--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. You and I are going to talk about the secrets to building and creating amazing romantic relationships, and especially if you're single, this is for you. I've been wanting to do this because I've been receiving so many questions from your fellow listeners around the world that I thought, I have to dedicate an episode to every single aspect of romantic relationships—from navigating being single, to finding a great one, to creating that intimacy, to keeping the romantic relationship great.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want you to know, whether you are single or dating or married or divorced, or you're in some situationship, or you're hooking up with people and trying to figure it out, whether you feel good or bad, whatever, this is for you. You and I are going to cover every single question you can imagine and every range that happens in the experience of finding love, falling in love, keeping in love, and falling out of love.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm also excited because today I have a co-pilot. I have a co-pilot because, you know, I'm 56 years old. No, I'm 55 years old. I'm turning 56. I'm 55. Being that I'm 55 and I've been married for 28 years, I've never done online dating. I'm at a loss for how to counsel our three kids who are adults and navigating the modern dating world. So I thought, I have to call in a heavy. I have to call in somebody who has been helping people create the most amazing love lives for 17 years. I'm talking about the internet's favorite and most-watched relationship expert on YouTube.
--:-- Mel Robbins: We're going to dig into incredible questions today. Questions like, what do you do if you can't find love? What is the biggest mistake that people make in relationships? How do you meet people in the era of toxic hookups and online dating? How do you not sound like some sort of controlling loser when you don't know where you stand in a relationship? What happens if you're growing but your partner isn't? What do you do if you feel taken for granted? And a question that I want to know: what is the single biggest mistake that people make in relationships? Well, it's not what you think.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm so thrilled you're here with me today. It is always such an honor to get to spend some time together. I also want to start by acknowledging you for choosing to listen to something that is going to help you create a better life, make you laugh, and feel a little better. Welcome, welcome, welcome. And if you're a new listener, I particularly want to take a moment and welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I'm so glad you're here.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Today's episode is for you. Whether you're single, dating, married, divorced, you've got some situationship thing going on that you don't even know how to describe, you're trying to figure things out as you're hooking up with people, you don't know where you stand, you're confused, you're feeling used, you're somewhere in between. Today, you and I are going to sort it all out.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, I've been married to Chris for over 28 years, and we've got three adult kids who are all navigating the modern dating world. Having never had to experience online dating, when I thought, "Okay, I'm going to answer relationship questions," I thought I better call in a heavy hitter to be my co-pilot so that I can handle the continuum on one end, and I've got somebody that can handle the crazy world that is modern dating.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let me tell you a little bit about my co-pilot today, Matthew Hussey. Matthew is a buddy of mine. He's also a *New York Times* bestselling author, and he's been helping people for more than 17 years to feel more confident and in control of their relationships. More than 3 million people turned to Matthew for relationship advice on his YouTube channel, which is completely dedicated to helping you create a better love life. Matthew and I are going to tag team your questions.
--:-- Mel Robbins: My team has sourced your most asked questions from your fellow listeners around the world. They have come to our inbox, our website, and social media. Trust me, whether you are in a loving relationship right now or you have sworn off relationships altogether, there is something here for you. You will relate to all these questions. You are going to get something from every single answer. And you're going to want to share this with everyone that you love.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right. Are you ready? I know I am. Without further ado, let me welcome Matthew Hussey to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Thank you. Awesome. I'm looking forward to talking with you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think what I want to do, because you've been advising people on how they can get into successful long-term relationships for 17 years, I want to focus our conversation on what you've learned about successful long-term relationships, how to get in one, and what the attributes are. Then I want to have a conversation about how you want people to think when they're single and navigating the dating world. As you think about the volume of people that you've helped, you have seen it all in relationships. What's the biggest mistake that you think people make in relationships?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: One of them is thinking that the things your partner is and does that are wonderful are normal by the time you have been experiencing them for a long time.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What do you mean?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: The things that your partner does that are actually wonderful, the special qualities, the things that make your life better, more joyful, more magical, easier, the things that support you—all those little things that are magic—you start to think those are just normal things that are to be expected, or that anyone would do in a relationship, because you've had so much distance from any other relationship that your memory now has nothing to compare it to. People have a rude awakening very often when they go and date someone else and they realize all the things that were wonderful about their partner were not normal. They were wonderful things about their partner.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: We do that in all of life. Human beings, in some ways, one of our greatest traits is that we're able to normalize things. We can go, as an entire world during a pandemic, and normalize radically new conditions in ways that are truly inspirational. But it actually gets mutated into a very bad effect sometimes in relationships and in other areas of life, where that normalization of what is wonderful can make us think that it's normal.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I freaking love that you went here. I think what we do when we seek relationship advice is we're so focused on what's wrong with this person, why did it go cold, how come we've grown distant. What you're saying is one of the big mistakes that we actually make is we lose sight of the fact that there are so many things that are going right, and you take it for granted. Is that what you're saying?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Yeah, that's exactly right. Look at anyone who flies in a fancy seat on the plane. If they do it for long enough, they don't even think it's a fancy seat anymore. They'll find a new complaint with it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I keep thinking about the fact that if you've ever been upgraded and you sit up front, it is like going to Disney World. You won't go to sleep because you're like, "I have to enjoy all of this. I have to try the little hand cream and I have to brush my teeth with the airplane toothbrush." You can't sleep. It's so exciting. And people do that with partners. You may have someone who has truly extraordinary things. You just don't know they're extraordinary anymore because it's your life.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Whoa. I think we can start to think we know everything there is to know about our partner. That there is nothing new going on in that head of theirs. We know it all. And we certainly don't know it all. We only know what they're telling us. And usually what they're telling us is a reflection of the kinds of questions we're asking them. We might have stopped asking them questions 10 years ago because we assume we know it all. But we may know them from 10 years ago. We don't necessarily know them today if we don't ask the right questions.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: I'm constantly thinking, I don't think there's any one answer for this. And it's certainly not a tip from *Cosmopolitan* about a new toy for the bedroom that's going to change the whole game. How do you stand back from your partner and see them as an enigma again? That, to me, is one of the most beautiful things you can do. Proust said, "The journey of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in seeing with new eyes." When someone has an affair, they're seeking a new landscape. But when you can start to see your partner with newness, you're seeing them with new eyes. If you can bring newness, you're giving them a chance to see you with new eyes.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: The question becomes, what are some of the ways you can do that? The beautiful part is there's not one answer to that. It can be organic to you and the ways you can create newness for yourself and your relationship.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How do you change it?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: I think you have to keep growing. I really believe that you have to find ways to make life fresh to you so that you can stay fresh for your partner. The more you read, the more you engage in a new activity or a new hobby or something that inspires you. I could, at this point, after coaching people in their love lives for 17 years, say, "I know enough to just do this for the rest of my life without learning another thing." And that might be true, but it would become stale for me. And then I would become stale for my audience.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: The thing that keeps me fresh for other people is that I stay fresh for myself. I do the reading, I look at what's going on, and I have conversations with people. Then I come back with an idea that feels new. It may be something I've said a thousand times, but the way I just thought about it because of the thing that I just read feels new to me. And if it feels new to me, I'm going to convey that in a way that's fresh to you. In our relationships, because we stop growing in our lives and because we stop doing things that keep life fresh for us, we now bring a very stagnant, stayed version of ourselves to the relationship. We have nothing new to bring to the conversation at dinner because when was the last time we got a brand new idea or we read something or engaged with something that made us think differently?
--:-- Mel Robbins: One of my big takeaways already, and maybe it's age because I'm 55 years old and you're younger than me. You asked this question about what have you done lately to grow. I certainly grew up in a generation where it was all about finding somebody. So much of it was about the search out there. What do I need to do to attract that person, to find that person? The presumption being that that person out there is somehow going to come back over here and make my life more interesting, my life more amazing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think I've already had this aha for every one of you listening and for all of the people that you love that you're going to send this to: the single most important thing, whether you're single and listening to this or you are in a relationship and you want to make it better, is that it begins with you understanding what you're bringing to the table and you looking at your own growth and what you're bringing either to your life as a single person or to the relationship as a person in a committed relationship. Is that a fair takeaway?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: It's everything. It's everything. I don't want to jump too far ahead of ourselves when I say this, but when you say that, what it brings up for me is when we feel like we're not interesting, when we have the insecurity of someone who feels like they're not enough, they're not cool, they haven't got a great life, they're not an interesting person, we go looking for that person who has those attributes. What we do now is we go into our love lives driven by ego—not the ego of "I'm so great," but the ego of "I'm not great, I'm not enough, so I need to find someone who's going to make me feel that way." We often end up looking for these very superficial markers of someone else's impressiveness, what makes them great.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: When you truly feel like you're enough, you don't actually feel the need to go in search of those kind of egoic things. You're not worried about, "Is this person I'm bringing home someone that is going to impress my friends? Are they going to look good on my arm? Are they going to look good on Instagram?" You don't care about that. You care, "Do they make me happy?" You start focusing on how they make you feel, not how they make you look. That's a huge distinction because so many people go out into their love lives worrying about how someone's going to make them look. That's all driven by ego because we don't feel like we're enough.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: It's no different to the playground at school. If you didn't think you were cool, the last person you wanted to be seen with was another person who was uncool. You were like, "If I hang around you, I'm going to get found out. Yes, we're both screwed. So I need to hang around with people that I can disguise myself from, and other people might by association think I'm cool too." At school, we looked for all these silly superficial markers of popularity, status, looks, what they were captain of, so that we could feel by association like we were somebody. If you just carry that forward into your love lives, you keep looking for all of those superficial markers that are going to, by association, make you look like the person you've always wanted to look like.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: When you work on yourself, it's a very freeing thing because you're now thinking, "I'm not looking for you to be a certain kind of good looking or a certain kind of height or figure or money or status or lifestyle. I don't care about you being any of those things. I've got me. I already feel good enough. So I don't need you for those things. What I want is someone I have an extraordinary time with. What I want is someone who sees me. What I want is someone I feel at home with." Those are the things that we start looking for. It's a very different thing we look for when we feel like we're already taken care of.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, what I love that you said, and I want to take a giant highlighter and make sure that as you're listening to this, that you got this: too many of us are obsessed with what does the person make me look like. So if I'm with this person, what does it look like versus how does this person make me feel? That's another takeaway in terms of the mistakes that we're making.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Here's something I think a lot of people will relate to. This is maybe a crude analogy, but I always think I am the house that I live in. When I go to a hotel, if it's a fancy, lovely hotel, I love the room. Oh my God, I love the view. I never think of it as my status or my value or anything. I'm like, "I'm renting this room for a night." This doesn't belong to me. It's not my hotel.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Are we about to talk about one night stands? Is that where we're going right now? Okay. Well, you said renting for a night. I'm like, "What's happening, Matthew?"
--:-- Matthew Hussey: I think of it as I'm just going to experience this and enjoy it for what it is.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: I can't take it home with me. It's not mine. My home is my home where I go back to every night. That's my home. The picture that I hang on mine and my wife's wall—that is a beautiful picture that affects my life every single day. The hotel that I stay in is irrelevant. It's just a nice experience. I think we have to, to some extent, start seeing when we're with someone that we think is really impressive or has amazing traits, is very charismatic, is sexy, all of these things that we get drawn to—this is not our value. It's something we're enjoying. It's something we're experiencing. But we are the home that we go back to every night.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: The work we do on ourselves, the work we do to make ourselves a resilient person in this life, a wise person in this life, a person who's giving in this life, who has connections and love—that's our home. It's not the value that this person brings us. There are so many people in relationships that when they lose the person, they think they've lost their value because they started to think, "My value is this value on the outside." I don't think you can ever get the two confused.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I like that you have a visual because when you fall for somebody, obviously there's so much chemistry and attraction and lust and sex and all of the amazing stuff that goes down when there is a new relationship and the chase is on and it's super exciting. It can feel like a sexy, amazing hotel room. We can all put ourselves there. The sheets are fantastic and the coffee is so good and you can pull down the blinds and get an amazing night's sleep. You can start to imagine, "What if my own bedroom felt like this?" But when the date is over, you know how you feel when you're back at home—whether you've just been with somebody that makes you feel more of yourself, or whether you then go back to where you are at your home when you're alone and you start to question, "Did I say the right thing? Did I not do that? Are they going to call me?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: I also love the analogy because I've been asked a lot since Chris and I have been married for 28 years, "How do you know?" And I'm like, "I don't know. You just feel like yourself." It's almost as if that right person, even though it might be fun for a minute to feel like it's a fancy hotel room, it actually very quickly just starts to feel like home. What you're saying is too many of us get swept up in the feeling of all that shiny shit, and then when that's over, we think it means there's something wrong with us. And you're saying, "No, no, no, no, you're fine. You were just in a hotel room."
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Yeah, and we think we've lost our value. We think that hotel room was our value. By the way, you see this on Instagram. The person whose whole Instagram profile is just them in fancy hotel rooms in some other part of the world. Everything is that. You go, "Oh, this person has attached their value to these places that they stay in." That's a very dangerous thing to do. It's always a dangerous thing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You can see it everywhere, Matthew. I think a lot about how extravagant people have become with their proposals and their baby announcements and all of that kind of stuff. I don't know if you did that or not.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: We are a complete... I proposed to Audrey in our bedroom. We're very behind-the-scenes people in all of those ways.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Everybody needs to do what makes them feel amazing. But for me personally, I see a lot of emphasis on the show and not the substance.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: The way that I have always talked about it is this: I'm kind of obsessed about how we tell love stories to ourselves and what we define as a love story. Like, what qualifies?
--:-- Mel Robbins: That you make it?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: I don't know. What defines it as a love story? That's interesting, right? Because if you take half the movies we see, they definitely don't make it. But we call them love stories, and it can get quite dangerous. If you take *Titanic*, there's something a little odd about watching a woman who's nearly 100 years old still dreaming about and thinking about a relationship that wasn't even a relationship with a guy that she met on a boat and was with for about five days. It's an interesting thing when you look at it that way.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: I experience these stories in real life in my work all the time. I was on TV in the morning, and a caller called in—a woman in her 70s. She said, "I can't get over this guy that I dated." I said, "Well, when did it end?" She said, "Well, he stopped calling me 30 years ago."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh my gosh.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Now, is that a love story? Maybe. I don't know.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think it probably does. I mean, my brain, I can't wait to hear what you have to say. I'm immediately like, "Well, she's been telling herself the story for 30 years, and your brain doesn't know the difference between the reality and what you've been telling it."
--:-- Matthew Hussey: That's right. The amount you've told it to yourself and the way you've told it to yourself has given that story a level of importance that it probably, in her case, almost certainly should never have had. So then you say, "Okay, we need to start changing how we tell ourselves love stories."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Matthew, I want to take a quick break right now and let everything you've already taught us and shared sink in. While you're listening to the sponsors, share this episode with your friends and stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend Mel. I'm here with Matthew Hussey. He has been coaching people for 17 years on relationships and has the most successful number one ranked YouTube channel on the topic of love and relationships. We have a ton of questions about compromise and how to weigh the proper compromises in a relationship. We have this great question from Carmen who wrote in: "Can you talk about the difficulty of compromise in partnerships without giving up yourself? I've had a longtime partner for 14 years. We've been together since we were 16, but I've been working in Europe for the last two years and the long distance relationship worked really well. They supported me. We saw each other regularly. I never felt happier during my time abroad. I felt like I'd found myself over there. I didn't want to go back, but ultimately decided to go back because I felt like my partner wasn't doing well without me, and they didn't want to move to Europe. Now I'm in a situation where I'm trying to find a compromise, looking for remote jobs to be able to work from anywhere, and figuring out a way where we can both be happy. Any advice on how much compromise is good, bad, without forgetting who you are as an individual?"
--:-- Matthew Hussey: So there you have a compatibility issue in the way that two people want to live their lives. Even if you share many of the same values, even if you have an incredible time when you're together, if you have a different vision for your future or a completely different vision for the present, then that's still a compatibility issue. I think we have to get out of this idea that someone can be the right person even when the way they want to live their life or the way they see their future is completely different to the way we want to live ours or see our future. That doesn't make them "right person, wrong time" or "right person, wrong circumstances." I think the right person has to be both right and ready. The right person has to be someone whose values we love and also wants the same life as us.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: I don't believe in this idea that you have the right person who, if it were only a parallel universe where they loved Europe and wanted to be there and live there and weren't close to their family back home, then it would be perfect. That's science fiction. I think we have to look at the reality of what we have instead of what we would like it to be, because anything else is science fiction.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: When I hear this question, I go, it's tough because it sounds like there's a lot that's right with the relationship. But right now, your dreams are taking you to Europe and a job that you really enjoy. And this person doesn't want to come to Europe. Firstly, that deserves ultimate compassion for the person who doesn't want to come to Europe. Of course. It's not their dream. It's not their life. They didn't choose to have a partner who decided to move miles and miles away from home. That requires a level of compassion and humility.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: I think about this with entrepreneurs all the time. Whenever entrepreneurs complain that their partner doesn't get it—"I'm working all hours of the day and I just have this dream and my partner doesn't get it"—I'm like, "Yeah, no shit. They didn't sign up for this. They didn't choose this. It's not their dream." There's something selfish about that dream. Own it. It's okay. I've been there. I'm an entrepreneur. I get it. But don't turn it into something noble that your partner doesn't get. It's not their dream. If they suddenly had a dream that meant they were never around and they were stressed all the time and they didn't bring you good energy in the evenings and even on weekends they were kind of not present, what would you be saying? We lack humility in those situations.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: This comes back down to another hard conversation: "Look, I've got a person I really value. How much do I value this person? Do I value them enough to try and find a job that I'm passionate about back where we're from?" Or when I'm honest with myself, maybe it brings up a tremendous amount of guilt. Maybe it makes me feel selfish. Maybe it makes me feel shame. But maybe if I'm honest, if I don't get this out of my system, I'm never going to be ready for that. And I might have to end up being ready for it with another person. But at least I will have done this thing and pursued this thing that's really important to me right now. Life is about choices. It just is. We wish it wasn't, but it just is.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's interesting because the question is about compromise, and yet you're bringing it back to the personal responsibility to make a choice that you're not going to resent somebody else for. I think that's the other thing we don't talk about: it's noble to compromise, but not if you are going to die on the sword and be silently resentful of somebody that you're with because, quote, "they made you do something," that they held you back when you didn't have the courage to seek the clarity about what you valued more and the timing of your life.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: It might be, by the way, he says, "Two more years, I could do this." Or he might say, "One more year, I can do this. But I can't do it after that." And she needs to be really honest with herself about whether a year is going to be enough. There might be the compromise. Or the compromise is, "You know what, I'm going to come home and I'm going to find something that I can do that I enjoy back home. But if I do that, then I'm really going to lean into that and make it work." You've always got to be prepared in life to make the plan B the new plan A. Turn plan B into the new plan A. What you can't do is continue to see it as plan B, because that's where the resentment comes from.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What about some of the smaller things that trip relationships up? Things like your partner plays video games all the time and it drives you crazy. Your partner just wants to watch golf on the weekend. You are a morning person and you love to get up and get to the gym, and this is a person who's a night owl and sleeps in until 11. How do you know when it's compatibility versus... Is it that you want them to be like you, or is it that your needs aren't getting met? How do you know?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Ask yourself: them playing video games—is it costing me something crucial that I feel I'm not getting in the relationship as a result? Or am I just mad that they're not like me? That's good, because if it's costing you something crucial, like one of your needs, then you absolutely better have the conversation. The conversation is something akin to: "I respect and I love that you have something that you love doing with your time, but you're doing it so much that I'm not getting what I need in the relationship. I want to support you in this thing that you really enjoy doing, but I also want to feel supported and I want to feel like this relationship gives me what I need the same way I want to show up for you and give you what you need. So by the way, after this conversation, let's talk about what you need. But right now, the thing that I need the most is quality time, and I'm not getting that because of XYZ."
--:-- Matthew Hussey: You can say that. But is it about you not getting your needs met, or is it about the fact that you don't like that they're not like you? That's a more interesting question because it gets into the territory of, do we need our partner to be like us in certain ways? Where is that coming from? We can talk about that, but I think that's interesting territory.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I definitely want to talk about that too. I can give a couple examples, and I think your distinction is very helpful because it made me realize why these two examples matter. The first one is that Chris and I have been together for a long time, but he recently went away on a ski trip with our son and I didn't go. It wasn't supposed to be a boys trip, but I literally was like, "You know what?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: I don't want to go skiing for a week. I don't really like skiing. I think I'd rather be home alone and do a staycation. Without anybody home. Thank you very much. And the reason why that was actually super cool is because Chris's needs and my needs are getting met in other ways. So I didn't need to take a trip with him to get the connection that you often will get when you take time and go away together. And so it didn't feel like it was taking anything away. In fact, it was kind of additive.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And here's an example where I did change. I have very bad ADHD and I have this habit when cardboard boxes come of stacking them up by the door because we live in a state where you have to flatten them and I hate flattening them. I get all kinds of paper cuts and I just don't like to do it. So Chris hates that I stack these things up. And he would yell at me all the time. "Can't you just stack them? Can't you?" And then I, of course, when he would yell at me about doing that — well, not really yell, but just like "For crying out loud, can't you just do it?" — I would then defend myself. "I'm so busy. You know, I'm traveling. Can't you just do this? I mean, for crying out loud, what else?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so we'd get into this standoff. It wasn't until he sat me down and had the conversation: "Listen, I get that you have ADHD. I get that you're tired. I get that you work long hours. I get that you do a ton of things. But let me tell you something. Every time I see that stack, like a little kind of pyramid for me waiting like a gift from you, it makes me feel like you think I'm your maid."
--:-- Mel Robbins: What I realized at a very profound level is that when he explained how my behavior made him feel, it made me realize that his need to be seen and taken care of and acts of service were not being met over and over and over again, even though he asked. And that's what motivated me to change my behavior. I'm the best cardboard box flattener on the planet, Matt. But that's a really important thing because I think in these small moments, where we're either forcing someone to be like us — which I don't think you should be doing — or you have an opportunity to express that there's a deeper need behind why you want somebody to actually load the dishwasher or move the stuff from the washer to the dryer, if you can express the deeper need, now you're strengthening the connection versus fighting with somebody over something.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Yeah, that's exactly right. And you're giving someone in a relationship a real gift and an opportunity to give you something that may not be rational. And by the way, that's okay. How many things do we need in life that are not rational? It's a beautiful thing sometimes to just understand that this is important to my partner and it's worth showing up for them in this way, even if it doesn't make sense to me. But that only works in two people who are a genuine team, where it feels like that kind of generosity of spirit goes both ways.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Matthew, my head is spinning. And you know what I want to talk about after a short break? I really want to dig deeper into hard conversations. And by the way, as you listen to our sponsors, be very generous and share this link with everybody that you know so that they can benefit from what you're learning today. Alrighty, I'll be waiting for you with Matthew Hussey after a short break. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back, it's your friend Mel. I'm here with Matthew Hussey and I want to thank you. Thank you for sending this episode to people in your life because I know that this information will help absolutely anybody who learns it to improve their relationships and also improve their relationship with themselves.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Do you have a strategy for how you know if something's a deal breaker? Because I do think a lot of people don't truly understand what is a deal breaker and what's just something you need to be more flexible about. So in the case of the partner who's let themselves go, or the partner who is struggling with drinking, or the partner who has anger issues, or the partner who — you know what I'm saying? To your point, we could take them one by one, but let's say the partner who's let themselves go.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: I think that the default with someone you love is always compassion, not judgment, because that must be hard for them. I know when I've let myself go in life, it didn't feel good to me. My mind was in a certain state when I was letting myself go. That has to be met with love and compassion. Now, one of the things I want to make sure we at some point touch on is the compassion we have to show ourselves and what that looks like. But outward compassion there is really, really important.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: You have to ask yourself, if this was taken to its extreme — which either means it keeps getting worse or this person stays this way for the rest of their life — is that compatible with me loving myself? Is it compatible with me taking care of myself? And part of taking care of myself is being in a relationship that supports my needs. And you have to go into: in what ways does that affect your needs? We may say in the short term it affects my needs sexually, let's say. It's a hard place for us to go, but if most people are honest, they say my partner has let themselves go to the point where they take no pride in their appearance. They take no pride in their body. They're not in that place. And I'm also not in that place. And this is something that's really, really important to me. It's no judgment on them. That's why I say we have to start with compassion.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, it's interesting because if you start with compassion, even when you're breaking up, or you start with compassion and you're having a hard conversation about how somebody is mentally or physically, and you start knowing that this is hard for them and you still love them, but you also have to kind of have the conversation for yourself because it's not fair to somebody to silently be mad at them or silently judge them. And if you find yourself talking more to your friends about it...
--:-- Matthew Hussey: No, and it breaks my heart as I say this because I genuinely think it's as hard for them to change that thing as it is for you to change your hardest thing right now. We have to start looking at these things that way — that this thing that affects you is as hard for them to change as it is for you to change something you're finding nearly impossible to change. And when you look at it through that lens, there is no judgment. It's just compassion.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: And the most tragic and heartbreaking thing would be if that thing that they couldn't change over time spelled the end of this beautiful relationship. That's the part that you have to connect with yourself — that that's truly heartbreaking. And at a certain point, you have to connect them to that as well, because it's the last thing you want.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: And then your needs are not just that. Your needs might be your need for this person who you love to still be around for as many years as possible. And that there is a delayed heartbreak that is coming for me because of the way that you're not taking care of yourself right now. And you are going to be responsible for the greatest heartbreak of my entire life. And I come to you in that spirit — that I want to be there for you, I want to support you, I want to put whatever support I can around you to help. I want to understand how hard it is for you. And let's talk about that. Let's go to therapy for that. Let's, whatever we have to do, let's do that. I'm not minimizing how hard it is, but I also don't want to minimize the impact that this is going to have on our life, is already having on our life, and will one day have in the most tremendous way if we're not careful.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: And that kind of language, I think, gets out of the mode of judging someone for what they're not able to do that maybe comes more naturally to you, which is your gift and their curse. I think if the shoe's on the other foot and you're the one struggling, that's how you want your partner to show up for you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I get a lot of questions about what to do when you're changing and someone else isn't. And so this one comes from Heather. "What do you do when the person holding you back is the partner that you love? I struggle to not be angry with my partner for not matching my desire for personal growth. And I resent the fact that I feel like I have to pull them along. My frustration to them is perceived as believing that they are a piece of shit or that they will never be good enough for me. I feel like I'm holding myself back to keep the peace. The more I grow, the more they become insecure. I don't want my kids to watch me sacrifice who I am because of my partner." What's your counsel to somebody that's in that position where they're growing and their partner's not?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Well, so I want to set up that framework again. Is it my problem that they're not like me, or that my needs aren't getting met? Now, if someone doesn't read the same books as you or doesn't fancy going to that weekend seminar, that has no bearing on the relationship on its own. It's like skiing. It's just a program. It's just a book. Someone could have grown up on a farm having never even connected with the idea that there was a self-development world in existence. You might be the same age and meet each other and have learned just as much about life through completely different paths. And the fact that they don't know about this or they don't know this language that you've learned and they don't understand these therapies or this growth work or whatever is utterly irrelevant.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: But where the rubber meets the road is: is them not doing that work denying you something fundamental in a relationship? For example, are they unable to apologize because they have no self-awareness of the traits that they have that are truly destructive? And they're not conscious of the things they're doing that are really destructive. And they're not even interested in becoming more aware of those things. They don't have to become aware of it through therapy. They don't have to become aware of it by reading the same books, but they can just become aware of it through conversation with you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What do you do if you're in the relationship though? Because most people are not as transformed as you guys?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: If you find that when you bring something up that affects you, it's met with disinterest, it's met with judgment, it's met with contempt, then you don't have the kind of teammate that you're looking for. You don't have someone who values teamwork and that becomes a deep compatibility issue. So you're sensing to what extent do I genuinely have a teammate? And you only know the extent to which you genuinely have a teammate when you're able to have these kinds of conversations.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I don't want to have these conversations, Matt. I just want it to be perfect. I mean, what do you mean we have to talk about it? I have a bunch of speed round kind of questions around dating. Okay. What advice do you have for people who have been single for a long time and are struggling to find love?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: First, the story is almost certainly now going to become, if you're not careful, your biggest enemy. Now it's not just the pain of loneliness — that pang of "I wish I had someone and I don't." It's the story I've told myself about why that is. That I'm not enough. That I'm undesirable. That I'm always the person before the person they marry. That all the good ones are taken. There's a story now that's no longer serving you.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: The greatest gift you can give yourself is don't try to fix your loneliness or the fact that you would really like to meet someone. That's a part of being human. There are going to be times where you feel lonely. There are going to be times where you ache because you'd really like to have someone in this life. But the thing that turns that pain into unbearable pain is the relationship you have with your loneliness, the relationship you have with being single. And so much of that relationship is defined by this story that gets created. Loneliness, the ache of wanting someone and not having found them, is like a chronic pain. It is a chronic emotional pain.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How do you change it? Because it sounds terrible.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Firstly, the deeper work is changing your relationship with it. The more surface level work is you do everything you can to make it inevitable that you can meet someone. And what are those things? Well, firstly, get comfortable with where you are. Because if you can't get comfortable where you are, then anytime someone comes along, you will join whatever cult comes your way. Because you just want to get out of pain. So you have to get yourself to a place where you're happy enough without someone. You don't have to be blissfully happy, but happy enough that you can always say no to the wrong thing. Because you will find the right person faster if you can say no to the wrong people quicker. So you have to be happy enough that you can say no to the wrong people when they come along and not grip onto them.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Give yourself a kind of portfolio of investments in your love life. So there's nothing wrong with online dating. It's one investment, but it shouldn't be your only investment. How are you investing in your social circle? Are you still hanging out with the same three friends that you've been hanging out with for the last 10 years, two of which are married and one of whom you love, but she never stops talking shit about men? And she feels so disillusioned that she's like, "Screw dating altogether." Well, that's okay. And be that person's friend, but that can't be your peer group for trying to improve your love life.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: So start saying, have I got the right people around me who are opportunity generating? Are they the kinds of people that say to me, "Hey, let's go do something today." And let's not just go do something where the two of us do something on our own, but let's go be in a place where there's other people. Are you joining communities? If you run, why aren't you in a running club? If you really want to meet someone and you're running anyway, why are you not part of a running club where there's 50 people there that can become an entire new community for you, some of which may be right for you? One of them may be. Or even if no one there is right for you, there are now a community of people that are more likely to invite you to their individual birthday parties where their brother is single or their sister is single or there's someone there that could be the right person. All because you put yourself in a new community.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Now, if you say to me, "My time's all spoken for," start looking for the things that you already do in your week. You keep going to the class at your gym. This is the thing people always say. "Oh, Matt, you think there's anyone at my class in my gym? There's no one there." Are you going to the only gym in your city? Like you're telling me that's the only fitness class going on in your city. Switch classes. There. Entire new group of people right there. You can go to a different church this week, one weekend, so that you meet a whole different group of people. There is more than one place that does the things you enjoy. But if you're addicted to your existing community, the places where you do everything, the friends you have, then you're never putting yourself in the new communities where you won't have one new option but 10, 20, 30 new options.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: There's many, many pieces of advice like this, but that's just a couple. And it gives people a sense that the limitations I'm giving myself are really a kind of cover for the way my life has kind of recalcified and hardened into this thing that I've made immovable when actually there's so much opportunity around me. I'm not exploring it because there's an activation energy required to explore it. And it's more than the price I want to pay.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What advice do you give for just the scene of so many people doing online dating and the fatigue and the anxiety and the frustration that comes with just feeling like there's a lot of cycling through and flaking out and being ghosted as you are out in the world dating? And let's say you've taken your advice, which I think is so important for everyone to hear, that online dating is not your only option. And I think people have really relied on that and pulled away from communities and putting themselves out there and joining different churches and trying new things and joining the running club and just being more open in day-to-day life. And I think it takes even more post-pandemic to start doing that for yourself. But what are some of the other pieces of advice? Because it is very hard. That's what I hear from everybody that is dating. It's very hard. It's very frustrating that the app scene sucks. It's just another social media app at this point. And you just feel like a commodity and it's a numbers game.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Which is why you have to obsess over the way you use your energy both on and off those vehicles. Because those vehicles are dopamine machines. Me and my wife were talking about this literally this morning. She was talking to me, she was like, "You know, I just realized I've got back into a little dopamine cycle with Instagram where I now I'm like, there's a friend I haven't texted back, and I'm telling myself I haven't got time to text this friend back" — which is real connection — "and then I go straight to Instagram."
--:-- Matthew Hussey: And I relate to that too. This is the same way that people use dating apps. So we have to manage our own way that we use those things. People are not wrong. Dating culture today for so many people sucks. And it is hard to find love. I'm not one of those people that talks about how easy it is. It's hard. It's the one area where we feel like we're out of control. Because if you want to lose weight or get in better shape, you can eat better and you can train every day and your body shape will change. You want to make more sales, you can pick up the phone. You want to save more money, you can deposit in the bank account every day, the money will accumulate. But you could go on a date every day of the week for the next year and still not find the love of your life. That is infuriating.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: If it were a board game, it wouldn't be Monopoly with its steady accumulation of houses and hotels. It would be Chutes and Ladders where you feel like you make all this progress climbing up the ladder. And finally, I'm on date five with someone. It feels like it's going somewhere and then they ghost me. And I just go all the way back down. But even worse, it feels like because now I've got less time and I'm heartbroken and I feel bad about myself and I'm questioning my worth and I'm questioning the people that I'm dating and how great they are.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: One of my favorite quotes is a Mitch Albom quote where he says, "If you don't like the culture, you have to be brave enough to create your own." And that is so relevant in dating and in finding love because so many of us are going into our love lives as culture adopters, not leaders. You know, one of the best things about starting a business — you know this — is that you get to decide what you want. You get to look at all the other businesses that do things like you and you get to decide the kind of business you want to create. You get to decide the kind of culture you want to have with your team. And because of that, you get to put your thumbprint on it. And the strength of your leadership then has this infectious impact on everyone else. It's not just that you hire people who are like you. You hire people and you give them a heavy dose of that culture and the way we do things here. And some people go, "Oh my god, this is what I've been looking for," and they rise to that culture. And other people fall off because they can't. That can happen in love too.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How? Because here's the thing, I really want to hear the how. I have so many extraordinary people in my life who are single, who are frustrated by the toxic dating scene that is very much driven by apps and social media. And the advice about creating your own culture and being brave enough to create your own — I totally get that. How do you do that? And what advice do you have without getting resigned if it's taking so long? You see what I'm saying? I think that it's really important that you go, "I am not going to buy into this shit. I am going to have very high standards for myself. I'm going to be brave and have the courage to create a different culture and just have the conversation because my energy is worth it. And I'm also going to invest in things that make me come alive because I know the more that I'm raising my standards for my own life, the more likely I'm going to bump into somebody that I could potentially have a long-term relationship with."
--:-- Matthew Hussey: So first, you go slow to go fast in your love life. You don't race to date someone because you really want to be able to tell the people at Thanksgiving that you're dating someone now. You don't rush because you just want a love story in your life, even if it's one that's precarious and you don't know where you stand because it's better than nothing. You go slow to go fast.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Then when you're actually engaging with people, you start to lead with the kind of energy you would like to see from other people. There's a piece of advice I've been giving for a long time, which is both deeply true and flawed. It's: don't invest in someone based on how much you like them, invest in someone based on how much they invest in you. Now, if you follow that rule, you're going to be okay because you're not going to get into these situations where you are over-investing in someone who's not giving you the same back because you keep telling yourself it's so important and there's attraction when really that person is not investing or committing on the level you are. So why are you bothering?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: The problem with the advice — don't invest in someone based on how much you like them, invest based on how much they invest in you — is that at some point, someone has to do a little bit more than the other person. Otherwise, we're just in a stalemate. We're just at the school disco with these people on this side and these people on that side and no one doing anything. So at some point, someone has to cross the room.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Now, if you apply that to online dating or just you're texting someone — you've met someone on a dating app, you're now texting them — what does it look like to create your own culture in that situation? Well, if you're only mirroring what they're doing, then you're mirroring all of the worst parts of dating culture as a way to protect yourself because "I'm only going to invest as much as they do." But you're now actually mirroring the culture. So instead, what we have to do is say, if I were creating my own culture, what would I do?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Well, you know what there is in this texting thing? There's a real lack of humanity. It's just words on a screen and we've been going back and forth and there's just something missing in this. It doesn't feel like a real connection. So the next time they send me a text and say, "What are you up to?" I'm going to leave them a voice note. It's a tiny thing, but I'm going to leave them a voice note and just say, "Hey, I am at IKEA with my sister right now and we are buying furniture for this room in our house and I'm already dreading the fact that I have to put this thing together. It's going to be a complete disaster. I'll send you a picture." They're hearing your voice. And let's say they are dating three other people or talking to three other people — you're attacking a different sense. They're hearing you. There's a different intimacy to a voice note and it invites them to the table.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But what I like about what you're saying is it's actually more about you giving yourself permission to just show up as yourself and not worry about whether or not that is what drives somebody to a different level. And having the standard on the back end. So having the bravery on the front end to create the culture and instigate it by being a leader, not a follower, but having the standard on the back end that says, if I don't feel that this pattern that I'm instigating is reciprocated, then I can back off.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Exactly. If I send you a message tomorrow morning and I instigate and I say, "Hi, lovely. I hope you have an amazing day today. I was just thinking of you." And I do that. I'm brave and I instigate that. If tomorrow you don't send me a message, then fair enough. All right. I got it. What I'm not going to do is send you another message tomorrow morning and then a week later say, "I don't get it."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Or just say, "No, but let's say they texted back that day. You instigated, right? So that was a brave thing to do, but you don't want to be in a pattern with someone where you're always instigating."
--:-- Matthew Hussey: So if the next day they don't instigate or you find that you're the one constantly instigating, then you back off. What you don't do is keep instigating. They keep texting back and you say, "I don't get it. They must like me because they keep texting me back, but you know, they never... I just wish they'd asked me on a date." Well, you are setting up that dynamic by having no standards on the back end of this. So that's where you mirror. If you create the culture and then they can't reciprocate, then you go, "Okay, I'm going to back off." You model first, then you mirror. But what we're doing is mirroring someone from the start.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: If someone hasn't texted you in two weeks and then they say — and you've been hurt by it, and you're like, "Wow, this really sucks. We had such a great date two weeks ago. I really wanted to see them. I barely heard from them." And then two weeks later on a Saturday, they say, "Do you want to do something tonight? Do you want to go to a movie? It'd be so great to see you." The temptation is to go, "I'm going to be a happy, cool person here because I don't want to make it seem like I've been thinking about them for two weeks." So then we mirror them. We go, "Yeah, movie sounds great. What time?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, what the hell would you say without sounding like a psycho clingy bitch?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: You say, "Hey, one of the things I really value is consistency and I haven't really heard from you. So I'd like to see you. It'd be fun to see you. But I kind of assumed we weren't on the same page because I haven't heard from you for two weeks." Like you just say that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You make it sound so simple. And I think the advice is incredible. I'm reflecting because I know how emotions get the best of us, which comes back to your original point that that's why it's dangerous and that's why you have to go slow to go fast. And before you just immediately text back, take a beat, assess where you are, be a little bit more honest and vulnerable. And when you lead with that and you create your own culture in dating, now you are in a more powerful position.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: That's exactly right. And if you don't get needs met, you have to be — you're being very warm and kind and compassionate in the way you bring things up. But if you don't get what you really need, you have to be ruthless in your response with your energy. And that's where the tiger comes out. It's not in me biting your head off because you haven't texted me for two weeks. You're going to get my sensitivity and my vulnerability about that part because I actually was kind of sad I didn't hear from you. We had such a great time. But where you'll see the tiger is that I have absolutely no patience for someone who's not showing up for me. So I aggressively move forward with my life. I am a train that goes. And if you step too close to the train as it's leaving the platform, you're going to get hurt. So you're either on or you're off, but this train is leaving.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right. Because I'm not waiting around for somebody to text me back.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: No.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, Matthew, I just want to say I'm so grateful you agreed to be my co-pilot today because I needed you to handle those online dating questions. And I'm also really grateful that I've never had to deal with it. And as you're listening, you're probably thinking of someone in your life that needs to hear this episode. I mean, maybe it's somebody who's struggling to find love, or maybe they just went through a really bad breakup, or maybe you've got a friend who went through a divorce and now they're thinking about putting themselves out there again and they just need the encouragement and the advice and the wisdom that you heard today. So share this with them because you know that they're an amazing human being.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let this conversation with me and Matthew Hussey remind them of the fact that they should never settle. You heard Matthew say that the biggest mistake that people make is thinking that they're not good enough. The truth is you are good enough for love. You just haven't met the person who's good enough for you yet. Ooh, don't you love thinking about it like that?
--:-- Mel Robbins: And in case no one else tells you today, I want to tell you that I love you, I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And based on everything that you learned today, you now know what to do to create stronger, healthier, and happier relationships. Alrighty, go do it, and I'll talk to you in a few days. Matthew, share this episode with your friends and stay with us because I'll be...
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh my God. Okay, hold on. That was the best interview. Really?
--:-- Matthew Hussey: Well, I would have been pissed if it was his worst.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm in your standards. You would have been pissed if it was second best.
--:-- Matthew Hussey: [Laughs]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Everybody, Matthew, welcome to the interview.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
