The Four Levels of Love: Why Admiration and Chemistry Aren't Enough
Matthew Hussey
Matthew Hussey, in conversation with Lisa Bilyeu, argues that many people struggle to find love because they chase the wrong things. To show what deserves weight and what doesn't, Hussey lays out a "four levels" model: admiration, mutual attraction, commitment, and compatibility. Hussey's position is that the first two levels are only prerequisites and are not important on their own. The last two are what make a relationship something real to build on, and real to grieve if it ends.
Level One: Admiration
The first level is admiration. Hussey says it is a prerequisite for a successful relationship but not important in itself. Admiration can happen from across a room: you find someone gorgeous, charismatic, interesting, or intriguing, and you want to know them better or ask them out. It is a distant feeling, and on its own, Hussey says, it doesn't mean anything.
Hussey points to the many unrequited love stories about people who longed for someone who didn't know they existed. Those stories, in this view, are only admiration, a story we build in our heads about how important someone is. You can find someone impressive, Hussey says, but a person who isn't your partner can't really be that important. The important person is the one you know is a great partner to you. It makes sense to fear losing someone like that. Fearing the loss of someone who was never your partner is, in Hussey's words, "just a feeling."
Level Two: Mutual Attraction
When Bilyeu moves to level two, mutual attraction, Hussey says it is "also not that important," which surprises Bilyeu. Again, Hussey calls it a prerequisite: you don't want a relationship without mutual attraction. On its own, though, it doesn't count for much. Hussey says their inbox is "littered" with messages about situations where the attraction is mutual but the relationship isn't going anywhere. This is the stage of chemistry and connection, where both people have at least shown they are attracted to each other.
Hussey gives two reasons people get hung up on this stage. First, we fear we will never find love, or won't find it in time. Second, mutual attraction feels rare. Many people seldom like anyone, so when they do and the other person shows interest back, it feels like the most important thing in the world.
Hope as the Worst Affliction
To explain why this stage has such a hold on people, Hussey retells the myth of Pandora. When Pandora opens the box, afflictions such as disease, fear, hunger, and shame fly out. Horrified, she closes it, and the only thing left inside is hope. Hussey attributes to Nietzsche the idea that keeping hope in the box was not a mercy, because hope is the worst affliction of all: the real torment is hoping for something and watching it never get better.
Add hope to mutual attraction, Hussey says, and it can fuel "every kind of hell." People keep believing there is something there, even when the connection isn't giving them what they need or want. Hussey calls this the most dangerous phase. It has relatively little real importance, yet "our body, everything about us" treats it as maximally important.
"Your Person" and Impact Versus Character
Hussey describes a person who had a three-month relationship that ended when the partner decided to go travel. The person was devastated and felt this had been "my person." Hussey disagrees with that framing. In Hussey's view, "your person" can never be someone who doesn't choose you. Someone who pictures a future flying solo around the world cannot be your person if you picture a committed relationship. When the book talks about finding your person, it does not mean someone who wants completely different things.
Hussey told this person that three months is nothing, because someone can perform for three months. From this comes a central distinction: in three months you are not seeing someone's character, only their impact. Character shows itself only over time. Impact can be felt on a first date. Many people mistake impact for character on date one: they feel deeply connected and understood, feel they come from similar places, feel the other person treats their family the same way they treat their own. Hussey's answer is that none of this reveals character. "You don't know anything about this person."
Hussey adds another example. A client said that in the first week of dating, a man sent videos of himself with his family, and the client felt he related to his family the same way the client does. Hussey's first thought was to question why he was sending family videos in week one. Hussey doesn't claim anything underhanded was going on, though notes the relationship didn't turn out well. The point is that this was impact: you can't know who someone is with their family from what they choose to show you.
Fireworks and New Year's Day
When a client says "I've been seeing someone for three months and now he's disappeared, but he's my person," Hussey answers: "No, he was fireworks." Hussey asks Bilyeu what fireworks need in order to be special. Bilyeu names a flame, loudness, and near-blinding brightness. Hussey supplies the missing ingredient: they have to finish.
Hussey asks listeners to imagine fireworks that went on for hours. For ten or fifteen minutes, people hold hands and look up dreamy-eyed. If the show ran another 45 minutes, Hussey predicts, people would start checking their watches. Fireworks need darkness and they need an ending, and the ending is part of what makes them feel magical. Many early relationships that people treasure, Hussey argues, are like this.
Hussey uses the London New Year's Eve fireworks to make the point. They are incredible, but they aren't our life. Our life is what comes after: who we're with, where we go home, how much we like that home, how much we like the job we wake up to, and what we have to do in the new year. In Hussey's words, life isn't the fireworks on New Year's Eve; it's life on New Year's Day. This, Hussey says, is the mistake people make at the mutual attraction stage.
Level Three: Commitment
The third level is commitment: two people who are not only attracted to each other but actually say yes to each other. Hussey acknowledges that many people feel this is getting rarer, that few people want commitment or a real relationship.
Hussey believes part of this perception comes from spending so much time with people stuck at level two who show no signs of moving to level three. If you keep "doing that dance" with such a person for months or years, you end up taking this one person, "your wall," for "the world." You start saying no one wants to commit anymore. Hussey argues this feels like a universal truth, even though people are committing, because we've spent so long with people who won't and have come to believe that's what everyone is like.
Level Four: Compatibility
Commitment alone isn't enough, Hussey says. The fourth level is compatibility. It goes beyond saying yes to each other and asks whether two people share ideas about how to live, what to build, and what counts as moral. Hussey offers examples: if one person lies all the time and the other values honesty, they may have committed but are "grossly incompatible." If one person shows up an hour late to every date and vacation and the other values being on time, that is an incompatibility too.
Hussey adds that certain values help people overcome incompatibility: curiosity, teamwork, empathy, compassion, and generosity. With those values, a difference becomes a question of how to solve it together, or a choice to give ground because something matters to the other person. Hussey describes this as being generous with your energy and making room for what your partner cares about. A team player, Hussey says, can overcome many incompatibilities, though perhaps not the deepest ones. Fundamental moral incompatibility remains a real problem. Surface-level or behavioral differences can often be handled through teamwork.
This is why Hussey advises anyone who feels "I need things to be different for this to work" to check whether their partner values teamwork. It is hard enough when both people are working on a problem. When only one is, Hussey says, there's no way through.
Knowing What You're Grieving
Hussey sums up the model, as structured in the book, as admiration, mutual attraction, commitment, and compatibility. When all four are present, you have something truly worth crying over if it ends. Losing that person would be a deep tragedy, not one you can't recover from, but a tragedy nonetheless.
What Hussey warns against is creating too many tragedies at level two. Bilyeu says she sees this often, and Hussey agrees it happens "all the time." People speak of losing the love of their life while that person is, in Hussey's words, buying a phone case on Amazon. The person hasn't left this world; they're "two streets over," deciding they don't want the relationship.
Hussey doesn't dismiss the pain. Hussey cites their friend David Kessler, described as a leading expert on grief, who defines grief as "a change you didn't want." That definition made Hussey think of how many relationships and situationships end with real grief. Hussey stresses there is no shame in being heartbroken over someone you knew for only a month, if you truly felt something amazing was there. But we need to be clear about what we're grieving: not the tragedy of losing our person, but the loss of what we thought it was and what it turned out not to be. Hussey calls that "a big, big difference."
The Investment Gap
Near the end, Hussey briefly names another common obstacle in modern dating. Even after finding someone who likes you back, it can be hard to reach a committed relationship because of what Hussey calls the "investment gap": the period in early dating when one person is willing to give, invest, and commit more than the other. Hussey says this issue is personal. Early in the relationship with their wife, Audrey, Hussey was the one with fears about commitment, and some of what Audrey said and did made a big difference in Hussey's ability to commit.
One of the big reasons why people struggle to find love is that we're constantly chasing the wrong things. And so I put together this four levels model to help us understand whether we're chasing the right things or the wrong things.
The first level of importance in any dynamic with a person is admiration. Which is to say, by the way, this isn't really important. It's a prerequisite for a successful relationship. But it's not important on its own because what admiration is, you can see someone across the hall and think they're gorgeous or charismatic or interesting or intriguing, or there's something about them. And you have this kind of distant admiration for them, or, "I want to get to know that person better. I'd like to ask that person out." On its own, it doesn't mean anything.
By the way, so many unrequited love stories are written about people who longed for someone who didn't know they existed, right? That's just admiration. And it's a story, by the way, we've built up in our head about how important someone is. How can they be that important? You can think they're impressive, but how can they be that important? The person who's important is the person who you know is a great partner to you. That's important. That's someone that it's justifiable to be afraid to lose, someone who's an amazing partner to you. But someone who's not even your partner, how can that be important? It's just a feeling.
So admiration is level one, not important. Level two is mutual attraction.
Also not that important.
Really?
It's a prerequisite. You don't want to be in any relationship where there's not mutual attraction. But on its own—
Right.
Not important. My inbox is littered with people writing to me about a situation where there has been mutual attraction, but it's not going anywhere. And so this is where you have chemistry or a connection or you both like each other, or at the very least you've both shown that you're attracted to each other. And people get very hung up on mutual attraction, like that was the thing.
And why do we get hung up on it? Because A, we're afraid we're never going to find it, and that we're not going to find love or we're not going to find love in time. And B, because we feel like mutual attraction is hard to find. A lot of people rarely like someone. And so when they like someone and that person seems to like them back or show them some interest, it feels like the most important thing in the world. So now when I feel like there's the hope of something...
In the story of Pandora, when she opens the box and all of these afflictions fly out, disease and fear and hunger and shame and all of these different horrible afflictions fly out, she closes the box because she's horrified. And the only thing that doesn't escape from the box is hope. And there is this interesting idea—I think it was Nietzsche had this idea—that the fact that hope didn't get out was actually the one bit of grace, because hope is the worst of all the afflictions. Because the real terrible thing for mankind is the idea of hoping for it and it not getting any better.
And so when you take hope and you add it into mutual attraction, it can fuel every kind of hell that you end up in because you keep riding on this idea that there's something there. There's something there. There's something there. Even though that thing isn't giving you what you really need or want. And there will be so many people watching this right now whose situation this describes.
That's the thing that is in many ways the most dangerous phase of importance because it actually has relatively little importance, but our body, everything about us gives it the maximum possible importance. And I said to someone recently who said, "I had a three-month relationship with someone who then decided that he wanted to go travel at the end of it. And I'm devastated because I just feel like this was my person."
And I don't believe your person, by the way, can ever be someone who doesn't choose you. I don't believe your person can ever be someone who sees their future as flying solo around the world and you see your future in a committed relationship. That cannot be your person by definition, right? So when I say on this book, "Find your person," I'm not talking about the person who wants completely different things from you.
But she, in her mind, had decided, "I had such an amazing three months with this person. This is my person." And I said, "Three months is nothing. You can perform for three months. Three months, you're not talking about someone's character. You're talking about their impact." Very different thing. Character can only be seen over time. Impact is something you can feel on a first date.
And so many people mistake impact for character on date one. Like, "You don't understand. I felt amazing. I went home and I just felt so connected to this person. I felt like they understood me. I felt like we come from similar places. I felt like they're with their family how I am with mine." And it just feels like this whole picture. You haven't seen anything about this person's character. All you've seen is their impact. You don't know anything about this person.
If you are watching this and there's someone you have in mind who you don't just like, but you really want a relationship with, and you want it to progress to the point of a relationship, I have a free training called Casual to Committed that you can watch at getcommitment.com, which is a perfect free training video for you to go to after this one. It gives you the granular things that you can do that take a situation from being someone you're just dating to someone you're actually in an exclusive long-term relationship with. Check it out at getcommitment.com.
I had someone recently talk to me about how a guy sent her videos in week one. They just met, and he was sending videos of him with his family. And she was like, "I really feel like he's with his family how I am with mine." My mind went to, "Why is he sending you videos of him with his family in week one?" I'm not saying there was anything underhanded about it, although the way it went, it turned out it wasn't great. But I look at that and I go, "This is impact." You can't possibly know who this person is with their family from what they've shown you. You don't really know that because you don't know this person.
So when my client came to me and said, "I've been seeing someone for three months and now he's disappeared, but oh my God, he's my person," I'm like, "No, he was fireworks." Fireworks is a very different thing. What do fireworks need to be special?
They need a flame, like a match lit to it.
Mhm.
They need to be loud.
Right.
They need to be almost blinding with how bright they are.
Yeah. And there's one more ingredient.
Oh God, what am I missing? They need to finish.
That's true.
Imagine fireworks that just went on for hour after hour after hour after hour. Now, when fireworks go on for 10 minutes, 15 max, we hold each other's hands and we look up dreamy-eyed, and they're magical. We love them. But I guarantee you, if those fireworks kept going for another 45 minutes, there'd be a point where we'd start looking at our watch. We'd be like, "Kind of ready now."
It wouldn't last.
Fireworks need that. They need nighttime and they need to end. And that's what makes them so special for us, is like, "Oh my God. Oh wow. They're over. Oh, but weren't they amazing?" That's what so many of the early relationships are like that we value.
Our life isn't fireworks. On New Year's Eve, when we see the fireworks, we watch the fireworks every year at New Year's Eve, like the London fireworks. Unbelievable. They're incredible. They're so special. But those fireworks aren't our life. Our life is, at the end of the fireworks, who's our company? Where are we going home to? How much do we like that home? When we wake up tomorrow, how much do I like the job that I'm going to? How much do I like the things that I have to do now in the new year? That's my life. My life isn't the fireworks on New Year's Eve. My fireworks is my life on New Year's Day.
So that's the mistake we make at the mutual attraction phase. So then you say, "Okay, fine. Not important. What's level three?" Level three is commitment. Two people who aren't just mutually attracted, but they actually say yes to each other.
Now, that's something that feels to many people like it's becoming increasingly rare these days. People who actually want commitment, people who actually want to be in a relationship. And one of the reasons I believe it feels so rare for so many people is because they're giving so much time to people at level two who are not showing any signs of going to level three. And if you stay with the person at level two and you keep doing that dance with them over and over and over again, using up months or years of your life, then you'll take this person who is your wall and you'll start to think it's the world. So you'll say, "No one wants to commit anymore."
But the reason why that feels like a global belief, even though there are people committing, is because we've spent so much time with people who won't, and we've started to believe them that this is what people are like. This is just what life is like. People don't want real relationships. People don't want to commit.
So the third level of importance is commitment. But commitment on its own isn't enough either. You have to have the fourth level, which is compatibility. And compatibility is not just, "Are we saying yes to each other?" It's, "Do we have the same ideas about how we would like to live our life? What we would like to build? Do we agree on a sense of morality together?" If I lie all the time and you believe in telling the truth, we might have said yes to each other for a relationship, but we're grossly incompatible.
If I think it's fine to show up an hour late for everything I do, and you like to be on time, and I show up an hour late for every date we go on or for every vacation, then there's an incompatibility there. So you have to have a sense of compatibility.
By the way, one of the values that helps you overcome incompatibility is curiosity, teamwork, empathy, compassion, generosity. Because when you have those values, you see someone who's different from you, but you say, "Well, how do we solve this difference together?" Or we say, "You know what, I'm going to sacrifice on this one because I know it means a lot to you. So this is important to you. I'm gonna make it important to me because I'm generous with my energy and because I want to make space for what's important to you."
When you have a team player, you can overcome lots of areas of incompatibility. Not perhaps on the deepest, deepest level, like if you're fundamentally morally incompatible, that's a real problem. If in lots of different surface ways or just behavioral ways there's little incompatibilities, teamwork can overcome a lot of that.
Which is why I say to people, if you're in a relationship with someone where you're saying, "I need things to be different for this to work," you better check whether teamwork is important to your partner. Because if you're trying to overcome those incompatibilities and they're not, then there's just no way. It's hard enough when both of you are trying to solve the problem, but when there's one person trying to solve the problem and the other person isn't, that's a real problem.
So that's the way that I structure it in the book, is admiration, mutual attraction, commitment, and compatibility. And when you have those four levels, then you have something really worth crying about if it ends. If that person, God forbid, gets taken from you, then there's a deep, deep, deep sense of tragedy about that. Not one that you cannot overcome, but a tragedy nonetheless. What I try to caution people against is creating too many tragedies at level two, mutual attraction.
And you see that one a lot.
All the time. It feels to people like it's a tragedy that they lost someone who, while they're saying, "It's such a great tragedy that the love of my life is not with me," that person's buying a phone case on Amazon. They're still here. They're not gone. They're not no longer of this world, right? They're two streets over deciding they don't want to be in the relationship.
It's still something to grieve. My friend David Kessler—he's a foremost expert on grief in the world—he said, "Grief is a change you didn't want." It's an interesting way of looking at grief. Grief is a change you didn't want. And when David Kessler said that to me, I thought of all of the relationships or situationships that end where people do feel a real sense of grief. There's no shame in that. There's no shame in being heartbroken over someone that you only knew for a month because you had really felt like there was something amazing there.
But we have to be clear about what we're grieving. I am grieving, yes, but I'm not grieving the tragedy of losing my person. I'm grieving the loss of the thing that I thought it was, but it wasn't. And that's a big, big difference.
Guys, one of the most challenging things about modern dating is not just finding someone that we like, which can be challenging all by itself, but even once we have and we find someone who likes us back, it still feels so difficult to get to the point of actually having a real committed relationship with that person. That's because of something called the investment gap. It is the time in early dating where we are willing to give and invest and commit more than the other person is.
I have put together a free training called From Casual to Committed where I talk about how to overcome the investment gap. It is one of the most common things in the world right now. And I show you very specific things that you can do and say that actually start to progress the relationship in an intentional way that leads to real commitment.
And I know of what I speak in this area. Not just because I've been coaching people in this area for two decades of my life, but also because in the beginning of my relationship with my wife Audrey, I was the one who was having some fears around commitment. And some of the things I talk about in this training are things that she literally said and did with me that made all the difference to my ability to commit. It's amazing what the right language and the right actions can do in creating a relationship that actually goes the distance.
I want to show you what they are in Casual to Committed, which you can watch for free right now at getcommitment.com. That link again is getcommitment.com.
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