“The Wall” that kills happy relationships - Matthew Hussey
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So much of what is being navigated in relationships is just a straight up lack of compatibility. It's far easier to date somebody who compensates for our shortcomings than it is to fix them. If you are the sort of person that likes to go to bed at 9:00 p.m. and your partner wants to go out clubbing three nights a week, there is going to be tension there and you're going to have to navigate it. Maybe the rest of the relationship is so good that this slightly major thing of a different sleeping pattern can be navigated through because everything else is great. But for the most part, there's going to be other stuff that comes along for the ride that you also don't agree on. If you have to compromise your sleep two nights a week and they have to not go out one night a week, both of you aren't getting the thing that you want. There is somebody out there who would love to party three nights a week. Allow them to find them. There is someone that would adore going to bed with you at 9:00 p.m. every single night and wants that homebody life. Go and find them. So much of the issues where people are trying to navigate this stuff is a lack of compatibility.
A lot of guys say, "I opened up to my partner." That's good. Congratulations. You faced the scary thing. As a man, you faced the scary thing and my partner was turned off. They weren't for you. That partner was not the person who can hold you in your wholeness, in your truth, in your full expression of who you are. Allow them to go and find someone who is never going to open up their emotions to them. They don't need to worry about those icks. They're never going to get that ick because homeboy is never going to talk about it. Enjoy that. Enjoy this emotionless barren wasteland of no one ever talking about their emotions. And maybe that's the guy that if you put him on a poster, you can say he's masculine and he's going to stand up. Great, you can date him. I'm going to go find someone who melts at the prospect of me being able to feel my feelings and then allows them to be a springboard for me to destroy in the world outside. That amount of compatibility.
So much of the memes that exist online are basically people saying, "I dated someone whose demeanor and disposition did not match mine and my preference, and look at how everything broke apart." Allow me to create a broad rule of human nature overall from what is actually just you mixing vinegar and baking soda together.
Yeah. And that what you just described is how people get more and more into these hyperpolarized echo chambers online because they've had an experience. It's been a very painful experience. They then go in search of other people who have had that experience and they hear more of it. And I'm not saying communities where people talk together about what they've been through aren't powerful because they are. But what it can be instead is this.
I talk in my book about this idea of the wall, like staring at the wall. The very famous self-development trope, race car driver Mario Andretti said his advice for race car driving: don't stare at the wall. Your car goes where your eyes go. But people don't take that concept far enough in terms of what it really means.
We all have our wall. Let's say it's "women don't like when I'm vulnerable." That's my wall. I was vulnerable with someone once and they ripped my heart out. And so now I go in search of other people who have that wall as well. And all of us together stand there and point at the wall and we keep talking about the wall and we find more evidence for the wall everywhere we can find it. We go out in search for it. Anytime we hear a story about it, we say, "Here, look. This has happened again."
And the wall becomes the world. It's no longer a wall.
It's a law.
It's life.
Yeah. And that's the truly dangerous part. We have to stand back from anytime I hear women generalizing about men, men generalizing about women, and be very careful of the little worlds that you get into.
Turning an individual experience into a globalized law.
There's a skit video on Instagram where a guy says "me doing XYZ because I don't have kids." Me waking up at 8:00 a.m. because I don't have kids. Me eating pizza at night because I don't have kids. Me checking my bank account that's so high because I don't have kids. Thousands of comments from people just being like, "Yeah, me too. I don't have to do anything on my weekends." Everyone who had that wall, the algorithm found them. I'm facing the wall along with you.
But as someone having my first child with my wife, I know there was a me that was scared of commitment and having kids that really would have related to the things in this video. The problem with these is that there is a cohort of men out there for whom that is the life that they want and probably is the life that they should lead. You'd suck as a dad and you shouldn't make yourself one. Please continue to do that.
It's the same as women that say "all men are trash." If you make these sweeping statements, one of the wonderful ways to neutralize the conversation and also it makes you feel pretty good too. "Men are trash and I'm done with men." Okay, feel free and you allow somebody to take the route that they want. The same thing with that guy. Great for you. You'd have been an awful dad anyway. Which one is it? Do you want to be able to have the counterculture black sheep heterodox cynicism points or do you want to be able to say that you could have been good at this but have chosen the other one? These two worlds are not compatible and allowing someone to crack on.
We're not good at the complexity of life and so we gravitate towards very simple arguments. When I was single, I watched Guardians of the Galaxy, the first one, and saw Chris Pratt playing Star-Lord, and it became this emotional button for me for why being single was awesome. This renegade. I was like, "Yeah, I'm Star-Lord."
Now that I'm having a child I'm looking at Finding Nemo and going like oh that movie now has a whole new meaning to me and how exciting. It's a kind of survival mechanism. But it's also a coping mechanism that we go to these places to lean into our choices or our lack of choices. We're living in a really dangerous time belief wise where your algorithm will really pull you into these little worlds of people who all have the same wall that you do and celebrate it together. And in some ways those are exactly the kind of people sometimes that you need to be able to stand back from because the people when I want to go somewhere different than where I've been, the people I want to be around are people who don't have my wall at all.
They're not even aware of my wall. If I explained my wall to them, they'd be like,
"What? Wait, really? You've had that experience or you feel that way or whatever?" It's not real to them.
I had a boxing trainer who told me a story of going into a bar in London. He was training a lawyer and this lawyer took a shine to him and said come out for a drink one night. He takes this rough and ready boxing coach from the east end of London into the west end and they go out to this really beautiful place in Soho. He's at the bar and the lawyer looks at him and says, "What's wrong with you? You look like you're about to fight someone."
What he realized in that moment was that he had walked into this bar immediately scanning for threats, looking for who's the person making bad eye contact with me, who's got mean intentions towards me. This boxing trainer is a sweetheart. He's a softy. You get him talking about emotions. He'll talk. But something happened. He went into that bar and started looking for the wall because he's a guy that's grown up around a rough childhood. He's had some things.
This lawyer who's just boxing for fun is looking at him going, "I've brought you to a nice place. We're having a nice drink at the bar and you're standing there like you're about to fight someone. What's going on with you?"
Did you see that clip of Shohei Ohtani? The pitcher launches it at him and it cracks him on the back. All of his teammates have already got one leg over the wall of the dugout where they're about to rush the field and start fighting someone and he just stands them down. He just like in this very classy way is like, "No, no, no. I got it." And the whole team stands down.
The commentators say, "This is why this guy is going to be a legend. He transcends the sport. A normal thing, the team would rush out and his teammates just stand down because he's like, 'I'm fine.' He makes nothing of it."
There was a guy in the comments who said, "I'm a hothead and this is exactly the kind of situation that I would have turned into something and watching this is like an example of a different path. This has taught me so much."
You have a guy who knows what his wall is, but he's watching another guy who doesn't have that wall, who hasn't got that thing that says someone just wronged me. Let me turn this into a fight.
You have to get around people who don't even buy into your frame of reference cuz those are the people that are going to take you into new worlds. Those are the people that make you realize life is not one reality. There's so many different realities. And get around people who by being around them and by understanding the way they think and the way they process things, it puts you in a different reality altogether.
Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that clip, the full episode is waiting for you right here.
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