The Science of Attraction: Why You’ve Not Met Someone - Matthew Hussey (Bonus Episode)

hey friends and welcome back to Deep dive the weekly podcast where every week it's my immense pleasure to sit down with authors entrepreneurs academics experts creators and other inspiring people and we find out how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools that we can learn from them to help build a life that we love now navigating the world of modern dating is actually pretty hard these days back in our parents generation there wasn't a lot of choice but the fact that there wasn't a lot of choice meant that it was actually a lot easier to find love because you would just marry the person who owns the plot of land next door or their daughter or their son or whatever the case might be but nowadays things are a little bit more complicated we are much less likely to meet our potential Partners organically and the sort of decline of in real life events is very much a thing and to counteract that we are way more likely to meet our partners online through dating apps or websites and this comes with a whole bunch of complicating factors like how do we best stand out on a six-inch iPhone screen and how do we take the right photos and how do we come across in a way that like is a bit quirky but not too quirky and all of these different things that our grandparents generation didn't even really have to think about and added to that we have the whole Paradox of choice situation going on we where everyone is just a swipe away and therefore you know all of the stats around dating app users show that basically the top one or two percent of people get like 90 of the swipes and that leaves the rest of us feeling a bit sad that we're not getting any swipes on dating apps and on top of that we have this whole thing around comparisons so apps like Instagram and Tick Tock and all that kind of stuff showcasing us Lifestyles that we don't have or encouraging the feeling of envy and jealousy and that feeling that we're not quite good enough so we are going to be talking about all that in this episode of Deep dive where I had a very lovely chat with Matthew Hussey now Matthew is a dating and relationships expert and coach and over the last 10 plus years he has helped millions of people find love and build and maintain strong relationships through his book through his content through his workshops his YouTube channel has nearly 3 million subscribers and his book get the guy is in New York Times bestseller now Matthew's Journey started out in public speaking when he was a teenager Matthew went to a Tony Robbins event in London and he realized that the process of communicating to a live audience was something that he felt motivated and inspired to do and then you know as everyone does he had a few bumps in the road he tried to get a job at Dale Carnegie's office and he got rejected but he took the rejection on his chin and he decided to try and become a public speaker and then after doing a few public speaking gigs around London he really ended up finding his niche in helping women navigate the world of dating so he's a guy who gives dating advice for women and his stuff broadly helps women become more confident and become better in their interactions and dealings with men and hopefully helps build better relationships overall now it's very understandable that you might be thinking if you have not yet come across Matthew Hussey's work before and especially if you're a woman why should I as a woman be taking dating advice from a guy and one thing I really like about Matthew is that he fully acknowledges that this is a thing there are plenty of women out there giving dating and dating advice for women but there are not that many men giving dating advice for women and so it's just really a different perspective from the side of the guy and it's kind of a good way to bridge the communication and expectation gap between men and women anyway in this episode we're going to learn about firstly the four stages of Attraction secondly we're going to talk about mistakes that we make while dating thirdly we're going to go over some practical dating advice and fourthly we're going to be talking about the secret to long-lasting desire now one of the first things that Matthew and I talked about is how attraction works most of us tend to think of Attraction as this magical thing that just happens and you hear all these phrases like I felt a spark and we had great chemistry and we just hit it off that speaks to this almost mystical nature of what attraction really is but if we actually break it down and look at the evidence that people have looked at around what actually builds attraction then Matthew's going to talk about how it's actually split up into four distinct phases I talk about the um there being a kind of a formula and I don't mean this crudely I I just mean there are certain components to deep and Lasting attraction you have chemistry um perceived value perceived challenge and connection the reason I like this model is because when you look at this you can usually see you can sort of self-diagnose where something may be going wrong chemistry is interesting because there's certain there's a certain intangible there and an unknown there and not we certainly can't control all of it but we can control some of it you know with the way the way that we look how well we take care of ourselves the way we move importantly is a big factor in chemistry which is why you can sometimes see someone in photos and think they're really attractive and then you meet them in real life and you kind of go Oh weird I don't feel the same way it's also why you can get back from a date and and say oh my God I just had this amazing date with this incredibly hot person and if you show pictures of that person to your friends they're like okay yeah I guess you know because you you were there yeah you were there you saw how they move how they smile how they gesture how they their micro Expressions so there's certainly things we can do to affect chemistry uh and obviously you can create tension too which is a big factor in chemistry in chemistry then there's perceived value and perceived value is all these things that that we are and do that bring value to the table it might be our personality uh it might be the things that we're good at in life it might be our life the life that we've built um can sometimes be our friends and family you know sometimes you meet someone's friends and family and you go whoa this is what a life this is to come into they have an amazing group of people around them so much love so much so there's a lot of ways for perceived value to to manifest itself then there's perceived challenge and the interesting thing about perceived value is it goes down regardless of how many things are in that category if there's no perceived Challenge and perceived challenge is not uh the kind of I don't know a typical way of thinking about it I guess would be like hard to get it's not that's a cheap way to create challenge because the problem with hard to get is you can't keep it up forever the moment you are got yeah if someone's if your attraction was built around the getting then you can't sustain it but if the the real beautiful sustainable way to create challenge is for there to be uh for your value to have a price okay what do you mean that that your value doesn't come for free your value is something that has to be earned by the someone showing up in the way you're prepared to show up by someone being prepared to make the kind of sacrifices you're prepared to make for someone um by someone giving to you on a level that you're willing to give respecting you on a level that that you respect them um and also not giving someone too much credit too quickly that's a a big problem when we come from a needy place when we come from a place of insecurity we start giving people credit they don't deserve yet I just met them I just had the most amazing date with the most amazing person oh my God they're incredible based on what based on how on what basis what information could you have possibly got on one date that enables you to say this you you have been seduced by a kind of charm Charisma maybe the fact that you did something really fun on the day the fact that they made you laugh a lot the fact that they told stories about their past that made them relatable or sympathetic or seem really authentic all of that is great I'm not I'm not saying be inherently suspicious I'm saying you don't know yeah you don't know so on what basis are you giving them all of this value already based on projection and based on insecurity this immediate putting them on a pedestal and putting yourself down here and when someone smells that they don't see an equal anymore and that's that's what I mean when I say challenge I don't mean artificially constructing games or Hoops for people to jump through I mean that the the criteria you have for someone has to be real yeah it has to be real like it's you and I met today for the first time really enjoying our conversation hope you are too absolutely you know but we don't know each other yet as friends you don't know if I'd be reliable if you needed something you don't know if I would show up to support you if something went wrong in your life you don't know you don't know any of that so you know it would be dangerous to go away and make it an assessment on how great of a friend I would be yep based on this exchange it what what you would hope in an organic situation is that you and I go this was really really fun we got on really well this was a great conversation I would like to get to know this guy better that would be like it'd be really cool if we could hang out outside of the podcast but it's not I have to be friends with with Ali you know like we I have to because he's a he's an amazing guy you know like yeah that's that now that's projection that's dangerous because I'm basing that on the fact that you're clearly outwardly a very impressive human and what you've achieved what you've done is very impressive and you seem to have had a really amazing kind of impact on a lot of people and those are all amazing things those are amazing things in their own right it's not about devaluing those but I have no idea what your value would be as a friend until we try being friends and the mistake people make in dating commonly is they look at someone's stats how Charming were they how charismatic were they how successful are they um you know where are they in their life what kind of person do they seem to be but none of that exists in relation to to you that's all just you admiring what this person has or is but none of it says this person's going to be a great boyfriend or a great girlfriend none of it says they're going to be loyal none of it says they're going to be reliable none of it says they're going to be a great teammate all it says is this person seems on these metrics to be attractive and in any relationship you have to go through for for in terms of importance you have to go through four stages one is admiration that's just where I can see someone and admire them from either up close or far wow this person's pretty impressive and attractive not very important in the stages not important necessary but not important yep then there's a connection or chemistry you both you need you know that's the next stage of do we feel connected to each other and is there a kind of chemistry all right now it's slightly more important because now it becomes Mutual yeah now it's not just me admiring you it's oh there's something between us yeah not important because necessary yeah but not important how many people have ruined their lives over the fact that they had chemistry with someone even when that person was a terrible partner a terrible person to base their their decisions on the next stage is a commitment okay I admire you we have mutual chemistry and connection and we're both actually saying yes to each other I deal with people every day where they have this stage but that person isn't saying yes they're saying yeah I'd like to see you this Friday at 11 o'clock but they're not saying yes to an actual relationship so you need commitment to go to the next stage of importance but many people are treating something like it has total importance even though they're only at the second stage so you need a yes you need commitment now you would say if you've got that that's the most important thing you can have you've got someone you admire you've got someone you have a connection with in chemistry and you've got someone who is committed it would seem like that was everything but that kind of idea is it Virgil love conquers all love does not conquer all two people saying yes to each other doesn't make for a long-term relationship you also have to have the fourth stage of importance which is compatibility are you actually compatible because if you're not you can say yes I want to be with you yes I'm committed but that lack of compatibility will show up in ways that will make both of you miserable well what do you mean by compatibility it could be anything it could be uh my idea of a good time is staying home watching movies and yours is constantly traveling around the world it could be your idea of a good time is going out and drinking and doing drugs and I don't want to live that life and we've both said yes to each other but that you know our idea of what is a good life is completely different or our idea of loyalty is completely different your idea of loyalty is that I don't have sex with anyone my idea of loyalty is that you don't emotionally cheat on me in the texts you send yeah you know that we've both said yes to each other we have admiration connection commitment and yet I am miserable because of what your definition of loyalty is so compatibility is do we both want to live the same kind of life and and do our values line up and do we both have the same idea two people can say I value kindness but we can have very different standards for what kindness actually means so without that stage so many things go wrong my what what I mean to say with all of this is that we lose our value in dating when we stop paying attention to the appropriate level of importance at different stages if you take stage two I found someone I have a connection with as the be-all Endor and the thing that you martyr yourself in service of you lose all your value you you are now the person who spends a lifetime uh accepting really poor treatment from someone because every time you see them it's amazing you don't understand when we're together it's so good it's so incredible they're so there for me that the sex is amazing the chemistry is amazing we have such amazing conversations what's the problem I haven't heard from them in two weeks but Matt you don't understand the connection is incredible you don't know like this this is really important to me why why because you you have miscalculated the value of stage two and when you do that you lose your value because someone realizes your value what you're willing to give has no price it's free it does not need to be earned so your perceived challenge drops and when you're perceived when there's no challenge to you when someone realizes your value has no price then you lose respect and you and you end up losing real value as a result which is crazy but I know it all sounds kind of heady but it you know it really this stuff is real whether you whether when someone there will be people listening to this guarantee there'll be someone in the comments who says oh does it all need to be so difficult can't you just be yourself and the answer is no because you may not be doing the things that make you confident or that show your real value you shouldn't be uh someone you're not but people Define being themselves as holding on to all of their the things that make them make bad decisions or that make them uh their trauma or the things that they haven't healed or the things that make them chase after someone who will ruin their life that's not being yourself that's that's not healing that's not doing the things that are necessary for you to attract a much more quality version of connection and love in your life so the reason that I've geeked out on all of this stuff is because the consequences of ignoring what I'm saying are a life of suffering and I have watched it over and over again I have watched women get to their 40s where they just gave up 10 years of their life to a guy that was never giving them what they wanted was never on the same path as them but they ignored it because they valued the connection so much well they valued the chemistry so much or both and now their window for having children of Their Own has has gone and the grief that comes after that is profound Okay so we've talked about the four components of Attraction let's now go into some of the mistakes that we make while dating one thing I've often heard and I don't know I don't know to what extent this is just a stereotype or if it's actually actually a thing um the the Trope of women saying something like you know I know I want to marry Mr Wright but I find myself attracted to Mr exciting and I get I guess it's a situation that you've dealt with I I'm I'm kind of guessing but and and I guess I want to lead lead from that into the question of to what extent is attraction a choice and how much like if for example I find myself attracted to the sort of person who is not good for me and whatever whatever that might look like can I nudge my deep core into being attracted to the nice guy or the whatever or is it like uh like what's what what's going on there what a fantastic question um I think that to an extent we Chase what we know hmm and sometimes being attracted to something other than what we know or has historically have been attracted to is um a matter of curiosity of actually opening ourselves up to a different kind of person to a different kind of situation and exploring it for all it is we tend to be very we make up our minds quite quickly about things even labeling someone a nice person the the you know Elaine the button would say they're not that nice do you know nice is a it's a kind of a mask they could be as freaky as the freakiest person you've ever met when it comes down to it you know this this idea of labeling someone a nice person is um or labeling someone the bad boy why what because they didn't call you for three days that makes them a bad boy you know but because they were a bit of a jerk to the to someone like they're the bad boy like what do you what is that what is that label do you think they're the bad boy all of the time like you think they're that person 24 hours a day of course they're not but based on this label you've given them they're exciting based on this label you've given this person they're boring so I think that yes of course there is a sense of there's a kind of reflexive attraction that we can have for people but I think that's a sometimes a lack of imagination and a lack of curiosity if you took time to actually get to know somebody I'm not saying you go on a date with someone where there's absolutely zero chemistry and you just keep hitting and hoping yeah and going oh I'll see them again because maybe one day chemistry could come about no I don't I don't believe that but I always think if if you feel like some some kind of interesting tickle in a direction that you haven't felt it before and you go well this isn't normally my type or this isn't normally my personal this isn't I feel something follow that give that chance because that might actually lead you somewhere you've never been before and where you've never been before might be the answer I think that we we prejudge a lot we judge what we're supposed to have what we think our friends and family would would validate yeah you know oh he's really good looking well done yeah you know and you so you kind of start looking for that even though you might find that an attraction with this person that doesn't look like that you feel validated by the fact that other people are are giving you the the social proof around that person so you feel like you keep and that's by the way it's how people get themselves in so much trouble they show off their their partner and their oh my God he's so tall handsome and successful look at you good job and they're miserable at home with this person but every time they go out and hear well he's he's very impressive and they go oh I should like yeah I should I should I should be grateful this person's amazing I should continue to be grateful you know so we have to be careful of the outside conditioning yep um and we also have to be careful Dr Romani would and people in her profession uh psychologists would talk about the kind of the trauma Bond that exists when we've been used to you know a parent that neglected us or that that was very hot and cold in our lives and that becomes kind of what we know and so we get attracted to to that behavior in others um and we try and complete a journey that never felt finished When We Were Young And it so we also have to be very careful of what we're labeling attraction am I labeling this trauma and this heightened sense of anxiety that I have around you because you're fickle and you never make me feel secure am I labeling that excitement oh I I just what is it I've got with this person I and the more they they don't call me the more I'm like oh they there's something special about this one why is it why why are they getting more attractive the less they try yeah what's going on here you know we have to really suspect those things in ourselves and I think that an another way of looking at attraction and again I'm not this I'm not an advocate for don't care about chemistry care about chemistry but if you start to lay look at all the things that would make an incredible partner and and would make you feel secure and at peace and if you start valuing kind of a a real sense of deep peace over the kind of drug-fueled high then you are going to start looking at people a little differently because you're not going to over index for chemistry you may still see it as necessary it's a necessary ingredient but I don't have to live my life trying to find the greatest chemistry of my life it's the same way you know when it comes to food or drugs there's a feeling of I'm looking for the greatest High but the greatest High isn't the thing that will make you the happiest sustainably there's different kinds of energy that make a person attractive I pride myself on the fact that if you come to one of my speeches you may just laugh and cry in the same speech that's that's what I call a unique pairing in attraction a unique pairing is when you find two different qualities that are both attractive but on their own can be a bit too dimensional but when you find them in the same person that creates a 3d effect that is mesmerizing so if you find someone who's really sexy but then they can be completely Goofy and make you laugh that's a unique pairing you're like whoa that's normally someone's just sexy normally someone's just funny and I want to eat pizza with them but I don't want to go home with them now I find someone that is super sexy and then after the fact I want to spend all day with them laughing well we might just have a relationship you know that's a unique pairing and I think that a lot of people have forgotten that they've they've become addicted to a certain way of being that has worked for them yeah if it's being like hard-headed in business that's worked for them but the problem is you're what and usually it starts young right what we get validated for we keep doing if you're funny you keep being funny if you're successful you keep acquiring more success if you're if people like you for your looks then you double down on that we all have those things that we got validated for early on and our validations become our mutations they become the things that we go we we keep doubling down on and we become less and less Diversified in our energy our personality you can't be you can't be one great song you have to be an album like every everyone has to be an album some album albums have sad songs they have happy songs they have Up Tempo songs they have slower songs you you gotta be able to be all of those things and everyone should ask themselves men and women alike am I being an album or am I being this this one great hit and hoping that someone sticks around I had a relationship with someone years ago uh in my early 20s when or it was just as I was approaching my 20s and I remember asking this person why it months after the relationship ended I was like why did you not want to be in it anymore and she said honestly I said yes I guess she said it got boring she said you were so ambitious and that was really really attractive at first but then it was all you were it was like you it was all you could talk about it was all we did was you just talk about work and whatever it was never anything else and it was a very important lesson for me in my life because I realized that one side of a unique pairing can actually Christopher Hitchens uh once said that the key in relationships is not allowing your advantages to negate themselves oh nice and the in his case what he was talking about is he was obviously a formidable debater on the stage and he did it for a living but when he was at home he said when he was in an argument with his wife the guy on stage would come out and really think about how to win this argument and even after the fact he would go away and like work on his case and come back and be like all right I've got the death blow to your argument and he realized there was no points for that in his relationship this was the mother of his children he was not trying to win a debate on a stage your advantages can negate themselves it's worth everyone asking what are what are the strengths I've been riding on and where have they become my my greatest weaknesses okay so those were some of the mistakes that we've made let's not talk about some dating advice and and you know how we talked about earlier that in our grandparents generation there were a lot fewer issues to navigate there were still issues to navigate when it came to dating and relationships and marriage but they were different issues to what we have today and so this is Matthew discussing some of the dating advice that applies to the modern day I read a book a very well-known book for women at the time it was called the rules oh yeah I read that a couple years ago it's super interesting very interesting and I you know I'm I don't at the time there was some there was something in there that I read and I went that's not true for me you know there was a there was a particular sentence or a chapter I can't remember but it basically said if a guy isn't coming over to you then he's he's not interested they'll forgive me if I misphrased that but I it got that was the kind of tone of it and I I remember thinking everything about my life has said that the opposite is true Yeah the more interested I am yeah the less likely yeah I remember I remember reading that kind of stuff and thinking oh this is wow this is you know I literally have spent my life doing the opposite of that and that kind of sparked something in me because I thought I wonder how many women are only ever meeting the loudest guy in the room yeah the one within with the confidence to approach them whereas the other 90 of dudes are just like a theme of written off either as not interested or as um cowards yeah you know you if you don't and I I would hear women say stuff like that when you know if you don't if you don't have the kind of stones to approach me yeah then I don't want to know you I don't know if I yeah I want you anyway and I felt very rejected by that because I was like I'm like a good human being you know I would be great for for someone in a relationship I have a lot to give I you know and the idea that I would be measured simply on that moment that I decided not to go and interrupt someone's conversation and sort of say hey um based on nothing at all really yeah other than the fact that I think you're pretty I'd like to get to know you which is a problem for men from the outset is you don't want to be superficial you want to form a connection that says hey I'm not just some creep I'm not just objectifying people I actually want to get to know you but the very reason you've gone over to someone in the first place is because you find them attractive that's a hard thing to yeah it's a big sort of cognitive dissonance there where you sort of yeah you you know why have you come over to me yeah because I have felt like what you did in the last year at work was really impressive and you don't know that so that's for the most part is what you have to go on is someone's at best you could say someone's energy if you really wanted to make it about something that didn't feel as superficial as looks something about your style exactly your aura yeah but but I um I started to think well there's actually a lot of really amazing guys out there who aren't in the habit of racing up to Every Woman they're attracted to how do you get women Meeting those guys because if you could just solve that problem you actually are gonna you're gonna be responsible for a hell of a lot of relationships and this was pre-dating apps so dating apps solved some of that problem because it gave people an opportunity to approach whoever they liked from the safety of a screen which we know has its problems too because you could do now all sorts of things from the safety of being behind the screen but I before dating apps I I figured well if I can get women to be able to approach a guy that they wouldn't normally meet because he's kind of hanging back and just you know doing his thing and he's not the kind of guy that's running up to everyone all the time that will have been to some effect and so I I started talking about this idea of the handkerchief and I kind of became known for the videos and that was one of the handkerchief for people metaphor that I started speaking about very very early on where I it was my way of telling saying to women you don't have to tell yourself this story that if you approach someone you're somehow going against your nature or what's or the way things are supposed to be if that's even true but but a lot of women have been conditioned to believe that the guy is supposed to make the move and I would say well if you think that's old-fashioned you don't know what old-fashioned really is a hundred years ago a woman might walk past a guy find him attractive and inadvertently drop her handkerchief in front of him he would see it pick it up and think this is an extraordinary opportunity to be a man and he'd take it over to and he'd say Madam you dropped this and and she would say did I and they would now have a conversation he may have felt he was being the proactive one by ah I'm gonna pick up this handkerchief and walk it back over to her what a great opportunity to make a move but she had initiated that move she was the one who made the move she just made him feel like he was the one making the move and that there's some there seemed to be something very interesting in that to me the okay regardless of whether you think women can or can't make the move of course they can but it almost what I was getting at is it doesn't matter what you believe if I can give you a way to be proactive that kind of feels like it's a bit under the radar then I'm going to get even people who feel like it's not my job to make the move I'm even gonna get them being proactive in ways they haven't before so I started translating the idea of the handkerchief into practical things that women could do and it was the results were really stunning because women suddenly felt like they had choice that they never had before they were able to get dates and exchange numbers with people and create activity in their love life and they hadn't been doing that for some for some people for years they had never had much opportunity in their love lives and all of a sudden not only were they being proactive and creating opportunity but they were doing it with people they were attracted to they would being they were choosing instead of being chosen which was very cool so what are the what are the modern day handkerchiefs on that topic I so there was a a book that talked about the the idea that likability was affected by our ability to do someone a favor um now what the study showed was not the obvious that if we do someone a favor they'll like us more is that if we do someone a favor we like them more as long as the favor is not onerous it can't be something difficult but if we're able to do a small act a small favor for somebody we actually like them more and I started looking at that in the context of the handkerchief and I thought that sort of feels like it applies there especially it's almost feels more potent in the direction of man to woman because a lot of guys have this sort of you know I want to be needed I want to feel like I'm able to do something for a woman I want to feel necessary which is a big problem right now in dating because men are feeling less and less necessary uh and you know everyone's trying to figure out their place right now in the world which is I find really fascinating uh the the kind of rules are being Rewritten but what I saw is with the handkerchief is oh a guy has an opportunity to kind of perform a small favor which is giving the handkerchief back so then I said well what's an equivalent of of them there's all sorts of little ways you can ask for a favor you could say excuse me would you just watch my jacket for a second while I use the restroom which could be done in a coffee shop in the daytime I just need to use the restroom when you watch my jacket for a second um or you know I always like the start of the phrase being I could you know could I get your help with something or I could really use your help with something could you watch my jacket for a second while I go to the bathroom do you know anywhere good around here for X what did you order that looks really good I you know it these are all very small things but they give someone the opportunity to do a small Act of service for us what I also like about it is it breaks the ice in a way that doesn't feel like breaking the ice so when you come back from the bathroom and you say thanks so much for for watching my jacket if you then say how's your day going anyway um or you know it looks like that that book looks really interesting or whatever you feel like you're already starting at 30 mile an hour yeah versus if you were just there and you turned to someone and went how's your day going yeah that's a bit weird now you can do it but it's a lot of people feel like they need that like 30 miles an hour to get going so that became my version for people of dropping the handkerchief is ask a very small and easy favor of someone and then allow that to be the bridge to a natural conversation nice yeah that I guess is fairly us somewhat similar to the whole uh indirect openers that guys will often use around like hey you know can you tell me where the nearest coffee shop is or something like that I'm oh I'm new here oh where are you from it's like it's just a way of prompting a conversation in a way that's not something like hi I thought you were pretty and I wanted to talk to you 100 which takes a large amount of well almost too much confidence yes and you know there's how you they can make someone else feel awkward and there's all sorts of things I I think for anyone else for anyone out there man or woman one of the things if if this is the kind of content you're interested in that I have found most helpful in my life is something I call two hit Theory which is the idea that how when you go out into any environment you have to be someone who's easy to talk to you focusing on approachability as as important as focusing on how to approach and what a lot of us do is we go into an environment we wait until we see someone that we're attracted to and then we obsess over what the hell we would say if we tried to talk to that person and now we spend the whole time that we're there becoming more and more nervous as the stakes get higher and higher and we start to imagine how wonderful this person is that we think is attractive and how lucky the person is that gets them and all the thing the qualities about them that we wouldn't admire if we got to know them they become something they become this projection that is so removed from what we actually know about them right now which is we just saw an attractive person that's it two hit theory is when you go into a room the first hit as it were is small interactions with people it might literally be like that looks really good because someone ordered a plate of food and you're like that looks great that's a that's a hit that's an interaction it might be um walking up to the bar or the counter and someone's next to you and you're like hey how's it going like a moment you don't remove the intention there's no intention it doesn't need to go anywhere it doesn't need to be a conversation nothing just a moment and you do that with more people than you normally would you have these little hits now what to me is really really powerful about this is such an understated thing but what's really powerful about it is most people when they go to any environment they're either alone or they're with one or two friends outside of those one or two friends who's the person they're most likely to talk to at some point during the evening at some point during that event they're going to talk to the the most approachable person they're going to talk to the person they've already had some small interaction with that became a kind of green light for a natural or organic Exchange if you if the natural or organic exchange with someone it's weird to say that you're their third best friend in the room yeah [Laughter] and if you go around being the third best friend of everybody who came with two people just because you are a little bit more approachable than everybody else then it's you're gonna find that a some interactions just gravitate back to you an hour later or two hours later B even if you're the one who initiates you already have that initial interaction to go by and the fact that that initial interaction didn't come with you like there's always something about someone coming over to you and talking to you for the first time and then sort of standing there and facing you as they're talking to you and you're almost unable to process whether you find them attractive or whether you uh want are interested in what they have to say because you're so busy worrying about are they ever going to leave yeah so when someone does this to hit theory that that first thing that first interaction you have with people helps them also they've already recognized that you're not the kind of person that needs them yep you left the first time so now when you speak to someone it the stakes feel much lower for something like safety as well like you don't feel as if yeah they're just not going to leave they're just going oh God it's like getting on you know what it's like you know when you get on a plane and the person next to you starts talking to you hmm now maybe you're in a sociable mood and that's awesome or maybe like me you sort of have a whole bunch of things that you're kind of excited to do on that plane one of them being nothing yeah and there's a part of you and it's not the best part of you but there's a part of you that instantly goes oh no am I next to a talker is this now gonna be my flight when someone says something for 30 seconds and then says well it's nice to meet you and then goes back to their book you go oh yeah okay and then it's almost like you wouldn't mind if you ended up talking to them more because you go oh this person's chilled they've got their own thing going on that's I I liken it to that and too often when we're in the mode of I want to get something we forget to communicate to other people that we don't actually need them so at this point we've spoken about attraction we've spoken about the mistakes that we make in dating we've spoken about some tips for navigating the dating Market in the modern era and we ended the conversation by talking about long-term relationships a couple questions about long-term relationships so uh honeymoon phase what's what's the deal with that yeah I you know I'm I'm I don't want to be really careful on this because talking uh from a place of humility I I've not been in the kinds of long-term relationships that other people have I'm now engaged um incredibly uh Happy and excited about the future um but there will be people who you know have like Esther perel's work is a really big influence for me because this is someone who not only has had a long-term marriage but has written extensively on the subject of Love and Desire yeah in relationships and I would absolutely Point people to her book mating in captivity which I think is an extraordinary read and something that so many people can learn from to paraphrase Esther's work which is no doubt much more eloquently put in her book she says that there's love and there's desire and that love um well let's start with desire desire is what exists first we see someone we become attracted to them and we desire them and we want to close down the space between us and Them desire exists in the space right the mystery who are you what are you all about could you like me could I win you over could you know I want to know you and then as someone says yes [Music] you have the building of love so we start to know each other we start to get closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and we have this feeling of kind of Oneness between us and and all of that Fosters feelings of love uh as Esther would put it the Paradox becomes how do you continue to desire that which you already have and so now as you kind of become that unit there's less space between you they may feel like there's no space between you and so desire becomes suffocated because desire exists in that space and then you so then you enter that world of well what does what does desire look like in a long term context we don't want to play a game in a long-term relationship where we kind of are constantly making our partner feel on edge yeah so that there's a sense of danger and and yet desire sometimes wants a sense of danger desire sometimes wants a sense of mystery desire wants a sense of spontaneity of the new of the unrecognizable now people want it to differ in extents right the honeymoon period is going to be much more important to some people than others because some people are are wired and engineered to want security so for them love is going to be much more important for them to achieve than to maintain feelings of desire for other people they're engineered in the opposite way it's much more important for them to constantly feel like that excitement than it is for them to feel safety not that they don't want to feel safe at all but it's just the balance is different and so I think what's kind of interesting is firstly to to to try to find somebody who's not engineered completely differently than you hmm where they you know it's all love and no desire or it's all desire and no love because that's going to be miserable but you may find that you're not calibrated exactly the same in those two things and that's okay but but that to me is where it's really important to listen to your partner's needs we we get so caught up in a relationship in figuring out what we need what's my love language what what makes me feel loved and the and the dangerous thing is that we start giving to somebody else what we would wish they would give to us so if we like security then and we think that's the highest thing you can give someone then we start going out of our way to give them as much security as possible I love you I love you I love you I love you I'll never leave you I think you're the most amazing person on Earth and so on we give them lots and lots of security right and we end up giving them that thing that We crave but it doesn't mean you're wrong for craving it just means that you're you're not necessarily listening to what that person requires because they may just be engineered a little different so I think it's really valuable to just think about what what are the things that make my partner that Stoke desire in my partner because in a way that to me is what the honeymoon the honeymoon period is a couple of things firstly it's thinking we're perfect I think you're perfect you think I'm perfect and that just feels unbelievable and idyllic and then we realize we're not perfect and they go you go through a storming period and the dust settles and now you have a real relationship where we actually see each other and say I'm still here even though I really see you now that's the to me that's the transition into a real relationship um but but beyond that it's also I think the the honeymoon period is that period of intense desire yeah I think it's worth paying attention as you transition in your relationship to whatever the next phase is really pay attention to what are the moments where my partner feels desire hmm and this can be a kind of exercise in really paying attention like right write them down and it may sound weird to people but like right because you will forget write down I just did this thing tonight I just wore a completely different kind of outfit and something about that outfit really got them going yeah I'm not even saying it was a really sexy outfit it might be a an outfit you wouldn't even even imagined was sexy to them yeah but something about that outfit did it for them yeah he's like okay noted yeah oh I just went away with my friends for a weekend and when I came back there was this intensity okay that's interesting um all of those little moments are they're like a formula that can help you sustain that desire within a relationship and I think when you stop paying attention to those things it's another way of not paying attention to the health of your relationship the health of your relationship isn't two-dimensional it's not just how many things have I done for my partner today but I don't understand why they're so ungrateful I I made them this I did this I called them at the end of that and asked them how it went I did that I did it okay there's all of that is beautiful but but value in a relationship isn't two-dimensional sometimes value to someone is hey you haven't seen your friends in a minute you should go see your friends like go hang out with that you haven't seen those two friends in a while you should go hang out with them are you sure what really I feel like you'd be a oh I'll be good I'll chill I'm gonna do some stuff I really want to do but you should go do that that's another form of value if if you crave security that might be unnatural to you because you might be like I don't want them to go out with their friends and leave me for a night yeah that might be the very thing that makes them go whoa I've never had anyone do that before I've never had anyone encourage me to go and have time with people I care about they're always sort of jealously guarding my presence and my time so there's another form of value that to me is like real Mastery in in relationships is going beyond what is comfortable to give beyond what is feels normal for you to give and really listening to what what makes them feel a certain way whether it's love or desire what Stokes that in that person I mean pay attention so that I can replicate that in the future so I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Matthew Hussey I think main thing to say is hey I love the conversation I hope you did as well and secondly we're not born knowing how to create love and create long-lasting relationships it is definitely your skill and it's a skill that we can absolutely develop over time and given the importance of relationships in our lives it's probably a thing we don't want to leave to complete chance into pure accident and I hope this interview with Matthew helped you think about dating or relationships or attraction in maybe a slightly different way than you did before and I hope you gained something from it and if you're interested in checking out Matthew's stuff that will be linked in the video description or in the show notes wherever you happen to be watching this so thank you so much for watching I'll see you hopefully in the next episode bye

Channel: Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

Views: 1,295,227

Keywords: Ali Abdaal, Ali, Abdaal, Ali Abdal, Abdal, Deep Dive With Ali Abdaal, Deep Dive, Ali Abdaal Podcast, Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal Podcast, matthew hussey, get the guy, dating advice for women, matt hussey, love advice, dating coach, relationship coach, mathew hussey, matthew hussey red flags, matthew hussey first date

Id: qx_RWKuQp_E

Length: 53min 40sec (3220 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2023