In this interview excerpt, Matthew Hussey explores why people repeatedly pursue partners who are ultimately unsuitable. He argues that many focus on superficial checklists—physical attraction, impressive traits—rather than the deeper dynamics of how two people interact and meet each other's emotional needs. Hussey introduces the "Never Satisfied" cycle, describing how individuals swing between safe‑but‑boring relationships and exciting‑but‑misery‑filled ones, never feeling truly fulfilled. He explains that this pattern stems from neural wiring and learned scripts that make us gravitate toward familiar, even harmful, dynamics. To break the cycle, Hussey outlines a two‑step rewiring process: first, make change necessary by recognizing that the current pattern is intolerable; second, identify what was missing in past relationships (e.g., loyalty, empathy, true partnership) and set that as a non‑negotiable entry price for future partners. He uses analogies—such as a captive dolphin that only knows to perform tricks for food—to illustrate familiarity bias, and shares a client story where an abandonment wound led to a self‑fulfilling prophecy. Hussey emphasizes that any deviation from habitual reactions can create new reference points for the brain, allowing new, healthier outcomes. The segment concludes with a promotional pitch for his October 18‑19 retreat (in‑person and virtual), offering intensive coaching, recordings, a 90‑day life‑coaching program, and access to "Matthew AI" to support participants in applying these insights.
Chapters
One of the things that I love about your work is that you really talk about the dynamics of a couple together. So you're not supposed to be looking for check, check, check, check, check. This in a person, this in a person, this in a person. So when you're saying, oh my ex is this, or if they were this in five years, really it's about how are you two interacting together in the relationship? And that's a much more tricky dynamic to say what would happen now or what will happen in the future.
I don't think people realize when they are obsessing over someone who doesn't want them or doesn't work with them, isn't in the same place, etc, etc. I don't think people realize just how important it is to have someone who knows how to handle you, who you know how to handle, and how much of a great relationship exists because of that. You can have someone who is, you know, struggles to trust because of everything they've been through in their life. And they may come across someone who hasn't got the patience for someone who is struggling to trust. They just. It's not on their radar. They don't get it, they don't understand it, they don't have the empathy for it. They don't have the generosity of spirit to make space for the fact that you need a little more sensitivity around certain things. That doesn't make that person a bad person, but it does make them wrong for you.
And yet we focus on, well, they have this, they have this. They're my dream person, I'm so physically attracted to them. But we should be looking for compatibility in these things that we really need compatibility in.
Yeah, someone who gets us, someone who sees us.
How do we know what those things are? The things that really matter for us in a relationship?
A really good question you can ask. There's a Two of my favorite favorite chapters in this book are one that's called never satisfied and the one straight after it is called how to rewire your brain. And the never satisfied chapter is all about why is we have struggled so much to find love and to be happy even when. Because we can find, you know, a lot of people's crazy, kind of like painful cycle is going from somewhat exciting people who make them miserable to people who feel safe, who make them doubt whether they're with the right person. And that is they oscillate between those two things over and over again. They're either safe and bored or they're excited and miserable and suffering with someone. So I talk about that. But then I go on to talk about, well, look, in order to find a healthier kind of love, we have to rewire ourselves because a lot of us have been chasing the wrong things our whole life.
If you're someone who listens to this podcast, chances are confidence is something that you really want to work on. You're probably also working on your relationship with yourself. You probably also have emotional patterns that you want to improve on, like over obsessing, overanalyzing, overthinking, anxiety, self doubt. These are all things that I work on for two days with people in my retreat, which is happening in October on the 18th and 19th. It's the only time it's happening this year. I don't want you to miss it because if you miss it, you'll have to wait a whole other year to come to this event. And if you're listening to this going, I can't travel to be with you.
In Miami for this event.
Matthew, you don't have to. I have created a virtual ticket that means you can do it from wherever you are in the world. And I'll even give you access to two weeks of the recordings so that.
If you can't watch it on the.
Actual weekend itself, you still have two weeks to digest everything we do on that weekend. It is the most powerful thing I do. Not nearly enough of you have experienced it and I wanted to make it so that every single one of you could experience the best program I have. Tickets are available@retreat access.com and if you get your virtual ticket or an in person ticket either way before September 30th. I'm also throwing in 90 days of my lovely life coaching program completely free. That means after the retreat is done, you'll still have me as your coach every month. It means you'll have my entire roadmap for finding love. And it means you'll have unlimited access to Matthew AI, which is like having me in your pocket to ask a question anytime you need over those 90 days. Go to retreat access.com, grab your ticket and I will see you on October 18th.
The way that our nervous system has gotten wired up, our models for love, the way we react to what we think is attractive and what's not. That got wired at a point in our life where we were not making conscious decisions. It just happened. And then we pay the price for that in our adult lives and we feel broken and we feel like there's something wrong with us and we feel crazy. But we're not crazy. We're not broken. It's just that we've developed some bad instincts and our bodies are reacting to the wrong things through no fault of our own. Now, if all of that happens unconsciously, the. The way out is consciousness and intentionality. And in the how to rewire your brain chapter, the first or the first thing I say is, you don't have to believe you can change or that you can find something different. You just have to make change necessary. Because you have to at least know that you can never do that again. That thing that crushed you, that thing that hurt you so badly, that kind of relationship with that kind of person. You just have to know for sure that you can never do that again. And when you come to that conclusion, that that was a special kind of hell you can never go back to. You don't need confidence. People like, if you were more confident, you would change. Actually, if you're in enough pain, you'll change. It has nothing to do with confidence in that moment. You just think, I never can go back to that. So that's the first step is make change necessary. But the second step I talk about is, so if change is necessary, then we have to ask ourselves to what was the thing I'm going for next time that's different to what I went for last time? And a really good question to ask yourself as you start that process is this what was missing last time? That by missing that thing, I was utterly miserable.
It was.
It was a kind of hell, what was the thing that was missing. And by the way, that doesn't just mean in a relationship that you couldn't wait to get out of. I'm talking about the relationships that you desperately held on to, the ones that you were white knuckling, where you thought, I can't afford to lose this person. Where you didn't realize how deeply unhappy you were because you were so busy trying to still secure this person. And when all of your bandwidth is taken up by trying to hold on to someone, you're not even thinking about how unhappy you are. Everyone else in your life is. They all can see it. They can see how miserable you are, how you're anxious all the time, how you're not yourself anymore. They can see that. But all we can see is I cannot lose this person. Well, when you look back to that relationship, what were you missing? Was it loyalty? Was it a true teammate? Was it someone who considered you in their decisions? Someone who, who paid attention to your feelings? Someone who met your needs? Someone who gave you empathy? Someone who truly accepted you for who you were and made you feel comfortable to truly be the most vulnerable version of yourself versus having to constantly live up to some idea of something you thought would impress them all the time. What were you missing? And when you realize it's a very, very powerful realization when you can look back on a certain relationship with someone that you thought you would die if you lost and realize even though I thought I would die if I lost this person, there was something I was missing in it that made it impossible for me to be happy while I had them. And when you know that, you go also actually, even someone I'm desperate to hold on to is worthless to me when I'm missing that crucial ingredient. And when you know what that crucial ingredient is, that has to be the new price of entry for every any relationship you have ever again. Because you realize that no relationship can have any value for you. No matter how shiny someone is, no matter how attractive they are, no matter how impressive they are. No relationship can have any value to you if that quality or trait is not present.
Well, it's such an important point that we need to be looking for the person again that can handle those parts of ourselves. But we tend to because of the way our brains work, look for the person who triggers all of those parts of ourselves.
Because we gravitate towards what is familiar. You know, that doesn't that intuitively that can. We can struggle to make sense of that. Why would I keep going towards what it is I say hurts me or what I don't want? And that whole, when I talk about that chapter, never satisfied. The whole point of that chapter is to be a pressure valve for people in helping them understand why is it that we keep being drawn to these things that hurt us. And I use the, the analogy of a dolphin in captivity, you know, a dolphin that's grown up in the tank who's been fed fish by humans and taught that in order to get a fish you have to do backflips and you have to jump through hoops, you have to do all of these fancy things. If that dolphin was suddenly released into the open ocean and that dolphin now didn't know how to find food, thought that jumping through hoops or doing backflips would help and started swimming up to boats with humans on that by the way, could be fatal. We wouldn't say that that dolphin had a self worth problem. We would say no, the dolphin is just doing what it knows. It associates humans with food, so swims out to humans. It thinks that you have to do These tricks in order to get fed, so keeps doing those tricks. It's just what we know. And I think that that is a real route to compassion for ourselves because we realize that we have. We. We continue to recreate this world for ourselves because A, it's what we know, and B, it's what we've come to believe that we are worth on some level. Because if I was worth more than this, surely I would have gotten it already. But this feels like it's my level because that's, you know, that's what I've always gotten. And it takes. It takes curiosity, an interesting mix of kind of curiosity and a little bravery to start to explore other ways of being that could get us a different result. Because right now our brain, you have to think about it like this. Our brain doesn't know a different result is possible. We may even see that a different result is possible for other people, but for ourselves we go, that's not my life. That's not me. It's not possible for me. And we have to start to teach our brain a different lesson that other things are possible. And then you have to say, well, how do you teach yourself that something else is possible? I. I'm not a. I don't. I find advice that just says, just believe. Incredibly unhelpful because I don't know what special power other people have to just believe things. I don't have it if I've never done something before. Just believing I can does not come naturally to me. What helps me is having reference points for a new belief. How do I create new reference points? I have to deviate from my normal programming and do something I wouldn't normally do. I had a client of mine who was dating a guy. By all accounts, it was going very well. Even she said, like, I couldn't fault the guy. It was great. And then one day, early in our dating, he had a gathering with his friends on a Saturday and he didn't invite me. And she said it really hurt me and it. For her, from everything she told me before, that it was very clear. It, like, activated a core abandonment wound for her. And she almost dismissed him altogether. But then she got so, like, angry and hurt that during the day when he was with his friends, she sent him a message and said, why didn't you invite me? And he said, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. These are some of my close friends I haven't seen in a while. Was just really excited to see them. Can I call you tonight? And she said, don't bother. Now, obviously, she was just hurting and scared, and so she pushed him away. And then four days later, when he still hadn't called, it just validated her idea that everyone would eventually abandon her. She was running the same script she had been running her whole life. One that expected to be abandoned because of what she'd been through in her life and in expectation of being abandoned. One that pushed someone away before they could do the kind of damage she was afraid that they were going to do inevitably. And so she just kept recreating, creating that same result in her life. And this was like a nice little example that I was able to point out to her and say, you know, this was you on script. Now, the truth is, we don't know why he didn't invite you. We don't know anything about that. And unfortunately, in that situation, we didn't get to learn because the response was just pushing him away. For her, the one of the ways to start shifting is, well, like I said, first necessity. Once you get to a place of enough pain, where you go, this has not worked for me. I have to do something different. Well, then you say, okay, what do I do differently? It almost doesn't matter. Anything different is better than running the same script over and over again. Because when you do something different and it gets a different result, it sends a message to our brain that which to me is like Inception is just a plants a new core belief, which is something different is possible.
So that's like, I wouldn't text him and ask him, what's up now? But I'm going to try it, or I wouldn't express how I'm feeling or I would get really angry. I'm going to try walking myself back from that. Literally any deviation from your typical reaction.
To the situation, do something different. What if I just sent him a text and said, you, you know, I. I don't know why you didn't invite me, but I just feel hurt that you didn't. What if instead of just saying, why didn't you invite me? You just said, I feel hurt that you didn't invite me? I guarantee you that would get a slightly different reaction. Maybe a very different reaction. Sam.
