Full transcript of “5 Behaviors That Push People Away (Without You Realizing)”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 do you know one of the things that I value most in my life peace all of the little ways that I get to construct this world of calm and equinity that makes me feel relaxed but when people are dating it's really hard to maintain this because there are so many things that Rob us of our peace when we are looking for love one of those things is when we go on a date with someone we like them it's seems as if it might be going well and then they fade maybe they stop texting as back as much maybe they stop asking us out even if they do text us back whatever is the case it becomes clear
0:45 that this person that we had hopes for has lost interest now some of the time maybe even a lot of the time that has everything to do with them and not with us but occasionally it's worth asking the question is there anything I might be doing that could be pushing someone away I'm Matthew hussy and today we are going to be talking about the five behaviors that can push someone away without us realizing it and stop it from ever reaching its full potential number one we run the risk of pushing people away when we overshare oversharing is incredibly common and by definition oversharing happens at a time when the amount of
1:32 information we've given someone is inorganic to our relationship with them at that point in other words when we say things to someone who is essentially a perfect stranger that they shouldn't be privy to yet now what does this actually look like well it can look like talking about our insecurities very early in the process you know I just hate when people ask me about my height or talk about my height cuz I've never like my height I'm you know I've always felt like I'm Too Tall or I've always felt like I'm too short that's oversharing about an insecurity we have at a time when someone else is just beginning to form their own opinions on us I always think when we dump our insecurities onto someone else we're telling them what to
2:18 think about us instead of allowing them to decide what they think about us oversharing can look like telling someone about deep traumas we've experienced and how we've worked through them which may be beautiful and courageous and amazing but is not information that someone who just met you needs to know or even necessarily knows what to do with this isn't a therapy session it's a date oversharing can look like dumping on someone from our past no matter how awful that person was who hurt you who destroyed your life who made you miserable this person in front of you doesn't need to know all of that right now they don't need to know how badly you've been hurt in a previous
3:03 relationship you can allude to the fact that you've had a challenging relationship but they don't need to know the details and we don't come off well talking horribly about someone they don't know when they're just getting to know us it might even leave them wondering what are they going to be saying about me one day to a perfect stranger now look why do we overshare we overshare because we're anxious and when we anxious we just start saying things and then afterwards we go why did I say that what was I even thinking when I said that that was so stupid so when we get anxious we overshare we sometimes overshare because we're avoidant if I can give you all of these reasons to reject me before you find them out then
3:49 it's almost like I'm owning the rejection if I say all of this about myself and you don't want me we'll screw you this is me so it's almost a kind of headed against future rejection some people overshare because they're too trusting because they forget that information is power and that someone shouldn't have all of that information on you right now because it can be used against you and you don't really know if you can trust this person some people overshare because they've been living in a certain world for a long time like therapy and it's very normal for them to talk about their traumas and and the way they're healing and they don't realize that this is a different context this is a date
4:36 not a therapy session or their best friend who they're talking about their therapy session with so we overshare for all sorts of different reasons but the effects of oversharing can be universally damaging they give people information that makes them uncomfortable that they don't know what to do with it brings them into a world of intimacy they haven't earned so they start ask asking themselves why do I have this level of intimacy with this person right now this doesn't feel normal this doesn't feel organic it not only gives too much information to someone we don't trust sometimes it breaks the bond of trust from their side because they see that we Have No Boundaries around the information that's stored in our minds so oversharing can become one of these
5:22 invisible ways that we push someone away without ever realizing it I mean whoever when they fade out of our Lives puts in a call to us at the end of it all and says just so you know I'm fading because you overshare no one ever so it's not like this is feedback we're ever going to get from anyone but it is having an effect nonetheless and unfortunately when it comes to oversharing it's often worn as a virtue by the people that do it I'm just being me I'm just being honest I'm just being authentic but oversharing is not the same as authenticity the second way we push people away without realizing it is through negativity now I want to make something
6:09 very clear I'm not when I talk about negativity being a bad thing advocating for Endless Relentless positivity that Finds Its way into every conversation no matter what someone says we have been going through the wildfires here in in Los Angeles and a very helpful video my friend Dr Ramy put up during these wildfires was advice on how to support people who are going through the wildfires and she said if you're speaking to someone who has lost their home talking to them about how lucky they are to still be alive and to have their family and that's what's important might not be the best place to go for
6:56 someone who's just lost in their mind everything that as she describes it is a form of toxic positivity right so positivity all the time is not necessarily what is called for especially when we're trying to connect with people in the things that they're going through but I think of negativity more broadly as the way that we leave people feeling after we've left them when they leave us do they feel like life is a little better do they feel a little happier do they feel a little lighter or do they feel like their lens of the world is dimmer you know
7:42 sometimes negativity takes the form of saying deeply negative things other times negativity can look really innocuous on the surface it's being the person that every time someone meets up with us and asks us how we are we say oh my God I'm just so busy there's just so much going on it's just like I don't know I can't catch my breath right now if that's the energy we bring to someone every time we meet them at some point that's going to have an effect it's also true that positivity doesn't mean always finding the bright side positivity can just mean bringing a certain kind of energy to a situation I was reminded of this during
8:27 the wildfires here in La when a friend of mine John Turtle tub a movie director whose movies many of you will have seen and love was being interviewed outside his house which was literally one of the only houses still standing in the neighborhood by the grace of a neighbor who had fought the fires all night to protect it and amidst this chaos and tragedy and him and his family worrying that that they had lost everything or were going to lose everything there was still a chance that their house was going to catch fire they were not out of it and in the clear he gave an interview because there was a cameraman nearby and an anchor who ran up to him and was like
9:15 can we get your thoughts and amidst all of this sadness he not only expressed how hard it all was and how terrible it all was he also managed to make the people behind the camera and in front of the camera laugh and he did this because he saw that there was something behind the camera that the cameraman should be shooting and wasn't and as a movie director he was quick to point out what the cameraman should be doing check this out can you believe that houses are still going up right now it's crazy I it's amazing there's anything left what happens is they're gone and then if you look over there that just started that new flame coming over over there I know
10:00 he doesn't want to pan over does he I'm a movie director and I'm telling you pan over is pretty great it is it is pretty great there we are seeing some flames right there John you can uh speak as we're looking at those flames right now now that clip was shot by John's family watching the TV going through one of the worst times of their life and laughing at the energy that John was expressing in that moment what I love about this example is that John left people better than he found them by the end of that interview by all right that should have just been an incredibly sad interview but John Being John is experiencing one
10:46 of the worst moments of his life with his family and has a moment of lightness and that moment of lightness does not come from him talking about the bright side of what they're all going through it comes from John injecting his playfulness and his wit into a situation where no one expected it it came from him leading and by Leading with that energy he made the guy holding the microphone laugh he made the cameraman laugh he made his family who were going through the worst time of their lives laugh watching him on TV and it made the rest of us who were watching that
11:32 interview laugh in a moment where so many people were crying so he led with his energy and that's the part that it's worth all of us looking at ourselves and saying am I default negative energy or default positive energy am I leaving people better than I found them and I find that by the way much more descriptive in some ways than am I a positive person because when we think positive we think we have to say positive things all the time or always show people how to look on the bright side but when I think of leaving people better than I found them I simply think of the energy that I bring sometimes without words at all that leaves someone
12:18 better off by the way before we get on to point number three you'll notice that so much of this is about how we choose to connect with another person that we hope to build a relation ship with and there are lots of wrong ways to connect and some really amazing ways to connect that maybe aren't our default right now so before I get on to point number three four and five I want to tell you that if you want better ways to connect and you're wondering what do those look like for me I have a tool for you that you can use right now it's called Matthew Ai and you can go and ask it any question you want about dating about love about how you come across you can roleplay things you can literally ask Matthew AI any
13:04 question you want for free right now at ask mh.com and get some immediate answers it's not easy to work this stuff out on our own but when we have the help of that Mentor which really Matthew AI is me because it has all of my information everything I've said up until today downloaded into it you're getting the best advice and personal tailored advice for your situation in fact I literally had someone send me this email just a couple of days ago I wanted to drop you a message about Matthew AI I had a truly awful experience with a man I'd been chatting to intensely for several weeks before we met I sought comfort in lots of friends but also reached out to Matthew AI the
13:50 response was brilliant it's a very clever toll and it actually did make me think more positively after I was blown away at how clever it is and how it actually really did make me feel less rubbish about myself so thank you you've clearly put a lot of effort and Minecraft into it and it has paid off well done so if you haven't tried Matthew AI yet go check it out at ask mh.com you can text it or call it whatever suits you all right let's move on to number three the third way that we can unknowingly push people away is by drinking too much this one is going to be a pretty short point but it is so common to have one
14:35 too many drinks on a date because we're trying to calm our nerves or just because we're in the habit of doing that or because it feels like the thing to do or because we're trying to keep up with someone else who we shouldn't be trying to keep up with and somewhere between drink one and four we become a different version of ourselves and that version of ourselves is isn't necessarily the most attractive version of ourselves now I'm not suggesting that we judge ourselves for the way that we are once we've had a couple of drinks but I am saying that even though sometimes it feels like our best self when we're drinking it really is and I don't say this as someone who has any kind of righteousness about
15:22 drinking orre and I consumed more than half their share of beers in Japan when we went there a few months ago so I have no dog in this fight of whether you should or shouldn't drink but what I will say is that when it comes to dating it really can take us off our game in unhelpful ways it can make us less composed it can make us say things we otherwise wouldn't we lose a sense of control over our ability to articulate and connect and for somebody else watching us it can quickly become something that turns them off when they see it so be aware of how much alcohol you consume when you're on a date and
16:09 it's a great advertisement for having daytime dates where you don't have that pressure to drink unless you live somewhere like London where people are just Pirates Who Drink All Day in pubs especially if the sun is shining but even then you know you could do something El the fourth way we push people away without realizing It Is by having too much intensity now there's different types of being too intense in dating let's explore a couple of them the first one is with excessive neediness you know following up with someone do you miss me
16:55 why haven't you texted me back I haven't heard from you what's going on demanding a level of attention and investment from someone that we barely know based on this idea of where we want it to go in a way it's kind of like we're not really reading the situation or measuring the true nature of the situation instead we're chasing after something that we want to happen and in the process we become the intense one who is doing the chasing another kind of intensity is over familiarity ity this is when someone that we don't know we place a level of proximity and comfort and intimacy that they haven't really earned
17:43 Audrey was telling me about a time when she experienced this kind of over familiar intensity where after a single date that she'd had with someone he started calling her baby and that for her felt really weird and unearned and it just made her feel uncomfortable and like there was almost something to back away from so you know pet names for someone that hasn't earned a pet name good way to be too intense through over familiarity there's the kind of intensity where we over invest emotionally or supportively to someone for example you may say how are you and someone may say oh I've had a bit of a crummy day at work my boss is has just been a nightmare and
18:29 you know what honestly it doesn't matter it just my boss is being really difficult now a nice response might be oh that sucks I'm so sorry how about I take you for some tacos to make you feel better compare that with the intense response which might look like well that's because they have no idea how valuable you are do they the last kind of intensity is what I call self selp intensity which usually involves some mix of reading a lot into a situation using one's intuition and giving unsolicited advice and it looks a
19:15 little something like this you know I I can't help but notice when you talk about this it seems like there's more there have you explored this at all have you tried trauma informed therapy uh I know that made a big difference for me I mean I when I learned to love myself all of those old childhood beliefs that I know you're struggling with they just just evaporated you know oh no I definitely I was just saying that I didn't um enjoy wicked as much as everybody else seemed to but no I I should try that intensity is scary huh here's the thing a lot of intensity in
20:03 the early stages comes from a story that we've been telling ourselves in our head that doesn't correspond with reality a story about who another person is or what they need a story about how important the relationship is at a time when you can't possibly know how important it is a story about how perfect you are for a person or how perfect they are for you at a time when you don't really know each other the answer to intensity is presence CU When we actually get present with the person in front of us and the stage that we're at our words and our actions will be a direct mirror of what's actually going on not the story we've told ourselves the fifth and final yes we've made it to
20:50 the final one in this video thing that pushes people away without our noticing is when we don't listen this is such an obvious point that it feels like it doesn't even need to be said and yet the true art of listening is lost on so many of us including me when we're in conversation with people and it's lost for a number of reasons it can be lost because of anxiety because we're waiting for our turn to speak not out of any sense of not caring but out of a sense of oh my God am I going to say the right thing am I keeping this person interested am I engaging right now am I doing a good job and when we're in our head thinking of those things we live on the outside of the conversation looking in instead of being in the conversation with somebody
21:37 else of course we can also be a bad listener through ignorance through having no empathy for the experience of the other person in the conversation we can also be poor listeners due to arrogance that I can't learn anything from anyone else what everyone else has to say isn't interesting I'm not truly interested in their story I've already drawn all of my conclusions about this person this situation so I'm just going to talk and of course not listening can also be a sign in some cases of narcissism the only words that need to be heard here are mine and the only thing that's really important to me is impressing you with how great I am and I can't do that when you're speaking in any case not listening becomes this ultimate barrier to connection it is what has someone leaving a date feeling
22:22 like they never really connected with us they don't really feel seen by us they don't feel UND stood by us the question is how can we become better listeners and there's so much advice on listening out there but I want to draw your attention to something I read literally this week I've been reading this book by Haruki murakami the famous uh fiction writer out of Japan called novelist as a vocation and it's essentially a book of advice and musings for people who are aspiring novelists of which I am not but I enjoyed reading the book very very much um there was something he said that really stuck with me which is that in a somewhat self-deprecating way he talks about how he's not bright enough or
23:11 quick enough to draw fast conclusions about things and that he just sort of has a way of observing the world without coming to conclusions and that that behavior that way of uh of going through life actually serves him as a novelist because if you were to come to conclusions too quickly that would make a bad novel right but a great novel is one where conclusions are arrived at somewhat slowly at a different pace and he says this I want to read this to you next before you start writing your own stuff make a habit of looking at things and events in more detail observe what is going on around you and the people you encounter as closely and as deeply as you can reflect on what you see remember though that to reflect is not
23:58 to rush to determine the Rights and Wrongs and merits and demerits of what and whom you are observing try to consciously refrain from value judgments conclusions can come later what's important is not arriving at Clear conclusions but retaining the specifics of a certain situation in other words your material as fully as you can it strikes me that that is really great advice for a date two of course there are certain conclus iions we come to privately in our own mind during or after the date that make us say yes I'd like another date with this person or no I don't want to go anywhere near this person again but when it comes to the art of conversation drawing conclusions quickly
24:44 becomes a barrier to getting to know someone for example if someone tells you about a a time they went through last year because of something that happened in their life and immediately your thought is oh I know that pattern they did that because they're this kind of person who has lived this life and that's drawn them to the place they are today and now you start assuming all these things about this person that may be right or wrong but certainly even if you're right aren't going to make that person feel hurt curiosity and continuing to listen and actively ask questions is what makes another person feel heard is what makes them feel like you are discovering them perhaps in a more intricate way than anyone else has recently because no one else has been
25:30 this great at doing this excavation instead of just rushing to conclusions there's a a great moment I just want to read you this real quick he says let's say you know someone who for no apparent reason starts sneezing when they get really angry once the sneezing fit begins it goes on and on now I don't know anyone like that but for the sake of argument let's say you do what you wonder explains this pattern one approach would be to try to come up with the tentative Theory physiological perhaps or psychological to analyze their behavior my brain however doesn't work that way I think wow people like that exist and leave it at that now I'm suggesting you go one step further in
26:16 the little novel that you're writing on a date and suggest that the the character in front of you is going to give you some information great listening is not assuming everything about what that information means But continuing to encourage the Arc of that story of that character to a point where a you get to know them much better as a result which allows you to decide whether to go on another date with that person and B makes them feel truly listened too which is one of the most miraculous things in helping you stand out so what about you having heard these five things is there something that you've either done yourself or seen in your friends and family that unconsciously pushes people away in
27:02 dating and ends things before they need to end leave a comment let me know I'd be curious to know what you would add to this list and do not forget to check out Matthew AI you can ask it questions like what should I do on a first date what are the kinds of conversations that make for really attractive conversations you can even ask it for specific scripts or ask what can I do to recover the attraction after a date if it seems like it's been lost you can ask it literally any question you could conceive of go there now and check it out and by the way if you're wondering what prompts you could ask Matthew AI in the description below I've got a little list of prompts to get your mind working on the ways that you could make it valuable to you
27:48 so check those out in the description below and go to ask mh.com to ask your question now thank you so much for watching as always it's been a pleasure I will see you next time oh wait before you go if you want a video that will pair extremely well with this one like a fine cheese then you need to go here next he doesn't want to pan over does he David I am telling you I'm a very well-known YouTuber you need to pan over [Music]
