Matthew Hussey's Expert Tips for Attracting and Maintaining True Love

The Summit of Greatness is back! Buy your tickets today – summitofgreatness.com – On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I talk about the key to lasting relationships with an international guru of the dating and relationship-coaching scene: Matthew Hussey. Hussey emphasizes the importance of active listening, empathetic understanding, and clear expression of feelings. He highlights that genuine communication forms the foundation of strong partnerships and helps resolve conflicts constructively. Matthew Hussey is a speaker, New York Times Bestselling author, columnist for Cosmopolitan Magazine, and dating expert on ABC’s digital series What To Text Him Back. His corporate clients include Hugo Boss, The Perfume Shop, Virgin Gyms, Procter & Gamble, Bare Escentuals, U. S. legal giant Weil Gotshal & Manges, and global management consultants Accenture. 50,000 women have attended his live events and he has reached over 10 million online. In this episode you will learn,About “activation energy” and how dating apps destroy itWhy space is so important when navigating a disputeAbout the “castle” metaphor and why you need to build togetherWhy the “trash cans” define your relationship more than the highlightsThe four stages of all relationshipsThe first step you can do to get out of the weeds of singlehoodFor more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1490For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960Want more relationship episodes like this one? Sheleana Aiyana - https://link.chtbl.com/1436-podLewis Howes solo episode on relationships - https://link.chtbl.com/1450-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection. I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Josprey Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero, and many more. You'll also be able to dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials.

• 0:44Lewis Howes?

  So if you're ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com/summit2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I'll see you there.

• 1:01Matthew Hussey?

  You do expect something in a relationship, right? It's overly simplistic. We do expect things. We expect respect, loyalty, defined on whatever terms loyalty means to us, love, appreciation, all of that, to be seen. We have a lot of expectations in a relationship. So it's not a relationship where we just, we give without expectation. But that, to me, is where the building thing is really interesting to me.

• 1:26Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 1:50Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to today's special episode. Over the last 1,300-plus episodes, there have been so many impactful interviews that I've been lucky enough to have, and I always like to reflect on some of the most powerful. And this episode was one that resonated with most of you guys in the past, and I'm excited for the value it's going to bring you today as well. So I hope you enjoy today's episode.

• 2:12Lewis Howes?

  There's a lot that's happened in the last four years because Tinder really started exploding, you know, four years ago, I think. It was kind of four, three, two years ago. There was coming around.

• 2:23Matthew Hussey?

  And perhaps lost its taboo maybe in that time.

• 2:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly. And then all the other apps came out to make it more accessible to swipe left and swipe right. And Instagram became a dating app essentially in itself, and Snapchat, and all these social media apps are just now

• 2:40Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah.

• 2:41Lewis Howes?

  dating and looking at, there's thousands of options. It seems like there's so many good options, yet not one great option for anyone.

• 2:50Matthew Hussey?

  Well, when you say, you know, they've all become dating apps, then it makes me feel we've come full circle because wasn't that the original point of Facebook? Was to go on and see who on college campus is single, you know, who's, that to me is...

• 3:03Lewis Howes?

  Who's the cute freshman coming in?

• 3:05Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah, we kind of started there and we're, you know, it's now just many different ways to do it. Obviously, social media is used for many different things. But I think anything that makes easier the ability to meet people, you know, Cal Newport in his book, The Happiness Advantage, talks about the activation energy required for a task. And the higher the activation energy, the less likely it is you'll do something you want to get yourself to do. So he uses the example of like, if you want to play guitar, keep it by the couch so that when you sit down to watch the TV, oh, the guitar's there. If it's up in the closet upstairs and you have to go in, now the activation energy is higher, you're less likely to practice playing the guitar. And I feel like the activation energy of meeting people,

• 3:50Matthew Hussey?

  when people had to go out to a bar, you know, dress up, look the part, see someone across the bar, think about what they're gonna say, take the risk to get rejected in front of someone's friends or in front of their own friends, the activation energy was really high. And people, I think, whether they admit it or not, love the idea of the activation energy being really low. That I can slide into someone's DMs on Instagram and hit someone up with very minimal effort. I could be in my pajamas, watching, you know, some TV show doing it. And I've also minimized the potential rejection from that. The rejection isn't happening.

• 4:33Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't hurt.

• 4:34Matthew Hussey?

  It's not happening in real time, at the very least. You might have the rejection of, I never got a response.

• 4:38Lewis Howes?

  But it doesn't hurt.

• 4:39Matthew Hussey?

  Not quite.

• 4:39Lewis Howes?

  You're not looking someone in the eyes. Your heart's not beating out of your chest.

• 4:42Matthew Hussey?

  It's not real time rejection of, I approached you and you're now being cold to me, or you don't wanna speak to me, or you tell me you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. That's like real time in the moment.

• 4:55Lewis Howes?

  Do you really have a boyfriend?

• 4:56Matthew Hussey?

  Right.

• 4:57Lewis Howes?

  How many times do you go up to a girl and they say, I've got a boyfriend, thank you? You're like, you're lying to me.

• 5:01Matthew Hussey?

  I just didn't do well.

• 5:02Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 5:03Matthew Hussey?

  So that, that is, you know, we've lowered the activation energy for meeting each other. And that, I think, has saved a lot of people. But what, but it's also done something else.

• 5:14Lewis Howes?

  It's hurt a lot of us.

• 5:16Matthew Hussey?

  It's interrupted a little bit, maybe a lot, the story of attraction.

• 5:25Matthew Hussey?

  You know, I thought about this recently, how if, let's say, before any of this, there was a man who meets a woman when they're out in some social environment, they exchange numbers. He goes home and he has to call her, right? Now, that takes guts. I have to pick up the phone, I have to have a conversation and, you know, already I'm kind of investing, if you know what I mean. Before I've even made the phone call, I'm investing because I'm thinking, what am I gonna say? How do I come across right? And how do I still my nerves? That's a form of investment and we tend to value what we invest in. So I'm now already beginning to value this person more because I'm having to try at something.

• 6:06Lewis Howes?

  Because I, I, I met her, I got her number, exchanged information, and I'm thinking about the next step.

• 6:11Matthew Hussey?

  And even just, by the way, the meeting someone out and exchanging numbers, there's a story already happening there. It worked. I went over to someone and it worked.

• 6:20Lewis Howes?

  And there's a potential for something.

• 6:22Matthew Hussey?

  Oh my god, yeah. She could have said no, and she didn't. And she, and I knew, and I thought I was attracted to her, and I went over there and I did the thing.

• 6:30Lewis Howes?

  And she confirmed it.

• 6:31Matthew Hussey?

  And it worked, and now I have a number, and this is a story that's happening.

• 6:37Matthew Hussey?

  You go home, you think about it, make the call.

• 6:39Lewis Howes?

  You tell your friends about it.

• 6:41Matthew Hussey?

  Tell your friends, that's a form of investment. I met this girl, you've got to hear about this girl, you've got to see this girl. Adding to the story. Now, you go on a date.

• 6:53Matthew Hussey?

  That date, you have a great time, where am I going to take this person, what am I going to do? After the date, you go home and you might have to wait three days or four days till the next date with this person. And in those three or four days, you may not consider it work, but you are working for that person. There's a chasing that's going on in your mind, there's an investment that's going on in your mind, an imagination, the narrative that's happening. And that is all part of that kind of natural courtship that that pulls us into the next stage of the interaction, whether it's date two, date three, date four, exclusivity, moving in together, whatever it is.

• 7:34Matthew Hussey?

  Now compare that with someone, you know, hits someone up, swipes, we got a match. Okay, there's like no activation energy to that really. We got a match, who are they? Okay, read their tagline, loves, you know, dancing in the rain, whatever they, you know, okay, yeah, well, yeah, so what's up, you all right? You know, you want to hang out, you know, let's go for a quick drink. They get out together, he comes back or she comes back from a date to five more matches.

• 8:08Matthew Hussey?

  Before he's even got time to process whether he had a good time and what was it about this person, what, there's already more options coming at someone, there's more, or at the very least, you can go home and just explore more options from your bed that night after a date. So it's interrupting the circuitry.

• 8:29Lewis Howes?

  Which will give you more dopamine, which will give you more excitement.

• 8:31Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah, you're getting attracted to the novelty again, right now, not the depth of where this thing might now lead. Now, I'm not saying that that's insurmountable and that we're just all, this is not me painting a picture of doom and gloom about current dating. I do think there is a toxicity, there is a toxic element to modern day dating. But it's not, I'm not defeatist about that. I just think that the impact we make on people in the time we have with them becomes that much more important. Yeah. Because you can no longer rely on being the only person they're talking to that week or that month. They might be at five dates that week and a hundred messages from guys.

• 9:16Matthew Hussey?

  And probably today, for a lot of people, it's less likely they're on five dates this week, but they're talking to ten people this week. Yeah. You know, they're not, a lot of people are going on fewer dates than everyone thinks. People are having a lot less sex than everyone thinks. But what's happening is there's a lot of nonsense conversations. Superficial, you know, going nowhere, incessant texting conversations. Crazy, right? And no one's actually even just getting on the phone and talking, are they? Not unless they want to be different. Right. And that, that's where it really begins to shift, is you have to be the person who's different. That takes a risk, stands out.

• 10:02Matthew Hussey?

  That, yeah, well, and that, that's the current question is, in a world with more noise than ever, and for all of your people out there watching right now, everything I think we talk about here in this hour, we can apply to business too. Of course. You can apply everywhere. Yeah. I get hired to go do speeches for corporates where I apply what I've learned in ten years of attraction and relationships to business. Because it's the same thing going on everywhere right now. There is so much noise.

• 10:38Matthew Hussey?

  Everyone's talking, in business too, right? It used to be that you were, you know, in a, if you were a personal trainer, you were competing with the five personal trainers on your gym floor and maybe down the street at the other local gym. And that was the, those were the people that were your competition. Yeah, now everyone's a fitness trainer. Now, anyone with an Instagram account and a six pack. Yeah. Is your competition. Who's trying to sell their digital program or trying to convince people that they don't need to go to their local trainer. That I might be the other side of the world, but I've got something special for you that you should do it with me. So the, the whole thing has opened up. And what that means is that you can no longer rely on just the scarcity

• 11:24Matthew Hussey?

  of people to be special. I'm the only one in town. Yeah, even if you live in a small town, that someone's options are only limited to the radius they set their dating app to. That's it, right. If I want to expand it out by another state, I got a lot more options. Yeah. So it, we now can no longer rely on that. We have to be, we have to have a voice that defines us. We have to have a voice that makes us different. You know, from your business. There are how many podcasters keep joining every day, every day, every day. You no longer can rely on having the, the market share simply because you're doing podcasting. No. Right? You have to now be a voice that's different. Why are people, people only have so many hours in a week, right?

• 12:08Matthew Hussey?

  This is a, a long form podcast. It's, you know, the interview's an hour or so on. Why are people gonna sit with their limited hours and listen to my hour instead of these other six or 10 top podcasters? Cause we can't listen to them all. Right. So now your voice matters. Most people, I believe, who think they are evolved enough for a relationship or not. Right. And for a long time, by the way, I count myself in that category. Where I thought I was. I really thought, there were times in my life where I really thought I was a great, I was a great guy. I wasn't, I was, it wasn't that I was ever a nasty person. I was never a mean person.

• 12:53Matthew Hussey?

  I was never a. That wasn't the great partner I thought I was. It's not like I, there are times in my life where I thought, God, I'm just, I'd just be a great partner to someone. And I was not ready to be a great partner to someone. Because I think the first time you really give yourself to something, really commit yourself to not just your own happiness and your own needs. Cause that's what most people talk about when they talk about a relationship is their needs, their happiness. Right? How good it feels to be in a relationship is about them. But it's not about seeing someone else.

• 13:34Matthew Hussey?

  Truly seeing someone else and understanding who they are and understanding what their needs are. And supporting them and their happiness and their goals.

• 13:45Lewis Howes?

  Is a great relationship when you stop thinking about your needs and you just say, I'm gonna give to this person and look at them from a place of understanding and wanna bring them so much joy and fulfillment and not expecting return, but hopefully the other person is saying the same thing to, about you.

• 14:02Matthew Hussey?

  Well, yes and no. There's a lot of, there are a lot of people who on that idea, that ethos have lived a very masochistic life for a long time.

• 14:14Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 14:16Matthew Hussey?

  That, by the way, you, what you just described could describe one of two things. One, beautiful, one terrible. What you just described could either be an extraordinary relationship of two givers, or it could describe unrequited love.

• 14:35Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 14:36Matthew Hussey?

  It could describe the person who is giving, giving, giving, giving, giving to someone and playing the martyr in their own relationship. They keep ignoring me, they keep, you know, not meeting my needs, they keep being selfish, they keep. But I am just gonna show up and be my best.

• 14:54Lewis Howes?

  The best partner.

• 14:55Matthew Hussey?

  And love them and give my all and one day they will turn around to meet me in that. Many, many people have, have caused tremendous suffering to themselves and, and wasted a lot of good years.

• 15:11Lewis Howes?

  So is it both, give to yourself, make sure you're asking for what you need, but also giving?

• 15:16Matthew Hussey?

  It's, I, it's a combination of respecting what your core needs are.

• 15:26Matthew Hussey?

  What do I need? Like, when it really comes down to it, what's my standard for what I need?

• 15:33Matthew Hussey?

  Now, how exactly someone meets that standard is... That's where the messiness of relationships comes in. Because you say, "I want to be respected." And then someone does something and you go, "I don't feel respected." But they go, "But that doesn't mean a lack of respect to me." So now we have a whole conversation on the execution of a standard.

• 15:53Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 15:53Matthew Hussey?

  And different definitions of what meets that standard. That's where the confusion comes in. And that's where we have to have some really loving cooperative conversations to figure out, am I, you know, am I being... This is one of the hardest parts of a relationship. Am I being reasonable in asking for what I'm asking for? Or is this my insecurity speaking?

• 16:15Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 16:16Matthew Hussey?

  You know? Am I... Which one is talking? And sometimes we're so close, we don't even know. That's the danger. That's, by the way, I see one of the most valuable jobs I can do for people in my work is not to be a smarter voice than they are. Because people can be great. They can, when it comes to their friends or people around them or whatever, they can be very smart. But to be an objective voice outside of their drunken haze. Because we're so close to something, we get... We're not sober. And now we don't have logical answers to questions. Because someone's... We get to the point where we're arguing about something, "I don't even know if I'm right."

• 16:59Matthew Hussey?

  "I don't know if the thing I'm saying is... If I'm being the insecure one or if I'm being the reasonable one." And sometimes we leave a situation and we go, "God, I was insecure." And sometimes we leave and we go, "I can't believe I let someone convince me I was crazy."

• 17:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:15Matthew Hussey?

  They, like, they were the one that was doing the wrong thing and they convinced me that I was nuts.

• 17:20Lewis Howes?

  So how do we step out of that emotional feeling where we're feeling overwhelmed, they're disrespected or hurt or sad? Or like, their relationship didn't meet an expectation or communication was off? And we're in it and we're communicating and we're both frustrated. How do you step out and look at it from a different point of view? So that you just don't keep repeating that conversation over and over?

• 17:42Matthew Hussey?

  I mean...

• 17:42Lewis Howes?

  And don't hurt it further?

• 17:44Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah. I think there's a... We have to have a really healthy combination of always questioning ourselves.

• 17:52Matthew Hussey?

  And and saying, where is this coming from for me? And would it really hurt me to compromise on this standard? Is is would it be the more loving thing to do to understand this about my partner? But in order to that that needs to be combined with a simultaneous respect for ourselves and what we need. And to, I think, go to a situation and say, okay, I want to be the most understanding, compassionate, loving partner I can be, who doesn't inhibit or limit my partner, who supports them, wants them to do great. But I also need to recognize that I need to be the person that is understanding of the needs of my partner and what they want.

• 18:37Matthew Hussey?

  But at the same time, I need to be understanding of my partner's needs. But the context of me being super compassionate and understanding needs to be that I am that this is happening in a loving environment where my partner wants to be my teammate. If we're in a situation where our partner isn't showing empathy for us and isn't like, if you feel they're not trying to, that we're always coming to that side, that's a problem.

• 19:05Lewis Howes?

  That's tough.

• 19:06Matthew Hussey?

  That's a problem.

• 19:07Lewis Howes?

  There should be seeing, I see where you're coming from as well, type of energy and communication.

• 19:11Matthew Hussey?

  Exactly.

• 19:12Lewis Howes?

  Not just, I'm not getting what I want, you did this wrong.

• 19:15Matthew Hussey?

  You need to feel you have a teammate.

• 19:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:18Matthew Hussey?

  And a lot of people feel like they're constantly being understanding, but they don't have a teammate on the other side. I'm constantly trying to grow and understand your position, but I don't feel the same from your side. That then becomes a problem.

• 19:33Lewis Howes?

  How do you have the conversation so that it switches or it becomes more of a equal partnership and teammate?

• 19:41Lewis Howes?

  If you feel like you're the only one being on the team, how do you get the other person?

• 19:45Matthew Hussey?

  I think we need to communicate a lot about what about the spirit of the relationship. You know what I mean? Like.

• 19:53Lewis Howes?

  Not keeping score.

• 19:55Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah, like pride is a very hard thing to give up in a relationship because we become competitive often very quickly when we feel threatened, when we feel vulnerable, when we feel our partner's done something to hurt us. Now I'm now, how do I score a point? Or how do I?

• 20:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:13Matthew Hussey?

  And that's that's a just, once you get into that cycle, it's like you're just it spirals.

• 20:22Matthew Hussey?

  It has to, one person has to be prepared to break that cycle. I'm not gonna do that game. And I do believe that we have to love the way we wanna be loved. And we have to constantly educate our partner on what it is to love. Not from an arrogant place, but we're all, in a sense, both partners are always educating each other. By you do something I don't like, and if I have a loving compassionate response to that, I'm also showing you what I want this to be in reverse. When I do something you don't like.

• 21:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:01Matthew Hussey?

  Here's the response I want.

• 21:02Lewis Howes?

  I'm not attacking you.

• 21:02Matthew Hussey?

  Not a game playing response, not a, you know? Like, if you see a partner, you're in the early stages of relationship and you feel your partner was really flirting with someone over there. Having a conversation about something that made you feel uncomfortable, but from a loving place and from a kind place and from a place of that made me feel, it hurt me to see that and not, I'm gonna blame you and I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna get angry, but that, you know, that made me feel uncomfortable. Bringing an energy like that, most people aren't used to that. In a relationship. We're not used to that standard of communication. We're used to doing something and then someone attacks us.

• 21:40Lewis Howes?

  Reacting.

• 21:41Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah, exactly. So I think it's educate, we're constantly educating.

• 21:45Lewis Howes?

  What's it gonna take for us to not react to a situation where we feel hurt? Or like we, our expectation wasn't met from our partner and come from that place?

• 21:53Matthew Hussey?

  God, it's so difficult.

• 21:55Lewis Howes?

  Because why, why do we react so much?

• 21:58Matthew Hussey?

  Sometimes it's just space, like how I need to take a moment to to process something so that I can say, I can have a more evolved response.

• 22:09Lewis Howes?

  And not react. It's funny, I've been, you know, the relationship I've been in, which is newer in the last five months.

• 22:17Lewis Howes?

  I wanna talk about something right away and address it. She doesn't wanna talk. She wants to have space so she doesn't react.

• 22:24Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Lewis Howes?

  So she's, and she'll say like, I don't wanna get angry at you. I don't wanna yell at you. That's not the type of person I wanna be. So I'd rather just not talk. And then I'm in limbo and I'm like, I just wanna, I just wanna like get to resolve this thing. Let's at least communicate and then we can move on as opposed to holding on to something.

• 22:40Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Lewis Howes?

  For half a day or a few hours.

• 22:42Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah. Here's the thing, space is easy when you get a text you don't like. Or when you see something you don't like from afar and, and you're not gonna see that person for a few hours or till tomorrow. Now you have space to go through. You know, I'm angry. You know, I'm really, really angry. I'm upset. I'm sad, I'm hurt, I feel rejected, I don't feel enough. I, you know, you can kinda cycle through those and then have a couple of sensible conversations with people whose opinions you respect. You and I have done this.

• 23:19Lewis Howes?

  And be like, it's not that big a deal, take a break.

• 23:21Matthew Hussey?

  You go, okay. This thing, I'm feeling this and I'm hurt and I'm this and I'm that and I'm that. You have a couple of smart voices, either that come from in here.

• 23:30Lewis Howes?

  Which is hard to do.

• 23:31Matthew Hussey?

  Which is very hard to get that objectivity. And, or that come, you know, from just one or two people whose opinions you really respect. Who aren't gonna tell you what you wanna hear.

• 23:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:43Matthew Hussey?

  Who aren't gonna tell you, you're so right to be, to feel that way.

• 23:46Lewis Howes?

  Get angry.

• 23:47Matthew Hussey?

  You need someone who is brave enough and close enough to you and smart enough sometimes to recognize. You, I'm concerned that you're overreacting to this. And that this, this reaction is not gonna serve you.

• 24:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:01Matthew Hussey?

  And that I think you need to bring this energy to the conversation. That is extremely valuable. What's hard is when you get information in real time and you're with the person and you're in the same room. And now you're dealing with trying to process and create that, you know. Okay, I need to, I'm trying to get to a more positive place here.

• 24:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:24Matthew Hussey?

  While being asked to communicate in real time. Well, real time elicits reflex responses and reflex responses are often very harmful to a relationship. It's the, um. Reflex responses are often based on instinct. And instinct is very, very dangerous.

• 24:42Lewis Howes?

  False instinct, yeah.

• 24:43Matthew Hussey?

  We're so often told, you know, trust your instincts. And that's just not often great advice.

• 24:51Lewis Howes?

  If you're not emotionally intelligent and you're jealous all the time, then having a jealous instinct isn't necessarily the best thing.

• 24:57Matthew Hussey?

  But some of these instincts are kind of hardwired, right? What we're doing with a lot of our better nature is overcoming certain programming that we have. In a riptide, you get pulled out to sea. Your instinct tells you in that moment to swim back to shore against the current. Ignore the riptide, I just need to get back to shore. Which is stronger, you or the current?

• 25:26Lewis Howes?

  The current.

• 25:27Matthew Hussey?

  And it will drown you. You will exhaust and drown before you get back.

• 25:32Lewis Howes?

  True.

• 25:32Matthew Hussey?

  So.

• 25:34Lewis Howes?

  And tell me it washes you to shore, just like.

• 25:36Matthew Hussey?

  All right, so in that moment, fighting harder won't save you. Thinking clearer will. And thinking more clearly means I need to swim sideways. I need to swim parallel. Let it take me out, swim further or swim parallel? Because I'm giving myself a longer journey. But then when I'm out of the current, then I can swim back to shore. Now, that's not, instinct won't get you to do that because that requires thinking clearly. Instinct will drown you in that moment. And in a relationship, in dating, your instincts will get you killed.

• 26:12Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 26:13Matthew Hussey?

  You know, your instinct says, a woman goes on a date with a guy and has a great time and says, your instinct says, clear the calendar for the next three months. We found him.

• 26:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 26:26Matthew Hussey?

  We did it, guys.

• 26:27Lewis Howes?

  We had an amazing night.

• 26:28Matthew Hussey?

  Clear the schedule.

• 26:29Lewis Howes?

  We were connected on every level.

• 26:31Matthew Hussey?

  He's awesome. We have a great connection. Clear the calendar, this is what we're doing now. Even if, I'm not even saying someone hates the rest of their life. You can like your job and still be so caught up in the chemical rush of, this was amazing, that this is all you want to do now. Right? Well, this isn't good for what you want to happen here. What do you want to happen? Well, you wanna get to know this person better, spend more time with them. Invest at an organic pace, based on the level of investment that's going on, right? Thing I've said for years, don't invest in someone based on how much you like them. Invest on, based on how much they invest in you. Hmm.

• 27:16Matthew Hussey?

  People don't do that. People invest on instinct. I really like them. And my investment is proportionate to how much I like them. Not how much I'm seeing there's a mutual investment. Did I tell you about the castle? What castle? All right, this is, you're gonna like this. So I was thinking about this whole idea of investment. Like buying a castle? Well, that's the thing, you can't buy a castle for a relationship. I, see, to me, the relationship is the castle. When you meet someone and you have a connection, cause I'm always, I'm, you know me, I do seminars all over the world. We have thousands of women come and join us. And the thing that, there's always someone who puts their hand up and says, it starts the story with, Matt, I have this incredible connection with this guy.

• 28:02Matthew Hussey?

  So they're already in a relationship? No. They're just dating? Often not. Yeah. Now I, now I know we have a problem. When someone's justifying whatever they're about to say next, with what an incredible connection they have with someone. An incredible connection is like, you meet someone, you connect and you have a great plot of land. This plot of land could be great because it's in the middle of a forest, could be great because it's on the cliffs overlooking the ocean.

• 28:33Matthew Hussey?

  It's a beautiful place to build.

• 28:37Matthew Hussey?

  That's the connection. That's the connection, but it's still just a plot of land. Hmm. All right, see it for what it is. It's potential. Still just a plot of land. Now what you need is two builders. Two people who are gonna build something here. And that requires two people who show up each day and lay brick after brick after brick after brick. And slowly but surely, create a castle.

• 29:10Matthew Hussey?

  Most people have the experience of someone who joins them on that plot of land and they both look at it and they're like, isn't this great? Look at the ocean. This is great. Look at the view we have here. Look at the trees. Look at that. This is amazing. And they get real excited. Now, one of them might be willing to build. One of them might be a builder. The other one might just really like the potential of this plot of land. And then you have someone who's there building every day. They're doing the investment. I have the woman come to me who's building. And a guy who's left the construction site. I don't know where he is. He's at home, he's binge watching his favorite show, he's out on another, he's looking at another plot of land.

• 29:52Matthew Hussey?

  You know, and then three weeks later, he calls in and says, you know, he sends a text to her after three weeks of ghosting her or just disappearing or just patchy communication and says, thinking of you.

• 30:05Matthew Hussey?

  That's a builder who started building, then left the building site for three weeks and called in from home and went, how's the castle going? Wow. Meanwhile, she's over there building the castle on her own. You can't build on your own. And the problem we have right now is there are too many people who value the connection instead of the castle. Castle is where it's at. And if you don't have a true builder, who over time is gonna build, that's, that's what a relationship is, a castle. This is why love at first sight is [BLEEP] to me. Doesn't work. It's just whatever. It takes time. It's infatuation. It's, she's hot, he's hot. You know, there's some connection there that's based on the fact you like this and I like this. Oh my God, we're supposed to be together.

• 30:52Matthew Hussey?

  This is bony part of the equation. A castle becomes a castle because two people work on it and it becomes unique and ornate and there are secret passages where he's only the two of you know about. And there's an argument that knocks down a wall and then you build it up and fortify that wall. And it makes it even stronger and the weather over time weathers the stone on the castle in a unique way that makes it your castle. There's other castles in the world, but this one is uniquely yours. It's been built by the two of you. It's been hard won. That's a relationship. It's why, you know, a twenty year relationship or marriage or thirty year relationship or marriages is special is because two people have had to go through together.

• 31:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:36Matthew Hussey?

  They've done things together. They, this isn't fantasy. This isn't building a castle in the sky.

• 31:42Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 31:43Matthew Hussey?

  The idea of love, the idea of what we could be. The one day wager, I call it the one day wager, the one day. I'm making a wager that one day you'll be what I want you to be.

• 31:57Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 31:58Matthew Hussey?

  One day you'll, you'll invest in me the way I want you to. One day you'll change. The one day wager is the most dangerous wager you can possibly make in your love life. The real is what's going on now. Is someone trying? Do they wanna be here? Are they focused on the little, not just the big? Cause anyone can go and have a, like, people say, but when we're, when it's great is great.

• 32:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:24Matthew Hussey?

  When we go, like, we go, we've been on some amazing dates or we did that vacation. We had the best time. It was amazing. Of course you were on vacation.

• 32:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:34Matthew Hussey?

  Anyone can go to Disney World and have a great time. It's Disney World, right? That's the, that's the job of the place is to make sure you have a great time no matter who you're with.

• 32:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:46Matthew Hussey?

  Right, but.

• 32:50Matthew Hussey?

  You know what? When I was thirteen, I had a, like, when I was, I think I was twelve or thirteen, my parents took me to America for the first time.

• 32:58Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 33:00Matthew Hussey?

  And we came to Florida and where do you think we went? We went to Disney.

• 33:03Lewis Howes?

  Disneyland.

• 33:06Matthew Hussey?

  And I was massively excited. I was, I was so excited. It was exciting to be in America. I was excited to see the things I'd seen on TV.

• 33:14Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 33:15Matthew Hussey?

  Excited to see the references to movies I'd seen, excited for the rides.

• 33:21Matthew Hussey?

  We go into Disney World and I learnt something very interesting about myself there. This is gonna sound profound for a trip to Disney World. At thirteen, yeah. But I realised something about myself, because of course I go in there, it's magical, it's, oh my god, this is crazy, it's huge. Taking a photo with Mickey. Space Mountain, yeah, there's Mickey there, there's all these dazzling attractions. But it was something that stood out to me, even more than Space Mountain, even more than the big ride.

• 33:58Matthew Hussey?

  And it was the trashcans. Oh, yeah.

• 34:04Matthew Hussey?

  On some level, that maybe I couldn't fully articulate at that age,

• 34:10Matthew Hussey?

  I saw the trashcans and I was moved by it. I said, someone cared enough about this place to theme the trashcans. The trashcan in Tomorrowland is a futuristic trashcan. The trashcan in, you know, Indiana Jonesland or whatever it's called, is a tiki bamboo trashcan. The trashcans were different depending on where you were. It's amazing. Someone cared so much about the detail of that world that they styled and themed the trashcans. It moved me. Yeah. I've never forgotten that. Wow. The trashcans in life.

• 34:53Matthew Hussey?

  And I've thought about that endlessly in my business. When I do retreat, I just got back from my retreat and someone came, I told this story on the retreat, someone came to me at the end of the retreat, because of all the little details we put on the retreat, you know, the law, it's not just a, it's not just a seminar or an event, it's, we hold parties and inside those. Experience. It's an immersive world. It's like, it's, it's, we like to think we've created the immersive theatre of the self-development world. And someone came up to me at the end of this retreat and said, you achieved trashcan status. Mmm. And it. That's big. The thirteen-year-old in me wanted to cry. Wow, that's amazing.

• 35:37Matthew Hussey?

  Right? And it, it moved me again and I, and I thought, that's what I want and.

• 35:43Matthew Hussey?

  I'm, I thought about this even today as I was coming here and I was like, you know what? This absolutely applies to relationships too.

• 35:53Matthew Hussey?

  Often in a, in a breakup, often when people are going through difficult times with their partner or whatever, the thing they go back to is, but we had that amazing trip. But we had those amazing times. They, they go to these highlights. They go to the Space Mountain of their relationship. They go, but remember when we met Mickey? It's that, right? The, the meeting Mickey moment of their relationship.

• 36:19Matthew Hussey?

  But relationships are about the trash cans, man.

• 36:23Matthew Hussey?

  It's the trash cans. Yeah. Cause guess what? In a day at Disney, you ride Space Mountain once, maybe twice. How many times do you use the trash cans? Every day, all the time. Every twenty minutes, every thirty minutes.

• 36:37Matthew Hussey?

  It's the trash cans. And what will define your relationship is the trash cans, not Space Mountain. The lower moments, the messy moments. That are barely noticeable. The moments,

• 36:54Matthew Hussey?

  the, the micro attractions. The moment where we do something sweet, where we

• 37:04Matthew Hussey?

  think of our partner when we didn't need to, and we worry about the, the day they had or support them or even just support them silently or in private, you know, or support them by what we don't bring to them. It's that, it's the detail, it's the detail. And that's what's going to determine how great your life is. And my concern is, and we've all been there, my concern is the number of people out there who are staying in the wrong thing because of the Space Mountain of the relationship. A few moments that were magical. Or they're spending too much time grieving the loss of the wrong thing because all they remember is Space Mountain. Interesting.

• 37:47Matthew Hussey?

  They don't, they don't think of how trash cans were. And the trash cans, that's the stuff, that's the day to day. Yeah. How good was it day to day? This is the difference between being in love and being happy. What is the difference between love and happiness? You can be in love and be really unhappy.

• 38:07Lewis Howes?

  Be suffering inside and be in love.

• 38:09Matthew Hussey?

  You can't have constant be in love and be having a relationship that's causing you constant anxiety, constant heartache, constant pain, feeling overlooked, not feeling important. You can be in love and all of those things still be true. How crazy is that? We think that love is this thing where it's like, it's rational, like I'm gonna love, I'm gonna be in love with this person who brings me joy. Not true.

• 38:37Matthew Hussey?

  And we need to start worrying more about happiness. Because if someone isn't building with you, if someone isn't committing to actually building the castle with you, that's the quality of your life.

• 38:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:49Matthew Hussey?

  Not how in love you are.

• 38:52Lewis Howes?

  You might love certain things about them, you might have loved the date you went on, you might have loved the space mountain or the...

• 38:57Matthew Hussey?

  Certain characteristics they had.

• 38:58Lewis Howes?

  The sex was incredible.

• 38:59Matthew Hussey?

  How charming they were, how charismatic, how whatever.

• 39:04Matthew Hussey?

  It didn't, but maybe, it doesn't mean that you're happy day to day. There's a big difference, right?

• 39:12Lewis Howes?

  When do you know, I love this analogy, and it made me wanna ask you about, when do you know you're ready for a committed intimate relationship? When do you know you're ready for it, as opposed to you just feel alone and you wanna have someone in your life?

• 39:30Matthew Hussey?

  I guess when you're, when you're ready to build.

• 39:34Matthew Hussey?

  When you're ready to build, when it's not, you're going there because the fantasy of it all is exciting to you, but when you're actually ready to build. And, and that doesn't mean that you're not looking, see, the castle analogy is, is cool because when we were talking earlier about this idea of giving without expectation, well, you, you do expect something in a relationship, right? It's overly simplistic. We do expect things. We expect respect, loyalty, defined on whatever terms loyalty means to us, love, appreciation, all of that, to be seen. We have a lot of expectations in a relationship. So it's not a relationship where we just, we give without expectation.

• 40:17Matthew Hussey?

  But that to me is where the building thing is really interesting to me. Cause you wanna work hard as a builder in your relationship. But you want someone else who's building too. Right? That's where the expectation comes in. I'm gonna, I'm gonna work hard to build this thing. And I'm gonna build it at a really high standard. I'm not gonna look at your work and go, well, if you missed out some of the grouting there, then I'm gonna, you know, like skip it on my end. No, this is my standard. I'm gonna build to a really high standard.

• 40:49Lewis Howes?

  What if the person you've been with for a year isn't building to your standard?

• 40:52Matthew Hussey?

  That's, that's a conversation. That's a real conversation. Like, here's what I need. Here's the kind of relationship I wanna have.

• 41:00Lewis Howes?

  When do you start to just say, well, it's okay if they do half the job that I do?

• 41:05Matthew Hussey?

  Is the job, is the job they're doing half one you really need them to do well? Or is it one that can be done half? Sometimes I think there are certain things we let go in a relationship. That's where the compromise comes in. That's where the sacrifice comes in. There are certain things I'm okay with you not doing as well as I once thought I needed someone to do them. Man, I thought this thing was really important.

• 41:27Lewis Howes?

  It's not.

• 41:28Matthew Hussey?

  It's not that important. I love you. So what are we doing? I'm not worried. It's not that big of a deal.

• 41:35Matthew Hussey?

  And we've all done that. We've all seen those things that once were important to us and we let them, we say, you know what, this. I was at an age where I thought that was really important. And it's no longer as important or significant as I made it. And then there are things that never stop being important. Or they become more important. The ability to communicate well. I think as you get older, those things become more important. The ability for someone to have genuine empathy. To, the, the ability for someone in, let's say, an argument to, to not jump to saying a spiteful thing. That's hard to then forget. Someone who doesn't try and do damage in an argument, but tries to build. Tries to figure out, let's figure this out together.

• 42:18Matthew Hussey?

  We may both be hurt, but let's come to this in a loving way. When you're younger, you say that's just mean.

• 42:24Lewis Howes?

  Hurtful.

• 42:25Matthew Hussey?

  Cause you're hurt.

• 42:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:26Matthew Hussey?

  Right? And then you realize, oh God, three months later, they still remember that comment, even though they said they forgot it.

• 42:33Lewis Howes?

  And they hold on to it.

• 42:33Matthew Hussey?

  They still, they, they still have that in their head. I'm not doing that again. There are certain things, I think, as you get older, hopefully if we mature, we start to see these are the, this is the important stuff.

• 42:45Lewis Howes?

  What do you think are the, I didn't prep you on this before, but what do you think are the three or five components to a foundation of a relationship that has the potential to really thrive long term, committed for decades? What are like, it needs to have these three or these five things. Otherwise, it's going to be really challenging to be, to sustain this type of love and joy and happiness.

• 43:11Matthew Hussey?

  I mean, a couple of simple ones, I guess, are, I need to show up for my partner in ways that they need me to, not just ways that are comfortable to me. We, in other words, pay attention to what your partner actually needs. Because it's really easy to say, I'm gonna bring them lunch every day. That's, that's like, I, I'm a really good cook and I'm really, you know, I wanna slave away every morning to bring them lunch every day, cuz, you know, that's me giving.

• 43:43Lewis Howes?

  They don't care.

• 43:45Matthew Hussey?

  Bring lunch every day. Like, maybe they don't care. Maybe what would mean the most to them is you, them getting home and you really being interested in their day.

• 43:54Lewis Howes?

  Do you think love languages is an important part of this? Where it's like, understanding someone's love language and giving them their top priorities?

• 44:02Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah, I think, I think it's, I think that it's an interesting framework. And it's been, for a lot of people, a very successful framework. Um, I think any framework that just allows you to kind of, you know, create a little, a structure for things that gives you some simplicity around it is, can be valuable.

• 44:16Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 44:17Matthew Hussey?

  You know, and it doesn't mean it's the only framework you can apply, but it's a valuable model to work from.

• 44:22Lewis Howes?

  So showing up in ways that they need.

• 44:24Matthew Hussey?

  Showing up in ways, yeah, not what do I wanna give, but what do they actually need?

• 44:28Lewis Howes?

  And I think that's a lot of, that's a lot of conflict in relationships because, and I think you need to understand, do I wanna do something that's uncomfortable every day? That's not foreign to me, or that's foreign to me? Or do I wanna find a partner that enjoys the things that I like to give?

• 44:44Matthew Hussey?

  Well, that's, that's, that's an interesting question. I, you know,

• 44:48Lewis Howes?

  I might be attracted to this.

• 44:49Matthew Hussey?

  Any relationship is gonna be a bit of both, but sometimes it works even without, like, that's a kind of compatibility issue. But I think it even works outside of that in day to day stuff. Because you might say, the thing I wanna give to my partner is an awesome night together. But maybe what they need is an awesome night with their friends. And the maybe the most loving thing you can do is say, hey, I know you haven't seen this person in a while. You should go and see them. I know that relationship is important to you.

• 45:17Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:18Matthew Hussey?

  You should go and hang out with your mom tonight or recognizing not what's easy for me to give, but what might be less comfortable for me to give, but is actually what would mean the world to them.

• 45:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Matthew Hussey?

  And and I think if you really want to make yourself irreplaceable to someone, it's recognizing that.

• 45:36Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 45:36Matthew Hussey?

  Because no one else is going to do that for them. I mean, you know what I mean? Like it's they.

• 45:40Lewis Howes?

  At some level, yeah.

• 45:41Matthew Hussey?

  It's really rare to find someone who who is willing to do that for you.

• 45:45Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. Okay, so that's number one.

• 45:46Matthew Hussey?

  The second thing is to work on yourself.

• 45:48Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 45:49Matthew Hussey?

  And to say, I'm responsible for me. My partner isn't responsible for me. I need to do the work to be the most loving, confident person I can be in this world.

• 46:03Lewis Howes?

  What what is this?

• 46:04Matthew Hussey?

  Fulfilled.

• 46:05Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:05Matthew Hussey?

  Has their own purpose, has things that drive them.

• 46:07Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 46:08Matthew Hussey?

  That to me is very, very important.

• 46:11Lewis Howes?

  What's the first thing people should do to do work on themselves? Because you you threw a few things out there, but what's like?

• 46:17Matthew Hussey?

  I mean, firstly, do you have maybe here's an interesting question you can ask yourself. If I had 10 hours free right now, what would I do with them?

• 46:26Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 46:27Matthew Hussey?

  If you can't give a good answer to that question, you might already be describing one of the weaknesses of your relationship.

• 46:34Lewis Howes?

  And binge binge watching a series is not the best use of your time.

• 46:38Matthew Hussey?

  It's, you know, if the answer is, oh, my God, will I have my purpose, the thing I love getting stuck into or it doesn't even have to be some grand purpose. Not everyone has found like their life's calling, but it could be, I really want to learn this language, or I really want to see this friend, or I really want to go and, you know, whatever it is, read this book or learn this thing.

• 46:57Lewis Howes?

  Take care of my health.

• 46:58Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah, I want to, I can't wait to get to the gym. If you should be able to answer the question of my partner canceled on me today.

• 47:05Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:06Matthew Hussey?

  What would I do with that day now? And if you can't, that then you you begin to describe the person who's sitting there waiting for their partner to text them, waiting for their partner to make them feel good enough.

• 47:18Lewis Howes?

  And that's not attractive.

• 47:19Matthew Hussey?

  It's not, and it's not fair to our partners.

• 47:22Lewis Howes?

  It's a lot of pressure.

• 47:23Matthew Hussey?

  It's a lot of pressure. And and by the way, people put a lot of pressure on their partners by expecting their partner to put a Band-Aid on all sorts of things for them. You know, if they're feeling like we there's a lot of rhetoric about vulnerability right now. Now, I think vulnerability is huge. I think the work that people like Brene Brown are doing and so on is huge. It's massively important. Vulnerability is absolutely an act of courage. And we should encourage it more, both sexes, all the time. But here's vulnerability is something's making me insecure. And I'm I'm going to share it with you because you're my partner and I love you and I tell you things, right?

• 48:05Lewis Howes?

  But you don't want to do that every day, right?

• 48:07Matthew Hussey?

  Vulnerability, if an hour from now, I tell you, oh, God, I'm feeling insecure again. And then an hour from now, you go, that thing's affecting me again. And this one tonight. Because now, in a way, what we're doing is instead of sharing, we're dumping.

• 48:23Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 48:24Matthew Hussey?

  I'm asking you now to fix it for me, to put a Band-Aid on it for me.

• 48:28Lewis Howes?

  Make me feel better, yeah.

• 48:29Matthew Hussey?

  Of course, it's part of our part. A loving partner will support you and will do everything in their power to make you feel loved and to make you feel safe and to make you feel secure. And it's absolutely true that sometimes what we're feeling as insecurity is because our partner isn't doing their job in those things.

• 48:49Lewis Howes?

  That's true. They're not building.

• 48:50Matthew Hussey?

  They're not building. They're they're doing things that are proactively making us feel insecure. There's minor betrayals, minor neglects, all of that. But sometimes we have to say, okay, what part of my, what part of this am I responsible for? And it's my, it's my partner's responsibility. It's our responsibility in life together to share. To share the load, to work towards things together. But it's not your job to carry the load for me. To carry my problems, to put the Band-Aid on every day. I need to.

• 49:23Lewis Howes?

  Maybe once in a blue moon, yeah.

• 49:24Matthew Hussey?

  Of course, of course, and we, and we're all gonna do that. We're all gonna have like, we're, we're gonna have days, weeks, times where we're going through something really serious. And our partner's job is to show up. You know, but a friend of mine who's kind of blunt said to me, some days or weeks, you get to be needy and difficult and high maintenance and boring and, you know, insecure. And then you don't. And I thought, yeah, like, we get to be those things for a time. Until we don't. Until it gets too much for somebody else. Because we need to be, at, at the very least, we need to show our partner we're committed to our own growth.

• 50:09Matthew Hussey?

  So the, you know, the first one, what do we have? Show up in ways they need, not just ways you wanna show up. The second one's, uh, work on yourself. I guess the third one. To me, teamwork is everything. Like, being a genuine team is huge. Really looking at each other as teammates. As opposed to, you're there to meet my needs or I'm competing with you in some way.

• 50:35Lewis Howes?

  Man, I've done that before.

• 50:36Matthew Hussey?

  Like, we're an actual team. I, I saw, you know, one of the things I loved most about Chris Rock's recent stand-up, Tambourine.

• 50:43Lewis Howes?

  I haven't seen it yet.

• 50:43Matthew Hussey?

  Such a genius name. The whole concept is about the idea that he couldn't, in his last marriage, play the tambourine. He couldn't play the backup instrument, right?

• 50:55Matthew Hussey?

  And I thought it was such a great, great metaphor. Because in a good relationship, in a, in a really genuinely mutually supportive relationship, some days you play tambourine. Some days, you're their teammate. You can't, you know, the way he says it, her success is your success and vice versa. You're in this together and some days that person's the lead. And you're on tambourine and a lot of people have never learned how to play tambourine. There's the other thing, I don't remember where it comes from, but every relationship has a flower and a gardener. Right? Most people don't want to be in a relationship where they're always the gardener.

• 51:40Lewis Howes?

  And they want to be the flower.

• 51:42Matthew Hussey?

  Right?

• 51:42Lewis Howes?

  Blooming all the time.

• 51:43Matthew Hussey?

  Yes, and sometimes you have to be the gardener. No matter how long you've played the flower, right?

• 51:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:50Matthew Hussey?

  You and I have played flowers a lot in our lives, right? We've been used to being a certain, having a leader role and having these kind of big lives and big worlds and whatever. And then you go to a relationship and the relationship doesn't give.

• 52:05Matthew Hussey?

  You know what I mean?

• 52:06Lewis Howes?

  About you.

• 52:06Matthew Hussey?

  No.

• 52:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:08Matthew Hussey?

  I don't care.

• 52:08Lewis Howes?

  You wanted to be a flower.

• 52:10Matthew Hussey?

  You know, you're the flower out there in the world. Sometimes in our relationship, you have to be the gardener. Sometimes you've got to play tambourine, even if to everyone else, you are the constant flower. All right, movie reference, Constant Gardener. You can't, you can't be the constant flower. You can't, you might be in your business in some way, but.

• 52:31Lewis Howes?

  In a relationship, it's different.

• 52:32Matthew Hussey?

  You can't, now you're coming as two equals.

• 52:36Matthew Hussey?

  And so it's so much of it's checking your own ego. And being like, I'm in this to be with you as a teammate. Not this or this, this.

• 52:50Lewis Howes?

  When do you know you've found your match for life? Or your potential match for life, that you think this could be the match?

• 52:56Matthew Hussey?

  By the way, these are much harder questions than the first interview.

• 52:59Lewis Howes?

  I know. Is it when you see these three things after a period of time and you feel convinced that the the bricks are being laid equally in a certain way?

• 53:09Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah.

• 53:11Lewis Howes?

  Like, when do you say, I'm ready to be committed all in?

• 53:14Matthew Hussey?

  I think there are four, four stages to a relationship.

• 53:19Lewis Howes?

  Stage one.

• 53:20Matthew Hussey?

  Stage one is admiration.

• 53:23Matthew Hussey?

  That's when you don't have a relationship with this person. You admire, like, attracted to. I look at you and I'm like, this person's hot, they have something about them, I like their qualities, I like their energy. They have a good potential. Yeah. Okay. And by the way, that doesn't even mean they have good potential for you right now. It just means this is a person of high potential in some way. You admire them, yeah. The second stage is connection. And you could, I think, in that, in a sense, connection and chemistry are both relevant to this stage. Cause you have this person where there's a mutual like. I like things about you, you like things about me, I think you're attractive, you think I'm attractive. We share some common ideas, common grounds in life, our outlook, whatever.

• 54:08Matthew Hussey?

  Beliefs, yeah. Yeah.

• 54:11Matthew Hussey?

  That could be found on a great date. Doesn't really mean much still. This is the plot of land. Yeah, you can have great sex, there'll be chemistry, you can make out all night. None of this means you're gonna have a great relationship. Okay.

• 54:25Matthew Hussey?

  The third stage is commitment.

• 54:28Matthew Hussey?

  That says, I want to do this with you. I am committed to building with you. And you are committed to building with me. Right?

• 54:42Matthew Hussey?

  That's a really great stage to be at. It's very important, right? It's, you can't have a relationship without that. Any relationship without that, or where that's one-sided, is unrequited love, by definition. And there are a ton of people out there right now who say, I'm just, you know, I created a program recently called Attraction to Commitment, which literally dealt with why people keep getting stuck in limbo. Why they keep getting stuck in the casual phases and it never gets to a relationship. One of the things that fascinates me is how long we stay with something that's just casual, that isn't a real relationship,

• 55:18Matthew Hussey?

  on the hope that it will change.

• 55:22Matthew Hussey?

  Unrequited love, you know? Certainly unrequited commitment. Hey, it's a nice time when you're like 23, right? That's stage three. Stage four is compatibility. Hmm, man.

• 55:37Matthew Hussey?

  And the hard thing, I think, for a lot of people is, I used to question this one myself, like,

• 55:46Matthew Hussey?

  if, you know, the idea love conquers all, right?

• 55:48Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't. It does not.

• 55:50Matthew Hussey?

  I wish. I like it. I like that phrase.

• 55:52Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 55:53Matthew Hussey?

  I love the phrase. I love the sentiment of it.

• 55:55Lewis Howes?

  It's an amazing bumper sticker, you know?

• 55:57Matthew Hussey?

  And there's nothing, you know, what is more powerful in the world than than love?

• 56:00Lewis Howes?

  And all you need is love?

• 56:03Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah, apparently, apparently not.

• 56:05Lewis Howes?

  It's not true.

• 56:06Matthew Hussey?

  We need a little more. You can have love without commitment, right? And you can have, you can have commitment without compatibility.

• 56:17Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 56:18Matthew Hussey?

  And this is where things get, I I used to think, well, maybe commitment is enough and maybe issues with compatibility can be overcome as long as two people are truly committed to each other. I don't, I don't believe that anymore. I I think that it goes beyond commitment. To truly last, you have to have two people who are really compatible. Like, okay, let's say we got commitment. Two people want to be together.

• 56:42Lewis Howes?

  They admire each other. They have chemistry.

• 56:44Matthew Hussey?

  Right.

• 56:45Lewis Howes?

  They're, they say, I'm committed to you.

• 56:47Matthew Hussey?

  But one person's sex drive is here and the other one's is here.

• 56:51Lewis Howes?

  Not compatible.

• 56:52Matthew Hussey?

  This is going to be difficult.

• 56:54Lewis Howes?

  And one person likes to spend a lot of money, another person wants to save all the money.

• 56:57Matthew Hussey?

  Right.

• 56:57Lewis Howes?

  One person believes in a certain religion and another person doesn't believe in that.

• 57:02Matthew Hussey?

  One person, you know, wants to spend five days a week together. The other person is happy with one night a week together.

• 57:08Lewis Howes?

  One person wants their family to move in, the other person wants their space.

• 57:11Matthew Hussey?

  Right. These are serious, serious issues that often end relationships. And so to me, you want to say what? How do you know when you found your match?

• 57:24Lewis Howes?

  All four.

• 57:25Matthew Hussey?

  Four stages.

• 57:26Lewis Howes?

  All four.

• 57:26Matthew Hussey?

  I admire this person. We have connection and chemistry. We have genuine mutual commitment. And we're compatible.

• 57:35Lewis Howes?

  How do you know if you're fully compatible or somewhat compatible? And is there a spectrum of what's possible?

• 57:45Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah, that, I mean, I wrestled with that for for years myself is.

• 57:50Lewis Howes?

  We're compatible here, but not here.

• 57:52Matthew Hussey?

  And can we overcome this incompatibility here? Is it, it goes back to, is it one of my deal breakers? Is it really important to me? Or can I let up here? And does the other person understand the sacrifice I'm making in letting up there? And do they show

• 58:12Lewis Howes?

  An appreciation for that.

• 58:13Matthew Hussey?

  Appreciation for it? And do they, you know, do they see me for that compromise that I'm making?

• 58:21Lewis Howes?

  Or do they just expect you should do it easily?

• 58:23Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah, you just, well, you should have. That's the way I am, so that's the way you should be.

• 58:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 58:28Matthew Hussey?

  And to me, again, part of growing up is realizing I wasn't always right. I was, you know, there were things that I used to, you know, I've looked at ways that I've been in relationships in my past where I did something and I just so thought I was in the right and so took for granted what someone else was doing for me. The way that they were being forgiving, understanding.

• 58:53Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:54Matthew Hussey?

  And just completely took that for granted, you know? And I think, man, I mean, you know, you talk about, we were, four years ago, we were together on this.

• 59:05Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 59:06Matthew Hussey?

  What's the biggest difference in my life? Being humbled.

• 59:12Lewis Howes?

  How so?

• 59:13Matthew Hussey?

  God, in so many ways. In so many ways.

• 59:16Lewis Howes?

  Thinking you had it figured out in one way, but realizing that there was a lot of growth still.

• 59:20Matthew Hussey?

  Thinking you wouldn't experience this kind of pain or worry or anxiety or fear. And then, oh, it turns out I can feel that too. And those people who used to use, that I used to hear using the word anxiety, who I used to think, why is everyone fucking talking about anxiety? Like, what is wrong with everyone? Oh, shit.

• 59:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:42Matthew Hussey?

  The ways that you realize you're not, you're more vulnerable than you thought, that mistakes you thought you'd never make, you make.

• 59:51Lewis Howes?

  You make, yeah.

• 59:52Matthew Hussey?

  You said where everyone else's mistakes.

• 59:54Lewis Howes?

  Ah, man.

• 59:54Matthew Hussey?

  And then you make them. Things that were going well for you for a long time and then all of a sudden didn't go as well. And you thought they were just always gonna go well. All sorts of things. You know, man. And that to me is what, as you get older, you, hopefully, hopefully.

• 1:00:11Matthew Hussey?

  You, you know, Socrates said the mark of an educated man is is someone who has some awareness of how little they know. And hopefully, every year I realize how little I know. Less, more and more, I realize how much I don't know. And that has just, it's made me better. It's made me better. It's made me more forgiving. It's made me more empathetic. It's made me less judgmental. Made me a better coach, a better speaker. Not to be so sure of myself about everything all the time, you know?

• 1:00:46Matthew Hussey?

  Which doesn't always make for great Instagram quotes.

• 1:00:50Lewis Howes?

  I don't know a thing, yeah.

• 1:00:51Matthew Hussey?

  I know, I know. If I know one thing, I know this. Well, yeah, maybe I feel I know less now than I did five years ago. And maybe that's a good thing.

• 1:01:00Lewis Howes?

  It is a good thing, I think. Humility is a good thing. We all need it at times. I'm curious, for all the women who come to your retreats, who are suffering, they deeply want this love, this connection, this compatibility commitment. They want all these things that we're talking about. And they feel like they've been struggling for years. They've done the dating apps. They've gone on hundreds of dates. For all the people at your retreats, or the women who are watching or listening at home that just want to find their match, their partner. What's the first step they can take to start getting out of the weeds of like failure after failure and start seeing some progress to greater potential matches?

• 1:01:40Matthew Hussey?

  Or a couple of things. I mean firstly, there's a guy called John Kay who wrote a book called Obligity. And the whole idea of the book was obliquity is when you reach goals through indirect means. So if you take building a business, you're far more like, if your, if your goal is to make money, instead of focusing on making money, focus on all the things that provide value to people. Because the making money part will be the byproduct. If you focus on, I need to get rich, I need to get rich, I need to get rich, you're probably not going to do the things that are going to get you rich.

• 1:02:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:18Matthew Hussey?

  Because what makes you financially wealthy? The relationships you take time to build, that often for a long time. You don't ask for anything, you don't even care to, you're just building, you, you know, the products that you create for no reason, then you just think that they're great, or that you think they have value, or whatever the service that you provide people, it's just, it's not, what's the quickest way for me to make money? Most people like that don't get rich. Right.

• 1:02:46Matthew Hussey?

  In a relationship, there's all these things that build a relationship, that really have nothing to, that don't feel like they have anything to do with a relationship. Like, who would say, knowing what you would do with the next ten hours of your life, if it was free, is actually going to be a huge determinant of the health of your relationship? It's like one's over here and one's over here. Right. Shouldn't we be talking about how to have better sex? Yeah. Shouldn't we be talking about how to communicate well with my partner? No, we're talking about you being an independently attractive, purpose-driven, independent person who is attractive just to watch from afar because of the life you lead. That's going to lead to a much better relationship. By the way, even that will lead to better sex. Yeah.

• 1:03:31Matthew Hussey?

  Because your partner looks at you and is like, They're more attracted. This is a person. This isn't just an extension of me. Yeah. This is a person. So it's the indirect things that contribute. And so let's now take that to the single place. I'm, I'm single. What's, what do I do next?

• 1:03:52Matthew Hussey?

  Understand and study, and this is a big part of what I do in my work, so I'd encourage people to come check that out. Study the things that contribute to getting you a relationship, that often have nothing to do with getting a relationship. The things you do with your spare time. If I wanna learn yoga, do I do it on my own at home with a YouTube video? Learning yoga, by the way, on its own could be a good thing. Just because it makes you more interesting, you have more to talk about, you feel confident in yourself, all of that. But, okay, now let me do a more sociable version of that. Let me go and do a class where I might actually have the chance of meeting other people. Maybe they're not men, maybe there are other single women, but other single women are useful too. Another indirect variable.

• 1:04:34Matthew Hussey?

  Because you have more single friends or more fun friends, more charismatic friends, friends who come knocking at your door going, "Hey, we're going out. Get out of your goddamn pajamas, we're going out." Right? That person is gonna be great for your love life. Makes you more desirable, have more value. And makes you leave the house. Yeah. Instead of staying in every weekend, makes you leave and go to places where people are. The books you read, who would say the books you read have anything to do with your relationship? But they do on a date when you have to talk about. Absolutely. Right? So, there's all these factors. Now, the reason I'm saying that, because of course there are direct factors, but look, my programs in my company, which by the way, people could go to howtogettheguide.com to go and find all of these.

• 1:05:18Matthew Hussey?

  But the programs I have there are about very direct things, like how to flirt. Strategies. How to meet someone, how to do this, how to do that. But that's one piece of it, right? It's, I encourage people to do all those indirect things. And then someone can't say, "I'm just sick of going out, I'm, I'm, I'm give, I give up." On what?

• 1:05:40Matthew Hussey?

  On what? Yeah. Like, someone said that to me in a seminar, I'd say, "I just feel like giving up." Tell me what- On yourself, on life? What are you giving up on? I wanna hear this. Tell me, what are you giving up on? Well, I, uh...

• 1:05:55Matthew Hussey?

  Meeting people? Meeting people, would you not meet people? If you, if someone said you could never find the love of your life, that's off the table. Would you really stop meeting people? Yeah. Your need for a human interaction would disappear? I don't think so. You'd stop flirting with people? That's part of your character. Flirt, being flirtatious is a part of who we are at times. Yeah. So why would we lose that, being sexual? Would you really lose that? You're gonna stop being sexual just because the end result isn't coming? I don't buy it. You'd stop doing hobbies, you'd stop getting out there? All the things that you have to get rid of to say, "I'm done with relationships" are things that would absolutely erode your life.

• 1:06:39Matthew Hussey?

  Even if you take the relationship out of the equation.

• 1:06:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Matthew Hussey?

  So I think people have to, I understand, I know there is a terrific level of like dating burnout right now. And if you're out there feeling that right now, I urge you to think about this differently. And to say, I don't have to constantly have it in my mind. I'm trying to meet someone, I'm trying to meet someone, I'm trying to meet someone. That game gets boring. And now when you go on a date and it doesn't go anywhere, you're a failure.

• 1:07:05Lewis Howes?

  You're exhausted, yeah.

• 1:07:06Matthew Hussey?

  God, I'm done. See it as life. This isn't dating. It's life. It's meeting people.

• 1:07:15Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:15Matthew Hussey?

  It's experiencing a great conversation, having a fun moment of interaction, of flirtation. Doing things you wanna do anyway, doing hobbies you wanna do anyway. Cause they'll, they'll enrich your experience of life. All of those things are really important. You don't have to call it dating. Just go live.

• 1:07:35Lewis Howes?

  It's kinda like the analogy you said about running a business. If you're focused on, I need the relationship. Whereas like, I need to make a certain amount of money.

• 1:07:42Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:42Lewis Howes?

  Is the, is getting the relationship as opposed to, why don't I add value to the world and I'll attract the customers that will pay me and I'll make some money?

• 1:07:51Matthew Hussey?

  Because I need to make money focuses on things that make the short-term economics work.

• 1:07:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Matthew Hussey?

  And those things are generally not good for a business.

• 1:08:00Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 1:08:01Matthew Hussey?

  Right? Same in, same in love.

• 1:08:03Lewis Howes?

  I wanna, I wanna ask you a couple of final questions. This just came to me. I don't think I've ever asked anyone this, but since you're the love guy, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go there. Typically, I would ask the three truths question, which is what are your three truths if it was the last day of your life? But I'm gonna ask you a different spin on this. Imagine it's the last day of your life and you've been in a, a committed, compatible, loving relationship with the woman of your dreams for the last thirty, forty, fifty, whatever years. And you've been a part of this journey and experience where you've built this incredible castle. With all of its dents and wears and tears and love and magic and unicorns and everything.

• 1:08:48Lewis Howes?

  And it's your last day. And you've got a, the lights are gonna go off and you're not gonna be on this world anymore. And your partner has a few more years to live. She's gonna live a little longer than you. And you get to write three things, a love letter to your partner.

• 1:09:08Matthew Hussey?

  Right.

• 1:09:09Lewis Howes?

  About the three things you loved about her the most. That brought you the most joy, the most incredible life from this relationship that you built together.

• 1:09:22Lewis Howes?

  What would you say or write to her are the three things you loved the most about this woman?

• 1:09:30Lewis Howes?

  That she would remember and go on for a few more years afterwards?

• 1:09:33Matthew Hussey?

  That would be specific to a relationship, right? To a specific person?

• 1:09:37Lewis Howes?

  To that relationship, yeah. To that person and the relationship. Imagine the relationship is everything you could ever dream of. You created the relationship of your dreams. It's the golden standard for the world. To look at a relationship and say, wow, they lived it. They did it, they loved, they went through it, they were vulnerable, it wasn't perfect, but man, this couple is the golden standard.

• 1:10:05Matthew Hussey?

  Man, okay.

• 1:10:06Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are the three things? So I want you to go there, because I believe you're gonna create that. In the relationship that you wanna create.

• 1:10:14Lewis Howes?

  So what are the three things you would write a love letter to your wife on your last day? About the three things you appreciated the most about the love you created together?

• 1:10:24Matthew Hussey?

  That

• 1:10:27Matthew Hussey?

  you made me feel safe enough to be the best I could possibly be.

• 1:10:36Matthew Hussey?

  Your love made me feel so secure.

• 1:10:41Matthew Hussey?

  Gave me such a platform to go and make an impact in the world on.

• 1:10:47Matthew Hussey?

  That that, and don't get me wrong, I think we should have our internal security, but I felt so secure in the relationship that this gave me, this relationship gave me the energy to go out there and do amazing things with that energy. So I made a bigger impact in the world because of the energy that your love gave me.

• 1:11:10Lewis Howes?

  I'm getting chills already. This makes me emotional just thinking about it.

• 1:11:14Matthew Hussey?

  Anywhere to go from there?

• 1:11:16Lewis Howes?

  So safety, security.

• 1:11:20Matthew Hussey?

  That you

• 1:11:24Matthew Hussey?

  You made me feel

• 1:11:28Matthew Hussey?

  like I wasn't alone in the world. And I don't just mean because we had each other.

• 1:11:33Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:34Matthew Hussey?

  You can feel very lonely in a relationship, especially if you don't feel seen.

• 1:11:38Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:11:41Matthew Hussey?

  But you find someone who sees you, who really gets you. And all of a sudden, you don't feel so alone in the world because life is lonely. You can have tons of people around you, but there are certain, there's a certain existential loneliness that many people feel in life that

• 1:12:06Matthew Hussey?

  for moments or times evaporates when you feel a true connection with someone and you see each other. You go, wow, this is, that's, that to me is transcendent. So you, your ability to see me made me feel less alone in the world.

• 1:12:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:31Matthew Hussey?

  And I guess

• 1:12:34Matthew Hussey?

  you were a role model for me.

• 1:12:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:12:39Matthew Hussey?

  That

• 1:12:41Matthew Hussey?

  through observing you and seeing the way you live and seeing the way you approach things, that there were so many times where I noticed you were better than me. And that taught me how to be better. It taught me how to, you, I grew because I saw the way you were.

• 1:13:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:13:06Matthew Hussey?

  And that showed me, no matter where I thought I was, being around you showed me

• 1:13:14Matthew Hussey?

  how wonderful people can be. And that made me want to be more wonderful.

• 1:13:18Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:13:19Matthew Hussey?

  I guess those would be three.

• 1:13:21Lewis Howes?

  That's a beautiful love letter. What's the letter you would write to yourself? You're 200 years old. It's the last day still. And you'd write a letter to your 32-year-old self. 32 now?

• 1:13:36Matthew Hussey?

  31, 32 in a couple of weeks.

• 1:13:39Lewis Howes?

  You write a letter to your 32-year-old self and say, one piece of advice, looking back at what you'd say to yourself on how to become the best partner to create that magical relationship.

• 1:13:54Matthew Hussey?

  One thing I would say, looking back, looking at myself, saying, here's a, here's a guide to being a...

• 1:14:01Lewis Howes?

  Here's what you need to do to become that partner with that, with that other person. Here's what you need to let go of, here's what you need to step into, here's where your ego needs to take a check.

• 1:14:15Matthew Hussey?

  I think, how many things do I get?

• 1:14:16Lewis Howes?

  Give yourself a few.

• 1:14:17Matthew Hussey?

  Let's do, let's do a couple. I, I think, I always loved just the, the idea of, you know, question everything. You know, don't, that thing that you take for granted that you're right about, you know, question everything, cause it's, I mean, it's just amazing to me, the things I, I look back on now and I no longer disu- I no longer agree with what the 23-year-old version of me thought, the 25-year-old version of me thought. And I think, understanding that, at least, we're, we're not very good at thinking about all the ways we might be wrong today. But we're really good at knowing the ways we were wrong before, right? And it's more, that's, you know, if you think of a lot, a lot of self-improvement, people, right?

• 1:15:02Matthew Hussey?

  Gurus, leaders, whatever, you know, people wanna call themselves. They struggle, they're very good at telling stories of how they fucked up, ah, five years ago or 10 years ago.

• 1:15:13Lewis Howes?

  But now you're still doing it.

• 1:15:14Matthew Hussey?

  You should've seen me then. But not many people are good at talking about today.

• 1:15:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Matthew Hussey?

  And I think that that's a kind of blind spot we, we, most of us have, in life, people in general. And I think if we can apply that thing of, oh yeah, God, I was so wrong about that five years ago. I was so, I couldn't be more wrong about that, and I know that now. We should apply that to the next five years too.

• 1:15:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:39Matthew Hussey?

  You know, in the next 10 years and say, there's a lot I'm gonna look back on five years from now and say, God, I did not know what I was talking about. That doesn't mean we should not trust ourselves on anything. You know, there's, I've heard it said, you know, strong opinions loosely held. You know, it doesn't mean we shouldn't be passionate about what we think now, but it does mean we should leave room for questioning. And to that end... I think I would tell myself to be kinder to myself over the course of my life for things that I'd, mistakes I'd made within relationships. I have definitely, I have definitely been the person and even today have to wrestle with

• 1:16:23Matthew Hussey?

  doing something that I know, God, that wasn't the best reaction to that. Mm hmm. I wish I'd handled that differently. I wish I'd have said a different thing. I wish I'd have phrased that differently. I wish I didn't say that. And then really, really beating myself up for it. Yeah. You know, not letting it go. Even after you've finished the argument, even after you get to the other side of it. Holding on to it, yeah. Continuing to berate yourself for it. And the shame about that is that it lacks humanity. It makes us forget that we're human and that we don't get everything right. And the only way we're gonna get more right is by making certain mistakes and learning from them.

• 1:17:08Matthew Hussey?

  That's true. And it also stops us from being effective because that energy that we're putting into berating ourselves is actually stopping us from doing the very things that would move everything forward from that mistake. Mm hmm. It's not, it doesn't make relationships better. Mistakes actually make relationships better very often. Because you learn, or you hopefully you'll learn. You learn. Those things, they really can transform, mistakes can transform relationships, but not if you sit there consistently dwelling on them. They make relationships better if you can improve from them and move on and be the thing you wanna be now.

• 1:17:49Matthew Hussey?

  So I think I would tell myself to be kinder to myself for mistakes. Yeah. To not obsess over things I should have said or done differently. You know what? To that end, we should, halfway through this interview, I was, kept losing my train of thought.

• 1:18:10Matthew Hussey?

  And probably you were gonna edit that out to be kind to me because like. Don't beat yourself up over it. People that real. Yeah. Matthew Hussey's really eloquent. Oh, look at the way he could string a thought together. Well, I lost, I, I lost my train of thought three or four times. I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. I, I couldn't think of the thing I was gonna say next. I kept, kept blanking.

• 1:18:36Matthew Hussey?

  Okay, show people that. That's, that's inspiring. Yeah. Oh, Matthew Hussey can be in the middle of an interview and just go completely blank and not know what the was saying. Yeah. Then what am I worried about? Yeah. That's more interesting. And that's, you know, that's a real relationship. Yeah. Real relationship. That's, that's the real stuff. That's the stuff we're not seeing when we see other people's relationships and everything. The highlight reels. Great and everything. No, that's like, if we wanna, if we wanna change our world, forget the world for a moment. Cause it's always seems a bit grandiose when we talk about changing the world, but changing our world.

• 1:19:14Matthew Hussey?

  Let's bring in the real. Because that, that genuinely changes things. You know what makes relationships better? True realness, vulnerability, people. Living their truth, people being more real, being more upfront, more direct. You know what makes you more attractive on a date? Being more real. Not going there. You people worry about their hair and is this all right? Be, tell a real story on the day. Yeah. That's what's gonna, you wanna talk about deep attraction, not surface level. Deep, surface level is in two D on Instagram. Deep attraction, the kind of attraction that gets relationships comes from real stories. Yeah.

• 1:19:54Matthew Hussey?

  Real shared experiences. And if you want, and if you do wanna change other people's worlds, as you know, cause you're so good at it, it's bring people the real. Yeah. Cause that's more inspiring than the. Guy who sits there and does great for an hour and always knows exactly what he's gonna say.

• 1:20:11Lewis Howes?

  Perfect person, yes. It's not as interesting. I love this man. Those are good insights for you. Hopefully that's helpful for your life reflecting on that.

• 1:20:19Matthew Hussey?

  Yeah, you've, I mean, that was, yeah, you asked a hell of a question. You're great though, man. You're great at what you do and I have to, I know that you, you say a lot about, you know, I hear you talk a lot about gratitude and you ask people questions constantly about that. I have to share my gratitude for you while we're here to, to honor you to your audience because you have, you know, I've been through difficult things and I've given you the phone call at difficult times in my life.

• 1:20:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:49Matthew Hussey?

  Where, you know, I'm like, Lewis, I need someone to talk to, man. And you've given me the time, sat down with me and been a voice for me that is sober and out of my own head. And been truly kind in, kind and wise, which is a good combination. When someone's not just being kind to you, but they also are saying things that are very, very astute and helpful. And you've been that for me in some, in some really difficult moments. And I remember in those moments thinking, God, I'm so, going home and thinking how grateful I am for that friendship.

• 1:21:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:25Matthew Hussey?

  And, and hoping that more people get that for themselves because it's a tremendous thing when you have it. So thank you for that.

• 1:21:32Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it. It's been a beautiful four years.

• 1:21:34Matthew Hussey?

  It really has.

• 1:21:35Lewis Howes?

  I'm excited for forty more, man.

• 1:21:37Matthew Hussey?

  Hey, let's keep putting paint on the wall.

• 1:21:40Lewis Howes?

  I'm in, man. We gotta keep building. We gotta keep building.

• 1:21:43Matthew Hussey?

  And I'll say to anyone out there right now who's watching, um, because I wanna, I'd love to give you a way to kind of continue the journey with me, uh, if I'm resonating with you. There is a, a wonderful video. I do my retreats twice a year, as you know, there are six day program. And I urge anyone to apply for that if you, you know, can create six days to transform your life.

• 1:22:06Lewis Howes?

  Game changer.

• 1:22:06Matthew Hussey?

  Please, please, please apply. That's at Matthew Hussey Retreat dot com. But I also created an at home version of this for people who aren't able to come to the live event. And you can obviously go and do that program and I would encourage you to do it. But what I've done is taken a training piece from that. And I'm giving it away as a gift. And that's, I literally bring a woman on stage, this beautiful gorgeous soul Alexandria. I bring her on stage and we really transform her perspective and her confidence in a kind of very relatively short space of time. And people can see what's possible for themselves in their confidence by watching this video. And by watching the process that I take her through.

• 1:22:49Lewis Howes?

  Where can I get that?

• 1:22:50Matthew Hussey?

  That's at GetMatt'sSecret.com, Matt with two Ts. GetMatt'sSecret.com. You know, just go there, put in your email address. You can download, you can be watching it immediately, five minutes from now. But it's very, very powerful. And for anyone who's like, oh no, you know, I wanted more of this, they can, you can go and get more there.

• 1:23:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and subscribe to you on YouTube because I watch your videos and I'm not a girl. You know, they're for women, but I'm like, I learned so much as a man. Being in a relationship, when I was single, I would watch them and I was just learning so much. So it doesn't matter who you are. I look forward to every Sunday to getting your email for the videos. So make sure you guys subscribe there. Matthew Hussey on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. And GetMatt'sSecret.com. Final question for you, before I ask it, I gotta acknowledge you, man, for constantly being a powerful voice in the world for so many women who are suffering. You know, you mostly work with women and there's a lot of women, I think, who are just suffering because they don't know how to get out of their own way.

• 1:23:53Lewis Howes?

  And you help them gain the confidence by focusing on their life and taking responsibility for life. And giving them strategies and tools to really attract love, committed, compatible love. And I think at the end of the day, we all want that connection and that intimacy and that love. And you're Providing a safe environment for women to cultivate that within themselves and truly love themselves first, so they can attract a partner that they want and equal that they want. So I acknowledge you, man. It's amazing. You've been committed for a decade plus now, and you haven't slowed down. So.

• 1:24:30Matthew Hussey?

  Thank you. And I want to say, I really appreciate you saying that. And I want to say to anyone out there, I'm, I mean, I'm on the journey with you. Like, I'm not, I'm not coming from here. I'm, I'm, I'm right there with you, doing the work for myself.

• 1:24:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:43Matthew Hussey?

  And my own experiment all the time.

• 1:24:46Lewis Howes?

  You're not, you're not perfect?

• 1:24:48Matthew Hussey?

  Life's hard.

• 1:24:49Lewis Howes?

  It is, man.

• 1:24:50Matthew Hussey?

  Life's hard, and I'm, I'm working on it. But I encourage other people to come and, you know, work on it with me.

• 1:24:55Lewis Howes?

  There you go. At your, my final question is, what's your definition of a great relationship?

• 1:25:02Matthew Hussey?

  I think it's, it's got to be one where one plus one equals three.

• 1:25:08Lewis Howes?

  There you go. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you, and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your

• 1:25:50Lewis Howes?

  life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.