What’s the best way to go from casual to committed when you’re dating someone?
There are two important things to remember here:
- Our standards are a HUGE influence on someone’s decision to commit.
- We’re more likely to drop our standards when we really like someone.
So how do you show your standards in a confident way (without seeming demanding or needy)?
In today’s video, I share the best advice I’ve given on this topic through the years to raise your value in their eyes and build lasting attraction. Don’t miss it!
Matthew Hussey:
Before we get into the video, it is so close now. What’s so close, Jameson?
Jameson Jordan:
The Love Myths film.
Matthew Hussey:
The Love Myths film. Our brand new film, The Love Myths, comes out on December 9. We are doing a global stream premiere of this movie that we have been working on for years, and it is finally here.
Now, how do you get access to this? It’s easy, it’s simple.
All you have to do is pre-order a copy of my brand-new book, Love Life, which you probably want anyway. And when you pre-order a copy of this book, not only will you get sent the book in April when it comes out, but you’ll get a free ticket to our movie premiere on December 9, plus a live Q&A that’s happening afterward, and forever access to the film after the initial screening. So you don’t have to worry if you can’t be there live. You’ll still be able to watch it afterward.
But this is the one time you’re going to be able to get this. And if you don’t get in now and the movie has already passed, you won’t be able to get access.
So pre-order a copy of the book now at LoveMythsMovie.com, and we’ll send you all of the information about how to watch the film live with us on December 9.
We’re going to have a right old rumpus. We’re going to have a big launch party, all eating popcorn, watching it together. Invite your friends, invite your family, and we’ll all have a wonderful time together watching it.
Grab your ticket now by pre-ordering the book at LoveMythsMovie.com.
Women are sick of mixed messages from guys. They’re sick of meaningless hookups. They’re sick of the endless cycle of casual dating, and they are ready for real. They want a real relationship.
And you’re probably watching this video because you do too. You want a genuine, committed relationship with someone who values you, who invests in you, who never wants to let you go.
Well, I have found that there are two secrets to getting a real relationship in today’s world, despite the current dating culture. The first is standards.
I believe that our standards are far too high about the things that don’t ultimately matter and they’re far too low about the things that do: someone who’s kind, consistent, reliable, an amazing teammate, someone who listens to you.
Now, a lot of the time, because we find the things we think we want, the things we have high standards about—charisma, looks, height, age, clothes, or someone’s style—because we find these things, we then overlook the fact that this person doesn’t have the things that really matter. And we have very low standards there.
“Yeah, they’re not very nice to me. Oh, they’re not very consistent. Oh, I don’t know where I stand with them. Oh, I don’t know where it’s going. Oh yeah, they make me feel fairly unsafe. Yeah, they haven’t texted me in five days, but have you seen them?”
That’s how we behave in our love life, and we invest based on these things that don’t matter, when we should be investing based on the things that do.
But the truth is, very often, our high standards are what bring up somebody else’s game. This is one of the things people forget when they say, “I should lower my standards.” Lowering your standards will simply mean that people will start lowering their behavior around you, and you’ll start to meet worse and worse guys, even within the same guys.
I know that sounds confusing, but even the same people who could have been a good person around you can become negative around you, or a bad person, depending on how you act.
So it’s not about lowering your standards, but it is about giving people a chance in the beginning. Cast the net wide initially and then get narrow when it comes to who you actually embark on a real relationship with.
Ultimately, having standards is what makes us attractive people.
How do you become challenging in life? How do you become a challenge? How do you become someone who is seen as high value, who has a high perceived value? It’s to be the person who has standards of what they will and won’t accept.
In other words, you have to behave in a certain way toward them and around them in order for them to want to be close to you. That, to me, is what defines a really attractive person and someone we have respect for.
The basis of attraction, I really believe, is respect. Part of it is curiosity and intrigue, but respect is huge. If you lose respect for someone, it’s almost impossible to be attracted to them.
And so, I like to think that people who come on this journey with us over time gradually learn to respect themselves more and learn to have standards for the people they’re around, including the people they like. Because the easiest person to lose your standards around is the person you like.
It’s easy to maintain standards around people we don’t like or can’t stand. Usually, we aggressively assert our standards around them, but around the person we like and the person we want to be liked by, those are the people we tend to lose our standards around.
We don’t want to confront them over things. It’s like they’re a light shining on us and we don’t want to lose that light by offending them or by disagreeing with them or by not being into the same things as they’re into.
We change ourselves around them, and perceptive people always notice when we’re changing ourselves around them, when we’re dropping our standards so we can be closer to them. Ironically, it doesn’t bring us closer to them. It actually puts more of a wedge between us and them, because they just see that we’ll chameleonize ourselves to suit them.
Now, I’ve talked at length in my work about the importance of having standards: having a standard for the way you want to be treated, having a standard for going on real dates instead of just Netflix and chilling, having a standard that says, “In order for me to invest all of this time and energy in you, it has to be for a real relationship that’s exclusive.” But here’s what I’ve found:
It’s not enough simply to have standards. We have to be able to show our standards. There’s having a standard, and there’s showing a standard. And there is a big gulf between these two.
Think about it in business. You may say, “I’m worthy of a promotion. I want a promotion,” but you now have to go and have the conversation with your boss to actually ask for it. And you need to know how to have that conversation.
It’s not enough to say, “I’m worthy of a relationship.” We actually have to know how to communicate, how to show that we’re worthy of a relationship, how to ask for something we want. Communicating standards is huge.
Having standards is confidence. Knowing how to communicate them is competence.
The food industry has a term, a term called the “bliss point.” The bliss point is the optimal level of salty and sweet in a food that keeps you wanting more of it, and they’re trying to achieve this all the time. Think Nutella, think peanut butter, kettle corn. What’s the bliss point that means even though you’re getting full, you’re not satiated—you keep wanting more of that food?
Well, I believe there’s a bliss point to communication—an optimal level of salty and sweet that keeps you wanting more of a person. So if you achieve the bliss point in your communication with men, a man can become addicted to you. He won’t be able to put you down.
I’m about to give you three scenarios I know you’ve found yourself in before and the bliss point response to each one.
The first scenario is the date deliberator text. This is the guy who’s indecisive about what you guys are going to do on a date tonight. So he sends something like, “So what are we doing tonight?” To which your internal response is, “You decide, man! It’s your job to figure out a plan. Just fricking pick something.”
But you don’t want to come across aggressive in this moment, because he hasn’t done anything really wrong. So instead, here’s the bliss point response: “As much as I love planning, I think it would be more fun if you decide. [Winky face].”
You see what you’re doing there? You’re simultaneously saying, “I don’t expect you to plan things forever, but right now, at this early stage, it would be fun if you took the initiative.”
Scenario two: The homebody text. He sends, “There’s a cool bar in my part of town for tonight.”
Now, you know that the last time you went on a date, you came to his part of town. So somewhere inside, you feel like he should be the one making the effort to come to you, or at least meet halfway. Now, once again, he hasn’t done anything drastically wrong, but you’d like to use this moment to educate him on trying a little harder.
So instead of bottling up your feelings and going to his part of town anyway, or getting overly serious about communicating this to him, you put together this bliss point message: “Geez, are you always this lazy? It’s your turn to come to me. [Kissy face].”
What this shows is that you can call someone out directly for their behavior, but you can do it in a playful and affectionate way, which brings us to scenario number three: The “day of” disappearance.
This is when you have plans with a guy to see him for a date, but on the day of the date, it’s getting past the point where it’s acceptable for him to have not given you the details yet. So maybe it’s one o’clock in the afternoon. He had said you’d see each other tonight, but he still hasn’t sent you anything since, and maybe it’s not because he’s a bad guy. Maybe it’s because he’s been super busy or maybe he’s out right now, but it’s still not really okay.
You can either be passive and just wait until he texts you, or you can construct this bliss point message: “Hey, you. Should I assume we’re not on for tonight? I haven’t heard from you and I have other things I’d like to do if not.”
Once again, the beauty of this is that it addresses him in a kind way, at the same time as having really high standards with your time. You are showing him that if he doesn’t up his communication, you are going to find something else to do.
Now, why do people hesitate before sending these messages? Because we’re afraid that if we have a standard with someone, they will not see us—that we might lose out on that opportunity to spend time with them tonight.
So let me be brutally honest with you: These messages won’t increase your chances of seeing the guy you want tonight, but they will radically increase your chances of him wanting you tomorrow.
Bliss point communication isn’t about short-term gains. It’s about long-term attraction. And if you’re wanting to create genuine, deep attraction that makes a guy want you not tonight, but tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, that’s about having the right standard and knowing how to communicate it.
The beauty of what we’ve been talking about today is this: Communicating your standards and creating attraction are actually the same thing.
Now, one of the things that’s true is that many women who are on, let’s say, year five of their relationship, are still getting what they don’t want, because they’re not actually on year five. In terms of their progression, they’re still on date number one.
Why? Because they’ve been communicating the wrong things since the beginning.
I want you to consider that maybe you’ve been seeing a man for the last six months and you’re still on date one when it comes to your standards and expectations, because you’ve been communicating the wrong things since the beginning.
If you want to get from date one to building your castle . . . I’ve referenced this before: Having a connection with someone is just an empty plot of land, but when you invest with someone over time and you build together, you create a castle.
The castle is real investment, and if you want to arrive at having a castle with someone, you’ve got to be communicating your standards all the way along.
But why don’t people communicate their standards? This is an interesting question. As I thought about this more, I realized, “You know what? One of the reasons people don’t speak up is they’re afraid of what the repercussions will be. They’re afraid that someone will walk away.”
Now, that’s another way of saying they don’t feel they have any leverage, because when we feel that we have something great on offer, when we have a unique connection with someone, when we have something special, we don’t think they’re going to walk away simply because we stated a standard—because we asked for what we really want. They’ll stay because we have something beautiful.
Herein lies the second secret to having a real relationship today. The first secret to having a real relationship is, as we’ve talked about, having standards and knowing how to communicate them. The second secret is deep attraction.
You have to have an attraction with someone and know how to create an attraction that is so deep, so meaningful, so unique between the two of you, that you become irreplaceable—that he wouldn’t leave you because you’re asking for something. In fact, when someone has that deep attraction for you, you asking for something, and you having a standard, just makes you more attractive. It just makes you more of a challenge. It just makes someone want you even more.
Think about it this way: Your standard is the job you expect that builder to do with you when you’re building the castle. Deep attraction is that builder’s reason for showing up to work every day. We need a reason. Deep attraction is that reason.
Now, deep attraction is more than simply the respect that comes from having a standard, because when you have a standard, it breeds respect. We’ve already talked about that, and that’s a great thing.
Respect does create some attraction, but it’s not the only component of attraction. You also need a unique connection with someone—a connection that cannot simply be replaced by someone else.
You also need to show yourself as three-dimensional, because the more dimensions you show yourself in, the harder you become to replace. You can replace someone in 2D, but in 3D, all of a sudden, that person has a color and a complexity and a richness that you would never want to give up.
And lastly, you need to know how to create enduring desire—the kind of desire that lasts. And we know that, often, this is one of the things people associate with being lost in a relationship: “Oh, we don’t have the same spark, the same passion, the same desire for each other anymore.” When you know how to create enduring desire, that keeps someone around.
So the bottom line is that standards and deep attraction are what create a real relationship.
Remember, before you go, don’t forget to pre-order a copy of Love Life, so that you can come and join us for the screening of The Love Myths movie on December 9. That link again is LoveMythsMovie.com. I’ll see you there and at the screening for The Love Myths.
The post How to Get Out of the Casual Dating Trap appeared first on Get The Guy.