonna be taken. It's gonna be taken the wrong way, and there's gonna be an argument or tension.

Right.

And.

And. Yeah.

And a conversation.

Is there ever a fear of this person's gonna leave me if I communicate this like that? Eventually they're just gonna decide, I'm not enough or I can't give enough or. I'm just curious. I'm not such. That's not intended to be.

I think there's definitely times where I felt nervous about, in the past, about talking about certain boundaries or things I would like for fear that they're gonna think this is like, yeah, this is too much demand, or this is like, well, who are you to ask that?

What?

You don't want to, like, spend time on me? Well, screw you. Like, you know that. It's like, oh, no. If I say that it is going to rock the boat.

And it's just kind of interesting, isn't it? Because whether whether you're on the anxious side or the avoidance side, you can still be afraid of who I am is going to sabotage things. It's going to be not enough for someone. And that prevents you from asking for what you actually need. And it's a sad thing because you can actually have a shot at getting what you need by communicating what would help you. And what would. It's not about someone. I think, you know, we have to be careful in the conversations about attachment Styles that it doesn't sound like communicating means that they have to meet all of your desires, because your desires are different from your needs.

Right.

What you may want is different from what you need. You may want. thinking anxiously to be texted every hour of the day. But what you need is structure. What you need is to know that someone, you know, that you're safe. And someone saying to you, hey, I'm really busy with meetings today, so I won't be very available, but I can't wait to speak to you after work, is a kind of structure. It's a kind of safety. I know where I stand with that. But when you know, I actually think it's almost incumbent on us, whatever our attachment style is, to figure out what template can I give someone for how to alleviate certain things with me so that they don't have to guess at it and read my mind. What template can I give them that isn't me asking them to, you know, respond to all of the worst permutations of my attachment style, but gives them a way of handling my attachment style that's healthy and gives me what I need to feel like I'm in a good place.

I love that. I actually want to add an extra layer, which is when you go and out and approach that, having the conversation in the realm of, you know, When you do this, I feel like this. Therefore it would be amazing if you could do this in order for me to not be triggered in those ways. But I appreciate you too have needs. So I want to hear as well what it is that you would like and where you feel that might be too much so that we can come to a compromise. Because sometimes as well, I think when we have quite kind of all-consuming attachment style, we forget that we're also dealing with somebody else who also might have stuff, who also might have needs. And so if we're not taking the time, if we're only putting on them what we want from them, we're not necessarily taking the time to see what they want back from us. And the more they can communicate and you can communicate, I think it just creates this very, it brings you out in the open, right?

Yeah.

And I think the more you communicate to someone, I'm looking out for your needs, the more that person can see you as a long-term partner, you relax because you go, oh, this person's got my. They've got my needs, so I don't have to constantly be defending my needs because they've got them. They're taking them in their hands. It's. That's a. That's a powerful thing.

I love that.

I see why people don't send that message, though. Like, Steve, you might not send that message, even though it's beautifully. said, especially the way you said it, Matt, where it's just like, Hey, I'm just getting down my meetings and been thinking about you, but just know I'm busy. There's a way to send that message and have it be really nice and compassionate and sweet. But even sending it there, you are putting yourself out there and you're almost putting a line in the sand and saying, Here's the needs that I can meet and maybe it's not gonna work. If you're still anxious after that message, that's kind of like, that's tough. Maybe we aren't actually compatible. So I think that's why people don't actually communicate it. Sometimes they're a little bit afraid to just put it out there. Like if it's a question mark, who knows, maybe we can make it work. But if I just communicate thoroughly, then we're gonna find out right away whether it's just gonna actually work or not.

True. Yeah.

Well, speaking of avoidance, we have somebody else who wrote in and her pattern was that she finds something wrong with everyone. And I think that is so common. We hear it all the time. tends to go hand in hand with, you know, chasing unavailable people and being repulsed by people who actually want to be with us.

Yeah. Yeah.

I I think that there's this really interesting dichotomy. I know we spoke to someone recently in one of our programs who said, anytime I, you know, when someone's making me chase them, I have this certainty, and. When someone is into me, I find myself constantly doubting whether they're right for me. And that what that can do is it can make the same person look like an an that they're anxiously attached when they're chasing someone, but avoidant when someone wants them. And to me, there's a really interesting thing going on there. Whereby when someone is making us chase them, we don't really have any bandwidth to evaluate their flaws. We're just so busy trying to get them. You can think of that with anything in life. When a goal seems hard to achieve or whatever, you don't have to worry about whether it's the right thing. You're just like, But let me just achieve it, 'cause I don't know if I can. And then I think that's why a lot of us, when we achieve our goals, we find ourselves going, oh, like this was the thing. This was what I was doing all this time. There's a certainty about chasing something because it's all consuming. And it's the same with people. There's a certainty about chasing people. You don't have to ask if they're right for you. You just want to make sure they want you. and when someone wants you, you've suddenly got all this energy freed up because you're no longer consumed by trying to get them. They want you. So all of a sudden you've got all this bandwidth to assess them, to look at what's wrong with them, to look at their flaws, to inspect them up close, and all of a sudden all this doubt comes in. 'Cause you're actually looking at all of those things. And now you're forced to actually make a decision. There's agency to that. We don't kind of, we think we want agency, but a lot of the time we don't. You know? We think, oh, I just want to be able to choose what I want for dinner tonight. But sometimes there's nothing more rewarding than a friend coming along and saying, I really fancy Indian tonight. And you're like, Phew, I don't have to decide between the 20 different cuisines on my app right now.

You're not like that. you like to scroll the app for hours, sometimes days, before finding.

Yeah, but that's.

Landing on one of the three things you always order.

I'm gonna come by and order for you tonight, just like old times.

Yeah, I do quite like that. Yeah, you do.

I do. I do like when someone expresses a strong opinion, like, oh, I really fancy this. And then it takes the weight off of me having to decide, because in relationships, When this happens, it takes the weight off of us having to figure out whether someone is right for us. And that is a heavy weight. When you're thinking, who do I want to spend my life with? We're not talking about what to order for dinner tonight. We're talking about my life. Who am I going to spend it with? Most people don't trust themselves on day-to-day decisions, let alone a decision about who to be with forever. so the stakes feel really high. And weirdly, the stakes, you don't think about those Stakes when you're chasing someone. You just think about whether, whether you can get them. And that's why, for anyone out there listening right now, if you find that you're anxiously attached with people that make you chase them and you feel avoidant with people that want you, I believe that that is, this goes to the heart. of why that is for so many people. You don't have to decide with someone who's not sure about you, but you do have to decide with someone who wants you. And when you don't trust yourself, when someone wants you, you can't get out of your doubt. Because really, it's a doubt about your own choices. It goes beyond a doubt about them. And that's ultimately a real relationship is choosing. Chasing someone all the time who doesn't want you, who isn't sure about you, who doesn't want to commit. That's a fake relationship. A real relationship is choosing. You actually have to choose. You have to choose a real human being, not a mystery human being, not an exciting, you know, human being that you can't quite see their flaws because they're too far in the distance, they're too removed from you. A real relationship is you actually you actually have to choose a human being and every human being is flawed. Every single one of them has something, whether it's something physical, whether it's something psychological, whether it's something in their history, a problem in the present that they have to deal with, a challenge in their future, every single human being is flawed and has a flawed life. And that's, I feel like that's truly the moment where you realize you're ready for a relationship is when you're ready to choose flaws.

You mentioned the other day that Christopher Hitchens quote, you have to choose your regrets in life. And you've never used it in this context before, but it's kind of interesting here. Like, you have to choose your regrets in a person in life. You're gonna choose a person and the person is gonna come with flaws.

Mm-.

The choice is gonna come with regrets. I don't know if that's the right word, but it's some lack of perfection. And growing up, I think, is realizing like life ain't gonna be perfect. People are not perfect and your choices aren't even really perfect. Everything's super gray and fuzzy.

Yeah.

And yeah, but choosing is pretty powerful. And once you actually choose, you can kind of use that as more energy to put into the choice.

Well, and nothing imbues something with more meaning than choosing it.

Right.

When you, when you actually, when something didn't choose you, when you choose it, you know, I was, I was speaking to someone who was considering having a child on her own, and she actually had a person in her life who was smitten with her and wanted a child with her. And she felt like it was this very, very difficult choice between, like, she felt it made the choice harder that there's this person that wants to do it with her, wants to marry her and have a family that she didn't feel was right for her, and that she was giving up a family with this guy in order to have a child on her own. and what I said is, you know, in an interesting way, this actually gives it more meaning. You having a child on your own. Because you're not saying there's, there's not another option. So I'm gonna do this. You're saying there is another option, but I'm still gonna do this. That gives it even more meaning because you're just you, you, that your story is deciding to do this because this wasn't right for you over here. This person, even though it represented a traditional family unit, wasn't right for you. So you having a child on your own was right for you. And anytime you don't have to be in that kind of a position to just be choosing a person and saying, if I could choose lots of different people, then, and all of them are flawed, then the flaws that I do choose have real meaning. Because what they represent is, oh, they're attached to someone who has things that are extremely important to me. What they have is that important to me. And that's why I'm choosing this. The mistake people make when they choose people who make their lives truly miserable is that the qualities they're choosing are actually, you know, the qualities they're choosing are not qualities that create long-term peace and happiness. They are the qualities they're ignoring someone's flaws because someone has a lot of Charisma. They're ignoring someone's flaws because they have a lot of success or because they're really attractive. Those aren't things that create long-term happiness or peace. So when we are choosing our flawed person, we better make sure that the things we're choosing are things that create long-term happiness, not things that just create short-term thrills.

That's amazing. I feel overwhelmed because there's so many incredible comments. So I think we're gonna have to make this a two-part episode.

Very good.

If you guys do that.

Yeah, because there's just too many to.

Choose from and these answers are amazing. Well, beautiful.

You know, Taco Bell stopped making double deckers.

I, and I know because you wouldn't stop talking about it for weeks.

I just wanted to know if, in case Taco Bell's listening, I just didn't know if there's something they could do about that. We can talk. No, you're right.

We'll talk about that on the next episode. Yeah, we can reach. I love the idea that we're It's not like we're getting paid to mention Taco Bell. It's that you're lobbying Taco Bell to bring menu items back.

What if they canceled Family Guy after that third season and we didn't raise hell about it and get it brought back to the air? We would have 20 seasons of Family Guy. Right.

Not.

So what are we gonna do? Just sit back?

And watch the double-decker fade into obscurity? Absolutely not, Jameson. If it's a fight you care about, it's a fight I care about.

Thank you.

Well, here's another fight we care about. Helping people find the love that they seek in healthy ways that don't leave them burnt out, but actually leave them feeling alive and happy and peaceful, and also help them avoid so much of the the mistakes that are made in dating that leave people feeling those things. And if you're in a place right now where your love life is a priority, we have a place that you can learn where to find love, how to avoid casual situations, and finally get the safety, the loyalty, and the commitment from someone that you deserve. It is a training that I put together for free called Dating with Results. And right now you can go and watch this training, which is a one hour training, and you have a two day pass to watch it once you've signed up. Go to datingwithresults.com, sign up, you'll get a free pass for the next 48 hours. And as long as you watch it within those 48 hours, You're good. So go check that out now. It's at datingwithresults.com, get out of the chaos, the wild west of dating these days and into a real relationship. We will show you how practically in this free training.

And don't just click on it and say you're gonna watch it and then miss the window, which is something I always do and then always regret actually watching it. Schedule the time.

It's one of the 48 hours so that you absolutely don't miss it.

Why would you wait? It's one hour long.

Start now. It's just gonna change your life. Datingwithresults.com Thank you so much everyone for listening to this episode of Love Life. We really appreciate you guys. We love the medium of podcasting to be able to reach you. It's different, isn't it? It's a conversation. You don't get to know us like this on YouTube. It's its own thing. We appreciate you listening to the episodes. and bearing with us on the weeks that we haven't got the time to put out one of these kinds of episodes. Thanks for being on the journey with us and we'll see you next time.

Bye everybody.

Bye Pickles.