"Things Were Going Well... Then He Ended it Suddenly"

Part of the risk of putting yourself out there in love is that three months from now someone changes their mind. Part of the risk of being in a long-term relationship is that 10 years from now someone changes their mind. Welcome back to the Love Life Podcast with me, Matthew Hussey, my wife, Audrey Hussey, and we are actually going to be answering a listener question today that was sent in to podcast@matthewhussey.com Before we get started, a couple of bits of housekeeping. Firstly, I have a brand new free guide that you can download right now called Spark and Connect This is, I used to do a lot of these actually, like a few years ago. We used to have all sorts of free guides. People loved them. They were super handy, practical. You could use them immediately. We haven't had a new one in a while. This is literally the newest one in years. And it's designed to give you nine ways to spark up a conversation, create a connection with someone that you would like to speak to. A lot of people are really sick and tired of dating apps. They feel burned out. They feel tired of online conversation. And the things that you're going to see in this guide could be used in that format, but they're also just great for meeting people in real life if you feel like that's where you're at right now. So if you want to create more options for your love life, go to whattosaynext.com and download the brand new guide, Spark and Connect. for free. Nine ways to start a conversation with someone new. We also have the retreat coming up in September from the 9th to the 14th. There's only a few spots left. If you want to grab one of those spots while they're available for this six day immersive coaching program with me, with my team, with Audrey, with my family, with my mum, who is also on the retreat every single time without you can go to mhretreat.com to get one of those final remaining spaces for the retreat. Time is really running out on those. We don't have a huge room for the retreat. It's designed to be an intimate program. Come join us while the seats are available. mhretreat.com All right, well we have a question question that was sent in by a listener today. Audrey, you want to kick things off and read it to us?

Yes. So this came in from Charlotte. So Charlotte, thank you so much for writing in. She says, I am emailing you from a place of pain at the moment and I am feeling complete burnout from the dating scene. I am aware that you say to keep emails brief, so I won't go into heavy details at this point. However, I have found myself yet again in a disappointing situation and I have found myself deeply hurt. Someone I was recently seeing gave me massive hope for the first time in a long while. Actions matched behavior and I saw deep care. However, this person has since flicked a switch and has told me that they aren't ready for a relationship and so are ending things between us. He has given many conflicting messages But when I asked for clarity, he has said it has nothing to do with me, that I was the first person who made him feel something, but he simply is not ready. I just find these messages deeply confusing and I am shocked by the change. Worst of all, I have once again been left feeling like I am not good enough. I also struggle with the way that someone can so quickly change their mind. Does he not miss what we had? Were his intentions ever pure? In brackets, this happened a week after sleeping together. Surely if I meant anything to him at all, it would be worth the risk. It was never given a proper chance. Did he ever even like me? You can probably tell I'm spiraling here. I've painted him golden in my mind due to the way he was, and I know I need to reframe this, but I am massively struggling.

Charlotte, thank you so much for writing in and being vulnerable. I understand that feeling that you've been having that you really, really want to find love. You've been losing hope. You've been feeling like nothing is happening in this area of your life. And then all of a sudden someone comes along and they represent that hope, that feeling that, oh, it's all about to change. And what's more, they say the things that seem to really signify that it's changing. You know, you get told all the right things in the very beginning. We have to be really conscious of our feelings going into dating with someone, because if we're going in from a place of I'm starting to feel hopeless in my love life. I feel like I really, really want to meet someone and I just want it to happen now, or I want it to happen yesterday. We put ourselves in a very precarious place. There was a quote that I read literally just last night as I was thumbing through this little book by Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living. And there was a little quote in this book where he said, Don't be in haste. When you are in a hurry, you are more easily conned or manipulated. And I thought that idea will be relevant to so many people in their love lives, because so many people do feel like they're in a hurry. So if we then transfer that haste into a very specific situation with a person, we make ourselves liable to be conned or manipulated or just to be susceptible to somebody else who's running away with themselves. Because I don't think every situation like the one that Charlotte described is evidence of like a love bomber. You know, a lot of us go straight to phrases like that. Oh, he love bombed you. You know, he told you everything you wanted to hear, slept with you, got what he wanted, and then decided to disappear. And there may be a sense of love bombing. That doesn't mean from his side it comes from a sinister place or a truly manipulative place. But I think it's very common that people get caught up and they run away with themselves and they can't deliver. I think of it like people in a job interview. When someone is trying to make the sale in a job interview to get the job, they will often say things like, I'm gonna work insanely hard for this company. I don't care about working nights. I'll be there whenever you need me to be there. I just wanna be as valuable as possible. I see this being the place that I'm at for the next few, for a long time, for years. I am not interested in just being somewhere for months. I really want to be there for the long term. You hear all of these things and does the person mean them? Who knows? Maybe they do. When you're trying to get the job, you often kind of do feel like you mean those things. You're like, no, I do. I'm all in and you say these things because it's hard to separate out in moments. And this isn't me defending this guy, but I think it's important that we just understand the very human psychology of this without immediately kind of jumping to everyone's bad. Yeah. I think it's a very human instinct for someone when they're trying to make a sale. to say the things that they feel will help them make the sale and stray into saying things that are over promises or that they don't for sure know that they can back up or even to convince themselves that they can back them up in that moment of excitement about possibly getting the job or, you know, getting the woman, getting the guy, It's like a very human impulse to say those things in that moment that get you the sale. And that doesn't make it right, right? To me, integrity as we get older, wiser, more mature, is to not fall into the trap of over promising in life. I think that under promising and over delivering is a much better way of going through life anyway. But a lot of people never learn that. They go through life over promising and under delivering. The danger is that in the beginning of anything, we don't know if someone is under promising and they're going to over deliver, if they're over promising and they're going to under deliver, or if what they're saying they are and what they want and where it's going to go is exactly what you're going to end up with. We just don't know. 'Cause I can hear people, as I'm saying all of this, going, well, how can I trust anyone? If I go into dating and I don't know whether this person is good for their word when they tell me that they really like me or that they really want a relationship and they could see themselves with me and they're talking about the future, how can I trust anyone if what you're saying is that in the beginning you have no idea? And I think that to an extent, you can't rely on the fact that they are telling you the truth. Either that you can't know for sure whether they're telling you something and consciously manipulating you by telling you what you want to hear. You also can't know for sure if they're saying something that they don't know they can't back up yet.

Yeah.

And that three months from now or two months from now, they're going to realize, oh, my God, I, like, went way too fast. I can't back that up. I'm freaked out myself at how fast everything's moved, and now I'm gonna bail because it got too hot, too fast. And it's like, even when they're the one that's responsible for it, or at least 50 of it.

But do you think that's what happened here? Do you think he kind of got. spooked.

I think it's possible that he was saying, look, here's the truth. He could have been telling her what she wanted to hear until the point of them sleeping together. And then they slept together. And after that, he was like, I don't feel as interested. And maybe he was misleading her about how much he actually wanted a relationship or how much he liked her when all he was really feeling was kind of this. horny impulse for intimacy. And, you know, him saying, when he was saying, I really like you, what he was saying is, I really desire you. And that I think for a lot of people, I really, I really desire you comes out as, I really like you. And the person on the receiving end of that, especially the person who wants to find love is hearing exactly what they've been hoping to hear for a long time. Oh, someone really likes me. And so I do think we have to be careful at that stage with those distinctions.

Which for the record, I have nothing to base this on other than my gut, but I don't necessarily get the sense I know that's not what you were saying for sure, but I don't necessarily get the sense that that's what happened. I don't feel like he just wanted one thing and then got what he wanted, so kind of pulled away. It doesn't. That doesn't strike me as what happened here. I think it's more likely that the former example you gave is the case here where he almost kind of tripped over his own feelings and you sort of. In your excitement, you sprint into the deep waters and then you realize you can't touch the bottom and you can't swim and you just basically have to.

Like swim back to shore. Yeah, I think I am inclined to agree. I think he ran before he could walk.

Yeah. Then kind of...

I didn't like my swimming sinking in that. No, no, I thought it was good. I actually thought it was very good.

I think that this happens an awful lot.

Unfortunately, where... I think it does, yeah. And I think it happens Does it happen more with men? My instinct wants to say it happens more with men, but I actually think we wouldn't be short of men listening to this podcast who would actually say that some version of this has also happened for them the other way around, where they've been dating someone who has created this incredible connection with them and then is like onto the next thing. and they find that she's not nearly as into them as they had hoped. But I do think it's a very common thing for people to get carried away and to ignore the consequences of getting carried away. And then to be like, oh my God, what have I got myself into here?

You know, it's interesting you say that. I just want to kind of put a highlighter pen to it because She started her email, Charlotte started her email saying that she's feeling complete burnout from the dating scene because she's basically in a situation where she's made to feel worthless yet again. And, you know, she finds herself in a disappointing situation, which to me the subtext to that is this has happened before and we have so many people come to us whether it's in the Love Life Club or, you know, through email or wherever, just, just with a very similar story of I got excited about the prospect that this person was offering. I, you know, everything was going great. We were just, there was a lot of momentum. It was all great. And then suddenly they turn around and say, actually, I just, I've changed my mind, basically. And there's no tangible reason for it. There's no kind of, like, obvious explanation as to why there's suddenly there's, like, a sort of complete switch in the way that they feel. So I just think it's interesting what you're saying when you're saying that happens a lot, because it could explain. I'm just thinking for everybody listening out there who has experienced something similar and is left going, you know, asking all those questions that Charlotte is asking, does he not miss what we had? Were his intentions ever pure? you know, if I meant anything to him, he would keep trying. And did he ever even like me? All of those questions, I just, I hear, I hear those. And I just think, oh, my God, so many people must be asking themselves those questions. And so I think it's just really powerful what you're saying because it offers an explanation for a lot of people who never got closure.

Yes. And I think it, the, it's a very dangerous trap because plays into exactly the kind of love that we were raised on in movies and TV shows, that whole love at first sight. You go on a date with someone, you have this unbelievable connection, you know, it's fireworks. You just have this knowing, right? And I think that we those stories are especially seductive even when they come from our friends or people we know who say, you know, I knew from the first date.

It's always easy to say that once it's worked out, you know.

It's always a historical account told by the victors.

How many times did you think you knew and then you just absolutely were so wrong about it? You know, it's just...

But that's exactly it. Let's say if When that's happened to you 10 times in your life, and nine times out of 10, they turned out to be players. They turned out to be people that you were like, once you actually got to know them, you were like, oh, my God, I can't believe I thought that was like my person. Or they turned out to be narcissists. They turned out to be, you know, terrible people. you don't tell any of those stories about love at first sight. But when you end up with the person, there is a story you then go, oh, I knew from the moment I met your mother or from the moment I met your father. I knew. And it's a very seductive story. It's kind of the same as like, I don't know, that we're in LA. How many actors in LA tell you to follow your dreams, like the ones who really make it, the ones who are on TV, on Jimmy Fallon, and they say, you know, what's your advice for life? Just go for it. Follow your dreams. Of course they're gonna say that. They became an A-list actor. Yeah. What about the 10, 000 people that came in at the exact same time that never got anywhere? We're always hearing those inspirational stories from the people that it happened for, not from the 10,000 people that came to LA to be an actor. And it was just grueling and it never amounted enough to pay the bills. So we have to be very careful of those stories in our love life. And we have to be conscious of the fact that we were raised on those kinds of stories of immediate intense feelings. being an indicator of the strength of a future relationship. I think of it in terms of how much I've been humbled over 17 years of hiring people, just how wrong I can be in that process. That no matter how great of a judge of character I think I am, or no matter how great of a judge of intentions, I think I am. I'm not that great at predicting how it's going to turn out with someone. If anything, 17 years later, I feel more humble than ever that based on interviewing someone, I don't know where we're going to be in six months. You know, when we talk about that interview scenario and someone tells you all those things, I'm going to work here for a long time, and I blah, blah, blah. I'm going to work so hard. What you don't do is then look at someone and give an expression like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I've heard it all before. You don't give them that because that's just another way of saying, now you've become a cynic. You've gone to the other side. So now someone could be authentically saying to you, I'm looking for something long term. I want to build a real relationship with this company. I'm excited. I'm no stranger to hard work. They might be meaning every single thing they say and they might be able to back it up. If you've become the cynic, then that person is going to read that cynicism and they might even end up going, I don't know if this is the place for me. I didn't feel a good vibe with that person that I'm going to end up working for. The same could be true in dating. If you've gone all the way to the other side that now you don't believe anyone anytime ever, Then someone can feel that on a date and the authentic person, the person that genuinely has intention and can back it up, they're going to be speaking to you going, I don't know if I feel like there's an edge here that I don't like. So we can't go full cynic, but we also can't fall into that trap that I said in that quote, Don't be in haste. When you're in a hurry, you're more easily conned or manipulated. You can't go in just wide-eyed and, you know, everyone means it because that's also a way to constantly get caught. And importantly, to your language, that's how you burn out. So much of dating, so much of finding love is energy management. You have to avoid burnout at all costs.

How do you stay hopeful? and yet still manage your energy.

We will be right back with the episode. But first, if you are listening to this episode and you feel the frustration that Charlotte has that your dating life is not moving as fast as you would like, you feel like you keep meeting dead-end options, people who are players, people who are flakes, people who just want to use you until they get to the next person, then I have something for you that can help you make genuine progress this year towards a real relationship. It is called Dating With Results and it is one of my most popular masterclasses of all time and it happens to be free. Go to datingwithresults.com and you can watch this free masterclass right now which is really about helping you date with purpose, set real boundaries with people, and actually create momentum when you meet someone you like. It's a powerful training. We have had over a million people go through this training now, and if you haven't seen it, it is one of the best free trainings we have ever created. Go to dating with results to watch it right now. and let me know what you think. So let's go back to the hiring example. You're hiring someone for an important job. They say all the right things. You don't see those, the things they've said as evidence of the fact that a year from now they're still going to be in the company and they're going to be one of your superstars. you see what they've said as, and the fact that, you know, whatever tests you've put them through as enough to get them the green light to go into the trial period. But you never lose sight in your own mind of the fact that it's a trial period.

What I find very useful about that is what we do in month one. is we just project out into year one. We go, oh, it'd be really nice to live together one day, or, oh, I have a wedding coming up in nine months. Maybe they can be my date, or, you know, oh, I really want to go on holiday to Japan, and I've always wanted to go with someone. Maybe they want to go to Japan too. Maybe one day we'll go to Japan. We do those things. They're very natural, very human things to do. But what that does is it makes everything feel more serious and like you lose a lot more if it goes away if you've already kind of banked on all those experiences being attached to that person. So I think the- Can I add to that? Yeah.

It's like imagine that this person who's done a great interview, you hire them not on a trial period, you just hire them because of such a great interview. and, you know, that weekend to celebrate their hiring, you go out and you get drunk with them and you spend 5 hours just bonding on a deep level, connecting, laughing, having a great time. And you feel really bonded to this person. By Monday, you might feel like this is like oh, I love this person. They're amazing. They're, you know, what a great time we had. And I felt like we really connected and so on. You still haven't really got any evidence of the fact that they can do the job. Yeah. You'll know that in three months, six months, nine months. But you, right now, you feel kind of, in a sense, artificially close to this person. because you went out drinking with them for the night and you bonded. I'm not suggesting that was a good idea anyway, with someone you've just hired.

I was gonna say, is this a new.

No, but I. But you know what I'm saying? Like, there's something about that.

No, I. I understand.

Like, I think most people, especially who have worked in cities like New York and London and places like that, have had, like, a work drinks with someone and found that at the end of.

It.

They felt a lot closer to someone as a result of having a few pints with them. And it doesn't actually mean that you're friends now, it just means that you probably both said a lot more than you normally do because you'd had a few pints. And it can create this artificial sense of loyalty, of companionship, of how close you are.

So in this example is, going out for a drink with them, the future.

I think it's like going on the weekend trip with someone. You know, like, you know, early on in the dating process, you're having an amazing time, connecting, you end up going on a trip three weeks into knowing this person, and you get really close on that trip, and you have an amazing time, and it's fun because you're in this place that neither of you have been to, and that's an adventure, and it's, All of it creates this sense of, oh, wow, this is, we're close and this is special. And this person's opened up to me and I've opened up to them. And really, you don't, you still don't have any of the guts.

Yeah.

Of what an actual relationship is in the same way that you can have You and I have been on trips with people where, you know, there's a bunch of people on the trip together, and over the course of those three days or four days you're on the trip, you have an amazing time with certain people on that trip that you'd never met before. And you come out going, We're all friends. That's not a great indicator of whether that person is going to be in your life six months from now. And it's definitely not a great indicator of whether this person is gonna be someone you can call a year from now when you're in trouble.

I guess I'm just, I'm thinking of Charlotte. And, you know, when you are, and I really want your practical take on this. You know, I'm Charlotte. I like this guy. We've, you know, I don't know how many dates they went on, but I'm assuming from her question, they were probably in the first like month or two months of dating, probably. seeing each other regularly. It feels like it was maybe like definitely under the first three months, it sounds like just from the way she's talking about it. They've not had conversations about exclusivity and all that stuff. So in a way, what you said earlier, and I'll go back to my point, what you said earlier is really practical, I think, because you can set yourself almost like a kind of goal post and be like, up until three months, I'm not allowing myself to think about this person beyond the three months. Let's just see how they show up in this three months. But even if she did that, right, even if she was like, I'm just gonna see and I'm not gonna project into the future and get really excited, I see a world where three months in, he still turns around to her and says, actually, and especially if they were just intimate, like, oh, actually, I'm not, I'm not looking for anything serious. I'm not ready. I think his words were. Even if you have approached it in a kind of measured way, it doesn't stop you from feeling really disappointed, especially if it's happened multiple times, which it does. It happens multiple times to people. And it's so common. It's the most common thing. And that's what you were saying earlier, like the idea of getting carried away and all of that stuff is just, it's, you hear it all the time. I hear it from friends who are single. We hear it from clients all the time. you know, for Charlotte, who's gone through that, how, how can she protect herself in the future in terms of, like, you know, tempering her excitement and her level of, you know, investing in that person and getting, you know, getting to know them with the fact that she doesn't actually have any security around whether this person is going to be there tomorrow at this stage.

As you said, all of that, I felt, I felt all of it. I felt that disappointment of, because you can't hold it all back.

That's why you can't.

And by the way, it wouldn't be advisable to, because no one's ever going to make a real connection with you if you are walling off every real emotion until some point of ultimate safety. But again, if you go with the trial period of someone working that in a job, you can absolutely, once you say, I'm in a trial period, you can absolutely like, bring your all to that person, you know, like, you know, be your best self, show up in with great energy, have some nice moments, have some vulnerable moments. You can do all of that. What you don't do is bet more than you're willing to lose. So you don't, in that scenario, put yourself in a situation that makes it impossible to reverse out of or where you feel like if you take it back to your love life, you don't give an amount that if it didn't go somewhere, you're like, I can't believe I gave that much. You have to stop before that, especially in those first few months. It will be a temptation to. To move really, really quickly. It will be a temptation to make some bold decisions, or when that person encourages you to, you know, take three steps forward, it will be a temptation to do that. But I think we have to be really careful about that. That doesn't mean measuring our feelings. It means measuring our actions in that time to some extent. You can say to someone, Hey, I really like you. I'm having the best time, but I want to be really intentional. And I, you know, people go really, really fast in dating all the time. who don't have, you know, when it really comes down to it, they're not being intentional about their love life.

What do you mean by not measuring your feelings, but measuring your actions?

You can still admit that you like someone. You can admit that you're having a great time. You can admit that you keep thinking about them after the other night. You can say those things. You don't have to hold back with the fun and the sexiness and the chemistry and, you know, that stuff can kind of flow, but it's actually easier to let that flow a little bit more if you are more measured with how much you give, if you don't over give in that time. Look, someone can say, oh my God, that second date was amazing. I was thinking we should just go away next week. Like, that may not be a great idea.

Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more with that. anything that makes you feel too bonded, I think, is until you, it's the end, and until you feel safe actually.

To, and by the way, someone might want to see, someone might try to see you every day of the week for the next week. And again, be careful. Don't kid yourself.

But this is confusing, right? Because you think in those, in those scenarios, first of all, to your point earlier, you get carried away because you've been taught Love is like this. So that's the first thing. And so we're taught that this is what romance looks like. This is what a true love story looks like. But on top of it, we worry and we are fearful that if we don't meet them where they're at, they will think we don't like them. They will lose interest. They won't think this is a great love story because you're not playing a game of getting overly excited together. and then you might actually lose this person when deep down all you want is a love story with them. So it's really quite hard to do.

I'm not saying tell someone, you know, I'll see you in two weeks. I'm saying you don't cancel that class that you really enjoy every Thursday because you had a date on Wednesday and they desperately want to see you tomorrow night. You say, Hey, I have this class. I do it every week. I love it. But I really want to see you. So why don't we do something Saturday?

I think as well, I love that. And it's true.

And who's going to hear that and go, you, don't like me? That if someone hears that and they're like, you don't like me, something else is going on. Either there is a tremendous amount of insecurity there, or there is some kind of ego game that's being played or a control that's trying to be exerted on your life at a time when that amount of control shouldn't be exerted on your life.

It's a two-part thing, I think, from what you're saying. Right. It's simultaneously keeping your feet on the ground and keeping connected to your life in a way that you always were before they came along so that if that person was to disappear or change their mind or whatever it is, or pull away, you're not left with a great big void. That's number for one. And I think that's really, really powerful. And I'm, I'm really glad you said that, because I think the instinct is for us to just drop everything and run head first into the relationship. But the other thing, I think, which is really powerful and it's hard to do, but I, I do think in order to prevent ourselves from getting very deeply hurt in these early stages, is to approach it as something that hasn't yet proven itself and almost not allow ourselves to get too excited about it and just be more agnostic and say, like, let's see how this goes. Let's see how you do. Oh, they planned a lovely date. That's a, that's a tick. But that's all it is. It's a tick because, you know, you always say character reveals itself over time. And I think that's really, really true. And I think even though it's, it's sort of fustrating for us to do when we're dating, right? Because we don't want character to reveal itself over time. We want to take somebody at face value. We really do have to trust that somebody showing up in a really excitable way, in a way where they're just like, let's do this together. I'm really excited about you. I really fancy you. I think this, I think that. It's actually quite easy to do when it's fueled by those feelings of desire that you mentioned earlier, those feelings of excitement, that desire to have a connection and have an experience with someone. What's much harder is to sustain that over time and is to sustain it and actually not just sustain it, but start evolving and start progressing to sort of like different stages. And that's much harder to do than to really show up and be there in the beginning stages. So I think that we really have to kind of just take a will see approach to this dating situation instead of a, I'm so excited about this. This could really be something because I feel it. Yeah.

And to pick up on what you just said, if, look, it's not about, I'm not a fan of rigidity. I'm not a fan of rules. I think it could be very stifling to go into dating saying, I don't do this, I don't do that. I think dating and relationships end up making a mockery of a lot of the things that we say we do and don't do. But it means if you're very early into knowing someone and you have a great Saturday and, you know, that person says, I want to see you again tomorrow more, you know, like, I want to see you for the next three days and you end up in a love nest for three days. Like, it's okay. There's nothing wrong with that on its own. But you mustn't take it as an indicator that they're still going to be there three weeks from now. Because to your point, intensity is very different from consistency. And consistency is harder to maintain. It's just as likely in many ways that you'll spend three amazing days together, and then after that, you'll be disappointed at how cold they go, because it was just there for them in that moment, and it was exciting, and they were on a roll. And then they, once they got back to their life, they were like, okay, onto other things. and you're like, wait a minute, we just spent three days with each other doing nothing else but, like, focusing on each other. And now you. It's like, I don't exist, right? That's a very disorienting experience for a lot of people, but it's because we're focusing on intensity, not consistency. You can do the intensity thing if you can do that. and also understand, maintain that awareness that it's not a replacement for the things that have to come consistently for this to be something. If doing that is going to massively color your perception in a way that's going to A, make it really hard for you, and B, allow you to get carried away in ways that are unproductive, then you should probably back off the intensity for your own sake. If you can hold space for both, then okay, maybe there's less harm in it. But to your point about what does Charlotte do? About the fact that she spends three months, if she spends three months getting to know someone and then there's the disappointment at the end of it, I would say you can't account for everything. and you kind of have to find something to love about the process, the journey, the possibility, the putting yourself out there. You just can't account for every result. And we have done an incredible number of videos and podcasts talking about how to help people avoid pain. Right. I would say that it is one of the great themes of what we do, is helping people avoid unnecessary pain in their love lives. So no one can accuse us and me of not paying real attention to that. But there's, I do think that we also have to admit that Yes, that's part of the risk. The part of the risk of putting yourself out there in love is that three months from now someone changes their mind. Part of the risk of being in a long-term relationship is that 10 years from now someone changes their mind.

I heard a little while ago, but it was really a useful thing for me to kind of use as a model. I'm sure you've heard this before, but some people may not have, is every positive feeling has an equal potential negative reaction. So to your point, if you're married for 10 years, it's gonna hurt a lot if that person leaves. But you get to experience a 10-year marriage. So for every amazing thing that you have, you have the you know, the possibility, the upside down of it going wrong and that hurting just as much as it felt good. In a way, it's, it goes back to your point around, and I didn't mean to interrupt you. I wanted to continue your point, but it really does go back to your point around kind of not putting more than you're willing to lose, you know, kind of how much are you ready to get hurt in this situation? How much are you willing to risk it. And I think being a romantic is very important in finding love. You have to be an optimist. You have to really believe that love is possible because otherwise love can't find you. But, you know, yeah, just tempering that with, okay, if I really go all in, am I okay with the fact that there's not really a lot of certainty in this situation? So it could really hurt. Like, as much as I like this person and allow myself to fall for this person, I can get just as hurt.

And you can hurt someone just as much. Part of going out there in love and taking swings is accepting the agency of other people and also not forgetting that in all of this, you have agency and there are going to be times where the shoe is on the other foot. And you're going to be the one three months in deciding that you don't like this person as much as you thought you did and that you're going to hurt someone and that's going to suck for you too. But we do it because what's the alternative? swearing off of love, okay? You could do it for a time. You may even need to sometimes. But forever for the rest of your life? Few people I know would say that that was the kind of life they wanted to live. I'm not even talking here about there's plenty of lives well lived where people don't find love. But a life where you say you're categorically closed off to finding love, to even the possibility, that shuts down a part of us.

Yeah.

That I would argue is an essential part of us for, for most people. So it comes down to what's a life well lived for you. And it's, to me, shutting down that part of us is no different to, for creative people. And I think most people are creative people on some level, shutting down your creativity and saying, I'm never going to be creative again because that publisher rejected me for that book deal. You know, it you. That doesn't mean you can't write. It doesn't mean you can't be creative. You still have to. It's an essential part of you, but sometimes the rejection makes you want to stop for a minute, but it doesn't stop you being a creative person. So let us know what you. thought of this.

And thank you so much, Charlotte, for sending in your question. And we hope that you feel better. And honestly, these things hurt so much in the moment, but in just a few months from now, it will just be a faint memory. It will not linger with you in a way that you might feel like it's going to linger with you right now as you're in the thick of it. So I hope you're doing okay.

And what I can guarantee you is that this person isn't nearly as important as you've made them in your mind. Remember, a huge part of what is contributing to how big of a loss this is is the fact that you feel like you are in some ways in a rush, that you are acting in haste, And that made you latch onto this person in a very powerful way. That's not a sign of how powerful they are. It's a sign of how powerful the instinct is in you to want to find love. Send us an email, podcast@matthewhussie.com if you would like us to talk about your particular challenge, your story, Please know that if we can just read your email exactly as is, i.e. if you don't tell us that it has to be anonymous, in which case we then have to kind of do a lot of work to try to change lots of details, which then ends up making it exponentially more labor intensive to bring an email to the show. If you tell us, hey, you can literally just read this email as is, it makes it much more likely that we can actually use your email in an episode. But email us podcast@matthewhussie.com with your story. Try not to make it too long again. If they're too long, we can't use them because we have certain time frames we're trying to get to the point in. But we would love to, we would love to hear from more of you. And also just let us know what this episode meant to you. What was the part that spoke to you the most about this episode? We'd love to read a few more reaction emails as well. So tell us, what spoke to you the most from this episode podcast@matthewhussy.com and guys we really appreciate any reviews that you leave on the show as well. We are trying to get the word out about the show, we want to spread it to more people, we really appreciate all of the lovely things that you write. So if you are enjoying the show, if it's helping you, if it's something you look forward to, Help us spread the message. It would mean the world to us. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, leave a review and let us know you did it as well because we'd love to go read it. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you in the next episode. Be well and love life.