Kind: captions
Language: en
today on impact theory relationship
expert matthew hussey walks us through
why the majority of relationships do not
succeed
continuing to grow is one of the
greatest challenges you can present
matthew breaks down for us where the
biggest challenges lay in relationships
so many people expect their partner to
be a mind reader
and they're not the author of the new
york times bestseller get the guy host
of radio show love life with matthew
hussey as well as the former resident
love expert on the today show matthew
emphasizes that people should find
fulfillment in themselves before seeking
fulfillment in a relationship that's
really interesting then so tune in now
so you can witness for yourself how the
incredible matthew hussey can help your
relationship survive and thrive today
[Music]
matthew hussey welcome thanks for having
me man dude thanks for being here what
is what are the biggest reasons that
most relationships fail that people
should be aware of so that they can
actually adjust and make sure that their
relationship is successful
i think people stop growing in
relationships
anytime we feel like what's exciting
about the beginning of a relationship is
that we don't feel like we've fully
figured each other out it's also what's
really exciting about dating i don't
feel like you i have any guarantee you
like me enough yet
and so there's that sense of why you
know why is it a cliche that the chase
is exciting the chase isn't exciting if
i think
it's a done deal the chase is exciting
if there's some element of i know you
like me
and there's a chance but i also know
that i have to work for this i have to
i'm this is challenging you know i have
to really bring my best to the table
when two people
really know each other
there's that sense that
these are two completely known
quantities
now from one aspect that's really
attractive because it's it creates love
it creates connection it creates a bond
but from another perspective there's
that part of our mind that still wants
to be challenged that still wants to
feel like there's
there's something to do here and one of
the greatest ways to you know i think
it's a time old question how do we
challenge someone in a relationship when
we already know everything about each
other and we already feel like we have
each other continuing to grow is one of
the greatest challenges you can present
and growth doesn't have to mean anything
crazy it could be reading a new book so
that you have a different conversation
to bring today it could be
learning a new skill it could be
performing well at something
but
that growth allows our partner to
continuously feel like there's always
something to learn
about us
there's some element of mystery that
remains uh proust said the journey of
discovery lies not in seeking new
landscapes but in seeing with new eyes
now that's to me the which i think is
really powerful but it's almost the
exact opposite that's like
hey part of your job in this dynamic
because i do think growing is huge but
the other part is like i'm about to go
on my 20th wedding anniversary which is
crazy but that i have to find new ways
to look at lisa to see her afresh
that even though she is a very
well-mapped territory for me
i also have to put in energy to like
challenge myself to see something new
that exactly it goes both ways i don't
think it's just incumbent on one person
to continue to bring their best to the
table and to grow
is incumbent on us
to not
see this person as so familiar and make
that calculation which is a false one by
the way that
we know everything there is to know
about this person well that's looking in
the rearview mirror
it doesn't mean we know everything about
who they will be or about how they're
growing or the parts of themselves that
they haven't even spoken to us about
because we haven't asked them those
kinds of deep questions in a long time
which is why sometimes you go on
vacation with your partner after a long
time of being together
and you come back feeling closer why
because you probably had time to ask
each other different questions than the
ones you ask on a regular week when the
two of you are busy at work and even the
weekends you're like trying to just play
catch up on getting rest and not getting
to know each other so that would be the
first one is growing the second one
would be
as simple as it is continuing to to
respect your relationship and your
partner enough to try
to try what
to
actually put in the effort with them
that you put in with
new people
esther perel talks about this you know
we go into work and we often give our
most charismatic charming energetic
selves to everybody else and then our
partner gets the scraps at the end of
the night
that's so interesting can i reveal a
secret yeah okay so
as you well know being a ceo of a
company you have to be charismatic and
you have to like get everybody together
and point them in a direction and so no
matter how bad my day is i'm going to
come into a group meeting and i'm going
to be charismatic and i can feel myself
flipping a switch it's kind of like
coming to a party coming to a party and
being a downer doesn't make any sense
you're going to walk in no matter what
ah what's up everybody and so i play
that same role in the company
but with lisa when i do that i feel fake
and i don't mind faking it i don't want
to be a liar but i don't mind faking it
in the company in fact i feel an
obligation
to
present a uh
a brave face like on a day where
everything is down like i'm not and i i
would advise any ceo worth their assault
don't come in and wear your heart on
your sleeve and be like oh my god like
i'm terrified like this is horrible
but with my wife
i want to be like that but the problem
is and this is me dude i've watched so
much for your content this is me like
channeling you
uh
at some point like that's
dumping i think that you call it like
where you're just constantly cycling
like no like this is freaking me out
this is freaking me out this is freaking
me out it's like at some point i do owe
her charisma but how do you find that
balance like i don't want to feel fake
with lisa but at the same time i don't
want to just constantly
make my insecurities her problem i
suppose
we all have
we all have different gears that we go
to right when we're stressed we go to
one gear where we we take a lot when
we're stressed we go to our partner and
we're we might be anxious
we might be freaked out about something
we might just be burnt out and we go to
to get energy
and so it might be a simple reframing of
oh i've been going to this situation to
get energy
more than i've been going to this
situation lately to give energy
and giving energy might just be a
different version of ourselves not
that's fake like
i'm sure when you're feeling good or
when you're feeling relaxed there's a
playfulness that comes out that isn't
there at the end of
a long day
and
that playfulness is every bit as much
you as
this other side but it's almost
sometimes it i feel like it's almost
just logistics right you if you keep
seeing someone at the same time at the
end of every day
then they're getting that you wow that's
really interesting at the end of every
day
whereas i'm not and i'm not suggesting
this is right for your schedule or
anyone else's but if you took the first
half hour of your day and said i'm just
gonna take like
some of this great energy and dedicate
it there first then it would just
naturally be a different energy than
there it might be worse by the way it
might be even more anxious energy
because you're like i have so much to do
though but really interesting i've
actually because i have so many rules
that i live by to overcome my laziness
so for instance monday through friday if
i'm awake i'm either working or working
out that's a mantra i say to myself all
the time to stay on focus because i
really am just an obscenely lazy person
by nature
and so i've had to put these things in
but that means to your point that during
the week and my wife is is a literal
saint for dealing with this during the
week i'm not a husband
i am a business partner to my wife on
the weekends i'm a husband and a
business partner if i'm really honest
but like i'm definitely a husband i
prioritize being a husband on the
weekends um but that's really
interesting in terms of the energy flip
because you're right logistically
different times of the day i'm in
different modes those modes have like a
micro personality assigned to them
and which is an idea i got from jordan
peterson i heard you say that people
should like acknowledge people when
they're using their idea that's a jordan
peterson thing that people have these
micro personalities
that's really interesting man i i and i
suffer from the same thing and i
one of the things i've noticed about
myself is
you know my partner audrey and i we work
at home
together
and
sometimes i realize like it'll be 11
o'clock in the morning and i'll have
done a couple of hours of good work
and
and she might be right there and i know
that
there's i might have this little
euphoria of having just done a couple of
hours of really good work maybe i wrote
and i find it really hard to get myself
to sit down and write
and i actually wrote this morning and i
have that little buzz of i did that
difficult thing
and i know that there's kind of a moment
where i'm like i don't have a meeting
for an hour
and yes there are a hundred things that
could now fill this next
hour
but what would happen if i just
went and gave 10 or 15 minutes of this
euphoric playful energy
to her right now and i don't always do
that some because sometimes i come from
a scarcity place of like i only have so
much energy in the day and you know it's
hard enough to get all these things done
i just need to go straight into the next
thing but sometimes
i i feel like i'm stealing you know 10
or 15 minutes just to go and give her
some really lovely energy while i feel
it and i do think those things
have a real impact and they also
speaking of the original question
why do some relationships fail
it's because we keep singing the same
song
over and over and over again
and we never
you know that song might be a very
serious song and by the way we love
serious songs like there's a there's a
time and a place for a serious song but
but we also if we listen to that all day
every day it's too much so we sometimes
listen to a fun song and sometimes we
listen to a sad song and sometimes
a relationship is an album but if you're
one song all the time
then even the best song on repeat starts
to get tiring
so
that i forget number one was um growth
number two was trying and and trying
doesn't just mean
trying harder it can mean trying can be
more subtle it can be bringing a
different energy than the one you
normally bring
and the third secret i would say
and the reason why a lot of
relationships fail
is
we have to be willing to give someone
what they
crave and need not the thing that we
really like giving
because it's really easy to keep giving
the thing that we're comfortable giving
like sometimes
you know if we if we give love through
food or if we give love through
coming and giving someone affection or
whatever it may be
that may be the thing that we find it
really easy to give and so we just keep
giving it and giving it and giving it
but to me the key to relationships
listen well enough
that you know what it is they're
absolutely
craving and then give them that exact
thing so it might be that what they're
craving is a evening with their friends
like maybe you if you read between the
lines of what they've been saying to you
recently they keep saying like
you know i feel like i haven't had a lot
of balance in my life recently i haven't
really caught up with my friends i'm
feeling you know if you listen hard
enough you'll go
oh what this person keeps telling me is
that
their friendships are really important
to them and they haven't had time for
them so the best thing i can do
is go have a night with my friends
so that they
get the space to go and have a night
with theirs without feeling guilty that
they're not spending the time with me
like my independence
this week is the greatest gift i can
give to them but that requires
listening and i think for in
relationships one of the reasons they
break down is for too many days or weeks
or months or years in a row
i feel like the thing you've been giving
me is the thing you want to give me not
the thing i actually need from you
what is up my friend tom bill you here
and i have a big question to ask you how
would you rate your level of personal
discipline on a scale of one to ten if
your answer is anything less than a ten
i've got something cool for you and let
me tell you right now discipline by its
very nature means compelling yourself to
do difficult things that are stressful
boring which is what kills most people
or possibly scary or even painful now
here is the thing achieving huge goals
and stretching to reach your potential
requires you to do those challenging
stressful things and to stick with them
even when it gets boring and it will get
boring building your levels of personal
discipline is not easy but let me tell
you it pays off in fact i will tell you
you're never going to achieve anything
meaningful unless you develop discipline
all right i've just released a class
from impact theory university called how
to build ironclad discipline that
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yourself up in this area so that you can
push yourself to do the hard things that
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right click the link on the screen
register for this class right now and
let's get to work i will see you inside
this workshop from impact theory
university until then my friends be
legendary peace out
dude that so
there's this joke that my wife and i
make
don't give the gift you would want to
receive give the gift that the other
person wants because my sister-in-law
god bless her had a fiancee who is no
longer her fiance
uh not just because of what i'm about to
say but in part uh one of the gifts that
they gave her was a movie
that they really liked
and it was like you know a christmas
gift and it was like oh my god here you
go and she was like but you know i hate
this kind of it's like a sci-fi movie
she's like you know i hate this kind of
movie like why on earth are you giving
this to me and of course it made her
feel unheard like he wasn't listening
but i totally get where he's coming from
which is so we all have a love language
um
they're probably oversimplified but it
gets you in the right ballpark and if so
for me words of affirmation is huge
but for my wife it's quality time
now if i'm giving her words of
affirmation it doesn't mean that they
don't resonate but
it's not going to land the way it would
land if i was like yo i really want to
carve this time out with you i want to
sit down like what do you want to do
like let's really sink in
and
the problem is that when i do that for
her i love it because it's time with my
wife and i really enjoy it but it i feel
like i'm not really giving her the thing
that she needs and that she would want
which is words of affirmation because i
feel it internally when i give her words
of affirmation because it's my love
language it's the same this is going to
seem silly maybe but when so in my
family we do christmas lists because i
think to your earlier point don't go out
with your friends by the way if you
don't first ask your significant other
is that something you would want because
if like for lisa if i was like i bet
what she needs is space so i'm gonna go
now and she's like what i want time with
you this would be a nightmare and she'd
be like what is going on yeah but
at christmas
you so that you get the things that you
actually care about we write down these
lists and i will go through and look for
things that i also like on their list
and i will give them those things
because
i
feel a different way and so it's like
getting people so for instance my sister
loves oh my god you like anime right
dude we have got to talk more about that
i heard you in an interview talking
about weathering with you and i was like
wait a second lisa told me about this uh
my sister likes manga
and so i'll go through this like if it's
manga i'm gonna be the one that gives it
to her
because i like manga and so it's like i
get it it's a trap you're a thousand
percent right but i also feel that
nature has done us a bit dirty because
it feels so good
when it aligns with the thing that you
also like
so you've really got to be like super
careful in fact so you've given us three
things i'll give people a fourth
which
we can round to communication
but it's really like you have to say
things out loud that almost seem stupid
because they are so self-evident
and
what so what do you mean by that okay
i'll give you one that
is
oh god
okay so this is if you have kids in the
room now would be the time to get them
to leave
so
i
used to hate shopping
and so
i told my wife look the key to
motivating me is to touch me in a very
special way and if you do that i just
tell you right now that like whatever
you want to do at that point like i'm
totally game and so my wife just learned
very early on in the relationship the
easy way to give me the thing that i
wanted to get me excited to go do
something that she wanted was that
and so but i had to say it out loud like
i just had to tell her like you're
really reaching and struggling to find
things that would make me want to do
that thing i'll just tell you right now
what it is and so in articulating that
it felt stupid because i couldn't
believe i had to articulate it because
in my own mind it was so self-evident
and yet i saw her struggle because she
was what would be the things that would
work for her right and i'm like yeah
that's not what you would want to do for
me this is it and so lisa and i call
that giving the keys to the kingdom yeah
like what are my hot button things
whether they should be or not here they
are my insecurities whether i should be
insecure about this thing or not is
irrelevant here it is and so these are
the keys to the kingdom
and
if people take the time to actually
articulate these things
then it's like the other person's like
oh wow like i wouldn't have guessed it
maybe i should but i wouldn't have
guessed it and now that you've
articulated it i get it and so going
back to the example you gave like before
you go oh the thing i should do to
acknowledge where you're at is go out
with my friends so that you can do the
thing that you want i would just say hey
i've been picking up this vibe is this
really
like what would be rad for you and if it
would then
we do it and if it wouldn't then we
don't the the keys to the kingdom thing
is huge
because we
so many people expect their partner to
be a mind reader yes
and they're not
and just giving them
a blueprint of how to please you
of how to make you happy which by the
way i mean it translates
directly to the bedroom
a lot of people aren't having the sex
they should be because they're literally
not talking to each other
they're both trying to read each other's
minds and be these master lovers
and
like read each other and i know you're
gonna like this and i'm gonna try this
and but the truth is what makes amazing
sex is two people
who say i like it when you do exactly
that thing that really turns me on when
two people are in that situation i also
think the
uh keys to the kingdom thing is
something we should be always paying
attention to the things your partner
says to you often in like just
you could be in the car going somewhere
and your partner will reveal
inadvertently the keys to the kingdom
i'm a i'm a note taker
and
people might find this strange but like
if i hear something my i can't
rely on my mind to remember that three
months from now
so i write it down
and it's like if i if i have a place
where i can go to remember like these
are the things that would
over time i've realized to the keys to
the kingdom that would really please my
partner if i did them that's a really
useful thing to be able to go back to
yeah and the
other thing i will say is that you never
that keys to the kingdom thing if your
partner tells you something
that would or let me reverse it if you
told your partner if you gave your
partner the keys to the kingdom this
thing that would really mean a lot to me
and then they don't do it
or they don't
care enough to do it that becomes a
great
revealer of the relationship itself
because
i think one of the greatest things the
greatest values that keeps a
relationship going is
teamwork
and i mean not just the kind of teamwork
of we're on a joint vision together but
the kind of teamwork that says we are a
team in making each other as happy as
possible do facts
want the other person to succeed yeah
like that is one thing that uh watching
other people in relationships i'm like
do you want them to win or are you
trying to win like what what's happening
here yeah so yeah you've gotta want to
see them be happy and if and if they
tell you something this is gonna really
please me if you do it
if then you should be doing that thing
and if you're with someone that too many
times in a row you keep saying these
things make me really happy when you do
them and they don't compromise your
values
they're just effort if you're in a
relationship where someone doesn't do
those things then you
then you have to start questioning is
this a teammate would you call it out
i think that there are like every
relationship is that it's all sort of
spectrum right to what extent do i
accept
that there are certain things you do you
don't like doing versus
kind of hope that
if it means a lot to me
you would do that
i don't think there's any perfect answer
to that other than
real teamwork
you you tend to know it when you feel it
and the more of it you can give i kind
of think the more
the more if you're not feeling it from
somebody else
then
give them it on the things they really
want that don't come naturally to you or
that you wouldn't nor ordinarily do i kn
this thing that you want you really like
a tidy bedroom
i don't care how do you know but i'm
gonna do it right i'm gonna i'm gonna
tidy the bedroom
because it means a lot to you
if you do enough of those things i think
it gives you a lot of leverage to go to
your partner and be like
hey this stuff that's really important
to me
you're not doing
but by the way i don't care about having
a tidy room and yet every morning i make
the bed every morning i tidy up all of
my clothes every morning i do these
things i don't do that for me
i do it because i know it makes you
happy
and i like making you happy it makes me
happy to make you happy
but sometimes i wonder why
i don't get the same in return
but i don't think we have that leverage
if we're in this tit-for-tat
mindset that you haven't been doing
these things for me that i really want
so i'm not doing them for you but now
i'm coming to you from an angry and
resentful place so i think you have to
go from a place of leverage and that
leverages i'm doing a lot to make you
happy
yeah so interesting so these are the
things that
you have to say out loud and so one
thing that lisa and i always talk about
is don't test me
so
for instance in the beginning of our
relationship i have a terrible memory
and people that see me on camera are
convinced that i have a good memory and
that i'm just being humble i'm so happy
to hear you say that brother because
it's [ __ ] terrible i'm i have a lot
of insecurity around my memory well then
you and i can be insecure together
because i have a lot of insecurity
around my memory as well yeah yeah i
thought there's something wrong with me
sometimes right there is something wrong
with me for sure i guarantee it dude the
the amount of hours that i have spent
thinking like how much farther would i
be in my life if i had a better memory
i'm not kidding so yeah yes i've had
success in my life i'm just telling you
dude i would be so much farther along if
i had a better memory a real pressure
valve for me here oh my god i think
about that all the time and i i
literally i said i said to audrey my
fiance the other day i was like
i'm so glad that we're together partly
because you're like a living archive of
my experiences like she'll tell me
she'll say
man you know the last time you remember
when we were in la like a few months ago
and you were so ill
and i'll go
uh where was that
you and i are the same i'll be like
she'll be like what are you talking
about you were like really really in a
bad way yeah and i'll have to search for
this
this memory and it freaks me out
sometimes yep yeah so the bad news is
your life would be a lot further along
if you had a better memory unfortunately
this is one of those like really real
things yeah uh yeah so
because of that i told lisa look i know
it matters to you a lot that i uh
remember our anniversary or your
birthday all of that stuff and i was
like i swear to god i am prepared to
dedicate my life to you i would
literally die for you like no [ __ ]
if there's an intruder in the house
literally just the other day this
happened and there was somebody on our
property there should not have been and
lisa calls me i come and deal with it
she does not need to deal with it i will
put myself in harm's way but i can't
promise you i'm going to remember that
our anniversary is coming up
and so on the day of our anniversary on
the week leading up to will you please
just remind me don't test me if you know
i i will make you feel to the core of
your being that you were loved by me
because i i owe her that i owe myself
that for the health of the relationship
she has to feel to the core of her
existence that i love her and all that
but don't make me remembering a date or
whatever like don't make that a test of
whether or not i really love you because
it's just not how my mind works so
that what you just said is so vitally
important to the question you asked
before which is what do you do when
someone isn't
doing those things right because let's
let's say in her mind lisa originally
came from a
paradigm of
it really is important to me when
someone remembers these occasions
what gives you the leverage
to be like can
can i get some leeway here
is
how much love you give her in all these
other vital
important ways
that she knows your heart that she knows
your intentions that she knows your
kindness that she knows who you are and
how much you love her and not just in
the sense because
i think in this argument intentions
matter but they're not the only thing
that matters in a in an abusive
relationship
a guy who says my intention is to be a
great partner it doesn't count for a lot
if a relationship is abusive especially
physically then
that to that extent intentions don't
matter for the relationship what matters
is the fact
but intentions
intentions matter on some level but what
also matters is how many other ways
you're showing up that are really
important that she's able to look at
this in the round
and go
i'm insanely happy
like this relationship makes me
unbelievably happy the fact that this
rule that i'd set up for myself
that i needed this
it doesn't actually matter anymore or it
certainly doesn't matter nearly as much
and sometimes i think what it allows us
to do is get behind the rule in the
first place the reason i had that rule
is because someone remembering the
anniversary
became a symbol
of how much they care how much they
think of me how much they pay attention
but if i feel like i know how much he
cares i know how much he's thinking of
me i know how much he's paying attention
then all of a sudden i don't need the
rule
anymore so i think that's kind of in a
way a crucial recipe for how sacrifices
do get made when they have to get made
is that you have enough credits in the
bank
in all these other ways that this thing
actually doesn't matter in the way that
it used to yeah you have to have credits
in the bank that's really well said like
if you want to make a withdrawal you
better have made a lot of deposits which
something you've talked about which lisa
and i talk about and people are super
weird about it is relationships are work
right and yeah what do you say to people
when they get weird about that
i don't
know
what life they're living that i'm not
i don't
you know
it's a kind of you know it's the same as
when people talk about no regrets and
there's a poet a british poet david
white
who wrote a beautiful essay on on regret
and the actually the importance of
regret and he said tomorrow he said um
well first he said for people who say
they have no regrets he says that where
have you been
you know like but he said regret is very
very instructive you know you you if if
you regret having bullied someone at
school
that informs
how you go about the rest of your life
and how you treat people and the warmth
that occurs in your life towards people
and the compassion occurs as a result of
that so
you know to to
to ignore regrets or to simply pass them
off is is really to to not take the
lesson with you
um and that doesn't mean that you
continuously it's not the same as
shaming yourself or wagging your finger
in your face for it it's just
he sees regret as actually an important
word in language not one to be dismissed
as you should never regret anything
but similarly
i struggle with the concept that
relationships should be easy because
i've never had an easy relationship and
i don't mean just with my partner i mean
in my life i mean with my mum with my
brothers with
my cousins with my best friends i i
wouldn't describe i would certainly
describe certain relationships as
not
containing suffering like unnecessary
suffering
but i don't have a single relationship
that hasn't involved pain
i believe our life gets gets better in
direct proportion to the number of
difficult conversations we're willing to
have
and
if and a difficult conversation with
anyone with our best friend hey that
thing you did recently upset me
which is a conversation you must have
with a best friend that's not an
enjoyable conversation for anyone no one
wants to have it the reason we call it a
difficult conversation is because we'd
rather do anything else
than have that honest conversation today
but if we can do it the relationship
gets better i wouldn't call that easy
um i think the reason people have kind
of coined that phrase when it's right
it's easy
is in contrast
to the kinds of relationships they've
been in been in that have been
torturous
where there has been true
uh
just incompatibility
where it's a constant grind where
they're having to constantly grip their
way
through it and convince themselves why
it's worth staying
why i should keep going
in those relationships i think people
then come out and they're like
it shouldn't be this hard and they're
right
it shouldn't be
that hard but i don't think that's the
same thing as i worry when we say that
the right relationship is easy because i
worry that that comes with a kind of
entitlement
that comes with a kind of i'm not
supposed to have to
do any work or
if there's a speed bump
early on which there will be of course
there will be there are gonna be days
where you find out something about each
other that you don't like
where you go oh i don't that piece of
history of yours that i didn't know
about
yesterday
that just upset me
you know and you have to now have that
conversation and wrestle with it
together and you you if it's the right
relationship
what the difference is you come out of
that conversation
stronger as a unit
that to me defines the right
relationship
i i think one of the biggest indicators
of a right relationship is being with
someone who knows how to handle you
you know
we
we spend so much time in relationships
kind of trying to weigh up who's right
and who's wrong
right someone just got jealous about
something and they kind of acted out
and
that then creates this kind of a speed
bump it creates a moment it creates a
fire to be put out and
and that would not be a moment where we
would say this is easy it'd be a moment
where we're both frustrated with each
other i don't think you should be
jealous about this thing
i'm jealous about this thing and i feel
incredibly
uh justified in being jealous about this
thing and now we're gonna like
battle this out
that to me is a moment where we get to
define
the relationship but
too often people in that situation are
arguing about who's right and who's
wrong
and the truth is
if we can
remove that for a moment and just go
is
this person who this per let's say the
person who's jealous has wounds they
have trauma there's like stuff there
that's going on for them
and
and sooner or later if they want a happy
life they might have to heal that
there is going to be someone who comes
along
everyone anyone who comes along is going
to aggravate it at some point because
it's there so it will be aggravated
that it got aggravated isn't a sign that
this person is the wrong person
to me
if this person aggravates it
and having aggravated it this trauma
just gets worse
then
that relationship may be the wrong
relationship
but if this person aggravates it
but then when this person gets jealous
the way they handle it
gives this person a chance to actually
heal
and as a result
this person starts to let go
because for them their whole life
jealousy has meant you know it's fear
it's you're gonna leave me it's i'm not
good enough it's
you know danger and then this person
comes along and aggravates it and i go
all that same stuff happens
tense up get frustrated get mad get
something but then the way you approach
me in that is a healing
presence
and then i kind of let go a little bit
now
you're right not because
not because you're such an uh because
you're right all the time you're right
because you know
how to handle me
and i think we sometimes spend
we don't spend enough time looking for
people who are actually good at handling
us and that shouldn't be an excuse for
all of our worst stuff all the time
but
i've said to clients of mine who have
coached privately
like
dude this it's not that this person
you're spending so much time going is
she in the right is she in the wrong is
she an evil person or is she an angel is
she you're spending so much time
worrying about that instead of just
going
is this
person a healing presence for me
or did they just aggravate my worst
trauma in a way that makes it worse
because i think relationships two people
should be able to come together to heal
is the person i'm with able
is it a relationship that becomes a
healing and i have to be part of that
but is it a healing presence for me and
if the answer is no
too many times in a row forget right and
wrong
it's not the relationship that's going
to help you overcome those things
that's the advanced class
that that is advanced class so
i couldn't agree more i think that
it's really interesting when i really
look at why lisa and i have lasted as
long as we have because we both have our
insecurities we can both trigger the
other person's insecurities but to your
point
we're able to help guide the other
person out but as you said
that doesn't mean that i get to just
throw my insecurities on lisa all the
time and say you deal with it or vice
versa it's like
at some point you have to own that i
can't just cycle right so
if something triggers me whoa like hey i
have this insecurity i shouldn't have to
lie about it
the person should give me that space to
have that because we all have them
if they can then it'd be amazing if they
can help you negotiate that and then at
the same time they have to hold you
accountable to not just sitting in that
all the time wallowing in it being in a
death loop
and
man that is really really hard either
people are like they throw it back at
you like oh my god you're so insecure
like you're driving crazy and it's like
okay that's not gonna be any fun to be
around
but at the same time if they just let
you like keep looping like you're never
gonna get out of it
it's
gnarly it's so true
and
the if you're on the receiving end of
the wrong behavior or behavior that's
really destructive or not productive
i think that bringing
your best to that moment is the greatest
form of closure
if the relationship ends
tell me more
you know we feel
because even when i was saying that
before i could almost hear people go
kind of imagining their worst
relationship with someone who was really
difficult
and toxic or destructive or whatever
words someone wants to use for it
and
getting angry like it's not my
responsibility to fix this thing in the
other person and they should take
responsibility for not bringing that
behavior that's all
true all of that is true
but we all know if we're honest well a
we should have a little humility because
all of us
you may not have this thing they're
bringing you but you have something
you're going to bring them
so
when you're when you're something comes
up you're going to want
someone to come to you in a healing way
this is your chance to put that credit
in the bank right
so
whether you relate to it or not
but
what i would say to those people is
modeling the behavior you would like to
see from them
a is the greatest way to influence
anybody
and that starts with
listening understanding what's behind it
understanding where it's coming from
you know i had a moment with with my
partner in the beginning of our
relationship
where i flared up over something
and
she she used a good language for it she
said
i had to figure out
is he just an ass
or is this something
is there something deeper that i could
learn
to navigate and understand about him
and might just be a sign of a wound not
a sign that he's just an ass
and
she had to
she she modeled the right behavior in
that moment she initially
like
jumped down my throat because she was
mad that i was flaring up over this
thing
but then
she took a step back and she tried to
actually
like
understand where it was coming from and
what what was going what happened in my
past that made me flare up in that
moment and she said it was a moment
where i actually endeared you to me
because i realized
oh he's not
he's not an arse he's a
like he's hurt
and this this like triggered something
for him and i and
actually when she brought me kindness in
that moment and understanding i
i used up
and
when you do that and someone starts to
ease up and they start to heal
that's a great sign
if they don't
that's also
really valuable
information because you learn nothing by
mirroring the behavior you learn
everything from modeling the behavior
you want to see
and seeing if they can rise
to that and if they can't
you have your answer about where this
person is in the their evolution as a
human being and whether it would be at
all wise
for you to continue down a path because
if someone cannot in any way meet you
there
and there's no like there's no signs of
that happening
then
you can make an informed decision you
can say am i really going to spend
10 years being this person's therapist
in a relationship
do i have that kind of time is there any
guarantee that if i did they would even
change no
okay so this might be a terrible
terrible bet to make
but if i model the right behavior and
and something shifts
and it starts to produce a better
relationship
well then that's a huge huge success
you've got to want them to win man it's
so interesting i that's so
true and so useful
one that you may not have the same
insecurity but there's going to be
something that you do have
that you establish like how should we
respond to each other like lisa and i in
the early days and i think i've talked
about this before on camera i'm almost
certain
so
i have a very long fuse so it takes a
lot to make me angry but once i get
angry then like i'm in it and it would
in the beginning of our relationship it
would sometimes be more than 24 hours
before i'd calm back down
and so it just always ended up being
this catastrophic waste of time
and in the early part of our
relationship where i was off working and
so work and relationship were very
separated
uh the weekends were the only time that
we were engaging with each other and if
i ended up getting pissed on a saturday
it was like
man you basically lost a week you know
what it means so it's just like a real
catastrophe i know that feeling intimate
oh it's [ __ ] terrible so i would get
mad let's say early in the day and then
i wouldn't finally be able to pull
myself out of it until later that night
or the next day and then
never once was i like you know what well
done for being mad that long like that
was a good use of time and so i ended up
writing down
this letter to myself
and i gave it to her to read back to me
and it was like all this stuff has to be
negotiated in the beginning and so
the letter was basically hey me it's me
you have no ulterior motive because i
always thought lisa would try to
apologize or whatever because she just
felt bad that she'd upset me but that
she really was wrong and that there
needed to be some sort of recompense
and without that then the the injury was
not worthy of being forgiven
and
because i realized
every time you finally emotionally shift
out of that space you wish you had just
let it go instantly
and it's only because you have this
weird thing about like no no she's just
apologizing because she's not because
she actually feels bad
but because she just doesn't want to
feel badly about
me being annoyed or whatever she did
that was wrong so hey me it's me you
know you have no ulterior motive you've
never once thought that this was time
well spent so right now
force yourself to laugh out loud because
you know that if you laugh out loud you
won't be able to stay angry you'll shift
your neurochemistry and and you'll be
able to move past this
and i gave it to lisa and i said the
next time i get pissed read this back to
me i won't want to hear it i'm going to
be super [ __ ] annoyed that you pull
this out but i i will honor this
marriage by laughing out loud i'm in my
sober moment i'm giving you this thing
and i'm committing myself to actually
doing it she only had to read it once
and it was so effective when she pulled
out the phone and she's like hey me it's
me i have the chills now
and i forced myself literally i don't
even think she made it through the whole
thing
and i laughed out loud and i was like i
can't believe that worked but just
hearing my words coming back to me and
so it's like this whole thing about
you've got to want the other person to
win you've got to give them the keys to
the kingdom you've got to be like trying
to meet them there right like she's in
the apology she was legitimately
modeling the behavior
that i would want in the reverse
and because i could see that i was
falling prey to some weird death loop in
my own mind i was like okay this is
going to be the way that you get me out
of this and then not only did it work it
worked so well that i never needed her
to read that to me again because i was
like okay i want her to win i don't want
to waste the time i know what it takes
to change my own neural chemistry so why
do i need that and we've come up with
other things throughout the times like
for a while she carried these love chips
again it only ever had to be played once
and then you realize like how effective
it is and it was just like
i want this person to remember that i
love them
and that if in the middle of your hurt
because it's like i don't usually get
upset over something dumb i get upset
over something real like it's the thing
that you did really is like you would
reflect on and be like yo i shouldn't
have done that i'm reflecting like yeah
you definitely shouldn't have done that
but i know you love me yeah and because
i know how easy it is for me to be the
one that does something stupid that i
really shouldn't have done and that you
would agree i shouldn't have done all
that like to have that little thing that
you just slide across the table
but you have to agree on all this stuff
you have to talk about it you have to
like say here are the rules i had to say
hey if you read me this letter i'm
actually going to do it and then you
have to stick to it there's just so much
in what you just said that is
valuable valuable
insight the pattern breaking which i've
heard you talk about like you have to be
you have to be a ninja about pattern
breaking yourself right i think you said
that in one of your videos
like it's
essential to understand yourself in
those ways and whatever you mechanism
you have for breaking that pattern
one mechanism is telling your partner
so that they know
you know and i i did a similar thing
with audrey where i said when i'm in
that state because i have a it sounds
like you and i have some similarities
when i'm in that state i'm not in my
right mind and i can't i find it really
hard to let go
and i said to her
when i'm when it feels like i'm pushing
you away in those moments i'm desperate
for you to love me
preach dude that's so true desperate for
you to love me and to and i need to see
like can i push you away and you'll
still come back exactly even though it's
terrible it's a really dope habit but
and it but it's true and i said like i'm
it's gonna feel like i'm being well i am
being cold and i'm pushing but trust me
there is a
child inside that is just so terrified
you're not going to love me that
i like
i push you away
and that understanding is invaluable
because of course for her then she knows
in those moments
oh this isn't about me and it's not
and it's not a it's not personal and he
doesn't not love because the problem is
you get into this right crazy cycle
where i'm pushing her away and then she
goes he doesn't love me
and it's the exact opposite of what's
true
and
and that giving that person the keys to
the kingdom as you say is giving the
person the understanding of what's
really going on so i love that you said
that and the
you know what you said about the
remembering
that oh lisa loves me so much if she did
something
the the core of her is that she loves me
so much it's not this behavioral thing
it's not this slip up it's not it's this
that is like i call them emotional
buttons i have a retreat program where i
do a whole section on this because to me
knowing what your emotional buttons are
is the key to life you you essentially
are learning how to program your
thoughts and your emotions and that
thought i know how much lisa loves me at
her core is an emotional button
i had
one that i got
from childhood where
we were me
my brothers
and a few friends were all playing in
the garden
and i don't even remember what happened
but something upset me so badly
or the way maybe it wasn't even a big
thing that upset me but the way it was
reacted to or the way i felt in that
moment
was so i got in my head so badly about
it that i went to my room and sulked
and didn't come out
and
then
it turns out this whole plan was made
for like my brothers and my friends
to all go to their house
to carry on like this really fun day and
have a sleepover at my friend's house
and
but not without me everyone wanted me
involved everyone was like knocking on
my door going matt like come on let's go
like it's going to be super fun and it
was so important to me
to make a point
about this thing and
pushing everyone away
that i didn't go i told them to leave
and i watched the car leave
the house from my bedroom window
i cannot tell you how much i remember
the next day my brothers came back and
there were stories and there were all
these wonderful things that happened
they got excited about the night and it
was such a great sleepover and
i regretted it
so badly
and it never that was
such in the scheme of my life
and
really insignificant moment and yet
i never forgot it because i it never the
lesson level never left me that i cost
myself that amazing
fun time with
a bunch of people that love me
with my brothers who are my best friends
with my friends they all had this
wonderful time and no one was against me
no one was trying it wasn't like they
said we're gonna go make this plan
without matt everyone's like matt come
it's gonna be fun and i denied myself
that
i've i've never forgot that and when i
feel i find myself
sabotaging myself or something good
when i'm upset today
i remember that sleepover
and that becomes an emotional button
a pattern break for me in the same way
that you know
lisa loves me
is a pattern break for you and i think
that's such those things are really
really powerful and if you ever find one
for anyone out there whoever finds one
of these write it down
and have it somewhere where it's to hand
so that the next time a situation like
that occurs you have a place to go to
connect with that truth
because the life is there's all these
truths in winston churchill said men
occasionally stumble over the truth but
most pick themselves up and carry on as
if nothing happened
right you occasionally stumble over a
truth about life about
about your partner about your
relationship about yourself when you get
one of those truths you like
write it down somewhere where in your
your moments where you're finding it
hard to access truth
you can you can go there because those
things are life-changing and they plug
you back in
to life itself and what's important
yeah that's really critical there's one
thing about me that i think has really
helped a lot with my success which is
that i don't trust everything i feel i
recognize myself as a deeply flawed
individual that routinely does dumb
things
and that may sound negative but it it
has stopped me from compounding
the problems
and so i remember
when you were telling that story
unfortunately for me that moment came
much later in life
but lisa and i got in a huge fight it's
the biggest fight we've ever been into
this day
and we were yelling at each other over a
cup of tea
and the fight had been going on for
it had to be close to two hours
and we were on our way to a weekend away
and i'm on the freeway and i take the
exit i'm like we're going back home this
is a waste there's no point going on
this vacation and i turn the car around
we start heading back and as i'm doing
that because the voice in my head was
screaming like why are we fighting
you're gonna regret wasting this time on
this
and i turn around and we're headed home
and i'm like
stop
there's no way you're this angry over a
cup of tea
what are you actually upset about
and
in fine and i literally said okay hold
on hold on hold on
i
i can't be this angry about a cup of tea
you can't be this angry about a cup of
tea what are we actually fighting about
and so then i was just like i'm just
gonna say like the raw [ __ ] ever like my
most naked
i'm gonna recognize that my motives here
are probably petty and that you've
triggered an insecurity in me and i need
to figure out what it is
and so i just started talking and we
finally figured out what it was
and she figured out what it was for her
and
we said we're never going to argue about
the t again
and we're always going to figure out
like because unfortunately you get
caught up in that micro personality you
said you're not in your right mind you
get in the neurochemical state
and you really become a different
version of yourself
and so i'm like when we slip into that
different version let's make sure that
we identify what we're really fighting
about
and so
in that and and long time listeners will
have heard me describe this before but
for anybody who's listening for the
first time
so at that time in our lives we were
really poor
and i was working really hard to try to
be successful and i hated my [ __ ]
life and i was just so desperate i had
told her i was going to make her rich i
told my father-in-law i was going to
make his daughter rich he did not want
me to marry his daughter he did not
think i was going to be successful and i
wasn't and so like all of my worst
nightmares are coming true my wife is
clipping coupons and so
i was just like you have to let me work
all the time
and it's the only way that i'm going to
make good i'm getting emotional now
because this isn't just a [ __ ] story
i was like really in it and remember i
don't know at that time i'm actually
going to be successful all i know is
i've taken her from a
much easier life and i've made things
really hard for her
and i'm in a dark place and i finally
agree to take a weekend away and like go
travel and so i'm like we can't afford a
hotel but we're gonna get a hotel and
i'm doing this for you and i'm freaking
out
and i think that if i don't end up being
successful you're not going to love me
so there's like a lot on the [ __ ]
line but i haven't said any of this out
loud i'm not even aware of it myself
right i haven't like put all this
together i just know
i wake up i'm ready to go they're going
to let us into the room at like one
o'clock or whatever so i want to make
sure we are there so we get every penny
out of this hotel room
i have not said any of this
i wake up my wife is thinking oh my god
time is her quality time is her love
language
he's finally taking time for me
we're going to have this special weekend
away
and i want to start it slow and have a
cup of tea
and just have them sit with me and like
we can just like sink in and like really
be with each other and so i'm like
what are you doing you're having a cup
of tea like the the car is packed let's
go
and she's like but i want to have a cup
of tea now what she meant was i want to
be with you and what i meant was i'm
trying to serve you and make good on my
promises and for me to spend money and
take time away from
taking care of you as is like it's like
breaking the promise i made to to keep
you alive and so
all of this collides over a [ __ ] cup
of tea and so now once we finally
said those things i was like oh my god
like seeing it from your perspective i
totally get it i
to honor you which is what i'm trying to
do by building a business and getting
wealthy and all that is to honor you and
honor my promises
i should have just sat while you had the
cup of tea and we could have started
this all out and and it had been amazing
but i wasn't s i wasn't putting it
together my own mind and i certainly
wasn't articulating it to you and vice
versa right
and so now we're like we'll catch
ourselves 20 minutes into an argument
we're arguing about the t like what's
really going on here because i have just
learned one truth if you're in a fight
someone has triggered your insecurities
period there's no alternative there's no
other like oh this was actually really
about this thing no no
you're insecure about something and once
you can figure out what you're actually
insecure about
then you can have the real conversation
but until then dude you're gonna loop
that is
one of the most powerful and one of my
favorite
relationship stories i've ever heard
it certainly changed our lives but man
in the moment it was
ugly and i felt really stupid
but it's so
i mean i i commend you for for sharing
it and being vulnerable enough to do
that because i think that you with that
one story
you're helping so many people because
it's
the cup of tea
is
what makes these things feel so shameful
and embarrassing to talk about
to everyone outside of the car
is that it feels
absurd and and that's what it feels like
in real relationships is the
the arguments we have feel so intensely
private because they feel so intensely
we feel so naked
and so exposed and all of us guys who go
out into our lives
with this kind of alpha energy and
putting on a front and being a certain
thing with all of our friends are so
stripped bare by those arguments
and
[Music]
you know i i think the what everyone i
hope everyone hears in that story is
that you decided to stop the car
that to me is like the heroic moment of
the story is that you stopped the car
and that is a choice and i don't know
where that comes from in you
but you stop the
car there's a moment i don't know if you
ever got into the the american version
of the office
but there was a moment where jim and pam
one of the great kind of love stories of
the show
he um
he sat at a bar
with her ex
and her ex is kind of
a brute
and
she's off in another town studying and
they're apart and they're doing long
distance and they've not been used to
doing that and they're finding their
feet with it and she gets a voicemail
like
he gets a voicemail from her because
she's out super late and she gets he
gets kind of like i think a drunken
voicemail
and there's a guy in the background and
you know
the the guy the ex who is the
quintessential
territorial kind of caveman
stand your ground don't put up with that
nonsense get jealous kind of a guy
he
gets in his he gets in jim's head
and he says you're okay with that
and jim has never been like that he's
never fretted about that kind of thing
with her but the ex gets in her head and
says that would that would worry me i
don't know if i'd be okay with that if
she was out that late and
you know with these new friends of hers
and jim gets in the car
and he starts driving
an hour to where she is to try and
see what she might be up to
that night
and catch her in something
and he gets
on the freeway
and he catches himself
and he says
he he stop he he grabs the wheel and he
turns the car around
and he says you know what no
because
that is not our relationship and i am
not that guy
and he makes a decision that he does the
hard thing
he interrupts
this trajectory
that is going to inevitably lead to
broken trust in their relationship
that she's not going to feel trusted
they're going to have a fight they're
going to have some kind of a breakdown
and he decided that's not going to be us
that moment is the most heroic moment
anyone can have in a relationship and
it might seem from the outside like that
wasn't such a big deal it wasn't such a
big deal to stop the car and but when
you're in it on that level
it's the most difficult thing in the
world and the thing i say to people a
lot is
when you're in that territory maybe you
maybe you haven't found it in you to
stop the car yet
maybe you haven't got there maybe like
you just can't
but
find the
inches find the one percent shift
if
if you're in an argument
and
you're seething but you reach out your
hand
and you just
you might just put it next to their hand
you might just
for two seconds like just
stroke their hand
and then you put your hand back
that may be just one percent you haven't
said anything to rectify the situation
you haven't
but that one percent registered with
them
and they're mad at you
but they felt your hand for one second
and what they really felt was humility
what they really felt was an act of
vulnerability what they really felt was
this person just for that one second
is reaching out to me and dropping their
pride just a little bit
maybe just enough
for me to reach my hand back
and grab their little finger you know
and
in that
dance of one percents
it actually begins this snowball
effect out of the situation and i think
that things don't change
because
no one makes that one they're so
preoccupied with how hard it would be to
turn it around
that they don't even if they don't know
their way through it they don't do that
one thing
that would soften the other person
enough for them to do a gentler thing
and so on and so on and so on
what's awesome is
you didn't do just do that
you stop the car
what is up my friend you and i are
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me inside of project kaizen which by the
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of never ending improvement all right
back to today's episode yeah man that's
terrifyingly good advice like the
the little hand outreach the reminder
that you love somebody
it's really interesting one it is very
hard to do in those moments
but it really goes a long way and
i
worry
that part of why
i have been successful in relationships
i think this is the same for you but i
don't want to pay you with this brush if
you don't think that it feels right but
is that i am on the sort of um
male female spectrum i definitely have
like a lot of female feminine energy
but that served me really well
like you write for cosmo magazine or you
used to yeah yeah so i have many many
times uh said that part of the reason
that i ended up getting good at
relationships is when i was a teenager
and i was terrible with women people
always used to joke that men didn't
understand women so i used to go read
cosmo magazine as a way to like better
understand them
and i think it's actually really really
smart like the more that you can
find those ways to reach out to break
down those barriers to be communicative
to be a motive to
identify your own insecurities to
articulate them all things that are
technically like not the sort of brutish
masculine thing now
i think to something we haven't talked
about here but i've heard you speak very
eloquently about you also need to be
able to be tough and masculine and all
that stuff
but if you can do both if you can be
soft in that moment instead of trying to
win the argument especially and in fact
here here is
really your own test
if in how do you act when you know
you're right
like you've got them dead to rights
you've caught them out
it's obvious in that moment they're
wrong and you're right
in that moment are you dunking on them
or are you like
because the way i think about it is
oh my god i know in the next breath i
might be the one that we both realize is
wrong so in this moment i'm deposit
deposit deposit because i don't want to
like
you know get caught out like i want the
grace the next time
and
in those moments if you can be that
gentler
outreaching hand to again to want them
to win to help them back to not be like
oh i told you and it's like give them
that grace and help them find the exit
ramp
man like when i think about what really
has made lisa and i stand the test of
time because it certainly isn't that
we're perfect it certainly isn't that we
don't do dumb things or
get petty or be insecure it's that we're
always
trying to
this really goes back i never heard
anybody say the way you said it earlier
like
how do they help you deal with something
that when you're insecure or whatever
but man if you can really be artful in
that moment and not try to bank the win
but instead bank the grace
that goes a long way
and i think it's very well said tom and
i think that
that is
for me at least born out of humility
it's borne out of exactly what you said
i don't know when it's going to be my
turn
and i look
hopefully we've been
as life goes on we
we suffer enough and we go through
enough pain and we get punched in the
face enough that we come to have a
little humility
we come to realize that
that
we all make mistakes that there are
things that we have found incredibly
difficult to shake
with the person you're with
understand that it is as hard for them
to shake
that thing you don't like that they do
as it is for you to shake
that thing in you that you've spent your
whole life trying to
stop doing
and can't do
you know it it's you know someone might
say i i really frustrated with my part
the way my partner relates to
alcohol
but it
might be and i'm not said this isn't an
excuse
excusing someone and and it's divorced
from the kind of actual kind of effects
on a relationship that something is
happening but just in theory
there how difficult they find it to give
up that glass of wine that they have
every night that bothers you
or that couple of glasses of wine that
bothers you every night it's as
difficult for you to give up being a
workaholic
like
they're all part of an addiction
spectrum
and
our partner is addicted to certain
behaviors
that make it really tough for them to
change and we're addicted to certain
things that make it really hard for us
to change now that means it's probably
good sense not to have a relationship
with someone where
your addictions
make you so immediately incompatible
that
you're going to make each other
miserable on a really long
but it does mean that
in other areas where maybe your
the two of you aren't actually that far
off
you've got similar values
you have a similar outlook on life at
your core
you have the same heart
but you're different
it allows more grace in those
situations and perhaps can get us a
little bit i i you know you and i were
talking earlier about just
youtube and how you title certain things
for youtube because it helps and
one of the pitfalls of my
line of work is that people love hearing
about red flags
and so anytime you title something with
red flags in it
people people want to watch that the
problem with that is that people get
addicted to looking for red flags i was
going to ask do you think that they're
worried they're seeing them
are they looking for a justification to
get out like why is red flags so popular
i think that it speaks to some part of
us that a is playing detective with
what's going to go wrong
and we want to
know you know we we love like what
how do i know that this thing they just
did is actually a sign that they're
going to ruin my life i want to know
that now but it also there's something
cathartic about it for situations that
have already happened for us
if i know someone did a lot of damage to
me
there's something about a red flags
video that is appealing just from a
retrospective point of view
see
there was that thing and if i'd have
seen that you know i i now know that was
a giant red flag and you know i get to
voice
that thing
but the danger of course of becoming
obsessed with
looking for red flags is that you will
find them in everything
me flaring up at the beginning of our
relationship over something
she could have easily watched one of my
videos and gone that's a red flag
like this is a giant red flag i don't
know i don't know about this you know
she could have had a conversation with
her friends and gone this is a red you
know you no no no that's a red flag you
know
we all have red flags
on some level we all have something
because we're all bringing baggage
to the table
but there's worse red flags than others
yeah no doubt
yeah that's really interesting that um
[Music]
the the i'm curious if i could look at
your stats if
is your audience more female or male
more female okay so a growing male
audience over the over the years we now
have a good kind of sizable male
contingent but but still predominantly
female because when you say that it's
more of a detective thing
um one of the things i wanted to talk to
you about is the difference between men
and women
and
one of the things because i'm obsessed
with this and i got obsessed with it
too so
the human brain is a prediction machine
so the
it began with really beginning to be
able to predict the body and what would
move you towards food and all of that
but it's become
not only are we predicting limbs and
where they are in space and there's some
fascinating new research about that but
especially when it comes to women it
becomes um
sorry before i get to the the part about
women just you to successfully stay
alive you have to be able to accurately
predict so it is incredibly deeply
ingrained in us
now when you start looking at the sexes
for men getting someone um pregnant and
making sure that you pass your genes on
is a very low uh
effort endeavor but for a woman it's
incredibly expensive and so
men are looking for signs of fertility
and women are looking for
is this going to be a good
investment are they going to be here for
the long haul and so it puts them more
into like i have to be a detective and i
have to suss this out
and it's become bizarrely taboo
to talk about the differences between
men and women which i find utterly
strange because your brain is a
predictive machine and you should want
anything that helps you make better
predictions and so i became obsessed
with this when i couldn't get a
girlfriend in the beginning so i'm like
the [ __ ] am i doing wrong like it just i
could not predict how
behavior a on a date would lead to the
outcome that i wanted and so i started
like really going down that rabbit hole
and then because back and uh i would
have gotten good at this right at the
end of the 90s beginning of the 2000s
and so yeah it wasn't weird at that time
to be like oh women are like this men
are like this men are moderate women are
from venus right right and
so as i've watched it become taboo i'm
like yo yo yo don't let this become a
taboo thing you are [ __ ] yourselves
up because if you don't recognize and
look i'm these are broad strokes and of
course as somebody who admits that i
have um a lot of feminine energy like a
hundred percent i think guys can you
don't have to be a woman to have those
intuitions or whatever but
once you understand the broad strokes
you can predict things a lot better
what are some things that you see and
i'll be curious to see like if this
makes you uncomfortable if you're like
oh no like this is how it is uh what are
some broad strokes you've seen that are
different between men and women
look i consider myself
an empiricist
wisely so i
and for those who don't know what an
empiricist is
a rationalist says
you know
x
equals x plus
y equals z and
then that's the the model that's the
theory and therefore that's what happens
and an appearance empiricist says
okay that's the that's the rationalist
viewpoint that's the assertion
let me
hammer that out
against the the anvil of my experience
of
of what i've noticed what i've seen the
people i know
yeah like what is
what's the story in my own life does
that feel
true
um
i was on a show
a number of years back
where
i was on a panel with uh
another man and a woman
and
the concept of first date sex came up
and
people they were talking the kind of
subject matter was should you have sex
on a first date
and somehow i think it got on to
differences between
men and women now look i don't have any
i don't care who has sex on a first date
as long as
you you know
be safe
don't put yourself in an unsafe
situation and we all know by the way
there's a difference immediately
a
man going home with a woman
we know is not is safer than women going
home
with a man because there's a size
difference
so we already know
none of us could claim that it doesn't
feel like there's a safety issue on one
side that's not quite the same on the
other
so
there's a there's a difference already
there
but i was also
saying that from i i'm not speaking from
me as a man i'm speaking from 15 years
of of working with women in this area
and answering their questions
that
and i've worked with men too
it's more often the case amongst the
women that come to me that
they regret having slept with someone
too quickly
then it is
for men to come to me saying the same
thing
that already is suggestive of a
difference
and so i made this point in the context
of first date sex was kind of it's kind
of a know yourself argument
no you know if you know you're gonna
you you have a kind of tendency to feel
used after that then you have to know
yourself well enough not to do something
that is going to make you feel bad at
the end of it
um
but it was an interesting it was a bit
like it felt like
empirical meeting rational because the
guy that i was with
flared up and said this is slut-shaming
how dare you this is and i said
i'm not talking from i'm not talking
about what you what's right and wrong
i'm saying
from everyone i've coached
that there's a decent amount
of regret amongst people at having slept
with someone too quickly that i get as
stories from women
and it couldn't he couldn't get his mind
out of that
it became a really combative
issue
that led to a kind of early ending to
the show it was that bad
but the woman on the panel said
i actually
completely understand and agree with
what matthew is
saying like this absolutely makes sense
to me
from my experience as a woman like i
said i wasn't speaking from the
experience of a man i was speaking from
the ex literally repeating what has been
said to me ad nauseam for years
wasn't saying it was wrong i was saying
you have to weigh up for yourself what
what that makes you feel afterwards
the biggest area that i see
a difference
that is really really destructive
is in the issue of the biological clock
because
my work i have dealt with
so many i mean to give people for those
that are just meeting me today through
the show to give people a scale
i'm
i'm not talking thousands of people i'm
talking millions of people over 15 years
and hundreds of thousands live in my
tours and events and retreats
i have dealt with so many
hundreds of thousands of women who are
in
30s
who
have reached a point where this life
goal they have
um
is coming into question
and like a career goal kind of thing the
life goal of having a family having
children i see
and
and they are now
starting to as any of us do as you did
with lisa where there was a life goal
you had of being able to provide
and protect and and give her the life
that you wanted to give that you wanted
to provide you there was an anxiety
about that there was a sense of oh my
god what if this what if i can't do this
what if it doesn't happen and that is
what i experience in so many women that
come to me who
really want a family
and are finding that there is a kind of
anxiety that creeps in that turns into
panic at a certain point for a lot of
people and then of course grief if it
doesn't happen
that then can invade their dating lives
yeah and so
it's a really
it's a key difference that i've tried to
actually level the playing field on
in my work to give women their power
back
well firstly i think
we live in a world today and look these
things cost money but we live in a world
today where people can actually decide
to go a different direction or they
could decide to freeze their eggs or
they can decide to have a baby on their
own but i i'm a big believer in you have
to be willing to take your power back
and that means asking yourself some
really difficult questions
like if it comes down to it and i have a
choice between
the
um
traditional
not having kids but having a partner
or
having a child
but doing it on my own
which is more important to me because at
some point you're going to have to make
that decision
or run out the clock with someone who
doesn't want the same thing as you and
resent them forever and grieve it
but you have to be honest with yourself
this is self-awareness and and talk
about difficult conversations
you have to have a really difficult
conversation with yourself
and say
is how essential is this to my being
if it is truly something that if it
doesn't happen for me
i will
there will always be something crucial
that's missed from my life
then
you have to have a plan b that becomes
your plan a
if
it doesn't work out the way that you
hoped it would maybe you did want to
meet the love of your life who was also
ready to have children and have children
on a reasonable timeline
maybe you did want that
but is having children important enough
for you
to do on your own if you don't get that
that doesn't mean that that will happen
but
can you
can you get on board with that plan b
now as if it was already plan a
and if you can
wonderful
you're free
you can either freeze your eggs so that
you're ready when the time comes i'm
gonna do that or you can decide if i
don't
have it with somebody else by a certain
date i am going to do this on my own
you can
have a plan and i i would suggest to
everybody have a plan
just know what you're going to do
because then you can go right
i know that's what i'm going to do
if it comes to it
and i'm not i i get there will be people
who say you don't understand how hard
being a single mother is you know and
you're right i don't
but i know
the grieving
that women experience in this area
because i have
been face to face with it for 15 years
of my life
so i know the pain
on the other side of it so i and i also
know that there are many many women
who are more
willing
to endure the difficulty of being a
single mother than to not have children
i'm not saying what's right or wrong i'm
saying know yourself
and then when you've decided all of that
go date
because now you can now you're free
now you're not going on to a date
from a i need you
perspective which is the worst possible
place
you can go to a date from
is i'm getting on a date with you and
you already hold all of the cards
because i desperately need what you have
and i need you for this and i can't and
so already i'm thinking d are you gonna
screw me over are you gonna waste my
time
are you gonna be
someone who wants this are you gonna are
you lying i'm already in that place and
i'm already you didn't text me for five
days where are you why didn't you text
me for five days no more because that
sounds fun you
because you hold all of the cards
and i'm now i'm commute people know when
they hold all of the cards people can
feel it and so
when you
when you ask me
and it may have been i don't know a
deeper answer than perhaps you thought
you know and and there are maybe
superficial differences between men and
women and dating but on the deepest
level
what creates the greatest power
imbalance in my eyes is that one thing
and i have spent my career
trying
in my own
modest way
to
get help women
rediscover their power
in that area
and their autonomy and their
independence so that they can date to
date so that they can fall in love to
fall in love so that they can experience
a relationship
organically
instead of going with this enormous
um
insecurity from the very beginning
that you're not in a rush in the way
that i'm in a rush
and i'm gonna kind of try and hide the
fact that i feel that but i do feel it
and so it's always a presence in the
room that i need you more than you need
me
and it always comes across and it comes
across in really insidious ways like
you just did something i didn't like
but i don't mention it
because i don't want to rock the boat
you just treated me a bit
disrespectfully you just broke a
standard of mine but i don't want to
enforce that standard i might even speak
up about it but if you do it again i'm
not going to enforce it
because
ultimately you have something i really
really want and and i'm willing to
to break my own boundaries and
disrespect myself
in order to have a shot at having it
that is
it becomes death by a thousand cuts and
i've watched it over and over and over
again and that is a really hard thing
it's understandably hard for men to
understand
until they
find themselves in a position like that
themselves where they
don't feel
like they're the ones in control like
they don't feel like they're the ones in
power
which sometimes happens when an older
guy dates a much younger woman
and suddenly he gets a sense maybe not
the same but he gets a sense
of what it feels like to to be on the
other side of that equation
i mean that's an amazing answer to the
question i find this so endlessly
fascinating and i find it fascinating
because it's so important to your
ability to predict so
i think it is really
important that people understand that
they're having a biological experience
and by that i mean that you're going to
view life in certain ways if you're a
guy and have that hormonal profile and
you're going to view things a certain
way if you're a woman and have that
hormonal profile
and that
it is there are some really predictable
things that are going to happen now
these are broad strokes not everybody's
going to go through in fact everybody is
going to have a different journey but
when you take them on mass like there
are some pretty predictable things
um
my level of ambition like if you were to
describe me on paper and then ask people
is this a man or a woman people got as a
guy like 100 that hard driving now you
would only be right let's say
70 of the time because there are plenty
of women that match my profile
but there's a lot more guys so you'd
definitely be better off guessing that
it's a guy if you said the story that
you just told you know somebody they're
in their 30s they're starting to have a
lot of anxiety about not having a family
and you laid out literally what you just
walked us through and said is this a man
or a woman like hey 70 of the time or
more you're going to be right that
that's a woman there's going to be
plenty of guys that fall into that but
you're better off and so
all of that stuff to me is like really
interesting i want to know what are the
things about being a guy that i can
predict like so that i can either steer
myself well not fall prey to it you know
whatever the case may be like for
instance i really want to have kids
but the only thing that i want more than
i want to have kids is to not have kids
because i'm so into
my ambition and what i'm trying to build
and all that but going into it because
i'm so eyes wide open i'm like i know
when i'm 80 i'm going to regret not
having kids
so to your point like hey would you
still have kids even if you knew you're
going to be a single mother like work
that out now if that becomes plan a like
are you still going to be okay with it
if you are there's a certain level of
freedom
it's like it's important to have walked
through that thought exercise
christopher hitchens um once said you in
life you have to choose your regrets
whoa he's an interesting guy but that
really hit me
it um
and there there is so much truth
to that what you're really saying is
you're already anticipating i am going
to regret
not having kids
but there is a bigger regret
that i am avoiding
in doing that and you've made peace with
that and that's actually a really really
self-aware thing to do what i'm
suggesting with women and
you know again i i want to stress to
everyone
i don't presume to understand the female
predicament and
what women go through
internally
but i've seen
i've seen so much pain
in
my career and in what i've done i've
been up close to it enough to have a
almost uh a visceral response when i see
people disempowering themselves because
i you know i know what's coming i know i
know the pain that is coming for them
five years or 10 years or 15 years from
now if they don't ask themselves the
difficult questions
that becomes another choose your regret
moment what am i going to regret more
you know
being in a relationship and
waiting
uh to see if someone comes around even
though they say they don't want it
and then never having them
or
having them and
and having them with a couple of years
to spare so that i'd you know even if
it's on my own so that i don't run the
risk that the clock runs out but i also
have these children i just don't have it
exactly the way that i
thought maybe i would one day
earlier in my life
there will be a regret either way but
which is the more powerful
is very very
it forces really honest questions and
there are questions that most of us want
to hide until the last possible minute
because it just feels too painful but
the pain is
the pain is coming
you know i i always think of
it's not a perfect analogy but i kind of
think of this you know there are certain
areas of our life where it feels like
this cliff edge is rushing towards us
and we don't we just want to ignore it
but at some point
we're going off the cliff
and i you know there are areas in my
life where i've sort of gone off the
cliff and
wished that i had
anticipated it sooner or later
which is which is even more
crazy even more self-loathing doesn't it
when you did anticipate it and you
didn't do anything
um
and so i i kind of become fascinated
with what has to happen for us today
to
somehow get the experience of going off
the cliff today while it's just a
phantom
version
of it
so that i don't know
like how do you compel yourself like
there's always enough confusion i find i
think this is what's going to happen but
i'm not 100 sure and there's enough
friction
i i think that you look for the areas of
your life where you're pretending
that it's a question mark and it's
a foregone conclusion
you know if there's someone in your life
that
has
repeatedly offended you know has just
every time you give them another chance
they do the same
bad thing
and they they lie they
cheat they
you know they let you down they
disappoint you and it this is a
predictable
pattern
and every time you make up it's because
you
decided to make up it's because you
decided to make allowances and give them
another chance it's not because they
changed
um well then
the the question mark that may you know
sooner or later in a relationship like
that there's a cliff edge coming it's
gonna this person is gonna wreak havoc
in your life
now it could be that the thing they do
gets
so bad that it becomes cataclysmic in
your life and just causes immense
destruction and a lot of people feel
that when
when they are with a true kind of
narcissist
there's usually kind of a moment in
their life where it
it becomes so destructive that there's
no option but to leave
um
and sometimes the the cliff edge is just
realizing your life is gone
and
and nothing changed
but
you have to look at those situations and
go
on what evidence
does this remain a question mark for me
what is it i'm actually using to justify
the idea that this person may still
change it becomes just a
it becomes
a rationalist
not an empirical perspective a
rationalist perspective is yes of course
they could
but empirically
everything i've ever learned about this
person and the way they are suggests
they they won't and they can't
um
now 99 times out of 100 and again you
the the the example could be used in all
sorts of things not just people but to
talk people for a moment
if you said well one in a hundred people
like that does change
okay that's true
but
um how many lives do you get to try yeah
you know and i
someone once said to me and and i was
talking at the time it was kind of
regarding
it was years ago when there was someone
that i was thinking of letting go
and i said they might they might do
better
and
and someone
who was advising me at the time said how
many times out of 100 do you find
someone
genuinely has just this massive turn
around and i said
i don't know but it's not many
ten one i'm not sure he said i'd rather
lose the 90
than stake my business on
the one that might change or the 10 that
might change i'd rather lose the 90 and
keep moving
and
you can apply that to
all relationships and and you should
because you don't get 100 lives
you get one at least as far as i know
so
uh your time is not replaceable
there's a there's a
to use another hitchings example when he
was talking about global warming
he said you may or may not believe in
global warming but it makes sense to act
as if it's
happening because we don't get another
one we don't we don't get another world
so if we're if we don't think it's
happening and we're wrong
we don't get another chance to run the
experiment
um
and you could say that about life itself
that you don't you know
when you're looking at a situation in
your life that's not changing or someone
that's not changing and yet you keep
staking your life on them
um you have to ask yourself what are the
stakes of getting it wrong because i
don't think you get another one
well said
i want to go back to
women and kids it's something i've
thought a lot about in my own life
[Music]
why do you think
that so many women regret having kids
and do men regret not having kids and if
you had to put on a stone tablet
your advice
like how do you think about it and no
one right path is right for everybody i
understand that a thousand fold but if
we had to like what do i think on
whether people should or not yeah i'm
balanced oh god this is
this chair goes back
this is not a time to recline is it time
to sit forward i
i'm not qualified to answer this
question but i will
i will say is that you're just you've
been in the public eye long enough you
know to caveat
because i'll i'll give you my like bold
thing that'll just
be such a great response perfectly
i so firstly
as far as why so many people regret
having kids i think i would struggle to
answer that
um
i would struggle to answer that
only
you know perhaps
i would reason on some level that
culture
tells us society tells us we're going to
feel
all of these things
when you have that more than biology
going hey
numbnuts have kids because that's what
you're programmed to do perhaps perhaps
like at a dna level i think it is
dna is just screaming although i don't
know that the
dna would um
be responsible for the biology would be
responsible for us
thinking that it would be
wonderful all the time or that it would
be easy or that it would be
easier than it ends up being i don't
know if
if biology would be responsible for that
but i do think that there's a lot of
rhetoric out there about the wonders of
having children
that convinces a lot of people that
maybe
it would be for them
and and
perhaps a lot of people get there and
find that it's not
it's not a uh
it doesn't save you
any more than anything else will any
more than getting married will save you
from a difficult
relationship
or improve a difficult relationship
having kids doesn't take away any of the
problems of life i'm sure it multiplies
them as much as it also multiplies the
joys
um
and um some a lot of people's do seem to
resent how much their life changes
as a result of it um but that's sort of
true of anything isn't it i mean
our life changes if we start a business
our life changes if we get sick our you
know our life changes with everything
i
i suppose what people regret a lot about
having kids is they may at one point
have seen it as a voluntary action and
that they could have avoided
my
you know i saw uh
jordan peterson talking about children
having children and he said
i
i think he he basically said i think
it's he did actually say i think word
for word i
i think it's impossible for anyone to
truly grow up
unless they have children
which i thought was a really bold
statement
um but he also said
he basically made the case that everyone
should do it you know it's
it is
you fundamentally are missing out
on the best experience
you should do it
um
i can't i can't speak to whether that's
true or not i know that i've wrestled
selfishly kind of with the with my own
selfishness and my own feeling of
wanting my life to stay the same and
um but i also i can't help but be
i can't help but feel that pull of what
everyone
says about the before and after of it
and i wonder i wonder if when i have
kids because it providing everything
goes well
it is a win for us
i
i wonder if i will have that feeling of
i should have done it sooner
i don't know if i i will or not but i i
wonder if all of this delaying
is kind of
me holding on to something that once
i don't have it anymore once i have
children i just go what i'm so dramatic
i wonder if i'll feel that guarantees it
a hundred percent so i definitely at the
risk of being a rationalist here because
i haven't done it so i haven't run both
experiments so i can't say uh but i
there's probably data that we can look
at
but here is my strongest hypothesis
i
so again my big thing is you're having a
biological experience
nature is designed to ensure that you
have kids that have kids like that's its
job
and knowing the levers that nature has
the pull
just as a
woman that gives birth will forget just
how psychotically painful it is and want
to have another kid i think that there's
a reason that people
like so thomas soul brilliant economist
who
just has a line that everybody should
live by there is no utopia there are
only trade-offs
so having kids is not a utopia
it's a trade-off so you're going to pick
your trade off the same way that you're
going to pick your regrets but the
reason that i think that the highest
risk strategy that you can run is to not
have kids i think that's high risk i
think for most people it will end up
being the wrong answer now that's
somebody who chose that path but i chose
it looking at it and going whoa i think
this is actually going to be a really
high risk strategy
the reason that i think that is when i
just look at the the biology of the
situation
we all have a hunger for fulfillment i
think it's the deepest drive that humans
have full stop period that's it because
that is the thing that nature has
leveraged to make sure that you do the
thing that it wants so nature is going
to leverage fulfillment to get you to do
two things one to get you to do really
hard things
so doing really hard things that serve
not only yourself but the group right
because humans as a species we've chosen
a group strategy so
i'm gonna be compelled by my dna to do
really hard things to go out face to
saber-tooth tiger to make sure that i
get food and all of that and bring it
back to the tribe so i've got to have
like a really deep reward for doing that
and a really deep emotional punishment
for being lazy and if i don't have that
then i would never go out and do those
things that serve the group and make
sure that genes survive
cool so that's high risk number one
the reason it's high risk again is the
other way that nature uses fulfillment
is that
you have to have meaning and purpose
and
fulfilling meaning and purpose through
work is
very difficult you can do it i'm living
proof of that
but you're doing it in a way with
basically people that aren't your kin
they're not your family they're detached
from you they've got their own wants and
hopes and dreams and all of that and so
keeping them together and moving towards
something in a way that feels good that
i'm connected to a tribe of people and
all that
real tough when it's not your kin
because there's just extra juice when
it's your family think about it if you
had a father that
beat you
you still feel like some really deep
connection if i met a kid when i was
seven that was beating me up [ __ ] that
guy like i'd never like get them out of
my life don't want to think about them i
would laugh if somebody was like no you
should solve a relationship right but
you see people still have relationships
with the most abusive parents which i
give an example only that nature has a
[ __ ] grip on you that i don't think
people are really fully acknowledging
so i'm like okay
fulfillment from that perspective the
most obvious is kids the second you have
them you're like oh my god like how i
can't believe for even a second i
thought about not having kids like this
is crazy it's the best thing i've ever
done in my life like how many people
smart people incredible people
accomplished people have to pull you
aside and say
nothing you do in life will ever be as
potent as having children nothing the
number of people that pulled me aside
were like homie i don't care what you
dedicate your life to
nothing measures up to my kids so
my thing is okay cool i took all of that
on board i was like that [ __ ] is real as
real gets i'm not discounting it nothing
so
i know i'm gonna need fulfillment and i
know i'm gonna need to serve the group
if i don't do those two things like i'm
gonna be [ __ ] so the reason that i
think most people should have kids is
because it is ready made meaning and
purpose
you will get the neurochemical reward of
like oh my god that i have i have kids
this is incredible it gives you this
sense also that something is going to
live beyond you and i'm just enough
older than you that i will tell you one
thing that is coming for every single
human being on planet earth
is a sense of like oh [ __ ] i'm going to
tap out this is not forever and i really
want something to live beyond me now you
can trick yourself into believing that
your youtube videos are going to live
beyond you that your book is going to
live beyond you and that will give you a
ton of solace i don't think it will
match
feeling like your kids are going to live
beyond you but like i don't know who my
grandfather was on my dad's side i knew
my grandfather a little bit on my mom's
side my gran my great grandfather on
both sides i have no [ __ ] idea
none so if they were hoping that there
was some sense of them that was going to
live on in me i guess genetically
disappointed but yeah none of us i think
it's three generations right right right
cannot hope that you're and i couldn't
agree more on that argument i think
we're all uh much more forgettable than
we ever want to admit
we're not remembered for very long for
our presence here you imagine the the
most
i always think
name me
huge celebrities from the 50s yeah
and it's not easy
same 10 from the 1800s so what trends do
we have you know and and so i agree with
that argument
why don't you want them then
what what is the reason
remember i think that this is a very
high risk strategy
but here for me
i am
very good at relationships so my
marriage is [ __ ] awesome
and what i get out of that marriage is
insane and it makes all of the other
risks seem manageable
so the one thing that scares me is the
death of my wife because if that happens
i will have chosen poorly i'll just be
honest with myself right now
so i get so much out of my marriage that
i don't find myself wanting so every
time i thought about having kids i was
like
if you have kids and they're not your
number one priority you're doing
something wrong
but at the same time your kids are going
to leave you
and i remember my mom when i was a kid i
would say like
who's like more important to you
dad or us kids and she would say your
dad because you guys are gonna leave if
i've done my job well as your mother you
will go be autonomous beings at some
point and my mom almost literally had to
kick me out of the nest it's the
greatest gift she's ever given me and
utterly fascinating because every day
since then she tried to get me to come
back
like
really really give her a lot of credit
for that
and but she got divorced
and so i can only imagine the
devastation of saying your father is
more important to me even than you kids
my mom was amazing as a mother
but nonetheless had even more eggs in
the father basket and they end up
getting divorced now from a biological
perspective that [ __ ] is so predictable
as to be funny which is why i would
really love to see like really really
nobody knows like the actual stat of
like forget marriage certificates of
people that have committed their lives
to each other for more than say five
years how many of those relationships
break up homie i'm gonna guess it's 80
it's got to be ridiculously high
and so
when we look at that like they're just
components like when a woman goes
through menopause forget it she is going
to look at you so differently like when
her kids are gone she's gone through
menopause and she's like why have i been
cleaning up after your ass for so many
years like to ju you have to acknowledge
that this stuff changes and that it
becomes its own personality to jordan
peterson's point again about micro
personalities but these become macro
personalities like when i think about
how obsessed i was with sex in my 20s i
would the 25 year old me that was you
know recently married to lisa
would laugh
if he heard that i have a rule monday
through friday if i'm awake i'm either
working or working out he'd be like you
must be joking that means you're not
having sex during the week get the [ __ ]
out of here future me you have ruined my
life
but as my
hormonal profile has changed
it's just not as all-consuming right
it's still super important to me on the
weekends i still think that people
absolutely if you're not having sex
weekly you are really in trouble and i'm
talking like you could be 85. like you
just need that physical relationship for
your marriage to thrive
but nonetheless like you change over
time
and so
recognizing that about myself is
incredibly important understanding how
things are going to change is incredibly
important so the reason that to bring it
back to the question the reason that i
didn't have kids i'm getting a
tremendous out of my marriage i know how
to manage that relationship to make sure
that it's incredibly rewarding and my
ambitions in business border on mental
illness not a justification it just
really is who i am and so either i need
to go in and like do the deep work of
unwinding all of that so that i'm no
longer getting my meaning and purpose
from my work because i learned very
early in my business relationships
that i needed to
build a business and generate wealth out
of helping other people and doing
awesome things for other people so now
the harder i work the more that i'm
improving people's lives and as i'm sure
you know i get comments every [ __ ]
day like you've changed my life if it
wasn't for you i would have committed
suicide like day in and day out so i'm
like when i'm
busting my ass this hard but i'm getting
this tremendous echo back from people
that what you're doing matters in my
life okay so all of that and then right
in those peaks sort of early 30 years
i was on the cusp of like this is
actually starting to work
and so now i'm like moving up in life
and like things are really working and
it's clicking and i'm building wealth
and like oh [ __ ] so i'm getting all this
fulfillment i'm no longer chasing money
i'm trying to add value to people's
lives but it's also like coming back to
me in the form of money my marriage is
[ __ ] incredible my sex life is insane
and i'm like thinking about having kids
and i'm like yo i really want this
but
i don't want
the things that are working to change
and so i'm like okay there's no utopia
only trade-offs and i'm like be honest
with yourself when you're on your
deathbed are you going to regret not
having kids and i was like one thousand
percent
and so you're going to betray your
future self yes i am why because i have
this obsession with frames of reference
your entire life is just a frame of
reference the problem is your frames of
reference change and what mattered to me
now what my frame of reference is
productivity uh changing my potential
into actual usable skill set making sure
that my marriage is thriving mattering
in the world
being both the shout and the echo so
like doing something that matters that's
the shout getting the echo back yo this
has meant something in my life like
that's my frame of reference today now
does that get me into my 60s probably
like i think i can be really vital into
my 60s does it get me into my 70s
probably not so somewhere in there my
frame of reference is going to change
and i'm going to be like you bastard as
a young person like you didn't have kids
and oh my god and i just thought okay
what's my plan b that if it became my
plan a i would be okay and that would be
mentoring other people and so if you
look at benjamin franklin never had kids
but he really got into mentorship in his
old age i've already done mentorship and
i it really gives me something so i'm
like okay i will a thousand percent
resent that i did not have kids because
there will be no
of my own genetic code making it into
the future unfortunately i know that
just technology changes so fast no book
no
video is ever going to make it more than
say 50 years
so it's like okay like it feels good now
and i'm super stoked that like you know
i've got videos that are like seven
years old that like still perform
work like so i know that i'm going to
get some number of years
super shelf life anyway so frame of
reference i'm just super aware
that it's going to change
but i don't want to live my life for my
deathbed frame of reference and so when
i hear people say yo i think about
myself on my deathbed and i make my
decisions today based on that
i think they're crazy i check in with my
dead death bed self i won't lie and i'm
like okay how am i going to feel about
that then oh this one i'm actually not
going to like on my deathbed interesting
but am i going to change today knowing
that this frame of reference is probably
going to get me into my 60s and that ps
i may not live to see tonight
let alone my 60s and if you do get into
your 60s 70s and 80s then you can mentor
and still kind of fulfill that criteria
a different way or be it not quite the
same but still kind of tick that box
yup
none of what you just said um
doesn't make sense to me
i
i am you know and anyone who knows me
will tell you i have not been the person
in my life who's always been like i'm
having
kids um
even today it does it's not like a thing
like i must
i must do this
um
and so it's always interesting to me to
talk to different people and to hear you
articulate that because all of that
makes sense to me
the
the part that
i might stumble on if i was playing
chess with that is
i i try to look at my life and go what
are the moments
that
really kind of
make me feel connected what are the
moments that really
bring me joy or just make me feel i i i
don't like thinking about what do you
really enjoy when you do it because most
of the things i
that make me feel great aren't things
that i really enjoy when i'm doing that
is a conversation under itself i totally
agree
but i do like asking the question
what once you've done it are you glad
you did
because i find that much more
kind of instructional in terms of what i
should be spending my time on
and
in the top three always for me is
having a conversation
a true moment of connection with
a person a friend a family member
someone i care about or even sometimes
just
a person that i just
share a moment with or share a great
conversation with you know
that's those tend to be the moments
where i walk away feeling really filled
up
i also get it from doing something
creative and
and feeling like i just got that feeling
i just did something that mattered that
expressed myself
i also get it from working out but i i'm
a firm believer and there are only four
or five things
in life that if i regularly do them give
me that feeling and i should just spend
as much of my life as possible doing
those four or five things
but one of them is undoubtedly
people and i find myself constantly
drawn to even though i'm
you know i'm an introvert i do not
easily do things with people
it takes me a lot of effort
i
almost instantly regret every plan i
ever make
i get to the day and i regret it even
more
and i pray and hope that they'll cancel
and then they don't and uh and i go and
you know
for the first five or ten minutes or
hour i'm kind of getting through it and
then at some point
it i have a moment where i go
ah that was so worth it i'm so glad i
did that
and it's always around people for me or
at least you know when it's not around
work
and and interestingly people always that
moment with people
always
releases the pressure valve on
everything else
it always makes me feel like i know i
will
you know i go into today feeling the
stress of the day and how many things i
have to do today and all of that and i
know i will leave this conversation
with a sense of none of it matters as
much as i think it does
it you know i i'll leave feeling just
sort of
happy
just feeling like that was great that
was a great conversation i just
more of that like that was great and i
won't in my mind now is none of the
things
that for the first half of the day i was
like
i go get that done and i got to do that
and i got to do that
and so
i suppose for me
children on one hand would represent
what i assume must be that experience
but on another level
and something that is frequently there
in your life on that level
and
and secondly something that
actually provides a kind of necessary
pressure valve
balancer perspective
forcer for all of those other things
that feel like they are
the most important things in the world
until you have a moment of presence like
that that
allows you some breathing space and
ironically i think you know if you take
cal newport's
deep work argument
the deep play the the
deep leisure and being able to lose
yourself in the things outside of work
provides that extraordinary energy
to then go back in and and do that thing
and
and of course it adds a lot to your
plate too but you've never been afraid
of adding things to your plate so it's
hard to make that argument as you know
now i know better but um
but so those those two things that
the relationships being the thing that
ultimately always brings me the most joy
and that's the ultimate relationship in
a sense
and
to th those things being the necessary
counter lever
to all of these other things that
are responsible for a lot of
joy in my life but also a lot of anxiety
and a lot of stress and a lot of taking
myself and life too seriously
i i imagine that it's a nice
it's a it's a
a portal
out of all of that and into a place that
forces presence
yeah you're very thoughtful i think that
is very wise
speaking of wise where can people follow
you
uh instagram is a good place to follow
me um facebook
and i also matthew hussey the matthew
hussey on facebook uh uh no coach
matthew hussey on facebook the matthew
hussey on instagram uh for anyone who
wants to join me on an immersive program
this year i'm coaching people for three
days in november on my virtual retreat
if you want to learn more about that you
can go to
mhvirtualretreat.com mh being my
initials matthew hussey so
mhvirtualretreat.com
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be legendary take care peace so the way
we want to create and maintain change is
acknowledge that discomfort is part of
changing it's part of doing something
new it's that unfamiliar space that my
subconscious likes to avoid we can even
reframe it it's signs that i'm moving in
a direction of difference