Why We Get Attached Too Quickly (with Matt and Stephen)
6 Feb 2021 · 22 min
Stephen and Matthew Hussey explain why we attach to new romantic prospects too fast, comparing it to hiring bias under time pressure. Fear of missing out and excitement distort early judgments. They suggest waiting multiple dates before investing emotionally and keeping a full life to maintain perspective.
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Well, hello listeners and welcome back to the Love Life Podcast. I am Stephen Hussey. We've got in the room in Los Angeles live on the feed, Matthew Hussey. How are you, sir?
Steve, I'm good. I've got a new microphone. Jameson, he's here masked up behind the screen. He's got me a new microphone, Steve, so I'm finally competing with your podcast tech.
Yeah, on our visual, Matt's in sort of this sunny idyllic LA looking backdrop. background and I look like I'm in a cave with like a goblin, because I'm in a much darker England right now.
I wouldn't say like a goblin, Steve.
Fair enough.
Some sort of bowrog.
Very sweet, say. So what I want to bring to you, Matthew, is something you were chatting about on YouTube, which is Coping with disappointment in dating. I think this video seemed to really resonate with people. People talked about how they go overvalue people early on. They end up projecting an image of someone in their mind. And I think you and I have also, you know, been really, I don't think surprised is the word, but we've seen over and over again throughout our career how people can, build a story of someone off of so little. I think that's sometimes been shocking is how people have managed to project an entire future with someone sometimes off of someone they haven't even met yet, someone they talk to online, someone that they went on one date with or hooked up with once on a trip. What happens here? Do you think that people, there's a certain kind of person who gets really over excited and projects onto someone new or is this a human flaw that whenever you meet someone who seems to tick a lot of your criteria, you just invest a lot because this doesn't happen very often. What do you think?
Well, I think it's a combination of things. We are a biased judge when we really want to meet someone, when we want to find someone, we become an unreliable judge in many ways. It's not unlike when you really want to recruit someone for your company. If you've got a spot to fill in your company and you feel a time pressure like, I've got to fill this spot now, you're more likely to start to see someone that you think is interesting or, you know, has some good qualities that could be good for your company, and then immediately start projecting all of other things onto them because you just really do need to hire someone right now. And so you meet someone, you don't ask all the questions you should because it's almost like you don't want to find out that they're not right. You want to believe the resume. You want to think they're, you know, wow, this person's amazing. Because asking a difficult question, asking a more revealing question about their intentions, about their background, about their skill set, might elicit an answer that starts to introduce doubt into your perception of how great they'd be in the company. Very similar to dating in that many of us either feel a need to fill a role, we feel a need to make someone our partner or have a partner in the first place. or we're just very excited about the prospect or a combination of both. But in a way, fear can drive dating in a negative way and excitement can also drive dating in a negative way. Because you could have someone who's 41 years old and is like, I wanna have a family and I need to meet someone soon because I feel like I really wanna have kids and I'm running out of time or whatever. You can have someone in that mindset who is attributing false qualities to someone or false intentions to someone because they feel like they're in a rush and that's fear based. But you can also have someone who's 21 and just desperately excited about being in love and having a boyfriend and someone comes or girlfriend and someone comes along and they go, oh my God, they're amazing because they're so excited about the idea of being in love. So I think we're a biased judge. and we always have to be aware of that. That my want for this thing to happen, my need for this thing to happen, might be coloring my judgment and might make me size up this person too quickly before I can possibly know, A, how right for me they would be, and B, how much they're willing to actually invest, which how do you really know that until You've given it a little time. And by the way, even if they are investing early on, how are they in different situations? You don't know an employee from an interview. Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in talking to strangers. You don't know someone from an interview. You're more likely to know someone from their references. You call their references. And if someone, if you can manage to get an honest opinion from their references, that's going to teach you far more because you learn How did they act on the way out of the company, not just on the way in? What were they like in year three? What were their worst habits that came out? Those are the things that are more likely to give you a real picture than how someone is on a date, which is the equivalent of judging someone how they'll be performing in year three of a company based on the first interview they do with a company.
Yeah, yeah.
Do you think it's boring when I give examples, when I make analogies between dating and business? Because it's interesting to me because I'm in business, but do you think in general it's somewhat dry?
This is a meta question. I think it's, no, I think a lot of people can relate to that idea. I think if you got into cash flow forecasts, it might get a little bit dull, a bit dry.
I'm glad you said that, Steve, because let's talk about integration. and how it relates to the balance sheet.
Right, well, I'll get my Excel up. Let's get down to the hard formulas. We had a good comment on YouTube from Sam who said, I am guilty of creating an idea of someone in my head and falling in love with that idea. One way I prevent myself doing this is giving myself a rule where I don't allow myself to get invested until at least date I keep reminding myself, I'm still in the getting to know you phase and the idea I have of them in my head is not reality. Now, what I want to ask you, Matthew Hussey, do you think that one can rationalize themselves into this position? Do you think it's something you have to train yourself a little bit to do? Is it something that maybe with a bit of time and wisdom you have experienced a few letdowns where your first impression was wrong? And so you realize I have to stop believing that so heavily.
Thinking of the past and when you've been so wrong is a sobering thought. I think that anytime we think we're, you know, everyone thinks they're such a good judge of character and we forget all the times where we've just been incredibly wrong about somebody. So I think it's dangerous. It's good to remember those moments where you were completely wrong, where you thought someone was the love of your life and you couldn't have been more wrong. so that's the starting point.
I.
What else was I gonna say?
If I was gonna. If I was gonna put us as two types, I would say I'm more cautious and you are slightly more passionate. And, you know, I have live on your.
I have been known to. To fall in love with someone who's getting their coffee.
No, I think. I have seen that before.
I will say, you're saying that I see someone in a coffee shop and immediately think that's the love of my life.
Right, well, I guess you enjoy story a bit more in that way, and I can be a little more guarded and cautious sometimes to a fault.
Like, I'm sort of a romantic type, sort of almost a prince. I don't know if you're saying this, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm almost sort of... Please don't, I'm like a sort of Prince Charming sort of figure and you're like a sort of disillusioned, sort of embittered, curmudgeonly old wretch.
Right, I suppose I wouldn't put it like that if pressed.
But, okay.
But, you know, so it's hard, isn't it? Because you get too cautious and you are then not open to things. And I don't think I've fallen into that trap. I think I have been open many times to falling in love in my life. But it's, you don't want to keep going through again and again and falling in love with a new person each time.
But here's one of the secrets. Have other things going on that are exciting because It's, you know, I've done TV interviews before where I just made it way too important. It's like, you know, like the Eminem song, like, what is it? You only get one shot, don't miss your chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, Stephen.
Wrong, Marshall Mathers. That's what you're saying. You're saying wrong, sir.
I'm saying there's a poetic license there that he's taking to overhype at any given moment. in one's life.
You're saying the culture of Detroit rap battles does not necessarily extrapolate to chances in one's romantic life.
Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I'm saying it's not always universal truths that, like, you know, Eminem got his shot, didn't he? But in a way, he got many shots. He got quite a lot of shots. Some of them, he missed his chance to blow.
He got some second chances.
And third and fourth and fifth, and he's not taken them all, Steve. I mean, I'm an M&M fan, but he's not taken them all. And, you know, that's okay. And do you think that when he had a smash at the beginning of his career, that has made him happy in this moment today? Do you think it made him happy when he woke up this morning? No. So look, life isn't about one shot. When I've done TV before and I've built it up too big, I forget that there's always another thing coming, whether it's another TV show, another interview, or guess what? I won't need TV because we've got our own podcast and we've got our own YouTube channel and we don't need any of it anyway. I think Dating is a little bit like that where you overhype a moment. What she's saying is she gets four dates in before she allows herself to have any feelings. Look, you can allow yourself to get excited. Just get excited about how fun it is in the moment. Don't overexcite yourself about what it could be because it might be that it might not. But guess what? There'll always be something else. And even if there's not someone else, which there will be, but even if there wasn't, someone else. There's something else in your life that brings you joy right now. Yeah. There's other. And by the way, if there's not, that's your problem, not this guy not turning out to be the right person. If you haven't got other things that are exciting you right now, that's a much bigger problem. And that's the one you should be trying to solve. And that's honestly, Steve, I don't care if the, if the If any one thing we're doing fails, I truly, it does not matter to me because we've got so many other things going on. People, you know, when we come to a team call and I'm like, oh, by the way, there's this, I'll say in the middle of a team call, oh, there's this TV show we might.
Be doing next month.
Oh, there's a new series they might be having me host or whatever. And everyone's like, how are you just telling us this? How do we just find out about this? But it's because I don't care.
Yeah.
It's because I'm like, there's 10 other things I'm excited about this week. It'll happen or it won't. That's all right. That's how life should be.
If you build that snowball of things and opportunities and stuff you're excited about, the thought of you waiting by the phone for a text is totally alien. And I know there's different stages in your life. If you are looking, waiting for that text, you're like, what am I doing? What am I missing right now that this has become so important? Like someone you didn't know Two weeks ago, someone is like waiting for a text from them. It does seem crazy when you have a tongue going on.
That's right. By the way, there's a comment here from Heather on Facebook Live who says this Detroit-er just logged into this and hear about Detroit rap battles and Eminem metaphors to dating Detroit versus everybody. I don't know if Detroit thinks like that, but if they do, dare I say that's your problem, Detroit.
That'S where that fire in the belly comes from.
I mean, that's where it versus everybody. I didn't even know I was at odds with Detroit. Well.
Well, I would round this off this episode. We should go to Detroit for a tour event.
I would like to.
I think sometimes of that Churchill quote. The success is all about going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. And there is something to that in the early stages of dating. You don't want to keep failing at every relationship, but there is that thing of sometimes just letting a disappointment bounce off you and still enthusiastically rolling onto the next one. And again, like you say, if you've got a lot going on, it's much easier to keep that enthusiasm up. But the success takes care of itself a bit. If those disappointments don't just knock you on your ass and then you're stuck for weeks, but you keep moving, it often just becomes a process of time.
I agree. I agree. Just keep going and keep going even when you lose a little enthusiasm because just that's how you want to live. You want to live as someone who lives a rich life and you don't want to decide not to have a rich life in the second half of it simply because you had a few failures in the first half of it. What sort of way is that to just eke out the remainder? of your time? Well, it didn't go very well the first half, so I'll just keep quiet the second half. Is that really how you want to live your life? You don't have to be excited or enthusiastic all the time about your losses, but just decide I want to be the kind of person that lives a full life, even if it means going on bad dates or whatever. At least I'm out there and having experiences in life. I'd rather do that than do nothing at all. Steve, how long have we been going for? Better not have been longer than 15 minutes.
We've hit time, so I'm gonna have to wrap this up.
That's no, how long?
We're about three or four minutes over time.
Right then.
And there's a big noisy truck going by right now, so that's good for the audio, isn't it?
I'm, you've done, you've done a classic male thing there, Steve. Can I just say? I said, how long? And you said, it's about time, knowing you'd gone three or four minutes over what we said we were going to do. Right. Just keeping intentionally vague about it.
And do I do a male thing now and not apologize? Is that. Is that a male thing?
Or you just. Just.
I'm sorry.
All right.
I'm sorry.
Free to gaslight the out of me, Steve.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
I'm sorry you got annoyed. So.
Well, look, we're trying to. I'm not. And by the way, before you all start sticking up for Stephen, I'm not having a go at Steve. I just. I'm trying to keep these to a length where you'll be able to listen to them on either, you know. A short breakfast or a lengthy toilet run?
Speak for yourself.
Well, thanks Steve. Is there anywhere people should go or should they do something?
We've got a virtual retreat coming up. It's coming up real soon. So if you wanna not worry about disappointments, be able to have your confidence at an all-time high so that you can just boulder through that shit Go to mHVirtuAlRetreat.com and join us for our virtual retreat.
Guys, please come. It's three days. Three days where we're gonna be working with you in every part of your life. And Steve, I'm doing great.
You are doing great.
I'm like, I'm up at 5:00 a.m. every morning right now. I'm training hard, I'm working hard, I'm real focused. The creative work I'm doing, I think is some of the best I've ever done. like I'm really on form and that's like I'm just, I'm living our message and I'm really happy about that and I'm very pumped for this for this virtual retreat. It's only the second one we've done. The first one was a big hit and I'm on fire on this one that I wasn't even on the first one and the first one was great. So when is it? March 18th to the 21st. No, the 19th to the 21st.
That's right.
Go to mhvirtualretreat.com All right.
And listen to us for more than 15 minutes.
Don't worry, they'll be loving this.
Thanks, my little pickles, peaches, puddings and pears. That is all from us today. Thank you so much. No, that is not your sign off.
You don't do that every time, do you? Not every time. I change it. Peaches, puddings and pears isn't your regular sign off.
Peaches, puddings, pickles and pears. And I mix it up. I have, you know.
So you mix it up, but you remember exactly what it is.
That's one I do occasionally.
Right. Okay. It sounds more than occasional. If on any of the other podcasts, Stephen says peaches, puddings, pickles and pears, I want you to DM me so that I know. If any of you hear that, you DM me. We'll see you soon, guys. Thank you, Stephen.
Thanks, everyone.
We did it, bro.
All right.
Facebook, I hope you enjoyed it. Michelle says she's definitely a pickle. I suppose that's part of the outro, isn't it, Steve? People can identify with whatever they identify with, whether it's putting a pickle or a peach or a pear.
And everyone is one of both.
Right, what are you?
Pudding.
You're a pudding. I would say I'm a pickle.
I'd say peach.
Jameson. You're a peach. Jameson's a pretentious be alluding more to his shape. He's a pretentious making himself a pear. Jeremy. Jeremy's a pickle. well, with that, we'll say goodbye to all of you on Facebook. Appreciate you being here. We'll see you soon.
I see the blog sites.
Ookie.
Whoop.
Got a new wife.
Shorty got a new boo.
Yeah, love beautiful.

