Transcript of "Why You're SABOTAGING Your Love Life" - The Neuroscience of Attraction Revealed

Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

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Do you believe that we can be in beautiful, healthy, loving relationships. We can manifest everything we have on our vision or action boards if we have yet to heal the wounds of our childhood as a neuroscientist. No.

Really?

If we have these visions and dreams and goals that we want to go after, if we want to have a beautiful relationship, but we are wounded still, the inner child is wounded inside of us as adults, what will happen to us?

This is really about inner child and shadow, right? I think people understand that you've got an inner child that maybe didn't get over things that you experienced in your childhood. Shadow is about the parts of yourself that you've rejected because as a When you're a child, you rely on your primary caregivers for survival. Yes. If there is something that they don't love about you, you want to hide that for all the while so that they will still love you and not let you die.

You don't want anyone to notice about you. No. That shame.

You hide it away in childhood and often find yourself in adulthood no longer even aware of what those things are because you've rejected them so deeply.

Wow.

Yeah. But that's driving a lot of your unconscious behavior.

Right.

So if you put together the inner child in the shadow, then what happens is you meet people on the same level of psychological wound as you.

Oh, man.

You also leave people if you evolve out of that and they haven't been able to.

Which I think goes back to one of the pieces of content I heard you talk about, which is the sense of smell connected to someone's stress levels or anxiety levels. You'll attract a similar nervous system, or I guess a certain similar, I don't know, stress level.

Yeah. It's not smell. It's sensing, not through smell, the level of the stress hormone. Interesting. But that's short term, right? But the inner child and shadow stuff is longer term. Gosh, that's fascinating. Yeah.

So you think we attract people based on our psychological wounds?

A hundred %.

Wow.

And as we start to heal and grow, if the other person is not healing and growing, we pull away. Wow, that's interesting. Speaking, I guess, about relationships in men and women, with all of your expertise on the brain, is the process of manifesting love and falling in love different from men versus women?

I think if it's love you're really looking for, then it's not different.Not lust.Yeah, exactly. The issue is what you're actually looking for.

You think men and women manifest love the same way, similar ways?

Yeah, I think if you want that sense of partnership and friendship and intimacy and you want to be loyal and you want it to be for the long term, then it doesn't matter what gender you are. But if the disconnect is often, and this This is a bit of a stereotype, but usually it's more that women want a loving, stable relationship, and men perhaps don't want that as much.

Want sex or whatever. Yeah.

Or just don't want it right now. Go through periods where that's what they want and go through periods where that's not what they want, which I guess could be true of any gender as well. But overall, more likely, women will want to be in a monogamous relationship.

Why is that based on the brain size?

It comes from evolution. So when we lived in the cave, women did need men to protect them from predators and to hunt for food.

So women tend- It gets especially if they're pregnant, too, and they weren't able to go out and hunt or gather or whatever it might be.

I mean, they generally didn't hunt as much, so they gathered more. But then it's hard to get protein from what you gather rather than what you hunt. So for survival, and they use the fat and the skins and everything. So it wasn't just food, it was shelter and fire and all of that stuff. So although we don't necessarily need a man for those physical things now, it's a very strong survival wiring in the brain. In the cave, we lived nomadically. So often the men would go and hunt and be away for a very long time. Or if they went far enough and they found a cave of the But of the same tribe, they would just stay there and not go back. Why risk your life to travel back for six weeks? But over time, a lot of societies in the modern world have asked people to live in unit families. And so we have seen men's brains be rewired. Really? Yeah. Relatively recently, maybe in the last 10 years, research has shown that when you become a dad for the first time, oxytocin rewires your brain so that you're more into bonding and less into the testosterone competitive stuff.

Because if you think about it, lions and tigers, they'll eat their own children.

You have to tame that in some ways, right? Yeah. But how do you tame it, but also harness it in other ways? You know what I mean? It's like a dance of having drive and testosterone. I never want to lose that drive, right?

I get this question all the time.

But I also want to be a great loving parent and partner and all these things and not let testosterone drive me in doing damaging things.

Well, so from about the age of 35, your testosterone will have started dropping significantly already.

Not mine.

What's going on?

One's testosterone tends to drop from that age. So when you do become a dad-It drops after you become a dad? For the first time, oxytocin goes up, testosterone drops, you become much more about cuddling and bonding and wanting to stay in the home and look after the- Interesting. Mom and the baby.

Less about lifting and hunting, right?

Yeah. Interesting. If you keep lifting, then you would actually keep your testosterone levels higher. Also, if the baby sleeps in the same room as you, then your testosterone levels drop even more. Come on. So you might want to move out for three months to a different bedroom.

Yeah. I've already told her, I'm getting my sleep the first few months. So your testosterone drops?

If you sleep in the same room as the baby.

Why is that?

Because the oxytocin is becoming higher and higher because you've got this cute little warm thing that smells so nice and it's so vulnerable and dependent on you, and it's in the room with you the whole eight hours of just oxytocin boost.

But are women attracted to men with less testosterone?

They are when they're not fertile, but they are not when they are at peak fertility. Really? So mid-cycle, when you're ovulating, you're going to a bad boy, and the rest of the time, you're going to want a nice man that will stay at home and help you look after the baby.

So if you're not a bad boy when you're at peak fertility as a woman, is that going to hurt the relationship if you don't give women what they want?

Hang on, say that again. What?

So if a man is not a-Not a bad boy. Not a bad boy, when a woman is at peak fertility, and the man just wants to cuddle and chill and not be driven by testosterone and give the woman that testosterone feel, well, that ultimately hurt the relationship long term if the woman doesn't get what she wants sexually?

I mean, I think if she's chosen him by then. So this is more about when you're in the choosing phase. Once you settle down with someone, then you have a logical conversation about, are we trying for a baby or not, right?

But logic and emotion are two different things. No, I mean- In relationships, you might logically say, Okay, I'm safe, but emotionally, you want something else.

This is a reason that people cheat. Right.

Because they're not getting what they want sexually. It's like, how do you suppress the thing you want sexually to be like, Oh, but he's such a good guy, or he's this, but if he's not giving me what I want, then I'm going to go find it from this other younger testosterone driven man, right?

You're getting really jealous here.

I'm not getting jealous.

This fantasy, younger, high testosterone man.

I'm just thinking, is this what women deal with. I know.

Is this what women deal with? Yeah. To some extent, more consciously or less consciously, depending on the woman.

It's interesting, right?

So let me explain the physiology behind it from the research that we know the best, which is in Prairie voles. So there are two types of voles in America, marsh or mountain voles. Voles? What's a vole? Vole. It's a little rat-like creature.

Prairie dogs?

No.

Not Prairie dogs. It's a vole.

It's more like a mouse or a rat. Okay, cool. The ones that live in the marsh or the mountain They have plenty of food and plenty of shelter, and they're super promiscuous. The ones that moved to the Prairie where there's scarce food and shelter, they snuggle in and settle down and become monogamous for life.

The same rat, the same mouse, but just living in different areas. Yeah. Come on. So wait, you're telling me rats are monogamous?

These voles. It's a mess. The voles are monogamous.

If they live in the prairie.

If they live in the prairie, but not if they live in the park.

But if they have all the food and abundance, they're just- And lots of female voles that they can go and visit. They're just little polyamorous voles.

Yeah. Because they know that if they get one vole pregnant and she's left on her own to look after her young, they're going to survive because they're well sheltered. There's plenty of food for her to nip out and bring it back to the babies. Yeah. But in the Prairie, if he was promiscuous, then the chances of his offspring dying are quite high because she can't defend the nest herself. She can't find enough food for herself and then without help. And so let's How does this help humans?

First off, which mice are happier? The ones that are more promiscuous or the ones that are coupled?

I think it depends on the vole.

Do you think the female mice are happy if They just are pregnant, but then their partner just leaves. No. They're not happy. No. How do we know? Can we test that? Okay, so how do we apply this to our lives?

No, I know. Hang on. There is an answer to that. Okay. We test it through levels of oxytocin and vasopressin.

Come on. Have we done this? Have people done this? Yes. No way. From these mice? Yeah. Wow, that's crazy.

Actually, just to be serious, the research has done more to help with loneliness, grief, and heartbreak, but obviously, it's got implications for dating. Because one of the things that we saw with the receptors in the brain is that if I'm in... No, it's got to be the other way around. If you're in love with me, you've got more vasopressin receptors in your nucleus accumbens, which is on the reward circuitry. Then every time you see me, you get a reward. The longer that we've been dating and stay together and When you become closer, that reward becomes more intense every time you see me. However, if we then had a prolonged separation, time can downregulate the effect of those receptors. So obviously, there are implications for that in a breakup or grief, right? Right. But one of the things I think is so, so important for dating is that if a couple are getting to know each other, and this is all on heterosexual couples and research. Then as a woman is sexually interested and liking the guy and enjoying the dating, her oxytocin levels is slowly, slowly starting to go up. When they start actually having sex, she's going to be releasing higher levels of oxytocin every time she orgasms, and that's going to make her bond to the guy much more.

If you have sex on the first date, the guy's vasopressin levels will plummet straight away and all he'll be interested in is testosterone. If you make him wait, his vasopressin and oxytocin levels go up, and then when you do actually have sex, he's already bonded, so it's more likely to become part of a loving relationship. Wow.

So if a woman sleeps with a man on the first date or two, is a man driven to want to bond long term with that person? No. Why not?

Because the vasopressin levels drop as soon as he has sex.

What does that mean?

So vasopressin is the one that makes the prairie vols monogamous. The higher the levels of that and that the receptors appear in the reward circuitry of your brain. Basically, if you see your partner in distress, it affects your brain, those neurons, and you want to comfort her through physical touch. So that's oxytocin. But if you haven't had time for those receptors to appear in the correct place to make you bond, then it goes back to lust. So what I say about love and relationships is that the genetics and the receptors will load the gun, but sexual activity will pull the trigger.

Based on neuroscience, if you sleep with someone quickly, you're less likely to bond long term together. They're more likely to be promiscuous or just not be as interested in that person long term. Is that right? Okay. That's fascinating.

I know.

But you hear a lot of people just be like, just sleep with them on the first day. It's fun. Just have fun. It's all good. But I just feel like you're setting yourself up for let down.

But if that's what you want, that's fine. But I think- Don't expect the guy to keep liking you after that. No. Don't say it's fine and it's fine if you actually want a long term relationship and then be disappointed that they didn't want that, too. Yeah.

So the brain chemistry within a man changes if they have sex earlier with a woman.

And it changes in a different way if they wait and they actually create a bond. First?

Yeah. And then have sex? Yeah. What changes within a woman when they have sex with a man? Do they become more bonded to the person?

Yeah. So for the woman, it's not so much to do with whether they are already in love with the person or not, if they're having sex and they're releasing oxytocin, because we don't have as much testosterone as you. You've got at least seven to eight times as much testosterone as me, and that buffers the effect of oxytocin, whereas I would get the full effect of oxytocin.

That's fascinating. So a woman, when they have sex with a man, they're bonding quicker. When a man has sex with a woman, he's not necessarily bonding right away. He has to have more time connecting with her until he bonds. That is interesting.

And then the oxytocin isn't as buffered by the testosterone. So when you've got the vasopressin and the oxytocin high, then the testosterone has less negating effect on it.

This is fascinating. Okay. What else about neuroscience and relationships should we address since we're on this topic that you think is really interesting?

I think the whole visual and smell thing at the start is quite interesting, and then the receptors and hormones to do with bonding and sex is really interesting. I would say that because we live so much longer now, we're using these cave analogies. But to be honest, in If you were to save tons, you and I would both be dead.

Died 30, yeah.

Relationships potentially have to last for longer. I think there's two things to say here. One is that you can use neuroplasticity to keep growing and changing in a way that keeps a relationship fresh. If you are holding on to this fantasy that a relationship has to last forever, even if we're now living till we're 100, right? So I think another way to look at it is about being in the present, not necessarily putting this intense pressure on yourself, your partner, and the relationship that it has to last forever. Understanding that even if a relationship breaks down, and that's obviously difficult to handle at the time, that there are potential possibilities for something that's more right for you at a different age than maybe a choice you made in your 20s. You don't have to be a neuroscientist to say those two things. It's just using your brain to understand that there's a certain amount of time. There are benefits to being in long-lasting relationships, but there are possible alternatives as well. Absolutely.

Yeah, that's interesting. I want to go back to what we're talking about a little bit before in terms of 3D, 5D, brain states. I guess my question is, we're in the three-dimensional world right now, 3D. But from my understanding, 5D allows us to manifest faster. It's like skipping time. It's not saying you have to push things forward in the physical material world. You're We're jumping time, in a sense. I don't know if that makes sense. When we use our brain to think about something, we're sending a signal into space, into time, space, our environment, consciousness. We're putting a signal out into the world. Maybe sometimes when we think about someone, we're sending that signal to the other person, right? Potentially. If we send a signal out consistently, we're signaling to the world. If we fill our hearts with love and gratitude and harmony and peace in a beautiful state, a flourishing state of abundance, we're signaling something out and we're drawing it back in through the heart. Is that a bunch of baloney or is that something that you can, back by science, to to support our energy, our thoughts, our way of being, and connect it to the actions we take on a daily basis.

That's a really beautiful way that you've put it, and a great question as well. I just want to start Start that story with a few things. If you think about what you and I watched as Sci-Fi when we were kids, so much of that is true now.

It's happening. Yeah.

Things that we used to think about the brain, like one way that we used to treat mental illnesses was by doing a frontal lobotomy or cutting the corpus callosum that bridges the left and right hemispheres. We thought we were doing a good thing. I have actually given patients electroconvulsive therapy in my career, so not that long ago. And not because I wanted to, but I had a patient that came to me and said, I've got a long history of depression, and when it gets to the point that I don't want to eat and drink, the only thing that helps me quick enough that I don't have to suffer for weeks is ECT. I said, Are you sure? You don't want to try? There are some modern antidepressants now that have an effect in a couple of weeks. And she was like, No, I'm not eating, I'm not drinking. I'm totally depressed. I just want ECT. I was like, Okay. But we don't generally do that so much anymore. So our understanding of psychiatry, psychology, and then with the advent of brain scanning, how healthy brains function has come a long way. Even at this conference at the weekend, all the speakers were amazing, but a few of them mentioned right brain, left brain.

I said, I'm sorry, but I've got to stand up here and say we really can't talk about the brain like that anymore. It's so much more complex and sophisticated with these amazing networks and subsystems, and it's just doing a big disservice to the brain to talk about.

It's all connecting.

Yeah. In that sense, The research that most backs up what you're talking to, speaking to, is we can't prove all of that yet, but how we're getting there is through two main ways. One is looking at what happens in the brain with psychedelics and how they can induce neuroplasticity. I keep my eye on the research at Johns Hopkins because it's, to me, the best lab that's looking into that stuff. So there are really great benefits from one or two doses spaced one to six months apart of certain psychedelics in mental illnesses like depression and schizophrenia, potentially in grief as well. But what's really interesting to me is that everything that you see that a psychedelic can achieve relatively quickly, you can achieve yourself by sleeping right, eating right, breathing right, and meditating. Let's go.

I'm so happy you're saying this because I have a lot of friends that swear by psychedelics. They say like, Oh, this changed my life, and it's opened me up, and it's allowed me to see things differently. But I've been in many meditation-intensive retreats that I feel like I'm seeing visions, and I'm seeing geometric shapes, and pulsating, and all these different things that we are creating ourselves within ourselves. It's the chemicals, the pharmacy that we have in our brain and body that can manifest and create these things are so powerful that I I think if trained continually, it's hard work, but if trained properly and continually with the right teaching, can have just as powerful effects, if not more powerful healing benefits than an outside pharmacy. That's just my belief. I may be wrong, but it sounds like from your research, that's true.

I'm so glad you said that because I know it's particularly popular in LA as well. Oh, yeah.

Everyone's talking about microdosing and ayahuasca and everything.

My concern is that- They're swearing by it.

It's It's helping them immensely. I'm like, Cool. If it's helping you, cool. But can you try other things, too, that aren't changing your brain chemistry from the outside in, but rather from the inside out?

I think there's a couple of other things around that. One is that if it's not in a hospital or a lab under proper supervision with qualified people, then A, how do you know how pure the source of whatever you're taking is? In the '60s, there were so many bad LSD trips that happened to people. So what happens if something goes wrong and there's no one trained there that can help you? Neuroplasticity, as I remember we discussed before, is not always good. It can be bad. You obsess over a breakup. You're just wiring into your brain.

You stay in it for years. There's grief. Yeah.

And so can these psychedelics do that as well.

They can keep you trapped in a depressive state.

They can make things more negative because how do you know where that mushroom or whatever it is that you're taking is going to induce neuroplasticity in your brain. How are you directing that if you've got no experience of that? So that is a bit of a concern. When they did the ayahuasca research at Johns Hopkins, they used the pure ayahuasca. When you do it in ceremony, it's mixed with something that makes you purge.

Makes you throw up and feel sick.

Yeah, and have diarrhea potentially as well. Yeah. So the purging-I don't want that. I know. Who wants to go through that? It completely puts me off. Some people don't mind it so much, but it's done because it symbolizes a massive release. Yes. And that's part of-And a rebirth. Yes, exactly.

I think for a lot of people, Especially those who are playing the field and experiencing different people and whatever, there is a being single is this dopaminegenic cycle. And it's hard to get off that cycle because you're wired for it You're wired for instant gratification. You're wired for variety and excitement and what next and the traumas of the first few weeks of knowing someone and the romance of just figuring each other out All of that is like, and texts, and phone buzzing, and this and that. This person is now called, and it's like a frantic dopamine engine that you get stuck in. At a certain point, you have to come to value something else more because otherwise, and this happens, of course, routinely, is people get locked into that cycle. And it was clear to me at a certain point, Oh, this happiness doesn't lie here for me. Anxiety lies here for me.Uncertainty.Uncertainty. It's having an effect on the way I see the world or myself. This is not going to serve me long term. But just because you realize that, it doesn't mean that you immediately have an appreciation of what the other thing is, or that you even know what it looks like, or what package it comes in, or you don't know any of those things.

There's a whole chapter I wrote in this book that I'm I'm really insanely proud of because I think it's so on the money of what's happening for so many people. It's called Never Satisfied. That, I think, is the feeling. I explain the steps of why it is we struggle to be satisfied. The next chapter is how to rewire your brain so that you can actually rewire your sofa happiness. Because I know for a long time, I was that never satisfied person.In.

Relationships or just?Yeah.

My love life. I think in life, too. But But in my love life, I was just chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing. Dopamine, dopamine. I'm not happy. I need to get out of this relationship. I'm single. Dopamine, dopamine. I'm not happy here. There must be some perfect person who's going to make me feel differently about this whole thing, and I'm going to feel different when I meet that person, and that person didn't come because it wasn't really about that. Something was going on with me. I was in that cycle The other thing that is available to you is so… This isn't a lecture on whether someone should be single or in a relationship. I don't want to become that person.Sure. But what is so amazing about a healthy relationship is not available to you until you come to value I'll tell you something different. It's like someone who's been used to doing drugs every day. Then the day that you get them to quit drugs, you sit them outside their house in front of a beautiful field and you say, Appreciate the sunset.

Yeah, there's no dopamine rush anymore.

A sunset is an awe-inspiring, unbelievable thing. It's It's something that is mind-blowing. Why do we all go on holiday and everyone at the same time goes out onto the beach and watches the sunset? Because there's something stunning and magical about a sunset. But for the person who's been doing drugs every day, that's not the day you can appreciate a sunset. You are coming out of all of those feelings that you've been addicted to and all of that instant gratification, dopamine. It's about, again, it's nervous system stuff. It's retraining my nervous system. This is some of the stuff we talk about in how to rewire your brain. But you have to orient yourself towards a different goal. In the beginning, you can't expect the new thing to feel like the old thing because it's not going to feel like the old thing. But the more you lean into the new thing, you develop an for how much better it actually feels. That's a stunning and eye-opening realization. I feel really passionate about this because I see a lot of really unhappy people, I was one of them, by the way, who are stuck in those cycles.

I think there's a lot of people who get stuck in optimization cycles in their love life, where it's like, especially Taipei people, not everyone does, but a lot of people do, where it's like, I'm trying to find the perfect thing, and if someone's missing this thing, I'm going to optimize and go for another person who's got all the good things about this person, and also that thing. It's like, people don't work like that. You exchange one basket of ingredients for another basket of ingredients, and you'll get new good stuff and new bad stuff and challenging stuff. I'm a huge believer. I think the settling is a word that has a really unfairly negative connotation, and it shouldn't. Is there something amazing about that word? You can change the meaning of that depending on the word that goes after it. If you tell someone you have to settle for something that feels immediately negative, It's like settling down. Yeah, because I feel like I'm being short-changed. But if you say settling on something, that changes it because you, Lewis, settled on a particular business and brand. You're such a capable person. You could have done a hundred different things in this lifetime, and you would have been a success at them.

How the hell do you decide which one you should do? You found one that scratch the itch in a bunch of different ways. It allowed you to be creative. It allowed you to broadcast, which is something you're really good at. It allowed you to connect, which is something you're really good at. It allowed you to harness all of these relationships, which is something you're really great at, is relationships. It allowed you to put to work your strategy mind. It allowed you to be competitive, which is something that's in your bones. This business, it ticked a lot of boxes for you. But it's not the only business that That would have ticked boxes for you. Sure. There are other things you could have done that would have ticked boxes. But you settled on greatness. Yes. You said, I'm going to go all in on this, and I'm going to keep going on this. The thing that has made what you do so great, and what you have done is extraordinary. What you've built, the audience you've built, the platforms you've built, the body of work you've built, it's extraordinary. But it's not extraordinary because you found an extraordinary thing.

You didn't find the word greatness. You just went, I've got the... If you'd have said to me, 15 years ago, we didn't know each other then, but when you started, if you'd have said to me, Matt, I've got the greatest idea. I am going to take the word greatness, and I am going to just own that word and build a brand out of it and do all of the... I would have been like, That's not an idea. You've taken a common word in the English language.

You talk about it.

You know what I mean? But that's not what's made this extraordinary. What's made this extraordinary is that you have settled on it, and you take this thing to another level every year. People who are looking at you going, you've got a lot of... I've walked with you in the street in Vegas on holiday in places, when we've traveled. You have people coming up to you everywhere you go. You're hero to so many people, and so many people want to create what you've created or want to be where you are. But you didn't start with this really special thing. You spent year after year after year making a really special thing. Every year, I see you take the same core thing and stick with it again.

Yeah.

Not go, You know what? Now, what I really want to do is now I really want to do real estate.

Yeah, I'm over this. I'm going to move on to something greater. Yeah.

It's not That's not it for you. You're like, I'm going to make this thing even better.

I think that's how people should approach relationships.

That's my point, is that you settle... The thing that makes a relationship the greatest relationship of your life is that you take someone who ticks the boxes for you. And that's the starting point. But then, based on the values you each bring, and I think there are some very powerful values for a relationship, like being growth-oriented, like teamwork, like loyalty, like prioritizing the vision of the relationship. I think when you take those things and you put those two people like that together, what they start with is not nearly as interesting as what they will create together. You can only create that if you settle on a person, but you will never settle on a person as long as you are looking for the perfect person as a starting point, because the perfect relationship doesn't exist at the beginning. But the perfect relationship for you can exist over time if you settle on someone and you resolve to make that relationship as good as it can possibly be. That's why I get so excited about my relationship because I'm like, It's amazing right now. It's going to be even better in six months. Because we're building something together.

Martha says that to me all the time. She's like, How do I love you even more more today than I did last week. I think it's because we're both focused on growing ourselves individually and growing the relationship together. I'm sure there's going to be adversities and challenges we face, but us facing it together makes us even more connected and appreciate each other even more.

There's something even fun about that. When you know you're an amazing team, there's even something fun about knowing that there's going to be challenges and how you're going to solve those as a team because you're a killer team. Absolutely. Even that, there's something exciting about it. Absolutely. I think we almost have to pay attention to some of these ideas we have about love and relationships. The way we use words like settling, are you settling for someone or are you settling on someone? That will change. If you settle for someone, you'll become passive and resentful in that relationship. If you see it like you settled on someone, of any choice you could have made, you Because you chose this person, and because you chose it, you're going to lean into it and you're going to make it as great as it can possibly be, that relationship, that will change the way you approach relationships. The same is true of the word commitment. This is amazing. This is such a fantastic example of the point I'm making. If you look up, I think it's in Apple Dictionary, I don't know how it's reflected in the Oxford Dictionary, but if you go on your Mac and you type in the word commitment, there are two different definitions that come up.

Really?

What does it say?

One is a... I think it reads, and people can go and look for themselves and get the exact wording right. But one of them says, roughly, a obligation that restricts freedom of action. Wow.wow. Now, if you give me someone that has that as their definition of commitment, and I'll show you someone who has a hard time ever being in a relationship. But there's There's another definition of commitment under that one. It says, commitment, a dedication to a cause. Now, when you think of dedication to a cause, it creates a completely different energy in your body. I'm dedicated to this cause. I'll fight for this cause. I'll do anything for this cause. There's something heroic about that. I'm dedicated to the cause of our relationship, of our future, of our vision, of where we're going. There's something stunningly beautiful about that. Dedication to a cause, an obligation that restricts freedom. One is about shrinking your world, and the other one enlarges it. There are so many people out there struggling with the idea of committing, whether it's to a business, an idea, A path, a country, a person, a new sport. And your definitions around these words, the way you choose to see them is going to determine your ability to stay with something, to invest in something.

And I think that's so fascinating. I really do.

Yeah. This is big, man. There's so many more I have a couple of questions I want to ask you, but I want people to get the book because I know you're going to answer a lot of these questions in here as well. Love Life: How to Raise your Standards, Find your Person, and Live Happily, No Matter What. So make sure you guys get a few copies. If you have a friend who's been struggling in relationships Relationships, get them a copy as well. If you know someone that just went through a breakup, get them a copy. If you know someone who's in a healthy relationship, get them a copy so they can still use these tools to improve their relationship as well. Love Life: Where can they go and get this copy? Is there a way we can get some extra goodies or bonuses? Or should we just go on Amazon? Where should we go?

You can definitely get it from Amazon or Barns & Noble or wherever you get your books. But we actually have a website, lovelifebook. Com.

There's There are many great concepts in here. Again, how to rewire your brain. I love the chapter in here about if you know you want to leave, but you don't know how to leave, it teaches people how to get out of a relationship the right way.

Yeah, there's a lot of talk in there. That's a big chapter on anyone who's in a toxic, abusive, or narcissistic relationship. You can apply that, by the way, across the board, not just to your love life, but if there's family relationships that you're struggling with and you don't know what to do about them, that's a very hard-hitting chapter. There's chapters on confidence in there, which is why this has mass appeal. I want to say this just to... Because I think it's important for people to hear. I have come to believe that there are three relationships we are all in in life. One is our relationship with other people. The second is our relationship with ourselves. The third is our relationship with life itself. These are three relationships that you can't get out of. For as long as you are here on this planet, you are in these three relationships. These relationships, the quality of them, will determine your happiness in this world. We better focus on those relationships. In many ways, this book designed not just to be a book for people who are looking to find love, but a book for people who are looking to improve those relationships.

I talk about my own journey. Even I talk about some times where I fell out of love with life because I handed some difficult cards along the way and struggled. Maybe we could talk about it on another episode, but was in a very dark place and a very I talk in the book about how I improved the tools that I used to improve my relationship with life in the hardest times of my life. That's why the double meaning in the title of this book is so important to me. This isn't just about your love life. It's about your love for life. It's why that last line, How to raise your standards, find your person, and live happily no matter what, was really, really important to me. I don't think this is just a book that about finding love. I believe that this is a book that will get passed around for people who are struggling with all sorts of things in their lives.

That's cool, man. And again, if you don't have a good relationship with life, you're probably not going to have a good relationship with yourself. And if you don't have a good relationship with yourself, how are you going to find someone that you can actually love and appreciate without being jaded on them trying to hurt you in some way? So you need to have a healthy relationship in all three areas, or those first two, at least, if you want to to have a healthy relationship with someone else and trusting them in your life and opening your heart to them. Knowing everything you know now from being in multiple different relationships, going through breakups, being in challenging situations in love, being single and dating a bunch of people over the years, now being married, if you could give your 18-year-old self three pieces of advice about love that you wish you would have known then, that you know now, what would those three things be?

Three on the spot is hard, by the way.Imagine...I.

Got it, though. 18-year-old Matthew sitting in front of you saying, I just want to find love, and I just want to feel loved, and I want to find a great... I want to have a family and be married one day, and you get to sit in front of him with all the wisdom that you have now, and all the heartache, and all the pain, and all the love that you've experienced, what are you going to say to your younger self?

I think the first thing I would say is that It's not... This is going to sound cheesy, but I really mean it. I would start by saying it's not your fault that you are the way you are. That These things that you think are a sign that you're broken, whether it's your shyness or your anxiety or feeling like you're terrified of rejection or that you're not good enough. These things, they've either been part of you from the beginning or they are a response to things that have happened in your life. I'm not saying everything is nurture. Some of it is just our DNA, our brain. But either way, these things that you keep judging your sofa and telling yourself that you're broken for, they They deserve compassion because you didn't choose them. The reason I think that's important from a love-life context is because what I lacked for so much of my life was self-compassion. I thought I wasn't good enough. I thought that deep down, I was shameful, I was ugly, I was unlovable. I was bad, not a good person. I was just not... If people really knew who I was, they would think I was disgusting and pathetic and weak and unlovable.

I'm not saying all of this was always conscious, but on some level, this must have been how I was feeling because I was really deeply afraid to be seen. I would have said, It's okay. You're okay. The way you are, it's not because you're broken or that you made choices to be, it's that you're responding to something. That would give me self-compassion. The second thing I would say to myself is share those things. Now, I don't know how well it would have gone for me at 18 to share those things with girls my age. But in general, I would have said as a lesson for life, share those things because everyone else is also In all the ways you fear you're broken. Everyone else is, too. If you can share that with other people, that is going to be your ultimate power. I spent my 20s, Lewis, I was coaching people, and I was lucky enough, like you, to be quite known, relatively speaking. As a 25-year-old, I made a bit of a name for myself A lot of people knew who I was. I never really allowed myself to truly just be myself because I was trying to be something else.

I was trying to be impressive. These days, I'm much more focused on connecting with people. You and I would never have had this interview 10 years ago. You were trying to impress too much. I'm sure the first interview we did together was strong because it's fun sometimes when someone is being impressive. We get to watch someone do their thing. But this now, this wouldn't happen 10 years ago because I wasn't sharing myself in that way. I would say share yourself because that's the route to real connection, real friendship. It's real love. Then the third thing I would say to myself is, have compassion for these flaws in other people. Because I spent way too much of my life writing people off or judging people for things that they were struggling with and things I didn't like the way they did this or that, or the way that insecurity showed up or the way... Honestly, man, I look back on it now and I'm like, They were me. No, they were me. They only didn't know that that was me because I wasn't being vulnerable with them. I didn't even offer them the ability to have compassion with my deeper flaws my insecurities or my vulnerabilities because I never shared them.

You didn't reveal them. No, because I judge those things in myself. When you judge them in yourself, you judge them in other people. The more in my life I've developed space for myself and who I am, the more compassionate I've become with myself, the more compassionate I've become with other people, the greater my capacity to love other people for who they really are. I have found it easier to love other people the more that I have I've learned to love myself. The more compassion I've developed for my own complexities and the things that make me a difficult and complicated. It's made me able to love other people more because now that I'm making more space for myself. I also make space for the way that other people are and those things on the surface that are easy to judge, the deeper wounds that those things represent that they're struggling with. Having that compassion for yourself breeds compassion for other people.

You mentioned something about learning to accept love. I'm curious, can you truly accept and feel loved by someone else if you don't learn to love yourself?

I don't know. I don't think so, yeah. Because you don't believe it. If you think you are undeserving of love, you think that you're not good enough, when someone says, I think you're great and I love you, you honestly will think they're lying to you.

Even if you're chasing them and even if you're trying to be with them.

Yeah. You might feel valid or special. You get that fix. I've heard a lot of relationship advice, like food advice, that I always refer to people as Sour Patch Kids. I had this epiphany. I was like, What? How can I? I was dating an actress at the time, and her sister was asking me for relationship advice, and she was talking about this guy over and over about like, he would go out with me. We do all these boyfriend and girlfriend things, and then they would hook up, and then he would disappear, and then she'd feel like crap afterwards. I'm like, You know who he is? He's a Sour Patch Kid. She was like, What do you mean? I was just like, Well, when I eat Sour Patch Kids, I love them. When I talk about them right now, my mouth is salivating just thinking about it. Every once in a while, I'll indulge a bag of Sour Patch But every time I eat it, even though I get that fix, and it's so good going in, I inevitably always feel like crap because, well, they're crappy food. Nothing about Sour Patch Kids will nourish your body.

You're not going to get healthy out of putting Sour Patch Kids in your body. That fix is always followed by that hangover of being crappy. A lot of people are that Sour Patch Kids or that hangover of that fix of validation, that temporary short term feeling of excitement, the euphoria of feeling enough, only followed by that hangover of not feeling good enough. Back to you, if you don't really love yourself and you don't truly believe it, they might complement you They might say this, I love you, and you're caught off guard and you're feeling good, but then you'll get in your head. You'll be like, Well, are you sure? Because they can't really love me. It's just like you look in the mirror and you're disgusted with yourself. Then It will be followed by that hangover of that excitement going away. I think it really is important to truly be comfortable with who you are. As I get older, I'm sure you've done this, too. Again, you're never a finished product. I always want to work on myself. I always want to work on my bad habits, of which I have many. But I also have gotten to the point in my life, and I remember a moment when Nelly and I first started dating, and she was giving me a hard time because I don't ever close cabinet doors.

I leave things open.

I'm a very disorganized person. I said to her, I'm like, Listen, I promise you'll always work on this, but I just want you to know this is also who I am. I've never been good at this. I remember, and I was half joking, but just me being able to say that to her and just say, I have some really bad habits. Honestly, my brain works a certain away, then I'm just… I've tried so hard to be good at this stuff and correct it, but it's just hard for me. I don't know how to do this. Just to say that out loud to her… A 23-year-old me, I would never have acknowledged that. Oh, yeah, no, I can do that. I'm right on that, babe. I'll master that. I was never willing to acknowledge that there's some things that are just really hard for me. I'm really not good at this. I'm really going to I'll go with this. This is a weakness of mine.

When you can say that and someone else can see and accept it.

Yeah, and say, Yeah, it's annoying, but okay. I'll put up with it. Yeah, I'll accept it. It's a lot easier because even if those little things of pretending that you're somehow going to master closing cabinet doors or never be forgivable, you know that you're not being honest with yourself. You know you're not being honest with them. Then that subconscious brain feels like they're going to find out about me. Usually, our bad habits run much deeper than not being able to close cabinet doors. That subconscious and fear thought of, They're going to find out who I really am, I think will often lead to that fear of abandonment and rejection and always live in that state of fear of not being enough and things like that.

Why do you think so many people settle in relationships for something they know is not right for them?

Fear of finding it elsewhere, I think. Yeah. Fear of wasted time. I I think me about to be a father for the first time, I want to figure out how I can teach my daughter perspective, which I don't know if you can. I remember going through a heartbreak after my fiancée cheated on me. We were living together, and I didn't want to keep living with her. Oh, man, that's tough. I moved in with grandma, who also lived in downtown Milwaukee at the time. She's a hip grandma, but grandma, nonetheless, that was very embarrassing for me. How old are you now? 28.

28, yeah.

It ended up being a very memorable moment of my life. But at the time, I was living with a lot of shame. My grandma, my grandfather, left her for other women when she was in the '70s, and she had to raise five kids on our own in a time when a lot of people were getting divorced and not a lot of women in the workforce.

She had shame from that. She had a shared experience.

Shared experience, but she also had the perspective. She ended up dating, and she taught me that I was at a time where I thought my life was over. I'm a failure. I'm a 28-year-old man. I'm almost 30, and I've had nothing but failed relationships, so much so that now I've been engaged, and I got cheated on, and I bought this ring, and I'm an embarrassment to myself and my friend. That's how I truly felt. She taught me that my life wasn't over. In fact, it was probably just beginning, that you're only 28. I don't know when I'm going to die. But she was baking on the fact that I wouldn't live as long as she had, and I had a lot of years left, and I might have some more loves that might not work out. Life is definitely a journey. When you find that right person, it might be much longer than you realize, but from now, you might have to be more patient. But there's so many opportunities to reinvent yourself, which I'm really grateful that I learned from my grandmother Phyllis. I think back to that guy, that 20-year-old man, and I think about how many times I've now reinvented myself only at 43 years old.

I was an accounting major, got a job as an accountant. Then I decided to get into sales, had a successful sales career in corporate America, quit that, left that, went on reality TV, had a little stint on reality TV, and then got into podcasting and being really interested in relationships and social dynamics. Now I'm doing what I'm doing now. But who knows how long I'm going to do this? Hopefully for a long time, but you never know. Life brings you challenges. I think that once we're in our 20s, that we somehow have to lock in to whatever it is we're doing. That fear of starting over is, I think, scary for a lot of people. But I have learned that sometimes starting over is really the best just to press that reset button. It's never really too late to press that reset button, to reinvent yourself into something completely different. I can't think of how many times in my 20s when I thought to myself, What if I went back to school? Or what if I did that? I'm thinking, I asked for three years for your commitment. I got to do that. Then three years would go by.

Then I would think back and look, I remember that time three years ago, and I was thinking about, what if I went back to school? I thought to myself, I haven't really done anything that significant in those three years. Had I gone back to school, I would have been right where I wanted to be, but I didn't do do anything, and why didn't I? Then I stopped doing that. I started being more of a doer and saying yes to things. I wasn't much a risk taker in my 20s. I'd become a big risk taker later in life. I quit my job, go on this TV show, move out to LA, with a of a hope and dream. But yeah, I played it close to the vest in my 20s, and I realized that didn't get me very far.

What's interesting, man. This is fascinating. Now, Natalie, since you're fiancé, have you guys picked a name for your- We have. Your child. Is that public yet or not? No. Okay, cool. I'll tell you afterwards. Yeah, tell me afterwards. But you got a girl coming, right? I have a girl.

We have a girl coming.

Yes. I'm curious, what do you really want her to know as she grows up in terms of how to get into a healthy relationship. Fast forward 20, 23 years from now. She's graduated college. She's where you were at 23. What do you really want her to know and what do you want to teach her about love, relationships, intimacy, being with a man, and what that looks like?

Well, one, I guess, it sounds almost cheesy or cliché that she's deserving of love, that she is truly loved. I want my daughter and any kid I have after her to know that really they're capable of anything. I want my kid to have perspective, and I want them to be hard working, but I don't want them I want them to understand their value, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Their value comes from how they treat themselves and how they love their family and how they take care of the people they love. I want them to understand that their time is not infinite and that their energy is not infinite and that the people that they spend time with has a cost. Everything. Anytime we have an interaction with someone, when they start dating, to ask themselves, Is this person worth my time? Where is it getting me? Because I don't want my daughter to chase the wrong things. I don't want my daughter to feel like she is not enough or that there's something inside that's missing. Instead of seeking out love that's going to make her feel content and safe and valued, I don't want her to go out there and chase something that just fills a void that she thinks she has.

I hope to give her enough love and make her feel valued. I want her to value the, hopefully, the hard work she puts into whatever it is she wants to do or create to know that her time is special and to not waste that on people who aren't going to prioritize her, who might use her, and things like that. Also to respect the people around her and respect their time. If she's going to expect people to value and prioritize her, then she has to be willing to do the same for those people as well. I hope I answered your question. Sometimes you ask a question, I just.

We're both not fathers yet, so maybe you don't have the answer to this, but how do you think a father can teach their daughter how to feel loved and valued without needing a toxic man to chase them?

Well, I think it is just giving them that love and attention. I have a lot of my fiancée will joke about having her own daddy issues. Because I think daddy issues can be a real thing. I think sometimes when you grow up in a lot of our trauma, you talked about this comes from our childhood. If you're not loved and you're not cared for, I think it can create a void that you try to fill in toxic ways. I think really just being present and being around and paying attention and showing an interest in what they do and not just be a parent. There's a balance. It's like you want to be a parent and you want to teach them respect. It's not your job just to be their friend because they can have friends, but at the same time have a connection with your daughter or your kids. I guess that's what I think. I don't want her to feel like she's not getting the love that she deserves from me, and that I'd rather have my daughter say, Hey, dad, you know what? I know you love me. Thanks. Back off a little bit in a way.

Can it be annoyed with dad because, Oh, dad, why do you have to? Rather than… It would break my heart to know that my daughter wonders if I loved her or wonders why I don't spend enough time with her. Wonders why I prioritize other things over her. That would break my heart. I don't want those actions to affect her in her adult life because they often can.

What do you think needs to die inside of you before your daughter is born for you to be the best father you can be or something you need to let go of or step into?

Probably that fear of abandonment. Because, again, anytime you're operating under fear, You're just not making choices that are usually healthy. I don't want to pass my anxiety down to my daughter, and I can be a pretty anxious person. I don't want my fears to become her fears. So un Necessarily worrying about things outside of my control is definitely something I don't want to pass down to my daughter. That's good.

Twenty years ago, when we guys started getting into relationships and dating, things were a lot different today, it seems like, than they were 20 years ago. Where do you think things are going to be in 20 years when your daughter starts dating and being with boys?

I'm worried.

We just got in the social media world.

It's gone too fast. I think technology has made it easier and easier to disconnect from each other. We are social creatures. We need human connection. Technology has made it easier and easier to not connect with each other human to human. The art of communication has been lost with people. I'm really afraid that things like AI and technology will offer us non-human options to find some connection. It sounds almost sci-fi-ish, but I don't think we're that far away from it. We're becoming lonelier and lonelier as a society. Men are even lonelier and lonelier. I saw a study recently about men are making less and less friends, and we're isolating more. Yeah, I am worried about that. I'm worried about the potential options for my daughter in terms of making connections. I almost feel like there needs to be a renaissance with dating, where we have to go back to our roots, and we have to limit our options and limit our choices. We say things like being intentional, but we truly have to be. We just start ask, Why are we dating? People go out and date. It's like, Well, why are you doing it? Now we have this hookup culture.

It's just like, Yeah, I'm in my 20s. I'm going to go around and hook up with people. Listen, I'm not here to shame anyone if they want to go out and have some sags, but just be honest with yourself about what you're doing. If you're really focused on meeting someone who's right for you, then you maybe have to reflect on maybe your past choices and Who are the people you're choosing to go on dates with? Is it the person that will really give you that ego fix because you think they're really good-looking or have a certain type of job or they have a certain type of value that you think that if you were able to land that person, it will make you feel special. You have to start thinking about, how is this person going to make you feel? How are you going to be able to connect with this person on a daily basis? Is this someone who is willing every day to prioritize your connection? Because that's something Natalie and I really focus on. It's really helped us in our relationship because I think sometimes, I used to do this, you get in a relationship and it's like, I really like you.

You've been my boyfriend, you've been my girlfriend. Then you decide, it's like, Oh, I like this person. Most of the time when we date, once we meet someone we like and we decide we like them or we realize we like them, we actually stop getting to know them. It's like, Oh, now I like you, and now I have to just keep making sure you like me. Instead of realizing, well, even though we like each other, there's a lot to learn about each other. You're going to grow as a person, I'm going to grow as a person, and ask myself, How connected are we? Because that's a tangible thing that we can actually measure. Today, I feel less connected to you than I did the day before. Okay, well, and then I can address that. There are days where Nelly and I will say, I just feel a little disconnected from you. Can we try to be more connected? In the past, I never used that language in relationships. I didn't know how to quantify being in a fight or just feeling like, I think we've been going through the motions. Nelly and I really focus on and give some actual thought to how connected we are.

Because that's something we can name, and then it doesn't become anyone's fault. It's not like, Why did you do this? You're always going out. You're always doing It's like, I just don't feel as connected to you. I don't know what it is. Let's just talk about it. Let's just figure it out. Then in that way, it's not being adversarial. It's not pointing fingers. It's just we prioritize our connection. That's the lifeblood of our relationship. We're either coming close together, staying together, or moving further apart. We check in from time to time about how close we're feeling. There are days where I just feel a little distant from you. Disconnected. Disconnected. If nothing else, sometimes it's just holding each other's hand. We started prioritizing holding hands and going out in public and just always holding hands. That just is a way, a very tangible way of literally being connected to your partner, but you can feel that. Sometimes that's just enough, caressing each other and things like that. It sounds corny, but make love without having sex sometimes. That way you can be more intentional with your connection because especially with guys, sometimes you can have sex, and it really has nothing to do with connecting Right.

That's something I've had to learn, too, in terms of really prioritizing my connection with my partner and going on my way to really make her feel seen and be present and pay attention to her and listen to what she's saying because those are all things I've struggled with.

That's beautiful, man. I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple podcast. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcast as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.