So many women come to me asking . . .

“Are we living in a time when men just don’t want to commit anymore?”

“How do you know if a guy is ready?”

In this brand-new video, I give you 11 specific signs to look for to determine if a guy is serious about you . . . and as you’ll see, some of these points closely relate to my own journey to commitment.

I enjoyed opening up in this video, and I’m excited to hear what you thought of it. Leave me a comment and let me know!

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Matthew:

So as many of you know, a couple of weeks ago, I got engaged. I suppose my love life has always been very interesting because even though I’ve lived out my love life very much in private, people have always very publicly asked me what my relationship status is. Imagine your grandmother or your mother at the Thanksgiving table pressuring you and saying, “Why aren’t you married yet? Why don’t you have a partner?” Imagine that time’s a million and that’s been my life for the last decade. It’s also interesting to be getting engaged at a time when so many of our audience, so many of you who follow me, are asking me why men won’t commit. Do we live in an era where just the norm is men not wanting to commit, not wanting a real relationship? And so we thought we’d take this opportunity to make a video about the signs that someone is actually getting more serious with you. And we came up with 11.

Number one, he brags about you in front of other people. It’s a particular kind of compliment, isn’t it, when someone doesn’t just compliment you in private, but they do it in front of others, their friends, their family, strangers that you just met together? It shows a particular kind of respect and admiration. So if he starts bigging you up in front of other people, that’s a pretty lovely sign.

Number two, he’s willing to mix your lives in a way that might be inconvenient to him. Whether it’s going to see your friends in a different part of town or going to something that your family wants you to go to, things that ordinarily might seem like sacrifices, but he doesn’t treat them as sacrifices. Instead, he just sees them as things that will make you happy and, therefore, it makes him happy to do them, which leads me nicely on to number three.

Your happiness is more important to him than his tastes. He buys you tickets to that Celine Dion concert that you really want to go to. But the two tickets are for you and him, not you and your friend. He’s willing to go see Celine. Or he listens to your music in the car. You have no idea how many times I have listened to the Encanto album through. 

Number four, he’s willing to adjust the temperature of his house, which as Jameson will tell you, I didn’t do for years when Jameson was here freezing his little balls off in the icy tundra.

Jameson:

I think we could probably cut that.

Matthew:

Why?

Jameson:

I just don’t want to apply that my balls are cold.

Matthew:

Jameson literally came in today and remarked with some venom and resentment at how warm the house is now. 

Number five, he plans a trip with you months in advance. Anyone can take you away for the weekend this weekend, but for someone to actually say, “Let’s plan a trip for a few months from now.” You know at the very least they’re planning on being with you longer. They’re actually looking at investing and building something in the meantime. 

Number six, he respects the things that are important to you. I do Brazilian jujitsu and there was woman in this class who had just got her black belt, and when someone gets their black belt, they get to give a speech.

And it was very beautiful because while she was giving her speech, all of us were lined up listening and her husband was off to the side of the mat watching with their dog in his arm. And just his eyes watering at watching this person he loves achieve this amazing thing. And there was something profoundly beautiful to me about that, that he both respected and admired her for something that mattered to her and was part of that with her.

Number seven, the fights have less ultimatums. You know that when you’re in the beginning with someone and just every fight is relationship threatening. It doesn’t matter what you argue about, it’s always a question in that moment of, is this all too much? Is this worth it? Maybe I’ll just storm out and never come back. Well, hopefully, over time, the threats on the relationship become less.

You don’t walk away so easily and, in fact, someone who’s serious about you has a desire to make up with you quicker because the health of the relationship is paramount to them and simply walking off and being odds with you and having the problems of the relationship fester becomes a less and less viable option. 

Number eight, his friends teasing him about how in love he is, how much he’s investing in the relationship, how much time he’s not spending with them is no longer something that affects him in the same way as it would have before. It’s not his kryptonite anymore. He’s not made weaker by these teasings of his bros. I remember when I posted my engagement announcement and there was just some bloke in the comment. There was lots of lovely, lovely comments, thousands. It was unbelievable and so touching. Then there was just this one bloke in the comments that went, “Another one bites the dust.”

When we are happy and when we feel like I know this is right, we are not  weakened by the comments that in relationships where we were less certain of our own decision, we would have been affected by. They would’ve needled us. Not because someone was so important necessarily, but because it struck an uncertainty that we already had.

Number nine, when he stops worrying so much about missing out on other plans because he’s happiest when he’s spending time with you. FOMO becomes FOMU. Oliver Burkeman talks about the problem of FOMO in his book, 4,000 Weeks, where he talks about this idea that we’re all worried about missing out on things and, by definition, we are always missing out on everything all the time. And when someone’s not particularly happy in a situation or when they’ve got one foot out of the door, they’re acutely aware of all of the things that they’re missing out on in that moment.

The party that their friends invited them to, the boys’ trip that they could have gone on, the family event that’s happening, or just the myriad things that he could be doing that aren’t being with you in this moment. But that fear of I’m missing out on everything becomes irrelevant in the context of someone that you are building something with, someone that makes you happiest when you are with them. The everything becomes the feeling that you have when you are with them so you’re no longer searching for the everything that’s on the outside. 

Number 10, he starts collecting mementos from your time together. It could be a trip you went on. It could be an evening you had together where they gave you something in a restaurant. But these little knick-knacks that are the milestones of your relationship, he keeps because it matters, it becomes part of the fabric, the history of your relationship together.

Not everyone is sentimental like this, but you know what it’s like. When you care about someone, you are more likely to hold onto something as a symbol of your time with that person as something that reminds you of that person or a time in the relationship. If he starts getting sentimental about things from your relationship together, that counts for something. 

Number 11, his associations with commitment itself change. I know that for most of my life, it always felt like commitment was giving something up. It always felt like a sacrifice. There was always some glorification of the other, whatever the other may be, some idea of freedom, some idea of single life. But I remember thinking, with this person, I am ready to actually build something. I’m excited to build something. And with that, my entire associations around a relationship, around commitment, all the things that felt scary about commitment didn’t feel scary It felt natural. It felt like home.

That becomes true, doesn’t it, of anything in life that we develop a positive addiction for? If we’ve spent our life being really unhealthy and then all of a sudden we discover good nutrition and exercise and we start feeling really good, it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice anymore. Instead, it feels like this is where I want to be. This is what I want to be doing. Our associations change. I’m not sacrificing something really exciting for this thing that’s good for me. The thing that’s really good for me feels like the thing that’s really exciting. There are many, many ways that a person could show you that their associations have shifted, the way they describe their relationship, their time with you, and what it represents to them and the way they talk about their past or the other life unchosen. Do they talk about it with a sense of melancholy and heaviness and, “I’ve sacrificed so much”? Or do they talk about it with a sense of calm and peace, a feeling of, “I know that where I am is where I want to be”?

Thank you so much for watching. I wanted to let all of you know that I have something really special coming up on the 23rd of this month. For my members, I am holding a two-hour master class on “How to Get Him to Commit.” Because you maybe have gone through this video and listened to all of these things I’ve said and thought, “Well, I would really like someone to do and be all of the things you just said, but I’m not seeing those things.” Well, there are actually things you can do to influence that situation. I don’t believe that it’s any woman’s fault if a guy won’t or can’t commit. So I want you to remove that from your mind. If someone hasn’t committed to you in the past or isn’t committing now, that’s not your fault. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that there were things I have learned over the years in 15 years of working with people’s love lives that they could do to influence whether a guy commits or not.

You have more power than you even know and once you understand the levers that you can use to change how comfortable someone feels about committing to you, how safe they feel, how trusting they feel of you and the future they’ll get with you, how excited they are about the future of the waits for them if they choose you, once you understand how to affect and impact those things, you have the best possible chance at getting someone to commit to you on a deeper level. And in this two-hour Masterclass, I am going to show you exactly what you can do to have that impact on someone you are seeing. All you need to do to be part of this, because, like I said, it’s an exclusive is for my Love.Life. Club members, but you can join on a free two-week trial to come and be a part of this, experience it, and if you don’t want to stay a member, you don’t have to stay a member. You can bounce out again in without paying a penny.

But you can also stay and be part of a bigger journey with us if you want. Either way, come and try this if for no other reason than to be part of this two-hour Masterclass. Go to AskMH.com to be a part of this and to claim your free trial. And I look forward to seeing you on the 23rd. Thank you so much for watching. It’s lovely to be back on the sofa for a video and I’ll see you next week.