Matthew Hussey reveals the TWO red flags to look out for in a relationship

Virgin Radio

21 May 2024, 12:36

World-renowned confidence and relational intelligence coach Matthew Hussey visited Virgin Radio to turn the pages on his new book, Love Life: How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person (and Live Happily, No Matter What).

Both Rebel Wilson and Drew Barrymore are fans of Matthew, who began working as a dating coach for men in his teens. Joining the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with webuyanycar, he said: “Oh man, 17 years ago, I started working with people in their love lives. It's been a long, long road.”

In his new book - which is out now - Matthew looks at reasons why we keep attracting the wrong people and focuses on how to rewire our brains so we can meet the right person. Speaking about the chapter which looks at red flags, he told Chris: “I always say red flags are a dangerous thing. Because we live in a world where everything's become a red flag to people. We have to be careful, because if we're not careful, we'll rule ourselves out of the dating market, because I've been guilty of a bunch of red flags."

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Talking about “trying to get rid of all of these superfluous red flags,” and focusing on “the ones that actually matter,” Matthew said: “The two of them that I wrote in that chapter are the inability to say sorry, and another one, which was not keeping promises.”

He continued: “Neither of those things, as a one-off, are necessarily the end of the world. We've all broken a promise, forgotten to do something we said we would do. We've all had an argument where we found it hard to say sorry in that argument, but as a chronic condition of someone who isn't good for their word, and someone who can't say sorry, those two on their own are quite potent red flags. 

“Everyone can probably recall a relationship with someone where that made their lives miserable with that person. But together, they become what I think of as a kind of dark pairing. Because if you have someone who can't keep their promises, but then when they don't keep their promise, they can't even be accountable for it, they can't say sorry, yeah, that's a really potent combination.”

Speaking about liars, the author said: “The dangerous ones are the ones who are very good at it, and there are some of those. There are truly both pathological liars and people who are able to construct an entire world that you come to see is not real. Those are more rare. What the thing I talk about in the book that is relevant to everybody is the difference between liars and avoiders? Because, avoiders are much more common than liars. 

“For example, if you're dating someone, and you want to be exclusive, but you're afraid to bring it up, because you don't want to scare them away, you don't want to come on too strong. So you're having a lovely time with them, and you're never bringing up, ‘Are we just dating each other? Are we exclusive?’ An avoider is relying on you being afraid of having that conversation, because they're not gonna lie to you and say, ‘I'm not with anyone else.’ But they're never going to talk about it as long as you don't.

“And so what I say is the most dangerous thing about an avoider is that, in order for someone to be an avoider, they need another avoider. They need someone unwilling to have the hard conversation. And that makes us now complicit in the theft of our own future, because we're not having a hard conversation, because we don't want to scare them away”

He added: “But then a year later, we find out we have been in very different places all along, and I never knew it because I enabled this avoiding. So, it doesn't excuse their avoiding, but we have to start taking accountability for the conversations that we're afraid to have. Our life gets better in direct proportion to the number of challenging conversations we're willing to have.”

Love Life is out now. 

For more great interviews listen to The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with webuyanycar weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.