Tired of dating the wrong people?
When we really want to find a relationship, saying “no” to the people who don’t align with our core values can feel scary . . . especially when we’re not meeting a lot of people we connect with. We may even start to loosen our standards and become attached to someone who’s only giving us crumbs.
In today’s video, I dive into the subtle-but-profound difference between those who successfully find love, and those who continue to remain in limbo. You’ll also learn how to cultivate the right culture in your life to attract a lasting, fulfilling relationship (plus I share a story from my younger days as a DJ). Let me know your thoughts!
MATTHEW HUSSEY
I want to talk about a subtle-but-profound thing that people who successfully find love do that other people don’t. And by doing this, it allows them to find the right kind of person far earlier, where other people keep running into the wrong kinds of people.
If you’re new to the channel, welcome. I’m Matthew Hussey. I’ve been doing this for 17 years—helping people find love through increased confidence and relational intelligence. I’m the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Love Life, and for anyone who wants to join me for one of my events, you’ve just missed one. But there’s good news. We have a replay of it. It happened on the 22nd of October. It was all about how to go from casual to committed in a relationship. So, if you want a long-term relationship, check this out. The replay is only available for a few more days. Go to lovelifereplay.com to watch it right now.
So the subject of today’s video came out of a live I did on social media this week where someone asked me this question:
“An acquaintance of a few years has been texting me every day for weeks. And when I tried to ask him out a week ago, he said ‘no’ and said that he’s dating someone. He continues texting every day. What to do?”
Have you ever been in a situation like this that you find confusing, where you’re wondering what to do? Why is someone behaving like this? How can I get their attention? How do I get them to actually go out with me if it seems to be stalling in this way? Do you have a situation right now in your life that you’re finding confusing and are trying to work out what to do next?
All of those questions are the wrong question. What I know about the woman asking this question is that she is ignoring something fundamental. There’s an implicit, “Why is he doing this?” in her question. There’s an implicit, “What do I do now? What do I text him back?” And there’s also kind of an implicit, “How do I get him to actually go on a date with me?”
But while her focus is clearly being monopolized by all of these things, there is something she is not focused on, and it’s the most important thing there is when it comes to choosing a partner for our love life: his character. And his lack of character is being revealed in the way that he is dealing with her.
This is a man who was texting her when he was dating someone—clearly seriously enough to say “no” to a date—and then when she asked him on a date because she was reading his signals as him being interested, he said, “No, because I’m dating someone.” And then even after being very clear that he’s dating someone, and therefore, can’t go out with her, he continues to text her every day.
How does this add up to the character of a person who is good to date? It clearly doesn’t make him good to date for the person he’s dating—a person who I can almost guarantee doesn’t know that he is texting his acquaintance every day despite the fact that that acquaintance clearly asked him out and has romantic feelings for him.
If she was connected to the ways that his character wasn’t living up to the character of the person she’d want to share her life with, she wouldn’t be asking me a question about this man in the first place. But she is by no means on her own in asking this kind of question. In fact, it’s incredibly common for me to field questions like this. Why is that?
It’s because, for so many of us, we are not taking “culture” seriously. What do I mean by culture? The culture we create in our lives is really an external representation of an internal value system. We develop and cultivate a culture in life by the choices we make and the people we let close to us and surround ourselves with. And creating the right culture takes discipline precisely because we have to make hard choices that may involve saying “no” to people who feel attractive, interesting, or like they’re giving us some kind of short-term seductive reward, but don’t actually live up to the values that we hold dear.
When I was a teenager—many people don’t know this about me, but I used to be a DJ, and deejayed for about 10 years. So, I was playing out one night and there was a group of older guys. I was a kid, albeit a kid that was sort of dressed up in gold chains and whatnot. I was doing the whole look with a hat and everything. I was a late bloomer, so I was also quite small at that time.
So this group of guys came over to me, and was sort of hovering around me, close to the DJ stand. At first, it was intimidating, because I was like, what’s this group of guys all doing standing beside me the whole time I’m deejaying? But then one of them, a sort of—I feel like we can throw out some sort of Jason Statham-esque image, you know, that kind of character—leant over and said, “You’re all right, boy. Got some skills there, ain’t ya? Good DJ, yeah? Listen, we’ve got a pirate radio station and I’d love to get you on there. Big opportunity.”
And when I said to him, “I mean, that sounds really exciting . . . like, wow. That sounds fun,” I was just giddy as a teenager.
He was like, “See? I knew you’d love the opportunity. You’re sharp as a tack, aren’t you?”
This was someone, by the way, who simultaneously, I felt so excited to say “yes” to and felt it would be a bad idea to say “no” to. But I skipped home. I remember going back and talking to my dad about it: “A group of guys came over to me. They’ve invited me to go and have my own slot on this pirate radio station. It’s a really big deal.” I knew the station and was already a fan of it.
But the further away I got from that conversation with “Jason Statham,” the more I came to realize that this wasn’t a crowd that I necessarily wanted to be around—that there was something about the value system of this group that my intuition picked up on that wouldn’t be good for me.
James Hollis has a question—a question I was turned on to by Oliver Burkeman, who wrote the new book, Meditation for Mortals. (Great episode with him coming out on the podcast, by the way.) He has a question that goes like this:
“Will this opportunity diminish or enlarge me?”
And obviously, as a teenager, I wasn’t asking myself that specific question. But on a visceral intuitive level, I had this sense of “this isn’t going to be good for me. This isn’t going to bring me into contact with the kinds of people who will enlarge me—that this has the potential to diminish me, or even immerse me in a culture that I don’t want to exist in.”
My point in all of this is that throughout our lives, culture is actually one of the hardest things to cultivate. It takes real effort, it takes real energy, and it often requires us to say “no” to things that our ego wants to grab.
The way I see culture is that if we keep feeding the right culture, if we keep paying attention to that intuition, if we keep paying attention to people’s character, to people whose values reflect our highest values, and people who don’t seem to have those values, and we make decisions on that basis, our life will get better and better over time.
Sometimes it feels like in the short term, we’re taking a step backward. In the case of this person whose question I answered on the live, I know that my answer to her meant that in the short term, she would stop texting someone she had come to enjoy texting. Even though it wasn’t ultimately satisfying to her, there was some kind of reward it was giving her on a daily basis. So it doesn’t feel good to stand behind the culture we want to create.
But long term, our entire world becomes a real, tangible reflection of the values we hold dear and the people in our lives—from the person we choose to spend our life with romantically, to our friends, our colleagues, or the people we hire if we have a business—everyone will end up being a reflection of your culture . . . a culture that your life is evidence of you taking seriously.
Have you ever had a friend or someone you know who has introduced you to different people, and every new person they introduce you to makes you realize more and more that this person just surrounds themselves with amazing people, kind people, interesting people, lovely, compassionate, warm people? Have you ever felt that? I know I have.
What you know is that that person takes the culture of their life seriously. And then from the outside, you end up going, “Man, how is it that everyone you know is so lovely?”
It’s because they’ve cultivated that over time.
The people in life who not only find love, but find it with people who make them happy in relationships that last, take culture seriously. They are disciplined and willing to be ruthless and do the hard things when it comes to saying “no” to people who may feel sexy and exciting or rewarding in the short term in favor of waiting for someone or proactively searching for someone who actually represents the values they care about.
And that doesn’t just take effort and discipline. It takes guts. It takes guts to say “no” to the opportunity that’s in front of you, resting only on some kind of faith that at some point, someone better, someone with more character, someone more in line with the way you are, will come along. But I believe that if we can create space in our lives, that faith gets rewarded, but the right person can never come in if we never create that space. Love needs space.
To this day, one of the greatest compliments I ever received about my relationship, my marriage to Audrey, is that along the way, the people who knew me the best and the people who cared about me the most, when they met Audrey, said, “That makes sense. It makes so much sense why you chose Audrey and why you two are together.”
Even to the extent, by the way, that the people who know me best in my audience . . . one of the loveliest things is how many of you listened to Audrey on the podcast and then emailed us and said, “Oh, my God, it just makes complete sense.”
That’s because Audrey and I have the same culture. And sometimes you have to wait a little longer to find that person who fits with your culture. And you have to say “no” a little more. And when nothing’s happening in your love life in the short term, that can feel like a thankless task. It can feel like a thankless thing to have to do to keep saying “no” when it doesn’t feel like there are any other opportunities around. That’s what makes it brave. But the rewards for being brave are profound.
For those of you who want to be brave in your love life and want to find not just a relationship, but a relationship that lasts, because the person you find fits with your culture, go over to lovelifereplay.com, because the entire session that I did on October 22 live with thousands of people was really at its deepest level about finding someone whose character fits with the culture of your character, your life. And when you find someone like that, those are the relationships that go the distance.
So, come join me if you’re sick and tired of coming up against the wrong culture in dating and the wrong people, but you want to find the right one and know how to bring an energy that creates more commitment, come join us. I look forward to seeing you there. And thank you as always for watching this video. I look forward to reading your comments.
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