Have you ever found yourself in the “casual zone” with someone you’re dating . . . and it seems impossible to escape it? When it started, you were fine with them saying, “Let’s see how it goes,” but you soon found yourself stuck in limbo with all your friends asking if you were in a relationship . . .

While there are many positive reasons to take things slow when dating someone, there are 4 specific scenarios where “just seeing where something goes” can lead to heartbreak.

In today’s video, I walk you through each situation so you can figure out where you stand and move things forward. The sooner you watch this, the faster you’ll know if a relationship actually has potential.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

One of the challenges of dating today is that so many people want a relationship and keep ending up in casual situationships of some kind. 

Is there anything that we ourselves might be doing to contribute to being put in the casual zone without even knowing it? That is what this video is about today, and I think it’s going to help a lot of people. 

I am Matthew Hussey, by the way. If you’re new to this channel, I have a New York Times—I have two, two, David, New York Times best-selling books. One of them is called Love Life. The other one is called Get the Guy. It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago. Go get it, though. It still matters. I mean, I worked very hard on it. But we also have done lots of live events over 17 years, including retreats, and tours, and webinars. 

And why am I telling you all of this? Well, because before you watch this video, you might be thinking, I want to come to one of your live events. Well, you can. On October 22nd, I’m doing an online event that is all about getting to commitment. 

If you are sick and tired of this dating culture where nothing ever seems to materialize into something real, and you want to make sure you’re one of the people that actually does find a real and lasting relationship, you have to be there. It’s going to be super practical. It’s going to make a big difference. I really believe it’s going to be a game-changer for the people that are there, and it’s free. 

So you can go and sign up right now at LoveLifeTraining.com. Open a little browser, type in LoveLifeTraining.com. It will take you to a registration page. You can just join right now for free, and I will email you the details so that you know how to access it on the day. That link again is LoveLifeTraining.com. Now let’s get to the video. 

There was a story I heard recently from someone who asked me a question, some advice for their love life. I was actually on the podcast “Fake Doctors Real Friends” with Zach Braff and Donald Faison, which was really exciting because I grew up a very big “Scrubs” fan and well, there were the “Scrubs” lads sitting in front of me. 

But midway through the podcast, their producer joined to ask me a question and she said, “Well, I’m dating this woman who lives in another town. It’s long-distance. And while, you know, I want some advice for the situation,” and I said, “Well, what do you want?” She said, “Well, I’m just seeing where it goes.” And I said, “But do you like this person?” And she said, “Oh my God, she’s amazing. You know, she’s hot, she’s sexy, she’s fun, she’s charismatic, she’s intelligent.”

She reeled off all of these wonderful qualities of this person, and she lit up as she was saying it. But when I asked her what she wanted with this person, it was almost like then she became very small and, kind of,  almost afraid to say it. And I said, “So you’re just—do you want a relationship?” And she said, “Well, I’m open to it with the right person.” And, I thought this whole conversation was very indicative of our dating culture these days, whereby a lot of us, maybe deep down want something more, but as a kind of protection mechanism, have shielded ourselves from that wanting. 

And by the way, I just want to say this both for her sake and for yours, there’s nothing wrong with just seeing where something goes. I think that there’s a beauty to that. 

I was speaking to Esther Perel, the world-renowned psychotherapist on the Love Life podcast, just last week. I don’t know if the episode is out by the time this video comes out, but, you know, you’ll see. Go check the Love Life podcast and you can see if the episode with Esther is there. It was a good one. But Esther was saying that back when she was dating, there was a kind of organic nature to dating. You’d go on a coffee date with someone that you thought was interesting, and then if it went well, you might see them again. And if that went well, you see them again. And, you know, in a sort of process that was rewarding, and surprising and fun, you would gradually end up in a relationship. 

And I think all of us deep down, wish that life was just like that all of the time, that we didn’t have to make very clear our intentions or discover theirs. And, you know, ask them what their intentions are. We could just let things unfold. And for those of us that don’t feel like we’re in a rush, or we don’t have the anxiety of wanting to get married and having a family sooner rather than later, maybe we can take that approach. There’s nothing wrong with that approach. 

But there is obviously a point at which that approach becomes a problem because we can find ourselves at a point where we’re investing a lot into a person that we end up wanting more with. But by constantly adopting this mindset, this posture of, “Well, whatever, you know, I don’t mind. We’ll just see.” We’ve actually inadvertently ended up in the casual zone with this person and find it hard to get out of that place. 

Hands up in the comments, by the way, if you’ve experienced this. If you’ve been with someone for months or years and still find yourself in a place of complete ambiguity about what it is and where it’s going. There is a point at which our indifference can backfire. 

And so, what I wanted to do today was, not denigrate the idea of seeing where it goes, but instead encourage everyone to think about a few scenarios where the “Let’s just see where it goes” approach can actually start to become more dangerous. There are four in particular I want to highlight in this video. 

The first scenario is when it means not being honest with yourself. 

So, I look at this on two levels. There’s one just being honest with yourself about wanting a relationship. If that’s the case, not lying to ourselves about how much we want to find love. Owning it. If I want a relationship, if I want to find love, I’m going to own that. I’m not going to hide it or pretend to be indifferent. But it’s also owning and being honest with ourselves about our feelings towards this person, which might have become very significant. And if we’re not careful, there becomes this real disparity between what the casual nature of it that we claim to be fine with and how we actually feel about this person. 

So, here’s a good question to ask yourself. If this person that I am like, “Oh, let’s just see what happens,” if they started dating someone else tomorrow, how would you feel? If you found out they were dating multiple people in addition to you right now, how would you feel? And actually, while we’re on the subject, how do you feel about seeing other people yourself right now? I mean, if it’s just a casual thing or if it’s not that big of a deal in the first place, then why not go date other people? Why spend all of your time and energy on this one person alone? Why not keep your options open? And if that, to you, sounds like something you don’t want to do, then you have to suspect yourself. Why is it that this person, where I’m just seeing where it goes, is the only person I want to keep seeing? Right? There’s a difference between what we’re feeling internally and what we’re saying externally. 

So, to recap, “Let’s just see where it goes” can be dangerous if over time it masks our true feelings towards wanting a relationship or this person.

The second place that it becomes a problem is if saying we’re just seeing where it goes is a strategy to attract this person, not the truth of how we feel. In other words, it’s not that we feel indifferent and casual about this person, it’s that we think that playing indifferent and casual about this person is going to attract them more. That there’s some element of being chill, maybe even a little bit hard to get, not stating our intentions, that’s going to make us more attractive. 

But by doing so, by employing this strategy, even if it kind of works on this person, who wants a relationship where the thing that works is not being available? That’s a bad relationship to end up in. Because what happens when you are available? There’s a very good chance that you’re going to lose this person’s interest, because the interest they had was never in you. It was in the dynamic that you had created. Never get yourself into a situation where someone is more in love with your absence than your presence. This is the problem with using it as a strategy. It is a flawed strategy because it gets you the kind of relationship you wouldn’t want in the first place. 

The third thing that makes the “Let’s just see where it goes” approach dangerous over time is that we’re not actually properly assessing the opportunity cost of giving this person energy. 

In the case of this person that I was talking to, I asked her, you know, “How often do you speak to this person? I bet you have some pretty long phone calls with this person.” There’s a time commitment to keeping this person in your life. Maybe you’re arranging to see them at some point soon. That’s both a time commitment, a weekend commitment, and a money commitment because they’re long distance.

Based on how passionately she spoke about this person, I can guarantee this person takes up a pretty decent amount of her mental and emotional bandwidth. In other words, this person is on her mind a lot, so that takes up energy. And, perhaps most importantly, when we like someone in that way, it gives us a kind of tunnel vision. 

That means that even if they don’t take up a big physical footprint in our life, even if we’re not spending a lot of time with them, they take up a big psychological footprint. And when we’re suddenly in the coffee shop and someone cute walks into the coffee shop that we might actually like, that we might have a real relationship with if we got to know them, if we were brave enough to say hi, but it represents a little activation energy to say hi to someone and be brave and risk rejection. Instead of doing that, we go for the easy path, the path of least resistance, which is texting the person we already know. Texting the person that we’re already flirting with, that we already know we like, even though we’re not actually getting what we want from this person. 

So this person now, who you’re not in a real relationship with, where you’re just seeing where it goes. I keep saying it in that way, David. We just have to create some kind of a loop of that—seeing where it goes, seeing where it goes, seeing where it goes. Could we create a four-hour loop of me saying that as our next video? 

The person that you’re just saying “We’re just seeing where it goes,” that person is actually taking up a big part of your life, and they are denying you other opportunities just by this dynamic existing. 

So, if you’re going to be casual with someone. If you’re over time going to keep saying, “Well, we’re just like, you know, we have this thing and who knows what it is. We’re just seeing where it goes.” Be honest about the true cost of this thing that seems really easy and light-hearted and low-maintenance, and I promise you, you’ll start to see it as less low-maintenance than it really is. 

And the fourth situation that can make the “Let’s just see where it goes” approach dangerous is when you’re using being casual as a cover for your fear of rejection. 

What you really want is to be able to have more with this person because you think this person is awesome, but what’s really scary is getting rejected by someone you think is awesome. And so, it’s easier to play indifferent and to keep them at arm’s length and to say, “I don’t really care. We’ll see what happens” than to actually state what we want and have that person reject us. We have to be very careful about our indifferent facade being a cover for a much deeper fear of rejection. 

And by the way, this becomes a form of rejecting ourselves, doesn’t it? Because we’re not even giving them a chance to reject us. We’re rejecting ourselves. We’re saying, “I’m not even going to try.” And we may not even be honest with ourselves about the reason we’re not trying. We may not tell ourselves “I’m afraid of rejection.” We may simply say, “You know, I’m just one of those people. I just—I don’t get that involved. You know? I just have fun. Whatever. You know, everyone takes it so seriously.” When deep down, you’re like, “I really want a serious thing with someone. God, I want a long-term relationship. God. I want to feel safe with someone.” But it feels very unsafe. It feels very dangerous to approach the thing that you really, really want. 

Now, look, I get it. We live in a world where I think dating has become really confusing. It’s become hard to want a relationship, to have maybe tried to have a relationship before, but to have met people who are non-committal. Who look like they’re someone who has a lot of potential, and then all of a sudden reveal that they weren’t serious all along, or that they’ve changed their mind, or to get rejected by people. It hurts. And when we get enough of that hurt, we become afraid of putting ourselves out there. And it becomes easier just to numb ourselves, to dissociate, to keep people at arm’s length, or to just start saying that we don’t really care that much what happens anyway as a way of protecting ourselves from all of that. 

And there is nothing wrong by the way, with not getting overly invested in the beginning. I’m one of those people who says that’s a good idea, not to get too invested in the early stages. And there is nothing wrong, by the way, with having such a happy life in your life already that you do feel like it’s okay if nothing happens with this person because you’ve already got you. You’re good. All of that is beautiful. 

But it does become a problem if it means that over time we stop being honest with ourselves about what we really want, and how we really feel about someone, and how much we could get our feelings hurt or heartbroken in this situation. It becomes a problem if we’re using it as a strategy to attract someone instead of being our authentic selves. It becomes a problem if we’ve not measured the true cost of giving this person our time, our energy, and our emotional and mental bandwidth. And it becomes a problem if all of this indifference is really just a cop-out for our fear of rejection.

And remember, at the end of the day, if you continue in a situation where it is just casual and you don’t know where it’s going, and you’ve initially sold yourself on this being fine, but over time you’re no longer voicing your authentic feelings, your needs, or what you would like to happen. You will lose yourself in a situation that is unfulfilling, unrewarding, and doesn’t meet any of your needs. But you will have ingrained a situation whereby the dynamic is, you not actually voicing these things in the first place. 

So here’s my question to you. What do you relate to the most in all of this? And if you’re being honest with yourself, are you in a place in your life where, despite wanting to go into dating in an organic way, you don’t ever want to cross that line into “I’m no longer being authentic, and I’m actually denying myself the experience I really want to have. I am putting myself in the casual zone instead of actually going for the thing I really want.” 

And if that’s the case, then my invite to you is to join me on the 22nd of October, because there I am going to show you a way to still go into dating in a relaxed, confident way where you don’t put too much pressure on something in the beginning. You’re not going on a date going, “So what are your intentions?” You’re not deciding you like someone and then the next minute saying, “So where is this going?” It can still unfold in a beautiful and natural way, but you can also direct the currents and you can direct them towards an actual, committed, long-term relationship with this person instead of just sitting back, being passive and hoping, which all too often leads to situationships that go nowhere. And, more than going nowhere, actually leave us brokenhearted at the end of them and having wasted an awful lot of time. 

Go to LoveLifeTraining.com. Sign up now. Come join us. This is really going to be a special event. We’re going to have people from all over the world joining us online for free to learn about how to direct their love life in the direction of their deepest intentions and desires. 

Thank you so much for watching this. Like I said, LoveLifeTraining.com is the link to go to to sign up now. Don’t go anywhere before you do that. By the way, if you click off this video, you’ll forget and then it’ll come and go and you’ll have missed it. So please don’t be one of those people. Get on board now while it’s on your mind and, well, I’ll see you there. Thank you so much for watching. Be well and love life.