The #1 Biggest Mistake You Can Make in a Relationship

Ha.

Real jobs. Q and A. You send videos and tweets, we answer them. The last one went very well, so we thought we'd do it again.

Hey, Matthew. My name is Jessica and I am a learning specialist up in San Francisco for a K through 8. And I often have the girls want to hang out with me and they'll ask me about crushes and how they can get the guy or at least the attention age appropriate for their age. So I was wondering if you have, like, top three things they could do to get the guy that's appropriate or at least in kid speak. Thank you.

So wait, how old were they? Jameson? 13 to 15. That sort of age? 14. Okay. This is one of those moments where showing me these videos on the fly is tough. I've got to think of some PG advice. Firstly, at that age, you think that your reputation is everything. Fear of what people will think of us at that age will prevent us from being who we want to be, and that's a shame. But it can also lead us to doing things we wouldn't normally do. It could lead a young girl to becoming sexually active with someone before she thinks she's ready. You're likely to be, in some cases, more pressured to act older than you are, and you don't need to feel pressured. I deal with adults every day who haven't figured out many of the issues that we ask ourselves about when we're teenagers. So trust me, there's more time than you think to figure out everything. I feel like when we're 13 or 14, we feel like we have to figure out everything about dating and sex and relationships really quickly. And then we end up rushing through phases that really are kind of precious. You know, they are something that can be very meaningful if you give things more time to breathe and you give things more of a chance to develop. So don't feel pressured. And if you do do something, whatever that may be, and then everyone criticizes you for it, understand that that doesn't last forever either. Your mistakes won't follow you around forever. And nothing is as permanent as we think it's going to be when we're at school and we embarrass ourselves and do something that everyone singles us out for. And kids can be really mean to each other, but girls can be really mean to each other. There's pressure as a teenager to not always be a good person, to think that being mean about people wins at that age, and being part of the group wins at that age. And making fun of someone else when everyone is Doing it and gossiping and all of that. And actually, I truly believe that the people that win in the end are the people that are kind, don't follow everyone else when they treat 5% of the popular kids really well, and treat everyone else like they're not important and they don't matter. And if you do these things and you really care less about what everyone thinks of you and you don't follow the crowd, you'll find that boys will likely be more attracted to you anyway, because you can feel it. And you girls are the same. You can feel it when someone desperately wants to be liked, when they desperately want to be invited to the party, then they become unattractive, and you drive the very people away that you want to keep around you. Okay, let's move on. Next question.

Hi, Matt. My name is Christina. So my question is I've been living away from home for quite some time. Time. And I find that the friends that I do have in my hometown, I think some of them, we've grown apart. And I just want to know what's the best way to approach that. Going back for the holiday season, do we not hang out as much? Do we have a discussion about it? Where do you suggest going from here?

That's a great question. Was it Christina? Christina. Right. This is a good question. And I know some of you will have experienced this over the holidays that we've just had where you. You do feel like you went back to certain friends and you didn't have that connection with them that you used to. That could be for one of two reasons. It can either be because you. Neither of you invested when you were apart. You didn't phone them, call them, you didn't email them, you didn't try, or they didn't. Or it can be because you legitimately have grown apart. Your lives are different now, and you have different values. You're just. The two of you aren't the same anymore. So naturally, you don't quite have the same level of rapport as you once did. In some ways, moving away can be the great clarifier. So if you're leading up to an occasion where you're gonna see your friends again because you've moved away, but maybe now you're coming back for a few days or it's one of the holidays in the year, if that's happening, then lay the groundwork a little bit ahead of time. I'm talking about if you really actually want to be closer to them, lay the groundwork ahead of time a couple of Months before, start speaking to them, start calling them, start emailing them, find out what they're up to, so that when you actually arrive there, you've started to build the foundations of that friendship again. What we can't do is not invest in our friends and then go home on a trip back and all of a sudden expect it to just pick up where it left off. Okay, let's go to some tweets.

Mandy Costwyk, you have been known to be quite the globetrotter. What was your favorite place you visited and why?

That is tough. One of the most magical places I've ever been was Bora Bora. There was stingrays swimming under the hut, and you could just go down with your snorkel. You could just jump off, jump off of the. Out of the bedroom. I could get out of bed and jump into the ocean.

Monica Park. What's the most common mistake you see in relationships? How do you fix avoid that mistake?

Great question. Certainly one of the biggest mistakes that people make is in assuming that everything will just stay the same if they either coast along and slowly taper off the level of effort they put in or that the relationship will stay the same even if they just keep doing the same things they've always done. This is false for two reasons. Firstly, we begin to value less what we don't invest in. What we do invest in, we value more. So what we take care of what we look after. You ever seen someone with that, their car, and they keep polishing it, Polishing it, and they keep looking after it. And every little detail is important to them. They become more attached to the car because they spend more time on it. As soon as you start leaving a few, like, fast food bags on the floor or you leave some stuff in the. In the. I was gonna say boot, but you say trunk in America, so boot and trunk. I'm gonna appeal to everybody. As soon as you do that, you now start to care about the car less. And you already start focusing on the next car you want. Putting in less investment doesn't just leave the other person feeling like you're predictable and boring or just. Just different, not as exciting as you were in the beginning. It also starts to make you feel like you don't care about that person as much because we value what we invest in. If you stop investing, you won't value that person as much. The other problem is when you do all of the same things, everything you've always done, you just do the exact same way. But you never evolve, you never grow. The Same things that have always worked won't necessarily work with the same amount of responsiveness or the same effectiveness. Now, that may seem like it's contradictory to my first point, but it's not. It doesn't mean stop doing the things that worked before. It just means that sometimes you have to evolve and grow. Sometimes you have to learn new things with your partner. Sometimes you have to do things that you haven't done before. So surprise them in new ways. Show that you're someone who is learning about life more or growing or taking on new skill sets. These are ultimately the things that keep relationships interesting. Once you get to know each other at a certain level, the only thing that keeps a relationship fresh is growth. And the unique views that you develop on the world that continue to evolve, they may not change completely, but they continue to evolve and you begin to see the world and fresh parts of the world together. And that keeps things fresh. I think that's a very common mistake. They either stop doing the things that are important or they think that the things that were important a year ago or 10 years ago will be the exact same things that are important now instead of always looking for new ways to add value to the relationship. Have we got time for one more, Jameson, or you think we're out? I'm getting the. No, I'm getting. He's nodding like this. Jessica and Christina, since your videos were used in this episode and since your videos were part of the original batch that I said, if you make a video and we put it in one of these, then I will give you two free tickets to the live tour. Since you're part of that batch, you are gonna get two free tickets to the live tour. We'll email you and let you know. And for those of you who aren't currently coming to the tour, now is the chance to get tickets. We will link up underneath this video and on the video. Go get your tickets. Go. Come join me and keep sending in videos. We're not going to keep doing free tour tickets because otherwise it will just, you know, we'll just have a full house of people who made videos for us and aren't paying to come. And Jameson's got to eat. You know, man's got. A man's got to eat. So we won't do any more tickets just yet. But this is fun. Anyway. Send in a video. I will answer it. Keep tweeting as well. AskMathuhussy and I'll see you in the next video. This is fun, Jameson. I like this. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye.