Hidden Dangers of Long-Distance Love: When to Stop Yourself From Falling
Matthew Hussey
In this extended episode of the Love Life podcast, Matthew Hussey and Stephen Hussey return to long-distance relationships, a topic listeners asked them to revisit after an earlier episode. This time they focus less on how to make distance work and more on which long-distance situations are worth investing in at all. Matthew's central argument is that dating advice talks constantly about finding love but rarely about restraint: the skill of noticing a connection you could fall into and deciding, for good reasons, not to feed it. Along the way the brothers work through listener comments, share personal stories on both sides of the question, answer a listener's letter about dating again without becoming guarded, and close with a quick-fire game of long-distance "hot takes."
A New Baby, and a Fear That Turned Out Differently
The episode opens with personal news. Matthew's wife, Audrey, gave birth to their son a couple of weeks before recording. Stephen visited the hospital and calls the boy the family's "first Hollywood baby." Matthew describes how hospital rooms are assigned by availability, and how they ended up in one overlooking the Hollywood Hills with the Hollywood sign framed in the window. Having grown up in London and then Essex, Matthew found it surreal. The child, Matthew notes, is half English and half French, and American by birth. Matthew admits to finding it strange that if the family stays in the US, their son will eventually sound American. That is "no shade" to the accent, just an odd thought: a child who doesn't sound like you.
Asked what the first two weeks have been like, Matthew says they didn't know how quickly they would connect with their son. They mention how common it is for men to say bonding took weeks or months, often only once the baby "starts giving you something back." Matthew finds that a slightly damning commentary. Stephen offers the novelist Evelyn Waugh as the extreme example: Waugh reportedly said he had little to do with his children as infants, but once they were "capable of speech and reason," he associated with them. Matthew calls that awful.
Matthew then makes a careful distinction. They strongly reject the idea that people can't truly be unselfish until they have a child, calling it offensive to people who can't have children and to those who have cared for elderly parents or siblings and carried heavy burdens. Matthew does say that a child offers a particular chance to enjoy the fact that life isn't about you, and that waiting for the child to show personality before engaging misses what the experience offers.
For Matthew personally, the connection was instant, which they describe as a relief. They acknowledge that not everyone, men or women, feels this, and that those people deserve compassion. Their lifelong fear had been the relentlessness of responsibility. After dog-sitting for a friend over a weekend, they had concluded by the end of day one that "this is nonstop." What they didn't anticipate was how little they would mind. The fear that did land, more profoundly than expected, was vulnerability: the love is so overwhelming that Matthew already feels heartbroken about future ways their son might get hurt, and describes this as their anxiety speaking. Going back to work after two weeks has been hard. Every day their son is a day older, and Matthew says they are "having to dig deep for my why." Stephen jokes that there's no doing long distance with this boy. Matthew points out a better segue: the child exists only because of a long-distance relationship.
Listener Comments: Sparks That Don't Survive Meeting, and the Slot Machine of Intermittent Affection
Before the main discussion, the brothers read comments from YouTube viewers. One viewer describes good connections with people met through social media, but says that when they finally meet, the problem isn't distance. The spark simply doesn't translate in person. Matthew calls this a general hazard of meeting online: you can feel chemistry over text and feel nothing face to face. Stephen's advice is to stop spending ages online and "get to the damn meeting." Matthew adds that this is harder with long distance, so a FaceTime call is the minimum stand-in for an in-person meeting.
Another viewer argues that meeting face to face first makes a big difference compared with meeting on a dating app. Matthew agrees and restates a point they have made before. When we meet someone from an app, we meet up to find out whether there's chemistry. When we meet someone in everyday life and choose to see them again, it's because we already feel chemistry. Meeting in real life skips that phase.
A third comment picks up on something Matthew said previously about relationships that move in "fits and starts." The viewer describes intermittent affection as the emotional equivalent of variable rewards, the loop behind addiction. Matthew connects this directly to long distance. A hallmark of long-distance situationships is an intense honeymoon week or weekend together, after which communication often falls off once the couple is apart. The thought of "it was amazing and I'm living for the next time" is what keeps people in, Matthew says. They call it a slot machine: occasional highs keep you hooked while offering none of the real benefits of a consistent relationship.
Seven Years Apart, and a Stranger in a Robe
One of the starkest comments comes from a viewer who spent about seven happy years in a long-distance relationship. They talked daily, visited every two or three months, and spent holidays together. When they finally moved in together, the viewer writes, it quickly became clear he was not the person he had seemed. He didn't want to study or work. He wanted to walk around at home in a robe all day, living off her money and demanding fancy clothes and dining. The viewer concludes that he was never the person she thought he was.
The brothers joke about him as a "kept prince" and a Big Lebowski figure, and wonder whether the robe counted among the fine clothes. Matthew then calls it tragic that you can talk to someone for seven years and never learn what they're like day to day. Stephen sums up the lesson: it's dangerous if you haven't tested it.
"He Still Lives in My Head" Is Not Proof You Made a Mistake
Another commenter says they once followed Matthew's advice, given during a stressful time, to walk away from a relationship that didn't suit them. It was a long-distance relationship. The video no longer exists, and they call leaving the "worst idea ever": five years later, he still lives in their head.
Matthew says they don't know why that video is gone, but still stands by the advice. They push back on the reasoning. People who wronged Matthew have lived in their head for years, simply because it took a long time to get over what happened, and that doesn't mean those people should be their friends. Matthew points to limerence, the obsessive attraction to someone we can't let go of even when that person never reciprocated or is wildly incompatible. It shows that someone can occupy our thoughts without being right for us. Still thinking about someone, Matthew argues, may just mean we've built an elaborate fantasy that turns them into the right person, and that fantasy becomes self-inflicted pain.
The "Avoidant Playground" Accusation
One comment is aimed squarely at Stephen, who is currently in a long-distance relationship. The commenter says Stephen "has avoidant written all over him," that long distance must feel perfect to him, and that long distance is "the avoidant playground." In the commenter's telling, avoidants love deep talks about theoretical possibilities and planning fun trips while keeping separate lives, with no real future in the same place. Stephen notes they have said publicly that they relate more to avoidant tendencies, so the commenter can't claim much credit for the read. A follow-up comment observes that long-distance relationships seem to run in the Hussey family. Matthew points out that they married their long-distance partner, who now lives very much next door.
Stephen rejects the accusation emphatically and says they would much rather their girlfriend be there all the time than see her every couple of months. Matthew grants that the underlying point is true in general: avoidants commonly enjoy long distance because they never have to prove they're willing to have a genuine, intimate relationship. But the implication that Stephen has no desire to close the distance is, in Stephen's words, "very false." Both partners are doing everything they can to figure it out.
Why Long Distance Keeps Happening, and Why It Feels So Romantic
Stephen says it has always surprised them how big a topic long distance is. Matthew thinks it makes sense. So many people meet online, and one way to widen your options is to widen your geographic radius, sometimes literally in an app's settings. On social media, forums, or in groups, you often don't know where someone lives when a connection sparks. Matthew compares it to spinning a roulette wheel: exciting, a bit scary, and occasionally ending with the discovery that the person is in Australia.
That discovery, Matthew argues, can itself add to the romance. Suddenly there's a painful but compelling obstacle, and you get to believe "this could have been it" long before that belief is reasonable.
Matthew adds a less obvious mechanism. When we've already decided in our minds that something probably can't work, a more relaxed, playful, authentic version of ourselves comes out. They compare this to why people fall into emotional (and sometimes physical) affairs with married people. Once someone is "off the table," people feel free to be goofy, open, and warm, sometimes on both sides, which Matthew calls worse and dangerous. In many long-distance situations, the premise that "it's never going to work anyway" is exactly what makes people lean in more authentically. Counterintuitively, and somewhat tragically, Matthew says, that is how a real connection gets built.
The Skill Nobody Talks About: Choosing Not to Fall
This leads to the idea Matthew most wants listeners to consider, one they feel is rarely discussed in dating advice: when is it wise to stop yourself from falling in love? There is enormous focus on finding love, Matthew says, and very little on restraint. That means recognizing a situation you could turn into an emotional connection and choosing not to, for the right reasons.
Matthew separates two things. Falling in love is involuntary. But love is a choice to the extent that we decide whether to feed it. Matthew uses a deliberately odd analogy from their new life: every diaper change makes them more connected to their son. Investment produces attachment, and Matthew says this is why they think it matters for men to invest in their children. The same holds in romance. Every minute spent talking to someone deepens the bond. Choosing not to invest, or actively divesting, limits your capacity to fall.
Matthew's Own Example
Matthew offers a personal example, keeping the details private and noting it never amounted to anything. When single, Matthew talked with people who were geographically spread out. Part of what made this seem reasonable was a life of constant travel: the brothers regularly fly between family in England and their home in America, and Matthew was also touring and passing through cities like New York often. Someone in another part of America, or even Europe or Australia, might actually be seen in person.
In hindsight, Matthew says, they were "a little too open-minded." They describe talking to someone in a place Matthew never went, where the person never came to Matthew's city, and where it was almost impossible for people from that country to get US visas. There was attraction, but beyond that they didn't get on especially well. The person also smoked, which didn't appeal to Matthew.
Matthew stresses that smoking alone wouldn't have ruled someone out. With the perfect person two streets away in Los Angeles, it might have worked, and that person might even quit. The point was that it was one more incompatibility on top of a situation already wildly incompatible because of where each of them lived. To make long distance work, Matthew says, takes an extraordinary amount of compatibility, will, and shared vision. At least one person has to be excited, or at least willing, to move. They must also be able to move, not locked into a job with no prospects abroad for the next ten or twenty years, and, in this case, realistically able to get a visa. This situation had none of that.
Matthew describes asking what was really drawing them in. Partly it was attraction. Partly the connection was an escape from painful feelings: loneliness, and frustration that finding love was proving harder than hoped. And, Matthew adds, if we were really psychoanalyzing, an avoidant streak may have enjoyed the barrier itself. The test Matthew proposes is to remove the obstacle. If this person lived down the street, would you still be wondering whether to continue? Or would you immediately say "probably not"? Distance lets you focus on the distance as the obstacle instead of on the lack of compatibility. Stephen adds that it pushes the real issue further down the line and keeps you hooked.
Matthew admits to not always following this principle, but says that in this case they consciously decided it wasn't good for either person's heart, for their energy, or for the goal of genuinely meeting someone. Matthew is clear that long distance isn't always a bad bet; the relationship with Audrey started long distance. But Audrey was in England, where Matthew's family is, so a visit to Audrey was also a visit to family, and vice versa. In Matthew's words, it "wasn't a crazy bet."
Why the Stakes Are So High
Matthew argues that long-distance situations call for "incredible restraint" because of what they cost. They're costly in time and money, and you often don't know whether the relationship works until you're together full time. You can spend five years feeling like things are progressing and exciting, move in together, and discover that it doesn't work in the same place. That is why Matthew calls them high-stakes situations and urges more discernment. Sometimes the right answer is: "Yes, I'm attracted to this person, and I'm not going to put any more time and energy into it."
Stephen's Cautionary Tale: A Relationship Born on Chatroulette
Stephen offers a personal story that confirms the point. Years ago, while working on themselves and eager to see results in their love life, Stephen met someone one night on Chatroulette and treated it as a sign of serendipity. That led to a six-month long-distance relationship over Skype. Stephen acknowledges that moving a connection off Chatroulette isn't inherently wrong, but most people would find it an interesting place to make a relationship choice.
The investment kept building, Stephen says, even though they didn't really know the person. When they finally met, Stephen knew it was never going to work. Because of everything already invested, Stephen deluded themselves into thinking it should and could. She moved to where Stephen lived, and it wasn't a personality fit. Stephen says this wasted a lot of her time and represented a large investment on both sides for nothing, because neither had the restraint Matthew described.
Adventures, and the Cost of Them
Matthew responds that for many people it's probably unavoidable to learn this the hard way at least once: to invest huge energy in the wrong direction and hurt yourself, someone else, or both. They sketch a familiar scenario. You're 22, you meet someone in Colombia, you can't really afford flights every three months, but "what an adventure." Six months in you're deeply in love with someone who can't move while you can't either, and a year in hearts are breaking because it has to end or someone cheated. Once the pain fades, people often don't regret such episodes and remember them as adventures.
But Matthew says many listeners have reached a point where they want to be highly intentional about their limited time, energy, and heart. At that stage, these adventures come at a very high cost. Matthew's invitation is to ask whether another intense, painful, dead-end situation would really be an adventure now, or whether the pain would far outweigh the romance.
Stephen remarks that the episode has taken a more sober tone than expected, then shares a related case from a caller on their Love Life Q&A that day. The caller had met a promising man in New York a couple of months earlier. He had rerouted plans to spend four or five days with her in Dubai, was now leaving for about two months somewhere far away, and had invited her to visit for a week. She wondered whether to raise what the relationship was. Stephen's advice was that his invitation doesn't necessarily mean much, and that right after a great trip is almost the perfect moment to discuss what this is. Otherwise she would put her life on hold for two months while building the fantasy further, or take a romantic trip and come home still not knowing where things stood. Matthew agrees it was very good advice.
A Listener's Question: How Do I Date Again Without Being Guarded?
The episode's Love Lifeline question comes from a listener named Seleni. She has always believed in loving with her whole heart but now wonders whether that is what keeps breaking it. Earlier in the year she ended an eight-month relationship with a man in another country. His busy schedule left them little quality time, but she kept making the effort, even planning a trip from Bali to India to see him. There, she felt lonely most of the time. Even at home he was constantly on work calls, and when she tried to talk she felt dismissed or unheard. She hid little letters of encouragement around his home, which he never acknowledged. During the trip she learned he was still talking to his ex and felt he still had feelings for her. Before she left India, he broke up with her in person, saying, "I can't give you what you want." She later discovered he had been on dating apps during the relationship. Now, a couple of months later, she is talking to someone new, feels nervous, and is afraid of giving too much too soon and losing herself. She asks how to approach new connections with hope and warmth while protecting her heart, and how to tell a healthy guard from one that blocks love.
Matthew begins by saying such experiences don't have to harden us. They can guide us toward what matters. Looking back, there were signals. She went out of her way, at some cost, to be in the same place as him, and he spent the visit working. Matthew says that someone doing this is showing very clearly how much time and attention they can give a relationship. Being with an ambitious person who has major responsibilities is fine, Matthew says, as long as you also feel like a priority, and she clearly wasn't. Matthew also highlights the breakup line: he was telling her plainly that he couldn't give her what she wanted.
The unacknowledged letters point, in Matthew's reading, to both a compatibility problem and a prioritization problem. He didn't connect with the small gestures. He was connected to his work, goals, and ambitions, not to the love available in his life. Matthew says you don't want to be with someone who doesn't value the love available to them.
Valuing the Love You Give, and the People Who Value It
Matthew relates this to their own past. They describe a period of being not only extremely busy but also disconnected from the value of the love being offered to them. They note that they have always been close to and prioritized family, but say there's a difference between family mattering to you and truly feeling the value of someone's kind message or a note that they're thinking of you.
To illustrate, Matthew recalls an episode of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown, which they believe was the Miami episode, in which Bourdain and Iggy Pop share a glass of white wine and joke that this is now the extent of their hedonism. Bourdain asks what Iggy Pop is grateful for. Iggy Pop answers, in Matthew's retelling, that it's corny and embarrassing, but it's appreciating the moments of love the people in his life give him. Matthew heard this not as a line meant to sound good but as a hard-won conclusion from someone who had become deeply connected to that value, and who, Matthew suspects, wasn't always.
Matthew's message to Seleni is that her ex couldn't currently appreciate what she offered. They add that this isn't personal: he probably isn't connected to the value of what anyone who loves him offers. He might be drawn to someone "shiny" who represents status or popularity, but, Matthew says, he isn't connected to the small ways people show up for him.
So some added guardedness is appropriate, Matthew says, but of a particular kind. If Seleni truly values what she has to give, she will look for people who value it too. When she notices someone prizing only success, money, status, or how fast they're rising, she won't ask how to impress or win them. She'll lose interest, and even be turned off, because "this is not my people." That, Matthew argues, is the difference between a closed person and one who values their own gifts and the kind of person who values them. The goal is to be turned off rather than scared. Matthew encourages her to see this as progress rather than a reason to fear love.
"Steve Sleeves": A Long-Distance Hot-Take-o-Meter
The episode closes with Stephen's recurring segment, "Steve Sleeves," normally played with Audrey. Stephen reads statements, and Matthew rates each as a hot take, a flaming hot take, or cold as ice. There is some early confusion about what the scale means: Matthew initially uses "flaming hot" to mean strong agreement.
Long-distance relationships fail more from fantasy than from distance. Flaming hot take. Matthew agrees: we often blame distance when the two people weren't compatible in the first place.
Voice notes are more intimate than video calls. Hot take. Matthew doesn't really use voice notes and prefers writing romantic messages, while Stephen likes them and jokes that this is more of an anxious than an avoidant trait. Stephen compares a nice voice note to someone whispering in your ear.
A surprise visit is more of a hassle than a joy. Cold as ice. Matthew has twice flown back to surprise Audrey. Once was for her birthday. The other time, Matthew called her while walking through London, suggested they get a matcha crepe cake they both love and have a night in, waited for her to say how much she'd love that, then knocked on her door. She "lost her mind." Stephen admits to worrying that a surprise could blow up someone's plans for the week. Matthew clarifies that they did this in a committed relationship and would consider it very risky while still getting to know someone.
The partner whose life is more portable should usually travel more. Hot take, with a caveat. Matthew says it's fine for the more mobile person to travel more, but circumstances can't justify a one-sided relationship where the other person never visits or meets halfway. It can't always be convenient for one of you and inconvenient for the other.
Sending sexy texts is more important in long distance. Flaming hot take. Matthew warns against sending anything you'd regret being on someone's phone if things ended tomorrow, but argues that you can't park the sexual side of a relationship for weeks or months. Phone sex, sexy calls, something has to happen. The only way long distance works over time, Matthew says, is to recreate as many normal elements of a relationship as possible. Otherwise resentment builds and part of you isn't being fed, and it can't simply be a friendship until the next visit in three months. Matthew is fine with this being scheduled or spontaneous.
It's easier to maintain a long-distance relationship when you're older. Hot take. Matthew explains that when you're young you're motivated "in a crazy way," willing to fly to Madagascar for someone. The consistency a solid long-term relationship requires, though, comes more easily when you're older and more intentional and have the patience not to seek someone else just because the next visit is two months away. If you're being intentional, Matthew concludes, you have the patience for a relationship with obstacles. That is where the episode's argument lands: long distance is not a problem in itself, but it deserves a deliberate choice about whether it is worth feeding at all.
What's up, guys? Welcome back to the podcast. Today we do an extended episode on long-distance relationships. We did one of these recently. You guys loved it. You asked for more. So now we are digging deeper into the nuances of what kinds of long-distance relationships you should be invested in and what types you shouldn't. We also talk about a very big thing that's just happened in my life. We'll get to that. And we answer a love lifeline question from somebody who is struggling with the hurt from a relationship she just had and wondering how she can get back out there and date without being guarded. All of this coming up and more. Enjoy this brand spanking new episode of the Love Life Podcast.
Well, hello.
Hello, brother.
We're back after an eventful few weeks. Possibly the most eventful few weeks of my life, I think.
You're a changed man. May I say you are glowing. And why are you glowing?
It's funny you say that, Stephen, because I have an intimate coaching group, as you know, called Club 320. And after two weeks of being off, I came back and the first comment that was made by one of them was, "You look tired." So your glowing reference is not shared by everybody, I have to say.
An internal glow.
That's true.
And for new listeners, why might you be glowing? What happened in the last two weeks?
Well, for the last nine months, Audrey has been making a baby, and that baby arrived a couple of weeks ago.
He did. I came to the hospital in Hollywood. Our first Hollywood baby. We've come a long way.
It was really surreal because you don't know what hospital room they're going to give you. They literally will say some of them have a window, some of them don't. It's not quite first come, first served because people are having birth around the clock, all day, every day, but it's kind of what's available when you arrive. And I just thought, well, it doesn't really matter. Hope for the best. We'll see. It was not the forefront of your mind, like what sort of room will we get in the hospital, in the middle of we're about to have a baby.
But it turns out they gave us a room that was overlooking the Hollywood Hills, and you could see the Hollywood sign in the framing of the window that we were in. And I just thought, what a strange life, having grown up first in London and then in Essex, England, to be sat here next to my wife who's giving birth in front of the Hollywood sign. I'm exaggerating slightly, but not really. It was kind of extraordinary. So that child is now half English, half French, and he's an American because he was born on American soil.
Yes. Yeah. Weird. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the fact that if we stay in America, he will eventually have an American accent. And I say that as no shade to the American accent. It's a very weird concept to have a child who doesn't sound like you. I don't know. It's very, very strange.
Yeah. And so everyone's wondering, what are the first two weeks like? And don't worry, everyone, we've got topics today. We won't be so indulgent here, but what are the first two weeks like? Some people give horror stories. People like to propagandize. Is it overwhelming? Is it just fun? Is it a disruption?
It is a disruption. I mean, I should let Audrey—Audrey should...
Your wife's not here, so you could say anything you want. We don't know.
I definitely can't. It's been really, really surreal. I didn't know how it would hit me. I suspected, as you know, Stephen, I'm a sensitive human being.
Very much so.
I'm an emotional human being, but I didn't know how quickly I would connect to this experience, to our son. And you hear stories from men who say—it's quite a regular thing that men say—"It took me a while to connect." Some say weeks, some say months. Many say it seems it's at the moment where the baby starts giving you something back, which I always think is hilariously—I don't know. It's not good commentary on men, is it? When it's like, "I didn't really feel connected until the baby started giving me something."
There was a wonderful interview with the most old-fashioned man in the world, Evelyn Waugh, who was a famous English writer from a very old generation in Britain. And they asked him about his children and that, and he said, "Well, I don't have much to do with them when they're young infants, of course, but when they're capable of speech and reason, I associate with them."
Yeah.
And that was his view.
I find that awful. Surely the experience of having a child is, for the first time maybe ever, it just is not about me. I get to be in service of another human being. I get to show up for another human being completely unselfishly like that. Holding a child and looking at them and going, my life is no longer—and look, many of us, I'm not one of these people. I really take offense to the notion that some people talk about, which is that you can't truly be unselfish until you have a child. That ultimately your life is one big selfish adventure until you have a child. I find that an offensive concept.
It's offensive to people who cannot have a child. It's offensive to people who have lived lives of responsibility and shouldered extraordinary challenges and burdens and taken care of elderly parents, taken care of siblings, had extraordinary amounts of pressure in their life and taken care of people. The idea that unless you biologically are raising a child, you don't understand what it is to be unselfish—I really, really take offense to that idea. So you will not hear that idea from me. But it does strike me that a child is one of those moments in life where you get to enjoy the fact that it isn't about you.
You get to just look at this thing and say, "I'm here for you." And to suggest that you're not really into it until the child starts giving you a bit of personality is counter to the whole experience that's on offer.
Also, they're adorable. He's adorable.
Yeah, he already has personality. A friend of mine, John, said people don't talk enough about how funny they are, right? They talk about how cute they are, but how funny they are. He cracks us up all the time. Little stupid faces and little expressions. You project so much onto those expressions that they probably aren't feeling, but they look like they're having all of these very adult emotions from the way they look.
And it's been amazing. I have not had any trouble. I was so pleasantly surprised and relieved to find that I connect. I instantly felt this overwhelming sense of love. And I know not everyone feels that. Men and women, by the way, not just men. Not everyone feels that, and for all sorts of different reasons that deserve an incredible amount of compassion. But I was personally very relieved to instantly connect to the whole experience.
And the things that I've been scared of my whole life, like adding this huge responsibility to a life where I already felt a lot of responsibility, was really, really scary to me. The relentless nature of it was really scary to me. I looked after friends' dogs for a weekend.
Oh God.
And by the end of day one, I was like, "Oh my God, this is nonstop." Wherever you are, there's still a pet to be looked after. There's still a dog that needs the next thing it needs. And I sort of projected that experience onto—I was like, imagine then having a child and it never ends. And of course it does never end, but the thing I didn't anticipate is how much I wouldn't mind. And so my greatest fears were alleviated in that sense.
But the big fear is, the thing I don't think I saw coming in quite as profound a way as it has, is this overwhelming love that is exhausting because now I feel vulnerable. I feel so vulnerable to life and the world, and that there's this little person that now I have to take outside at some point, and they have to be in the world, and that's sort of terrifying. And this is my anxiety coming out, but my heart's breaking for all of the ways it's going to break in the future over getting hurt that he's hurt or worrying about him or whatever. And I'm going to have to do a lot of work to manage all.
I already have a vision of you and Audrey as quite protective parents. But I did see you were totally in love the moment I went in the hospital, and you even said, "I missed him when I went to the bathroom." And I could see there was a notable shift the day he came, even compared to up to the pregnancy.
I miss him now. I miss him now. Honestly, one of the hardest parts about this is that I now have to do my life. And in some ways I hope this part gets—I'm sure it will get easier. But right now, I'm two weeks into this experience and I've, quote, gone back to work, but that's really, really hard.
I feel like I'm missing out right now, and that tomorrow he'll be a day older, and that will keep happening, and you keep adding days, and I can't reverse it. I can't go back to how he was a week ago. So I'm having to dig deep for my why to do things right now because I want to be spending every minute just staring at this little person.
Well, that is wonderful, and I'm very, very happy to be an uncle, and I love the little guy already. He's absolutely wonderful. So one thing is for sure, you couldn't do long distance with that boy. And that's going to be an awkward segue because we're going to talk about long distance.
What you could have done as a segue is, "And let's not forget that the only reason that little boy exists in the first place is because of a long-distance relationship."
That would have been better.
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So we are going to be talking about long distance today. Before we do that, I want to get into some comments from people on some recent episodes, one of them being on long distance. Blue Skies says, "I have had nice connections with people I met through social media. Very nice guys. We eventually meet and we realize the distance isn't a problem, as I get on well with fellow communicators. It's that in person, the spark just doesn't translate to a relationship."
Yeah. That's one of the difficult things about even just meeting someone online. One of the challenging things is that you can be texting with someone, feel like there's chemistry, and then you meet in person for the first time and feel nothing.
Yeah. Don't spend ages online. Get to the damn meeting.
Yeah. Which is harder with long distance, and that's part of the issue. So at the very least, get on FaceTime to see if you feel something through FaceTime in the absence of an in-person meeting.
Finding Home with Reginine—these are all on YouTube—says, "I think it makes a big difference if you met face to face first rather than texting and calling after meeting on a dating app. The two of you created a bond meeting organically."
Yeah. Look, I've always said the problem with meeting online is that when we meet someone after having met them on a dating app, we're meeting up with them to see if there's chemistry. When we meet someone in the course of our everyday life and then we choose to see them again, we're seeing them again because we already feel chemistry. So you've already kind of shortcut that phase by meeting someone in real life.
Psych Wealth said, "What Matthew said about fits and starts is powerful. Intermittent affection is the emotional equivalent of variable rewards, the same loop that keeps people addicted. Once you see that, you stop chasing texts and start valuing peace."
Yeah, that idea of someone being super affectionate, having an amazing time with you when you see them, which, of course, by the way, in long distance, one of the key hallmarks of a long-distance situationship or relationship is that you meet up with someone, you have this honeymoon of a week together or a weekend, and then you're apart. And often people find that the communication then falls off when they're not with that person anymore.
But the variable rewards of, "It was amazing, and I'm living for the next time that it's going to be amazing with them," is what keeps us in it. It's just a very dangerous thing to stick around for because that slot machine of it being great, like an amazing high sometimes, keeps you addicted while offering you none of the true benefits of a consistent relationship.
The Golden Angel says, "I was in a happy long-distance relationship for about seven years. We would talk every day, visit every second or third month, spend holidays and all that. Then we finally decided to move in together. It didn't take long before I realized that he was not the person at all that he had been for those seven years. He didn't want to do education, didn't want to work. He just wanted to walk around at home in a robe all day, living off my money, and demand fancy clothes and dining. He was never actually the person I thought he was. And that's where it ended."
He wanted to be some kind of kept prince.
Yeah. Sauntering around in a robe and demanding fine clothes. Some sort of titled Big Lebowski.
I wonder, is the robe included in the fine clothes? Did you get him a really fancy robe?
Or did he bring the robe?
Yeah, maybe that's how he set the precedent. He's like, "This is..."
It's so tragic and sad, the idea that you can talk to someone for seven years and never really know what they're like in their day-to-day life.
Danger if you haven't tested it.
Yeah. Someone said here, this was an interesting comment: "I took Matt's advice once at a very stressful point in my life. He was stridently telling people to walk away now if a relationship doesn't suit you. So I did. That video no longer exists. Worst idea"
Ever. It was a long-distance relationship. Five years later, he still lives in my head.
I don't know, firstly, why that video doesn't exist anymore. I still agree with that advice that you should walk away from a relationship if it doesn't suit you. To me, there's something very dangerous about thinking that you've made a giant mistake if five years later someone still lives in your head.
I've got people who have lived in my head for years who have wronged me, and they live in my head because it took me a long time to get over the ways that that person had wronged me. That doesn't mean that that person should be my friend.
Yeah.
So the idea that someone's still in our head romantically five years later means we made a mistake by walking away, it's actually a bit of a dangerous conclusion to come to. In the world of limerence, that obsessive attraction with someone that we can't let go of, even if that person has never reciprocated in any major way or is wildly incompatible with us, even if nothing's going to happen, is evidence of the fact that someone can live in our head who is not right for us.
We have to be extremely careful with thinking that because we still think about someone, that must mean that they were the right person. What it can mean is we've constructed an extremely elaborate fantasy scenario in our mind that makes them into the right person, and it becomes a kind of self-inflicted pain.
Stephen, this one is aimed at you. This person's really taken fire here. Ted Talks Rock says—I like their username—Ted Talks Rock says, "This is very funny because they aren't addressing the elephant in the room." And Stephen, the elephant in the room has to do with you, which is, "Stephen has avoidant written all over him." I think you've publicly said you relate more to...
Yeah, they can't credit themselves with a good read on me. I've said that.
"I'm certain long distance feels effing perfect to him."
Wow.
"Lol. Long distance is the avoidant's playground. Avoidants absolutely love deep talks about theoretical possibilities while establishing separate, distant lives and planning fun trips, but absolutely no real future living in the same location."
Now, this is an interesting part because someone has followed up on that comment whose name is Rejection Is Protection 4448, who says, "Long-distance relationships run in the Hussey family." It seems as if there's some sort of conspiracy here.
As well, if they're lumping you in there, you ended up married to your long-distance relationship.
Yeah. And I can tell you she's not very long distance anymore. She's next door.
Let me say emphatically, it's not a playground for—I would much rather my girlfriend be here right now, all the time. I would not choose, "Yeah, I'll only see you every couple of months."
No, but what she means is, and this is true, it is highly common for avoidants to enjoy long-distance relationships because they never actually have to commit. They never actually have to prove that they're willing to have a genuine relationship with someone and an intimate relationship with someone. And the implication, or the assertion here, is that I suppose you have no desire to actually fix the distance part in your relationship, that this is a sort of elaborate long con.
That's very false. We're both doing everything we can to try and figure that out.
I know that, Stephen, but Ted Talks Rock doesn't. So I just wanted to clear the air on it. Peace and Love 462 says, "Please do a part two of long distance," the subject of long distance. You're welcome. That's what we're doing here today. Slowown Studio says, "Great conversation. Would love to hear more like this. Also, we want Audrey AI." Well, maybe one day you'll have Audrey AI.
Maybe.
She says a lot of very, very wise things. So I understand the desire for it. Let's get on to some thoughts we've been having about long distance because we wanted to elaborate on that episode we did on long-distance relationships.
We had a chat recently on the podcast about long distance, and we asked people, "Do you want a part two?" And many people said they do. It's just always amazed me ever since we started doing dating advice, full stop. Long distance was always a huge topic, and that always surprised me. But I guess it's just a situation so many people find themselves with, is falling in love with someone who isn't in the right place.
But it makes sense, right? How many people meet online these days? And one of the ways to expand your options is to just increase the radius that you're willing to meet people within geographically. And sometimes you do that literally on dating apps. You can literally set your radius to a wider field.
But it also is just the case that when we're meeting people on social media or online in forums or groups or wherever it may be, you have no idea where that person is, and you spark up a little connection. You have a little moment with someone. There's an initial attraction, and you get speaking to someone, and it's almost like spinning the roulette wheel to be like, "Where's this one gonna turn out to be?" You have no idea. And there's something exciting about that, kind of. And there's also something a bit scary about that because you're like, "Oh God, this person I'm having a good conversation with, where are they going to be?"
And then they tell you they're in Australia, and you're like, "Oh my God, why?" And of course the danger of it is also that it can add to the romance. The moment you go, "Oh my God, they're in Australia. Why does this keep happening to me?" And there is something immediately sort of compelling, even in a painful way. There's something compelling about the fact that that person is so far away, and all of a sudden we have this very romantic obstacle that, if only it weren't for them being hours away or on a different time zone, this could have been it. And you kind of get to say that before it's ever reasonable.
Yeah.
To say that.
Yeah. And strangely, you get to be a version of yourself that is a bit, in a way, more relaxed. When you've already in your mind gone, "Oh, this probably can't work," for a lot of us, a more playful, more relaxed version of ourselves comes out. For the same reason, by the way, a lot of people end up in these emotional affairs with married people. Why does that happen? Or physical affairs, of course, in some cases, but why does that happen? Because as soon as you hear someone's married, you're like, "Oh, I can be myself. It's off. Nothing can happen here."
Yeah.
So now all of a sudden, and sometimes that's true for the married person as well, which is worse and dangerous and all of that, but, "Oh, I can be—nothing's going to happen here." So you start being a bit more goofy. You are much more open and warm because it's all with this pretext of nothing can happen. And in a lot of long-distance situations, that pretext of, "Well, it's never going to work out anyway," is what counterintuitively and somewhat tragically for us emotionally actually makes us lean in in a much more authentic way.
Mhm. And then all of a sudden, surprise, surprise, a connection gets built.
Yeah.
The thing that—and I know we're going to answer people's questions around this today. We'll read some comments. We'll dig a bit deeper into it. But there's an idea that I want to introduce here that I want people to consider that I don't think is talked about nearly enough in the world of love and dating. And that is, when is it appropriate? When is it wise to stop yourself from falling in love?
There is so much focus on finding love, and there's very little focus on the skill of restraint when it comes to seeing a situation in which you could fall. You could engage and turn this into an emotional connection, and for all of the right reasons, you decide not to.
And I won't go into this in any detail because it's too personal. It's not that it amounted to anything anyway, but it's just an interesting example. When I was single, I would speak to people who were sort of geographically very spread out. Obviously social media and online made that possible, but what made it feel not completely unreasonable is that I had a life where I was traveling a lot. You and I, by the nature of the fact that we have family in England and we're here in America, we travel a lot just going back and forth from home.
Yeah.
But I was also touring, and I was in different cities, and it would never be too long before I was in New York again, even though I didn't live there.
Yeah.
If someone happened to be in a different part of America or sometimes even Europe or Australia, it's like, I might actually see you. And so I was fairly open-minded in times in my life where I was like, "I want to find love." I was fairly open-minded about where that could come from. But I would argue in some ways I was a little too open-minded because what happened was I could get talking to people in all sorts of places that really were hard to make work.
And I remember a time when I started speaking to someone who was in a place where I never went. They never came to where I lived, and it was almost impossible for people from this particular place to get visas for the United States. Add to that, by the way, that it's not like I had the most amazing connection in the world with this person. There was an attraction, but beyond that we didn't get on so well. Add to that, this person was a smoker, and that wasn't something that appealed to me.
Mhm.
And you start looking at it and going, "I have a choice to make here. I can continue to get invested in this. And if I do, if I show this situation more love and more investment, I will become more into this person." I don't know if we call that physics or biology, I suppose biology, but there is a biology to that. If I just...
Yeah.
If I just invest more...
The bonding hormones.
Yeah. Of course we're going to find more areas of commonality. Of course. The fact that this person was a smoker didn't rule—I don't believe that if I had met the perfect person two streets away in Los Angeles and they smoked, that there's no way it could have worked.
Sure. That person might decide that smoking is not as important to them anymore at this stage in life. They might stop smoking, whatever. So this isn't a commentary on, "I would never, ever have dated a smoker."
Yeah.
It's a commentary on the fact that that was one more thing that made us not compatible in a situation where we were already, by sheer dint of where we both lived, wildly incompatible. And it takes an extraordinary amount of compatibility and will and shared vision and one person being excited to move. Both people don't need to be excited to move, but one of you has to be excited or willing to move. And on top of excited and willing, able to move and not locked into a job that keeps them where they are now and will not at any point in the next 10 or 20 years offer them any prospects in a different country.
And in the case I'm talking about, capable realistically of getting a visa that would allow them to move, or you being willing to go there. And it had none of those things. If I was being honest with myself then, what I would have said is, "This person's lovely." What I'm saying is no commentary on this human being. This person's lovely. They have so much to offer. But what is it that is drawing me to this situation and this person right now?
There's an attraction, and it's also taking me out of my own painful feelings right now because my own painful feelings are that I feel lonely at times. I want to find love, and right now it's proving more difficult than I'd hoped. I really would love to meet someone, and this person, there's at least an attraction.
And by the way, if we were really psychoanalyzing me, we might say, and on top of that there's an avoidance streak in me that enjoys the fact that there is a barrier here. Why can't I find someone like that that I'm attracted to down the street? What's going on there, right? So there's that side of it too. But there's nothing wrong with having a situation in which there's an obstacle like long distance. But is the fact that there's an obstacle the most exciting thing about this situation? If I'm really honest with myself, is that the thing that's making this interesting?
Because if I remove the obstacle and this person's down the street, am I really saying to myself, "This person who there's an attraction with, but it's not like we have so much in common, and they're a smoker"—am I scratching my head going, "Should I keep going with this person or not?" Or am I immediately saying, "Probably not," right? But because there's distance, I get to focus on the distance as the obstacle instead of the lack of compatibility.
Yeah. Well, it pushes that issue further down the line and gives you a reason to keep going and keep addicted to that person. So is your point that people need more—well, you said about restraint, having some self-awareness of saying, "Is this worth me throwing my heart out?"
I've not always done what I'm about to say, but in that situation, I made a very conscious decision that this isn't a good idea for my heart, their heart, my energy, my goals. If I mean it when I say I want to meet someone, then this is going to take up time and energy in the wrong direction and in a direction that I don't think I'm willing to make a bet on.
And of course, I'm not someone who says it's always a bad bet to go long distance. My relationship with Audrey started long distance, but it also started long distance where she was in England and I was in LA. And a visit to Audrey also meant a visit to family.
Mhm.
A visit to family meant a visit to Audrey. It wasn't a crazy bet.
Yeah. And I did in that scenario exercise real restraint in saying, "Yes, I know that I could get more attached to this person if we kept speaking for hours on end, but to what end?" And that restraint is something that's very hard to practice. And I think this is, in some ways, the elephant in the room. It's extremely hard to practice that restraint of, "I'm going to choose not to fall in love. I'm going to choose not to fall for this person."
Love is a choice. Falling in love is something that happens. Don't get me wrong, that's an involuntary thing when we fall in love. But it's a choice to the extent that we can decide whether to feed that.
I agree. And I chose not to feed that because I said, "I know myself. I know if I keep talking to someone, every minute on the clock is getting me more connected," right? In the same way that every diaper change—it's a weird analogy—but every diaper change gets me more connected to my son.
In a very messy way.
Right? But it's investment. I'm investing. I'm investing with every act, with every bit of time and energy that I put into it, which is why I think it's so important, by the way, for men to invest, is because you'll get more connected the more you invest. And the same is true in romantic relationships, but you can choose not to invest. And by choosing not to invest but to divest, you are limiting your capacity to fall.
And I think we have to start exercising incredible restraint in long-distance situations because of how costly they are. They're costly time-wise. They're costly financially. They are costly because you don't
Necessarily know until you're together full-time whether it's really going to work. So you can do a long-distance relationship for five years and everything feels like it's progressing and it's exciting and it's fun, and then you finally move in together and you're in the same place, and all of a sudden you realize when you're in the same place it doesn't work. So they're extremely high-stakes situations a lot of the time because of how much time and energy they take.
I think we do need to start being a lot more discerning about where we show restraint, where I say, yes, I am attracted to this person, and I'm not going to put any more time and energy into it.
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I kind of have a cautionary personal tale to confirm this. I once had a long relationship with someone who I met on Chatroulette. Do you remember that? Yeah. Site. Yeah. So one night I was just scrolling and I met someone on there, and I think what you're talking about really rings true to me here because this was kind of a disaster.
But I started off by letting the desire to find someone in a time where I was really working on myself and I wanted to see results. So I let this Chatroulette thing be a sign, like, oh, it's true serendipity that has brought me here. And that led to a long-distance relationship via Skype for six months where exactly what you're saying happened. The investment kept going and I really didn't know this person.
First investment was, hey, let's take this from Chatroulette, which I guess there's nothing inherently wrong with, but I think most people would be like, hmm, it's an interesting place to make your relationship choice. So that was the first thing. And then that level of investment over six months, when we finally met, I knew at that time when we finally met that it wasn't ever going to work. But because there was all of this investment, I deluded myself into thinking that it should and that it could. And that ended up wasting her time a lot. She moved to where I was, and it just was not a personality fit.
Yeah.
And it was a large amount of investment on my end, a large investment on her end, kind of for naught because I think we both didn't have that restraint that you were just talking about.
And I think you kind of have to have—I mean, maybe you don't have to, but I think that for many of us it's unavoidable that we're going to do that at some point in our lives. We are going to invest a huge amount of energy and effort in the wrong direction, and we'll either really hurt ourselves in the process or we will really hurt someone else in the process, or both. I do think there is a kind of inevitability to having to learn some of those lessons the hard way.
The question is, at a time in our lives—and I know so many people listen to this podcast who have reached a juncture in their life where they are now at least wanting to be highly intentional about the way they spend their limited time and energy and the way they give their hearts and who to. And when you're at that place, all of a sudden these things become highly, highly relevant.
It's not, I'm 22 and I just met someone who lives in Colombia and screw it. I've got no other reason to go to Colombia but this person. I don't even have the money to be flying there every three months. But what an adventure, and let's see where it goes. And oh no, I'm now six months in and I'm completely in love with this person who can't move, and I can't move, and a year in we're now all getting our hearts broken because it has to end or someone cheated or whatever.
It's like you do those things and you kind of look back on those things and often you don't regret them. You just go, that was an adventure. Now the pain has subsided, what an adventure. But at a certain point, they become adventures at a really high cost.
And I think that invitation to everyone who's being intentional to say, "Look, you've probably made some mistakes in this area already. You may not regret them. You may see them as wonderful adventures in your life, but would it be such an adventure now? Or would the pain of not showing restraint and getting yourself into another very, very intense, painful, and ultimately dead-end situation far outweigh the adventure and the romance of it all?"
Well, this podcast's taken a more sober tone on long distance than I thought, Matthew.
What playful, jovial direction were you going to go in?
No, but you do make a good point. I had a Love Life caller today on our Q&A in Love Life, and she was talking about how she had met a great guy in New York, a couple of months in. They had actually—she went to Dubai and he had diverted some of his plans to come and spend four or five days with her in Dubai. Now he was going to go away for two months to somewhere far away. She was basically saying, should I now say, I want to talk about what this is because two months is a long time for someone to be gone and I'm on hold.
Right.
And he's also said, come out and come for a week. And the word of caution I gave on that is, him saying come out doesn't necessarily—it's great he's come to see you in Dubai and you had a great time. Now is almost the perfect window to discuss what this is because you have a reason, and not discussing it now means putting your life on hold for two months and building the fantasy even more.
Yeah.
Or going on a romantic trip. I went and saw him for a week and then we didn't know what it was. So yeah, I think that's very, very good advice you gave.
So we have a Love Lifeline question from someone called Seleni. Why don't you do the honors, Stephen?
We did indeed. Seleni very formally says, "Hello, Matthew Hussey. I've always believed in loving with my whole heart, but my last relationship made me wonder if that's what keeps breaking it. I've been following your advice for a while, and your words have often felt like the friend I needed when I couldn't see my own worth.
Earlier this year, I ended an eight-month relationship with someone who lived in another country. We didn't get much quality time together because of his busy schedule, but I still made the effort to connect with him, show love, and be present. I even planned a trip from Bali to India just to see him. While I was there, I felt lonely most of the time. Even when he was home, he was constantly busy with work calls. And when I tried to have conversations, I often felt dismissed or unheard.
I still tried to make things special. I hid little letters of encouragement around his home, but he never acknowledged them. He would dismiss the little things I do for him. During that trip, I also found out he was still talking to his ex. And from the way he spoke about her, I felt he still had feelings for her. Before I even left India, he broke up with me to my face, saying, 'I can't give you what you want.' Later, I discovered he had also been on dating apps while we were together.
The whole experience has left me questioning my worth and my judgment. Now, a couple of months later, I'm talking to someone new. I'm not expecting anything, but I notice I feel nervous. I'm scared to repeat my mistakes of giving too much too soon and losing myself in the process. How do I approach new connections with hope and warmth while still protecting my heart? And how do I know when my guard is healthy versus when it's blocking love?"
Yeah, it's a great question, Seleni. These experiences don't have to harden us. They can actually really guide us to what's important to us and what we actually want. In that situation, there were certain things along the way that you may look back now and go, oh, I ignored that. Even the fact that I went to see him, which takes some effort. You went out of your way at some cost to be in the same place as him, and he was, I think she said, on his laptop the whole time working.
Well, this is someone who's showing you very clearly what kind of time and attention they're capable of giving to a relationship. And it's okay to be with an ambitious person who's got some big responsibilities so long as you also feel like you are a priority, and you clearly were not a priority to this person.
And she said something else that stuck out to me, that he said, "I can't give you what you want." That's important. He's telling you he couldn't give you what you want. You said, "I tried to make things special. I hid little letters of encouragement around his home, but he never acknowledged them. He would dismiss the little things I do for him." That's potentially both a compatibility issue and an issue of someone not prioritizing a relationship at this point in their life.
The compatibility issue is this person doesn't actually appreciate or connect to the little things. You're going out of your way for this person and they're not connecting with it. They're not there for it. They're showing you, I connect to my work, to my goals, to my ambitions. I am not connected to the love that is available to me in my life. And you don't want to be with someone who's not connected to the love that's available to them in their life, who doesn't value the love that's available to them in their life.
And by the way, I relate to that. I relate to a period of my life where I was not only insanely busy. I'm still a busy person today, but the difference is back then I was both busy and not connected to the value of the love that was being offered to me. And that's not like I was—you know me, Stephen. I've always been close to family. I've always prioritized family, but there's a difference between, let's say, family being important to you and people in your life sending you a beautiful message or telling you that they're thinking of you and really connecting to the value of that, of really saying, "Wow, I'm so grateful for the love that I have in my life."
There's a great clip with Anthony Bourdain and—oh, I always forget his name. One of the old rockers.
Oh, Iggy Pop.
Iggy Pop was on an episode of Parts Unknown. And they were both having a glass of white wine in a restaurant in Miami. I think it was in the Miami episode. And there's a moment where Bourdain's joking about the fact that their only tilt towards hedonism is now the two of them in a restaurant drinking a glass of white wine together. And gone are the days of going out and doing a ton of drugs. And he asks Iggy Pop, "What are you grateful for today?" And Iggy Pop says, "Oh man, it's so corny and embarrassing, but just appreciating the moments of love that the people in my life give to me."
And it was so—this was not an answer that he gave to sound good. To me, it really registered as a hard-won conclusion that he had come to, that what really mattered to him in life were those moments of connection between the people he loved and him, and the ways that people loved him. And he looked like a human being who had become very connected to the value of that in his life. And I'm sure there was a time in his life where he was not connected to the value of that, where that was the last thing on his mind.
The reason I'm saying that is because, Seleni, you're dealing with a guy who can't appreciate right now what you have to offer. He's not connected to it. He's not connected to the value. Forget you. This isn't personal. He's not connected to the value of probably what anyone who loves him has to offer him in his life. He might get attracted to someone very shiny and who represents status or popularity or something that he thinks he needs in his life, but I promise you, he's not connected to the value of the little things that people do for him in his life right now, of the ways that they're willing to show up.
So it's actually appropriate for you to be a little more guarded in some ways. It's appropriate for you to go back out there into dating and to recognize that you should be putting a value on those things yourself. And if you really value those things that you have to give, you will be on the lookout for other people who value them too. And when you sense that you're around someone who's valuing the wrong things, valuing things that are not valuable to you, they're just valuing success or money or status or how far they're going and how fast they're getting there.
When you start to pick up on the cues that someone's values are very different from yours, you won't think, "How do I impress this person or how do I get this person?" You'll think, "I don't want to give any more time to this person. I don't want to give what's valuable to this person who can't see what's valuable. In fact, I even find myself somewhat turned off by the fact that this person doesn't value it. It's not just prudent for me to pull away. I'm actually pulling away because I don't find this attractive. He is not my people. This is not the kind of human being that I want to be around. This person thinks differently than I do. They value different things in life than I value."
So now it's not that you're going into your love life as a closed person. It's that you're going into the rest of your love life as someone who values those things that you have to give, but also values the kind of person that values them. And when you come across people who don't value them, you won't be scared, you'll be turned off. And that's the progression from where you are now. Take this as a wonderful progression as opposed to a reason to be afraid of love. But thank you for writing in. Really appreciate the question. Wonderful question. Thank you for your vulnerability.
It's that time again. It's Steve. Don't be bereaved. You know that we can't live without another episode of Steve Sleeves.
Welcome to Steve Sleeves, everyone. Without Audrey today, who you know is usually good banter on Steve Sleeves. So you're going to have to make up for her.
Don't start. It's so negative. It's like, well, normally we have Audrey, stuck with you.
Usually one of you is more critical than the others, but we'll see how this plays. So we're going to do long-distance hot-o-meter.
Okay.
I'm going to give you some hot takes.
Do I need a pen and paper?
Not necessary.
I would like to have a pen and paper, Steve.
You're going to tell me if this is a hot take, a flaming hot take, or cold as ice.
Okay.
You going to write those down?
I will see.
Long-distance relationships fail more from fantasy than from distance.
They fail more from fantasy.
Yeah. They fail more from some kind of false fantasy than the actual distance themselves.
Flaming hot take.
Hot take.
Flaming hot take.
In that you don't agree.
No. Surely that's—I agree.
Oh, okay. Great. We'll figure it out as we go.
So, you don't know what the scale means.
Flaming hot take. Yeah. We so often think it's the distance, and we just weren't compatible with that person in the first place.
Okay. Voice notes are more intimate than video calls.
I'm going to say hot take.
There is something intimate about voice notes.
Yeah. I don't really do them. But you're more into it, aren't you?
Yeah. It's more of an anxious than an avoidant thing.
Right. Right. But we do a lot of video calls. But yeah, the voice notes.
You don't have time for it.
It sounds like they're too intimate, too.
I'm a writer. I like to write romantic things.
Well, it's like nice voice notes, like someone whispering in your ear.
Okay, I'll keep that in mind. A surprise visit is more of a hassle than a joy.
Cold as ice.
No, imagine you're in the thick of everything.
You're doing nothing for your avoidant reputation here.
Yeah. No, no, I just—
I've been the one who twice I flew back and surprised Audrey.
Did it go great?
What? Of course it went great. Imagine me getting off the plane and her going, "Oh, I had yoga."
Well, no. That's the thing. I always think it would be awesome to do it and to get the good reaction. You just do wonder, what if someone's whole week is out the window? They're like, "Oh, well, I had all these things I was doing."
Right. Firstly, you don't do this with—
I'm worrying as the person who would go and surprise. You're like, is that going to be a massive disruption?
Well, we were in a committed relationship at the time I did it. I wouldn't do it if you're just dating someone and getting to know them, because that is really, really risky. But we were in a committed relationship, and I flew back once for her birthday, and I flew back another time, and I joked. I was walking down the street. She didn't know I was in town. She thought I was in LA. She was in London. I was walking down the street, and I was roleplaying, going, "We should get out."
There's a cake in London, a matcha crepe cake, that we both love. I was walking. I was like, "Oh, we should have a night in and get the matcha crepe cake tonight." And she was like, "Haha, yeah, we should. That would be so nice. Oh my God, I want that so badly." And then by the time she said that, I was at her door, and I went ding, ding, ding, knocked on the door, and I was like, "Well, let's do it." And she was like, "What?" She just lost her mind.
Oh, that's really good.
Yeah.
It would be wonderful. Maybe that's my own issue. Maybe I've just got to throw myself in and find out.
So that one's cold as ice.
Okay. Cold as ice. One partner usually should travel more if their life is more portable.
One partner should travel more if their life is more portable. Yeah, I would say hot take, with the caveat that it cannot be the reason for a really one-sided relationship. So, it is okay if you're the one who can travel more to travel more, but that can't be a reason they never travel to see you or they never meet you halfway. There has to be a give and take. You can't use circumstances as a reason for the relationship to always be convenient for them and always be inconvenient for you.
Sending sexy texts is more important in a long distance.
Flaming, by definition, flaming hot take.
Right? You should be sexing it up more.
Well, don't send anything that you would regret if it ended. Don't send pictures that you wish wouldn't be on someone's phone if it ended tomorrow. But a little bit of sex talk, I'm all for it.
Yeah.
Whether it's a sexy phone call—why am I blanking on what the—phone sex. I was blanking on what the phrase was for having sex over the phone. Imagine that. Phone sex makes sense.
I think that's great. I think you should have phone sex, or you should have—you've got to do something. You can't park the sexual element of the relationship for weeks or months on end. You just can't. The only way a long-distance relationship works over a period of time is if you try to—I don't know if simulate's the right word—but you create as many of those normal elements of a relationship as possible, because otherwise you become resentful, and you feel like a part of you is just not being fed in this relationship. It can't be a friendship until we see each other three months from now.
And is it scheduled in, or is it just happening?
I'm okay with both.
Yeah.
You might be a bit overwhelmed by surprise.
No, I'm spontaneous.
You might be like, "I've got a busy week going on. You're just showing up out of nowhere with these sexy texts. I've got files on my desk I'm trying to deal with."
No, I'm always ready to make time for that. That's never been a problem.
Or blend your priorities.
It's easier to maintain a long-distance relationship as you get older than it is when you're younger.
Well, that's probably a hot take. I was going to say that's probably true, but then I remembered the vernacular of this particular Steve Sleeves.
The arbitrary vernacular. Yes.
I would say that's a hot take because, when you're young, you're sort of motivated in a crazy way. You're like, "Yeah, I'll fly to Madagascar for this person. Let's do it." But I think that in terms of the consistency required to actually have a solid long-term relationship—
Yeah.
When you're older and you're being more intentional, and you have the patience that you don't need to go and hook up this week just because you're like, "I'm not going to wait two months to see another person," or whatever. I think if you're being intentional, you have the patience for a relationship that has obstacles.
All right. Well, we had a lot of spicy takes there. We were hotter than we were colder. Thank you very much for playing Steve Sleeves.
Is that from somewhere, or is that just from this?
No, you started it.
It's just a game show sort of ditty.
Yeah.
That's great. I love that.
Well, it's really Stephen's. I've just sort of come to see it as an—as—
Yeah, I've got the rights to that piece of music.
Well, thank you, everybody, for listening. If you watched it on YouTube, thank you. We now have our own dedicated channel for the podcast. So, if you want to just listen or watch our podcast episodes, they're all going to be on Love Life Podcast, the channel on YouTube. Go subscribe to it. And thank you, as always, for listening to the show. Don't forget to email us, podcast@matthewhussey.com, and we'll see you soon.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you for listening, everybody, to another episode of Love Life. And look, whether you're in a long-distance relationship or not, one of the great perils of relationships these days is being stuck in one that isn't actually going anywhere or that threatens to waste months or years of our time without ever resulting in a real commitment.
I cannot emphasize enough, you have to go and take this free masterclass, From Casual to Committed, that I have created for you. It is one of the best free trainings I've ever created. And most importantly, it will save you years of your life being wasted by someone who is never serious or by someone who could commit but isn't right now because you're not asking for what you're worth. Go check it out at getcommitment.com, and you can watch this for free right now.
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