Single in This Pandemic? 6 Ways You Can Still Move Your Love Life Forward

Every day, our world gets a little more connected, but a little further apart. But then, there are moments that remind us to be more human.

Thank you for calling Amica Insurance. Hey, I was just in an accident. Don't worry, we'll get you taken care of.

At Amica, we understand that looking out for each other isn't new or groundbreaking.

It's human.

Amica, empathy is our best policy.

Hello, listeners, and welcome back to the love life podcast. I am Stephen Hussey. And what is going on? Well, we are in the closing act of 2020. It is, as I speak these words, it is coming to late December. Christmas is around the corner. And in England, we've just gone into a stage of increased caution on the coronavirus pandemic, where shops and bars and restaurants and basically everything is closing now, which has been an unexpected turn of events. You wouldn't think anything could be unexpected in this year, but everyone thought things were going to be open over the Christmas break, but they're not. So it looks like it's going to be a very cozy, indoorsy Christmas for our family. Unfortunately, some people won't be able to see their families because of the new restrictions and various vulnerabilities people have.

So.

It looks like we're not out of the woods on this yet, even though hope is around the corner with the vaccine being rolled out. But yeah, it looks like things, particularly in the southeast of England, have gotten worse again. So here we are. And, you know, I feel very grateful to be lucky enough to be here in my home with my family, but the uncertainty continues for now. And, you know, I'm thinking about the questions I've been getting so much this year about, you know, people who are still looking to date in this time to make something of it. And they're saying, well, can I do that? What are my options in this period? What is my strategy? Do I just have to be in stasis and hold still constantly and just keep waiting and waiting? And I don't believe that is the case. Things are limited, of course, but there's actually ways. I've seen people also being proactive this year. I've seen people who have made moves socially, who have connected with communities, who have been learning things, who have found ways to online, to meet someone. Obviously, they, they've been able to do socially distance dates as well. Some people haven't, but some people have been out there still meeting, still going for walks in the park, doing socially distance things. So there are options. available. And, you know, I think the worst thing in life is feeling like you're powerless, feeling like there's just nothing you can do to affect your situation. So it's really important in any time of difficulty, any time of crisis, any time when there are obstacles in your way to say, okay, let's accept that and stop fighting against it and think about what I can do. And so I'm going to flick over to Matt, who's going to talk about some ways you can still move forward in your love life if your single right now. And the important thing about this is this isn't chastisement, this isn't saying you should be doing more, you should be getting off your butt and making the most of this, because I think that never works. I think that's a bad mindset. This is a difficult time. We have to accept that. And we should be kind to ourselves, caring. I remember there's been, you know, there was a phase a month or two ago where I found myself really struggling with the situation, and it was a lot to do with the way I was to myself in my head. I, you know, earlier in the year, I had dialed into my routines quite well when we were in the midst of the pandemic. And obviously everything was crazy, but I was like, okay, I had a writing schedule every day. I had a reading schedule. I was going for runs. And it was like, okay, this is a crazy situation, but I'm actually managing to keep things moving along and I'm getting stuff done. This is fine. And A month or two ago, perhaps it was the accumulation of all the uncertainty of the year and, you know, kind of going through this constant in and out of lockdown pattern. But I had kind of gotten out of my routines and then I was not getting as much done as I'd like and things kind of went off the rails and I was feeling more and more anxious, like, okay, I didn't get enough done today, well, hopefully tomorrow will be better. And then the next day was the same and I was procrastinating on things and I was not on my game and suddenly the self-talk gets worse and worse because you wake up each day feeling more and more annoyed and angry with yourself and then you start beating yourself up and then I would isolate myself more socially because I think I can't speak to people or see friends because I'm too anxious about work, I'm not getting enough done. So then my social relationships would suffer because I wasn't getting back to people and people would think, oh, where have you gone? and it was because I was thinking, no, no, no, I have to get things done now. I'm not getting enough done. And then you get into the state of just overwhelm, where you just constantly feel anxious and overwhelmed and paralyzed because you're beating yourself up, you're saying you're not getting enough done, but you're not doing things. And yeah, and then I was in this stage of feeling like I'm really off my rhythm and I'm just trying to get enough done to keep my head above water every day. sleeping at odd hours, not having any real routine. And that's what happens. And it can happen in our love lives. It can happen in any area of our lives when we feel overwhelmed, when we feel powerless, when we feel like there's nothing I can do in this situation. And so I had to talk to myself kindly again. I had to start being nicer to myself. I had to start saying, okay, Let's just try today to sit down and do something for 10 minutes. Let's just start there. Let's just text someone back. Let's reach out to someone, have a phone call, just pick up the phone and talk to a friend just to get some social connection. I would have to stop, you know, with whatever my lofty goals, my big ambitions were, I had to just narrow it down. And I found that if I keep talking to myself in an ugly, horrible way, I will feel worse and worse and then I won't want to do anything. But if I start just giving myself love and praise for the small things I do well and say, okay, we're just gonna get up now, we're gonna just take a moment to open a book, we're gonna sit down and open your diary, your work schedule, and write something in there, and just giving that, okay, that's great. You did 20 words, you did 30 words, you did a sentence. Great, now you can do another one. why not try opening that book for 10 minutes now? Why not try just taking those first steps to reach out to someone? But yeah, I do want to say that before we start because just being kind to yourself, not being a jerk, not being like a nasty coach to yourself and beating yourself up every time you're not making the most of every possible opportunity, except that times are difficult, There's a lot in everyone's minds right now, but just narrowing down your focus saying what could I do just a little bit today? If I just tried today, what would that look like? If I just wanted to do enough to go to bed saying I did something, what would that be? That's how you get the snowball rolling. Okay, I'm gonna switch over to Matthew in a second. Just before I do, at the end of this clip, Matthew mentions our upcoming second virtual retreat, which was a big hit of this year, something we are incredibly proud of that we managed to do in this difficult time. And everything I just mentioned, we cover in that program. We managed to get people moving, taking the steps they need in this difficult time, being proactive, having a community of like-minded people around them to lift you up when things are difficult, how to self-care, how to take care of your own self-esteem, moving forward in your dating life. relationships, everything in that program. We are so, so proud of it. We had a blast on the first one, so much so that we want to do another and we didn't know we were going to do another. But it was so, it was so popular. We loved it so much. Our team got so much out of it. Everyone said it was such a blast that we wanted to do it again. So that's coming up. You can check all the info out about that@mhvirtualretreat.com All right, that is it from me for today. Take care of yourselves out there. Email us on the show podcast@matthewhussie.com if you want to get in touch and over to Matthew.

Are you single right now in this pandemic making you dismal, is it? Lugubrious, lacrimose? How are you? It's a time I think we've all become a little exhausted of. And there's a lot of people, in fact, Amy sent a comment. She put a comment on our last video about dealing with depression and chronic anxiety and so on. Being single in a pandemic makes me sad. There are so few social opportunities right now. It feels like forever. I want to deal with two parts of what you said, Amy. The first one, it feels like forever. The one good thing is that we know now that there is an end point to this. That it seems as though within a year of today we will be out of this situation because a decent proportion of the world will be able to get vaccinated and life will return to some semblance of normal. So that's the first part. The second thing you said is few social opportunities. Now, I get that part, but I would also say that the mindset I'm adopting right now is that this isn't going to go on for that much longer. So it's like someone told me, Hey Matt, in a few weeks, I realize it's more than like a few months or half a year or slightly longer, but it's like someone said to me, Matt, in a few weeks, you're going on vacation. And then I go, oh shit, there's so many things I need to do before I go on this vacation. I need to write that blog post. I need to make those three videos that are gonna allow me to go away. I need to do this, manage my team, whatever. I suddenly would think of all of the things I need to do in order to enjoy that vacation. Well, I ask you now, what are the things you need to do right now, this month, in the next six months that will allow you to enjoy the vacation that's coming, whatever that vacation means for you, metaphorically. So, here are six things that I think represent a kind of homework to be doing right now. I don't like that word. It has a negative connotation. But progress you can make right now so that you can enjoy this time when it comes and you can still make progress in your love life in the meantime. Number one, build relationships that you will be thankful for when social events return. Meeting a person at a party takes one minute. Having the friends that invite you to the party in the first place takes a little longer. So build those relationships now. I know that we sort of did this in the beginning of the pandemic. What did we all do? We all jumped on house party, didn't we? And that lasted for about 10 minutes before we all got bored of it and thought this is awful. This pops up. I'm being called while I'm in the bath. We did this at the beginning of the pandemic and then we sort of realized we were sprinting in what was a marathon. Well, now the end of that race is coming up or at least has a defined end point and therefore it will serve us to invest in those relationships right now. I don't mean just selfishly. We should of course invest because we like those people and we want to give to them. But investing in those relationships right now is going to have real payoff when it comes to things returning to normal. You'll be thankful for your relationships being in a good place six months from now because of the work you did on them today. Number two, assess the responsibilities and commitments that you have right now that would get in the way of your love life if things were back to normal. I, for example, at some point would like to go on tour again. But I know that one of the things that stops me going on tour is when there are creative projects that I need to get done. Because I know that once I start touring, traveling around, being on stage, doing all of that, it will be very hard for me to sit down and do the deep creative work on things that are enduring pieces of work for me. You will have your equivalent of this in your life. You might not be going on tour, but you might have a time when you want to spend more time socializing, where you would like to travel, where you would like to go to events where you'd like to have more balance in your life. And just because more balance is possible on a macro level, because the world has opened up, it doesn't mean that more balance is possible for you on a micro level if you haven't handled certain commitments and responsibilities that are causing you stress and even in normal times stop you from going out there and investing in your social life or in your leisure time. So ask yourself right now, you know, your love life is not just a meeting someone issue, it's also a time management issue. Ask yourself, am I solving the time management issue right now so that when balance is possible, my life is actually in a position to take advantage of it. Number three, become a better conversationalist now. so that it benefits your dates tomorrow. Becoming a better conversationalist is something we get better at by practicing, but it's also something we get better at by living a richer life, by having more opinions, by knowing about different subjects. If we read right now, if we listen to podcasts, if we develop new interests of our own and live a rich life right now, we're going to have more to talk about on those dates. We don't want to get on a date three months from now or two months from now and find ourselves with nothing to talk about because we haven't done anything and we can do things in this time that feed our mind and make us a more interesting person. And by the way, simply watching the news and having opinions on political matters right now doesn't count. That's going to get old really quickly. At some point we need to transcend that to more interesting subjects. Number four, create more loves. in your life. I believe that if we have more loves in life, we will have a better love life. That means having hobbies that you really enjoy, losing yourself in a project or a passion that in some way consumes you, that feeds your soul. If you do that, you will be in a much better position in your love life because when you find someone, you'll always have something better to do than wait for a text back from that person. The thing that has us anxiously waiting for someone to respond to us, do they like me? What do they think of me? Is not having enough that fulfills us in our own life. We don't have enough purpose. So this is the time to build loves in your life so that you're not overly reliant on the love of your life. Number five, get in shape. Not for anybody else, but for you. You know that there's a shape that when you're in it, you feel your sexiest, most confident you when you're on a date. Are you in that shape right now? If you're not, this is a wonderful time to put in those hours and get the body you want so that when you do go on a date, you feel awesome. Number six, get your house or your apartment love life ready. Here's the test. If I said to you that five minutes from now, the love of your life was going to show up at your door, for a cup of tea, would you shit your pants? If you would, there's another thing to do right now before that happens. Look, it's really convenient in our love lives to suggest that the only problem we have is that we haven't met the right person yet. That makes it really simple. It makes it very literal and it always allows us to simply blame the situation on I just haven't met them yet. Now, that's true on one level. It's not that that's not valid. It's just that it's not the whole story. If it was, dating apps would solve the problem for everybody all the time. Dating apps solve one part of the love life problem. But here's how we have to look at it. Meeting someone is a fixed moment in time. What we need to work on and can work on right now is the lifestyle that leads us to that opportunity because we're living this rich and full life that consistently brings us into contact with other people. We can work on the skills that mean when we meet that person, we present ourselves in a charismatic and fun and interesting way. We have things to say and we can work on the character the personality and the inner confidence that means that meeting someone leads to keeping someone because of all of the work we've done on ourselves to present a beautiful life that we can share with that person that is abundant and not reliant on that person. All of these things are things that I do on the virtual retreat, which is designed to work on all of the oblique things that create an extraordinary quality of life, both on the outside and on the inside in terms of our emotions. And one of the things that I'm most proud of about the virtual retreat is that it's not about finding someone so you can be happy. It's about being happy. It's about creating an extraordinary and fulfilled life. So if you wanna make massive progress in your life right now in all of the ways that you can. I implore you to sign up to the virtual retreat that is coming up in March. We are running it for the second time. We just ran it a few weeks ago. It was a huge success. We're doing it again in March from the 19th to the 21st. And you, my friend, are invited to come and join us for three days of coaching immersion for your entire life, not just your love life. If you want to find out more, go to this link here, speak to one of my team, ask any question you have, but please be there.