Transcript provided by YouTube. Slightly edited with AI.
A Particular Kind of Painful
I think one of the most painful things about breakups is that they often happen at the very time that we feel we were letting our guard down and being more of ourselves—revealing more of who we are or revealing more of our life. And when we get broken up with in those moments, it is a particular kind of painful because it feels like we are being rejected at our core.
The Hidden Fear
A lot of us, when we date in the first few weeks, and sometimes even months, it can feel like we’re sending out our representative on our behalf to look as good as possible, sound as good as possible, be as easy as possible to be around. Not bring any of the complications of our lives or personalities to the table. And of course, all of this is a time when we feel quite insecure because deep down we know there’s more of me you don’t know, there’s more of my life and the reality of my life that you’re not experiencing. And we’re terrified that when they get to know all of that, that’s going to be the point where they decide that we’re not for them.
The Moment of Revelation
So in that moment, where we finally reveal more, where we finally get comfortable enough, relaxed enough, feel safe enough to say, “This is me, this is my life,” and that person says, “Hm, I don’t, I suddenly don’t want this,” it is like our worst fear coming true. So I wanted to talk about this idea, and if you’ve experienced anything like this, give you five things that I think can make a huge difference that can not only ease your heartbreak but restore a sense of confidence that might feel like it was taken from you by someone leaving.
If You Don’t Know Me
If you don’t know me, I’m Matthew Hussey. I’ve been coaching people in their love lives for 17 years, helping them with both confidence and relational intelligence. While you’re here, I would really appreciate you liking this video, subscribing to this channel, and hitting the notification bell so that the next time I release a video, you are among the first to find out.
1. It’s All Data
The first thing I want to say is that it’s all data. When someone sees a part of your life or a part of your personality and decides that based on that, they don’t want to be around anymore, that’s data. And it’s data that this person either doesn’t really see you or sees you but doesn’t accept you.
The Right Person Will Accept You
The ultimate that all of us should be aspiring to in a healthy relationship is that someone gets us, someone sees us in our life and says, “I want that,” not that we have to constantly hide things from someone for them to continue wanting us. So rather than thinking, “This person was the right person and I blew it that weekend when I took them home to my family or when we spent time together and I actually let them in on the way that my disability makes me tired or the way my chronic pain affects me, or I finally let them stay over for the weekend and they saw me caring for a sick relative,” that is the reality of my life. Whatever it may be, if someone at that point says, “I can’t do this,” then that’s data that they are not the right person for you.
Don’t Get Stuck in the Moment
I think that we spend so much of our dating lives worrying about the parts of us that are going to scare someone away instead of realizing that all of these different parts of us that get revealed over time are really an opportunity for us to gather data about how right for us someone is. If we show a part of our lives, if we invite someone home for the weekend and they meet the family and they go, “I can’t do this, I’m out,” then that’s a crucial piece of data, especially if your family is really really important to you. If they can’t even stick around for that or at least respect that relationship and say, “You know what? God, you have a crazy family, but we’ll figure it out.” If they can’t deal with that part of you and it doesn’t have to just be something external, it could be something internal. You revealing more about yourself.
Revealing Your Life to the Right Person
When we introduce people to a part of our lives like that and then, as a result, it looks like they bolted, that was the moment they broke up with us. We pinpoint that as the exact moment where somehow we screwed up. Instead, we have to start flipping it and saying, “That was a chance for me to see if this person really accepted me in my life, and if the answer is they didn’t, then this isn’t the right person for us.”
2. Introducing Someone to Our Real Life
Number two, in order to get that data on whether someone is right for us, we have to actually introduce someone to our real life. We should ask ourselves the question, why is it sometimes so long before I realize that someone doesn’t actually want to sign up for my real life or my real personality? And the answer, much of the time, is because we took so long to close the gap between what I think of as our dating life and our real life.
Bringing Your Real Life Into the Relationship
There’s a big difference between the representative of ourselves in our life that we often send out on the first few dates or weeks, or even sometimes months of dating, whose job it is to show us our best all the time, to be as low maintenance as possible. But at a certain point, someone, if we’re to determine whether they’re really right for us, has to be brought into our real life and our real selves.
3. Viewing the Breakup in the Right Context
Point number three, which is that when we diagnose this moment, the moment where we caused the breakup as being the reason why we broke up, we are often not viewing the relationship in a large enough context. Imagine that if they were ever going to have a problem with that part of your life or that part of your personality or just you being you, that was always the case since day one. We could just as easily blame perhaps even more so on their inability to communicate those feelings that they were having way earlier in the process.
Original Transcript Link: Youtube Link
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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