Rebuilding After a Breakup You Never Saw Coming
Matthew Hussey
In this episode of the Love Life podcast, Matthew Hussey and co-hosts focus on one particular kind of heartbreak: the breakup that arrives without warning. Matthew separates it from the "slow car crash," where a partner has been visibly unhappy, breakups have been threatened, and there is at least some time to adjust. The breakup he wants to address is the one where someone sits you down one day, says they are unhappy and leaving, and your whole world is upended. For many people, he says, the result is not only heartbreak but a prolonged state of shock at suddenly living in a new reality.
Matthew brings six or seven points he has written down on how to move forward. The episode then turns to listener comments, a listener's question about an ex she is second-guessing, and a light closing game about what to do and not do after a breakup.
Why the Blindside Hurts Differently
A co-host asks whether these breakups tend to happen early. Matthew says they can come three months in, when you thought things were going well and suddenly hear the other person doesn't want to continue. But he is thinking even more about relationships and marriages lasting 5, 10, 15, or 20 years, where the partner had been quietly contemplating leaving. A three-year relationship doesn't have time to reshape your whole life, he notes, but after a decade it can be all you know.
The hosts argue the pain is sharpest for people who felt safe because they assumed there were "breakers" in place before anything could end. As Matthew puts it, if you believe that in their position you would never just pull the plug, you would explain why you were unhappy, try to resolve it together, and maybe bring in therapy or coaching. When your partner skipped all of those safety nets, it is hard for that not to feel like a betrayal of the promises you made each other. You are left asking how they went from unhappy straight to "it's over and there's nothing I want to do to work on it."
A co-host adds another layer: you never got the chance to understand what was happening in their mind. It feels as if they were living a different life. You were happy while they were secretly doubting you, for who knows how long. That discovery can turn into embarrassment and shame, because you realize you were somehow living the relationship on your own. Then the questions start: when did you become this unhappy, and for how long were your "I love you"s and your plans for next year's vacation untrue?
Point One: The Relationship Was Real, Even If It Only Existed in You
Matthew's first point is that you are grieving a life that, on some level, didn't exist the way you thought it did, while also making room for the fact that it did exist, even if only in you.
To explain, he uses an analogy, while noting the episode is not about narcissistic relationships. When a relationship with a narcissist implodes, one of the most painful realizations is that the reality in your head never existed for them in the same way. There may have been love and laughter, and they may even have felt deep love, but they loved differently and lacked your capacity for empathy. He offers an image: if they were drowning, you would jump in and risk your life, and it can be devastating to learn that if you were drowning, they wouldn't even throw you a life raft. That realization feels like discovering you were "living a lie."
His approach when coaching people through this is to locate the grief precisely. What didn't exist was the shared world you thought you both lived in. The world you believed in, with its love, its devotion, and the vision you gave yourself to, was real. It was real in you, not outside you. Matthew says he gets goosebumps saying this, because he sees something beautiful in honoring that inner world instead of letting it be destroyed along with the shared one. In many ways, he argues, what you experienced and showed was the best of you, and it is something you carry forward.
He then connects this back to the blindside breakup. The partner may not be a narcissist, but he suggests that someone who leaves without conversations or steps along the way may be "highly, highly avoidant." The analogy holds because you can still celebrate the love that did exist and the special times and years you had, which don't disappear. At the same time, for some stretch before the end, whether months or years, you were not having the same experience. You can grieve what you thought you had while honoring the world you created and held within yourself.
Point Two: Don't Rush to Make Meaning
The second danger, Matthew says, is rushing to make meaning out of the breakup, and that can go in two directions.
The first is negative meaning, which fear produces automatically. It's because you weren't good enough. You screwed up. You'll never find someone like that again. You'll be alone and unhappy for the rest of your life. There's something unlovable about you. The co-hosts supply several of these lines as the familiar voice of fear.
The second is positive meaning pushed on you by the self-development world, and also by optimistic friends and family who are quick to spin the event into something good. Matthew grants this is often well-meant but says its effect can be "borderline cruel." After one of the worst things in your life has happened, being asked what good it really means is insulting, because it keeps you from being present with what you are going through. A co-host gives the example of friends who suddenly start running down the ex. The hosts agree this leaves the person feeling unseen. Even if the loss is not what it seems, you need to experience the loss of what you think you've lost, and being told "you didn't lose anything, I never liked them anyway" doesn't acknowledge that.
Matthew's alternative is to hold meaning loosely in both directions. Life is long, and you have no idea yet what this will come to mean. You may feel like "the loser," in the sense of the one who lost, but you don't know how things will play out. The other person may become deeply unhappy, question their decision in a thousand ways, or end up in relationships they regret. You don't know where you will end up either. He stresses he is not promising that amazing things will come out of it. His point is only that from where you stand, you cannot judge in real time what is good or bad about this.
A co-host shares a quote they heard recently: "Just because it could have been different, it doesn't mean it would have been better." They suggest it as a mantra for anyone going through a breakup, and Matthew agrees.
Point Three: Slow Down and Avoid Irreversible Decisions
Because you don't yet know what the breakup means, Matthew's next point is to avoid quick or irreversible decisions. Anxiety wants to speed us up: get them back as fast as possible, move on as fast as possible, hook up with someone else, move to another country. It asks what you can do right now to feel better, numb yourself, or escape. Many of these moves, he says, make life more chaotic at a time when it is already chaotic, and they compound the problem. The necessary response is "the most unnatural thing in the world": slowing down.
He tells listeners to let the ex move fast. In his view, the person who left is likely anxious too, and after making a huge decision to upend their life, they will want to justify it. That may mean dating quickly or rushing forward while telling themselves they did the right thing. He warns that you may see this on social media, or hear through friends that they've hooked up with someone or already chosen a new apartment, and that these things "will gut you at a time where you are already gutted."
His answer is still to let them rush while you slow down, because you'll make far more mistakes speeding up. He sees power in refusing to compare your pace of moving on with theirs, and frames it as a stance you can take: if they deal with the end of something as sacred as your relationship by racing into bed with someone else or changing their whole life overnight, "that's on you." You will not be quick to be reckless with what you had. He clarifies that this doesn't mean holding on to hope. It means honoring a serious situation by not making fast moves. He promises that six months later, the person who moved slowly and intentionally will have fewer regrets.
Point Four: Not Everyone Will Be Good to Talk To
Matthew then turns to support. Some people will show up like angels, sometimes people you never thought of as especially close, who turn out to be uniquely helpful. Others will disappoint you, and sometimes those are the people closest to you. They may be tired of hearing about it by the third or fourth conversation, when what you need is closer to a hundred. They may not understand why you're still grieving three or six months later.
He cautions against judging everyone by how they react, because people are equipped differently. Some are skilled and resourceful at handling other people's grief. Others only inflame the situation or annoy you. You can still love those people, he says, but you need to lean on the ones who have the resources and tools to give you what you need.
A co-host describes a piece they once wrote about three kinds of people you need in a breakup, each bringing a different energy:
- Kindred spirits: people who love you, listen, and are empathetic.
- Fun lovers: people who put you in a better state, make you laugh, and change how you feel, even if they aren't in your inner circle.
- Sage council: people with perspective, perhaps older or experienced, whom you look up to as mentors and who offer a longer view.
Point Five: Don't Isolate, and Expect Relapses
Matthew's final point is not to isolate. You won't always feel like talking, but you will often feel lighter after a conversation with the right person.
He also addresses setbacks. Months, or even years, later you may feel a relapse into heartbreak. That doesn't mean you've done it all wrong or failed. He cites Guy Winch, whom he calls one of the world's leading experts on heartbreak, who once told him that heartbreak requires massive amounts of repetition: you need to hear the same messages and truths over and over. Matthew says this is one reason people hit a limit with family and friends. After giving you two hours in the morning, a friend may not be able to give you more that night because they have kids to pick up and a life to run. His advice is to get that repetition wherever you can.
Listener Comments: Long Distance and Standards
The hosts read comments from earlier episodes. On an episode about long-distance relationships, a listener wrote that long distance doesn't break people, silence does, and that if someone's words stop matching their effort, your heart will feel it first. Matthew mostly agrees but adds that long distance for long enough without hope is like a slow, chronic pain. Communication isn't enough, and a co-host adds that you also need a plan, including knowing when you'll next see each other.
Another listener said the episode pushed her to state her standards in her long-distance relationship. She didn't expect to get the result she wanted but was putting her sanity and happiness first. Matthew sees this as one of the benefits of standing up for your needs: it brings clarity. Such conversations aren't always about getting what you want. They reveal what you actually have. Without them, he says, you may not find out until it's too late or until years are wasted.
A third listener thanked the hosts for answering her question with empathy, and thanked "David" for choosing it, which set off some brief joking among the hosts.
The Listener Question: An Ex She's Now Doubting
The "Love Lifeline" question comes from Anelise, who writes that since her breakup she has been obsessively watching relationship videos. She believes she is anxiously attached and thinks her ex is dismissive-avoidant, though she's unsure. They met in August, and she ended it five days ago and went no contact. She feels like she's going crazy waiting for him to respond, to the point that her depression is coming back.
She explains that she feels younger with him and wants to marry him, and he had called her his wife. But she worried about his growing laziness and shrinking ambition. They lived two and a half hours apart, and she had made the last two visits. He wanted a child, and she was willing to have one more, but she says she can't marry someone who doesn't take care of himself or his home. He ate very badly, didn't clean, and told her it was her job to take care of him. She has two sons, aged three and five, and says she can barely take care of herself. She is 39 and he is 37.
Matthew's reading is that they are in different places and there is a genuine compatibility issue. He points out that she was the one who ended it and cites a line he attributes to Alain de Botton: "Trust what you knew then, not what you feel now." What she knew then was that something was genuinely off: he wasn't trying, wasn't taking care of himself, and didn't keep his life in order. She's already a mother, Matthew says, and is looking for an equal, not someone to babysit. For someone who clearly wants a relationship to work, it must have taken a lot to decide it wasn't working. He sums up her ex as looking for "a mom or a wife from the 50s," and says she is neither.
In his view, her anxious attachment is now making her second-guess a decision that was well grounded. Nor is this a case where she never raised the issue. It sounds like she did, and he answered clearly that she should take care of him. Matthew suggests she can reflect on what she'd do differently next time, such as whether she mothered him too much and let him slip into that role. If she truly needs closure, she can have the conversation directly. She could tell him she misses him and likes to nurture, but can't be the person who puts his life together, and ask whether he can meet her needs. If he's right for her, Matthew says, he'll choose her over not eating better and not cleaning his house. If he doesn't, she has her answer. He'd rather she have that conversation out loud than keep arguing it hypothetically in her head, though he suspects she'll find that what the ex already said is what he meant.
Matthew also offers a reframe: maybe she feels younger with him because he is "a bit of a child," a 37-year-old man who can't take care of his house or himself. Having a child with someone like that, he says, is out of the question. A co-host adds that carefree, youthful traits can be attractive but won't sustain a long-term relationship through children, sickness, and responsibility. Because the relationship was long distance, she never saw what daily life together would look like. As the co-host puts it, if he can't clean his house when she comes to visit, imagine what it would look like if they lived together. Matthew closes by saying there may be connection and even love, but without compatibility in key areas, you don't have a relationship.
"Sleeve It or Leave It": Post-Breakup Habits, Rated
The episode ends with Stephen's recurring segment, "Steve Sleeves," this time a game called "Sleeve It or Leave It." Stephen names a post-breakup behavior, and the others say whether to keep it ("sleeve it") or drop it ("leave it").
Texting your ex on their birthday: leave it, unless you've been apart a long time and are genuinely friendly. The hosts add that if the "friendship" is really a long-term strategy to get them back, leave it.
Keeping the hoodie they gave you that makes you look amazing: leave it. One host argues it will still carry their smell and connect you to them even after washing, and "there's plenty of good hoodies out there."
Replying to an "I miss you" message: leave it nine times out of ten. The exception is replying to say you're sorry they're struggling but it isn't fair to share that with you while you're moving on.
Going to places you used to go together to overwrite the memory: sleeve it. Going back with a new friend or in a new situation is one way to change associations. You don't need to reclaim every Mexican restaurant in town, but sometimes the place to reclaim is a favorite spot, or even your whole city. One host mentions needing to "overwrite" a beloved museum in London. Matthew adds a caveat: avoid places the ex still frequents, because you might run into them. Better to wait until you're over it. "You can't reclaim the yoga class they still go to every day."
Deciding your new personality is being really into matcha: after a split vote, sleeve it.
Using the Apple Notes app as your therapist: sleeve it, though Matthew frames it as being your own therapist, writing down important thoughts you'll want to return to.
Telling your Uber driver the breakup story: leave it, or at least don't be obnoxious about it. Matthew adds that you need to tell your story many times, but it should evolve as you tell it. What you don't want is to be telling the Uber driver the same version a year later.
Finishing the Netflix show you started together: leave it. There's plenty of other content, and it will remind you of them.
Getting a revenge body: sleeve it, with qualifications. Matthew warns it won't change your life and you'll still have to grieve: "Getting hot isn't a replacement for grieving." A co-host defends investing in yourself as valuable, and another suggests renaming it, because "revenge body" still makes the ex the star of the show. They bring up Princess Diana's so-called revenge dress, speculating that she probably just wanted to look great rather than thinking of it as revenge. The segment lands on the view that doing it for yourself is fine, but doing it for revenge still makes the ex too important, when they need to become less important, not more.
Try and get them back as quickly as you can. Move on as quickly as you can. Go hook up with someone else, or the love of your life just left you: move to another country. The anxiety wants us to just feel, what can I do to feel better?
Welcome back to the Love Life podcast, everybody. Today we're talking about how to rebuild your life after a breakup that you absolutely did not see coming.
There is a difference between that and those slow car crashes where we know that someone is unhappy. They've threatened the breakup several times. Maybe we both have. There's that heartbreak of it's finally over, but there was a kind of an off-ramp that we at least had some time to acclimatize to.
Then there's the breakups where it's like our whole world gets upended because we just didn't see it coming at all. There weren't signs, or at least maybe we look back and we're like, well, I guess maybe that was a sign that they were unhappy, or we kind of tried to make sense of it going backwards, but we had no idea that that person was going to have a conversation with us that day saying they weren't happy and that they're leaving.
So, I want to talk about this particular kind of breakup for anyone out there who just feels they've had the rug pulled out from underneath them and that they're not just in utter heartbreak. They find themselves in this prolonged state of shock about suddenly finding themselves in a new life and a new reality.
Do these breakups tend to happen early, or do you think they can happen at any time?
There's obviously the kind of breakup that happens after three months where we thought someone was having a great time and we were having a great relationship with them, and then all of a sudden they tell us they don't want to be with us anymore, and we're like, "Wait, what? I thought we were on to something really good." But I'm also, and perhaps even more so, talking about the relationships that last years and years. The marriages that go on for 5, 10, 15, 20 years.
The ones that we had no idea they were that unhappy or that they had been contemplating this. And then we're finding ourselves, like our life as we know it, because in three years your life as you know it doesn't have time to change, but in a decade it can be all you know anymore.
Yeah.
And yet it's over. I think this is especially relevant for people who felt safe in their relationships because they felt like there were so many breakers that would happen before the relationship ended. So they would have conversations. They would know more about the other person being unhappy, perhaps. And I think it's a particular kind of pain where you feel blindsided because you didn't necessarily have any context that the person you were with wasn't happy.
And you falsely assumed that if that person were that unhappy or that close to that breaking point, they would have had a conversation with you.
Yeah. And you would have worked on it, and it wouldn't have just been a breakup. It would have been the beginning of a conversation that you can kind of navigate together.
Well, especially if in your mind you think, if I were that unhappy, I wouldn't just pull the plug on this. If I were that unhappy, I would begin a process of sharing why I'm unhappy, resolving it together. If we're struggling to resolve it between us, we maybe do therapy together or coaching, and we see if we can work through it with someone else involved who knows what they're doing in that department.
It's like, if you think there would be so many safety nets before the end for me, but then you realize that person didn't employ any of those safety nets, which actually makes it that much more painful because it's hard for that not to register as a kind of betrayal of the promises you've made each other. How could you not have engaged these different steps first? How did you go from being unhappy to we're breaking up and it's over and there's nothing that I want to do to work on it? I'm already past that point.
Well, and there's a feeling that you didn't get a chance, or you didn't get to even understand what was happening in their mind. That's the painful thing. It's like they were living a different life. And I think that's what really rips your heart out and hurts at that time because you're like, "Oh, I was happy." And they were secretly doubting me for who knows how long. And I think that's where it really registers as just pain.
And also then becomes a bit embarrassing and shameful because you can feel really embarrassed about living this kind of existence that it turns out you were somehow living on your own, and you don't even know for how long you were living it on your own. Because now the questions start: well, when did you become this unhappy?
For how long have you been essentially bullshitting me about, when you say I love you, when you were talking about plans for next year or that next holiday, that vacation, how much of that was just complete and utter—
So, we have a very, very helpful episode for everybody who finds themselves in that situation today.
I have some important things.
I was going to say, Matt, to kick things off, you're speaking to that person. I'm sure there's so many people listening who are literally going like, "Yes, this has happened to me. I'm in that place, or I was in that place and I still haven't healed from it because it's been so traumatic." Where do you start if something like this happens? If the tectonic plates of your life shift in such a massive way that you feel you just don't know what to do with yourself.
So I have six or seven points that I wrote down for this that I'm curious to know your thoughts on. But the first one was, a huge part of how to move on from these situations is recognizing that you are on one hand grieving a life that on some level didn't exist in the way that you thought it did. But you also have to keep space in your mind for the fact that it did exist, even if it only existed in you.
What do you mean?
When we look back and we say, so wait, you weren't feeling how I've been feeling. You weren't as in love with me as I am with you. You weren't willing to do anything for this relationship the way I am. You weren't feeling the same things in those moments as I was feeling.
It's a different situation, but there is an analogy here. In a relationship that someone has with a narcissist, and we're not here today talking about narcissistic relationships, but in a relationship you've had with a narcissist, when it implodes, one of the most painful things about coming to terms with the fact that you were in love with and had dedicated your life to a narcissist is this feeling that that reality that existed in your head never really existed for them. Not in the same way.
There may have been loving moments between you. There may have been moments of laughter between you. They may have experienced deep moments of love for you. But the way they love is different to the way you love. They don't have the capacity for empathy that you have. They weren't worrying about you the way you were worrying about them. If they were drowning, you'd jump in and risk your life to save them. If you were drowning, it can be devastating to realize they not only don't jump in to save you, they don't even throw you a life raft.
And when you realize that, there's the kind of cataclysmic internal event of realizing, oh my God, I was living a lie. I thought I was in one reality and I was in a completely different reality. And the way I help coach people through those situations is realizing the grief is in realizing that the shared reality, the shared world you thought you both occupied, didn't exist.
You thought you both occupied a shared world together, a shared experience. You weren't occupying that world together. They were occupying a very different world than the one you thought you were both in. But the world you thought you were in did exist. It just existed in you. That love, that I would do anything for you. That beauty, that cause you dedicated yourself to, that vision you dedicated yourself to, that was real. It just was real in you. It wasn't real outside of you.
And I get goosebumps as I say that because I think that there's something intensely beautiful about honoring that and not destroying that because the shared reality gets destroyed. It actually, in many ways, is the best of you. What you experienced and what you showed was the best of you. And you need to honor that because that inner world that you dedicated yourself to, okay, yes, the grief is realizing it's an inner world. It wasn't a shared world, but that inner world is still the most beautiful part of you that you take forward with you in your life.
And I think there's something analogous about that to the kind of relationships we're talking about that don't necessarily need to have been with someone who is narcissistic. We might argue that they're with someone who was intensely avoidant. If you found out about it out of nowhere and there weren't conversations and there weren't steps to get there, they may not be a narcissist, but there is something highly, highly avoidant about that.
But there is something analogous about these two situations because you can celebrate the world. Firstly, you can celebrate the love that did exist between you because that doesn't mean there was no love between you, and it doesn't mean you didn't have very special times and very special years. All of that doesn't disappear. But clearly for a period of time at least leading up to the end, it might have been months, it might have been years, you were not having the same experience. But you can grieve what you thought you had while simultaneously honoring the world that you created and held within yourself. So that's the first point.
I love that.
The second point is, I think that one of the dangers when something like this happens is we rush to make meaning out of it. And that can happen in two directions. So our fear seeks to make really negative meaning from it. So our fear will say, it's because you're not good enough. It's because you didn't do this, because you screwed up in this way in the relationship.
I'll never find someone like that again.
I'll never find someone again. This is it for me. I'm going to be unhappy for the rest of my life. I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life. I'll never—
I just think there's something unlovable about me.
There's something unlovable about me. I'll never find someone as good as them. There's the negative meaning that our internal fears comes up with, and that happens automatically, right? But then there's the positive meaning that the self-development world will try and push on you in these moments. And by that I mean not just the kind of industry of self-development, but I also mean the optimism-oriented people in your life, your family, your friends, who are so quick to invent positive meaning out of it, which may be very well-meaning, but it doesn't allow you to just be present in what you're actually going through.
It's almost, I can't even experience this moment because I'm being rushed into creating some kind of positive meaning out of it at lightning speed. And it may be sometimes well-meaning, but the actual effect of it is borderline cruel because your job in that moment is not to go, one of the worst things in my life just happened. What's the good that this really means? How is this actually a good thing? It's insulting.
Or someone's like, "Oh, it's okay though because you know what they could be like." And they start running them down.
But in that moment it's like, "Yeah, but I'm not feeling that."
Yeah. And it makes you feel incredibly unseen. You feel unseen. Like, you don't really see me. You don't see the beauty of what I think I've lost, what I feel like I've lost.
Yes. Even if that may not be true, I need to experience the loss of what I think I've lost, but you're telling me, don't worry, you didn't lose anything. I didn't like them all along. I'm just telling you now.
It really doesn't acknowledge someone's pain. It doesn't make them feel seen, and it doesn't acknowledge the loss. So, be very careful not to look for meaning in either direction too quickly. Don't feel you need to subscribe to inventing positive meaning out of it. And also be very wary of your own internal orientation towards the catastrophic in this.
The reality is life is long. You actually have no idea what the meaning will end up being out of this. You just don't know right now. You feel like a loser in the situation. And I mean that in the sense of a person who has lost. There's winners and losers here, and I am clearly the loser.
But you have no idea how this is going to play out. That person may go on to be very unhappy. That person may come to question their decision in a thousand ways. That person may end up in relationships that they wish they hadn't as a result of this. You don't know where you will be as a result of this. And again, I'm not saying this from the point of view of you have no idea what amazing things will come out of this. I'm saying that in the sense that life is a long game. You have no idea how any of this plays out right now. And you can't assume you know what's good or bad about this in real time from where you stand, the perspective you have right now.
I heard a quote recently which I think encapsulates this really well, which is, just because it could have been different, it doesn't mean it would have been better. And I think for anyone going through a breakup, that's a really nice mantra to hold on to because, to your point, life is long and you don't know what you don't know yet.
I couldn't agree more.
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It leads on to the next point I've got written down here, which was because you don't know what this means yet or how this plays out or where this goes for anyone in the situation, don't make quick or irreversible decisions from this place. Anxiety wants us to speed up.
Try and get them back as quickly as you can. Move on as quickly as you can. Go hook up with someone else, or the love of your life just left you: move to another country. The anxiety wants us to just feel, what can I do to feel better? Can I get them back? Can I numb myself? Can I escape somehow? What can I do? And a lot of those quick decisions result in making our life more chaotic and more messy at a time where it's already chaotic and messy, and it compounds the situation.
We have to do the most unnatural thing in the world in these moments, which is actually slow down. Let them move fast. Let them make quick
Decisions. Let them race ahead. Because, by the way, there's highly likely some anxiety on their side as well. If they've just made a huge decision like this to upend their life, they are going to be wanting to justify that decision.
So they're going to be moving quickly and trying to justify it and be like, "Oh, I've made the right decision." And maybe they'll even—I hate to say it, but it's the truth in a lot of these situations—maybe they'll even try and move on to dating quickly because they're trying to justify, "I've done the right thing. I've done the right thing. I've done the right thing."
And that means, by the way, you might see their social media reflects them being happy and moving on quickly. You might hear stories that hurt you about how they've moved on quickly, or they've already hooked up with somebody or whatever, or they've already chosen an apartment somewhere. You'll hear these things on the grapevine through friends, or you'll see things on social media that will gut you at a time where you are already gutted.
But slow down. Let them rush. Let them rush from an anxious place to justify their decision. Slow down because you won't make mistakes if you slow down. You'll make far more mistakes if you speed up.
And there is something very beautiful about being the person who doesn't fall into the trap of trying to move as fast as they are because you're comparing your journey of moving on to theirs. There's a real power in being like, "Hey, listen. If you have to deal with the end of something as sacred as our relationship by racing into bed with somebody else or situations or changing your whole life overnight, that's on you. If you want to be that quick to be reckless with what we've had, that's on you. I'm not going to be quick to be reckless with what we've had."
And that doesn't mean you are necessarily holding on to hope. It just means you're honoring what is a very real and serious situation to you by not making fast moves. That will be very unnatural. But I promise you, six months from now, if you move more slowly and you move more intentionally in your life as a response to this, you will be the one with less regrets in the situation.
Next, not everyone will be good to talk to. There will be some people in your life who are really good to talk to, who show up as angels in your life. People you've never even made that much of before in terms of your connection, who just turn out to be the most amazing human beings in that time. Uniquely helpful.
And there'll be other people, and some of the major disappointments will even be the people closest to you—not all the time, but sometimes—who you wish would really show up for you and who don't show up in the ways you actually need. Who, by the third or fourth conversation, are already getting tired of hearing it, even though you don't need four conversations, you need a hundred conversations. People who can't understand why three months or six months later you are still grieving and can't make sense of it.
There will be disappointments along the way. And that doesn't mean you should judge everyone for how they react, because people are equipped differently to handle things. Some people are really good at handling other people's pain and grief and very smart and resourceful about the ways they do that, and they know how to give you exactly what you need. And other people don't know how to not just further inflame or make you annoyed with the way they show up. It doesn't mean we don't love those people, but we have to lean on people who actually have the resources and the faculties and the tools to give us what we need.
I wrote a piece once about three kinds of people you need in a breakup. And I think different energies helps as well. So one was your kindred spirits. That's just the people who love you and will listen and be really empathetic. Two is fun lovers, people who will just put you in a positive state again. And maybe they're not even that related to your inner circle, but they're just going to put you in a different state, a different feeling when they're around. They make you laugh, they're fun. And then your sage counsel, and that's who's got perspective. Maybe they're older, maybe they have wisdom, maybe they've been through some stuff, but someone you almost look up to as a mentor who gives you the longer perspective-taking view on things.
The last point I want to make about all of this is not to isolate from other people. Recognize that you may not always feel like having a conversation with someone, but you will often feel lighter at the end of a conversation with the right person. And one of the things that we have to come to terms with is when, months in and sometimes even years in, you feel like you have this relapse into heartbreak, it doesn't mean you're doing it all wrong. It doesn't mean you have failed.
Guy Winch, one of the world-leading experts on heartbreak, once said to me, "Heartbreak requires massive amounts of repetition. You need to hear the same messages and the same truths over and over and over again." And that's one of the reasons why we can find we meet our limit with family members and friends, because it gets to a point where they're like, "I need to live my life. I can't spend another hour and another hour and another hour. Especially, I gave you two hours this morning and you still need to talk about it tonight. I have to pick up the kids. I have to do this. I have to do that." We find our limits with those people. So wherever you get your repetition, it's really important to get it.
And by the way, it feels important to say this: one of the things that people have been enjoying about Matthew AI the most, if you haven't used it yet and you're curious, is during the most intense heartbreaks of their life, that Matthew AI is invaluable. Many people use the term lifesaving because they can talk to Matthew AI in the night. They can talk for hours a day. They don't ever need to worry that they're running out the clock on that. So if you haven't tried Matthew AI during your heartbreak yet, go try it. You can try it for free. Askmh.com is the link. Askmh.com is that link. Go and try that, please, because it really does help a lot of people.
We had some comments in from recent episodes. One on our episode titled, "If You Hear This from Your Long-Distance Relationship, Run." Pain with Purpose One says, "Long distance doesn't break people. Silence does. If their words stop matching their effort, your heart will feel it before you do."
That's interesting. Yeah, I think that's true. Long distance doesn't break people. Silence does. But long distance for long enough without any hope is really, really, really like a slow chronic pain. And I think that there has to be hope. Yes, you need communication and not silence, but you also need—
A plan.
A plan. You need to know when you're next going to see each other.
Classic Edge says, "Wow, this made me state my standards in my long-distance relationship. I don't think I'll get the results I want, but my sanity and happiness comes first."
That's lovely. I think that one of the benefits of having a conversation about what we want and what we need and standing up for our needs is that we actually get clarity. Having these kinds of conversations isn't always about getting what you want. It's about giving you the information you need about what you really have. Standards reveal what you have. And if you don't have those conversations and you don't stand up for yourself or what you want, you never actually find out what you have until it's too late or you've already wasted many, many years.
On our episode, "The Best and Worst Cities to Date Ranked," Janelle says, "Thank you so much for answering my question with thoughtfulness and empathy. It helped me more than you know. And thank you, David, for choosing my question."
I didn't put that in because I wanted you to call me out. I just put that in because she thanked you.
No, no, I appreciated her liking the answer that you gave.
Yeah. No, thank you, Janelle. Thank you so, so much.
And thank you, David.
And thank you, David. More importantly, you're welcome. Thank you, David.
You know what? You're welcome.
We have our Love Lifeline question here from Anelise. Remember, you can always send in your questions to podcast@matthewhussey.com. Send us a voice note with your question. We love playing them out loud on the podcast. Keep it around 30 seconds or so. This one is a written question.
So Anelise says, "Hi, my name is Anelise, and ever since the breakup, I've been obsessively watching love relationship YouTube videos. I'm pretty sure I'm an anxious attachment trying to get my ex back. I think he is dismissive avoidant. I'm not sure. I met him in August, and I broke up with him only five days ago." Oh, I broke up with him. Interesting.
"And started my no contact at that point as well. I want to talk to you about my situation, but I can't afford any coaching. I'm in between jobs, but as you probably know, I feel like I'm going crazy waiting for him to respond, almost to the point where my depression is kicking back in. I feel younger with him and want to marry him. He was calling me his wife and he didn't even propose yet.
"I was worried about him getting worse and worse about his laziness. His ambition was shrinking and not really trying to visit me. We were doing a long-distance relationship. He lives two and a half hours away. I visited him the last two times. He said he wants a kid. I'm willing to have one more. Unfortunately, I can't marry someone who doesn't take care of themselves or their house. He was eating very bad food and not cleaning his house. He even said it was my job to take care of him. I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old, both sons. I can barely take care of myself. I'm 39, he's 37. Is there anything you can recommend?"
It sounds, Anelise, like you're in different places. It sounds there is a genuine compatibility issue. And you broke up with him. So I think firstly we have to be careful. There's a great line from Alain de Botton, which is, "Trust what you knew then, not what you feel now," when it comes to your decisions. And I think that is a very powerful line. Trust what you knew then, not what you feel now.
Because what you knew then was that something was genuinely off about the relationship. He wasn't trying. He was lazy. He was not taking care of himself. He didn't keep his life in order. And you don't have the time or the energy to babysit someone or to be their mom. You're already a mom. You're looking for a partner. You're looking for an equal.
And so you felt—I always say this to people—you're someone who wants a relationship, Anelise. You want a relationship. So as someone who wants a relationship and wants it to work, it must have taken something for you to get to the point of saying, "This isn't working. I'm the one putting in the effort. I'm going to visit him. He's not trying. He can't even tidy his own house, let alone be a partner to me. He's not taking care of himself. He's openly said it's my job to take care of him. This guy is looking for a mom or a wife from the '50s, and I'm neither."
So this part of you got on board with, "This isn't going to work." But because your tendency, as you put it, is towards anxious attachment, you're now questioning your decision. You're now wondering if you made a mistake. But from what I can see, you're not saying here, "I know that I never even spoke to him about it." It sounds like you did speak to him about it, and he gave you a very clear answer that, "I think you should take care of me."
So, okay, you can look at it and go, "Next time around, what would I do differently? Maybe I mothered him too much. Maybe I actually allowed him to slip into that role and I shouldn't have. If I want to have that conversation with him, maybe I can. If I really need the closure of having a conversation where I say, 'Hey, I miss you. I miss being around you. I miss our relationship, but I know I can't make this work if I'm having to be the one to take care of you. I like taking care of you sometimes. I want to have that. I'm a natural nurturer. I love being there for you, but I can't be the person who's putting your life together for you. There are certain things I need from you, and I need to know whether you can do that or not.'"
And you'll get your answer. If he's right for you, he'll say, "I can do that. It's not such a big ask for me. If it's lose you or eat a little better and clean my house, I choose you." But if he doesn't say that, you have your answer. There is nothing to be anxious about about this situation.
But what I worry about more is that you have this hypothetical argument in your head where you're like, "Did I end it too soon? Could he have become what I needed him to be?" And you can, if you want, if you really need that closure, you can have that conversation with him out loud. You don't need to be having it in your head. I suspect that you'll come to realize what he's already told you is really what he means.
And don't forget, Anelise, that maybe one of the reasons you feel younger with him is because he's a bit of a child. He sounds like a manchild. He's a 37-year-old man who—
Doesn't know how to take care of his house and take care of himself. And I think to have a child with someone like that, forget it.
Yeah.
Forget it. And those traits that are really attractive when people are carefree and young and youthful and whatever, they're not the traits that are going to actually sustain you in a long-term relationship with children, with sickness, with responsibility, with whatever life throws at you. So don't be too enamored with those kinds of traits either. And also remember, you were long distance. So again, you never really got to see what the relationship could have been like had you been living near each other.
That's a great point.
And if he can't show you that long distance when you're visiting, day to day that's going to be—if he can't get his together for the long distance.
Can't clean his house when you actually come over. God forbid what the house is going to look like when you actually live together. That's a really good point.
There may be connection. There may even be love, but when there's no compatibility there in the key areas, you don't have a relationship.
If you want to email us your Love Lifeline question, email podcast@matthewhussey.com. And if you are one of our Love Life members, we put you to the front of the line. You get priority access. And by the way, if you are an avid listener of the Love Life podcast, but you are not one of our Love Life members, let me tell you why today is the day that you should become one. We have created a 14-day free trial specifically for our Love Life podcast listeners that you can get at lovelifeclub.com.
Why should you join Love Life? Because for anyone who is being intentional about finding love, healing from the past, becoming their most confident and attractive selves, it is designed and structured specifically for that purpose. I coach you every single month live. Stephen coaches you every single month live. We have a whole library of courses, from how to heal from narcissistic abuse to how to date in your 50s to how to find and meet people in modern dating. An incredible array of programs designed to meet you where you are. You also get 24/7 access to Matthew AI that you can use any time so that you can be coached by me whenever you want.
See what it does for you, and then you can decide whether you want to stay or not. My guess is you will stay because it changes so many people's lives, and you'll start experiencing that for yourself. Lovelifeclub.com is that link.
It's that time again. It's Steve Sleeves.
Don't be ber. You know that we can't live without another episode of Steve Sleeves.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Steve Sleeves. We are going to play a game today called Sleeve It or Leave It.
I love it when you do this.
It's the one that has sleeves in the title. So we talked about breaking up, how difficult breakups can be. I want to talk about some things you could do after a breakup. And you're going to tell me whether you should sleeve it or leave it.
Nice.
Sleeve it means put it up your sleeves. Do it.
Keep it.
Sure. No, I got the gist.
It's the opposite of leave it.
Yeah. Stuff it up your sleeve.
In a good way.
In a good way. Yeah.
Texting your ex on their birthday.
Leave it.
Leave it. Unless you've been broken up for a really long time and you have a good relationship and you're friendly and whatever, in which case, fine.
Unless you're friendly because you harbor hopes of being back with them and it's not really a friendship. It's a long-term strategy to get them back.
Yeah. No. So then leave it. But if you're actually friends...
Okay. Keeping the hoodie they gave you that makes you look amazing.
Leave it.
How amazing?
What?
Well, if you don't care about the hoodie, if it doesn't remind you of them...
How can it not remind you of them?
Okay.
It's going to have a bit of their smell. Even after you've washed it, it's still the hoodie that connects you to them. You got to leave it. There's plenty of good hoodies out there in the world.
Fine, leave it.
Replying to their "I miss you" kind of energy when they send you that in a message.
I'm going to say leave it nine times out of 10, but sleeve it one in 10.
If you want to message them and say, "I'm sorry you're having a hard time, but it's really not helpful for you to use me to share that with. I am moving on with my life. So it's not fair for you to tell me that stuff when you feel it."
Okay. Going to places you used to go together to try and erase the memory of them.
Sleeve it.
Sleeve it.
Sleeve it. So it's good to go to places to try and overwrite the memory.
Yeah. That's one of the ways you change associations, is you go back there under new pretenses with a new friend or a new situation, and you rewrite the association that you have with that.
It's hard though. It's painful, isn't it?
Well, you don't have to do it. You don't have to actively do it with every—if there's 10 great Mexican restaurants in your town, you don't have to worry about getting that one back. But if there's a place that you really love, sometimes the place that you need to reclaim is your entire city.
I've had it with a beloved museum in London that I needed to go and overwrite because I want to go back there. Are you also...
I think I went there with someone else.
There you go. Classic Steve.
Classic Steve.
That's what it's just...
Sorry. I know it's not classic Steve. I just wanted to say classic Steve.
Right.
Me too.
So sleeve it.
Sleeve it.
Leave it.
I do think you have to be careful with that one though. Just as I know Stephen's going to do his next one, you have to be a bit careful because you might bump into them. So you have to be careful that it's not somewhere that they're going to frequent.
Oh. Well, if it's that, then leave it.
Yeah. I think if you think that it's somewhere they're going to go to, I think it's better to just leave it until you're over it. And then when you bump into them, you don't care anymore.
You can't reclaim the yoga class they still go to every day.
Deciding your new personality is someone who's really into matcha.
Just leave it.
Sleeve it.
So, yes.
Sure.
Be a matcha person. Using the Apple Notes app as your therapist.
Apple Notes app?
Yeah. Like writing notes to yourself.
Sleeve it.
Apple.
I wouldn't say therapist, because you're your own therapist there. You're writing down thoughts that you want to record that are important, that you need to come back to. I think that's very, very important. So, sleeve it.
Telling the Uber driver your breakup story because they seem open and friendly.
Just leave it.
Yeah. Just leave it. But...
We've all been there.
Don't be obnoxious about it. And be careful how many times you tell the story. You need to tell the story a lot of times, but the story needs to evolve as you tell it. What you don't want to do is be a person who, a year later, is still telling the story the same way to the Uber driver.
Finishing the Netflix show you started with them.
Depends how much you love the show.
Yeah, there's a lot of content these days. Don't really need to.
It's going to remind you of them and just...
Leave it.
Okay. All right. Leave it.
Delete the playlist. Start fresh.
One more. Let's have one more.
Oh, okay.
Last one.
Getting a revenge body.
Sleeve it.
Sleeve it.
There you go, Steve.
Definitely.
There you go. But don't feel like—revenge body is not going to change your life. So it's fine. It's good, but it's not going to change your life. And you're still going to have to grieve.
Yeah. But okay, fine.
Getting hot isn't a replacement for grieving.
No, but I do think that actually getting a revenge body or any kind of situation where you're pouring back into yourself is really, really valuable.
Can we call it something different though? Because revenge body still makes them the star of the show that is your life.
You remember Princess Diana's revenge dress?
Yeah.
And she wore that black dress and everyone was like, "Oh my God, it's her revenge dress." She probably didn't go, "This is my revenge dress." She just was like, "I'm going to look hot."
Right.
And I think that's...
I like it. Do it for you, though. Don't do it for revenge because you're still making them too important. They have to become less important, not more.
Yeah.
Very good.
Well, thank you everyone for listening to the show. We appreciate you. Whether you watch this on YouTube, whether you listen to it on Spotify or iTunes, don't forget to claim your 14-day trial of Love Life if you haven't already. LoveLifeClub.com is that link. And just thank you always for supporting us, being there for us, and all of your lovely emails and thoughts that you send in. We'll see you next time.
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