You Attract What You Think You Deserve - Matthew Hussey

1. 0:00 – 6:13

   Are Dating Coaches Hard to Date?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Do you think that dating coaches are any easier to date?

   2. MHMatthew Hussey0:03

      Uh, God. I, uh, it's funny, I used to, uh, I've been called a dating coach so many times in my life, I now opt for other titles 'cause the- the- the title alone is something I try and-

   3. CWChris Williamson0:16

      Oh.

   4. MHMatthew Hussey0:16

      ... steer away from.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:17

      Yeah.

   6. MHMatthew Hussey0:17

      But I, no, I do, uh, I- I know that for me, the first chapter of this book is really dispelling the idea that-

   7. CWChris Williamson0:28

      Any myth that you were a competent dater?

   8. MHMatthew Hussey0:31

      Yeah, I wanted to take myself well and truly off that pedestal.

   9. CWChris Williamson0:34

      Mm-hmm.

   10. MHMatthew Hussey0:34

       ... that anyone had ever put me on, that I must've been a great guy to date, as any kind of a, whether it was a dating coach people called me or a relationship coach or a love coach.

   11. CWChris Williamson0:45

       Love.

   12. MHMatthew Hussey0:45

       I, um, I think it's one of the great challenges when you, when you talk about an area is, you know, you're probably gonna trip up in that area at some point, and it's gonna be a real existential- (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson0:57

       Yeah.

   14. MHMatthew Hussey0:57

       ... kind of test of, uh, you know, uh, what you do and whether you, you- you know, the imposter syn- syndrome you may feel in what you do, and whether you feel like you really are the complete package, uh-

   15. CWChris Williamson1:12

       Mm-hmm.

   16. MHMatthew Hussey1:12

       ... in everything you talk about. And I know, you know, it was a very weird thing for me, 'cause I, I would have people come up to me and say, "I'm married because of you," or, "I'm in this amazing relationship 'cause of you," or this. And, um, and for a long time, I hadn't, I hadn't found that for myself. And not only had I not found it for myself, but I think I didn't, I didn't h- always date in particularly healthy ways.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:37

       Mm-hmm.

   18. MHMatthew Hussey1:38

       So, you know, that's- that's tough. I was on stage in New York in a live event, and there was a woman who stood up to ask a question. I mean, bear in mind, there were like, there's over a thousand people in this room, a big theater, and a woman stood up and asked a question. I can't remember what she asked, but I, in my answer, I alluded to the fact that I was sing- single. I said, "You know, I- I get what you're saying. I'm single too, and this part of being single is hard." And someone in the audience just shouted out, "Why are you single?" (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson2:11

       (laughs) How long have you got?

   20. MHMatthew Hussey2:12

       And then another person in the audience, I was like, "Ha ha, that's okay," like, I'm gonna keep going. And then another person in the audience shouted out, "Why are you single?" And then, like, it just started to creep around the audience, and b- and like almost in unison, the audience, like, were chanting, like, "Why are you single?" I couldn't get forward. I couldn't get past it. And so I had to, like, it was a very weird moment for me, this very meta moment, standing on stage in New York, helping people who wanted to find love, who were questioning why I hadn't found love.

   21. CWChris Williamson2:43

       (laughs)

   22. MHMatthew Hussey2:44

       Uh, so, you know, it's a tricky, it's a tricky thing. But I also, on the other side of it, some of the smartest, wisest people I know, and the people who have the most to coach about love are the people that just got divorced.

   23. CWChris Williamson2:55

       Yeah.

   24. MHMatthew Hussey2:55

       You know, and they've been, th- they've been in a tumultuous relationship for the last 10 years, or they've been, you know, just left a relationship with someone, incredibly abusive or narcissistic, and those are some of the people that you need to hear from when you're venturing out into the world of love.

   25. CWChris Williamson3:10

       I have a friend who's a powerlifter in the UK, holds a bunch of different records, and he said, "I always want to learn how to bench from a guy who's got long arms." The point being the longer your arms are, the harder it is to bench.

   26. MHMatthew Hussey3:20

       Oh, that's good.

   27. CWChris Williamson3:21

       So another friend, William, talks about, uh, he says, "Research is me-search." He happens to be the number one researcher of incels on the planet. He has to make the distinction between an incel researcher and then a researcher of incels. He's like, "I- I- I research incels, that does..." But, you know, all of the evolutionary psychology guys that I'm friends with, everyone that's into human nature, dating, mating, all this stuff, everyone's trying to find their path through. And yeah, you know, if you've gone through the fire and the flames, it... Would it make your insights any more legitimate if you'd breezed through some, uh, "From 19, I found the love of my life, and it was a blah blah." It's like, I- I don't think so.

   28. MHMatthew Hussey3:58

       No, I, I think we have to, you- you have t- you have to make a lot of the mistakes that other people are making. You know, I've made so many of the mistakes that I advise against making.

   29. CWChris Williamson4:09

       (laughs)

   30. MHMatthew Hussey4:10

       And, uh, you know, and it, look, that's the peril of being anyone who- who is obnoxious enough to stand up and give advice on anything.
2. 6:13 – 10:21

   How We Use Dating to Make Us Feel Better

   1. CWChris Williamson6:13

      go and listen to this. One of the things that you say really early on as well is that our dating patterns are often a way to salve us from sitting and feeling our emotions.

   2. MHMatthew Hussey6:24

      Mm.

   3. CWChris Williamson6:24

      You know, we, we do, w- w- something uncomfortable arises inside of us and then we clamor after a partner that isn't good for us, or we, uh, rush into a relationship that's going to be bad for us, or we pull away from somebody that makes us feel like, "Oh, maybe I am worth something." You know, so much of what we do with other people is the tip of the spear of what's happening internally, and what, we use that as a, to anesthetize ourselves away from that.

   4. MHMatthew Hussey6:50

      So much, yeah, I relate to that so much. I, you know, and we, when we do that it, we're a liability to ourselves 'cause we end up hurting ourselves a lot, 'cause we go through a lot of, you know, you end up going through a lot of heartbreak yourself, and you end up, and whether, and you can go through heartbreak by being left and you can also go through, m- m- create heartbreak for yourself by leaving, and it's... So I, I did a lot of that, and, and then you hurt other people, I hurt other people, and you know, I'm not proud of those moments. And it's... Man, confused people are really dangerous, they hurt a lot of people. People who don't know what they want, people who haven't figured out their own stuff, you know, they, they can be really, they can be very damaging people. And, you know, I, I, I know there were, so much of what I was dealing with, I owed to being incapable of just sitting with my feelings, being incapable of even really being able to truly access my feelings. Like, I, I didn't... You know, it took, it took therapy, I think, really, for me to get to a point where I could name what I was even feeling half the time, because I couldn't even name it. You know, I would sometimes, I would go through tremendous guilt for having broken up with somebody. That, that would kill me. I would, I would, it would just, day after day, it would eat away at me. And I, it's so much so that I'd be like, "I never wanna do this again." Like, "I never wanna get involved with someone again, because I can't take hurting someone." And, and I remember a therapist once saying to me, "You're, the guilt that you feel, it's not that you don't feel guilty, but the guilt is an e- is an easier emotion than the real emotion you feel." And I was like, "What's the real emotion I feel?" And he was like, "Well, a big part of what you feel is disappointment."

   5. CWChris Williamson8:53

      Mm.

   6. MHMatthew Hussey8:54

      "That, you know, you, there's something you wanna find, and you're struggling to find it. And it's d- you feel disappointed, you know, you feel like..." A- and, and disappointment's a really hard emotion, right? When you feel like there's something you deeply want and you don't necessarily know how to find it, or the r- you don't know why you don't seem to be satisfied or why you don't seem to be happy, it's easier to focus on, like, the guilt I feel for hurting someone else than your own personal disappointment at, "Why am I struggling? Why am I not happy?" W- and, and it's why I, I wrote a chapter in the book called Never Satisfied, because I, you know, I, I could relate to that feeling of being like, "What's, what's going on with me that I don't, I, I have people around me that seem really content in this area of their lives, and they seem to kinda glide through."

   7. CWChris Williamson9:50

      Yep.

   8. MHMatthew Hussey9:51

      "And I can't seem to find peace here. I, you know, I'm either being hurt or doing the hurting-"

   9. CWChris Williamson9:59

      Mm-hmm.

   10. MHMatthew Hussey9:59

       "... but I'm not, I don't feel in a place of contentment." And that's a scary place to be, 'cause you're like, then you start to think you're broken. Like, "I can't, I don't know how to be happy."

   11. CWChris Williamson10:08

       Relationships are for other people. Happy, stable relationships are for other people.

   12. MHMatthew Hussey10:11

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson10:12

       And for some reason I'm this sort of, whatever the opposite of one of those Weebl-wob things that you push it and it doesn't fall down. I'm like the thing that doesn't get pushed but it always falls down.

3. 10:21 – 20:03

   Flipping Between Comforting & Inspiring Relationships

   1. CWChris Williamson10:21

   2. MHMatthew Hussey10:21

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson10:21

      Why, why do you think so many people flip-flop between comfortable, lukewarm relationships, and inspiring, unrequited ones?

   4. MHMatthew Hussey10:32

      I, I don't know that we've necessarily defined what the right kind of thing is, so we keep chasing the wrong thing. And you know, so much of that, I, I truly believe is in our nervous system, and it's in what is familiar, and for a lot of us, peaceful doesn't feel very familiar. It feels strange, it can even feel boring. I- uh, you know, you just go, "This isn't it." But then you meet someone and it's like, like that feeling, that crazed, you know, attraction and crazy chemistry, and you think, "Oh, this is it. Like, this is important. And we're measuring the importance of it by the intensity of what-"

   5. CWChris Williamson11:21

      Mm, mm-hmm.

   6. MHMatthew Hussey11:21

      "... we're feeling right now."

   7. CWChris Williamson11:22

      We're confused about what that signal is.

   8. MHMatthew Hussey11:24

      Uncom- con- absolutely, absolutely confused about what that signal is. And you know, we, it, it often ends up getting us into really unhealthy situations, and chasing people that aren't right for us or don't treat us very well. Um, you know, and I, I s- a- again, I say this as someone who has done those things, I say this as someone who, you know, uh, can remember a relationship where I completely lost myself trying to please someone else, trying to hold on, trying to, you know, be enough, trying to... And, and, and really as a result, just losing myself.

   9. CWChris Williamson12:02

      Mm.

   10. MHMatthew Hussey12:02

       And, and I've al- I can also relate to the other situation of being, feeling like where I was very much in the driver's seat...... but in a way that I felt like, "This can't be the thing." And it, it really took until Audrey, who, you know, I wrote this book, uh, th- this was not a book written by a married person. This was a book written by, first, a single person, so there are many pages in this book that were written by me single.

   11. Mm-hmm.

   12. Uh, then having met this person, then navigating my way through the early dating of all of that, and, and I've... The final edit of this, I did on my honeymoon.

   13. (laughs)

   14. Which is like a really crazy arc.

   15. It's almost autobiographical.

   16. So crazy.

   17. Yeah.

   18. And it's why I'm so passionate about this, because this is not just stuff that... You know, this has helped me find peace. The things in this book have helped me find peace in my love life.

   19. Mm.

   20. Not just find my person, but find peace in my love life, which I think is, uh, is really, really important. And, um, you know, it took me meeting Audrey, my, my now wife, to start to truly understand what healthy looked like. And-

   21. Would you have, w- would this relationship with her worked five years ago? Like were you ready for this relationship five years ago?

   22. No. No.

   23. So we're even talking about such a narrow window.

   24. We're talking five years ago... Th- this is the funny thing, man. Like, it... I almost did get in my own way in this relationship.

   25. (laughs)

   26. Like b- she helped me get out of my own way, but I almost did. Like I almost blew it. Because it just, for me, I couldn't, I couldn't see how valuable it was in the first place. 'Cause I wasn't even open to that in that way. I was like... There was just a part of me that did not let her in. I was not very vulnerable. And when I did get vulnerable, it... I, like I remember a moment very early in the, when we were dating. And there was something that happened that made me jealous. And I did not approach this situation in a very productive way. And I came at it from a place of, of course, I was insecure. That's really where it came from, is I wasn't feeling secure in that moment. And I felt like, uh, like I didn't trust either. So it was a combination of like insecurity and, "I don't trust people," which is something I've had to work on in my life. 'Cause I... Trust did not come naturally to me. And that blend (laughs) made me suddenly bring a version of myself that was not the best version of myself. And it was... You know, here's what was interesting. First, she came at it like someone would. When you come at them like this, they come at you like this.

   27. Match the energy, yeah.

   28. But then she was like... She took a different approach somewhere in the argument, which probably... In my head it was like a five-minute thing. It probably lasted about three hours. But somewhere in there she stepped back a bit and she was like, "Look, I... Something about this has affected you and I can see that and I don't... That's the last thing I want to do. Like I don't want to hurt you and I would never, you know, do anything that, that would be, you know, something that would make you feel like this in a warranted way, I promise you. Um, but the way you're bringing this to me, you can't do that." Like it's... This isn't-

   29. So she's very capable of self-regulation-

   30. Very capa-
4. 20:03 – 30:01

   How We Condition Ourselves to Feel Love & Peace

   1. CWChris Williamson20:03

      idea about, uh, meditation. So, anyone who's ever tried to meditate will know this. If they're sufficiently introspective, which everyone that's listening to this is way too introspective. And they were talking about, you know, you sit and a thought arises, and then you notice the thought and the thought goes away, and then you have the thought, "I'm the sort of person that notices my thoughts and then they go away."

   2. MHMatthew Hussey20:24

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson20:24

      And then you have the thought, "Oh my God, I'm the sort of person that thinks. I'm the sort of person that notices a thought and then the thought goes away." It's this infinite regress of, like, self-flagellation, uh, as you sort of wobble between wanting to become better, and then lambasting yourself for being so self-congratulatory about being better, and then lambasting yourself about making yourself feel ashamed and guilty about being this sort of person. All in all, in all, one of my favorite passages in the book, you have this line about self-compassion. You say, "I struggle to believe I'm worthy of moments of joy and peace without first putting myself through a brutal schedule, monitoring my productivity levels down to the minute. Perhaps some people apply this earn-your-cookie mindset in ways that lead to healthier achievements. Not me. Mine is a mutation whereby joy and self-compassion are regularly outlawed by an internal tyrant who decides when I've been flogged enough for one day. Just when I'm about to collapse, a voice inside says, 'Okay, give him half an hour of peace before bed, but make sure he knows we'll start again bright and early in the morning.'"

   4. MHMatthew Hussey21:23

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson21:23

      So interesting, our, our, our past conditioning makes us who we are, but it also sets the bar for what we believe that we deserve moving forward.

   6. MHMatthew Hussey21:34

      Yeah, man. It's... All I really ever knew was being, feeling guilty that you weren't doing enough, or feeling guilty that you weren't working hard enough, or, you know, that you were sitting around doing ni- if you were sitting around doing ni-... I remember growing up, if you were sat around doing nothing, like, there was like a-

   7. CWChris Williamson22:01

      Chop shop. "There's work to be done."

   8. MHMatthew Hussey22:02

      It's like, "What's going on?" This is, uh, th- you know, one of the phrases was like, "This ain't gonna get the baby a new bonnet." I don't know if this is... They didn't have that up north.

   9. CWChris Williamson22:10

      The most, the most London, "Fuck in hell, mate. This ain't gonna beget the baby a new bonnet."

   10. MHMatthew Hussey22:16

       No, that was literally, like, that was a, a phrase from my childhood. And I remember that, that phrase, that idea that, like, this isn't useful, this isn't productive, this isn't... Like, I think that, that stuck with me in a lot of ways. And I'm still, I'm still learning how to...

   11. CWChris Williamson22:34

       We'll get back to talking to Matthew in one minute. But first, I need to tell you about Cozy Earth. As Matthew often highlights, self-care and quality rest are the cornerstones of thriving connections. And if you care about transforming your sleep and relationships, time to upgrade your bedding with Cozy Earth. They have the most comfortable bedsheets that I've ever found. If you haven't taken the ultimate red pill, the real red pill is bedding makes a massive difference. The thing that you interact with your bed through are your bedsheets. So, high-quality bedsheets equals much more comfortable bed. They're made with viscose from bamboo, which means they're temperature regulating, super soft, and will last forever. Best of all, they have a 100-night sleep trial. So, you can try it for 99 days. And if you don't love it, you can return it, no questions asked. Best of all, there is a ten-year warranty as well on all purchases. That is how confident they are that it's going to last and that you're going to love it. Right now, you can get a 35% discount off everything site-wide from Cozy Earth by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to CozyEarth.com and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's CozyEarth.com and MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's what I mean, that's what's so interesting about the book. Like, that insight isn't really to do with love at all. It's an insight about, uh, our inability to not permanently be improving and sit with growth, as opposed to just allowing ourselves to enjoy things.

   12. MHMatthew Hussey23:56

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson23:56

       I think, I've got this idea, I've thought about this a good bit over the last few years, that if you're not particularly happy with the person that you are, self-improvement and personal growth offer a very unique kind of solution to it. But it's like a, it's a phantom solution. Because what it says is, "Yeah, you might not be happy with yourself now, but look at how quickly you're improving. Tomorrow you might be worthy of love." You don't feel like the world is gonna give you...... love or acceptance or praise, or like you're enough, or you're guilty and ashamed about the things that you want. Like, who dares want what you want? Like you sh- just, put your nose on the fucking grindstone and keep going. And, uh, y- it's, it's a way of not having to sit with emotion. It's a way of not having to sit with the things that you're feeling because you think, "Well, if I'm moving so quickly and if I'm improving so fast, it doesn't matter that I don't like me right now, because tomorrow me might be sufficiently acceptable." And I've been reading a lot of Alain de Botton recently, and he's got this line where he says, uh, "You're suffering not because you deserve to suffer but because you have become far too familiar with the feel- the feeling of suffering."

   14. MHMatthew Hussey25:09

       Mm-hmm. That's good.

   15. CWChris Williamson25:11

       And it's j- it's true, it's true. I think that-

   16. MHMatthew Hussey25:13

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson25:13

       ... a lot of people that- that, you know, anxiety comes easily, uh, uh, i- uh, it's self-criticism comes easily, a lack of self-belief comes easily, um, uh, th- fear comes easily. All of those things are just home base. So it's not that you don't feel emotion, it's just that you have a very narrow band of emotions that you're prepared to sit in.

   18. MHMatthew Hussey25:33

       What comes easiest for you?

   19. CWChris Williamson25:37

       Guilt. Uh, guilt really, really good. Like guilt's probably the, probably the number one, I think. Uh-

   20. MHMatthew Hussey25:45

       (laughs) .

   21. CWChris Williamson25:45

       ... and just, "You should be doing more. This isn't enough. You should be better. You should've done things in a different way. And even if you have had a victory, that victory itself isn't enough. There is, there is more to be done, there is always more to be done."

   22. MHMatthew Hussey25:59

       Yep. Yeah, I relate to that. I got to... I think I got to 27 when like it started just hitting a wall. And I was like, some- n- I d- I, I went, I didn't fix it that year, don't get me wrong. It was like many years of slow car crash. But like, that was the moment where I realized, "I'm, I'm in a bit of trouble here, because it's not, none of it seems to..." You know, I'd, I'd been running, running, running for so long. And I, and I had told myself, like... 'Cause I, you know, I came out of a kind of very financially unstable situation family-wise. And I told myself, "If I get h- if I get us out of that, then, you know, we'll be in a good place, and we'll be in peacetime. And then we'll feel good and it will be a different, different time." And there w- peacetime just never came for me. I never got to a point where I'd like done enough or made everyone safe enough that it felt like peacetime. It's like having a wartime president that doesn't know what to do now that there's no war-

   23. CWChris Williamson27:19

       Stop fucking fighting. Yeah.

   24. MHMatthew Hussey27:20

       ... to fight. It's like... And I, and that for me was a really scary, a really scary place to be, 'cause I was like, "Something's..." I, I re- I, I, I remember thinking, "Something's really wrong with me." Like I'm, I'm... I had a r- a real kind of sense of internal panic, which is a very challenging thing to have when you're working with so many people and you know-

   25. CWChris Williamson27:44

       Supposed to be the guy that's holding it together and giving other people advice. Who the fuck is this guy giving everyone advice when his inner, the texture of his mind is just a-

   26. MHMatthew Hussey27:53

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson27:54

       ... it's a wazza.

   28. MHMatthew Hussey27:55

       Yeah. And it's a, it's a... I, I kind of, um... Yeah, I, I feel sorry sometimes for people who, uh... And I say this knowing full well that I fit into this category, but I feel sorry for people who step into wanting to know it all too fast, because you don't leave yourself room to, to be a student and to just be someone who's growing and figuring it out.

   29. CWChris Williamson28:22

       Oh, yeah.

   30. MHMatthew Hussey28:22

       And I, and I, I don't think I left myself that room. And you know, I-
5. 30:01 – 36:23

   Overcoming Imposter Syndrome Through Working Hard

   1. MHMatthew Hussey30:01

   2. CWChris Williamson30:01

      Well, think... What is more likely that your internal pathology, person who wants to be successful is going to be fixed by an amount of success? Like is that really the thing? Because is it about the lack of success?

   3. MHMatthew Hussey30:17

      This-

   4. CWChris Williamson30:17

      Is it about the world not recognizing your brilliance? Is that really what it is? Or is it... If you, when you sit and sort of wait with it, is it something else? Will Smith in his memoir, he said, uh, "When I was broke and miserable I had hope."... but when I was rich and miserable, there was nothing left.

   5. MHMatthew Hussey30:34

      That's great.

   6. CWChris Williamson30:34

      And it's like-

   7. MHMatthew Hussey30:35

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson30:36

      Yeah. And, and unfortunately this is, there are few lessons, I think, you literally cannot learn unless you learn them y- yourself. You know, you can hear the story a million times, "Yeah, but not for me. Not for me. Once, once I've got the house, and once I've got the car, and once I've got the financial security, and once I'm respected by the world, all of these things, once those things are lined up, yeah, these guys, you know, they said it didn't work for them but really." Like, I mean how doesn't it work? Because your... The challenges that you as a person who doesn't feel like they've achieved what they want to yet in the world are so front and center, so you think, "Well, how couldn't it be, like it's so evident that this, I wanna be, uh, y- uh the adoration of the crowd, and I'm in front of 1,000 people and they, you know, they're looking up to me like I'm some sort of messiah, eh, o- of love." And, uh, how couldn't it be that? Of course it's that. It's just e- e- y- it just didn't work for him. He had a, you know, uni- and it's like, I've been around some of the most wealthy, high-status, you know, well-accomplished individuals on the planet, and it is idiots all the way up.

   9. MHMatthew Hussey31:43

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson31:43

       Like no one, (laughs) no one knows what they're doing.

   11. MHMatthew Hussey31:47

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson31:47

       No one knows what they're doing-

   13. MHMatthew Hussey31:48

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson31:48

       ... all the way up. There's a very rarified strata of people, a very, very small number of people that have done the achievement thing and done the internal work thing, and are actually comfortable with both. But the achievement on its own does nothing, and there are tons and tons of people I know who haven't done the achievement thing but have done the internal work thing, and they're just totally fine.

   15. MHMatthew Hussey32:09

       Well that's it, that, uh, you know, those, those have become some of my greatest role models is, you know someone's, sometimes people say to me, like, you know, "I want someone who's playing at my level," when they're looking for love, right?

   16. CWChris Williamson32:22

       Mm.

   17. MHMatthew Hussey32:22

       And I'm like, "What do you mean playing at your level? Like what does that even mean?" And it's usually some version of someone whose a- ambitions and success in their career is on par with where I'm at, or someone who's similarly... And it's like, I think that is such a boring way of looking at life, because some of the people I know that are the best people to be around are the people that never needed to do that in the first place for a sense of significance. Like how many of us that have achieved a lot were driven by some disease?

   18. CWChris Williamson33:05

       Fear of insufficiency, a crippling self-doubt, a desire to be loved by the world.

   19. MHMatthew Hussey33:10

       Yeah. And then-

   20. CWChris Williamson33:10

       A necessary amount of validation-

   21. MHMatthew Hussey33:11

       ... and then when we get there, we have the audacity to say, "I want someone with the same disease."

   22. CWChris Williamson33:18

       (laughs)

   23. MHMatthew Hussey33:18

       I, not like, oh, I m- I might start to realize that some of the people that didn't feel the need to do this-

   24. CWChris Williamson33:26

       Mm.

   25. MHMatthew Hussey33:26

       ... that might be the healthiest thing about them.

   26. CWChris Williamson33:29

       Yeah. I mean that's, eh, I think especially for the current world of internet dating, we spoke about this last time that, uh, rising socioeconomic status of women, uh, uh, can make it difficult for them to date in, in, in some regards-

   27. MHMatthew Hussey33:43

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson33:43

       ... women tend to want to, eh, that I would imagine you'll hear "playing on my level" much more from women than you do from guys. Uh, and yeah, i- if you look at that especially as a woman who's got that level of drive, like you're even, you are even more of a pathology among your sex-

   29. MHMatthew Hussey33:58

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CWChris Williamson33:58

       ... than the male equivalent, right? That's, you're even more of an outlier. And to think-
6. 36:23 – 48:28

   Why the Internet Isn’t Talking About Love Anymore

   1. CWChris Williamson36:23

      it interesting that there's a lot of content on the internet at the moment about dating, mating dynamics and stuff. Almost no one ever talks about love.Like, it's very rare, if you look at the most popular channels on, on YouTube, even m- mine to, to some extent, you know, it's, it's this quite sort of sterile-

   2. MHMatthew Hussey36:44

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson36:45

      ... transactional, commercial, value-for-value exchange. That's what people are talking about. They're talking about it in this sort of like performatively autistic, like, "You give me the thing, and I give you the thing, and, uh, our values meet," like it's, like it's a, a currency of some kind. And so rarely do we actually talk about, "Oh, yeah, and like how does this make you feel? And what's the love between you two people like?" And, uh, I think, I think that that is a conversation that's wildly missing from a lot of, uh, uh, a lot of this talk.

   4. MHMatthew Hussey37:20

      It's why I, I've started talking in terms of finding love, because I just, you know, for me, most people who genuinely, deeply wanna find love, they don't really wanna date. (laughs) They, you know, like they, they don't... They wanna find love. I don't, I didn't wanna, you know, like when I was being more intentional with my love life, it's not like dating was the most appealing thing in the world to me. It, it, I didn't... I'm an introvert. I don't wanna leave the house most of the time. So the idea that I have to go and talk to a person in order to end up in a relationship with them is like, feels like, an annoying step. But finding love is something we, I, I truly believe pretty much all of us want. Like, we, on a deep, deep human level, we want to find love. And, and when you frame it, and m- most, uh, when you, when you talk about dating, people are like, "Ugh, dating. I don't wanna date." But when you talk about finding love, it's hard for people to say, "That's not something that's important to me."

   5. CWChris Williamson38:26

      Yeah.

   6. MHMatthew Hussey38:27

      And the whole point of this book was to show people, uh, even if you've struggled for years and years in this area, even if it feels like nothing's working or if it feels like what you are trying to find is eluding you, what is a better path to finding love? How do you do love better? And that, that's what really excites me now, and I think that that goes much, much... That goes much deeper than strategies.

   7. CWChris Williamson38:59

      (laughs)

   8. MHMatthew Hussey38:59

      That gets into like what's really going on with us. What's going on with me that I keep getting attracted to this kind of person that is chaotic? What's going on with me that I keep chasing these people that aren't really investing in me, or that make me feel really unsure of myself? Why do I find someone more attractive when they don't text me back than when they do? What's, what's going on there? And that, those have become the fascinating questions for me. And it, and it's not... Our reality, the one we've experienced our whole life, is really just, it's just our reality. It's not, it's not reality itself. And I, I realized this more and more in my life, where I would just look at people who experienced life differently than me, and go, "What's... What are they doing or thinking that is different from the way I'm doing it or thinking about it that means they have a different result?" Like, I have a whole chapter in this book called, um... There's two chapters that live together that are two of my favorite chapters in the book. One is called Never Satisfied, and the other one is called How to Rewire Your Brain. And there's a, there's a part of the chapter on Never Satisfied where I talk about the reasons why we keep getting drawn to things that hurt us.

   9. CWChris Williamson40:23

      Why do we?

   10. MHMatthew Hussey40:27

       For one, it's what we know. So if something is f- it's... I talk about like a, a dolphin in captivity, right? 'Cause we're very good... We have a, a, a culture right now self-development-wise that anytime someone's going towards something bad, we say, "You have a self-worth problem." But it's a bit m- that's a bit reductive, 'cause if a dolphin in captivity learns that in order to get fed, it has to do backflips, jump through hoops, and swim up to humans, and then it gets released into the ocean, and it starts doing backflips for food in the ocean, or it starts swimming up to fishing boats, we wouldn't say that that dolphin has a self-worth problem. We would say, "The dolphin is just repeating what it learned in the tank." It's just familiar. So, a big part of what we're doing is just familiar to us. And it becomes a, y- you know, that classic kind of self-development idea, the, the race car driver says... You know, Mario Andretti said if, "The key to race car driving is don't look at the wall. Your, your car goes where your eyes go." And when we realize that whatever is, whatever we've come to expect of life becomes our wall, it becomes the thing we keep driving into because it's, it is what we know. I, you know, I tell a story in the book about I grew up with, uh, a childhood that wasn't, you know... Like, I worked in a nightclub from the age of 13. So like, it was, my dad owned a nightclub when I was a kid, so that was like, uh, not okay, uh, for me to be doing that, but I was doing that. And I used to experience a lot of like, you know... It wasn't a ni- it, like I don't want anyone picturing like a nice nightclub. It wasn't like a, (laughs) this wasn't like a glamorous, Vegas style. This was just a grotty, rough club back in a local part of England, and it was rough. And, you know, people would get in fights and they'd get thrown out in nasty ways. And-And I, and it put me on edge a lot, especially at a young age, and, and even in, you know, my own family I was... You know, I have a interesting family and, you know, I was a- around certain things. And it, it created a kind of hyper-vigilance in me that really stayed with me. I didn't really, I didn't really lose it. I never really felt safe. So, for me, going into a room, I was always scanning for threats, I was always scanning for w- where's the trouble gonna come from? And I remember being out with my two brothers, we were in a little tiny bar in Japan, and, uh, and my brothers are having a great time, they're just chill. And one of them's singing like, "Hey Ya" on the karaoke machine and just like belting it out and carefree, and I'm like looking ar- you know, I'm like hyper-vigilant. I'm having fun, but I'm also like constantly kind of a little bit on guard. And there was a person who just, a guy, a Western guy, who just kept staring at my brother non-stop. And it got to the point where I just, uh, I created a whole story in my head and went up and confronted the guy. The guy hadn't even done anything yet, but confronted the guy and in- instantly it was, you know, like the bartender came around and, "No, no, no, no," like, it was all fine, but I remember my brother saying to me, "What are you doing?" And me going, "Wh- what do you mean?" He said, "What are you doing?" I was like, "Well, you don't understand, there's a whole thing." It was (laughs) in my head it was like the scene had already happened. It's like, "No, you... He was about to, and then this was gonna happen, you..."

   11. (laughs) .

   12. And I, I remember thinking to myself, "How do my brothers survive when I'm not around?" But meanwhile, by the way, my brothers are both bigger than me.

   13. (laughs) .

   14. One of them's 6'3", the other one's, the one's 6'2", the other's 6'4", both capable of taking care of themselves. But I, in my mind I was like, "How are they not constantly getting in trouble when I'm not around?" But it's because, that for me, that trouble was my wall. And everywhere I would go I would like look for where's the, where's the p- potential problem, where's the trouble coming from? And they weren't looking for that.

   15. Yep.

   16. And it's not that trouble's not around, it's not that bad characters aren't around, but they're not focused on them, so those things don't find them. They're not even, they're not even locking eyes with those things. But I'm the one locking eyes, because I'm the one looking for where's the threat?

   17. Vigilant.

   18. Yeah. And that, and that, the sad part about that, this is the really tragic part, is that the l- I am truly... I have zero interest in trouble. I, all I want is a peaceful, lovely time with people I love. That's all I ever want. But there's something so tragic about precipitating the exact thing that you want less than anything, which is a fight, confrontation, a- aggravation. And when you look at people's love lives, it's the same thing. They, everyone has their wall, and keeps crashing into that same wall. "I keep dating people that cheat on me. I keep dating people who end up ghosting me. I keep dating people who end up being, uh, narcissistic in their tendencies, or, or, um, who don't invest in me, or take advantage of my good nature." Oh, you just, you f- keep driving into that wall. And l- helping people to reprogram themselves away from that I think is one of the most important things we can do.

   19. So, you're looking for partners that feel familiar, not necessarily partners that feel loving?

   20. Yeah. Not ones that will make you happy.

   21. How can-

   22. Partners that feel comfortable, and comfortable is confused with happiness. It's not... Comfort can be misery, but when you know your way around it, there's something a b- y- you at least know the t- the territory.

   23. Yeah.

   24. And I, I think that this is why I never... When I was coming up, I never used to understand fear of success. I understood fear of failure, but I didn't intuitively understand what was meant by fear of success. And these days I'm like, it's all just fear of the unknown. It's all just fear of being somewhere you're not comfortable. It's the, it's actually the same thing. It's, I've always had fear of success. I told myself I didn't, like, "I'm, I... You know, fear of success isn't something I understand." The truth is, I've always been afraid of success. Any time I step into a domain that's new to me, where things get a little bigger than I've experienced before, or a little more like, "Oh, god," I immediately get uncomfortable because it's just unexplored terrain. The same way that if you're, if you sink too far down, that's unexplored terrain as well. You're like, "This isn't me. I've never sunk this low before." And you get afraid of that. But it's all just domain you don't know. And I think so much of life is, "How can I make what is deeply unfamiliar to me something that becomes home to me, and, and sit with it for long enough that it, that it eases up?" Uh, and it, and it, and so much of finding the right kind of love is that. You will, you will find that there are certain aspects of healthy love... If you've been l- constantly gravitating towards unhealthy love, there'll be... Or unhealthy attraction, there'll be aspects of it that feel alien to you.

7. 48:28 – 52:28

   Being Comfortable With Healthy Love

   1. MHMatthew Hussey48:28

   2. How do you become more comfortable with the alien-ness?

   3. Well, first, con- connect with the pain that the other has brought you. I think that's really important, is you don't have to believe something better or more exists for you, you just have to know, "I can never do that again."And I always encourage people to s- to say to themselves, "What was missing the last time you were with someone in an unhealthy dynamic? What was missing that made you miserable?" And you might have been white-knuckling it, trying to cling on for dear life, trying to make it work. But ... And telling yourself it was the most important thing in the world and you'd die if you lost it. But when you were in it, what were you missing that also made it hell to be in? And for a lot of people it's, you know, let's say, "I never felt safe with this person. Like, I f- I constantly was made to feel like I wasn't good enough, that I didn't match up, that this person might be out the door any minute, or I just constantly felt insecure because they just never... They never showed up the way I was showing up." When you connect with how bad that made you feel, hold onto that and take that with you, because you don't need self-belief if you have necessity. If it hurt that... If y- you don't need... Like, it... Y- if I put a flame to your hand right now, you wouldn't need self-belief to take your hand away. You just... D- it's... I can't keep my hand there, it's gonna burn. It's the same in love. If... In relationships, what has caused you so much pain that you can never be in a situation like that again? That's the starting point. Make change necessary. You don't have to get more confident, just make it necessary. And the next thing is decide the path that you actually want to be on, and one of the quickest ways to decide the path you wanna be on is figure out what was missing last time. Okay, that's gonna have to be up there with the most important things I look for next time. No matter how sexy, or fun, or seductive, or impressive, or charismatic, or whatever it is someone is, if I don't find this quality, or this value, or this way of th- they interact with me, none of that matters. It's all irrelevant, it's worthless without that thing, and you stay with that truth even when it feels uncomfortable. And, uh, s- and also, I believe you have to give your nervous system time to adjust, 'cause it's not... If you take a drug addict, and on the day they quit you ask them to sit and appreciate a sunset, it's gonna mean nothing to them. It's gonna feel like the most boring thing in the world, 'cause it can't compare. How can the gorgeous beauty, the understated, like, transcendent, existential, connected, awe-inspiring beauty of a sunset compare to just this crazy high that someone was on yesterday? It's not the same thing. So a, a huge part of it is telling ourselves it's not... I'm... I can't chase that thing in this thing, 'cause it's not the same feeling. It's a different kind of feeling. It's ultimately gonna be much better, it's gonna bring much more peace, much more happiness to be with a healthy person, to be in a place where you feel safe, to be in a place where you feel truly seen, to feel in a place where you feel at home, to f- be with someone who accepts you. But it... For a while, your nervous system might not respond to that, 'cause it's so used to the, the drug of the other thing, and that takes time for your body to adjust.

8. 52:28 – 1:01:37

   Feeling Guilty About Having Needs

   1. MHMatthew Hussey52:28

   2. CWChris Williamson52:28

      You've got a, another quote which I love. Uh, "My problem is not that my needs aren't getting met. My problem is that I have needs."

   3. MHMatthew Hussey52:35

      (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson52:36

      "All I need to do is get back to being grateful that I have this person instead of having any expectations of them. Forget feeling safe, secure, loved. You're just lucky to be here." And that's that, uh, familiarity-with-suffering thing-

   5. MHMatthew Hussey52:50

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson52:50

      ... again. Like, it just... It's just home base. And the guilt that so many people have around having needs, having n-... Who am I to have n-... What do you mean, to have needs? You g- you do the thing, right? You... Again, the working-class British mentality, and maybe the American one as well. Like, you just show up. You do... You just crack on.

   7. MHMatthew Hussey53:12

      And I think that, you know, you... That's... In a, in a way, for so many people, n- being a- being afraid to express our needs, it can make us anxious. It can also make us avoidant, right? Because if you don't trust yourself to communicate your needs, then... Like, I'll... I, I give you an example. I always struggled in relationships to communicate that, like, I might really, uh, like to have a few hours of reading time right now, and that was something that if I was on my own I would do. But when I felt like I was responsible for somebody else's needs or their happiness, or I was supposed to be entertaining, I would feel like it wasn't okay for me to do that. And the sad part about it is I never even got... I never even gave someone a chance to support me in that way, 'cause they may have been like, "Absolutely. Yeah, like, let me..." Uh, you know, one of the things that beautiful about my relationship now is that my wife will say... She'll anticipate those things because she knows me. And so she's like, "Hey, I feel like you need some time this weekend to just do this or that," and I'm like, "Wow, I didn't even need... Like, that's so nice, that she's, she's literally thinking about these things." But in previous situations, I didn't even give someone the benefit of being able to support me because I was too afraid to really voice my needs, 'cause I always thought... Deep down I was like, "I'm not gonna be enough if I'm not constantly there f- entertaining, doing something, showing up in some way," and I made myself very responsible for somebody else's feelings. And I also felt like... This is getting even deeper, but I felt like if...... I said I needed to do this, there would be some kind of consequence, like, they would be like, "Well, if you're gonna do that for the next five hours, then I'm gonna do this for the next three days." (laughs) And that like, I would be abandoned for having asked for that, and so I, I didn't voice it. But what that meant was that you can very quickly see the trajectory between that and what looks like avoidance, because you end up saying, "Yeah, I don't want a relationship 'cause when you have a relationship, you just don't get to do anything you enjoy doing anymore." So-

   8. When you, you made your own destiny-

   9. Yeah.

   10. ... with this.

   11. It's the wall again, right? You, you crash into the wall, you, 'cause it's what you know, so you end up... I had a, I had a, uh, a woman that I coached, and she was dating a guy that by all accounts had been great so far. And then on a Saturday, he got together with his friends during the daytime, a little get-together at his house, and she got really upset that he didn't invite her. And this was someone who had suffered with a lot of abandonment, so in the, that brought everything for her, like, "He doesn't like me as much as I like him. You know, he's just toying around with me. He doesn't want me to s- he doesn't, he's not proud of me, doesn't want me to be around his friends." All of that. So in the middle of the day on the Saturday, she texted him, and she said, "Why didn't you invite me?" Like, there was no intro to that text, nothing, just, "Why didn't you invite me?" And he said, "I'm so sorry. I, you know, I was, I haven't seen these friends in a while, you know, I was just really looking forward to hanging. Can I call you later?" And she said, "Don't bother." And the three days later, he still hadn't called, and she was like, "See, this is what happens." Like, "I get," like, you know, "I just get hurt. If I date, I just get hurt." Now, of course, you see again, like, she had, she had looked for the wall. (laughs) 'Cause if we can't find a wall, we'll create one, and she created the wall in her situation. Now look, she had a right to feel hurt that she d- wasn't invited, and to express that to him and for them to have a conversation about that. But the way that she went about it literally precipitated the thing that she was afraid of and confirmed it. And that's the, that's the scary part. And that's why, like, what is going on with people on the surface in their love lives often is so different, and in some cases, the complete opposite, of what's really going on inside. And these are the, like, these days, I spent years helping people with, you know, strategy in their love lives. These days, this is some of the stuff that, like, interests me the most because it's so, it's so life-changing when you start to realize these things about yourself. And I think people will read this book and they'll get a l- level of understanding about themselves and a level of compassion for themselves in that, that they maybe have never had before. You know, I, I, like, here's a s- here's a funny example. Like, when I was a kid, I remember playing in the garden with, like, my brothers and a couple of friends of mine. And I can't remember what happened, Chris, but something upset me. Like, some, I think my mum came out and yelled at me or, and embarrassed me in front of my friends. Something happened. And I, like, stormed off to my bedroom, and I stayed there, in my mind, thinking that I was, like, some, like, A, I was embarrassed and felt shame, and so I just was like, "I wanna be in my cave and screw everybody." But I also felt like in some way I was punishing everybody for having, like, you know, hurt me in some way. Not that I ever wanted them to know that they'd hurt me, but... And I shut myself-

   12. (clears throat)

   13. ... in my room, and one by one, everyone came up and knocked on the door and was like, "Matt, come down." Like, "Come hang." You know, my mum, my brothers, my friends. Like, everyone was sent up to, like, get me to come back down and have fun 'cause everyone was having fun. I was just p- (laughs) like, punishing myself. And then I always remember my brothers came up and they said... It was w- my friend, Alex. "We're all gonna go to Alex's now." We'd just had a sleepover at our house the night before. "Well, now we're gonna go to Alex's house, and we're gonna continue the sleepover, and we're gonna watch movies, and we're gonna get food, and..." And I was like, "Just go." Like, "G- I don't, I'm, I'm good." And one by one, everyone came up and tried to persuade me, and I didn't wanna know. I was like, "Just go." My mum finally comes up. She's like, "Matt, come on, please." Like, "Come on. Don't do this." Like, and I'm like, "No." Like, "Just leave me alone." And I stayed home that night while my brothers and my friends went and had this awesome night, and they came back the next day, and my brothers came home, and it turned out they'd had the best night, and it was so much fun. And it, like, haunted me that I was like, "Who did I hurt there?" Like, they had a great time. No one had it in for me. No one was trying to hurt me. But my inability to express that something had hurt me and that I was, I felt shame for being hurt, shame for being, you know, embarrassed that something had got to me, that my anger was, m- w- felt more righteous and more, stronger than my embar- uh, you know, the hurt. So I just robbed myself of this really lovely experience. And when I look at my life, I think, "Oh, my God." Like, that you can, you can draw a line-

   14. (laughs)

   15. ... through so many experiences in my life where I just robbed myself of moments of joy and fun and love because I, like, it's what I did with Audrey in that moment of jealousy. I just... The walls went up, and I went, "It's easier for me to be mad or f- to say you're wrong than to just express that something about this has made me feel hurt." And, and God, if that, if I took that to its, like, extreme, if I'd have... And not even that many steps further. If I'd have just done that three more times with her-... she would have been out the door. And then I would have... Like, this is... I've never been more supported than by this woman, I've never been more loved or accepted than by this woman, and I could have lost her because I shut the door in my room and I told everyone to go away, all because I couldn't express something. That- that is profound to me, it's mind-blowing to me, and that's... Tha- those kinds of things ha- have become kind of my obsession now.

9. 1:01:37 – 1:08:35

   How to Become Better at Hard Conversations

   1. MHMatthew Hussey1:01:37

   2. CWChris Williamson1:01:37

      How can people become better at having hard conversations? How can we get better at having hard conversations?

   3. MHMatthew Hussey1:01:46

      I think firstly by not putting so much pressure on the way that we have them. Like I- I think sometimes we go... When we have a hard conversation with anyone, it very quickly turns into an ego battle. And if we can come to someone, like, i- if... Let's say in one's love life. Love lives are shaped- l- any part of life is shaped by the ability to have hard conversations, whether it's friendships, romantic love, familial relationships. If we can't have challenging conversations with each other, the relationship cannot improve. Right? They are forged by difficult conversations, and so many of us are so deeply afraid of confrontation, the rejection or the abandonment that might ensue after a confrontation, or just saying it wrong that nothing ever gets better, and resentments get buried and boil over into contempt and people implode, and that's when things go really, really bad. So the starting point of any hard conversation is knowing that your... Everything gets better when you can have them. So even if you have them badly right now, having them badly is better than not having them at all. Make up for lack of eloquence with humility. And sometimes y- you can say to someone, "It made me feel strange when that happened." Like, "That made me feel strange, and I guess it made me feel strange because, you know, it's- you're really important to me, and, you know, what we have is important to me, and that made me feel... You know, when you did that, it felt like it wasn't representative of the energy I want us to have with each other." And maybe you didn't mean it like that. I always think "rightly or wrongly" is a good phrase. Like, rightly or wrongly, I felt like that was- that was not a great way to come at it.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:03:39

      You're offering the other person the opportunity to help you uncover why you feel that way. "I might be in the wrong. I'm open to this not being a you thing, this could be a me thing."

   5. MHMatthew Hussey1:03:49

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:03:49

      "But together-"

   7. MHMatthew Hussey1:03:50

      "This made me feel something."

   8. CWChris Williamson1:03:51

      "Together let's work out... Because this is going to continue happening."

   9. MHMatthew Hussey1:03:55

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:03:55

       "And if we don't want this to continue happening, then either we need to investigate what's going on with me, or what's going on with you, or what's going on with the dynamic."

   11. MHMatthew Hussey1:04:03

       Yeah. And the target is the... You know, the target is not the person, it's what... We're trying to improve the relationship, and this is getting in the way of our relationship right now, or this is making it difficult. And that can be as s-... Like, in early dating, someone might say... You- you might be in a situation where someone's barely responding to you, and then all of a sudden they tell you, like, "Hey, do you wanna do something today?" And for you it's like, you- you almost don't want to enable that behavior, because if you say... If you're just grateful to see them, and you're like, "Yeah, I want to see you today" (laughs) -

   12. CWChris Williamson1:04:40

       Mm-hmm.

   13. MHMatthew Hussey1:04:40

       "... like, I'm just grateful that you're now asking me out even though you've been completely inconsistent for the last three weeks and I can barely get a text out of you."

   14. CWChris Williamson1:04:48

       Mm-hmm.

   15. MHMatthew Hussey1:04:49

       That's where we go when we don't wanna have a hard conversation, and it's a- also where we go when we're coming from a place of scarcity is, "I just... I'm glad that you're now asking me out." But if you wanted to actually say, "No, this is a great moment for a," quote, "hard conversation," which might just take the form of a message that says, "I'm s-... You know, I haven't really heard from you for the last (laughs) three weeks. I was excited to see you, but I don't... You know, I feel like we may not be on the same page. I was excited to see you two weeks ago." Like, it's... That's a moment where you're being willing to say the thing that maybe they're hoping you won't say, maybe they're hoping you won't point out the incongruent- the incongruence between-

   16. CWChris Williamson1:05:30

       Mm-hmm.

   17. MHMatthew Hussey1:05:30

       ... what they're saying and what they're doing. But when you're the one willing to point that out, it- you give the thing a chance to become what it's truly capable of becoming.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:05:39

       Or you give it a chance to bounce off and realize that it's not, as opposed to the sort of-

   19. MHMatthew Hussey1:05:45

       Exactly. Either way.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:05:46

       ... uh, like, fantastical vacuum that you can fill with all of the speculation about why and how and what this means and that the reason that they said this thing is because of that, and it's... It'll a- it's a selection criteria. But you're right, it very much comes from a- a scarcity mindset. If you believe that nothing better can come from this, that you can't get anything that would ever be better than this, there is no firm footing from you to make your needs known.

   21. MHMatthew Hussey1:06:16

       Yeah. And the trap is that you think by not having the hard conversation, by not challenging the dynamic, that it's somehow safer.

   22. CWChris Williamson1:06:27

       Yeah. If I just do what they want-

   23. MHMatthew Hussey1:06:30

       Mm-hmm.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:06:30

       ... if I just mold myself around their needs and wants and pathologies and uncertainties and fears and stuff, everything will be fine. You know, it's the- it's the nice children problem. I- I'm in therapy at the moment, which is why I'm starting to see everything with therapy language, and, uh, y- you know, a- another Alain de Botton insight where he says that the people who behave like that in relationships are the ones who didn't feel like they had license to be able to make their needs known-

   25. MHMatthew Hussey1:07:02

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson1:07:02

       ... as children. Uh, because you maybe had an overly anxious parent, or you had an angry parent, or you had a busy, or you had an aloof parent, or whatever. Uh, so what are you gonna do? "Well, I- I'm just gonna do whatever I need to to make Mom or Dad happy. I just- I just- I just want them to be happy."But what you're permanently doing is subjugating your needs, in place of making this other person feel okay.

   27. MHMatthew Hussey1:07:27

       Yeah. Yeah. And, and that's, poof. When you've been trained to be that way, whether it's conscious or unconscious on the part of the people who raised you, it's a very hard thing to break out of. Because when you then make your needs known, you feel incredibly unsafe and you don't know why.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:07:48

       And selfish.

   29. MHMatthew Hussey1:07:49

       You feel selfish. You feel, yeah, you feel bad, and you feel unsafe 'cause you're like, "Something bad's gonna happen as a result of this. I'm, this person's not gonna love me anymore. They're not gonna..." Or, "This friend isn't gonna like me anymore." And, and so by the way, you end up attracting friends who do only love you because of what you do for them. That's, again, it's the wall. You, you attract people who just want you because you're doing things for them. For a relationship to survive, you f- to find relationships that aren't based on how much someone's doing for you, but are just, uh, based on someone who likes you and accepts you for who you are, not what you do, you have to be capable of saying no and seeing which relationships survive.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:08:34

       But you also have to be

10. 1:08:35 – 1:18:18

    The Downsides of Being a Fixer

    1. CWChris Williamson1:08:35

       capable of just being who you are and not always doing things.

    2. MHMatthew Hussey1:08:39

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:08:40

       If the dynamic of any relationship, friendship, parents, r- romantic, whatever, if that dynamic is always you being a doer, that you don't ever get to stress test whether or not people are there for you to be. James, my business partner with Mutowonic, the drink, he did a, um, a mushroom trip in, in Australia and i- this question came to him, "Do people love you for who you are or for what you do?" Uh, and you know, he's like a successful guy and lots of people follow him and stuff like that. Uh, and I think he was, you know, asking himself, "Well, if the things that I do stopped, would the love that people have for me also stop? Is, is the world's acceptance of me contingent on me being able to offer it something in return?" And the weirdest thing is that if you don't ever stop doing things, if you don't stop showing up as the, the fixer, the person whose needs are permanently subjugated by whatever anybody else around you needs to have happen. Perfect example of this. I had a call with my mom couple of weeks ago. It was, what was it? It was day before my birthday. Day before my birthday, right? And, uh, she'd hurt her back. Uh, like, not badly, but she'd hurt her back a little bit. And as soon as I heard that, I was like, "Right, I'm upstairs, I'm showing her..." 'Cause I've had a bad back as well. 15 minutes of a conversation was me giving a fully customized demonstration of, "Well, these are the three movements and this is the rep progression scheme and this is how long you need to hold these positions for. You need to make sure that your feet are not stacked on top of each other. It's actually, it's this, which is a subtle difference between the two."

    4. MHMatthew Hussey1:10:22

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:10:22

       "And, uh, this is the book if we need to get more references." It's blah, blah, blah. "And if, if you need to roll up a towel to put it underneath each of these, that, that'll make it a little bit more comfor- And I actually found that you, what you wanna do is get a small kitchen timer and you put the kitchen timer next to you." I was like, I thought to myself after, I was like, "What the fuck am I doing?" Like, why, why have I, I, I've just immediately taken control of this situation to try and like, "No, let me fix, let me get in there. Let me do something to make this go away." And it's really, like, poorly holding space as well for the other person, because it delegitimizes... Uh, a bad back might not be a great example, but it delegitimizes the way that that person feels because the subtext of what you're saying is, "Your discomfort is making me uncomfortable."

    6. MHMatthew Hussey1:11:04

       Mm-hmm.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:11:05

       "You must have it, it, you must take it away and I'm gonna help you, help it, m- m- you make it go away."

    8. MHMatthew Hussey1:11:10

       Yeah. I'm responsible for making it go away. You know, is ultimately what we do with ourselves is like, "I'm..." We take on responsibility for somebody else's happiness. And it's okay to, to want the people in our family to be happy and, and to do th- and, and, and to, to do things to help them be happy. But it crosses over, and I know this because I had the exact same thing, it crosses over into, "I've made myself responsible for this person's happiness." And that's, uh, that's when we abandon ourselves. Uh, we're no longer, we're no longer focused on, you know, making ourselves happy. It's just, "I'm responsible for the feelings of everyone around me." Which is, uh, of course an- another classic kind of hyper-vigilance thing as well.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:12:01

       What are the red flags that people should look out for in relationships?

    10. MHMatthew Hussey1:12:05

        Hmm. I th- I think people who can't take responsibility is a pretty difficult one to live with. If someone can't say sorry, they, if they don't have that kind of humility, that's a r- that's a, one of the more damning ones, I think. Because it's hard for s- if you can't take accountability, if you don't have the humility to look at yourself and apologize, you also can't really grow. It's why, you know, one of the classic kinda hallmarks of narcissists is incompetence.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:12:44

        Mm-hmm.

    12. MHMatthew Hussey1:12:44

        Because if you can't, if you can't take responsibility for something, you can't get better.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:12:52

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    14. MHMatthew Hussey1:12:53

        So you just keep making the same mistakes over and over again, and it's everyone else's fault.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:12:57

        'Cause you're permanently in the right.

    16. MHMatthew Hussey1:12:57

        And it's the world's fault. And so you, you essentially maintain that incompetence. And, um, and so someone who can't say sorry or someone who can't take responsibility in a relationship, that's a really difficult thing to work with. Um, that goes hand in hand with, like, someone who talks badly about multiple kind of exes and it's just always everyone else's fault.... like it's, if- if you've got a string of people that you've dated that you just keep saying how awful they all were, it's like there's something going on there 'cause you can't-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:13:34

        You're the only common denominator between all of these different relationships.

    18. MHMatthew Hussey1:13:37

        Yeah. So I- I... That one, I struggle with too. Um, not keeping, not keeping promises I think is a pretty big one. It's th- you know, I think that's a big red flag. That's like a big red flag for staff and for, uh, and for people that you date 'cause it... When you no longer trust that someone's gonna do what they say they're gonna do, it- it really breaks something in a relationship because now that you don't trust that they're gonna do something, you tu- you turn into a version of yourself you don't like with that person. Like, the... Historically, the people that have ever worked for me that I micromanaged the most are the ones that I don't think are gonna actually get it done.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:14:28

        Well, it's that vigilance again. It's the nightclub.

    20. MHMatthew Hussey1:14:30

        It's the hypervigilant- exactly. If I th- if someone proves that they just... If they say they're gonna do it next Wedn- by next Wednesday, they deliver it by next Wednesday, I actually don't bother them at all.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:14:40

        Mm-hmm.

    22. MHMatthew Hussey1:14:41

        I don't... I'm- I'm like, "I have fully hands off the wheel. I'll see you next Wednesday."

    23. CWChris Williamson1:14:46

        Mm-hmm.

    24. MHMatthew Hussey1:14:47

        But when someone doesn't do it by next Wednesday and then they don't even bring it up and I'm like, "Wait, you said you were gonna do this thing today," I'm the one who has to bring it up. And they're like, "Oh yeah, well, there's this thing." It's like, w- now I don't trust that you're gonna do it and I don't even trust that you're gonna acknowledge it if you don't do it. So in, in d- for me, in dating and relationships, if someone consistently... We're all capable of breaking promises, don't get me wrong. Like, we all overpromise sometimes or we try and take too many things on, and anyone's capable of that, but if someone consistently doesn't honor their word with you in big and small ways, that to me would be a big red flag 'cause it just... I can't... Th- s- those things, uh, to me, there's like just fundamentals of a relationship. Can someone take accountability? Do they deliver what they say they're gonna do? Like these things are the... Like without those, you don't really have anything. If you- if someone does... If you don't trust someone to do what they say they're gonna do and if when they don't do what they say they're gonna do or they fall beneath a standard they can't apologize, then you- you have a fundamentally broken dynamic that no amount of love is really gonna make... It won't overcome it to be able to make you happy. You're not playing by the same rules in life. And w- and when in any relationship you're not playing by the same rules, if y- you and I have a friendship and I wrong you and I apologize, it's not the end of the world that I wronged you. You might go, "I can live with it, and you've apologized. We're playing by the same rules."

    25. CWChris Williamson1:16:25

        Yeah.

    26. MHMatthew Hussey1:16:26

        You did something wrong. You get it. You've apologized. We're both living in the same universe. But if I do something wrong and you call me out on it and I say, "I didn't do anything wrong. In fact, what happened was you..." Er, like-

    27. CWChris Williamson1:16:39

        (laughs)

    28. MHMatthew Hussey1:16:39

        ... now it's like, "Oh, we're not even playing the same sport. We're not playing by the same rules. This is... We're operating in different realities here." The- the danger of any relationship is that you think... We equate proximity and closeness to a, a shared experience and a shared moral and emotional world, and they're not the same things. You can share the same bit of carpet with someone for years and think that you're on the same page about things, and then the m- when something goes wrong, that person is like... You realize you're- you're with an alien. That person... You- you know, the... I- I get stories of people who get sick and their partner's s- not... like, can't be arsed to take them to the hospital, and you go, "Oh, these are two people that..." Like, sh- she or he thought they occupied the same emotional space, but they're on, they're on different planets. It just felt like they were close because they lived together, because they'd been together for so long, because... You know, it's like the, the... You know, and even if... In any bad relationship, you're always gonna be able to point to great moments. Like it... And those great moments really confuse us, but it is the equivalent of a broken watch being right twice a day. You don't... You wouldn't say it's a great w- that's a great device for telling the time just because twice a day it was like, "Oh, it's right," but that's what people do with love. It's like twice a day, it feels good and it feels right, and then they go, "Oh, it must be important," but broken.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:18:17

        How can people

11. 1:18:18 – 1:28:07

    How to Communicate When You’re in the Wrong

    1. CWChris Williamson1:18:18

       get better at apologizing as the, the person that's maybe...

    2. MHMatthew Hussey1:18:24

       Huh.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:18:25

       They feel unsafe when-

    4. MHMatthew Hussey1:18:27

       Yeah, yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:18:27

       ... "I'm in the wrong," and you know, their- their- their face gets flush and they, they hear it and their shoulders come up. It's tight.

    6. MHMatthew Hussey1:18:33

       Like, you know you're wrong?

    7. CWChris Williamson1:18:34

       Yeah. Oh? And it, ugh, it just activates, and you can do it in a sort of resentful way. You can do it in a passive-aggressive way. How can people learn to be a bit safer when it, when it comes to being in the wrong and- and communicating that?

    8. MHMatthew Hussey1:18:51

       I think s- slowing down and even communicating with someone what you're feeling. Like, "I know..." Like, "I'm struggling right now because I've n- I n- I'm not proud of what I just did or said, but I feel like my brain has been hijacked and, and I feel really defensive right now."... but I also am not proud of that thing that I did. And even if you voice it in an angry way-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:19:32

       Yeah.

    10. MHMatthew Hussey1:19:32

        ... like, "I feel so defensive right now, and I feel this, and I feel that. And I know what I said was out of line just now." (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson1:19:37

        Yeah.

    12. MHMatthew Hussey1:19:37

        But, like, it- it just- a crack in the door, creating the crack in the door for s- for a- a different dynamic to start to kind of snowball. 'Cause right now it's snowballing in one direction, but sometimes all it takes for it to start going in another direction is just one person to, like, be angry but still grab the other person's hand anyway.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:20:02

        Mm-hmm.

    14. MHMatthew Hussey1:20:03

        And just be like, "Ugh," like, say, uh, be a l- step more vulnerable than you feel comfortable with in that moment. And of course so much of this is about regulating your nervous system. Sometimes it's breathing, going for a walk, just taking a moment to, like, go, "Okay, something's happened. I have gotten activated here. This- whatever is going on for me right now, I know I'm in the wrong about this, but I have become activated in a way that is, like, way outsized from what's going on right now. What is going on there?" And you could ev- again, you could say that to someone. "Something about this-"

    15. CWChris Williamson1:20:39

        Yeah, yeah.

    16. MHMatthew Hussey1:20:39

        ... "is- has, like- has really, like, got me triggered, and I don't know what it is. I don't- something about it has, like, messed with me, and I, you know, I don't wanna take that out on you."

    17. CWChris Williamson1:20:53

        This is why I think the overly sterile approach of looking at, uh, dating and relationships is so insufficient, because it leaves no room for this messiness.

    18. MHMatthew Hussey1:21:08

        Mm.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:21:08

        And this is something- again, uh, uh, hesitate to bring it up because it's like, your guy goes to therapy and all he wants to talk about is therapy. But the therapeutic relationship is one of the very few where you can be as messy as you want. You start five sentences and stop all of them, just bail out, and go, "Ah, ah, ah, I know, actually. I don't even know what I'm talking about." Or you repeat the same thing 10 times, 10 sessions in a row, or 10 times within the same session. And learning to be like, "Right, okay, I- I don't- I don't need to present to anybody a perfectly well-informed thought, especially if I don't have it."

    20. MHMatthew Hussey1:21:46

        Mm-hmm.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:21:47

        There was a guy- I went to a retreat in LA, uh, a couple of months ago. And there was a dude there, and I asked him why he'd stopped creating content online. And he said, "Because I felt like I had to live up to, in private, the things I was saying in public." And I think that we almost- there's, like, a, uh, uh, shadow of that occurring in these situations, where if you don't have the skill, or the understanding, or the capacity, or the safety, or the room to slow down and to be able to say, like, "I- I don't know what's going on here. I'm a competent person." Maybe you're super high fly, you do all of these things, your partner looks up to you to drive whatever relationship forward, or his parents, or whatever, and you're like, "I- I don't know what's going on, but, like, let me messily, chaotically just try and communicate to you that I don't know what's going on."

    22. MHMatthew Hussey1:22:42

        Mm-hmm.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:22:43

        But trying to bring something into land with this perfectly well-rounded box with a bow on it and it pushes it across the table, like, that- it's a lie. Like, what you're trying to do is you are sacrificing honesty for smoothness.

    24. MHMatthew Hussey1:22:58

        (laughs)

    25. CWChris Williamson1:22:59

        And you're trying to make it seem- you're trying to make yourself seem like less of an insane person. You're like, "What functioning adult would say- that would- what functioning adult doesn't know what they're thinking or feeling? This makes me sound like a crazy person."

    26. MHMatthew Hussey1:23:15

        Mm-hmm.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:23:16

        "I can't- I can't access this level of truthfulness or honesty, because what does that say about me?"

Episode duration: 1:58:54