Matthew Hussey's Four Signs That the Person You're Dating Is Right for You
Matthew Hussey
Few questions consume people in the early stages of dating as much as whether the person they have started seeing is actually right for them. In this video, dating coach Matthew Hussey offers four signs drawn from what he describes as 18 years of coaching people in their love lives. He says he hopes the video will both comfort viewers and act as a "pressure valve" for that anxiety. He then ends by distinguishing between the person we think is right for us and the person who actually is.
Sign One: They Close the Investment Gap
Hussey's first sign concerns what he calls the "investment gap." In his definition, this is what happens when a relationship's potential is never realized "because one person isn't willing to try and the other person is too scared to." The result is a situation where you are left wondering what the relationship even is. You also don't feel able to raise the question, because the other person hasn't made you comfortable asking for clarity.
With the right person, Hussey argues, communication flows. You know where you stand. If you don't, it feels acceptable to bring the subject up. He suggests asking directly: is this someone I actually feel I can communicate with?
He spends more time on how the wrong person signals, "directly or indirectly," that it isn't safe to raise things. One example is an offhand remark: someone saying that everyone they date moves "insanely fast" and that they always feel like saying "slow down." A comment like that, Hussey says, plants the idea that moving fast is wrong, and you become preoccupied with not moving too quickly. The wrong person may also never bring up where things are going, or may communicate inconsistently, which keeps you unsure of yourself.
He singles out the pattern of someone disappearing and reappearing. When they come back, you aren't thinking about the conversation you need to have about the relationship's direction. You are just relieved they've returned. In Hussey's view, all of this occupies your "mental bandwidth" so that you can't focus on whether the relationship is progressing.
By contrast, he describes the right relationship as progressing organically, neither too fast nor too slow. You become exclusive, you can openly share how you feel about each other, you make plans, and you gradually become part of each other's lives. He connects this to a broader lesson: people have to "demand our value." They can't expect others to tell them their worth and treat them well. They need to expect good treatment and know how to communicate that they want it. When people fail to do this, he attributes it to deeper confidence issues that need work.
Sign Two: You Feel More Like Yourself Around Them
The second sign is that you feel more yourself around the other person. Hussey links feeling seen to feeling safe. When you feel seen, you feel accepted and free to be who you actually are, and from that place you can "go out and conquer the world." He describes this as one of the best qualities of the right relationship: it acts as a springboard into the outer world, where you can become more.
He illustrates this with a story from the early days of dating his wife, Audrey. He noticed that she would sometimes be sarcastic in a way that undercut the sincerity of a moment between them. He didn't love it, and he pointed it out. He stresses he did this not in a mean way, remarking that something was "a little unnecessarily sarcastic."
Over time, Hussey says, he came to understand that the sarcasm wasn't innate to her. In his telling, it had developed as a defense mechanism against people she had dated who made her feel she was too much: too sensitive, too emotional, too easily hurt. Her sensitivity took a back seat, and sarcasm became a protective "weapon of choice" she had relied on for a long time.
When he first called it out, it caught her off guard, but Hussey says it reminded her of a part of herself. She realized she was dating someone as sensitive as she was. Instead of hearing "why are you being so sensitive?", she recognized herself in him and felt she could simply be sincere. She began to let her guard down. Hussey frames this as a defense mechanism that, once named, became "a kind of portal" to a way the two of them were deeply compatible.
He is careful to add that this doesn't mean partners must be the same. Someone less sensitive than you can still be right if they genuinely love and appreciate that difference. What doesn't work, in his view, is a partner who fails to see that quality in you, or who sees it only as a source of contention, judgment, or shame, or as a reason to go cold. The two acceptable options, as he puts it, are seeing each other because you truly understand each other, or seeing each other's differences and treasuring them. Either way, the right relationship encourages you to be more of yourself, not less.
Sign Three: They Accept Where You Are in Your Life
For the third sign, Hussey draws on a recent group coaching session. A woman described going through a divorce, taking time to heal, and then returning to dating. Within the first few months she met a man. There were a couple of moments, two in particular, where her anxiety was triggered and she became reactive. Hussey notes he doesn't know exactly what happened in those moments, but they caused friction. The man told her, "This is not for me. I'm out," and left.
Afterward, she was beating herself up. She wondered whether she had started dating too soon and whether she wasn't enough, whether she would scare people away. She had also told him that she was in therapy and working through these issues. Hussey calls that "an amazing level of transparency and vulnerability," evidence that she wasn't avoiding responsibility.
It would be tempting in her position, he says, to conclude that he was the right person and she ruined it. Hussey rejects that framing. His argument is that "the right person for us is the person who signs up for the stage of our journey we are actually in." Nobody arrives at a relationship perfect, without baggage, or fully healed. He calls the idea of healing yourself first and then having a relationship too simple and binary, since everyone is always a work in progress. We are always asking a partner to accept the stage we're in and make space for it, and we do the same for them.
The right person, Hussey says, isn't someone who would be right for us only if we had never been divorced, or never had parents whose trauma we're now untangling. It is someone who understands where we are, or tries to understand, or cares enough to stay with us through that stage. He adds a qualifier: he isn't saying another person is responsible for everything we bring to a relationship, or that we shouldn't take responsibility for working on ourselves. His point is that two people who are right for each other see where the other is in life and say yes to it.
Sign Four: The Relationship Can Handle Difficult Moments
Moving on from friction that instantly ends a relationship, Hussey's fourth sign is that the right relationship can withstand hard moments. "The right relationship isn't brittle," he says.
He speaks personally here. In his most anxious periods of dating, he says, he tortured himself over a text that went unanswered, or over an argument he caused out of jealousy or frustration that led to coldness. Afterward he would leave convinced he had ruined everything. He expects many viewers will relate to the feeling after a first argument: "well, it was nice knowing you," and going to collect your toothbrush.
What we hope for in those moments, he says, is a partner who responds with something like: what are you talking about, it's fine, go put your pajamas on, it's movie night. That is the relationship he describes wanting, one where you can butt heads but resolve it in a way that is forgiving and makes room for mistakes.
Hussey distinguishes between two kinds of post-conflict anxiety from his own experience. Sometimes, he says, his anxiety was simply unwarranted. Other times it reflected the fact that he "genuinely wasn't safe" in that relationship. He had an instinctive sense that the other person wasn't accepting of him, was quick to judge, and viewed him through a "highly scrutinizing lens." His metaphor for the right relationship is a car with good suspension: you may still feel the speed bump, but the car continues on its journey.
Imagined Rightness Versus Real Rightness
Hussey closes by addressing the gap between who we think is right for us and who actually is. He says this gap is a major source of distress.
He recounts something he once read by the British writer David Whyte. Whyte visited another writer's house in Ireland and saw a beautiful room with a desk looking out through a window onto rolling hills and mountains. Whyte felt intensely jealous and thought he needed a space like that to do his work. After leaving, though, he realized that the space that actually worked for him was far more austere. What he really needed was intense mental focus, which would quickly make any beautiful background fade anyway.
Hussey uses this to argue that there's a large difference between what we desire and what will make us happy. We tend to want what we can't have, including the person we can't hold on to, and in doing so we let real life and its opportunities pass us by. He believes resistance to real life often comes from treating it as a consolation prize. We see the person who is actually available as a form of quitting or settling for less. That attitude, he says, can cause us to miss someone far more appropriate for us. That person's rightness only becomes visible if we lean into what we have with them.
He states a belief he says he has come to hold: that love and attention are what allow something to "truly blossom" and show what it could become. He clarifies that he isn't claiming anything can blossom with anyone. His claim is that there are people far more right for us than the ones we fixate on, and we never see them blossom because we never give them our attention. "We are so busy looking for the flowers in life," he says, "that we fail to take up our responsibility as a gardener whose job it is to bring the flowers about."
He then turns to fixation on someone who isn't choosing us, or who only offers a casual situationship rather than commitment. Much of that fixation, he argues, rests on "imagined rightness." It hasn't grown organically from two people weaving their stories together over years, the kind of rightness that becomes obvious in hindsight. Instead, he says, it comes from a desire to have them, from ego, and often from the insecurity that we won't be enough unless we can prove we can get them. The compatibility we picture reflects how we imagine we might be together given the chance, not how we actually are together.
What makes a great relationship, in Hussey's view, is one where we keep finding ourselves giving. The motive is not a desperate wish to make someone love us, but genuine, generous love for them. He says that love comes from appreciating the other person's deeper nature rather than how impressive they are, and from growing grateful for "their generous interpretation of us." He ends the argument by contrasting the two kinds of rightness. The fixation he describes is not a rightness that has been earned; it is one we attribute to a situation simply because we want it.
One of the most torturous debates we have inside our own head in our love lives is whether the person we have started dating is right for us. What if we already have too much friction for...
No. That's enough. Because in this video, I want to give you four useful tips that I have learned from 18 years of coaching people in their love lives that you can use to identify if the person you're seeing right now is right for you. And my hope is that this video will both provide comfort and be a necessary pressure valve for what you are feeling right now. As always, like this video, and if you are new here, subscribe to this channel.
Let's get started. Number one, you know someone is right if they close the investment gap. The investment gap is when the potential of a relationship is never realized because one person isn't willing to try and the other person is too scared to. But you're left wondering, what the hell is this? But you don't really feel like you can bring that up and have clarity because they've not really made you feel comfortable to be able to bring something up and have clarity.
With the right person, you feel like you can communicate. You know where you stand, and if you don't, you actually feel like it's okay to broach the subject. It flows. So, ask yourself, is the person I'm dating someone I actually feel I can communicate with?
The wrong person directly or indirectly gives you these little cues that it's not safe to bring things up. How do they do that? They might say an offhand comment like, "I just feel like everyone I ever date moves insanely fast, and I just always feel like, wow, slow down." They might just say something like that that puts the idea in your head that if you move too fast, it's wrong. And so now you're preoccupied with not moving fast.
They may never bring up where it's going or what this is. They may be inconsistent with their communication and therefore leave you always feeling unsure of yourself. If someone disappears and then reappears, it keeps you distracted. When they come back, you're not thinking, "I really need to communicate with them about where this is going." You're just thinking, "Oh my God, I'm so glad they're back." It all becomes this way of occupying your mental bandwidth so that you can't actually focus on progression.
With the right person, things actually progress organically. It's not too fast. It doesn't feel love-bomby. It's not too slow. You do become exclusive. You can openly share how you feel about each other, and you start becoming more a part of each other's lives. You can make plans.
One of the great lessons we all learn in our love life is that we have to demand our value. We cannot expect people to show up and tell us what our value is and treat us well. We have to have the expectation of being treated well and know how to communicate that we want that. And the reason most of us aren't doing it is because there are deeper things going on within us, deeper confidence issues that we need to work on.
For anyone who wants to do this deeper work for themselves this year because you know it's holding you back from the life you could have, I am holding my annual retreat again this October in Miami, Florida, for two days of coaching immersion. I always say that this is like years of growth in the space of two days, and it's my favorite thing that I've ever created. You can find tickets at MHRetreat.com.
We have a VIP ticket that's available right now. There's a whole VIP experience. It's going to be amazing. We have an early bird discount that's available right now, so take advantage of that. And let me know in the comments if you already have your ticket or if you're planning on getting one so I know who my people are that I'm going to be seeing in Miami this October.
The second sign that someone is right for you is when you feel more yourself around them. Feeling seen by somebody is ultimately about feeling safe. Because when you feel seen, you feel accepted. You feel safe to be who you actually are. And it's from this place that you get to go out and conquer the world. I think that's one of the best things about the right relationship, is that it is a springboard into the outer world where you can then go and become more.
Interestingly, when me and my wife Audrey first started dating, I noticed something she was doing that I ended up calling out because I didn't love it. She would sometimes be sarcastic in ways that cut through the authenticity or the sincerity of a moment we were having. And I ended up calling that out, not in a mean way, but I would just point it out and be like, "That was a little unnecessarily sarcastic."
Over time I realized Audrey's sarcasm was not innate to her. It had been developed as a defense mechanism for people she had dated in her past that constantly made her feel like she was too much. She was too sensitive. She was too emotional. Her feelings got too easily hurt. And her sensitivity as a result started to take a backseat, and sarcasm became the kind of weapon of choice. And it was protective. And she had been in that mode for quite some time.
So when I first pointed it out, it caught her by surprise and it caught her off guard, but it made her remember a part of herself. What she realized was that she was dating someone who was as sensitive as she was. So, rather than looking at me and going, "Why are you being so sensitive?" she saw me and saw herself and went, "Oh, I can just be sincere with this person. I don't need to do this." And she started to let her guard down as a result and actually be more of who she really was. So, it was actually a defense mechanism that became a kind of portal to a way that we were deeply compatible once it was pointed out.
I'm not saying in this that you have to be the same as the person you're dating. You could be with someone who's not very sensitive in the ways that you are and it work because they really love that about you. They really appreciate the difference between you in that area. What we can't have is a person who doesn't even understand or see that about us and, if they do, sees it simply as a point of contention and judgment and a way to shame us or a way to decide to go cold on us. It can't be that.
We either have to see each other because we truly understand each other, or I see you in your differences and I love our differences and they just become things that I treasure about you. Either way, it encourages you to be more of yourself, not less of yourself.
The third sign someone is right for you is that they accept where you are in your life. I did a recent group coaching session where a woman was talking about how she had been through a divorce. She had then taken time to heal from that divorce, and then she went back out there and dated and she met a guy. In the first few months of dating, she had a couple of moments where she got triggered and her anxiety was triggered and she became reactive. And she talked about two moments in particular. I don't know what happened in those moments, but they obviously caused some friction, and the guy ended up saying to her, "This is not for me. I'm out." So, he left.
Now, she was beating herself up. Part of her was wondering if she shouldn't have dated so soon. Part of her was wondering if she's not enough. Am I going to scare people away with the way that I am? She also did point out to him that she's in therapy, and she's working through these things, and she's doing work, which I think is an amazing level of transparency and vulnerability, right? She wasn't taking no responsibility for these things.
Now, it's tempting for someone in that position to be like, "He was the right person. I just screwed it up." But the reality is the right person for us is the person who signs up for the stage of our journey we are actually in. None of us are coming to a relationship perfect. None of us are coming without baggage. None of us are coming unscathed or fully healed. This idea of, "Heal yourself and then go have a relationship." Life is not that simple or binary. We all are always a work in progress.
So, we are always asking the person we meet to accept that this is the stage of our journey we are in, and to ask them to make space for that, and to sign up for that. And we're doing the same for them. The right person isn't the person who would be right for us if only we had never been through a divorce and didn't have issues from that. If only we hadn't had parents who caused us trauma that we're now having to untangle. That's not the right person. The right person is the person who either understands where we're at, or seeks to understand where we're at, or likes us or loves us enough that they're going to be with us through the stage that we're at, and is in for that ride.
I'm not saying that someone else is responsible for everything we do and the problems we bring to a relationship. I'm not saying that we shouldn't take responsibility for working on ourselves, but I am saying that the two right people for each other are two people who see where the other person is in their life and says, "Yes."
Speaking of moments of friction that instantly end a relationship, the fourth sign that someone is right for us is that the relationship can actually handle these difficult moments. The right relationship isn't brittle. I know that in my most anxious moments of dating, personally, I have tortured myself over a text that I sent that then didn't get a response or an argument I caused in a moment of jealousy or frustration that then created coldness and made me go away thinking, "I have ruined the whole thing."
And many of you I know will relate to that. That feeling of having your first argument with someone and then going, "Well, it was nice knowing you. I'm going to go and get my toothbrush." Our hope, obviously, when we do something like this is that the person looks at us and goes, "What are you talking about? It's fine. Stop it. Go get your pajamas on. It's movie night." That's the relationship that we want to be in. It's the relationship where we can actually butt heads with someone. But the way that we resolve it is quite beautiful and it's forgiving and we make space for the screw-ups.
I know that sometimes when I was anxious after a fight in a relationship or when I felt like I'd sent the wrong thing, sometimes it was just my anxiety and it was unwarranted. But other times it was a reflection of the fact that I genuinely wasn't safe in that relationship. I instinctively knew that this person was not accepting of me or was quick to judgment and was looking at me with that highly scrutinizing lens. The right relationship has great suspension. You may still feel the speed bump when you go over it, but the car continues on its journey.
I want to finish by talking about the difference between who we think is right for us and who is actually right for us, which are often two very different things, which causes us a lot of distress.
There is a writer, a British writer, David Whyte, who I once read describing an intense feeling of jealousy he had when he went into another writer's house and saw his writing space. He went to this guy's house in Ireland and he saw this gorgeous room with a desk that looked out of a window onto rolling hills with mountains in the background, and he just thought, "This is the dream writing space." And he was overcome with jealousy as he thought about how he needed a writing space like this in which to do his work.
But at a certain point, once he left, it dawned on him that his actual writing space, the space that worked for him, was far more austere. The real thing he needed was the intense focus of his mind, which very quickly made all of that beautiful background fade into the distance anyway.
There is a huge difference between what we desire and what will make us happy. We want what we seem not to be able to have. We often want the person that we seem not to be able to hold on to. But this becomes a way of watching real life and the opportunities it brings pass us by.
Our resistance to leaning into that life, real life, is often the result of seeing real life as a consolation prize. The person that is presenting to me as an option, as somehow my way of quitting or settling for less. But when we do that, we can actually miss a situation or a person who is far more appropriate for us, someone who is actually right for us, and someone whose rightness will only be seen if we can lean in to what we have with them. We can see their beauty. We can see the potential with them.
I fundamentally believe, and I've come to believe, that it's the love and attention we give something that gives it a chance to truly blossom, that gives us a chance to see what it could be. I'm not saying that you can make things blossom with anyone. I'm saying that there are people that are far more right for us than the people we're fixated on, that we never see blossom because we never give our attention to them. We are so busy looking for the flowers in life that we fail to take up our responsibility as a gardener whose job it is to bring the flowers about.
The problem with our fixation on someone who isn't even choosing us or is seeing us casually for a situationship that isn't offering us a real committed relationship is that so much of what has us fixating on them is an imagined rightness. It didn't grow organically out of the two of us weaving our stories together in a way that, after years of being together, I look back and say, "God, this person is so right for me and I am so right for them." And that is so clear to me in hindsight. It didn't come from that.
It's an imagined rightness that's born out of a desire to have them, born out of ego, often out of insecurity that I won't be enough unless I can prove that I can get them. The compatibility we imagine is not a natural outcome of how we in fact are together, but how we imagine we might be together given the chance. The reality of what will make us feel calm and content in a relationship may be totally different from what we lust after in early dating.
What will actually make a great relationship is one in which we can continuously see ourselves giving to, not out of a desperate desire to make someone love us, but because we find ourselves deeply and generously loving them, not for how impressive they are, but for how much we appreciate their deeper nature and how grateful we become for their generous interpretation of us.
In other words, it is not a rightness that has been earned. It is a rightness we are attributing to the situation simply because we want it.
Let me know in the comments what you thought about this video. I love reading your comments. It's been one of my favorite things in 2026, and be sure to check out the link to the retreat so that you can come out and be with me and we can spend a weekend growing together. I will see you next week.
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