In this episode of the Love Life podcast, host Matthew Hussey (referred to as Matthew AI) and guest Sam discuss the common early‑dating dilemma of limited texting between dates. The conversation begins with a brief testimonial for Regain Couples Therapy, highlighting the value of professional help in relationships. The core of the episode explores why people often seek quick closure in early dating, how they unintentionally reinforce unhelpful “culture” by merely reacting to a partner’s behavior, and the psychological principle of reciprocity. Matthew contrasts two approaches: mirroring a partner’s communication style (a reactive, defensive stance) versus modeling the behavior one wishes to receive (a proactive, brave stance). He advises listeners to initiate vulnerable, low‑pressure contact—such as a friendly text or a phone call—to set a new relational tone, and to assess whether the partner reciprocates. If the partner continues to fall short, mirroring can then be used as a self‑respecting boundary. The episode concludes with a promotion for the Momentum Texts program, a paid resource offering concrete texting strategies to move early‑dating dynamics forward.
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Rather than simply mirroring his behavior, what if I modeled the behavior I want to see? Foreign welcome everybody to the Love Life podcast. I am Matthew Hussey and I believe today's episode is really going to help you accelerate your love life today. Check it out and I'll speak to you at the end of the episode.
What do I do when there's a long break between texts? But he's great on our dates. We've been on three dates and we don't choose chitchat during three dates. So not long.
Firstly, we expect a lot of closure very quickly in life and early dating doesn't offer a lot of closure. You know, it doesn't offer a lot of closure on how someone is or what their intentions are or why they didn't call back or why they haven't called us in two weeks but now all of a sudden want to see us. Early dating is very open ended and to an extent we sometimes underestimate our influence in the equation. So we're so busy looking for closure from somebody else. What do they want? What are their intentions? What are their patterns? Do they like me? Why aren't they texting me? That we forget that we actually play a role ourselves in shaping the dynamic. Early on, Mitch Albom said, if you don't like the culture, you have to be brave enough to create your own. He was not referring to dating, but you know that that idea relates to so many different things. We often go into situations complaining about the culture of the situation. You know, we go to a party and we complain. Oh, it's not a very fun party. Well, are you making it fun or are you just complaining that the party's not fun? We go on a date and we say, that person wasn't flirtatious and well, were you flirtatious? This person's communication is terrible. Well, is yours strong right now? Are you being proactive? Are you being vulnerable? And, and so we're kind of. A lot of us just go through life reacting to culture and complaining about culture instead of being brave Enough to create our own culture. And one of the really powerful psychological effects when we decide to create culture is the phenomenon of reciprocity. Reciprocity is this idea that if we act first, that will create a reciprocal response from somebody else. Somebody else is influenced by that action. If I walk down the street and I look at you and you have a kind of grumpy face, I then decide as a result of that that I'm not gonna smile. And then I walk past you and I go, what a grumpy person that was. There's a kind of reverse reciprocity going on there, right? That your. Your mood right now, at least the way I'm reading it, may not even be true. But the way I'm reading it is that you're grumpy or you're standoffish, and therefore I don't smile at you when we walk past each other. Yeah, so you've had an effect on me. There's a reciprocity going on there. You haven't. I'm afraid you're not giving me anything, so I'm not going to give you anything. But what we don't know is what might have happened had you smiled. That might have created a different kind of reciprocity where that person suddenly felt like they could smile because they weren't going to get rejected or you were in a good mood and it lifted their mood. I almost look at a situation like this and say, well, what would it look like if we were reverse engineering the kind of dynamic we want to have in early dating? She is saying that the dates are going great, but there's not much contact in the middle. And part of what she is looking for, there is some kind of closure. Well, what does that mean? Does that mean he doesn't like me? Does it? It could mean, for example, we could speculate that what it means is that this guy is not really dating with any intention. And we might be right. It might be the case that he's not interested in actually getting to know her or building momentum, which is what someone builds or looks to build when they have true intentions. They want to build momentum. They don't want to leave you in any doubt as to whether they like you. They want to start to ratchet up the investment and to fill that from you in return. So we could. It would be fair to kind of make a guess that he's not dating with the same intention that she is. And that's why when he kind of wants some instant gratification, he goes on a date. With her. And he very much enjoys being there. He clearly enjoys her company if he's on three dates with her or he's enjoying something about it, but he doesn't have any intention. He's not doing it with any purpose other than immediate gratification. And that's why she doesn't hear from him in between, because he's not actually looking to spend any time investing or getting to know her. That might be true. It also might be true that it's early in dating and within that three date window, he's just kind of got a lot on and a lot of other priorities, and it's not the top of his list because she's not the top of his list right now. And that's also kind of understandable in the context of early dating. The point is we don't know. And we can spend all our time trying to work that out. In a. In a way, what that is, is responding to culture. Right? The culture of this situation right now with this guy is that they go on dates, have a good time, and then she doesn't hear from him in between. That's the culture. So rather than looking at why is the culture like this, which is a. Can be a pointless exercise with no clear answers, what we can do is apply that. That phenomenon of reciprocity or make it work in our favor by saying, okay, what would this look like if I was creating the culture? In other words, rather than simply mirroring his behavior, what if I modeled the behavior I want to see? And this is where I want to kind of clear something up? Because people have heard us. If they've been longtime listener of the podcast or viewer of our videos, they've heard me. Or you say some version of don't invest in someone based on how much you like them, invest in them based on how much they invest in you.
Yeah.
Now that looks on the surface like a bit of a reactive approach.
Yeah, yeah.
That looks like waiting to see what the culture is and then responding to that.
So I just sit back and watch what vibrations come out, and I just.
Decide to match them exactly. Now that that's mirroring and to use NLP language, and that has its place, right? That says don't invest more than they are. The only problem with that is that if everyone takes that approach and everyone is the two people in a dynamic in dating, then no one makes a move because we're all just waiting for the other person to make that first move. And then we go, okay, they did something. I'll now do the same amount. At some point someone has to be brave enough to step out of mirroring and model the behavior they want to see in the other person. So there's mirroring and there's modeling. The modeling is the proactive part. The mirroring is the reactive part. When someone comes to us and says in between dates, he doesn't reach out. And I'm following your advice to invest in who invests in me and to invest as much as they do. Well, right now, based on what he's doing, I'm not doing anything. Now that has the danger that we've just spoken about, which is that not only does it not go anywhere, but you also don't see whether you can get that reciprocal effect that can be achieved if you model the kind of communication you would like to see. So what we then say is, okay, maybe model, be a little proactive right now by modeling what you'd like to receive. That means in a vulnerable and proactive way, without agenda reaching out to this person. It could be in the form of, hey, how's your day? I was just thinking of you. It could be referencing a joke that you both had on the last date. It could be just letting someone know that you were thinking of them or that you'd like to see them again. But you are there modeling the behavior you want to see. And you might even do that a couple of times. It might be that you model the behavior you want to receive by picking up the phone and calling someone, thereby showing them that you are comfortable on the phone and that a phone call isn't a strange thing to you, that it's actually perfectly normal for you to have a phone call and therefore they should not feel embarrassed or, or ashamed to call. Or they shouldn't feel kind of like they're treading on eggshells around you. They should feel free to pick up the phone. That's modeling. Mirroring can turn from self respecting behavior if we're not careful, into a form of defensiveness or protectionism. You didn't text me. Well, I'm not going to text you. Then it can, it can be that kind of reactivity. So mirroring can be strong. If it's like, hang on, I'm respecting myself, you're not giving me a lot, so I'm not going to give you a lot. Which should be the case. If we model first what we want to see and we find that consistently they do not meet us. There's at that point, mirroring makes an awful lot of sense. In order to be self respecting. But if we just start by mirroring and we never do anything else, then it's not self respecting. It's a way to hide. It's a way to be defensive. In the book attached it's what would be called protest behavior, right? I'm in some form or another I'm acting out or hiding as a way of protesting the behavior in you that I don't like. That is now that is following. It's not leading. Leading comes when we model the behavior we want to see. Mirroring is appropriate when after having modeled the behavior we would like to see, they show that they are either incapable or unwilling or of meeting us there. And from the nature of this question, I see someone who's doing a lot of mirroring, but who hasn't been vulnerable enough yet or brave enough yet to do a whole lot of modeling. If you haven't already, grab yourself a copy of the Momentum Texts program. In this program I give you very practical things that you can do to move an early dating situation forward. Avoid messages that don't go anywhere. Avoid dates that never result in follow up or situationships that never result in a commitment. This is the most practical early dating program you will find and it's super reasonable to get your hands on. At $7. Go check it out@MomentumTexts.com Sam.
