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Transcript provided by YouTube. Slightly edited with AI.
The Love Life Reset
Are you finally ready to get back out there in your love life? Then there is one big mistake that I want you to try to avoid before you go any further with the video. I just wanted to let you know that I have something really special coming up this month. In case you’re really busy and you’re just going to catch the first two minutes of this video, I don’t want you to miss this. On March 19th, I am doing an event called the Love Life Reset. You can sign up for free at lovelifetraining.com. It’s a 1-hour training that I am doing for all of you out there who, over the years, have told me that you want more advice, for people who are in a different stage of life, who are trying to get back out there, who feel like dating has changed, who feel like they’re confused or scared to get back out there, or maybe even feel invisible at this stage of their life. This is for you, and I am really, really excited about it. I think this is going to restore hope for so many. I think it’s going to make the process of getting back out there manageable, and it’s an approach that’s not going to rob you of your peace in the process. So, come over to lovelifetraining.com, sign up for free now. It takes you 15 seconds. Even if you don’t watch the rest of this video, at least that will be in your calendar for this month. And if you are going to continue to watch the video, I’m happy because this is a good one.
A Mistake We’ve All Made in Dating
Making this mistake is the most natural thing in the world, and we have all done it because it’s not a conscious mistake that we make. It is a byproduct of what happens when we get nervous in early dating. And who doesn’t get nervous in early dating, especially if we’ve been out of the game for a long time? I know so many of you who watch my work have been in a relationship for a long time, and that relationship has ended. Many of you were in a marriage and have been through a very painful divorce, and maybe some time has elapsed, and you’re finally ready to get back out there. But having been ready to get back out there, you find yourself in a world that feels confusing. It feels like dating has changed. It no longer resembles the landscape that you once knew. You feel like you’re in a different season of your life, so you’re not sure if people will respond to you the same way, or you fear, as your friends tell you, that you will now be invisible, that you won’t be attractive to the people that you want to date who are all looking for someone younger, in a different stage of their life, not someone like you.
How could these things not make us nervous? How could they make us not want to show up with some kind of armor in place, some kind of defense against what we believe will be the worst effects of getting back out there again: confusion, rejection, and a feeling of worthlessness? And when we get this nervous, we make the big mistake, and that is bringing to the table an inauthentic version of ourselves. Now, most of us don’t go into our love lives being intentionally inauthentic. What happens is our nerves have us playing roles that make us inauthentic.
Weapons We Use #1: Impressing
And I think of them like this: our favorite weapons when we go into dating. We all have our favorite weapon. Now, for one kind of person, the weapon is impressing. And the impressor, as I like to think of them, goes into dating trying to show how great they are, how accomplished they are, the big shot that they are in their career or their life, the place they’ve arrived at in their life, their knowledge, their intelligence, their wit, their independence. They’re trying to show the other person how impressive they are. And it’s a very common thing that I see where people say to me, “Matt, I feel like I keep intimidating people. People keep telling me I’m intimidating or that it seems like I don’t need anyone, and that’s what’s turning them off.” Now, it’s okay to intimidate a few people. If you’re an impressive person in general in life, you’re always going to intimidate a few people. But if you’re intimidating everybody, that’s a pattern, and that’s worth looking at. And usually, the reason that we’re intimidating people is because we’re going into our love life trying to impress. Why do we do that? It’s a bid for control. We know that if we can show ourselves to be someone who is independent or impressive in a whole bunch of ways, that it will give us some kind of power in the dynamic, it will put us in the driver’s seat. But a problem with that is we end up not really connecting with anybody, so it backfires.
Weapons We Use #2: Pleasing
Now, the other weapon I see a lot of people rely on is pleasing. So, this pleaser goes into a date trying to be as accommodating as possible. It’s kind of very different from the impressor. It’s the person who’s always asking questions because they want to be polite and ultra-curious because they want to show that they’re generous with their energy and that they’re giving that other person space to just talk and to show who they are and to be impressive. You make someone else impressive, right? You laugh at every one of their jokes all the time, or you’re constantly trying to make them feel comfortable, you feel every silence. You may find yourself speeding up because, as the pleaser, the worst thing in the world you can do is create an awkward environment where anybody would be uncomfortable. So, you try to manage all of those silences and make sure there never is one. Maybe someone asks you a question, and as the pleaser, you think, “Well, I don’t want to take up too much space or be obnoxious with how much I’m talking about myself. I don’t want to be indulgent.” So, you throw it straight back to them. You give a quick answer and then ask another question of them, passing the microphone right back to them to be the star of the date. Now, I often hear people who play this role say, “I go on dates with people, and they never ask me any questions.” How do you solve the fact that they’re not curious about you? What I find interesting about that is these people tend to precipitate this complaint by always making the other person the star, by being overly accommodating, by never really sharing a lot about themselves or taking the microphone and having a moment in the spotlight on the date.
A Different Approach: Connecting
How do we get out of this mistake? What can we do as a different approach? I want to change your intention going into a date. I want to change it from impressing to connecting, from pleasing to connecting. Connecting should be the ultimate goal for all of us in our love lives. Authentically connecting by being us and bringing our real selves to the table and looking to discover their real selves. Because, by the way,
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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