Sex With Emily - Find Your Person & Lead Your Love Life w/ Matthew Hussey Pt. 1

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Listen in on my conversation with my friend Matthew Hussey. You may know him as the inspirational YouTube personality, author, and public speaker who has revolutionized the world of dating advice with his amazing methods. We chat about emotional journeys, what Matthew has learned in his experience as a relationship coach, and ways to take charge of your love life. If you've been in a dating slump, this is the episode for you. In this episode you’ll learn:  How to take charge of your love life Why reflecting on your instincts is a game changer The value of valuing yourself first Show Notes: Matthew’s New Book: Love Life More Matthew Hussey: Website | Instagram | Youtube SHOP WITH EMILY! (free shipping on orders over $99) The only sex book you’ll ever need: Smart Sex: How to Boost Your Sex IQ and Own Your Pleasure Want more? Sex With Emily: Home Let’s get social: Instagram | X | Facebook | TikTok  Let’s text: Sign Up Here Want me to slide into your inbox? Sign Up Here for sex tips on the regular. See the full show notes at sexwithemily.com.

You know what's a word that's not used enough in a love life context? What? Leadership. We rarely ever use the word leadership in a romantic context, in a love life context. We talk about it in business all the time. We talk about it in personal leadership all the time. You're listening to Sex with Emily. I'm Dr. Emily and I'm here to help you prioritize your pleasure and liberate the conversation around sex. Today's episode is really special as I

get to talk to my friend Matthew Hussey. He's a return guest on the show and leading dating expert and confidence coach who quite frankly is loved by everyone because honestly he is the real deal. And he has a new book out, Love Life. How to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what. We get into so much that we had to split this episode into two parts. We talk about what we have in common with dolphins, how this one text message changes life, why we need to learn the difference between our intuition versus our instincts, and how our own beliefs and stories get in the way of finding love.

Please rate and review Sex with Emily wherever you listen to the show. It really helps get the word out to help more people. My new articles, 7 Hot Threesome Positions and Want to Improve Your Sex Life? Use these sex scripts. Are up on SexWithEmily.com. Alright everyone, enjoy this episode. Attention pleasure seekers, what if I told you there was a toy that was so iconic that it practically set the standard for all my favorite products. Allow me to introduce or reintroduce to you the magic wand. Dubbed the Cadillac of Vibrators, the magic wand is more than just a toy. It's a cultural icon, a

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I really respect his work. He's authentic and it's been so inspiring watching him evolve both personally and professionally. What I love is that he shares the good, the bad, and the ugly of his life road trip and gives the rest of us hope that we too can be the person we want. He's so talented, love listening to him, and such a wonderful coach and friend and I couldn't wait to have him on again to talk about his new book, Love Life, How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person, and Live Happily No Matter What. If a title is worth a thousand words, I think we all know this book will be flying off the shelves.

Welcome to the show. That was so lovely. I love seeing you. That really means a lot coming from you. You and I have had this friendship that we've now seen each other sort of through different seasons. It's been long enough now that like, you've come to my house, I'm in your place.

We've like seen you through a book, you're now seeing me through a book. Yeah, through a book, I know. And this is what I love about what you do is I've actually really experienced your coaching, being part of your community and doing the talks at your house. You're just so passionate and you really care

and you're really in there to help people. Like you're in it to win it for people. You take the time and you're patient and thoughtful. All right, thank you. I've been doing this for 17 years now, which is kind of crazy and just seeing upfront how hard things are for people. I've experienced some of it myself

in different ways in my life and I've seen the pain that people go through. And I think a lot of what I see out there doesn't necessarily fully acknowledge how much of a struggle it really is for people. Yeah, for people to find. Well, now I love to not only find, to date, but to find love, right?

To find love, to be single, to feel lonely. You know, I had a woman say to me, how do I kill the desire to find love? She didn't say, how do I find love? She said, how do I kill the desire to find love? She didn't say, how do I find love? She said, how do I kill the desire? Because if I never find it and I hold onto this longing I have for it, I'm gonna be sad for the rest of my life. That's a heartbreaking question.

That is so real. So real, because it had been so painful. This is not someone in her twenties. This is someone I think she's in her early sixties perhaps and had never found the thing that she was looking for and wanted so badly to still find it, but also found that wanting to find it was kind of ruining her experience of everyday life.

What would you say to that? There's no easy answer to that. The truth is that life goes in all sorts of directions for people. Some people find love and then lose it. You know they find this person that's the love of their life and then life takes that person from them. Some people have amazing passionate love affairs that never last. Some people struggle to find a person in the first place. Some people go most of their lives feeling invisible. And that's real. What I said to her is that that pain,

because what she's feeling is at its core pain. And that pain has kind of a physical component. Is a, you know, you lay in bed and it's whatever time it is and the thought pops in and you think, I want to meet someone, I still haven't met someone and it's never happened for me and you think about that and you feel lonely and you feel this pain of loneliness but that pain is accompanied by a lot of story and the story around it takes what is a very physical pain you know whether she felt it in her chest her throat her

stomach there's a place that she feels that pang of loneliness. But then there's the, I struggled with chronic pain for many years and physical pain and it ruined my life for a long time. And I didn't know what I was gonna do. I truly didn't know what I was gonna do. It was the first time I went to therapy was because I- Because of the physical pain. Yeah, because I didn't know, I was gonna do. It was the first time I went to therapy was because I- Because of the physical pain.

Yeah, because I didn't know, I was truly despairing. I had reached a point of kind of hopelessness and I thought I'd thrown money at trying to fix it. Yeah, I like- I traveled the world. You described, you had the tinnitus, right? I had tinnitus, which was a loud ringing in my ears, which is still there, that never went away. Wow.

But I also had accompanying that, I had all sorts of head, constant physical pain in my ears, which is still there, that never went away. But I also had accompanying that, I had all sorts of head, constant physical pain in my head, my eye and my ear that just never went away. It made me feel dizzy, it made me feel ill, it was throbbing constantly. And it just took me out of every experience of my life. I felt like I was completely on the outside of my life. And the funny thing is when I went to therapy, I said to this therapist, I've made a decision

that I'm just going to live for other people now. I'm going to live for my family. I'm going to live for my team. I'm going to in my company. I'm going to live for the people that I coach because I know I can make their lives better, but I don't enjoy my life anymore. Even what should have been joyous moments with family at Christmas. And I remember one Christmas Eve where I was in our local town and it was in a coffee shop and I got really agitated with my brother over nothing. I remember feeling the sense something's really wrong. Like I'm really angry at my younger brother right now. I'm picking a fight. And then I said to my, I looked at my younger brother right now. I'm picking a fight.

And then I said to my, I looked at my mom and I said, I gotta go home. Like it was Christmas Eve. I can't take, Christmas is a big deal in our family. We love it. We make a big deal out of it. It's the happiest time for us. And I said to my mom, I have to go.

I got up out of this coffee shop. As I left, someone like cut across me and like, you know, kind of like, and I like felt myself get so angry, like wanting to fight this person angry. And I thought, oh, something's really wrong with me. Like I'm not, I'm so deeply unhappy and it frightened me. And that was like an ongoing experience me for a long time was just trying to function with that pain.

And so when I said to this therapist, if I have this pain forever, I'll never be happy again. So for as long as this pain is here, I'm just going to live for other people. That had echoes of what this woman was saying to me. If I have the pain constantly of wanting to find love and not finding it, I'm never gonna be happy. So both of us are asking, how do I live and find happiness in the context of a life with chronic pain? One is physical, one is emotional, but they're chronic pain nonetheless.

And what I learned on that journey for myself is chronic pain has the component, which is the pain. In my case, it was the physical pain in my head and my ear. In her case, it was the pain of loneliness, but then there's the relationship that we have with the pain and what is that relationship and what makes that relationship better and what makes that relationship worse.

I told myself a lot of stories about my pain and those stories turned it from pain in the moment to intolerable pain that I didn't know how I was ever going to live with. Because then you create stories like there's no way I can go on with this pain, my life will be. My life is, here's some of the stories I told myself. My life is over, I'm never gonna enjoy anything again.

I couldn't eat certain foods or even have a sip of wine. So I was like, even food is ruined for me. And that was one of my few kind of like escapes and even that's ruined for me. I'm never gonna be attractive to the person that I, cause I was single at the time. It was like, I'm not gonna be attractive anymore to women because I feel like I'm about to snap.

When did the pain start though? What age, like is this? 20s, 28 maybe. Okay, okay. So this has been almost at eight years you've been dealing with this then? It became existential for me. Like I really have to figure out my relationship with this

and I started to learn tools to manage it. And those tools, they were life-changing for me because they got me to, there's a chapter I write in the book called happy enough. That phrase to me is a life-changing phrase because what I realized in my life is happiness is not something I can relate to right now. That's how I felt. I can't relate to happiness and anyone who's like you just have to be happy. I was like, you know, like I just, I'm not even close to that experience. Self development for a long time made no sense to me because of the idea of like

optimizing peak performance and whatever. I was like, you're living in a different world. I'm not, I'm not thinking about peak performance. I'm thinking about like how to get through the day and not hate my life. So I stopped thinking about how to be happy and I started connecting with like, if I could just get to happy enough. We all struggle in some ways, right?

We all have, whether it's our inner voice or our limiting beliefs or negative self-talk. So can you wanna talk a little bit about that belief, such how do we get happy enough? Well, I like happy enough because it's achievable. I've been working with people in their love lives for a long time. And when I would hear people say to other people, you just have to be happy and whole first before you meet someone.

I would always cringe a little. Because I'd be like, there's something a little disingenuous about this because half the people saying it weren't happy and whole, at the moment they met their partner. Right, this person is like this whole thing that you need to become whole because then somebody's gonna fill this hole in you or something, but we're always a work in progress.

So it's okay. It's okay. It's okay to be single and feel sad about it. It's human. It's more than okay. It's actually human. We all want to find love, everyone. And people wanna find different forms of love

and we find love in different ways, but I truly believe what unites us is we all want to find love. That is universal. It's like the worst kept secret in the world that we all have to go around pretending we're indifferent to it, because that's cool.

It's like, yeah, if I find it, I find it. Like I'm not in a right, whatever. And we all have to like feign indifference over this thing that we deeply want, because there is this stigma, this shame attached to looking for love. Well, I feel like that's what's so interesting about your evolution.

And I love that you opened the book, being so real about that, because again, you started at 19 and now you're in your mid thirties. Like that's quite a journey to be on. Starting out being the expert and being like, you know, I don't have it all figured out, but you, you know, you can help people. Um, and that I thought it was really interesting that you just said, yeah, I didn't know, like you, you were helping other people,

but you weren't necessarily able to help yourself at that point. And I totally related to the part where people were like, raise your hands, like, why are you single? Are you single? Are you single? you were helping other people, but you weren't necessarily able to help yourself at that point. And I totally related to the part where people were like, raise your hands, like, why are you single? Are you single? Are you single? And you're like, then you feel like imposter. Like I get this, the other night I was doing a show,

a live show, and people were like, I'm talking, like, are you married? Did someone say that? Yeah, they did. They did. Like, okay. I'm like, hey, but I can have sex and not be married. You just said that.

That's a little different than Matthew Hussey here because he's actually talking about it. But still people, there's always this like trying to prove yourself. But we're, you know, we're just on a journey. But I love that like when you open your book, you take up the pressure of being the expert and all that and how you just sort of gone on from, to go back to what you said, like getting the guy was your first book 10 years ago. And it was more about tactics and how to get the person, how to land the plane, but now you're like, well, what about when we reframe it as like, well, what about finding love? Like finding that person, like love, love life is a whole different thing. It's a deeper journey

and it's, and it also deals with the complexities of, of life. I, you know, I, I never knew what to call myself, to be honest. I really didn't. I was still uncomfortable with relationship expert. I hated dating expert. I didn't, you know, it never, what I was always interested in is how to, how can we connect more? How can we be happier?

How can we feel more confident? Now, how do we find more peace in this part of our lives? Because life isn't simple. You can't, no one can tell you they're gonna find you love in the next six months. We can, you know, I've created roadmaps in my career for people to do that, that massively up their chances of finding love faster, but there are no guarantees in life. So for me, it was never, I never saw myself as the expert in relationships.

I always saw it as, this work is deeply meaningful to me. I really, really enjoy helping people who are in some kind of pain, find more peace. That's always been my deep, like I realized that when my whole career, I've had people come up to me on the street and say, I found love because of you.

I found, I'm married because of you. I've had that my whole life. But I started realizing I got even more of a kick out of someone coming up to me on the street and saying, you got me through the worst breakup of my life. Or I'm no longer, I was in a narcissistic marriage for 10 years, I'm no longer, I was in a narcissistic marriage for 10 years, I'm no longer in that relationship because of your work.

That meant more to me, something about helping people in pain meant more to me than just the love stories of someone finding someone. That's so interesting that you get, okay, so what do you think it is about the pain? Why does that have more of a charge for you? I think I have a healthy amount of maybe a more than healthy amount of darkness. Yeah. In myself.

No, and I know I've we've talked about this too, because I have the negative self talk too. And I'm really hard on myself. And I feel like we discussed this when I was on your show that it's kind of the same thing. And I think you also mentioned, I've just been listening to other things about like your brothers to like your protective, and you don't want anyone to be in pain. And so growing up in an environment, I think so much of what you talk about in your book, why I think this book is so different too, is that it talks about, yeah, we get all these patterns and we're

dating the wrong people, but until we do the work and we look at like, where did this come from? And you were saying growing up in an environment where you had to be hypervigilant, you had to see, is there something bad that's going to happen or how do I protect those around me? So maybe the connection there is that part of helping people from pain is that that was always like your first job maybe in your household. I think there's a lot of that. I think I grew up very fast.

I've watched how badly people's lives can implode. You know what like one of my obsessions is? There's so many of us find ourselves in these situations in life that we for many reasons find it hard to get out of or we find It hard to untangle from or to change from and in a lot of those situations They have dire consequences at some point point in our life Some people find that romantically some people have that with friend in their life a brother a mother a father a someone there's someone in their life, there's a relationship a friend in their life, a brother, a mother, a father, a someone. There's someone in their life. There's a relationship, a situation in their life

that is like affecting them deeply. And what I've seen so much of in my life is that a lot of people need to have their life completely implode for them to decide to do something. So like they're kind of their rock bottom? Kind of, but the danger in, Beth Macy, I think, wrote a book, I wanna say it's called Raising Lazarus, but it was about the opioid crisis.

She was talking about this misconception about opioids that there is a rock bottom. You know, there's this kind of one, when people hit that rock bottom, they're gonna ricochet back up again. And she said, the problem with opioids is that when you a rock bottom, you know, there's this kind of one, when people hit that rock bottom, they're gonna ricochet back up again. And she said, the problem with opioids is that when you hit rock bottom, you find that rock bottom has a basement

and that that basement has a trap door and that you just keep going and going and going. And that is true of relationships too. When I'm in one of my events and a woman stands up and tells a story of a guy she has been seeing or a guy she's with or a guy she's married to or was married to or whatever, there will be moments in the story where everyone hears the detail and says, and that was the moment you left. And then she doesn't say that say that she says and that was five years ago

and then what happened is and you you keep hearing the next part of the story and the next part of the story thinking and that was the moment you hit rock bottom and you let but it wasn't it was there was still further to go and and i have watched so much I've seen so much pain in my life of people not, you know, hitting what we would think is rock bottom and then something even worse happens and then something even worse happens and sometimes people go to the grave never getting out of those situations. In fact it's quite common and some people's lives have to completely fall apart. They have to go through the ultimate pain of losing everything, of having their finances devastated, of having their life devastated, of having their trust

devastated, of having their confidence devastated before they will be forced in many cases to do something different. And that's my obsession. When I say I have an obsession over this, my obsession is what can I say or do to get someone to be brave enough to light the fuse, to detonate their own life before an even bigger implosion is coming.

Because that's what it takes. We have to sometimes be brave enough to light the fuse to detonate our own life. That is so hard. When someone breaks up with us, it's kind of like with a victim, and we get to say, they broke my heart, they cheated, they left, they went with someone else else and now I'm on my own.

But there's this kind of closure in that they killed it. But there are many situations in life where that person will never kill it and you're gonna be in this loop with someone. And for some people, this is a very dramatic thing of being in a narcissistic marriage and all of the devastation that comes with that. And for other people, it's a different kind of implosion.

It's from the age of, you know, 35 to 45, they had this person in their life that they were on and off with that they always had hopes for. They always thought this person would come around, would finally commit, would finally want the same things. This person never went away. They never gave them the closure of- It wasn't just enough. Just enough. To keep them hooked.

To keep the micro dosing on them for 10 years, 15 years. And then all the while, this person deep down is like, my ultimate dream is to have a family. And then as it does, the year comes, that's no longer possible. And then the person leaves too. And they realize that not only have I given up this dream of mine and missed that window, but the person I was doing it for turns out to not even

be here anymore. That's another kind of implosion. So these are the these are the kinds of things that this book is dealing with. We just got right into it. It's like this is the book is like, it's sort of like if you've been in unhealthy relationship patterns, if you've been suffering either you're the one who's broke up with someone or you're the one who does the breaking up. Like it's still, it's suffering all around. But I love like, what was your implosion moment?

Because you do talk about how you went from being less vulnerable you know because we're talking and then you grew into being a more the vulnerable man that sits before me today. So can you talk more about what your moment is because you also like in your book you say unhealthy dating patterns are a way to keep us from our emotions and that was such an interesting way to think, because you were like, why do I keep dating bad people? Or why am I only attracted to the narcissists? You know, we get into unhealthy relationships and we just keep from,

we just stay with things that don't work. So it's the cycles and I'm wondering that's also related to maybe your own patterns too, there's a way to connect all of that. Yeah. patterns too. There's a way to connect all of that. Yeah. I've had I think a few implosion moments and and some I've talked about publicly some I haven't. I think for a long time I was running in a certain direction very fast and yeah things were working on the surface and that masked a lot of things that weren't in relationships or even in life, I was like winning.

You know, like things were going well and it looked like things, you know, it just looked like, oh, things are working for this guy. And it was a good cover for things that weren't working under the surface and for things that I think I'd been running away from for a very long time. You know, I think one implosion moment for me

was getting to my late 20s and realizing this was even like before my chronic pain and some would argue it has something to do with it. But I realized I'm not feeling how I'm supposed to feel right now. How I feel is not in line with I'm supposed to be happy right now. This is supposed to be good. This is supposed to... So many of the things that I thought I wanted life to be about or I. This is supposed to be good. This is supposed to, there's so many of the things that I thought I wanted life to be about or I wanted to be able to do in life have happened. Is that when you started then on your journey

like to therapy and realizing it? No, it took me having- A few more years? It took me, well, close to, it took me getting to a point of this physical chronic pain getting basically ruining my life. Oh my life. That's what made me.

I know whatever known that you were suffering. I never talked about it. I mean, like you're doing videos, you're prolific, millions and millions of subscribers. This last two years is like, I think the last six months maybe even, is like the first time I'm ever really talking about it. Cause for seven or eight years,

it was the one thing in life I was trying to forget. And I thought if I talk about this publicly, I'm gonna get people kind of come up to me on the street and they're gonna ask me about it or they're gonna say I have chronic pain too and I was like I can't take it. I can't this is I spend my day 24 hours a day I spend trying to forget this if people start coming and reminding me of it or trying to give me like, try this thing for it, try this thing. If that happens, I'm going to snap. So I was like, I can't, I couldn't speak it anywhere because I was so afraid of it suddenly becoming something that people talked to me about. And the last thing I wanted in the world was people to talk to me about it. I truly couldn't talk

about it without breaking. And that's what I mean by happy enough, by the way, because I got to happy enough, I was able to then make an impact. I couldn't talk about it without breaking. And that's what I mean by happy enough, by the way. Because I got to happy enough, I was able to then make an impact. I couldn't make an impact with this thing when I was in the dark place that I was in all the time. So that was a big moment. So you still have the pain though when you're managing it, but this, right?

I changed some things about my life. I changed some things. I started looking at some of the chronic stresses in my life, some of the things about my life. I changed some things. I started looking at some of the chronic stresses in my life, some of the situations in my life that were chronic stresses. And I started to do things I hadn't ever been able to do and remove certain things. And that had a profound impact, weirdly.

I mean, I never would have believed in that mind-body connection stuff in the same way that I do today. I truly saw that as almost like the woo-woo side of things and I'm having an allergic reaction to anything that I consider to be kind of out there and woo-woo. But like it was truly apparent to me that, oh my God, so much of this is to do with stuff I haven't been dealing with and situations I haven't been dealing with. And now the ringing in my ears, I still have. I still have, but the other stuff is by doing the work,

whatever it is, body work, that could be a whole nother show. But going back to Happy End, that's also related to your never satisfied, which I also love is that what is never satisfied, the journey of being like, we're never gonna get there, right? We're never set, same kind of condition, right?

Yeah, that was- Is there enough to climb? That was for me. I got to a point being single where I was like, the way I'm doing my love life is broken. Something's not working about it. I am, you know, going about it in a very dopamine-ogenic way. I'm like, I'm not, way. I'm like, I'm not, you know, I had come out of a relationship where I was anxious all the time and where I was like, that relationship brought out your anxiety. Oh, for sure. Before that I was, I've always been anxious. Okay, right. Like, let's be clear. No, no, no. But long before I even knew what anxiety was, I look back now and I'm like, oh, I've been

anxious for a long time in my life, but I never called it anxiety because I just did. I never, if you'd have said to me at 25, you have anxiety, I'd have been like, no, I don't. What are you talking about? I don't know. I didn't. You didn't normalize it then. But I didn't. I've had anxiety my whole life.

That's been my constant like challenge. And so I think for a long time I chose relationships that made me feel like it never brought that out and Then you know, I think I had a relationship where I thought I felt very anxious and I was very much not in the driving seat and I thought this is good medicine for me Like I need this but I took that way too far Okay, you're like this is great. This is something new. Now I'm anxious. But no, this isn't right either.

Because the pendulum swung too far the other way where I had no safety. And I felt completely at the mercy of this relationship. And I lost myself. And I detached from the things that were important to me and the things that made me me. And I started to feel unimportant. I started to feel like I'm, you know, I lost my confidence. I lost myself. I was like, God, I'm- Which is so not you.

Not me. And I, you know, people around me at that time felt that it wasn't me. And they were like, oh, you know, our Matthew is not happy. And I couldn't, just for me, I was so in it at the time that I didn't, I couldn't, just for me, I was so in it at the time that I didn't, I couldn't connect to the fact

that everything I told people not to do when I was coaching people was what I was doing in this relationship. Yeah. You're doing, you're like, I know, like I sometimes am going through things and my friends will say to me, what if I called into your show, Emily?

What would you tell me? You know, and I have to think like, I do have the right answers here, but sometimes just cause we know all the answers or we know what to help other people, it's just a lot harder to help ourselves, which I think is a lot of what you're sharing now. And everyone has their thing. I think of it as the wall. You know, I talk about it in the book. There's a race car driver, Mario Andretti, who said his tip for race car driving was, don't look at the wall, your car goes where your eyes go.

And that metaphor for me has always stuck because I realized, oh my God, I keep crashing into the wall. Like one of the things that for me has been hard my whole life is trusting people. And there's reasons for that. And I have deep history with that. But it's like it. I really struggled to an extent I didn't even realize until in the last few years.

But I really, really struggled to trust people. And that has affected me my whole life. It's affected my friendships. It's affected my friendships, it's affected my relationships, it's affected how much I give to people because I've spent my life being worried about being taken advantage of. And so-

And that's why we do it just to explain it. I think this is again why it's similar. We give to people, healers, basically helping people, but so we're not going to take it. If we give, we won't be able to be taking advantage. Right, because that's not a relationship where you have to worry about that. I realized how much I struggled with trust

and that was the wall that I like just kept crashing into because I kept, you know, if you focus on the wall all the time, you'll find it. You'll find- You'll find that thing. You'll find the person who's unt find it. You'll find- You'll find that thing and that thing. You'll find the person who's untrustworthy. You'll find the situation where you gave more than someone else did.

You'll find, and you'll focus on that. And you'll say, see, this isn't why I don't do this. I started to see that not just with myself, but I saw it with people in relationships everywhere. I coached a woman who said, you know, it's been growing great with this guy, but then he didn't invite me to this thing with his friends on a Saturday in the daytime.

He had a little gathering and he didn't invite me and it brought out all of her abandonment wounds and everything she was worried about with being her again and comes from deep history for her. But on the day that he had this little get together, she texted him and she said, why didn't you invite me? And he said, I'm so sorry, I just having a little gathering with my friends.

I hadn't, by the way, before this, even by her account, he had been great. It's not like he had had a history of being difficult or being untrustworthy. She got triggered because like, she got so triggered and he said, can I call you later? And he's texting her this while he's with his friends. He said, can I, can I call you later? And she said, don't bother. And then of course, that's what happened was her wall is I'm gonna be abandoned and she's staring at that wall all the time. She's always looking for

the place that she's gonna be abandoned is what we're saying. Right. Like if we're looking for someone to take advantage of us or to abandon us or to gaslight, we're gonna find that. We're gonna find it. That's our upbringing. Yeah. That's what's comfortable to us. Yeah and especially because we live in find it. That's what's comfortable to us. Yeah, and especially because we live in a world where it's complicated and people are messy and people aren't perfect all the time. And there's like, she found her wall there. And instead of like checking to see like, oh, well, let me actually have a call with

this person. Let me explain that today got to me in a way that I'm, maybe I'm a little embarrassed to say, but I was really hurt that you didn't invite me to your thing and I don't know if I have a right to be hurt but I was hurt and instead of having that conversation she said don't bother what she did was she took the car and she said well if there's a wall I'm just gonna crash into it myself and she abandoned him before he could abandon her so everyone can relate to this stuff and again like the thing that I am fixated on with people right now is we all have our, every one of us has our

reality and we don't realize for the most part that it is our reality. We just think it's life right and that's not our fault. When a dolphin grows up in captivity and learns to do backflips for food and jump through hoops and a human gives it a fish, if that dolphin was released into the wild tomorrow and it started doing backflips in the ocean for food or swimming up to boats thinking that those humans were going to give them food, we wouldn't say the dolphin had a self-worth problem.

We wouldn't say the dolphin was broken. We'd say, no, no, no, this is the behavior the dolphin learned in the tank. And when the dolphin was in the tank, it didn't know it was a tank. It thought it was the world. When we grew up in our tank, we didn't think it was the tank. We thought it was life. So we go out into life and we keep doing the same things over and over, thinking that whatever our experience is, is how life is. And at some point, if we can just develop the humility to say, my experience of life might not be the only experience of life.

There might be other people who are having a different go of it than me. And if they are, what could I be curious about in learn? I think curiosity is a very powerful word. Curious is huge. Yeah, let's get curious. What are my beliefs? Yeah, what are my beliefs and why are those people having a different experience than me? What's going on over there? Don't think you have to believe something new. That's the hard part. Like when people are like, you just have to

believe, I'm like, give me a break. You know how hard it is to change a belief? That was apparently what? which is gonna adopt, like go to the buffet of great beliefs. So just go, I'll take that one. Like it doesn't work like that. It's pretty wired. If you've been cheated on your whole life or betrayed your whole life,

you don't, people can't just go to the buffet of beliefs and go, I'm just gonna believe that people are amazing and that people can be trusted. That's not what your wiring has told you. Your nervous system is built to expect this. So what we can do instead is just get curious. I remember I grew up and because of my trust issues, jealousy was like a thing for me.

I would get jealous and I would like look for ways that I was gonna get betrayed or that I was gonna... And I remember I had people in my life that didn't get jealous, who were in healthy relationships. And I'd be like, I would sit there and I would ask them dumb questions. I'd be like, so wait, what would you, if your partner was doing this and whatever,

how, what would you do? And they would tell me their answer. And I'd realize they thought completely differently about it. And I'd go, oh my God, they have a relationship I value. I admire these people. And when they get to that junction, I go left and they go right.

What if I went right? Yeah, just to use that example, jealousy isn't my trigger. I haven't had that a lot, but I know that people do. So I'm always so, aren't you jealous? Aren't you worried? And I don't know why, because my tank I grew up in that wasn't part of it like sometimes I think people have jealousy because like their parents were jealous or the mom was always like you better watch out for that neighbor they're

gonna steal your husband or your partner and I never just had that for whatever reason everyone in my family was out for themselves so you know it is interesting to look at I don't have to live in this way just because I have jealousy or I've trust issues or whatever it is interesting to look at, I don't have to live in this way just because I have jealousy or I have trust issues or whatever it is. Like what you talk about is that we are not set, like just because it's the way it's been, or we always date these kinds of people,

we are part of that problem or that pattern. And so if we, you talk about retraining our instincts, right, like our instinct might be to do one thing, but we can retrain ourselves, right? To think another way. Is that? Yeah, there's a, we have to start seeing our instincts as just the survival instincts we learned. They're not the truth.

And that doesn't make them the best instincts we could have. It is, you know, whenever I hear like, trust your instincts, I'm like, yeah. It's a hard one for me too. I'm like, oh, I know. Is it my thought? Is it my obsession? Am I anxious? Well, I would say that it's a better phrase to say trust your intuition. But the problem is most of us aren't in touch with that. What we have is instincts and our instincts aren't as trustworthy. No. Our instincts are what we learned to do to survive in the tank. What we learned to do to survive in the tank, it might've been a really weird tank.

Yeah. And it might've been like, those aren't good survival skills if you want a healthy relationship. So you have now people who someone pulls away from you and stops texting you, and your instinct is to text them twice as much. That's a bad instinct.

Because you want to feel safe in that moment. Yeah, so you form and you're like, you know, trying to just get them to like you and you try and you value, you know, the instinct when someone becomes scarce to value them twice as much. Because you think that if they're hard to get, they must be valuable. That's a bad instinct.

Yeah, and those are the people who say they're dating the toxic people or they're like why do I keep dating the bad people or whatever. It's because it's that instinct from childhood. It feels from wherever it feels familiar. There's an instinct that when we have a crush on someone and we have a great date with them to just essentially drop our entire lives. Right. Exactly. I don't need those classes. I don't need this job. All I need is to hole up in a love nest with this person. Yeah, that's it. We need to normalize all those feel good hormones too

that are going on that are also aren't real. It's very hard. It's very tricky. How do we become the person to attract the person? Like how do we be the person we wanna find? Like that's the bigger picture. Are you saying like we gotta work on all of our stuff? Like how do we do that?

Like do we have to become the person? Well I think that we, To be the fine person? I'm a big believer in no one will value you if you don't value yourself. And valuing yourself is an interesting thing. You have to start, most of us go through life looking for the world to tell us what our worth is.

And it's completely backwards. We have to tell the world what our worth is. It's not, don't wait for anyone to tell you what you're worth. They're waiting for you to tell them. And the way you tell them is by having standards and boundaries, things you will and won't accept, behavior that you wanna be around. And if you don't get that behavior,

you stop being around that person. And a huge part of that comes from, you know, you go, well, where do standards come from? How can I be brave enough to have standards? How can I develop my self-worth to the point where I can actually have standards? We'll be back with more Matthew Hussey after the break. In this book there's a chapter for everyone who gets it there's a chapter called core confidence I promise you it will change the way you look at confidence forever because it it has an uncommon way of looking at where self-worth can come from. A lot of us, when you think about self-love,

and you say to people, why should you love yourself? People will say because they'll start coming up with reasons, like logical reasons, like, well, because I'm a good person, and I'm kind, and I take care of people, and I go out of my way for people, and I'm a good person to my family, and I work really and I they they come up with all these reasons and I always think that's a trap because if you give yourself if you think you need all those reasons to love yourself then what do you do when you're none of those things?

What do you do when you have a bad day? What do you do when you're a little selfish? What do you do when you screw up? Are you not lovable then? So we have to have a more robust system for loving ourselves. It has to come from something much more fundamental. Now, what is that thing? I believe we don't need to think we're special in order to love ourselves.

That's the mistake. We think in order to love myself, I have to start telling myself I'm special. And it's really hard to believe you're special because guess what? We're one in eight billion people on the planet. Like none of us are that special. Right, we all want to be special, don't we?

We all want to be special, but our brain logically goes, you're one of 8 billion. And there's lots of people who are really good at shit and they're really good looking and they have loads of great stuff going for them. And they have, like, we don't feel that special. So we go, well, how can I love myself? I really don't feel special

in comparison to everyone else. It's the wrong way to look else it's the wrong way to look at it the right way to look at it is this out of 8 billion people on this earth you are the only one the only person out of those 8 billion who is responsible for the human that is you you're the only one who has custody of that particular human being. And if you look at it that way, what you realize is your whole job in life is to give that human the best life you can. It's not to judge this human. It's not to look at what this human has in relation to other humans.

It's kind of pointless when you realize I can't exchange my human. So if I can't exchange my human for another human, it's irrelevant. My only job while I'm here is to give this human the best life I can. And it's a bit like, you know, when you ask a parent, why do you love your child? They don't say because they did well in English class yesterday, or because they were really kind today, they say, what are you talking about? They're my child. Right.

And you're saying, so I love this reframe. It's like we are our own children. We love ourselves like we love our children. Like we shouldn't even have to. And if we could give ourselves that kind of love or even like, like you say, we don't always like ourselves, but we should love ourselves. But it's okay if some days we don't like ourselves. Is that- You don't have to like yourself to love yourself because loving yourself is not a feeling. It's your job. It's our job. No one else is going to ever care for us

the way that we do, but yet, we can be so hard on ourselves and we keep pushing ourselves, but literally it's our only job. And of course, if we have kids, we're a better parent. I really enjoyed that point because it's like, if we really think of it that way, it's like the whole putting your own oxygen mask on first.

I think people have kids sometimes like, well, that's the great love the whole putting your own oxygen mask on first. I think people have kids sometimes like, well, that's the great love, but then we're still hard on ourselves. So to say, no, my job here is like, I have to love myself. I love myself. Don't sleep on the job. Yeah. Don't leave your post. You got like, where have you been? I love all my sex. This human is suffering. Your job is to take care of this human. And if you wake up tomorrow and you go, job is to take care of this human and if you wake up tomorrow and you go how do I give this human the best experience of life today? How do I take care of this human, nurture this human, stand up for this human today? What would I do today if I was trying to give this human the best life possible? We will make a lot of

different decisions to the ones we made yesterday. Suddenly that toxic person who's coming in and out of your life, you'd be like, I'm never texting that person again. Why I'm not letting this person near my human. Why have I given, how have I let this person be near my human for the last five years when all they do is poison them?

And that's like getting them out of their tank. They don't deserve it. Still loving themselves, right? Like it's like when people go cold or they ghost or they blame themselves. I mean you spent a lot of time talking about how we in the book about how like we like don't even try to investigate why you had ghosted like you don't even need to go down a road and say like maybe this happened maybe that's been like you'll probably never

know but number two it's usually not it's not even about you and just move on right in a way like like what would you say? I just think we have to get good in life at giving ourselves closure. Yeah, you're not closures kind of bullshit. Closure's not coming from the outside. And there are some people who will intentionally never give you closure.

You know why? Because they wanna leave the door open so they can come back. So of course they're not gonna give you closure. Why doesn't someone give you closure when they ghost you? Because they might want to come back. So they're not going to give you closure. They're not going to say I'm not interested because then you might not respond when they reach out again. If I ghost you I confuse you and then when I come back

four weeks later and say what's up how are you? I'm relying on the fact that you're confused and that you're not going to speak up for yourself. I'm relying on the fact that you're going and that you're not going to speak up for yourself. I'm relying on the fact that you're going to go along with this weird situation and pretend it's okay and just see me again. And by the way, that's what's happening in dating all the time. You're talking to someone every day and then for two weeks they go cold and then two weeks later they message you and say, what are you up to tonight? They're relying on the fact that you are going to think

that it's weak for you to admit that that hurt you or that that was strange behavior to you or that that's not enough for you. And instead, your thing, that the cool thing to do is feign indifference to their behavior. So you'll now come back instead of being like,

I'm not going to tell them that this has affected me. Instead, I'm just going to be cool. So they send you a message and say, what are you up to tonight? And you go, I'm not going to tell them that this has affected me instead, I'm just going to be cool. So they send you a message and say, what are you up to tonight? And you go, I'm just seeing friends, da da da, what are you up to? And they're like, cool. You've just tacitly approved this entire dynamic. We think that we're holding the power by mirroring their bullshit behavior, but

instead we're enabling this bullshit behavior. We're approving it. I love this. By not pointing it out. Cause we don't feel, yeah, cause we try to play it cool. Like, oh, no big deal. But what the right thing to do there would be like, thought we were having a good time, whatever, not cool, have a nice life.

Shine a giant light on the elephant in the room. Yeah. Don't let there be an elephant in the room. Shine a light on it and be like, you know that that thing's weird, isn't it? Yeah. We were having a good time. I didn't hear from you for two weeks.

Now you're texting me again. Like you have to be willing to shine a light on it. Yes, we have to. Mitch Albom said, if you don't like the culture, don't buy it. Create your own. Create your own. I love it.

And in our love lives, we have to start, you know what's a word that's not used enough in a love life context? Leadership. We've rarely ever used the word leadership in a romantic context, in a love life context. We talk about it in business all the time. We talk about it in personal leadership all the time.

Not many love life books talk about leadership, but leadership is the ability to lead with your culture. We have to go from mirroring to modeling. Mirroring other people's culture and the behavior that they bring to us to modeling the kind of behavior we want to see from someone else. So we lead by being it first and I'll tell you right now this is gonna, people I'm sure will be tickled by this. When I was dating my wife Audrey, I was the guy for a minute who left,

I went back to America, we met in London. I went back to the States and I was like, I can't do this, I can't do a long distance relationship. And we were dating at the time, we weren't in a relationship, but gradually she started to feel me pull away. And it got to the point where I pulled away so much that it was like there was nothing there anymore.

I then sent a message to her and I roll my eyes at it now, but I sent a message to her saying I miss you. And this was after like a couple of weeks of no contact, nothing, not trying, like very bare minimum. Now, if she was mirroring me in that moment, she would have been like, I miss you too. How are you? It's been like, you know, what's going on? She didn't do that. I'll tell you, she modeled the culture she wanted to see.

She sent me a message and she said, hey, I hope you're well. I don't really know what to say when you send me a message like this. We haven't really been that close for a while now. And rightly or wrongly, this message comes across as a bid for attention. It was one of the most brilliant, brave, leading messages that I've ever received in my life and if you look at the language of that everything about it was powerful. Firstly she's still warm right if you look at the best people who have the best standards who are really grounded in them they don't lose their warmth and their kindness when they're having a standard they can maintain all of that beauty at the same time as

having a standard. So she said hey I, I hope you're well. There was still warmth there. But then she said, when you send something like this to me, I don't really know what to say, which is her way of saying, this is really confusing. Yeah. We were having a good time. Now it's been a few weeks. Right. And what you're saying is completely out of sync with your behavior. You're saying you miss me, but I barely heard from you. She then said, we haven't been that close for a while now. So that's her shining a light on the elephant in the room.

And then she said, rightly or wrongly. And then she said, and rightly or wrongly. And I think she put those in like parentheses. Rightly or wrongly is a beautiful phrase by the way because it takes ego out of the equation it's her way of saying I'm not judging you and I'm not pointing at you and saying you're a bad guy or that you know you truly meant to do this in a malicious way or anything like that she's just going rightly or wrongly I could be wrong rightly or wrongly this message comes off as a bid for attention she's, I could be wrong. Rightly or wrongly, this message comes off as a bid for attention.

She's saying, I might be wrong, but it feels like that's what this is. Tell me if I'm wrong. And it was, I remember feeling completely kind of naked with that message. Okay, now I'm gonna ask you our five quickie questions we ask all of our guests. Quickie, ready? Whatever answer comes to your mind first, what's your

biggest turn on? I think like mentally connecting. Yeah. Yeah. Biggest turnoff? Unkindness. What makes good sex? No judgment. Something you would tell your younger self about sex and relationships. You're not perfect. So be compassionate towards the imperfections in other people. What's the number one thing you wish everyone knew about sex? That it's play. Yeah, have more fun. I love it. That's good. Thank you, Matthew.

Matthew Hussey, thank you for being here. So where people find your book and join your world and hang out with you more. I hope, if I haven't been able to sway anyone to buying a book in this conversation, I'm not sure what else to say. I hope that people have heard enough that they would love to get a copy. Of course, you can get a copy at lovelifebook.com.

All the retailers are there, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, international retailers, if you're not in America. I'm doing an event on May the 4th called Find Your Person, which is kind of my answer to, okay, I can't guarantee someone finds their person, but if I was taking someone's year and saying, what would I do to engineer the best chances,

this event is my answer to that question. And every single person who gets a copy of the book, if you go to lovelifebook.com and enter your receipt you're gonna get a free ticket to that event on May 4th it's exclusive for book buyers but I really truly truly have pulled my heart and soul into this and I care about it deeply I'm very very proud of it. All right hope you enjoyed part one with Matthew Hussie but you you gotta stay tuned for the second part where we will reveal what he wrote back to his now wife after he got that direct and unexpected text from her.

The story doesn't go quite the way you think it might. And of course, there are more tips, more talks with Matthew in the next episode, and we answer your questions. That's it for today's episode. See you on Tuesday! Thanks for listening to Sex with Emily. Be sure to like, subscribe, and give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and share this with a friend or partner. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at Sex with Emily.

Oh, I've been told I give really good email. So sign up at SexWithEmily.com. And while you're there, check out my free guides and articles for more ways to prioritize your pleasure. If you'd like to ask me about your sex life, dating, or relationships, call my hotline, 559-TALKSEX. That's 559-825-5739. Or go to sexwithemily.com slash ask Emily.

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