What To Do When The Attraction Isn’t Strong Enough…

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Before we get into the episode, everyone, it is my duty to tell you that it is Retreat season in September from the 9th to the 15th. I am going to be coming together with a group of people from all over the world for six days of immersive coaching on the beach in Florida. Fort Lauderdale. Audrey Hussey is going to be there. My whole team is going to be there. We have an incredible group of people traveling in from all over the world. And the reason I say it's my duty to tell you now is because this season is going to end because we are coming down to the last few spaces on the retreat. So if you want to come and do six days of deep coaching with us to work on the things that are holding you back in your life, then go to mHretreat.com and you can find all of the information about this program there and how you can apply to get one of those last remaining slots. Come check it out. It is the pinnacle. of what we do. I have been doing this program for over 15 years now and it continues to be the most transformative immersive program we have. So come join us mhretreat.com I also want to let everyone know that we have a brand new free guide that is available at whattosaynext.com have you ever wanted to talk to someone and not quite known what to say? Have you wanted to be more sociable but censored yourself and got stuck and not known what to say next or how to engage? This guide is great if you are shy, it's great if you're introverted, it's great if you just get tongue-tied, it's great if you're struggling with the concept of going out there and meeting people or flirting or just bringing a different kind of energy to your social life and your love life that could create opportunities. We have not released a free guide like this in a long time. I mean, literally years. So this is a core moment in time. It's brand new. It's full of practical suggestions of things that you can say and you can find it and download it for free at whattosaynext.com Lastly, before we get into the episode, did you know that every Friday a select group of people get an email personally from me containing ideas, strategies, things I don't write anywhere else. I take a lot of time to construct this email. It's really valuable. A lot of people have commented that they can't believe that this email is free, that they look forward to it. every single week. And the of the many emails they receive from many different people, it's the one they always open. If you are not on this list right now, you can be by going to the three relationships.com. that is the name of this private email that I send out. The three, the number three, the three relationships.com. Sign up now. It's free and you can look forward to my private email direct to your inbox this coming Friday. All right. Now, everybody on to the episode. How are you feeling?

I'm good. I'm good. Yeah. How are you feeling?

I feel really good. I said earlier today to you, I feel very grounded. today.

Yeah.

I've been doing the right things. I've been sleeping. Now I've got my aura ring. We're not sponsors of aura ring, though we should be aura ring.

Yeah, we should be. We love it.

But I've been tracking my sleep. I've been eating very well these last couple of weeks and training a lot. And I feel. I feel pretty good.

I'm in a very different place to you because I just came back from a weekend away with my friends. And we went to Vegas, as you know.

And you didn't get any sleep.

I didn't get any sleep. I mean, it sounds way wilder than it was. It wasn't like a big debauched trip by any means, but I was staying in a room with one of my best friends, Marta, and she, we just stayed up talking one night until four o'clock in the morning. And I slept like four hours and it felt like being back at university.

That's fun.

Yeah. So I'm like the opposite to you. I'm a bit tired and a bit like foggy, but I'm ready for this episode. I'm very, very excited.

Me too. This is Love Life and we are talking today about how to let someone down if you're struggling to let them down, but you don't feel a spark.

So why do you think people struggle to let the people that they're dating, they're not interested in down? Like, why do you think that happens?

I almost. I want to use as a bit of a case study for this, someone that I spoke to recently. and some of the issues that came up for her. Because while everyone may not share the exact same issues and challenges around it as she had, I think that there will be a lot in here in terms of the pattern of why she found it difficult that people will relate to. This person had been talking online to a guy and hitting it off. He seemed very nice. They seemed to get on. But then when she finally met up with him in person several weeks later, having already built a little bit of a connection to her...

Disappointment.

Disappointment. He didn't appear the way that he appeared in the pictures that he had sent. He was a very different size. He looked quite different, and he had given a false sense of his height. She, to her credit, wasn't in any way being dismissive of him because of those things, but she was very caught off guard by the misrepresentation. And she also found that when they were together, she just didn't feel an attraction. But since seeing him, she had struggled with, how am I actually going to let this person know? How do I say I'm not interested?

You know what's really hard about that is that if they were already building a little bit of a connection before, and then they meet and she says, hey, actually, Like, not for me. You feel really guilty, right, if that happens, because you know that the other person knows that it's some, it most likely is because of a lack of attraction or something that they, you know what I mean? Because there was all that connection. So it's something about her actually seeing him in real life that put her off, and she knows that by ending it with him, he will know that and that will hurt his feelings. And that's probably why she's struggling with it.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's true.

There's like more guilt because of the connection that was built.

Well, I asked her, you know, where does this come from for you? And, you know, I said, what are you afraid of? And she said that he will be angry, that he'll be mad at me, and that it will make me a bad person. and when people say things like that, there's often a history there, you know, that doesn't sound like something she just came up with out of nowhere. And so, you know, I spoke to her a little bit about where that came from for her. And it was clear that there had been previous relationships in her life where, in certain formative relationships where it had really been the case that if she spoke up, people got mad and they would shame her for the things that she said. And she would be told in one way or another that she was a bad person. And those same beliefs were coming out in this situation with this person, by the way, that had misled her. She wasn't in the wrong for not being attracted. and it would be completely implausible, which I pointed out to her, to spend the rest of her life with this person just out of a fear of it would make me a bad person to say to him that I'm not attracted and to potentially hurt his feelings. But in this situation, she was afraid that she was going to make him mad, that there would be consequences to making him mad, and that she would come away from it feeling like she was a bad person. And as a result, her nervous system was just going crazy. Anytime she thought about being honest with him, like calling him and saying she wasn't interested in seeing him again because he had been pushing to see her again, she would just go into this like childlike mode of panic. I can't call and say this. I don't know what to do. And I think a lot of listeners out there will relate to that feeling of having some kind of situation in life where there's either a potential confrontation or you're letting someone down and feeling like it takes hold. It's more than just some rational thought about, I don't want to hurt someone's feelings. It takes hold of your body when you think about doing it. literally changes your breathing to think about it. Puts you on edge. It makes you anxious. You feel like your whole body goes into fight or flight at the idea of, you know, hitting call on your phone.

Which, I'm curious, do you not think that's kind of normal?

I think there's a version of this that's very, very common. in the sense of we don't like delivering bad news to people. And I think there's the version of this that is, you know, when someone is saying, I don't want to make someone, I feel like they're going to get mad and I feel like I'm going to be a bad person. Yeah. There's a, to me, there's more history to that.

Yeah.

But yeah, I think it's so common. The idea of like, I don't want to deliver bad news.

You know that feeling of just, whatever that word is, that sound is in a word.

It's really hard. But I think there's all these thoughts that swirl around our head in that moment that take us away from just being present with the situation. which is that the situation is there's something about whatever the situation is now that's untenable.

Right?

They are. They keep reaching out to hang out. I don't want to ghost someone, but I also can't be in integrity and see this person and just fake feelings for them because I'm afraid that I'm gonna hurt them, by the way. that would inevitably end up hurting them anyway because they would sense the disconnect.

Of course.

And so we end up just hurting them in a very slow way where they can sense that our feelings aren't the same as theirs, but because we're not admitting that they feel like they might be crazy and that affects their self-esteem. So there's nothing tenable about the situation. And if you're really present with it, then you look at it and you go, these thoughts, I'm having all these thoughts around this. What are the thoughts? I'm going to hurt this person. Okay, that's one thought. Maybe there's a thought that goes up that extends from that, which is that this is going to scar them or this is going to stay with them. I'm. And I'm going to be the one who did it. Maybe there's another thought. of guilt, like, oh, is it my fault? Did I lead this person on? Did I take it too far? Should I have found a way to tell them earlier? I've left it too long already. Maybe that triggers thoughts of, I'm a bad person. Maybe it triggers a thought of, this is why I hate dating, because I'm either hurting someone or I'm being hurt. It all sucks. And then you go into that spiral. These are all just thoughts. If you step back from those thoughts and get present, you just realize there's a situation I'm in right now that just isn't working. What does the situation need? The situation needs me to be honest with this person so that I can essentially liberate them from spending any more time or energy on me. And so that I can be in integrity for myself by actually, you know, letting go of this person and directing my energy elsewhere instead of having this constant guilt of I'm not texting them back or I'm not calling them back or I'm feigning interest when I'm not really interested.

It's also, I think, really interesting because when it comes to other people, other people get to do that, right? Other people get to say, actually, you're not for me, or, you know, actually, I don't want that. I don't want to hang out. I have it on a different, like, on a different scale and different in a different area where if one of my friends cancels on me, let's say, you know, she doesn't want to hang out because she's tired or busy or ill or anything. I don't mind. She can literally cancel on me on the same day. I do not mind. I go, oh my God, I know she loves me. She doesn't want to hang out today because she needs to take care of herself in whatever shape or form that is. I have zero issue with it. But when it comes to me, even if I'm sick, I'm like, I need to go because I can't possibly cancel because then I would be a bad person. And we don't put ourselves in the same arena as the rest of the world. And this just reminds me of this situation where it's like if he turned around to her and said, I'm really sorry, I'm not sure this is gonna work for me. I don't look at you in that way. This is more platonic for me. She would maybe be disappointed. Maybe she would feel sad and hurt and offended because those are very human reactions to being rejected or being told that Somebody doesn't want to be with us, but she wouldn't go, and he's a terrible person and an asshole for having me told the truth. But for some reason, there's just a different standard that we have with ourselves. Why is that?

The judgment that we place on ourselves tends to be so much harsher than the judgment we place on other people. You know, we're our standard for ourself, especially if we're people pleasers. then our standard for our self is impossibly high. And often we set the bar too low for other people. We don't even have standards for other. We're so focused on whether we're doing a good job and we're doing right by other people.

Or we do the wrong thing. Like, I had it when I was really sick recently, and I said to my friends, I was like, don't worry, I'm really sick, but I'm still gonna come because I really want to see you guys. And they were like, We don't want you to come. You're sick. Like, you're gonna get a sick stay home. No. And they basically made me cancel because they didn't wanna hang out with me because I was sick. But I was like, I'm just gonna dose up and I'm gonna, you know, go there and show up. And even if I show up for two hours, I'm gonna prove to them that I love them by showing up. And that's not the right thing to do. Yeah.

It shows how far out of our way we will go. to not feel guilty, to not feel like we have let someone down.

Yeah.

At the expense of what is best for the situation. And that's the same in this example, is that what's best for the situation is to give him his time and his energy back and to give her her time and her energy back so that they can both go and find someone who's right for them. But the fear of letting someone down, the fear of hurting someone's feelings, that keeps us trapped in this anxious rumination where nothing happens.

I don't exactly know what it is. Is it like we're bad or we're not good enough or we're not lovable unless we go 10 times out of our way for people? Whatever it is, there's a pre-existing belief there. And I think the fear of he's gonna get mad is almost what if they basically shine a mirror back at me about this belief I have, which is my biggest fear, you know? Let's say he goes, I can't believe that. You're so selfish. You led me on. She goes, see, I knew I was a bad person. I knew I, like, I'm selfish and I'm bad and I'm, you know, she's none of those things, but she believes that, and so. She's so afraid that he's gonna tell her the very thing she's afraid of being. Does that make sense? Yes. I think that's probably where it comes from for us.

In so many people's cases, that is, that comes from history. That comes from this trauma that we have been led to believe we are bad, that there is something wrong with us. I was talking about this earlier today. I heard something to the effect of when, I think it was George Saunders, who was the American novelist, was saying that when young girls, the time when they start to lose their self-esteem or have it affected is when the world starts to invalidate their experience and essentially tell them that what they're experiencing is not true. So the example he gave is the young girl points out the creepy neighbor and says that that neighbor is acting really creepy. And the family who loves the neighbor says, he's not creepy, he's a really nice guy. And she learns that her experience is not valid. that she can't trust herself. And if I'm seeing this but no one else is, and that must mean-.

There's something wrong with me.

Right.

Yeah. So- Because I still feel it. I still feel that he's creepy, but everyone else is gaslighting me into thinking he's not creepy. So then I'm the only- if I'm the only person seeing it, then there must be something wrong with me.

Yeah. And that's true for so many people in who end up in narcissistic relationships is that slowly their self-confidence gets chipped away at because their experience is constantly invalidated. They're constantly told that they're wrong, they're overreacting, they're seeing things, they have bad judgment. And over time, that starts to really erode someone's self-esteem. People lose their faith in their own judgment. They start to become very indecisive because they don't trust their own decisions anymore. So that makes it really hard to decide things. And they start to think something must be really wrong with me because I keep thinking there's something wrong here and apparently there's not anything wrong here.

Yeah. And I think with narcissistic relationships, whether that's romantic or family or relationship, like friendships or whatever it might be, the other thing you end up feeling is that you're constantly doing wrong by this person. So it's almost like that person always makes you feel like you keep messing up, like you keep upsetting them, you keep doing something wrong. Even though usually it's. I mean, with those kinds of personalities, you're not doing anything wrong. They are just the kinds of personalities that are kind of. basically trying, that's what they want, right? They want the control and they want you to grovel for them. They want you to, you know, prove yourself to them. They want to feel like they have control over you. They want you to feel bad. They want you to feel bad.

Which is why a lot of people in those relationships end up apologizing for things and they don't even, at a certain point, they don't even necessarily know.

What they're apologizing for. And they're betraying themselves every single time they do, because every time you say sorry when you're not sorry, just because you want to keep the peace, what you're saying is your needs don't matter. And that's very destructive over time. And I think that's what, if that happens, if you are in those kinds of relationships, that's how you then end up in situations where even doing the right thing that's a little bit difficult because the right thing in this instance is to let someone down and potentially hurt their feelings and disappoint them. But you do not trust that your ability to judge, almost like your needs in that situation, the fact that you need to step away from that person so that you can find someone who makes you happy on your quest of finding love. That's not a good enough reason. Consciously, you know it is. Unconsciously, you feel like the other person's need matters more than you.

Yeah, and if you hurt them or you let them down, then you're bad youd're a bad person. I think it's always interesting to point out how Divorced that idea is from the reality for people like this because the very fact that this person is so concerned on a deep level not on a superficial level, but on a deep level with wanting to be a good person is evidence of the fact that they are not a bad person.

Yeah. I had the same thought when you were saying telling the story.

The narcissist in their past or the person in their life that was able to weaponize this idea that you're a bad person. was only able to weaponize it in that way because this person cares about being good.

Yeah.

If you took a truly bad person, a strategy for manipulating them that would really be unsuccessful would be trying to tell them, you know, if you do this, it makes you a bad person. like that would be the least effective strategy with someone who's actually bad.

Yeah.

Because it just wouldn't motivate them. It might do on a superficial level if you said everyone's gonna think you're a bad person.

Exactly. Yeah. If you're attacking their ego and ultimately their ability to control and feel powerful and feel relevant and feel important. If you're attacking that, then. Yeah.

But.

So not just I will think you are a bad person. Yeah.

But in the case of the person I was coaching, she was really afraid that that it would, you know, she would feel like she was a bad person if she let this person down. So we're already talking about someone who has a high degree of concern to higher degree, right? That's actually the problem, is that there's such a preoccupation with trying to be, quote, good, that she doesn't want to do the thing. that would actually be good for her and ultimately would also be good for somebody else after the short-term pain of it. So that's one side of it is we have to recognize that this idea that we're a bad person for delivering bad news is a non sequitur. The other thing is this idea that I am, going to make this person mad. One of the things that I reminded her of is that, A, it's okay for people to feel mad. It's okay for you to say something and it disappoints someone. It's okay for someone to get mad. These are things we can't say we can never be responsible for disappointing someone or for making someone mad. But also in the past, when she's made people mad, it made her feel frightened. Like something bad comes of that. I get abandoned. Someone cuts me off. Someone's mean to me. Someone tries to smear, run a smear campaign on me. Someone does something nasty. And our trauma in situations like these always takes us to the worst possible eventuality. You know, I am gonna tell this person I'm not interested in going any further, and then they're gonna stalk me and harass me for the rest of my days.

Right?

Now, there are worlds where that can happen.

That's one reality, but there are many others.

There are a thousand different realities between them going on with their day and you never hearing from them again. and them being fine five minutes later and them viciously, spitefully harassing you for the rest of your life.

It reminds me of in Inside Out, too, when she's lying in bed. I'm sorry, spoiler to anyone who hasn't seen it. So fast forward if you don't want this ruined. But when she's lying in bed and she is, like, playing out all of the different scenarios, and then it's actually this, like, room full of, like, I don't know what they are, like people in her brain basically drawing all these different scenarios. And it was like she misses the goal and then everyone gets mad at her and then she dies alone on this bench forever. And it's like all these different things. It reminds me of that. It's almost like it's this anxiety we have inside of us that comes from trauma, right? Where we just go, you know, all these, there's all the ways in which this could go so horribly wrong and I couldn't possibly handle. any of those scenarios and that keeps me frozen.

Yeah, exactly. They're all versions of catastrophe that our brain is sketching out. And that's what trauma does, right? It takes us to these worst possible scenarios and then we live in them. So for her, it's he's gonna get mad at me and then something awful is gonna come of that.

That's your unconscious mind. Right? And because you are letting your unconscious mind rule your conscious state, you end up actually being creating a situation where you are more likely to create, to make him mad at you or to make him think he can get mad at you and speak to you like that. Because maybe you go into it hedging or you go into it not having your own back or not having standards or boundaries around how he responds to you. Or, you know, yeah, you just maybe end up actually attracting the very behavior you're most afraid of receiving because you are so kind of in the belief that it's going to be the truth and it's going to happen. Does that make sense?

I think that's really interesting. Yeah, you start literally creating the very response that you don't want. Yeah. Even if you're just too on a minor level, if you go into something that's perfectly reasonable for you to say, but you're extra apologetic, like too far, then someone might start to think that you've really wronged them when you haven't. Because why would they be apologizing this much if I hadn't been wronged? Or maybe I should be mad, you.

Know, like- yeah, instead of going, oh, we've only been on one date, fair enough, like she doesn't feel the spark. It's, yeah, we did talk every day for two weeks and you know, we did have a big connect. You're right, like how out of exactly. So you end up, it ends up being the focus is exactly on the thing you're trying to avoid. Yeah. Shine a spotlight on it.

I heard it said recently that the thing you're, the thing you're most afraid of has already happened. That's why it lives on as this fear is that you, It's happened. And because it's happened, something we don't connect with enough is that it happened and we survived. It happened and we're here. In her case, she's terrified someone's going to get mad. But that had already happened in her life many times. And what she was evidence of and where she had gotten to in her life now was evidence of is that the ship couldn't be sank. None of those people that tried to sink that ship sank the ship. So she didn't need to worry that if he got mad, she wouldn't be able to handle it. She already has handled it. She's handled it many times in the past. So while her nervous system is telling her, I can't do this, we can't do this. If he gets mad, if this goes wrong, you know, we'll never be able to handle it. It's actually important that she, the kind of the adult in the room comes out and reminds the child, like the child is still living way in the past at a time when the adult in the room was mad at her or the narcissistic partner was mad at her and she went to pieces and didn't know how to handle it. But the adult in the room can remind that frightened child, Hey, you know we already did this. Like, we've got it. Like, the fact that we're here is evidence of the fact that we already survived that thing. It happened and we lived through it and now we're here. So it's okay even if this person got mad and even if Something really, you know, like catastrophic happened. We'd still get through this.

Yeah.

Because this is what we do. People haven't been able to sink the ship in the past. This new person's not going to sink the ship now. We're okay. And with that perspective, we can start to breathe differently. We can start to calm that part of us down that tells us to freak out. in this situation.

And also practically how I think you elegantly let someone down is first of all you sit down whether with yourself or with a friend and you literally script out what you're gonna say, how you start the conversation, how you're gonna phrase it, what you're gonna do, you know, you don't make up some nonsense story about why you can't right now commit because you're just, you know, not over someone or you're, you know, you have issues of commitment. You don't make up some nonsense because that's actually when someone might get mad because they can sense that you're using excuses and if they don't understand, then they will just assume you're lying and then they'll get mad at you for lying. So you are honest, but not in a way that's going to be hurtful and decimate someone's feelings. You. You sit down and you script out something that's elegant, which is something like, you know, I have a list in my head of the kinds of. The kind of relationship I want, the kind of qualities I'm looking for in a partner, the kind of, you know, personality traits and things about someone that I'm looking for. And I just don't think that. in the long term, this is going to, to be that for me. And I don't want to waste your time or my time because I'm really looking for that. And I, I want us to, to find what we're looking for. And I just don't think that's, that's it. And you also accept that in this situation, you're the bad guy. You know, we're so afraid. I always say in the context of men being like, I'm not a bad guy. I'm just a confused guy. I'm just. I'm just a scared guy and men are so afraid in those, like, you know, the context that we always talk about with some of our Love Life Club members and stuff, you know, they're so afraid of being the bad guy that they try and just be the hero in these situations. And there's so many different, like, examples of that. But it's okay to be the bad guy sometimes because if you were never the bad guy, then you are just people pleasing and always putting yourself last. there will always be moments, whether it's you're giving someone feedback at work, you're, I don't know, you're letting some, a friend down in something that they want to do. And because you can't do it, they can't do it either. You are breaking up with someone. You're leaving a job that you are really needed for because you want to pursue something that's better for you. There's going to be a million and one instances in life where you're going to be a bad person to that in, in the eyes of the other person that you're letting down or disappointing or making whose life you're making harder. And I think we have to accept that. We have to accept that we are good and bad at any given moment. And that's okay. The alternative, to your point, is what she ends up marrying this guy and staying with him for the rest of her life. That's ridiculous. So she has no option but to be the bad guy. And. And that's okay. And he's allowed to have his reaction to that. he is allowed to be disappointed, to cry, to get mad. But if he does, she has to know that's his disappointment. It's not her fault. It's not her responsibility to make him happy. It's his responsibility to make himself happy. And if she does not want to continue with him, that is not her fault.

And it really is. It is. part of the little war zone that is dating. Like, you can't, you are also by stepping into dating, you're entering an arena where people won't want you, where people will find you not attractive enough, where people will say you're not their type, where people will dismiss you for any one of a thousand different reasons. Like, that's just that is what we're walking into any single one of us.

Yeah.

And it's okay. Like it's a it's a messy business trying to find someone that you have a mutual attraction for each other. That is a messy business. And in a sense, more often than not, it's it's kind of natural that it would you would either like someone more than they like you or vice versa.

Yeah.

That's kind of a natural state. So it's important that we don't think that we've done something terribly wrong if we decide we don't want someone. We will be on the receiving end of that, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And no doubt already have been, you know, so, yeah, that's. That's really, really an important point.

This was a great subject, by the way. Thank you for bringing it. I think people are gonna really like this.

I hope that it appeals to people who, not just in dating, but in life, are struggling to say unwelcome things to other people. Because I. That's something we're gonna have to do a lot in our lives. Like, it's never going away. the need for us to say unwelcome things. I'm not suggesting that we should go through our lives speaking truth to everyone everywhere we go, as if it's our job to, like, you know, somehow deliver them something they need to hear. I think we have to pick our moments. But, you know, there's going to be plenty of times where we have to say something a friend doesn't want to hear. If you have kids, where you're going to have to say something that's potentially going to hurt their feelings with siblings or with parents, where in order to have a boundary, you have to say something that risks hurting their feelings.

Yeah.

Or delivers an unwelcome truth to them. And that's a. For people who are conscientious, this can be very hard. I think one of the interesting things is we have to look at our conscientiousness over a longer timeline, and then it actually starts to change what we're willing to do in the moment. Because if we look at our conscientiousness on the timeline of a single day, 24-hour period, we'll never want to deliver bad news because we'll be so scared of hurting someone and ruining their day. But if we look at it on a longer timeline, It's like delivering to someone in a company something feedback that you know is going to help them. Your short-term conscientiousness might go, I don't want to hurt their feelings today. But actually, if you take a longer-term view on what could benefit that person, being honest with them today might be the thing that 10 years from now or five years from now means they're even better at what they do. I mean, who hasn't got a story of someone from their past telling them something that was hard to hear at the time, but they now credit that moment with having, you know, been a catalyst for growth or change or something that they now, some new quality about themselves they now hold dear because of how they reacted to that difficult conversation. Often we end up putting those people on a pedestal and going, you know, I'm so grateful for the day that that person told me that thing when no one else did. And so I. I do think it can help to look at it on a longer timeline. And I also think for those that are conscientious or for the people Pleasers or the people that are prone to guilt, I think it's really important before we have a conversation with someone that we really connect to a deeper intention about what energy we're coming from when we say this. because on the surface, it's very easy for our ego to get caught up in, I hate the idea that I'm gonna hurt this person, that I'm gonna have to let them down, that I'm gonna have to tell them I don't wanna go any further, and that that's gonna hurt them and that's gonna make them think less of me and all of that. But if we can truly connect to one, like wishing this person well, and we deeply connect to that. I really wish this person well. Like, I want, I want, I don't just want what's best for me, I also deeply want what's best for this person. And if that means in this case, I need to give them their time back and, oh, I know that's going to be painful and I know it's going to be hard for me to tell them, that I don't want to continue, but I also know that it actually gives them all of their energy back to go and find love that they're not going to find here. And I want that for them. I want them to find love. If you can really connect to that, then it does become easier to have that conversation. And I think we also, when we come from that intention, we obsess less over the exact wording and instead we really connect to our why. It's like what we may lack in eloquence we make up for in intention. And just remember, while it's really valuable to have a clear idea of what you want to say and how you're going to say it, so much of what will carry you through in the moment is just having a very clear and pure intention for why it is you're making this call, for why it is you're saying this to this person. Think of yourself as wishing them well, like on a deep, deep loving level. You are wishing them well. You know that it can suck to get rejected, but at the end of the day, you also know that you're freeing this person up to go and find the kind of love that you really want them to have, but isn't going to come from you. Wish them well, wish them nothing but love, and if you can come from that place, nothing you say will be disingenuous because you will actually mean it. So, if you fumble your words or if you find yourself not being eloquent, you'll make up for it in the energy that you bring someone. when you're having this conversation. Before we finish the episode, I thought we'd read a few emails that have been sent in. You can send us an email podcast@matthewhussie.com either just to let us know what you think of the episodes, what you liked, what you didn't like, or just to ask us a question for a future episode. We have a few, we actually got quite a few emails in response to episode 250, which was called How Soon Can I Ask for Exclusivity? And there were some really lovely emails in response. This was the episode where we talked about getting in my jar.

Did everybody title their subject line, Get in My Jar?

They actually did. People said, I forgot we asked for that, by the way. And then I just saw lots of emails piling up. saying, get in my jar and nice things in the subject line. And I was like, how are all these people saying the same thing? And then I was like, oh, we must have asked for this. What did people say? Mihaela said, Dear Matt and Audrey, this was subject line, get in my jar, only nice things. This email is long overdue. Anyone else a chronic procrastinator? But this really needs to be said. You're podcast is just awesome. I've been listening to it since launching and I am very much enjoying the depth of the topics, delicious banter and all the wisdom shared. Having Audrey on the format is also the perfect wisdom combo for me. I love her input, humility and empathy. I listen to all episodes, even though a certain topic may not feel as relevant for my stage of development. Every time I am happy I did because there is always a new element of perspective I go home with. This particular episode was such an example. Asking for exclusivity may not be a struggle area right now for me, but Matthew made an excellent point. Someone may want to know you, but he may not necessarily allow for himself to be known yet. This being a sign of emotional unavailability. Wow, that hit hard. I guess I never thought of emotional unavailability in this way before. So this for me, was a great insight. Thank you guys for the tremendous value you put into the world. I hope you know how much you're helping people and I've personally grown so much throughout the years with you. In other words, you got me in your jar. Keep up the great work and much love from Romania. That was from Mihaila. This email was from Sanaa. Hi, Audrey and Matthew. I just recently got into a relationship quite fast. He's a good guy, sweet, reliable, and hopefully trustworthy. But ever since we had the conversation of making it official, fears started plaguing my mind. My last relationship ended toxic and ended in another girl plotting and mate poaching him. She was shady, befriended my ex, and masterminded everything so that she could have him. She saved me from him, so I was better off. It's been over a year and I thought I'd moved on from it. My boyfriend has never done anything to make me think that he would do anything wrong, and the relationship is new. But old fears that I thought had disappeared started popping up that another girl would try and mate poach him. I trust him, but men can be extremely oblivious to women's manipulations. We are all idiots, aren't we?

She's not wrong.

You are not allowed to agree with that. Only I, as a man, can say that we're all idiots. And Jeremy, Jeremy can say it. I agree with you sometimes.

I agreed with the oblivious comment.

Okay, fine. People say, if he can be stolen, he was never really yours. But how can I ensure I chose right and save my humiliation? Any advice on how to prevent this from happening or self-sabotaging something new. Thanks, and I loved your latest episode. It's one of my new favorites. I think she was also referring to the Get in My Jar episode, but I can't confirm that. Yes, she was.

I have a lot to say on this.

All right, well, how long do you want to take saying that? Because we're kind of technically at the end of the episode, but we can give like, what's our pithiest answer to this?

Okay, so a few things bring to mind the first one. First of all, I really empathize and really appreciate what she's going through. And actually, the reason I said she's not wrong is that there are absolutely a lot of women who are master manipulators who will try and steal your partner, who will say things and act in a certain way, and women know how to like the so that those kinds of women know exactly what they're doing. But I think that to almost blame the woman is a mistake because what she didn't have in her partner was a true teammate. She didn't have someone who went, why are you saying these things about my partner? Why are you even talking to me about my partner? You know what I mean? there are certain relationships where you never leave any space for somebody to do that. And there are other relationships where people leave space. And if someone is leaving space and they're not being a good teammate to you, and they're not being loyal to the relationship in the way that they should be in, in order to protect it as well as they can. And the way I see it is he had left enough space for somebody to manipulate him, and that's on him. that's not on the other woman. And all that you can do going forward into a new relationship is communicate that with your partner and make sure that your partner doesn't make the same mistake. There is no universe where for me, for instance, a man could come along and start telling me anything that's wrong with our relationship. It just, there would be no scenario where that would even happen. and I trust that it's the same the other way around. And that's because there is a level of protection around the relationship, and that's on the people inside the relationship, not on the people on the outside. So in my opinion, he was.

Do you think that's something that needs to be communicated in the relationship, or do you think that she should just assume that she's got that kind of a person until proven otherwise?

I think it can be communicated. I think you can communicate what you would perceive as a betrayal. I think you and I, for instance, in our relationship early on communicated what we would perceive as a betrayal. And that can be different for different people. So ultimately, everybody has their own kind of textbook on how to be handled and what they think is important in a relationship. But I I know that, you know, for the both of us, we would feel like that would be a betrayal. If I was, and if you were speaking to some woman, oh, I was speaking to some man about you behind your back or allowing that person to have an opinion on you, on our relationship, that would be a betrayal to our relationship. There's no two ways about it. This is very black and white for me. The same as if you're messaging somebody, that's cheating. It doesn't matter that you haven't actually, you know, seen each other naked. If you're messaging somebody in a way that's inappropriate or in a way that has any kind of intention behind it that's not pure and not just friendly and platonic and innocent, then you're cheating. And that's something that you have to make peace within inside yourself. It's not something that your partner should be checking in on. It's not that they should be going, are you messaging people? Are you doing this? Are you doing that? Ultimately, you state your boundaries, you state your expectations, you state your standard for a relationship, and then you trust that they will uphold that standard until they innocent or proven guilty, until they show you that they can't do that. You just assume that they is heard loud and clear, and they go, okay, that in order to be with this person, I have to uphold this standard. I can't talk. shit about my relationship with this random person. I can't message this person over here. I can't talk to my ex behind her back because she has stated that's a boundary for her. And the wrong people for us will break those boundaries. But that's, we can't help that. There's nothing we can do about that. That's just, that's just life, unfortunately.

I love that answer. And so, now, I would just say just, Know that you can't control everything. So, you know, after you've done what Audrey just so eloquently said, let go. Let go. If you see things you don't like, then you can reserve the right to talk about those at any time. But recognize you just can't control everything. And your own past and the things you've been through are going to make you want to control. everything, because that gives you the illusion of safety. But there is no, you know, safety from what? I saw a video on Instagram yesterday of a sinkhole on a football field. Did you see this, Jeremy? There was literally a football field in America where there was just a sinkhole that appeared underneath it. Thank God there was no one playing on it at the time. It was like a school football field, I think, and half of this pitch. just fell into the ground. Jesus Christ. Just disappeared. It was crazy. That's how little control we have is a sinkhole can just swallow us up. Like the idea that you are gonna be able to go into a relationship and predict everything that can or would happen, will happen. It's just a bad instinct. 'Cause you'll never be able to control everything. But by trying to control everything, you will suck the enjoyment out of your life.

And you know, to your point about the sinkhole, trying to control your new partner from being coerced into leaving the relationship by some manipulative individual, you might spend all your time and energy trying to do that. and then what ends up happening is, I don't know, they reach back out to their high school girlfriend behind your back and you go, what? But I obsessed over making sure this thing didn't happen. It's kind of like, you know, your point about the sinkhole. If somebody's gonna hurt you, they're gonna hurt you. You can't predict in what way somebody will and won't hurt you. You just have to trust that your values align. and that you have communicated those values to each other.

Yeah, that's good, isn't it? Selective Focus. You're not spending all day, every day worrying about them getting hit by a bus. Why aren't you monitoring that 24 hours a day or anytime they're out of the house? Like making sure there's a little camera on them.

That's what I worry about.

I.

That's the thing I worry about the most in our relationship is. anything happens. Yeah, you know, you leave the house, I'm like, did you get to the doctor's okay?

Yeah.

You haven't texted me to say you got there okay.

This is the problem, isn't it? I've made you feel so safe in every other way that all you have to worry about is some tragic accident on the way to the doctor's. But for you, Sanaa, you are exclusively focused on this one thing that could go wrong in a world where a thousand things could go wrong. And what that can tell you is, oh, what I'm experiencing, these thought patterns aren't a reflection of how likely something is to happen. They're a reflection of my past pain. And that can actually allow you to stop taking that thought so seriously. Start worrying about buses on the way to the doctor's.

Or sinkholes.

Or sinkholes.

Unless you don't play football, in which case you have nothing to worry about.

A sinkhole, it's not, the lesson of that wasn't that a sinkhole can only happen under a football field.

That was my joke.

Yeah, but I then added to the joke. Well, I think we did it.

I hope everyone found this useful. Yeah, it was really, I really enjoyed this episode.

It was definitely more, More sinkhole chat than normal. Get in my sinkhole.

Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. Just get in with Jar.

We'll stick with Jar. All right. Thanks, everyone, for listening to the Love Life Podcast. Do we have anything I've missed? Any sort of announcements or anything? Let me just check.

No, just come to the retreat.

Nothing. Just, Oh, come to the retreat, mhretreat.com, why wouldn't you want to get all this in person? mhretreat.com is the link. Leave a review on the podcast. They really mean a lot to us. And thank you to everyone who's been leaving a review also on the new book, Love Life, because it's crazy. It's still number one in self-esteem, in Amazon, it's number one in interpersonal relations. And the last time I checked, it was number two in love and romance.

Which is quite interesting, isn't it?

Yeah, I know. I can't remember what one was number one. Some piece of garbage.

Yeah.

No, I can't remember. I'm sure it's a lovely one.

I hope it's a good one. Otherwise that would be more insulting.

I'm sure it's a good book. But thank you, everyone. And, well, we look forward to seeing you again in the next episode of Love Life. Be well, friends, and love life.

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