The Brutal TRUTH About Relationships You Need to Hear | Matt Monday

I've come to really believe in life that if you find a connection that has all the right raw materials and you both have the same level of commitment, then you can build something extraordinary.

The thing I hear the most, and I asked my audience and my team a lot of questions before this interview because I know a lot of my audience is dating, trying to figure it out. And one of the biggest things which we touched on here, but I want to ask you about, is that people find it overwhelming with the number of options they have today. And I've spoken to friends who are like, well, this guy's great, but maybe there's someone greater, right? And we're constantly living in this. They're good, but maybe they're 50%, and maybe they're a 51. And then maybe there's a 79, and maybe there's a 99, because I can see someone else over there has a 99. And so we keep second guessing even the person in front of us, even if they are fulfilling our needs because of the overwhelming number of options. So how. When you said you felt at home, and, you know, I think that's what people want to feel. They want to feel at home. They want to feel more than safe. But how do we know? Or what have been the best signs and indicators that people can look out for, that they're actually making things harder for themselves by wishing, hoping, wanting someone else? Or is that a sign that you're not with the right person, that you feel that there is someone who has more?

It's such a tough question because I think it's. Sometimes we're wanting something else because there's, you know, the person that's in front of us isn't compelling enough. There really is something lacking in that relationship. But I do think we have to ask ourselves, what are the things I really must have for an amazing relationship? For me, when I was going to ask Audrey to marry me, I literally called up a friend and told him, and he was like, why are you doing that? I'm just curious. It was almost his way of testing whether I was ready or not, whether I was just in some crazy infatuation or. And I said, you know, I'm ready to build something in my life. I feel like, for me, my dating life was just like hitting reset all the time. And it was, honestly, at a certain point, making me anxious, like dating and being with different people. And it just didn't, you know, there was a time in my life where that was really exciting. And then it started to just Go the other way. And I. And I had to listen to that and go, this isn't. This isn't gonna work. Like, I. This isn't where it's at. This isn't making me happy. This isn't bringing me peace. The way that I was dating was. It had almost like an addictive quality to it that was really unhealthy. And I thought, this isn't going to be a good look ten years from now. It's not going to make me feel good. It's not going to bring me more peace, which is a different. By the way, that doesn't mean that you know how to give something up. When you have those realizations. You might realize eating healthier would be better for you, but it doesn't mean that you've trained yourself to be able to do that. But I got to a point where I said, I want to build something now. And with Audrey, I thought in my head, I was like, I'll never find a better builder. And I said that to him, like, I'll never find a better builder. This is. This is the builder for me. Like, we're gonna be able to do such amazing things together and the life we'll have and the, you know, her level of empathy and compassion and, you know, the person that I am with this person, it, you know, the way she makes me feel like that's. That's truly special. And I'm not a, you know, there's the one out there kind of a person. I've never been that way. If you look, anyone looks back through my videos and you know this because we've spoken about it back when I was single, you know, I've never been a person who believes in the idea of the one. So I think that it's finding someone that we've, you know, we look at what's really important to us, not what's important on an egoic level. Because I think a lot of the things that make us question whether this person is right for us are ego based. I don't think they're based on how we feel around this person. We worry, is this the kind of person my friends think that I should be with? Do they look the part? Are they my. My normal type?

Do they make the right amount of money?

Yeah. Like, is this. Does. Has this person come in the package that I had always told myself they would come in? And those things can be really, really limiting. And they can have us, like, constantly trying to optimize for some version of something that we think we're supposed with, which is a very dangerous way to go about finding love. You can't optimize for human beings. You can optimize for a lot in life, but you're dealing with people. And by the way, even if you let go of this person, you're going to find someone else who's also imperfect. And they might, okay, this person is, you know, scores a seven in this area and they score a nine, but guess what? They score a three in this other area that you didn't even know was great in this relationship because you took for granted how amazing that person was in that way. Like, it's very dangerous to optimize in that way in our love life. And I've come to really believe in life that if you find a connection that has all the right raw materials and you both have the same level of commitment, then you can build something extraordinary together. And actually, the extraordinary is the thing you sculpt together, no different from a career. You know, neither you nor I started by doing our dream version of this. It's evolved and evolved and evolved and evolved. And every year you sculpt it a little closer to your ideal way of doing it all. And along the way, you do a lot of things that you don't necessarily. You're like, oh, my God, I couldn't do this for a lifetime. And this part I thought I would enjoy, and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I thought I would. I'm going to stop doing that. And you, you know, you, you sculpt it. Like dream careers are sculpted, they're not found. And I think that that's true of relationships as well. Like, I'm more grateful for my relationship with Audrey. The more time goes on.

Yes.

Because we keep sculpting it into something that's better and better, what that requires, which is really hard for a lot of us, myself included, for many years. And this was one of the things that I think really hurt me was, was I got myself into an incredibly indecisive state where I was constantly second guessing myself. And I, you know, when we talk, when we, when we think of what's our. Like, what are we worried about in our love life? For so many of us, it's that we're going to settle.

Yes.

I'm going to settle for the wrong person. Well, I think we can actually start to reclaim the language of settling and make it into a very positive thing that what if it wasn't settling for? What if you decided to settle on? Because when you settle on someone. There's a power to that. It's like you resolve to say, I'm gonna settle on this. It's like people crossing a country. When a country is, you know, it's like people crossing America and deciding when to stop. At what point did the early settlers say, this is good enough? I don't need to keep going. I've found an amazing place. And when you find that place, you go, I could live here. Then you settle on it. And it's only by settling on it that you can make it great. It's only by putting your attention on it like a laser, that you can see what it becomes.

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I don't think that I ever really settled on anything in my love life in a way that gave it a chance to see what it could really become. And in this situation, I really gave myself that chance by saying, I'm gonna. I'm gonna go all in on this.

Yeah, but.

Or she was smart because she also saw that Audrey is ridiculously perceptive and in tune with people. And she saw in me early on, like, oh, this is a pattern for him and that doubt and that, what do I want? You know, is this right? And she saw that early on. And one of the things that she did was she. She called me out firstly, and she was like, look, if. If you're. I'm willing to, like, really see what this could be. And you don't seem to be, wow. In that place where you're, like, actually going all in and seeing what it could be. She said, so I don't want to continue if you're not going all in, because I. I'm not, like, I'm not here for some half of someone's energy. And. And the way she phrased it was amazing because she said to me, look, that doesn't mean like six months from now we could break up.

Yeah.

You might decide this is wrong for you. I might decide it's wrong for me. And no one's the villain if that happens. But if you're not willing to go all in right now to at least see what it could be and give it your real effort, then. Then this has to end here for me. And what was for me, what was amazing about that is that it lowered the stakes for me. Especially when she said because I. I felt like, you know, in the past I had hurt. Well, I didn't feel like I had hurt people and I had been the villain. And I was like, I can't do this anymore because I also suffer from ridiculous guilt. So I was like, I can't do this again. I can't. I was like, avoidant. Because I was like, I don't want to get close enough to anyone to hurt someone. If I hurt someone, I'm going to feel sick and that's going to haunt me. And then, you know, I'm just making myself miserable and them. And so I had all this, like, stuff. And when she was like, you're not. If six months from now you decide this isn't for you, that's okay. You're allowed to do that. That lowered the stakes for me, but by also demanding as a standard. And that's what so much of this book is about, how to raise your standards and what that looks like in practice. Because I. The reason so many people never reach the point of real relationship is because they don't have standards for what they expect and how to communicate and know how to communicate those standards. But because she had a standard that she lowered the stakes. But she also had a high standard that said, this is the price of entry for continuing. That, like, allowed me to fully invest. And when I fully invested, that thing started to actually realize its potential and to. We got to see what it actually was when I was showing up fully and she was showing up fully. So I. I sympathize with anyone who is struggling with those decisions in their love life. I don't judge anyone for it because I struggled in my love life with. I wrote a whole chapter of the book called Never Satisfied because I related to that idea that, you know, you find someone who you chase, who feels exciting to you, but they break your heart, you know, or you go for someone who feels safe and you're bored, you're doubting yourself, you're doubting whether this is the right person. And you just sort of, you know, cycle between those two different extremes. And it became the. Not just a goal for me to help other people. It became a goal for myself to go, I need to figure out how to be happy here. Because otherwise I'm going to constantly oscillate between feeling suffering because I'm chasing someone who doesn't want me, or being with someone where I feel like I'm not fully there and that's not fair to them and it's not fair to myself. Like, I need to figure out a way to be happy here.

You know, you talked about standards there, and obviously that's such a big part of what you felt with Audrey in that moment. I think what scares us about setting standards is that we think it's going to scare someone away. So Audrey saying that to you requires so much self worth in her saying, I may lose this guy if I say this, but I know that's where I'm at. You being vulnerable with that person many years ago saying, I'm going to open up about my life. And them saying, that's not very attractive. I don't find that attractive. That was you again, trying to demonstrate and be vulnerable. But because you were with someone who wasn't emotionally compassionate enough to receive that, and because you didn't have enough self worth, you made it a weakness in yourself. It sounds like when Audrey said that to you, if you would have said, well, I'm not in, she would have been like, okay, cool, we're not in, then it's not happening. It doesn't sound like she would have been like, oh, my God, he doesn't like me. I'm not good enough. Because she had a certain standard and that's what standards. Whereas when you were trying to be vulnerable, it was like trying to be vulnerable, but it wasn't a standard yet.

Well, I would.

No, it wasn't a standard. Tactics are different from standards.

That's what I'm saying.

Not that when I was being vulnerable, that was a tactic, but. But like, we do constantly employ faux standards that aren't really standards, they're just a tactic. So he's like, I'm not going to text this person back so that I generate interest. And then if it doesn't generate interest, three days later, we text them anyway. That's because it wasn't a standard, it was a tactic. Well, yeah, when something a tactic we do to try and get A result. And if it doesn't work, we go for a different tactic. A standard is who we are.

So well said.

And we don't change it. Like, if my standard for being open and vulnerable was what I did in that moment with that person, I wouldn't have stopped doing that just because I didn't get the result that I wanted, which was connection. I would have said, well, this is how I want to be. And come to think of it, I would have said, if I was in a better place. One of my greatest standards is to find someone who really accepts me. And if this person doesn't accept me, then my standard is going to be that, well, maybe this relationship isn't for me. You know, I want to be this vulnerable in a relationship. I want to be able to share from the heart both the good and the bad and my flaws and my insecurities. And if I'm not accepted, then, okay, maybe it's not right. But instead, what I did was I went down a very masochistic rabbit hole of going, I'm not good enough. It's just been proven I'm never going to reveal those weaknesses again. And I stayed right. So you're right about Audrey, because I guarantee you, if I had not then said, all right, I'm going to show up differently, she would have been out of there. And the big difference is we have to make the goal our happiness, not a person. You know, we think that we're going to be happy by getting a person, but you'll never be happy by getting a person that doesn't meet your needs. It doesn't matter how impressive you think they are. That's the danger, right? That's the trap people fall into. I've fallen into it. Someone's particularly exciting, impressive, charismatic, gorgeous. There's something. They have all these things that you go, this makes them a very valuable person. And then you say, well, my needs don't really matter anymore. The only thing that matters is I can get this person. Because we think, if I can get this person, then I'll be worthy and I'll be happy and it will all work out. But everyone out there, you know, most people out there have been in a relationship where they thought it would be heaven to get someone. And then they experienced what the relationship was actually like when their needs weren't being met, when they didn't feel safe, when they didn't feel acknowledged, when they didn't receive someone's empathy, when they felt like they couldn't really be themselves around that person, when they felt like they were constantly clinging onto the relationship because they never, you know, they were in a relationship with the person, but they never really felt like they had them. You know, that there's a special kind of hell to be in a relationship like that. And at a certain point we have to come to realize that this relationship, I keep telling myself I'm going to die if I lose it is worthless if I don't get these couple of things that are missing.

Yeah.

And so for me, one of the greatest ways to have a standard next time round is not. There's a whole. I wrote two massive chapters in this book on how to be confident. But. But you don't even need confidence for standards in the beginning.

Yes.

You just need to know that I can never experience that again because it's too painful. It's like, you don't need to. If I put your hand in a flame, you don't need a standard or confidence to get out of it.

Yeah.

You just, you don't need self worth to get your hand out of the flame. It's just too painful. I can't do that again. And a lot of people, especially people who leave really abusive or difficult relationships, a lot of them, when they have enough time away from it and they start to, their nervous system calms down and they start to experience a different reality.

Yeah.

They look back and, and they're like, no matter how much I still may dream about that person or fantasize about that person or, you know, get sentimental about that relationship, when they really think about what it was like to be in it and what that person was like, they're like, I could never go back to being in that kind of a situation.

Yes.

So the necessity is the birthplace of standards. Before you ever increase your self worth.

Leave me a comment on this video before you go. I love hearing from you. And by the way, if you're watching this and you really want to find love and you see other people around you pairing off and finding what you've been looking for for a long time.

And you're feeling like, when's it going.

To be my turn? How might I be getting in my own way? Is there something I'm doing to sabotage my chances in this area? How can I finally find what I'm looking for? I am going to be helping people uncover their deeper patterns, understand their blind spots, and find what they're looking for this October at my retreat. If you haven't got a ticket yet, you can get your tickets@mhretreat.com and don't worry if you can't make it to be there in person. In Miami with us, there is a virtual ticket that means you can participate in this event and get the content from it from wherever you are in the world. Go check it out@mhretreat.com, grab your tickets and I can't wait to see those events.

You who are coming.