Bonus Episode - The Science of Attraction: Why You’ve Not Met Someone - Matthew Hussey
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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 where everyone is just a swipe away. And therefore, you know, all of the stats around dating app uses show that

Basically the top one or 2% 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 TikTok 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 gonna 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+ 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 to the Guy is a 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 advice to women, but there are not that many men giving dating advice to 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 there being a kind of a formula, and I don't mean this crudely. I just mean there are certain components to deep and lasting attraction. You have chemistry, 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 a certain intangible there and an unknown there and we certainly can't control all of it.

But we can control some of it. 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 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, 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. Uh,

It might be our personality. It might be the things that we're good at in life. It might be our life, the life that we've built. It can sometimes be our friends and family. Sometimes you meet someone's friends and family and you go, "Whoa, what a life this is to come into." They have an amazing group of people around them, so much love. There's a lot of ways for perceived value 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 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-

If someone's, if your attraction was built around the getting, then you can't sustain it. But if the real beautiful, sustainable way to create challenge is for there to be, for your value to have a price. Okay. What do you mean? That your value doesn't come for free. Your value is something that has to be earned by 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, by someone giving to you on a level that you're willing to give, respecting you on a level that you respect them, and also not giving someone too much credit too quickly. That's 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 had the most amazing date with the most amazing person. Oh my God, they're incredible. Based on what? Based on what basis? What information could you have possibly got on one date that enables you to say this? You have been seduced by a kind of charm, charisma maybe, a

The fact that you did something really fun on the date, 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 saying be inherently suspicious. I'm saying you don't know. You don't know. So on what basis are you giving them all of this value already based on projection?

And based on insecurity, there's 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 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 criteria you have for someone has to be real. 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. 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 any of that. So it would be dangerous to go away and make a

an assessment on how great of a friend I would be based on this exchange. 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 really cool if we could hang out outside of the podcast."

But it's not, I have to be friends with Ali, you know, like I have to because he's an amazing guy. You know, like now 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 offensively.

on a lot of people. 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. 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? Where are they in their life? What kind of person do they seem to be? But none of that exists in relation 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 four, 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. Then there's connection.

Or chemistry. Both. 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. Now it's not just me admiring you. It's, oh, there's something between us. 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 decisions on? The next stage is 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. 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. 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 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

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. You know, 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 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. 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 end-all and the thing that you martyr yourself in service of, you lose all your value. You are now the person who spends a lifetime

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 like this. This is really important to me. Why?

Why? Because 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, it's

Then you lose respect and you end up losing real value as a result, which is crazy. But I know it all sounds kind of heady, but this stuff is real. There'll be people listening to this, guaranteed. There'll be someone in the comments who says, 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 someone you're not. But people define being themselves as holding on to all of their values.

the things that make them make bad decisions, or that make them 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 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. 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 or they valued the chemistry so much or both. And now their window for having children of their own 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 to what extent this is just a stereotype or if it's actually a thing, the trope of women saying something like, you know, I know I want to marry Mr. Right, but I find myself attracted to Mr. Exciting. And...

And I guess it's a situation that you've dealt with, I'm kind of guessing. And I guess I want to 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 quote the nice guy or the whatever, or is it like a, like what's, what's going on there? What a fantastic question. I think that to an extent we chase what we know and,

And sometimes being attracted to something other than what we know or historically have been attracted to is 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. You know, Elaine de Botton would say they're not that nice. Yeah.

You know, nice is 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 idea of labeling someone a nice person is, or labeling someone the bad boy. Why? Because they didn't call you for three days? That makes them a bad boy? You know, because they were a bit of a jerk to the bad boy? Like, what are 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 sometimes a lack of imagination and a lack of curiosity. If you took time to actually get to know

I'm not saying you go on a date with someone where there's absolutely zero chemistry and you just keep hitting and hoping and going, oh, I'll see them again because maybe one day chemistry could come about. No, I don't believe that. But I always think if you feel like 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 person or 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, you know, Oh, he's really good looking. Well done. 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 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 partner and they're, 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 very impressive. And they go, oh, I should like, yeah, 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. And we also have to be careful. Dr. Romani and people in her profession, 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. Yeah.

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 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 did 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 another way of looking at attraction, and again, I'm not an advocate for don't care about chemistry. Care about chemistry. But if you start to look at all the things that would make an incredible partner and would make you feel secure and at peace. And if you start valuing kind of 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.

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 what I call 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 two-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

to a certain way of being that has worked for them. If it's being like hardheaded 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 keep doubling down on and, and,

We become less and less diversified in our energy, our personality. You can't be one great song. You have to be an album. Everyone has to be an album. Some albums have sad songs. They have happy songs. They have up-tempo songs. They have slower songs. You got to 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 one great hit?

and hoping that someone sticks around. I had a relationship with someone years ago 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 that was a very important lesson for me in my life because I realized that one side of a unique pairing can actually, Christopher Hitchens once said that the key in relationships is not allowing your advantages to negate themselves. Oh, nice. Yeah.

And 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 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 the strengths I've been riding on?

And where have they become my greatest weaknesses? Okay, so those were some of the mistakes that we've made. Let's now talk about some dating advice. 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 there 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. Which one?

It was called The Rules. Oh, yeah. I read that a couple of 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. And, um,

They'll forgive me if I've misphrased that, but that was the kind of tone of it. I remember thinking everything about my life has said that the opposite is true. The more interested I am... Yeah, the less likely you are to... Exactly. I remember reading that kind of stuff and thinking, oh, this is specifically not... I just thought, wow, this is... 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 with the confidence to approach them. Whereas the other 90% of dudes are just like... Are being written off either as not interested or as cowards. Yeah.

You know, you, if you don't, and I would hear women say stuff like that when I, you know, if you don't, if you don't have the kind of stones to approach me, then I don't know if 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 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, based on nothing at all really, 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. Yeah.

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 know, why have you come over to me? Because I felt like what you did in the last year at work was really impressive. 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. But 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're going to be responsible for a hell of a lot of relationships. This was pre-dating apps. 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 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 started talking about this idea of the handkerchief and I kind of became known for that. I've seen some videos of you talking about handkerchief. What is the handkerchief for people who are not familiar? It's a metaphor that I started speaking about very, very early on where it was my way of saying to women, you don't have to tell yourself this story that if you approach someone, you're somehow going against your...

or the way things are supposed to be, if that's even true. 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. He'd take it over to her and he'd say, "Madam, you dropped this." She would say, "Did I?" They would now have a conversation. He may have felt he was being the proactive one by, "Ah, I'm going to 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 there seemed to be something very interesting in that to me. That, okay, regardless of whether you think women can or can't make the move, of course they can. But 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 going to 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 the results were really stunning because women suddenly felt like they had choice in

that they never had before. They were able to get dates and exchange numbers with people and create activity in their love life. They hadn't been doing that for some people for years. They had never had much opportunity in their love lives. 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 were choosing instead of being chosen, which was very cool. What are the modern-day handkerchiefs on that topic? There was a book that talked about the idea that likability was affected by our ability to do someone a favor.

Now, what the study showed was not the obvious that if we do someone a favor, they'll like us more. It's 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.

I thought that sort of feels like it applies there. It almost feels more potent in the direction of man to woman because a lot of guys have this sort of, "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. Everyone's trying to figure out their place right now in the world, which I find really fascinating.

Uh, the, 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. Will you watch my jacket for a second? Or, you know, I always liked the start of the phrase being, I could, you know, can 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, 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 watching my jacket. If you then say, how's your day going anyway? Or, you know, looks like that book looks really interesting or whatever.

You feel like you're already starting at 30 mile an hour 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 an actual conversation. Nice.

Yeah, that I guess is fairly or somewhat similar to the whole 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 new here. Oh, where are you from? 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. Which takes a large amount of almost too much confidence. Yes. And

There's how you can make someone else feel awkward and there's all sorts of things. I think for anyone out there, man or woman, one of the things, 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 when you go out into any environment,

You have to be someone who's easy to talk to. Focusing on approachability is 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 hit. That's an interaction. It might be 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. Doesn't need to go anywhere. 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. Yeah.

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 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. Yep.

If you've had the natural or organic exchange with someone, it's weird to say, but you're their third best friend in the room. 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 going to 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. Yeah.

And the fact that that initial interaction didn't come with you... There's always something about someone coming over to you and talking to you for the first time and then 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 are interested in what they have to say because you're so busy worrying about, are they ever going to leave? So when someone does this two-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. You left the first time.

So, now when you speak to someone, the stakes feel much lower for someone. Yeah, there's like safety as well. Like, you don't feel as if... Yeah, they're just not going to leave. They're just going to... Oh, God. Watch this now. 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? 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. 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 going to 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 chill. They've got their own thing going on. That's, 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 of questions about long-term relationships. So honeymoon phase, what's the deal with that? Yeah, I wouldn't want to be really careful on this because...

Talking from a place of humility, I've not been in the kinds of long-term relationships that other people have. I'm now engaged. I'm incredibly happy and excited about the future. But there'll 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 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, you have the building of love, right?

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 all of that fosters feelings of love. 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 of

There's less space between you. There 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 perspective?

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 so that there's a sense of danger. 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 differing extents. The honeymoon period is going to be much more important to some people than others because some people 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 try to

find somebody who's not engineered completely differently than you, 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 that to me is where it's really important to listen.

to your partner's needs. We get so caught up in a relationship in figuring out what we need. What's my love language? What makes me feel loved? 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 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. And 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 not necessarily listening, right?

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 are the things that make my partner, that stoke desire in my partner? Because in a way that to me is what the honeymoon period is. 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

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. To me, that's the transition into a real relationship. But beyond that, it's also, I think, the honeymoon period is that period of intense desire. I think it's worth paying attention to.

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. And this can be a kind of exercise in really paying attention, like write them down. 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. I'm not even saying it was a really sexy outfit. It might be an outfit you wouldn't even imagine was sexy to them. But something about that outfit did it for them. Okay, noted. Oh, I just went away with my friends for a weekend. Yeah.

And when I came back, there was this intensity. Okay, that's interesting. 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 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 that. Okay, all of that is beautiful. 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, oh, I'll be good. I'll chill. I'm going to do some stuff I really want to do. But you should go do that. That's another form of value. 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.

But 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 that's another form of value. Yeah.

And that to me is like real mastery 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. Let me pay attention so that I can replicate that in the future.

So I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Matthew Hussey. I think the main thing to say is A 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 a 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 and to 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-bye.