Moment 90 - The Incredible & Unexpected Power Of Vulnerability: Matthew Hussey

00:03you know you historically not posted a lot on social media about your relationship situations you've been as you said in your own words on that wonderful proposal announcement post you did you'd been quite a private person one of the lines in that that um post you did when you announced that you and audrey had become engaged was and finally thank you for teaching me how to love in way that i was too scared to before i found that quite intriguing i i think like a lot of men i struggled with genuine vulnerability we all have our fake version of vulnerability the you know it's the version of going into for a job interview and saying i my what's your biggest weakness i i work too hard everyone's got their pr version of vulnerability it's vulnerability if on some level it just makes me feel like i'm expressing a part of myself that you might not like or you you know i can't control your reaction to this and i had been in relationships in the past where i had revealed an insecurity like i was jealous of somebody you know i felt threatened by somebody else and it was fed back to me that that was unattractive and in my mind that that kind of stuck i think there is a especially in a lot of men there is a

01:40kind of there's a kind of double thing going on in their head where they go yeah yeah i know that's really important but i'm not saying that because if i say that she's not going to think i'm cool anymore i've spent a lot of time curating this sexy alpha cool image that has attracted this person you really think i'm going to jeopardize that by showing an actual weakness something that and again i'm not talking about the weakness of i cry in movies that's not vulnerability that you know that's going to be cute you know that she's going to see that and go oh my god he's sensitive to that's not vulnerability real vulnerability is this is something that i never really wanted anyone to see and and i'm taking a risk that when you see this you're going to still think that i'm what you want have you got something in mind when you say that like you had a conversation with audrey and you think now this is one of the things where i wouldn't normally have had the safety i think that for me times when i was anxious i would normally bottle those up i keep them to myself i wouldn't express what i was anxious about or what was doing that to me times if we were arguing where i wouldn't really be honest about why i was upset

03:17i'd give the kind of strong version of why i was upset the pr version yeah but i wouldn't give the real reason i was upset that went to the core of me not feeling enough of me not feeling good enough of me feeling scared of me feeling like something was being triggered that i didn't know how to handle sometimes even when i was in pain and there would be other situations from my past where i would kind of not want to reveal how much pain I was in with my head because I was worried that someone might determine this is not I can't I don't want to deal with this so I kind of keep it to myself for a lot of guys their experience of growing up wasn't one where being vulnerable would have been rewarded and then you add on to that the additional layer of as a guy we've been culturally led to believe that being the caricatured alpha male that's what women want and some of our experiences have confirmed that we lost out to the guy in high school who was much meaner than us and who we knew was not a very nice person but he had his pick and that that's quite scarring for a guy because you go what does that mean yeah what do what do i so i have to be more like that and so we close parts of ourselves down and and then it's and then you know god forbid you come

04:53across or have a relationship with someone who confirms that yeah now you really feel like i need to be that guy and and it can take a lot of rewiring and deconditioning to get to a place where you go, oh, if I keep being this way, I'm actually going to attract, I'm just going to continue to attract people who do value the wrong things, who are looking for an Instagram man. Can you do that from the jump though? I was just thinking about some of my friends in my head and I was thinking they're going to hear that.

05:27And I know some of my friends who are actually probably scared of, especially at the start in the dating phase, of laying it out. So they come, they put the makeup on, they get the hair done, and they go get the tan, whatever. And their objective is, I just need to keep this fucking person. And I believe the way to keep them is just, you know, keep trying to be that sexy perfect. At what point do you go from sexy perfect to, listen, I'm, you know, pretty fucked up in a number of ways?

05:54I think that we have to, there's a way to, firstly, vulnerability in the beginning of dating isn't, well, vulnerability is, can be really attractive, but not in a way where you expose all of your wounds and the things you don't like about yourself instantly. And offloaded, I guess. Exactly. It's fine to talk about something that you're working on or even in a playful tone, kind of nod to something that you're not very good at. But that's not the same.

06:33I remember being on a TV show in Australia where there was this one woman, she was an amazing woman, but every time she went on a date, it would just be a kind of all on the surface, laughing and just on the surface, on the surface, on the surface, on the surface. And I was like, part of the problem is these guys that go on dates with you, by the end of the date, they don't feel connected to you in any way. And the reason they don't feel connected to you is because there's no real vulnerability at that stage.

07:06So I said, the next date, I want you to actually connect and be a little vulnerable. Now, what she did with that advice is went on the next first date and told the story of her dad getting in a car accident that changed her whole life in a really awful way at the time. And I had to say at the time, when I said vulnerability, I didn't mean go and tell the story of the worst thing that's happened to you in your life. Vulnerability can be paying someone a compliment.

07:43Because in a way, when you pay someone a compliment, you're handing them a little power, right? Not in a bad way, but you're saying like, there's something great about you and I'm acknowledging it. And now you know that I think that you're great in some way. Or it can be laughing at somebody else's joke. or it can be talking about something that you really enjoy doing that's a little bit nerdy that you, you know, I might not put on social media all the time, but it is something I actually do in my spare time that's kind of geeky.

08:12But I love it. Sometimes, or even if it's not geeky, if it's just something you're super passionate about and you talk about something with passion, that's a vulnerable act. To express that you're passionate about something is vulnerable because they may not think that thing is cool or even just to be passionate is to be vulnerable. You might think that my passion is too much or you might think it's silly. So you could be vulnerable about the right things early on.

08:39And the more someone gets to know you, the more you can kind of let them in on some of the things that you struggle with. Vulnerability isn't necessarily revealing all of our insecurities all at once. and one important reason for that is because when we tell an insecurity if i tell you something i don't like about my face i'm telling you what to think about my face i'm not letting you have your own opinion of my face you can take the view that there's some part of your body or there's something you're you're not a fan of in yourself you can take that opinion but you don't get to be the opinion for everybody else the reason we're saying it is because we're almost trying to beat them to it you know let me just tell you that i don't like this thing about myself because then i'll feel better that's out in the open but i'm presupposing what you're going to think about it that's an awful quality people have that self-disparaging thing it's really insidious in many ways and that isn't vulnerability that's a different thing from vulnerability vulnerability can be acknowledging that there's something that you don't like about yourself all the time that can be an act of vulnerability but you have to suspect yourself if your instinct with someone you don't know that well

10:03is to immediately go to that place