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Early dating has a sneaky way of turning us into versions of ourselves we don’t even like. You start off calm, confident, grounded . . . and suddenly you’re overthinking texts or pulling back in ways that don’t feel true to who you are. If you’ve ever thought, “I don’t like who I am with this person,” there’s a reason for that, and it’s not because you’re broken.
In this week’s video, Matthew breaks down how early dating so often goes wrong without anyone meaning for it to. More importantly, he explains how to lead instead of react, and how that shift can turn dating from exhausting into something that actually brings out the best in you.
Matthew Hussey:
Early dating sucks. One of the worst parts of early dating is that it can make you act like someone. You’re not someone you can’t stop. Have you ever been in a relationship or in a dating scenario with someone and thought, I hate the person that I am with this person? I do not recognize myself. Well, there is a very particular reason why this happens when we are trying to get vulnerable with someone, but we’re not aware enough of our own patterns, and we’re certainly not aware of their patterns.
It can lead to this very dangerous cycle. They come on strong initially. You get invested, they then pull back. You then get pulled in. They then pull further back and before you know it, they are gone. What happens here? In order to talk about this, I want to talk about attachment theory and that kind of spectrum of there are people who are anxious.
There are people who are avoidant. There are people who live in the middle who are more secure because I have had questions for years from both sides of that attachment spectrum. The problem is that all of these people can get locked into a kind of spiral rule that’s bad for everyone. I think what’s interesting is that we find it much easier to sympathize with people who live on the anxious side of the spectrum than we do on the avoidant side of the spectrum.
It feels like people on the anxious side are always getting their hearts broken by some external force by another person, whereas people on the avoidant side are always hurting themselves. They’re people who, you know, can’t figure out what’s going to make them happy, push people away, self isolate. So their pain is kind of in some ways a more private pain that we often don’t see them going through, which is the pain of loneliness, the pain of constantly searching for some elusive thing.
People on the anxious side that heartbreak is extremely obvious. Someone hurt them. And now it’s easy to sympathize with the person who has been hurt by somebody else. But if we just look at it like everyone on this spectrum is someone who is reacting to something from their past, someone who is overcorrected in some way based on pain they went through in childhood with their parents or their caregivers.
And we’re all just kind of trying to find love and having our own unique brand of challenge. In searching for that, we can say, what would be something that would bring us together. I’m a big believer in the idea that if we want to really find love, rather than judging people for the way they are, we have to be someone who brings people together and bring someone together with us in a powerful way.
But we have to first understand the downward spiral that happens for so many people, especially in early dating. Let’s imagine that there’s a scale with secure attachment at zero in the middle, anxious attachment on this side going from 1 to 10, and avoidant attachment on this side going from 1 to 10. So one being the mildest form of both sides, ten being the most extreme.
Now let’s say that someone who’s a two on the anxious side meet someone who’s a two on the avoidant side. Neither one of them are in the extreme, but they both have tendencies in different directions. The person who’s a two on the anxious side shares that they need a little reassurance, and the person who’s on the avoidant side picks up on that.
As slightly uncertain or insecure energy. So now when this person comes along and shows that they’re a little uncertain of themselves, the avoidant person is like, I don’t like this. I want you to be sure of yourself, because I want to be sure of you. And the greatest way I know to be sure of you is if you’re really sure of you.
But right now, you’re not showing that. So now I have a little bit of contempt for that. And now I kind of want to back away a bit. So now, in response to this person needing a little bit of reassurance, the avoidant person gets a little bit cold. Not so much that a secure person would pick up on it, but someone who’s a two on the anxious side.
It’s just enough that their hypervigilance picks up on the fact that something’s slightly different in this person. So they mention it. Maybe they even cling on a little tighter because they can feel this person’s energy changing. So when this anxious person steals that shift in energy, their anxiety goes from a two to a three. And when it goes to a three, they start clinging on just a little bit tighter.
When the avoidant person feels this, they’re like, wait, why? This person’s now texting me a little more than they used to. This person’s asking me what I’m up to. I feel a little bit, oppressed here. Now, their avoidance goes from a two to a three, when the anxious person feels that their anxiety goes from a three to a 4 or 5.
So now the anxious person starts turning up their needs with the avoidant person. When the avoidant person feels that all of a sudden they go up to a six on the avoidant side. And what happens is you’ve got two people who are pushing each other further and further into the extremes of their natural inclinations. When that happens, the anxious person is likely to become a version of themselves that isn’t even the normal version of themselves, is an extreme version of themselves that they don’t like, and the avoidant person feels justified in calling everyone crazy and saying, God, I just can’t find someone who’s right for me.
Everyone ends up becoming too much, demanding too much. But these two people have got into that downward spiral. Now you can also have upward spirals in dating while we’re here on this video, guys, if you are tired of investing your time and energy into relationships that leave you feeling empty, and you want to learn how to break that cycle and create a balance where both you and your partner are equally invested.
I am thrilled to invite you to something truly transformative. It is a 90 minute masterclass called dating with Results. In this training, I’m going to be sharing the specific tools and strategies that have helped thousands of people find love without being overwhelmed by the process. You’ll learn how to decode mixed signals, check their boundaries, and attract the kind of relationship that aligns with your values and your goals.
I’m going to give you a clear roadmap to navigate the complexities of modern dating, helping you avoid the common pitfalls and patterns that hold so many people back. Whether it’s breaking free from the cycle of casual situationship, understanding how to communicate your standards effectively, or simply finding the confidence to pursue the love you deserve. This masterclass covers it all.
Go to DatingWithResults.com and you can sign up for this free masterclass right now. If two people understand how to bring out the best in each other, you can have someone who you know is ever so slightly avoidant, but understands the need to make someone feel, cared for or to be consistent in their communication. And so they show that they like someone, and then the person who’s normally on the anxious side of the spectrum says, I feel really good around this person.
And so they start to feel a bit more themselves and a bit more confident. Maybe they even walk into the room with a little more sass. All of a sudden you have this attraction, upward spiral, where both people are getting more and more into each other because they are bringing out the best in each other. But in order to do that, we have to go into dating.
Not in a reactive or a passive way. We have to go in from a place of leadership, and leadership looks different depending on what side of that scale you’re on. If you’re on the anxious side. Leadership might be saying instead of giving in to what my comfort zone wants, what if I put my vision on the kind of relationship I want to have?
In other words, when I think about the safe, secure relationship that I want to exist in long term, what does that look like? If someone goes out with their friends, do I really expect them to text me every hour just so that I know they’re thinking of me? No, of course not. I want them to go and have a good time with their friends.
So if that’s the kind of relationship I want, what would it look like to model that kind of relationship? Now? Not because I feel safe and secure in this relationship, but because if I can’t have the relationship I want to have with this person, then I’d rather not be in it long term. And I’d rather find out now.
So instead of giving in to the urge to get safety, let me start to embody the kind of communication, the kind of transparency and the kind of security that I want my dream relationship to have and see if that person can meet me there without me feeling disrespected and overlooked and taken for granted. What does it look like to lead on the avoidant side?
It might look like understanding that someone who is into you, where you normally might find that to be a bit of a turn, or a bit like if I feel safe, there’s something about that I don’t like. What if you saw someone’s vulnerable in liking you and trying with you as actually a sign of strength, the kind of strength that maybe you struggle to have, the kind of vulnerability that you’re too scared to have most of the time.
And instead of looking at that as a weakness, you start to look at it as a very powerful quality in this person. And if we start seeing it like that, instead of seeing this as someone to be repelled by, we see this as someone to learn from. So this is only one example of leadership. But leadership can happen on both sides.
And when it does, what happens is a healing environment gets created. An environment where we recognize that I can be with someone, even someone whose natural inclinations are different than mine and still be in an environment where I can have a beautiful relationship. Because when you find someone like that, when two people are both leading, improving themselves or correcting the mistakes of their past, what you have is, a dynamic where both people can actually bring out the best in each other.
Love requires leadership, and if we want to free ourselves from the mess that is early dating, we have to realize that we actually do have the power to get out of that trap ourselves. And the thing we can do is start leading. We can start saying, I’m going to be the person who brings out the best in other people.
If they can’t rise to that, if they can’t heal or give me more when I bring my best, then they’re not for me. But I have to stop playing the game of everyone. One just needs to accept me exactly as I am. And if that doesn’t go perfectly, then something was wrong with them. The right relationship is the one where we can be accountable for our patterns and start to heal some of our more destructive patterns, but we do so in the company of a person who actually creates a healing environment for us to do that.
Some people will only ever inflame your already painful tendencies. They will always be the people who take you from a two to a ten on the scale, no matter what, but other people, because of the way they show up, will be able to bring you from a 5 to 1 or a zero. You have to ask yourself, am I the person who’s doing that for somebody else?
Thank you so much for watching. Leave me a comment. Let me know what you thought of this and if you enjoyed this video, I promise you you will enjoy this one a lot. Go check it out and I will see you next week.
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