Your First Fight Isn't the End: How to Argue Well Early in a Relationship
Matthew Hussey
In this episode of the Love Life podcast, Matthew Hussey, his wife Audrey, and his brother Stephen talk about the first argument in a new relationship. Matthew calls it the scariest moment in early dating. The panel's position is that arguments are not a warning sign in themselves. What matters is how two people argue, how they repair afterward, and what the argument teaches them about each other. The conversation covers attachment styles and reactivity, a worked example of a difficult conversation, a communication model from Crucial Conversations, listener questions from a Vice article, and a game about which relationship conflicts are petty and which are profound.
Why the First Argument Feels So Frightening
Matthew separates two moments. He has long said the most dangerous moment in early dating is deciding you really like someone. That is when people tend to drop their boundaries, "let people get away with murder," chase, and obsess. The most scary moment, especially when you really like the person, is the first argument. You are suddenly somewhere you can't control and can't predict. Matthew describes himself as someone with "a wonderful ongoing relationship with anxiety," and says his fear in that moment is that this is where he loses the person.
Stephen describes the opposite reaction. His "avoidant tendencies" have historically led him to conclude that the argument proves the two of them aren't compatible. Matthew calls this a crude but useful picture of how the two attachment styles handle conflict. The anxious person thinks they've already blown it, then chases, over-apologizes, and ruminates about what they should have said. The avoidant person decides they've found the thing that won't work, and goes cold, distant, and withdrawn.
Stephen adds another trigger he used to have. He enjoyed the honeymoon phase, when each person thinks the other is perfect. When the first crack appeared, his thought was, "Oh great, now they think I'm flawed because they found a problem." The hosts joke that Stephen should have sat in the middle as the avoidant between two anxious people. Audrey says she is anxious too.
Arguing as Healthy, and the Wounds Underneath
Asked how to tell whether a first argument is a real red flag or a normal part of getting to know someone, Audrey says no answer can be definitive. Every relationship involves two unique people, so every argument is unique too. She offers principles instead, starting with her belief that arguing is healthy.
Her example: a friend five months into a new relationship told her they'd just had their first fight. Audrey's response was, "That's good." After five months a fight is normal, she says, and it would be strange to spend day after day with someone and never argue. She suggests treating an argument as a chance to know each other better rather than as the beginning of the end or a crack in something perfect. The repair afterward can make the relationship stronger.
She also points out that early arguments are often "two wounds coming at each other." Each person brings their own baggage, and the fight isn't really about the other person or the issue at hand. It becomes: "You did that one bad thing, therefore you are going to ruin my life… I can't trust you and this is happening all over again, and men this and women that." Audrey sees this too as an opportunity to learn what wounds exist in the other person and in yourself, and to ask why you are so triggered.
Reactivity: Knowing You're Wrong but Feeling Powerless
Matthew talks about how hard it is to act productively when you're genuinely triggered. Whatever story you've attached to the situation (being wronged, disrespected, scared) "has taken over your body." He recalls times when, even in the heat of an argument, he knew he was handling it badly: overreacting, going cold, getting angry, attacking the other person. He felt almost powerless to do better, and later regretted it. He has also been on the receiving end, with someone attacking him or freezing him out in a way he found unfair. In those moments, he says, "reactivity begets reactivity."
He sees two sides to arguments. They are informative, and he stresses he doesn't mean that as an excuse to watch for flaws and punish someone for them. Arguments show you, on a steep learning curve, who a person is when they're triggered and what triggers them. They are also dangerous: if neither person can get out of their own reactivity, the relationship can "spiral towards blowing this thing up before it's even really had a chance to start." He asks how to interrupt the feeling that "the train has left the station," and how to avoid amplifying someone else's reactivity.
Vulnerability and Softening First
Audrey's answer is vulnerability. In a fight, she says, you're usually trying to get something: to be seen, to be heard, to feel safe, or to hear the other person say, "Of course I want to spend time with you." You're going about it in a childish way because it's "your inner child essentially kicking up and having a tantrum over a feeling."
Once you notice that the argument has become unproductive, that you're both hurt and you may have overreacted, she says it is never too late to turn around and name what's really going on. Her example: "The truth is I think the reason I'm doing this is because I have felt like you don't value me and you don't want to spend time with me, and that makes me feel rejected. And I know that's probably my stuff, but that's just how I feel." Then you apologize for how you've handled it and ask the other person to see where you're coming from.
When both people are arguing from ego, she says, someone has to soften first. Being that person, and leading the way, can have "a really beautiful impact" on the connection. Matthew says Audrey is better at this than anyone he knows. He believes she argued better than he did in the early days of their relationship, and that this kept them from spiraling from a difficult situation into a worse one.
Working Through a Scenario: The Call That Never Came
Matthew asks Audrey to slow down and walk through a concrete example. A few weeks or months into dating, someone says they'll call you at the end of the day. You spend the evening looking forward to it. The call never comes. The next morning they text as if nothing happened and never mention it. You've been bottling it up, you hate how much it bothered you and that it affected your sleep, and now you can't act normal by text because you're too annoyed and it would feel fake.
Matthew notes that the reaction has often already started: shorter messages, a slightly cold tone, a mood shift the other person can feel. You're torn between wanting to say something and not wanting to damage the relationship or reveal how much it affected you, because you fear losing power. You also don't trust that you can hide the feeling once you're on the phone or in person. "It's going to leak."
Intention, Belief, and a Vulnerable Script
Audrey begins with intention. In the early fights between her and Matthew, she says, her "north star" was making sure she didn't damage the relationship. She mentions that in her experience couples fight more at the start. Six years in, she and Matthew fight less, because they've worked through many of those issues and know how to handle each other.
Her second step is to remind herself of a belief: relationships get better through communication and hard conversations, so having this conversation well will make things stronger with the right person. Matthew reframes it: if you communicate and things become worse and irreparable, then by definition it was the wrong relationship, because "a relationship where I can never talk and we can't argue is a hostage situation. It's not a relationship."
Matthew then pushes back on behalf of listeners. Early dating does feel fragile. People can be scared off, and sometimes we do pick fights over things that turn out to be nothing and cause real damage. How do you balance the belief that the right person can handle arguments with that fragility? Audrey says his scenario is really about how to have a conversation rather than an argument. She offers a script:
"Can I talk to you about something? This may seem a little crazy to you. You probably haven't thought about it much, but believe it or not, this has been really playing on my mind. When you said you were going to call me yesterday and you didn't, that was kind of hurtful."
She emphasizes attributing positive intentions to the other person. Jumping to "the reason they didn't call me is because they're an [expletive], they're disrespecting me, I can't trust them, and this is just like all the other situations I've been in" will badly damage the relationship even if the person isn't like that at all. She suggests saying something like: I know you didn't mean to, but it made me feel insecure, a bit abandoned, and I'm telling you because I don't want to get resentful, go cold, and punish you with my behavior when you wouldn't even know what upset me.
If you've already reacted badly, for example by calling to say "this isn't going to work if you don't call me when you say you will, it's really disrespectful of my time," Audrey says you can still walk it back. Go into "vulnerable mode," explain where the reaction came from, and apologize for your behavior. The right relationship will get stronger through that, in her view. She thinks apologizing goes a long way because it shows you're "not just some kind of narcissistic person who doesn't take accountability," but "a person like me who got triggered."
Not Minimizing a Feeling That Is Valid
Matthew praises Audrey's phrasing for taking the other person's ego out of the situation, then raises a concern. What about someone who doesn't think their feeling is stupid, who believes they have every right to be upset? Calling your own feeling "stupid" could invalidate it. It could also give a bad actor room to agree ("you're right, it is stupid, and it's unfair of you to put this on me"). He especially doesn't want people who already minimize their feelings to go further in that direction and lose the ability to stand up for themselves.
Audrey's first answer is that even when you didn't cause an argument, you can usually find something you did unproductively: a hurtful remark, dragging in something irrelevant to score points. You can apologize for that while standing by what you said. "I meant what I said and it has really hurt my feelings, but I'm sorry for the way that I brought it to you."
Matthew narrows the question to the first conversation, before any blow-up. Suppose keeping promises matters a lot to you. Audrey observes that the other person can't be expected to know that yet, so blowing up at them would be a mistake on your part, even though the feeling is valid. The key, she says, is to separate the pieces instead of lumping them together. You can acknowledge that your reaction may come partly from your own history and also state plainly that "consistency or keeping to your word is really important to me, and that's something I really need from someone I'm dating." The hurt may not be entirely reasonable, "but it did [hurt], and that's who I am, and you should know that about me because it's important."
The STATE Model from Crucial Conversations
Stephen notes that Audrey is avoiding common traps: assuming malicious intent, pointing fingers, calling the other person selfish. He says her approach matches the STATE model from the book Crucial Conversations:
- Share your facts: start with what you saw or heard.
- Tell your story: explain how you interpreted it.
- Ask for others' paths: invite their view of the situation. Did they mean to make you jealous? Did they know they were doing it?
- Talk tentatively: avoid "you always" and "you never." Early on especially, don't assume a pattern.
- Encourage testing: stay open to being wrong about their intent.
Stephen says the book calls this "adding to the shared pool of meaning." You set out the facts and your interpretation, then invite the other person to add their view and test it. Audrey calls this very practical because it gives people a model to follow.
Listener Questions: Frequency, Public Fights, and Marathon Arguments
David, from the podcast team, brings questions drawn from a Vice article.
What if we argue every week? Matthew's test is whether the arguments are evolving, both in what you argue about and in how you handle disagreement. Weekly arguments could mean both people have a lot to work on, or they could mean you're "wildly incompatible" and the arguments are revealing it. If the arguments are consistently fraught, he says, there may be individual work to do, because arguing is "a dance." One person can always choose to engage more calmly, so if you're fighting every week you have to look at yourself too. If both people have a growth mindset, the arguments should progress and change topics. The big warning sign, for him, is being stuck in "Groundhog Day": the same arguments, in the same way, with the same energy.
What if we argue in front of friends? Matthew calls this a "huge no-no" for him. Audrey agrees and finds it disrespectful and tactless, because now everyone is in your business. Matthew says it can feel like a betrayal, since it shows your partner they can't trust you with privacy around your struggles. It also shows a lack of impulse control and emotional regulation. He distinguishes this from asking to speak privately or stepping out of the room together, which he considers fine. You don't always have to fake cordiality until you get in the car. Stephen says an argument on the street bothers him less than one in front of people. Audrey adds compassion for anyone who has done this. She paraphrases a saying along the lines of "unspoken needs become future resentments." Arguing in front of friends, she suggests, often happens because someone is struggling to voice a need and lets it leak out, sometimes passively, when other people or drinks make it feel safer.
What if arguments go on for hours? Matthew acknowledges the exhaustion. Stephen describes relationships where the silent treatment lasted until the next day, so the whole day was lost to rumination. Matthew says he had arguments in his twenties that lasted days. Audrey mentions that she and Matthew once had an argument that stretched over two days early in their relationship, when they simply didn't talk. She says she was being "pigheaded" and wanted him to apologize. Audrey adds that when one person needs to resolve things now and the other needs space, it's very painful.
Matthew won't generalize, though. You can argue for hours with someone you're, or end up being, very happy with. He looks at context: is this generally a decent person who treats you and others well and stays broadly respectful even in the argument? He contrasts a "crime of passion," where things got heated and both people said things they regret, with someone who is "a scorpion" whose MO when threatened is to deliberately wound you. Stephen calls the latter "premeditated." Matthew says he has been in those situations, and that such a person "just destroys your confidence."
Vetoes: Never Threaten the Relationship, Never Attack Character
Audrey turns Matthew's point into a general rule: some things should be off-limits in arguments. She and Matthew have never threatened the relationship during a fight, never said anything like "maybe we're not right for each other." It's a strong boundary for them, and she says it lets them disagree "from a place of safety" and be more productive.
Stephen shares a counterexample. He was with someone who would say something like "well, that's it" during arguments. He took it seriously, believing they'd broken up, and then the next day an apology text would arrive. It happened with every argument.
Matthew says you shouldn't gloss over this, because the person is showing you what's normal for them. Saying something that would end a relationship in most people's world is, in theirs, "just another day at the office." If they came back and said they deeply regretted it, that it came from fear, and that they wouldn't do it again, then you'd be living in a universe of shared values and shared rules. If they just act as though nothing happened ("I can't wait to see you tonight"), then "we're not playing by the same rules," and you need to talk about it quickly. His suggested line is roughly: you're acting normal today, but going back to normal the day after telling me you don't want to be together isn't normal for me, and we need to talk about how this relationship can work, if it can.
Audrey adds that you can set this boundary early: "I get it, but never do that again… I can't be with someone who will just threaten a relationship and threaten my safety every time we fight." Her second veto is attacking someone's character. You can criticize a behavior, but saying "ultimately you are just a selfish person who only thinks about themselves" is hard to take back. Even after making up, the other person is left wondering whether you really think they're a bad person, and she believes that does long-term damage.
"Marry Someone You Argue Well With"
Matthew plays a clip from Instagram that he says was shared widely. In it he says not to marry someone you never argue with, but someone you argue well with. That means reaching good compromises, recovering in minutes or hours rather than "days of miserable toxicity," both being willing to come to the table, apologize, and soften, and not always relying on the same person "to save the two of you." He says you only learn these things by having hard conversations early. The goal isn't agreeing on everything but understanding each other's expectations and knowing you can handle differences.
He reads some comments. One commenter says they and their girlfriend never argue because both are empathetic and communicate well. Matthew answers that this may come down to definitions, since some disagreements he has called arguments wouldn't count as arguments by normal standards. Stephen jokes, "There's no plate throwing." Another commenter says they were married for 20 years to someone they never argued with and agree with the clip. Matthew and David read this as saying the absence of arguments wasn't a good thing. A third comment, from Kirby, is one Matthew especially likes: you probably don't argue perfectly either, so instead of waiting for a partner who does, look for someone willing to work with you on how you both argue.
Listener Voice Note: Fear of Rejection and the "Unhatched Egg"
A listener, Fabiana, suggests fear of rejection as a future topic. When they like someone and aren't sure it's mutual, they say, it's "always a state secret," to the point that the other person probably thinks they aren't interested at all.
Matthew promises a fuller episode and gives his immediate thoughts. He borrows Oliver Burkeman's idea of "imperfectionism" as a philosophy, as opposed to perfectionism. Liking someone has taken on an outsized importance, he argues, but someone you've only decided you like can't be that important yet. The people who become important are the ones who stick with you through thick and thin, show up, make your life better, and act as real teammates. Recognizing this, he says, gives you permission to be imperfect.
He compares it to procrastinating on a business idea. As long as it stays in your head, you never have to find out whether it's flawed, badly timed, or not understood by anyone. Relationships have to be tested in the real world too, and always imperfectly. Even if your first two minutes with someone are "pitch-perfect movie-level scripting," the next two won't be. You'll say something awkward or clumsy at some point.
Imperfectionism, he stresses, doesn't mean walking up and declaring your feelings. It means not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good: put yourself on the person's radar, notice something, have an exchange however small. "Something is always better than nothing." Comment on the music in the coffee shop or the muffin you keep being tempted by. Then see whether the person is responsive and engaged.
His central image is the unhatched egg. People treat those they like like golden eggs they keep nursing without cracking open, because as long as they never do, they can maintain that it could have been something. He urges valuing real life, "what's actually in the egg," and the search for something that shows promise, over unhatched eggs. The irony, in his view, is that the all-or-nothing approach robs Fabiana of opportunities, because they aren't even putting themselves in the game.
Petty or Profound: Sorting First-Argument Triggers
In the closing "Steve's Sleeves" segment, after some banter about whether Stephen actually enjoys Matthew's introductions (Stephen says it's part of a role he plays), Stephen runs a game. He gives scenarios that might trigger a first argument, and Matthew and Audrey decide whether each is petty (not worth it) or profound (a real issue that may or may not be fixable).
Loading the dishwasher is petty, though it prompts teasing. Matthew describes Audrey as grabbing fistfuls of dishes and throwing them into "an open void," and Audrey says he loads it like a museum piece.
One partner wants a luxury vacation while the other is aggressively paying off student debt is profound but fixable. Matthew says money-values conversations can end a relationship if handled badly. The person who feels safe paying off debt needs reassurance that there's a plan. The other person doesn't want to "indefinitely defer joy," and the two need to build a plan together.
"Your mom always nitpicks me" / "That's just how you know she cares" depends on tone, Matthew says. If both of you are rolling your eyes at a difficult mother, it's fine. If one partner is genuinely struggling and the other dismisses it, it's profound, and fixable only if the partner "joins your team." Not against the mother, but saying something like "I know I have a difficult mom… I see you and I'm with you."
A partner who overshares about the relationship with friends is profound. Audrey recalls being upset early on that Matthew shared more with his friends than she was comfortable with. Matthew says he'd forgotten. They talked it through and got on the same page, since Audrey felt they needed to be able to argue without all his friends hearing about it. Matthew adds a caveat: everyone needs people to confide in, and feeling you're never allowed to tell anyone what's going on is a mark of an abusive relationship, so this has to be applied in context.
Whether a hot dog is a sandwich or a sui generis item is petty, though Audrey briefly gets pulled into the debate.
Whether you must tidy the bedroom every morning is petty in their case. Stephen and Matthew tease Audrey about leaving it messy in the mornings, and they argue over whether Matthew is a "clean freak" or a "tidy freak." Audrey says there are levels: someone who likes order can tolerate some mess, but if one person is very orderly, the other very messy, and neither gives any ground, it can become profound.
A partner who ignores you for their friends when you go out and makes plans without you is profound but fixable, with limits. Audrey notes that at parties she and Matthew barely talk to each other and "debrief" afterward, and that giving others attention is healthy. It becomes profound when one person genuinely doesn't acknowledge the other and makes all the decisions about what happens next.
Teasing or banter that hurts your feelings is profound, both agree. Audrey says she and Matthew are both sensitive and work well partly because they're aware of each other's sensitivities. They have friends with more cutting humor who sometimes hurt her feelings. Matthew says you can be friends with people like that without being able to be in a relationship with them. Shared humor is profound, he says, and it's fixable only if things improve after you give feedback. The reverse also applies: if someone is easily offended by light jokes, that may simply be an incompatibility.
Matthew closes the game with a story about a friend known for acerbic wit. During a painful breakup, Matthew went to see him and asked him up front not to make his usual jokes because he couldn't handle them right then. The friend said, "Got it." Matthew's point is that this is communication: rather than letting a hurtful joke land and carrying resentment, he told a friend he loved what he needed that day. The episode ends with the hosts asking listeners to weigh in, among other things, on whether a hot dog is a sandwich.
Do you know what one of the scariest moments in the beginning of a relationship or dating someone you like is?
Finding out your partner's favorite pizza toppings.
Why would that be scary?
Because they might not match.
Is this another campaign against people who like pineapple on their pizza? Because I really think that that's very—
Stop. Everybody stop. This was a good intro. I was onto something and you've derailed it. Audrey's taken the bait.
I suppose it's apt for the subject of this episode. I was going to say that the most scary moment. I always say the most dangerous moment in early dating is when you decide you really like someone. That's the most dangerous moment because that's the moment where you have a tendency to lose your boundaries, let people get away with murder, chase too much, obsess too much. But the most scary moment in early dating, especially when you really like someone, is when you have your first argument.
That's so true.
Because when you have your first argument, you're all of a sudden in this unknown territory that you can't fully control. You don't know what's going to happen next. And if you're anything like me and have a wonderful ongoing relationship with anxiety in your life, you worry that this is the moment where you lose them.
I'm curious, Stephen, I relate more to anxiety. Maybe you think you do, too. I don't know. But when you imagine having an argument with someone in early dating, is the first thought, "Oh no, I'm going to lose them," or is the first thought, "Here we go. It's not going to work"?
Well, my avoidant tendencies have historically kicked up in that moment and I've gone, "This is going to show us we're not compatible at all."
So that to me, in a crude way, describes the difference between how anxiously attached and avoidant people handle arguments. Someone who's anxious immediately is like, "Oh no, I've blown it already. I've done something wrong. I shouldn't have said that. I've wrecked it. I'm going to lose them." And then the tendency after an argument is to chase someone, to over-apologize, to sit there and anxiously ruminate about what you should have done differently. The avoidant is far more likely to go, "Well, God, here we go. I've discovered that there's something about this situation that's not going to work," and you're more likely to go cold and distant and withdraw.
Yeah. And I told you before, I like that bit in the beginning, the honeymoon, where you both think each other are perfect angels. And then the crack in that comes, and my old trigger was like, "Oh great, now they think I'm flawed because they found a problem."
This podcast should have been called "Sandwiched Between an Anxious and Avoidant," and that would be you.
Well, I'm anxious, too. So I—
Okay. Well, Stephen should have been in the middle and it would be an avoidant sandwich.
Yeah, you two are so needy and anxious.
Delicious. Well, I just want to say to anybody that is maybe in the situation where they've just had a fight with somebody or relates to any of the things that we're talking about, we're going to be talking about arguing today and how basically arguments can actually make your relationship stronger and also how to argue better. We also have an article from Vice that David has found for us where we answer questions around arguing, and probably the kind of questions that you have around what is healthy arguing, what is unhealthy arguing. And yeah, I think we should dig into it.
Well, firstly, Audrey, because some people will have their first argument with someone and think that it immediately means either it's over or something's wrong, like something's wrong with this situation. What are your views on how do you know whether the first argument you've had is a genuine red flag or if it's just one of the natural organic moments in getting to know someone better?
It's a really good question. So I think this is a very nuanced and complex subject because I think by default there is no two arguments that are the same. Because it's the same way that every relationship is unique, every argument is unique because you're dealing with new people each time, both of which are unique. And so I think the combination, it's very difficult to answer that in any definite terms, but I think we can lay down some principles around arguing which hopefully are helpful to everybody listening.
I have the belief that actually arguing is healthy. And I remember the other day my friend said to me, she's in a new relationship, five months, and they just had their first fight. And she said to me, "We just had our first fight." And I went, "That's good. That's good because it's been five months. They should have a fight. It's normal." And it would be bizarre to spend day in, day out with somebody and never, ever fight with them.
And so I think that instead of looking at arguments as spelling the end of something or, to your point, Stephen, the cracks starting to show in this imperfect thing, seeing it as an opportunity to get to know each other better and almost having the repair part of the argument make your relationship stronger is really, really valuable.
I think that also we have to remember that in early dating especially, a lot of the times we argue because we have our baggage, they have their baggage, and it's two wounds coming at each other. It's not really them or you or really about the thing you're arguing about. You almost look at that person and say, "You did that one bad thing, therefore you are going to ruin my life and you are a bad person. I can't trust you, and this is happening all over again, and men this and women that." And there's this kind of reaction that's very emotional that we can have with people in the early stages. And I think it's also a really wonderful opportunity to understand what those wounds are in the other person and also in yourself. What's coming up for you? Why are you feeling so triggered by this situation?
The hard thing when you're triggered is that it really feels like moving a mountain to feel better or to be calm or to approach the situation in a productive way because you're just so mad or freaked out or you feel so wronged or disrespected, or whatever story you've attached to this thing has taken over your body when you're genuinely triggered. And when we're genuinely triggered, we're liable to act in ways that we regret. And I can look back on times where I was really triggered and I just went about something the complete wrong way. And even in the middle of it, even in the heat of it, I knew I was going about it in the wrong way.
I've had that. Yeah. What, you'd overreact or you would have a bad way of trying to resolve it?
Yeah. Overreact, get really cold, get mad, start attacking the other person in some way. And I had enough sense at certain points to know that I was not being a good version of myself, but I felt almost powerless to do better and then later on really regret the way that I went about it.
And I've also been on the other end of that many times, where someone else is handling something in a really unproductive way. They've gotten really mad. They've attacked me for something I've done, or they are choosing to freeze me out in a way that's really unfair or unpleasant or hurtful. And it's really easy then to turn into a reactive version of ourselves with that person. Their reactivity begets reactivity.
So I'm so conscious in arguments that on one hand there's something just very informative about arguments. And I don't mean that in a bad way, like we're looking for the problems with people and I'm going to wait and see how they argue and then I'm going to punish them for that by deciding they're wrong for me. I just mean we learn a lot about each other in an argument. It's like a really steep learning curve of who is this person when they go off the rails? Who is this person when they're at their most reactive? Who is this person when they're triggered? What triggers this person? So that's a positive. I mean that in the positive sense. It's an intense learning period.
But I'm also so aware that if neither person in an argument can find a way to get out of themselves and their reactivity, then you just spiral towards blowing this thing up before it's even really had a chance to start. Because we're talking about your first argument here, the arguments you have very early on with someone. So I know that in the times where I've been really reactive, I'm always like, what could I have done differently there that could have interrupted almost this feeling of my reaction now is predetermined and out of my control and the train has left the station and we're just going to this inevitable destination? And if we're on the receiving end of someone else who's doing that, what can we do to not amplify that reactivity?
The best way, I believe, to do exactly what you're doing is vulnerability. And when you're fighting, oftentimes, I don't know if you guys relate to this, but I definitely relate to this. You argue and what you're trying to get is something from the argument. You're trying to be seen. You're trying to be heard. You're trying to feel safe. You're trying to get them to turn around and say, "Of course not. Of course I want to spend time with you. That's crazy," or whatever it is that you might want from that person. You're just going about it in a bit of a childish way because it is your inner child essentially kicking up and having a tantrum over a feeling.
But I think that as soon as you can bring awareness to it and catch it and say, "Oh, I'm in that unproductive phase of fighting where maybe it's getting a little bit—I don't like the word toxic, but it's no longer productive. We're just both hurt, and maybe I've hurt the other person. Maybe I've overreacted, and I can see the areas that I maybe am not handling myself very well." It's never too late to turn around and just say, "The truth is, I think the reason I'm doing this is because of X. It's because I have felt like you don't value me and you don't want to spend time with me, and that makes me feel rejected. And I know that's probably my stuff, but that's just how I feel." Or, "I am worried that I love you more than you love me," or whatever it might be.
Whatever your flavor of why you're fighting, trying to bring that awareness and then almost just doing the hard thing of being vulnerable about it and saying, "I'm sorry that I'm not handling myself well. This is where it's coming from for me, but I really need you to see where I'm coming from." And I think that's—you talk about the softening. And oftentimes, I think two people, when you're fighting, if you're coming at it from a place of ego, it's super hard because you need one person to soften first. And being the person that can soften first and can lead the way and can set the example in your relationship can actually have a really beautiful impact on your connection.
You're, I think, better at this than anyone I know. And you have even, in the early days of our relationship, you argued better than I did, I would say. And I think that it saved us from spiraling into going from a difficult situation to a worse situation because you interrupted that. I want to drill down on some of the language you just used because there's a lot that was going on there that you spouted out very fast because it's natural to you at this point. But just go—that first example. Can you just walk us through it line by line one more time?
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Let's take this. Someone said they were going to call you at the end of the day and they didn't. And you were waiting for their call. You're still in the first few weeks or months or a couple of months of dating, but they said they would call you and they don't. And it's hurt you because you're a bit mad because you've waited for the call. It's your evening. You were looking forward to that call. You were waiting for it. It never came. They didn't say anything about it, and then the next morning they texted you and they didn't talk about the fact that they didn't call you last night.
And you've had a reaction.
Let's say you're about to have a reaction. You've been bottling it up. You didn't say anything last night, but now it's the morning and they have texted you, and you're like, "You said you were going to call and you didn't." And now it's got to you and it's hurt your feelings, and you hate how much it's been on your mind. You hate the fact that it affected your sleep last night and you were thinking about it as much as you were, but you were. And now it's the morning and you can't just be normal with them by text because you're too annoyed or it would be fake. Let's play that out.
Well, if you can catch that before you react, then that's amazing, right? I think so many people will just have a reaction and then they'll almost have to walk back from that reaction.
But in a way, you are having a reaction even if you're just texting them, but you're texting them slightly shorter messages. You're a bit cold.
Well, that's usually how it starts, is there's a mood shift, and then the question is, do I even say it or not? But if you're on the receiving end, you can feel the mood shift. And if you were not getting the call and now it's hurt you and you're being cold the next morning, you're split between wanting to say something and also not wanting to hurt the relationship or not wanting to give away how much it's affected you because you feel like you'll lose power on some level. You won't feel in control anymore. And until this point, you have felt in control, but you don't trust yourself that once you get on the phone to this person or once you're in person with them that you're going to be able to keep hiding this feeling. It's going to leak.
Yeah. Well, I think first of all going into it with the intention of, "My intention is to protect the relationship and to have a great relationship with this person." And so for me, whenever you and I would have fights in the early stages, because it's interesting, I also think my experience anyway is you fight more in the beginning than you do. We're six years in. You fight less six years in because you've hashed out a lot of the things that you would fight about, and you have got to know each other better, and you just know how to handle each other better, and you're a—
Bit more, I don't know, it's just a bit easier maybe. But in the early stages, you're really learning each other. And I think that's the tricky thing. But I think going into it, for me, in our arguments in the early stages, I was always going into it being like, what I want to make sure of is that I don't damage the relationship. And so that's my north star.
So that's good. So begin, before you even say anything, set a very clear intention for yourself.
Second thing is just reminding myself of the belief that I hold, which is that relationships get better through communication and through hard conversations. And so having this conversation in the most productive way possible is going to make things stronger with the right person. And so again, that gives me strength and it gives me confidence to know that I can go into it and express my feelings.
So I love that. I love the idea that, okay, I have a belief system underpinning this conversation that says the right relationship is one where I can communicate and things get better, not worse. So if I communicate and things get worse and irreparable, then by definition this is the wrong relationship, because a relationship where I can never talk and we can't argue is a hostage situation. It's not a relationship.
Yeah. But what do you say to people who say, I want to believe that, but I'm also aware of how fragile things can be in the beginning, that there is something about early dating that is inherently delicate, and things can scare people away, and I can make a fuss of nothing, and I can't always trust that my feelings are valid. Of course, sometimes my feelings aren't valid. Sometimes I do pick a fight over something that turned out to be nothing and do a lot of damage in the process. So what do you say to people who want to believe that, yes, you can have arguments with the right person, but are balancing that belief with the idea that early dating or early relationships are delicate?
Well, I think the question you asked me is more how do you have the conversation rather than the argument. So I think they're different things, right? I think if you are asking me how to have the most productive conversation in a scenario you've described, what I would say is you set your intention. You remind yourself of the fact that your north star is the fact that you want this relationship to work. And then I think you adopt a vulnerable stance where you explain what you're feeling and you say, when this happened, it made me feel this.
So, when you didn't, when you said, "Can I talk to you about something? This may seem a little crazy to you. You probably haven't thought about it much, but believe it or not, this has been really playing on my mind. When you said you were going to call me yesterday and you didn't, that was kind of hurtful. I don't know if it's... I know you probably didn't mean anything by it."
And I think that this is the other thing. Ascribing positive intentions to your partner is so important, or to the person you're dating, rather than jumping to the negative of, the reason they didn't call me is because they're an—excuse my language—and they are disrespecting me and I can't trust them and this is just like all the other situations I've been in. That's going to be so damaging to your relationship. Even if somebody isn't like that, it's going to really, really damage what you guys have.
And so I think ascribing really positive intentions and saying, "I know you didn't mean to, but when you didn't call me, it made me feel insecure. It made me feel, I don't know, a little bit abandoned. And I know that's really stupid, but I just wanted to tell you because what I don't want is to get resentful and, to your point, Stephen, go cold and punish you somehow with my behavior, because that wouldn't be fair to you because you wouldn't even know what's upset me. So I just wanted to be honest about it."
Now, if you can have that conversation, I think, wow, amazing, advanced, right? It means that you have almost interrupted the trigger before you let it boil over. And I think for anyone listening who's like, "Yeah, well, I didn't do that. I actually called them up and was like, we need to talk. This isn't going to work if you don't call me when you say you're going to call me. It's really disrespectful of my time," which we've all done a version of in our lives.
And I think if you're in that situation, there is still so much value to understanding at any point you get to be the person I just talked about. You get to go, actually, I'm going to walk this back. I'm going to go into my vulnerable mode. I'm going to be honest about how I feel. I'm going to explain where this comes from for me. And I'm going to hope that through my vulnerability and apology of my behavior, the relationship gets stronger, because the right relationship will, and the other person will appreciate, if they really like you, I think they'll appreciate knowing where that came from.
And also, I think apologizing goes such a long way because people go, "Oh, you're not just some kind of narcissistic person who doesn't take accountability. You're actually just a person like me who got triggered."
What do you say? I love hearing you talk about this stuff because you're so good at it. And I think that there's something so—
Good at arguing.
Well, you're good at people. You're good at relationships, and it means that you're therefore able to speak to people's hearts and to avoid the pitfalls that people just so naturally walk straight into. And I think there's such value to people hearing the way you phrase things.
One of the questions that came up for me as I was listening to you is, everything you just said is really, really great for removing the other person's ego from the situation so that they're not feeling like you're calling them a bad person. You're also addressing the feeling in yourself and being vulnerable with the feeling that it's brought up for you.
What do you say to someone who says, "But what if I don't think that the feeling I'm having is stupid?" What if I'm like, this is a totally valid feeling I'm having, and I am upset, and I deserve to be upset, and I am hurt, and they therefore don't want to minimize what they're feeling by saying that it is stupid, which could invalidate it, or in some ways it could give a bad actor on the other side space to say, "You're right, it is stupid, and it's unfair of you to put this on me." You know what I mean?
Yeah. And then you're like, "It's not stupid. I was just saying that."
What do you say to someone who's kind of... Because what I wouldn't want is for some people who naturally minimize their own feelings to go even a step further in minimizing their own feelings to somebody else in a way that doesn't allow them to then stick up for themselves.
Yeah. No, I really like that question. I think you can always find a way that you were not productive in the argument. Even if you feel like you didn't cause the argument, maybe a way you spoke to them, maybe the way that you said something hurtful, maybe a way that you dragged something into it that was just not really relevant, but you were doing it to score points. There's going to be something like that you can turn around to them and say, "Look, I meant what I said, and it has really hurt my feelings, but I'm sorry for the way that I brought it to you."
But what about even when you're bringing it up the first time and you're saying, let's say that someone keeping their promises is really important to you. Someone being a person of their word, and they said they were going to call you and they didn't, and then the next morning they didn't reference that they didn't call you. They just texted you as if they'd never said that they were going to do that in the first place.
But they're not supposed to know that that's really important to you. They don't know that about you yet. So if you do blow up at them, I think it is absolutely something you've done wrong. It doesn't mean what you're feeling is not valid.
But should you say, I guess what I'm asking is, do you think that you should still say that kind of, "I may just be being stupid," or whatever? Or do you think you should stand by the fact in the original conversation that you have with them that this is something that is important to me, and you not calling me and then not referencing that you haven't called me is something that I don't like, that isn't okay for me? What's a way to say that in a way where you're not minimizing your feelings about it, but you're also not overdoing it?
Mhm.
In this specific situation.
I think, again, you have to separate. It's all about picking the one. We group everything together, and it's about separating it out, right? You can say, "I know that you haven't meant to do this," or, "I know that maybe my reaction to this and the way I feel about it comes from this thing for me." You can say that and also say, "But consistency or keeping to your word is really important to me, and that's something I really need from someone I'm dating. And when you did that, actually it really hurt my feelings." Now, it's almost like, "I know that potentially the way it hurt my feelings isn't so reasonable, but it did, and that's who I am, and you should know that about me because it's important."
And there's still things to avoid. In that, you're still avoiding certain traps, which is you're not assuming they had some real malintent, finger-pointing, calling them selfish. You're modeling a very good model from the book Crucial Conversations, which is the STATE model, where it talks about certain difficult conversations. So it's an acronym, S-T-A-T-E.
But it's S, share the facts. Start with what you saw or heard. T, tell your story, how you interpreted it. A, ask for others' paths, which means invite their view, allow them to have their view on the situation. Did they mean to make you jealous? Did they know they were doing that? T, talk tentatively. So don't go with "you always," "you never." If you're in the early stages, you don't want to start assuming a pattern. And then E is encourage testing. Be open to being wrong about their intent or what they meant to do.
So they call it adding to the shared pool of meaning, but you're putting the facts down and how you interpreted them, but then you're encouraging them to put their view and testing that.
That's really good. I really love that, Stephen. I think that's actually super practical for people to have a model for it.
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David, you had a Vice article with some really interesting questions that I think everybody who is in the early stages of dating are going to have, or even just in long-term relationships. Can you throw them out to us?
Yeah, I think that they divide some things that people will be thinking about in their relationships in terms of arguing into a couple different sections. I'm curious what your thoughts are. So what if I'm a person who, in my relationship, I have an argument every single week?
So frequency of arguments, what is too much arguing?
Yeah, I think if you're a person who's arguing every week, then one of the barometers I use is, is the argument evolving? Are the things we are arguing about evolving? Is the style of how we talk about disagreement evolving? Because if you're finding that every week there are things that come up, okay, maybe both of you have a lot to work on as individuals and with each other. Either that or you're just wildly incompatible. If you're arguing every week, you might be just incredibly incompatible, and this might be revealing that.
If the way you're arguing every week is very fraught, then that might suggest that even as individuals, there's work to do, because there's "we disagree all the time" and there's "we argue all the time," and it takes two people to have an argument. Remember that arguing is a dance. It takes two people to fight because one person can decide, I'm not going to engage in this way. One person can decide, I'm going to engage more calmly. It takes two people to go at it. So if you're going at it every week, you also have to look at yourself.
If you're disagreeing every week, it might be a sign of incompatibility. It could be a sign that both of you are working a lot on yourselves and a relationship is bringing up a lot for both of you. But if that's the case and you both have a growth mindset, the arguments should be evolving and they should be progressing and they shouldn't be about the same thing every week. To me, the big warning sign is if over time we just continue to be in Groundhog Day of the same arguments in the same way with the same energy. What's the next one, David?
What if we get into arguments in front of our friends often?
Oh, that one to me is, if someone doesn't have the decorum to say we do this privately, that for me is something... I hate the idea of public arguments. Arguments especially in front of friends, even if someone implies they're unhappy with you in front of their friends. That for me is a huge, huge no-no.
I agree with that.
I just can't, I don't know. It feels disrespectful. It feels tactless. It's like they're now affecting the rest of your... Now everyone is in your business. They know it.
I think it shows a couple of things. It can be a kind of betrayal because you're showing your partner they can't trust you to have a degree of privacy around the things that you are struggling with or disagreeing on. So they're saying, "Hey, we couldn't have had this conversation away from everyone?" It also shows a lack of impulse control and emotional regulation.
Yes.
Because you're not saying, "Okay, I'm going to talk to my partner about that." Or even, look, there are some moments where you may say to your partner, "Can I have a word with you in private?" Or you might need to leave the room with them there and then, right? Not everything can you just fake being cordial with all your friends for the next hour until you get in the car.
And suddenly have an argument. But excusing yourself with your partner is not the same as fighting in front of your friends.
Yeah, I can do an argument on the street. I don't really care as much on the street, but in front of people, I find something about that just... Yeah.
No, I agree. I do think, though, it can happen, which is, I think, an important point for people. There's a saying—I can't remember it, so I'm going to butcher it—but it's basically something along the lines of, "Unspoken needs become future resentments." And oftentimes, if you're arguing in front of your friends, it's probably because you are struggling to voice a need or something that you're feeling. And instead of recognizing that I need to basically pluck up the courage to have this conversation, you're letting it leak because you feel safe to in that moment because there's other people around. Maybe you're having a drink, maybe whatever.
Or you're doing it passively.
Or you're doing it passively, but you're just throwing it out there. But really, deep down, it's because you have this resentment and this unexpressed feeling. And so, just to again bring compassion to people, if it's something they've done, it's okay. But I agree with both of you, and I think that actually looking at it as there's obviously something going on that's causing you to do that, because it's not the appropriate place to have an argument.
Give us one more, David.
One more is: what if arguments last inordinately long, like multiple hours? I mean, anyone who's been in situations where arguments go on for hour after hour knows the utter emotional exhaustion of a situation like that.
I've been in a situation where there would be silent treatment until the next day after. So it's like that whole day was ruined in rumination. There would be no solving it that day.
Same. In my 20s, I've had arguments that have lasted days. Days. We've had arguments that have lasted hours.
Yes.
And we had one argument that spanned two days in the early stage of our relationship.
So tiring.
We just didn't talk to each other.
But there's a difference. There's not talking to each other, and there's actually arguing. They're both, in a way, manifestations of the same thing, right? But when you finally break and you don't talk to each other, it's because you just can't find a way.
Well, I was really pigheaded, and I just was like, "You need to apologize to me because you're in the wrong."
No, but sometimes someone hangs up the phone and won't return texts, or they just go, "I don't want to talk to you today." And that's like...
Oh, I hate that. I think as well, if you're somebody who's like, "I want to fix this, and I need to resolve this now," and then you're with someone who's like, "I need space," that's so hard.
That's very painful.
Yeah. But you can be two people who just keep going at it, and you're just not finding common ground in that situation. I wouldn't generalize about that because the reality is you can be in that situation with someone who you're extremely happy with, or you end up being extremely happy with. So you can't write off a situation just because you've argued for multiple hours.
I like to think in terms of, well, firstly, context matters, right? Is this person a generally good human being who, outside of the context of this argument, acts with decency and treats people well, treats me well, is respectful? And are they generally respectful in this argument? I'm not saying—even the best-intentioned people occasionally say things that they wish they hadn't and hurt each other. So even that, it's not a hard and fast rule. But is this person saying things—are they a scorpion who right now is trying to eviscerate me and wound me, and it's very intentional? Or has this become so heated that we've both said things that we wish we hadn't said? To me, there's a difference between those two things.
There's like crime of passion, right, in arguments. I want to be very careful how I say that phrase, but you know what I mean. And there's someone who sort of systematically, when they're threatened...
Premeditated.
That is part of their M.O., to say really nasty things and to hurt you. And I've been in those situations before. There's nothing worse because that person just destroys your confidence.
I think what you're touching on, by the way, is super important as a point for just a blanket rule for arguing. There should be vetoes in the things that you say in arguments. For us, for instance, we have never been in an argument where we've threatened a relationship, or we've gone, "Well, maybe if you feel that way, then we're not right for each other," or, "Maybe this relationship isn't going to work," or whatever it might be. And that's because, for us, that's a really, really strong boundary that we don't cross. And I think that it allows us to argue from a place of safety no matter what. You and I have always been able to disagree on things from a place of safety and therefore be more productive with it.
I was with someone who used to do the, "Well, that's just it," and I took it seriously. I was like, "Oh, we just broke up." And then the next day there was a sorry text, like, "Oh, we just had an argument." Every argument we had, it would be like, "I think we just broke up."
But that's really important not to gloss over that when that happens, because what someone is teaching you there is what's normal for them. And you can't just overlook those things. You have to address them head-on. So in that situation, what that person showed you was that it's entirely normal to say something that in a normal world would mean the end of the relationship, but in their world actually is just another day at the office of a relationship. It's like this is a go-to place.
Oh yeah.
And we're going to make up tomorrow. Now, if that's like crazy town for you, and you're like, "I can't live in a world where someone doesn't mean what they say when they say these things," it'd be one thing if they said, "Hey, I deeply regret what I said yesterday, and it came from—I was in a really bad place. I was scared, and I should never have threatened the relationship, and I'm deeply sorry for that, and I won't do that again."
If someone said that, then it's like, "Oh, we're not living in an alternate universe for me. We're living in a universe of shared values and shared rules, importantly, where you've said something that's really big in my books, but you've acknowledged that you said something that's really big, and you've made sure to let me know that you are aware that that's a really big thing to say and that you regret having said it."
If someone comes to you and says, "Hey, I can't wait to see you tonight, and I really miss you, and let's just figure this out," it's like, "Oh, we're not playing by the same rules." And if we're not playing by the same rules, we need to have a conversation because I need to know very quickly if your expectation of what a relationship should be like is this.
And that's where you then have to go back and say, "Hey, yeah, listen, you're acting very normal with me today. But the day after you've told me you don't want us to be together, just going back to normal isn't normal for me. And we need to talk about how we're going to go about this relationship for this to work, if it's going to work, because I can't live in a world where someone can tell me one day we're breaking up, and then the next day everything's back to normal."
And I think setting those boundaries is super important. And you can do that in the early stages. If someone does do that, you can then sit them down and say, "I get it, but never do that again. Because to me, that's a big no-no. And I can't be with someone who will just threaten a relationship and threaten my safety every time we fight." And actually, you can say that. And I think that allows the other person to know that that's a very hard rule for you. That's a hard no, and not to cross that boundary.
Another example, I think, can be if you are arguing with somebody who is trying to say something, who's trying to hurt you in the process and saying things. I always think be really, really careful of not attacking someone's character. You can attack a behavior. You can attack something they've done, but if it ends up being like, "And because ultimately you are just a selfish person who only thinks about themselves, and I've noticed that in all these other areas," you're attacking someone's character, and you can't really take that back. Because even when you make up—I don't know if you guys have been in that situation where someone does that to you—you kind of are left going, "Well, do you just think that I'm a bit of a shitty person?" And I think that those things can really damage, long-term, the relationship.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. We released a clip recently on Instagram that summed up what I think about this in the context of long-term relationships. I want to play this, David, because it got shared so many times on Instagram. Let's play the clip.
Do not marry someone that you never argue with. Marry someone you argue well with. That means that when you have an argument, you reach good compromises. You have a good recovery time. In other words, it doesn't take you days of miserable toxicity to get good again. It takes you minutes or hours. You're both good at coming to the table to apologize and soften. It's not always the same person who has to save the two of you every time you have an argument.
And by the way, you only know these things by having hard conversations early on and being able to talk about the big stuff so that you know who you are when there are differences in opinions. And the goal isn't to agree on everything. You won't, and that's fine. But it is to make sure that you understand each other's expectations and you know ahead of time that you can handle the differences.
That's such a good clip and a good point. Point well made.
Thank you. Well, there were a few comments here. Oaks hit said, "Me and my girlfriend never argue. I don't see the point. We are both empathetic and communicate well. I don't see any reason why I'd even need to argue with her." I mean, I guess we get into semantics there of what you define as an argument. There are disagreements we've had that I have put into the category of argument that aren't really an argument by normal standards.
There's no plate throwing.
No, no. Lacy K. Corell says, "Was married 20 years to someone I never argued with, and I totally disagree—and I totally agree with this." I wonder if she's saying—David, do you think the problem was that they never argued?
Yeah.
Right. So she's saying, "I was married for 20 years. We never argued," and that wasn't a good thing. Kirby7 says, "Don't wait for somebody to be what you're not. Most likely, you are not the person who argues perfectly. Don't wait for a partner that argues perfectly. Look for someone who's willing to work with you on how you both argue." I really love that comment. I think that's a really, really great point, Kirby, because it's so easy to pick holes in the way other people approach things and forget that we are not perfect.
I think this has been a really good conversation. It's been practical. It's been interesting. Let us know if you want us to continue this conversation and if there's anything you want clarification on or if there's anything you want to contribute to the conversation: podcast@matthewhussey.com. Especially let us know if you want us to do more around this subject. Let's go over to our love life. David, who do we have today?
We have Fabiana.
Hello, Steve and Matthew Hussey's team. This is Fabiana, and I'm here to suggest a topic for the podcast, and the topic is rejection, more specifically fear of rejection. I know that Matthew and David, they touched a little bit on this topic in the last podcast, maybe two weeks ago. But I think it would be really useful to dive a little deeper in the psychology, the rationale behind fear of rejection. Why do we fear rejection so much? And in my case, I will give you an example.
If I like someone, this is almost always a state secret. If I like someone that I'm not sure if they like me back, it's always a state secret. And probably to that person it would look like I actually am not interested at all. And that all comes from a place of fear of rejection. So hopefully that's a topic that interests others in the community. It definitely interests me. So here's my suggestion. Thank you.
So firstly, Fabiana, that's a great topic for us to explore more. We'll definitely do that in upcoming episodes. I want to just throw out my immediate thought when you're speaking, that idea of it's a state secret when I like someone, and because it's a state secret, I end up going the other way and appearing like I'm not interested in them at all. It strikes me that one of the things that you would benefit from is what Oliver Burkeman refers to as having imperfectionism as your philosophy as opposed to perfectionism.
So in a way, there's a kind of perfectionist streak to the way that you like people. You have decided you like someone. It's now become extremely important, and it's, by the way, taken on an outsized importance. Because someone can't be that important who you've decided you like. The person who becomes really important is the person who sticks with you through thick and thin. The person who becomes really important is the person who shows up for you, who is there for you, who makes your life better in all sorts of ways, who's an incredible teammate. That's the person who's really important. The person you like is not really important. And so recognizing even that simple psychological shift can make a big difference to how important you make someone in the early stages.
Once you realize that they can't be that important, you can almost give yourself permission to be more imperfect about it. And you almost have to treat this the same way that you would treat anything that you procrastinate. We procrastinate big business ideas because we want to nurse it and nurture it, and we think that it could be so good. And the whole time that we keep it in our mind talking about how good it could be, we never actually have to go and do anything towards it and prove that maybe it's not such a great idea after all, or maybe the timing is wrong, or maybe no one really gets it. We test the idea in the real world to see if the idea in our head can actually materialize.
The same is true when it comes to relationships. We test them in the real world, but you're always going to be testing imperfectly. You're not going to walk up to someone and say the perfect thing and have the perfect movie moment. And guess what? Even if you do, even if the first two minutes that you spoke to someone were pitch-perfect, movie-level scripting, the next two won't be. The next time you meet, you'll say something off-key, or you'll say something that you're like, "Oh God, that was a bit dumb. That was a bit awkward." You'll be clumsy. You'll do something that you were like, "Oh, that wasn't very smooth." You can't keep a perfect score even if you get a perfect score when you first tell someone you like them, or you don't. And by the way, you don't even have to do that. The imperfectionist mindset to this is not to walk up to someone and be like, "Hey, I just want
To let you know I really like you. The imperfectionist mindset is like, "Let me not let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. Let me put myself on this person's radar. Let me notice something about them. Let me have an exchange with them, no matter how small. Instead of zero exchange, let me do something instead of nothing." Something is always better than nothing.
Do the obvious thing. Comment on the music that's playing in the coffee shop. Comment on the muffins in the case and talk about how one of them looks really... "I keep being tempted by that one in particular." Just say anything. Say anything instead of saying nothing. And what you'll find is you start to test in the real world whether this person is responsive, engaged, interested, whether anything comes of it.
It's the same way you treat anything else. The way to do it is not to treat it like this perfect... I think of them like the perfect golden eggs. You're nursing this egg, the unhatched egg, and you keep thinking about what's inside the egg, and you just keep nursing it and nursing it and nursing it. But you never break it open to actually see if there's anything of value in there. You're treating people you like like the great unhatched eggs.
As long as you never crack the egg open, you never have to know whether it could have been anything or whether it would have been anything or not. You can always maintain the idea that it could have been something had you only done more. But we have to value more real life and what's actually in the egg. And if there's nothing going on, the search for something that does show promise. We have to value that more than we value our unhatched eggs, right?
So, no more state secrets. I like someone. Guess what? That's not that big of a deal. I don't know what they're going to be to me in this life. So, if I like someone, it's worth me doing something imperfectly to have an exchange with this person. And if you do that, if you embrace imperfectionism, and if you remove them from the importance they have right now by recognizing they cannot possibly be this important yet, and if you start valuing real life over unhatched eggs, you'll find that you do a lot more than you're doing right now. And the irony is the all-or-nothing approach that you have right now is actually robbing you of opportunities because you're not even putting yourself in the game.
Thank you, Fabiana, for a great love life question. And if you want to send in your voice note with your question, send it to podcast@matthewhussey.com. Thirty seconds for your question, please. If they're too long, we can't play them on the show, but send us your question. We'd love to hear it, and we look forward to answering more of them.
It is that time again. Shuffle my papers. Look at Stephen. Hope he's ready. It's Steve's Sleeves.
By the way, do you know someone commented recently and said Stephen clearly does not enjoy the way that Matthew introduces him?
Is that true, Stephen?
No. We sort of play a role. I sort of play the roll my eyes, and he plays the cheeky...
Yeah. What they don't realize is you've been doing this to me your whole life. You've been sort of rolling your eyes at me in a dry way, acting like you're just exhausted by me and "I've had enough." You've been doing that forever.
Yeah. It's part of the character.
Character.
But don't be ber. You know that we can't live without another episode of Steve's Sleeves.
Welcome to Steve's Sleeves, everyone. Today we are going to play petty or profound.
I like it. I always love when there's a sort of phrase for Steve's Sleeves.
I'm going to give you some scenarios for what might trigger a first argument, and you're going to tell me: are they petty, profound? Are they fixable? Are they something one should... that betoken incompatibility between two people?
Okay.
Hang on. This is petty, profound, and fixable.
Well, that petty...
Petty or profound.
Okay, fine.
Profound means it's fixable. No, sorry. Petty means it's fixable.
Petty means it's not even worth it. Profound means it's a problem, but then you can decide if it's fixable or not.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Okay. All right. Let's do it. Let's do this.
Okay. I think this is one of those ones you got to play to understand.
Disagreeing about the right way to load the dishwasher.
That's really funny. Petty. We disagree.
Yeah, she does it so wrong.
I feel like you guys disagree on a lot of little domestic things.
No, we agree on most domestic things.
Yeah, we do.
All right, here's how she loads. Imagine someone opening the dishwasher and then just grabbing fistfuls of plates and cups and everything and just throwing them into an open void. That's how Audrey loads the dishwasher.
Loads it like it's a work of art that belongs in some contemporary museum.
If you put a cup the right way up in the dishwasher...
Obviously fill with water.
I don't do that. I don't put them... That is too fine. You know it. They don't do that.
I've seen her do that.
Petty.
Okay.
We're gonna have words. We shouldn't argue in front of our friends.
One person wants to splurge on a luxury vacation while the other is intensely saving to pay off student debt.
Well, profound.
Profound. Important. A very, very important conversation.
One person's like, "I really want us to go on vacation this year. It'd be really special and nice." And the other person's like, "I'm trying to save right now." You got to have that conversation. That can end a relationship if you don't get that right. You got to have the conversations about money, money values.
The person who feels safe by paying off debt needs to be reassured that there's a plan in place, even if they go on a nice vacation this year, that this person who wants to go on vacation doesn't want to continue to just indefinitely defer joy in life. But they do also recognize it's really important to them that they pay off the debt. And how can they make a plan together to be able to still not defer joy indefinitely, but also to be financially responsible? But you got to have that conversation.
Yeah. Profound but fixable.
Profound but fixable. Yeah. Sorry, that was the game. Profound but fixable. Okay.
After a family visit, one partner says, "Your mom's always nitpicking and criticizing things I do." The other says, "That's just how you know she cares." I'd say profound.
Profound.
If they can both laugh about it, profound. But if the person who says, "Your mom's always finding fault with me," isn't laughing when their partner says that, then profound. You've got...
So, you mean the first one is petty? If you can both laugh about your mom's silly behavior.
If it's an argument, because this is in the context of you're having an argument about it. I guess if you say, "Your mom's always finding fault with me," and they say, "That's how you know she cares," and you're both like, "Yeah," we both roll our eyes because we know she's difficult, then it's fine. But if your partner's genuinely trying to say, "I'm having a hard time with your mom. She's really always pulling me apart," and then they just gaslight you over it, then profound.
Profound.
But fixable. But the only way that's fixable is if that person joins your team. I'm not saying it's a team against the mom, but they have to show that they're on your side and that they're like, "Hey, look, I know I have a difficult mom. I know she has a tendency to do that. I don't have a lot of control over her other than to ask her to stop, but I see you and I understand it and I'm with you."
Okay. One person is an oversharer with their friends. They give a lot of detail about your relationship, and you feel it's too much.
Profound.
Yeah, we talked about that in the early stages, didn't we?
I got upset because you shared more with your friends than I felt comfortable with you doing.
I forgot about that. Yeah.
But we got on the same page about it, didn't we?
Yeah. Because I was like, "I feel like we have to be able to have an argument without..."
Everyone.
My friends hearing about it.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I think that it's important to... I really want to add a caveat here. You have to have people you can go to in life. A mandate for an abusive relationship is one where you feel you're not entitled to ever go to someone else and share what's going on. So you have to apply what I just said contextually.
Yeah. But that was a thing, and it was completely solved with us because we chatted about it.
Okay.
A blowup over whether a hot dog is a sandwich or whether it's a sui generis item. Sui generis is Latin for one of a kind, unique.
What was the first option?
If a hot dog is a sandwich.
Oh God. It's neither.
I'd say that's probably...
It's closer to a sandwich.
Petty. Well, no. You've literally been sucked into the hot dog debate.
Petty.
You got sucked straight into Steve's world there. You're deep in a vortex of Steve. Fight over it.
I'd say petty. That's not worth arguing about.
Okay. Disagreeing on whether it's necessary to clean up your bedroom every morning.
Profound.
No, that's petty. That's petty. If you left our bedroom dirty every morning, just...
He would not handle that well.
To be fair, though, you sort of do sometimes.
And we're all right, aren't we? So it's probably...
Funny. Do you know what's funny is everyone in this room knows that I tidy up more than... We've had this debate on air before.
Yeah. Let's not. Matthew is a clean freak. I think of Matthew as a clean freak.
Not a clean freak. I'm a tidy freak.
She's a clean freak.
Yeah, I'm a clean freak.
Clean freak, tidy freak. What's the difference?
She doesn't like germs. She's always washing her hands.
No, but the reason I think it's petty is that I think there's different levels. If you're somebody who, like you, for instance, really likes everything to be perfect and immaculate, you could tolerate a level, I think, and a degree of me not being that way.
Yeah, for sure.
But if I was disgusting...
If the house was always messy, that would...
Yeah, yeah. That would affect me.
But what he's saying is just in the morning you leave it a bit messy, right?
But it's not like you have a messy room all the time.
It's just in the morning when you wake up, you don't make the bed and you...
You leave it messy.
You leave it messy. Yeah. As long as it's not accumulating in a crazy way. I'm probably too much on this one. But I do think if one person really likes order and is tidy, and the other person's incredibly messy, and there's no give and take there on both sides, then that can be profound.
Okay. When you go out together, they always spend an inordinate amount of attention on their friends and you feel ignored, and they just go off and do their thing. "Oh, and hey, we're going to go here after." You don't feel included.
Oh, that's hard.
Profound. I think that's profound. I think it's profound but fixable.
But hopefully that person's not saying that when they go out with their friends, it's a problem that they don't pay all their attention to them, because the whole point of going out with friends is that you give attention to other people, and that's healthy in a relationship. But if...
Especially if you're always together. Whenever we go to parties, we don't talk to each other.
Because we are always together. So then when we're with other people, we just give other people attention. We actually don't spend a lot of time together when we're in company, I would say.
No, I agree. And then we debrief.
And then we debrief afterwards.
Yeah.
So it depends. I'd say profound if genuinely that person doesn't acknowledge you, and also...
They make the decisions.
They make the decisions about what to do afterwards without... Profound.
Yeah. Their form of teasing or banter sometimes hurts your feelings.
Sometimes they make some jokes, and you're like, "I don't..."
I don't really like...
Well, it has to be, right? It's fixable.
But you know what? You and I are very sensitive people, and I think one of the reasons we work really, really well is that we are aware of each other's sensitivities, and we don't say hurtful things to each other. I think if I was with someone who was continuously making me feel upset or disrespected, I don't think I would be happy in that relationship.
Some people's style of humor is naturally a bit more offensive, a bit more cutting. We've got friends like that.
We've got friends like that.
We've definitely got friends like that.
And sometimes they hurt my feelings.
I do. I sometimes don't like... I'm bracing myself when I tell them things because...
Be with them. That's the other thing, right? You can be friends with them, but could you be in a relationship with someone?
Shared humor is very profound.
I think it's profound. To me, that's profound. And it's only fixable if, when you give that feedback, it gets better.
Yeah.
Or what if you're always making a light joke and someone gets overly offended, and you're like...
That's the worst.
Exactly. See?
I think that's an incompatibility.
Exactly. If someone is so sensitive, that's how they feel, then that's how they feel, and it makes them wrong for you.
Yeah.
It might make them someone who's going to find it difficult to find love because they're a bit more difficult. But if they really can't help it because they get really offended, then that's who they are.
I have a friend who both of you know who, when I went through a really bad breakup and I was in true, vicious heartbreak, I went to see him and I said to him, "I'm gonna tell you where I'm at emotionally and what's just happened, and I need you to not make your normal jokes because I can't take them right now." I literally had to say, "Just..."
There are some friends...
Right now I'm not capable of your normal acerbic wit. So just right now I need you to be with me. And he was like, "Got it."
That's sweet.
Yeah. But that's communication. Communication. I didn't let him make a joke that hurt my feelings and then live with resentment over it. I just said, "I know you. I love you. I can't take your today."
Well, thank you, everyone. And please let us know: is a hot dog a bun or a unique sui generis item or a sandwich? Thanks for playing.
Email podcast@matthewhussey.com for any answers you have on that or any of Steve's Sleeves or ideas for Steve's Sleeves episodes.
Subject line: hot dog.
Subject line: hot dog. Well, thank you, everybody. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you, Audrey. Thank you, all of you, for listening in. I've enjoyed this episode. I thought it was a good one. You let us know, what did you think? podcast@matthewhussey.com. Thank you so much for listening. We can't wait to see you next time for another episode of Love Life.
Guys, before you go, don't forget to go over to AskMH.com to get in on the Black Friday sale for Matthew AI. Two whole weeks for free, only today. AskMH.com is that link. And thanks again for listening to the podcast.
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