The Messy Loneliness of Being Single: An Interview with Matthew Hussey

I'll start us off if you're if you're open to it we'll just kind of get going let's go yeah uh Matthew hussy wow this is cool I've been following you for a few years and I remember just before kind of I had my time taking off on Tik Tok and Instagram and stuff following and and just being like whoa it'd be so cool to get to talk to him one day because in the world of like relationship coaches and relationship gurus there's a lot of chatter and a lot of noise but you kind of stand out as like this really grounded and wise and like thoughtful voice in this space and way I mean not to insult the space or anything but just it it was uncharacteristic to find just uh someone with your I don't know there's a calmness and a patience in letting people work through the the many facets that can be difficult around finding love and relationships there wasn't I I guess the way I characterize my experience of your work is like he's not trying to rush to give quick answers and just to say the most viral kind of like bumper sticker type thing um he's actually seems like he's in the long Hall kind of Rhythm with folks of like let's do some of the personal work let's kind of hedge our expectations let's try to come near the other person is more than just kind of a fantasy or kind of a check mark let's try to get to know them on a deep level it seems like you're trying to bring people deeper on their path to finding love and relationship rather than it just being a solution um I don't know how does that strike you as I describe that uh that was lovely it's really lovely I I I appreciate it I'm a a fan of your work and you know I really respect the way that you go about your work you know I think we we share some some DNA and the way we approach these things and it's you know I I I don't think there are always simple answers and I you know I think it's um I would I'm like the worst live TV guest in the world I feel like because I just I'm the person they get frustrated with because I don't have short answers yeah I you know I I I feel like I'm never great for this just sound by element and I always frustrate people with you know hearing a question and then wanting to talk for the next 30 minutes about everything that brings up and that doesn't lend well it hasn't historically lent itself to you know when I started out 17 years ago it was all about TV and sound bits and and then you know luckily podcasts came along and you got to actually talk for longer with people the same way you know a therapy or a coaching session would take place where you actually get to sit with someone and dig deep into what's going on and not kind of patronize people or be reductive with an answer that's not actually nuanced for their situation so I uh I really appreciate it and I that's that's exactly the kind of energy that I've brought to this new book is the kind of energy that I try and bring to everything I'm doing these days is really figuring out what's what's going on it's not you know we I think it's funny cuz for my entire career what I got known for was helping people find love and being a kind of co-pilot for them on that journey and for a long time I think we were sort of gas lit by a technology companies to think that like the only problem is just we're not meeting each other and if we could just solve that and if we could just creates some maps so that we could meet each other more easily that would that would fix our love lives and of course we've discovered that's not true and for several reasons it feels harder than ever to find love we feel like we're in a kind of culture right now in dating that that feels really uh both naturally difficult and also uniquely difficult right now I think and that's that's people's real experience is that wow I really deeply want to find love is one of the biggest goals I have for my life and and there's a lot of fear out there and there's a lot of anxiety out there from people who feel like wow it's not working I'm not finding my person I'm not where I thought I would be by this point in my life I I don't feel the way I thought I'd feel by this point in my life and for a while we we feel like dating or finding you know the process of how we find love these days is broken and and then the more and more of our friends we see get into relationships the more we start to worry that we're the one who's broken and um and so I I really I I wanted this piece of work this book to be something that addressed the real emotions that people feel when they're on that path to finding love and the real obstacles they feel without just giving people cliches like it will happen when you least expect it without telling them they just need to get out there more um some of the low hanging fruit it almost kind of feels uh like kicking someone when they're down yeah for sure yeah uh you know and then so I all of that it worries me for people because I want I want people to not just find the peace and the happiness that can come from finding the right relationship I also want people to experience more peace and more joy on the way there because I think life is too short to defer that to a time when we we finally meet the person we we feel we've been looking for you know I I love that you start the book in that way too the book love life it's coming out soon I'm excited for it I'm excited for it to get into the world it's um you start the book by talking about singleness and this is uh it's just an interesting topic a little bit about my backstory and just how I relate to this was I actually got married super early so so my wife and I we got married 19 and 20 and that was a little bit endemic of like we grew up in kind of Conservative Christian Bible School world and so we kind of just left right from high school into a conservative Bible school was pretty like that the joke was Ring by Spring you know everyone kind of got engaged freshman here and then and then uh you know linked up and went on their way and most of those marriages have split up by now that's the sad reality of just looking on Facebook at old friends that I think when you're impulsive in that moment um you don't always make the most maybe value grounded decisions on who you link up with but it was it was interesting kind of I was we were always the married friends in the singles friend group um just by virtue of us getting married really young and I think it was it was fascinating just to see the the difference in our lives because I think like for example Paige and I really focused a lot on career in our 20s and school um because we kind of had that I don't know that aspect of trying to find the one so to speak kind of like already in place and I just watched so many of my friends go through these high highs and low lows and then just the mental fatigue of the breakup and just the emotional trauma like it just just people wrecked for weeks you know when they really thought that they found somebody and then it just uh for whatever reason fell apart and it doesn't just bring up the disappointment with that person it's like what's wrong with me you know is just like you stated and like ah maybe maybe I'm never going to find this again and then what's interesting now is so many of my friends uh it's the first round of like divorces right among amongst my friend group kind of where I'm in my early 30s right now and so there's lots of folks through 28 29 30 kind of going through that first divorce and then re-entering back into dating and wondering like again is something just wrong with me is something just and and the thing that kind of started to hit me maybe even just in this past year was like man I think we think of singl in this culture is like a disease or like like like it it's pathologized it's this awful thing that needs to be cured and almost all of our energy so much of our financial energy our attention is on curing this disease of singleness so that we can finally be happy and then on this current just viewpoint on my life story so far it's like well my marriage has been deeply meaningful and has not been the sole thing that's like accomplished my happiness permanently like like Paige makes me very happy but there's so much of my life that is not about my romantic relationship and the there's so many people where I'm watching those marriages kind of fall apart and they kind of fall back into that idea of like oh I got to get into the next relationship so I guess all that to summarize a question would be why do you think we hold singleness in such disrepute and why is it this disease that needs to be cured and what is is there anything positive in that season outside of just weight that we can say that's meaningful wow I mean the I have no doubt is a historical context that you know I is beyond my expertise for where that deep sense of um sort of social uh stigma comes from of the idea of being single and I think that more even in a what what is a much more liberal gen generally liberal culture these days and a far less conservative one I I think those hangovers don't go away so quickly and there is still the stigma of being unpaired and have having never found your person uh I still don't think has there been a president a sitting president that's ever been single I don't think so not that I know of yeah you know so it's it's uh you know I think there's still that sense of it's not just is there something wrong with me if I'm still single there's the way that people look at others is there's something wrong with you that you're still single and we feel that judgment we feel it even at our own loving dinner table at Thanksgiving where you know Grandma or Auntie asks you if you've met anyone yet and there's a slight tone to the question um we sense it and and and of course that's that's coming from the outside I think what confuses things is that there's also a very real in there's a very real internal feeling that we have that even if there was no societal pressure to find someone as some kind of marker for Success there's still the internal yearning for connection that's right and and that would be there even without the the stigma it would we would still have this what feels to many like an absence at the heart of life when we go have hobbies I have friends I have things I enjoy doing I you know happy to go and see a movie on my own once in a while or to take myself to dinner I you know I do all of the things that people tell me to do as a single person who needs to learn to enjoy it and and I have fulfillment in my career and yet you know it's Friday evening and 8:00 p.m. rolls around and I've seen my friends three nights this week and God what I would love right now is to curl up with someone who understands me who is with me romantically who I can say I'm building a future with we we don't think of building a future with our friends we think of having them in our future um with a partner we think of this thing we'd like to build with someone and and and it is an intensely sad thing for so many I had a a woman that I coached who said to me this was her first question to me when we met she said how do I kill the desire to meet someone to find love she didn't say how how can you help me find love she said how can I kill the desire to find love can you help me she said because I have wanted it for so long it still hasn't happened in my life and if I hold on to this desire and I never find that person I'm going to be sad for the rest of my life so how do I lose the desire to meet someone that who who could hear that and not have their heart break for someone having arrived at that point and this wasn't someone in their 30s this was a woman I was coaching must have been I I'm not sure in her the 60s but it's that's the kind of pain that we are dealing with and there's a lot of Shame out there from people who want to find love but feel like it's somehow shameful to admit that they really want to find love that's right Y which is uh incredible really when we all know it's like a it's like the worst kept secret in the world that all of us want to find love deeply but we're afraid of saying I really you know what I'd love in my life I'd love to meet someone I'd love to find love oh dating apps those are things my friends are on I I you know I don't do the apps which is a kind of there's even in that a little bit of Pride there there's AUD yeah and there's a pride and there's a little bit of a like a judgment of like look at them over there trying so hard as if as if trying to find love is a is something to be ashamed of as opposed to something to be proud of that there's a vulnerable act that you are seeking love that you want to find love and so so much of my work focuses around a helping people understand firstly that you are not there's firstly you're not broken there is no shame in being single there's also no shame in wanting love in wanting to find love and that there really are things that we can do and ways of approaching this going forward that can change our whole perspective on it that can help us find love faster and can also help us enjoy it more along the way our past in this area doesn't matter what age you are does not have to equal the future so well said I love that it's the both it's not pathologizing singleness it's also not pathologizing wanting to find love and connection I don't I was thinking when you said that like oh how do I kill this desire to find someone I'm like I don't even know if that's possible I don't know if it's possible to because we all need to be seen we all need that companionship like whether that's romantic or not and I think for to be honest most of us really desire that within a romantic context you know so I think one of the cheap answers that I hear is folks like oh well you know just find more friends find Connection in other ways find it in other places and it's like yeah there's some vulnerable depth that you really only uncover in a romantic partnership that um that would be inappropriate to find in other ways and it's okay to Des there is something a little disingenuous about those responses uh because I I I feel that the people saying them are saying something that I I would argue they probably haven't achieved themselves yeah yeah that's right or they're saying it within the safe confines of a relationship and have forgotten what it is to be in that situation and to to to and and and look the other side of that is people uh people want deep connection they also yearn for the the their sexuality to be expressed and and the current culture of hooking up doesn't necessarily work for them it's not it may not be something that they want and and so that that leaves a lot of people stuck in a kind of limbo because you know I don't want to put this sexual part of me is something I don't want to put on on hold indefinitely but I also don't Vibe with the idea of you know just going out and having a string of casual hookups until I meet the right person and by the way not everything is a casual hookup but what's what's the in between well the in between is someone who you kind of know isn't right but it's not quite casual you're seeing them and at some point you you know you keep going deeper and deeper with someone who ultimately you don't think you'll end up with and the more times you sleep with them and the more times you hang out and the the more you're going down this path that ultimately isn't going to work and is going to end up in tremendous heartbreak on one side or both so it's I don't think a lot of the time people discuss the practicalities of being single and wanting to express love wanting to express intimacy wanting to like put having this energy that you want to put somewhere and you don't have any a home for that energy that's an incredibly it a chronically painful and dissatisfying and unfulfilling experience to be having you know I think the same tension and this is a little outside the context of of dating but I see the same tension and the desire to have kids I think some people are like I have this energy and this desire to want to have a family and to have you know and that's one of their main reasons for wanting to find a romantic relationship and wanting to date I mean fine the companionship with with a you know a husband or wife or whatever but I really want to be a mom or I want to be a dad and I want to have kids and that's actually the primary you know reason for wanting to pursue that and I think the the strange seemingly parent paradoxical answer to this conundrum is something like it's not like you can't be happy without it in in the sense of like you have to have it or you're really doomed to be like really unhappy or hey you can totally be fine without it and you can just you know fine to that compan up in other places it's something more like it's probably going to be different for everyone and if you follow the yearning in your heart and where it's guiding you there's probably something there that's going to scare you and something there that's going to beckon you to take another step towards what's meant for you yeah there's um and yeah the final chapter of this book is called happy enough yeah yeah yeah cool yeah and and it's very very intentional language on my part I um I for for years I struggled with chronic physical pain uh which was a combination of tinitus had ringing in my ears that never went away still there um and I also had physical um all sorts of ear pain and pain in my head and dizziness and a whole kind of cacophony of of symptoms that for seven or eight years just pled my life uh to to the point where it was actually the the very reason I started therapy was because I got to the point of going I don't I do not know what I'm going to do about this I have tried every treatment I have flown all over the world I have thrown money at this nothing has worked and I don't know what I'm going to do because it's takes me out of every waking moment of my life I and everyone can relate to that feeling of God life even in the good moments I'm not there I am on the outside of my own life all the time and um and it was truly a very very dark place for me and I said a version of what that woman said to me about her love life I said a version of that to this therapist I I sat down and I said I've made a decision and he said what's that I said I think I'm going to live for everyone else now I I'm going to live for my family I'm going to live for my team I'm going to live for my friends I'm going to live for the people that I get to help through my work but I think I'm I'm going to live through for for everyone else because I'm for as long as this pain is in my life I I'm never going to be happy I'm never going to experience Joy again and I can't I I don't know what to do about that other than to find meaning in helping other people and it was the darkest statement of My Life um and and I in the years that followed I had to figure out what are the tools for me that can help me manage my relationship with this thing because if I don't get some tools I don't know what I don't know how I get through this for another 50 years um and those tools became I ended up putting them in the book for anyone who's going through any kind of pain be it physical or emotional because that chronic pain that I felt physically that I didn't know how I was going to manage is the same has the same components and the same there's a kind of similar mechanics to what happens to people emotionally in chronic pain and I knew that if what my goal became let me get to happy enough it if I can get to happy enough I can learn to be okay with my circumstances the way they are now and not wish for something else because for me it was the wishing for something else that was killing me it was the idea that with every doctor's appointment that was going to be the moment where I suddenly started to feel better and when and so I would get the same way someone gets excited about hopeful first date I would get excited you know being like this is this is a turning point I'd tell my friends you know I'm going to this treatment I feel really good about I think this is going to be the thing that helps me and then when it didn't I would crash into a depression in a harder way than before and that was the cycle I stayed on for a very long time and uh and I and and the the tools that I developed that or I not developed myself but I started to just everywhere I could find them I started to bring in the things that were the most helpful to me during that time those became the the tools that I talk about in the book for people to get to happy enough while they are in their current circumstances which isn't the same thing as uh not wanting for something else you you mentioned a very important example which is people who want children I have for 17 years of my life now been had a front row to the people who and women especially who want children so badly it is a life goal of theirs and it feels like it's essential to their being and and when and this isn't all women but the so many of the women I've coached are in that place and when it feels like where they are isn't the on the trajectory for that to happen in time for their own biology the panic that sets in the anxiety that sets in leads people to some disastrous decisions decisions that have compounding effects for the pain in their life and so it's it's been a huge I'm so passionate about that particular area that I wrote an entire chapter in this book called the question of having a child where it's not only my experience of working with people but I bring in fertility some of the top fertility experts to talk about what they've seen in this area but the what can help people is to figure out what their plan a is and then to get really clear on well what is Plan B in that area if plan a is that I meet someone by a certain time in my life and this happens the the so much of the anxiety we feel is when plan a is the only plan we've told ourselves that we can be happy with and then it suddenly we feel like we're a prisoner to that plan and what I help people do is find out well what look what is what is the plan B if this doesn't happen with another person on the time frame that you're looking for what's and then what's your plan C and what's your plan D and at any point you can decide and it does it's not for me or anyone else to tell people what plan B should be that's a personal decision for everybody but for some people Plan B is I'm going to have a child on my own for other people Plan B is adoption for other there are different avenues for different people and that's up to them to decide but one of the greatest things we can do in life is be ready at any time to turn Plan B into the new plan a and to resolve to make Plan B so beautiful that it's almost like you you can't now imagine plan a having happened because Plan B is so exquisitely beautiful in what you've made of it uh but I think that you know a big part of this book is about having hard conversations one of the hardest conversations we have to have is with ourselves that if life doesn't turn out the way that I had hoped what's my plan B that becomes the new plan a and how do I make that more beautiful than I ever could have imagined and and that's something you can do when you get to happy enough you get your power back again you like isn't perfect but you get your power back and when you have your power back you suddenly have you have the resources to start turning Plan B into a new and beautiful plan a beautiful and I love your emphasis on um doing that intentionally I I was just thinking as you were talking about all the women that I've worked with um I used to work a lot with foster kids so the majority at the beginning of my career was like all foster kids and the majority of the parents were single women who um maybe in their 40s you know late 40s who uh didn't you know find a partner or had recently left a partner and so they decided you know that they were going to express their desire to have kids in adoption and some of them premeditated that and kind of planned through that and some of them it was like an impulsive thing and the difference was really striking even in just how they held it because the the interesting thing about what happened for the mothers as I was walking with them like let's take an example you adopt someone maybe a bit impulsively they have like just High Acuity needs meaning maybe they went through a l of trauma maybe they have special needs maybe they're you know the type of kid that wakes up in the middle of the night and uh you're up every two hours and so and then you're trying to hold down a full-time job and provide for this kid but you feel overwhelmed and it's there's a lot of shame in feeling like even almost a little bit of regret in uh in the adoption process and how are you supposed to do that because this kid's defenseless so why would I you know regret you know a decision like that and then the catastrophe really compounds because it's like ah I tried to fulfill this dream and it turns out it's something that's making me miserable and I must be such a pathetic piece of garbage like that I'm just destined for misery and the The Arc of that I mean that what what a complex problem to to hold like the The Arc of kind of coming back around is like I think that all of us here on this Earth are meant to live these different lives and to relate to these meaningful things in different ways and when we can when we can hold the grief of our plan a not coming to fruition in the way that we hoped and then have a gentle warm presence towards Plan B we have a mindfulness to approach it in a way that's actually going to lead to some beneficial flourishing and even if you went with the plan B like I'm describing in an impulsive way let's say that you adopted or maybe you decided to have a kid now you're working full-time and you have child care and you're overwhelmed you're not stuck like you're never stuck I I think I think of people even who married someone impulsively that was just like oh I just got to get married and then with someone and they're like oh crap now I'm trapped in this terrible marriage you're not stuck either it's like you know there you're not stuck in a plan a that didn't go the way you wanted you're not stuck in a plan B because there's a way there's there's a how there's an engagement even within in a really complex situation where you can I don't know how do I describe this point it's like the thing that's making it hard is the thing that's making it meaningful and what I mean by that is like the reason uh being single is hard is because relationship matters to you the reason parenting is hard is because your dream of getting to uh to connect with a child and and pass on what you know and even just like watch them grow up like all of that matters there's a dream in the background that matters even in all the suffering and if you try to push against the suffering and be like I'm going to try to make the part of me that desires that meaningful thing just die then you're actually cut off from the thing that gives your life meaning and so there has to be a way to get close to the thing that's meaningful even though it's painful and uh I don't know what's coming up in your mind as I'm exploring that no it's beautifully said I I you know what comes up for me when you say all of that is just how how messy life is yeah you know we we have all these ideas of how life is going to be and man I look at I look up my last 10 years and mistakes I thought were the mistakes of other people that I then went and made 10 times worse um things that you know traps I fell into that I just if you'd have asked me 10 years before that will you ever fall into that trap I'd be like what are you talking about that's not me you know it's life is just really really messy and um I I think we have to get good at giving ourselves compassion and forgiveness and moving on from things that with hindsight and with you know more tools more resources the the the presence of a an Instagram video you just watched that now has clarified something for you you think oh I would never do I can't believe I did that or I I was so stupid I was so and I've I've done that in one form or another my whole life you know I've I've I my when I think of was been my biggest burden it has been self- judgment it has been constantly relentlessly beating myself up for the the mistakes of the past and or the or the or the mistake this morning and not being able to make peace with it not being able to understand that the person who did that and everyone else can think like this too you know the version of you that got into that relationship the version of you that stayed in that relationship for for 10 years longer than you think you should have now that you're out of it um you know the the version of you that made that decision it was a different version of you it wasn't you today it it was an earlier model uh yeah that's a good point too yeah and and you didn't of of course you made the decision you did you know you were working with the the tools the DNA the influences the mentors or the lack of mentors that you had then that was you were doing I I I think our best can be tragic I think our best can be terrible but our best is what we're doing and that you know 5 years ago when you decided to get into that relationship you know or 20 years ago when you embarked on that marriage with a narcissistic person that just ended and you're looking back and going where did my life go how did I give up 20 years of my life to this person and and of course things like that creates so much self-hatred I've thrown away my life I've thrown away uh you know all of those years that I could have been doing something else I've now got to pick up the pieces of you know people people make decisions that that bring utter chaos and Devastation into their lives or they or they align themselves with a person that brings Devastation into their lives and and I think one of our big regrets sometimes is how bad things have to get for us to do anything about it you know we we go did I really have to let someone destroy my life before I left could I not have left before I felt like I had been betrayed a thousand times could I not have left before my finances were destroyed could I not have left before I put my kids through all of this or people people hate themselves for these things but yeah it's um life is messy and and and what we have now it was never not it was never not going to be it was never not going to be messy yeah sorry finish your thought didn't mean to C no never and and and it's I sometimes think that the the desire for a clean slate is just another Act of ego it's just another yeah once again we're looking for that Purity that fresh start and there is there is no fresh start none of us had a fresh start when we were born let alone now 30 40 50 70 years in we were born to parents who inevitably were going to pass on a bunch of stuff to us and we're going to do the same if we have kids or whoever we end up influencing no one truly gets a fresh start so we kind of I I really believe we have to sit with where we are now in our lives and just go into this complete acceptance of what's our what's my starting point now it's a mess it was always going to be a mess I was never going to get a fresh start so instead of wishing for a fresh start let's just be aggressive about what does living well or differently or more expansively or more kindly look like today and that's where that that to me is an unbelievably exciting thought when we really connect to it instead of trying to to overcome some perceived deficit of the way we've been doing it so far the thing that I say in this you know because it's kind of a hopeless space you know we're talking about the messiness of love and dreams right now it's like all the ways that our our dreams could fall apart of course it's kind of a doubter it's like oh my gosh but the the hope that I see in just holding all the complexity is like the the the certainty is that things change um there's no world where things don't continue to change and the the thing that I feel like is most most heavy in all of these unique spaces I want to have kids I can't have kids I want to be married I can't be married I I just lost the person that I love through a divorce through death like what am I to do there it's like man the thing we can count on is change and the sadness the grief the regret that we're holding on to now will also change uh even the positives even the positives we're holding on to now are going to mature and change there was no world where we were always going to say goodbye to the person we love in death or in the middle of our life whatever we're uh we're always going to lose contact with our kids whether it was in death or whatever it's like it's the the process of this entire life it feels so overwhelming in the smaller Scope when we zoom in on this month it feels like oh what what am I doing but then when we zoom out this is The Human Experience of of gaining something for a moment and then letting it go and there's those of us who try to be happy by by claiming everything all the dreams all the desires by reaching out into the world and collecting everything we desire and bringing it as close and trying to maintain and control it as much as we can and and make it as predictable and make it as consistent and efficient as we can make it and then there's those of us who can take a moment to almost just like take in a sweet romantic flirty moment with a stranger and just to be thankful for that Tuesday night I was like oh that was so so sweet I felt like I was seen in a way even just in that little exchange that I haven't felt seen in a long time and that was beautiful in its own sake not even just for what it could turn into not just well is this my person but just wow in in a breakup in a divorce oh the last five years were hell and it gave me my kid like I'm so grateful for my daughter for my son I wish I didn't have to be with that person wish I left them long ago but look at the beautiful thing that came into my life in the midst of it the loss was is always going to be there but look at that beautiful thing sometimes that's not the given like these beautiful Sparks of just meaning and Joy are uh when we zoom out and hold it in retrospect it's like oh man what a beautiful thing to be alive and of course the experience is living you know we I think sometimes we have this idea that when we're having a bad experience we're not doing living and when we're when we're having a good one that's when we're living and yeah the the the we were still when we were in that relationship and it was hell and we were having all these negative experiences we were still we were we were living in that time and it's that's it was just another experience and those experiences can be intensely painful they also can create some of the parts of ourselves that we end up being the most proud of um and and the experience that we've had so far doesn't have to be the only story of our life you know I I talk in the book about the this uh um these these moments that we experience these deaths in our lives you know whether it's a heartbreak and the ego death of feeling rejected whether it's a divorce and the death of a promise that we made to each other that we were going to stay together forever we experience plenty of these deaths in in our life and there's a there's a moment in Peter Pan where it's Peter is strewn over a rock and he thinks for a moment it's all over and he's the rising tide is about to swallow him and and he has a moment of fear and then he stands up and he says to die will be an awfully big adventure and that Lon always G gave me goose bumps every time whe whe the reading of that book which for anyone who's read that book was intensely emotional book for adults um but there's a that moment where he says to die will be an awfully big adventure can be applied in in all of life you know there there's these moments in life where we experience a death and and our question is what's the adventure that comes out of that when we think that there's a a person we have lost that we can't you know so many people I speak to have lost a person who they thought was the love of their life and this person has decided they they don't want to be with them anymore or they've left them in a marriage or they've cheated on them and and left them for somebody else or they're going through these difficult deaths in their life a death of a relationship a death of this dream of being with somebody now it's not that that isn't sad or tragic or awful it's not that it doesn't need to be grieved it does but if we're not careful we will start to believe that that's the that was the great story of our life and and and that's the dangerous part is we we can all we all relate to watching movies that make us cry that every time we watch that movie it makes us cry but we turn that movie off and then we go live the rest of our lives it's not we realize oh that was a movie that was a something I engaged with for a couple of hours and I believe that we can do the same thing with some of the most difficult things in our life we can engage with the grief of it but if we engage with the grief to the exclusion of our present moment and our future we neglect the new stories that are available to us whose Beginnings can be located precisely where our feet are now now we never see them and we never experience them because we're constantly grieving and and sitting in the old story as if that's the only Narrative of our life oh that's so good you know I was just even thinking Matthew it's like being a therapist was not my plan a and I'm so thankful I I wanted to be a preacher I wanted to be a pastor and that was that would have been a great dream and I'm sure I would have been uh doing just fine in that but it you know my path led me over to being a therapist and I'm so grateful like there's no part of me right now that's like I should go back to the other thing because I'm like I I'm it's so meaningful and soul full of joy here and then I just I think about other things like um you know even just I had two kids I I have a I have a three-year-old and and a one and a half-year-old and to be honest I think having kids wasn't something I was like particularly I don't know it wasn't on my bucket list in my 20s I was just like ah maybe one day whatever and then it became really important to my wife and I was like okay yeah sure let's have kids but it wasn't exactly like my dream let's say I don't know if it I would say it wasn't my plan a I I don't know it it was what it was but then something you you didn't feel connected to the excitement of it necessarily Ahad of time that's a great way to describe it that's exactly it and then I got into the experience and I'm like oh my gosh this should have this is certainly plan a material like like this is incredible like obviously like it's I don't I'm not always the best judge of what should be the plan a I think was what I realized was like maybe life has a plan that is beckoning me and I have my opinions over what should be plan a and plan B and plan C and if I rigidly hold on to my picture of what plan a should be I might miss out on the adventure of my life and just like what you're saying like you're smiling what's coming up no there's a there's a there's a a British poet um and writer David White who wrote a book of essays another great book consolations um that I would encourage everyone to read he takes these words that have lost their meaning through overuse and he reimus them with a sense of poetry and meaning and cool he took the word ambition for the first chapter and he had this line when he described ambition he he said ambition is frozen desire and oh wow it's such a profound line because what he was getting at is this idea that we take these desires we have and then we concretize them a and within them our Prospect for happiness and where what we think is going to make us happy and it it is lacks humility it has no it has no kind of um curiosity about all of the ways that life is going to bring us joy and meaning that have nothing to do with the things that we decide to be ambitious about whether that's a career or having children or a certain relationship or moving to a certain country or whatever it is is that Joy is is what happens along the way in amidst all of those plans that we make and so I just that that idea I think I would invite everyone to ask what part of my ambition right now is is frozen desire that really leaves no space for where so much of my joy and my happiness is going to come from yeah oh couldn't put it better in myself I feel like that that stamps this conversation in a really beautiful way um this Frozen desire I'm going to write that down I got chills when you said that yeah what if you're not uh living in the wreckage of a perfect dream and you have to settle for second best you're actually right at the mark of the path of a great adventure that is going to surprise you and if you have lack of faith that that's even possible if you're in that hopeless depressed space the thing that I hold on to in these moments and I run into them myself plenty is the one thing I can count on in this life as things change and even the dark hopeless discouraged wreckage that I'm feeling now will change it's funny you say that every every in the the back of the book The in that chapter happy enough when I give the tools for how we change our relationship with the difficult times in our lives one of those tools is labeled everything changes so it's kind of a nice full circle moment we said we had some shared DNA here I I think um I encourage anyone who's in your audience who feels this conversation was in any way valuable or healing I think you'll get a lot out of this um book so I I hope you'll if if you're in matias's audience thank you for listening and and and if you uh if you do get the book let me know what you think cuz I'd love to hear about it and and for anyone by the way who does want to know more about it um you can get the book is available um I think we're releasing this around the time that the book is available um or just before so um it's at lovebook.com and we also have an event that I'm doing on the 4th of May um which is going to take the lessons of the book and bring them to life in a live way virtually so wherever you are you can join but um all of the everyone who gets everyone who gets a copy of the book is going to get a ticket to that event for free and you can find it all at loveif book.com ah everybody go get this book love life love Matthew and everything that he's bringing in the world it's um I've gotten to crack it I'm I'm a few chapters in and I'm just again impressed with the the not settling for cheap answers not avoiding the messiness I think you've probably heard that in this conversation there isn't a we're not shying away from the reality that there's a lot of hard ship in this whole path to finding love and building a love life and Matthew I think you're doing Justice and I think you're really helping thousands you know tens of thousands however many people around the world um really move towards the things in life that are meaningful the relationships that their hearts desire I respect you and really love your work thank you for having a meeting with me in this conversation it was great thanks for having Maas I uh I look forward to doing the same with our audience sometime you got to come and speak to our uh all of the

Channel: Matthias J Barker

Views: 23,188

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Id: eOKE6Hnhl4g

Length: 48min 26sec (2906 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024