Want a Commitment With Him? Do These 2 Things FIRST [+ Free Gift] (Matthew Hussey, Get The Guy)
Matthew Hussey explains why attention from a partner doesn't guarantee commitment. He shares two stories: a woman who took a six-day vacation expecting it to signal commitment, and another whose partner raised financial concerns when marriage came up. His fix: give only what you can afford to lose, then have direct conversations about intentions.
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What is the future of your love life? Do you imagine the committed, connected, beautiful relationship that you've always wanted? Or do you see an endless string of casual flings, casual relationships that lack that emotional nutritional value that you really excited about, that comes from a deep connection with someone, a real commitment. I want to talk today to all of the people out there who are right now dating someone or in a relationship with someone who feel a lack of progression in that relationship. In the last 48 hours, I came across two different women. One of them is one of my members who was on a webinar with me and asked me a question about a guy that she had been talking to for a long time, for six months, and then finally saw in person. But when they saw each other in person, they didn't go on a date, they went on a six day trip together. Right? So they went straight into the deep end, had an amazing six days, got super connected, and at the end of it, she had hoped that it would graduate to something more, but it didn't. The second scenario was a woman who came up to me in a restaurant last night to ask me a question about a one year relationship she's been in where both she and the guy have completely fallen for each other. She says they've talked about being together forever, they've talked about the future they're all in. And yet she all of a sudden started to feel him pulling away when they talked about marriage. He all of a sudden started talking about his finances and how he doesn't quite feel ready for that and he needs to get his affairs in order. Something that she felt was strange given that he's in a good position in life. He's 41, she's 39. They discussed the future. It seemed like a strange thing for him to suddenly bring in at this stage. Not only that, but this woman wants children and she is now panicked about her timeline of being 39 and being with a guy who doesn't seem like he's completely sure about where things are going. So what is the core theme for both of these stories? What I'm about to tell you was a revelation for me and I truly believe it's going to be a revelation for your love life. Attention is not intention. They are not the same thing. See, someone can be giving you a lot of attention. That might not mean they have any intention. It can just be a reflection of their emotional state. I'm enjoying being with you. This is exciting. I'm enjoying the feeling of being or falling in love. That can Create attention, but that doesn't mean someone has the intention to take it further. When we really get hurt is when we're giving someone attention and receiving their attention, and we're assuming intention from their side because we have it on our side now. You have a car crash coming down the road. Attention is what I'm doing right now. Intention is where I'm taking this. So in the first story of the woman going on vacation, she went on vacation for six days, and in her mind, that was a big sign. Who would spend six days with me unless there was something more there? We had an amazing time. We had an amazing connection. That must mean something more. But of course it doesn't. And in the second story, we of course have a relationship, a fully fledged, committed relationship. That relationship then takes the form of attention. And we have someone who might have the intention of being in a relationship right now, but is all of a sudden showing signs that they don't have the intention necessarily to go into marriage or have children. We need to make this distinction. There are almost two camps of people that I see very often. One is the person who says, until I see intention from someone, I'm not going to give them my attention. Which is a little difficult, right? It's the equivalent of saying to someone, I'm not going to go on a first date with you until I know that you want a relationship with me. Well, how am I going to know I want a relationship with you until we go on a date? So there is this moment where you have to give. You have to take a leap of faith and give some attention for someone to have any intention. Then there's the other extreme. The group of people that when they like someone, give and give and give and give and give attention, relentlessly hoping that they will make themselves indispensable to somebody, and one day that person will turn around and commit to them. Both of these are flawed, but they do highlight something very important. That there is a sweet spot between these two extremes. It looks like this. Imagine that this operates. Not to get too academic, but imagine it operates on a kind of bell curve. This is you giving no attention to somebody. So they don't even recognize your value. They don't get to see you, how amazing you are, the depth of character that you have, the person you've become in life, what you have to offer in a relationship. This is when you give attention for so long, even though you're not getting what you want out of the situation, that someone begins to lose respect for you and take you for granted. Here is the sweet spot. This sweet spot is the moment at which you've given enough of yourself for someone to recognize your value, but not so much of yourself that they've begun to take you for granted. Which is why this moment here is the perfect moment to have the conversation about what your needs are, what, what your boundaries are and where you want something to go. Okay, so what does this actually mean for your love life? How much should you give in the run up to the sweet spot in order to get there? And when you get to the sweet spot, what do you actually do? What do you actually say? I'm going to give you two principles. Number one, don't give what you're not prepared to lose. If at the end of you giving a certain type of attention to someone, you're going to feel used, hurt, you're going to self flagellate, you're going to regret that you did it, don't do it. And here's the litmus test for me. Can you be happy with what you're doing simply being a good memory instead of an actual future? That's not to say that it won't turn into something more, but can you be happy if it doesn't? Can you go on this six day vacation with someone and be happy with that as simply a good memory instead of an actual future? Can you have a year long relationship with this person or another year of a relationship relationship with this person, knowing that that relationship may just be a memory and not your future? If you can make peace with that, then you can go ahead and give that energy, give that attention. If emotionally you feel you can't afford to lose that attention, you can't afford to lose that time, that investment, that energy, don't do it. Principle number two, when you get to the sweet spot, have the conversations that allow you to to make key distinctions. And what I mean by that is we have to get more sophisticated than the way the rest of the world analyzes the early relationships or the relationships they're in where they just see attention and they think, oh my God, this is it. We have to be more clever than that and say, okay, I know I'm getting attention. I know that it feels good to be in this situation with this person. I know I have a connection. But I need to start having the conversations and asking the questions that allow me to truly distinguish between whether this is just someone who can give me some attention in the moment and whether I can actually build the future I deserve with this person. Now what's amazing about these conversations is that if you have them in a high value way, not only will you be able to read exactly where he's at in his mind, but you'll also make it far more likely that his attention will convert to intention because you'll show yourself as someone bold and confident who knows what she wants and knows how to go after what she wants and walk away if she doesn't get it. Now look, I want to go a step further than we have in this video because I think this has been a massive lesson, a massive piece of psychology, but I want to make it uber practical for your life. So I have taken a powerful module from one of my best programs. I actually think it's the best love life program I've ever created. It's called Attraction to Commitment. And in Module 7 of that program I literally show you how to have the conversation I'm talking about here. And there's a specific example I use in this module is how to take a casual situation and turn it into a committed situation in one conversation. Go to this link. I've unlocked this module for you. I've never done this before. By the way, this program is my favorite program, so check it out and feel free to send this link to anyone you know who is continuously stuck in a casual loop and wants more out of it because it's going to help them too. Alright, go to this link. I will see you in that video now. Sam.
