Ever been dating someone who suddenly goes cold when they go on a trip out of town? What happened? And how should you respond to this behavior?

Today’s video is all about what happens when we invest too soon, and how someone’s “radio silence” can trigger our insecurity. I even provide two text messages you can send: one for if they reach back out to you when they’re back in town, and one for when they don’t.

BTW, don’t miss our HUGE announcement in this one (it’s right after Audrey’s cheeky cameo). ;) You’ll be one of the first people in the world to try this thing out . . . it’s crazy!

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MATTHEW HUSSEY

One of the most common things that happen to us in early dating is we can find ourselves getting over-invested and too obsessed with this person we have started seeing, especially if we find them attractive, especially if they like us back, all of a sudden, our mind explodes with the possibilities of what this could become. All of this makes it particularly hurtful and anxiety-inducing when the person we feel this way about starts going cold after things were going so well.

In this video, I’m going to give you some principles for what you can do if you feel you’ve become over-invested to the point of overthinking and anxiety and two text messages you can send if someone has gone cold to re-engage.

If you’re new to this channel, I am Matthew Hussey, a coach specializing in confidence and relational intelligence. I’m also the author of the brand new book, the New York Times bestselling Love Life, and for the last 17 years of my life, I’ve been helping people find the love they want, heal from the heartbreak of the past, and discover the confidence they have always wanted to have.

Now, before I get into the content of this video, I want to ask you something a little unique today. I want you to think of a question that if I was sat beside you right now, you would be dying to ask me for your love life. What dating question would you ask me about your current situation if you could ask me anything in the world? Hold that in your mind because at the end of this video, believe it or not, I am going to give you a way that you can actually ask me that question and I will give you a personalized answer designed just for you.

So, I want to talk about the scenario that inspired this video. One of my Love Life members came to me and asked a question about a guy that she had been seeing for about three to four weeks, and then he went on a trip with his kids for about two weeks. Now, things have been going well, the communication had been good, she was having a great time with him, but once he left, she sparsely heard from him. She got a couple of messages when he sent some pictures of the trip on a Saturday, but then she didn’t hear from him for another five days. She sent a message saying, “Thinking of you.” He sent a heart back but that was it. And it was at this point she came to me and said, “I really don’t feel comfortable messaging him anymore. It felt like we were in a great spot but now, he’s pretty unresponsive save for a couple of pictures he sent me. And I’m a bit embarrassed that I said thinking of you and all he sent back was a heart, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

So, let’s start with the question so many people want to know to begin with. What does it mean? When he was trying hard in the beginning and now, on this trip, he’s no longer very responsive. What does that mean?

Look. The truth is we don’t know what it means without being in his head. But I’ll tell you what it means for sure. It means that he is not intent on making sure that the connection is sustained or progressed while he is away. That’s it. And the truth is, we don’t need to know any more than that. That’s all the information that’s necessary for her to know what to do about it.

So, what should she do about it?

Well, let’s start with the fact that from the way that she was asking me this question, it had been very clear that she had become over-invested and that she was now over-thinking and over-analyzing, and that was causing her a lot of pain. The over-investing is what has to stop now.

And by the way, this situation is hard because you have to hold two truths simultaneously. One truth that, this person shouldn’t matter to me this much right now, but the other truth that, I also don’t want to kill the romantic in me that can see potential for something, and can still come alive if this person starts showing the right things. That’s tricky. It’s far easier to either go all in and fall head over heels for someone, or if you’re feeling scared because they’re backing off to say, “I’m done with them. They are dead to me.”

Those two extremes are easier than living in this very nuanced middle point. But we can start to live in that more measured place if we have some rational thinking around it.

The starting point for this is to stop valuing someone based on how we feel about them and start valuing them based on how they make us feel. There’s a subtle but profound difference between those two things. How she felt about him was that he was amazing, attractive, she really liked him. She felt all of these wonderful things towards him. But how he made her feel in this moment was unwanted, anxious, and unsure of where she stood with him. That is the most important part, not how she feels about him. Clearly, she’s not getting what she needs from him in this moment. She’s not getting enough communication.

Now, at this stage, it’s still very early on. They’ve only known each other for a few weeks. So, as much as, if you know me, you know that I love talking about standards, this is probably not the right moment to have a standards conversation because if she sends a text about what her standard is at this stage with someone she’s only been seeing for a few weeks, he might think, “This is a little bit premature and over the top for where we actually are.” At this point, only a few weeks in, he may still be deciding how much he likes this person and how much he wants to invest. So, this isn’t really a “This guy sucks” conversation. It’s a, “She’s made him way too important at this stage” conversation.

So, the question is, how do you start making someone less important?

Well, we can start by giving more focus back to other areas of our lives, things that matter to us whether it’s our friends, our hobbies, the things we like to do. We take the light of our attention and we point it in a different direction.

And by the way, this can mean opening yourself up to dating other people. It’s not like his behavior suggests that he wants to take her off the market and make sure she knows that he’s the only person he wants her to see. His behavior suggests that right now, he’s not in that place. So, if she wants to date other people, that’s okay. That doesn’t mean she has to. But at the very least, the attention has to come off of this person. The expectation has to come off of this person.

On top of doing that, what’s key is when he does get home, she shouldn’t jump to see him at the first opportunity or even now be planning to be free for the weekend that he’s home just in case he asks her to do something. If they do ask you to do something, they will have to wait if you’ve made other plans. If they do start speaking to you, don’t suddenly pick up right where you left off before they went on vacation. That’s not appropriate. You’ve lost some momentum.

In some sense, this person should have to resell themselves a little bit to you, not in any sense where you’re very cold and playing hard to get. That’s a game. But in the sense that there genuinely has been a loss of closeness during the time that they’ve been away. That’s actually important to be authentic with when you’re communicating with them. If you were very physical with them the last time you saw them but you’ve barely spoken since they left, it’s not necessarily appropriate or authentic to go straight back to being that physically close to them. Be authentic to the level of closeness that you actually feel. Don’t let your excitement take you right back to picking up where you left off when they were communicating well.

Okay. So, let’s get on to the part that people always want to ask. So, all that being said, we now have a sense of what it definitely means that he’s not reaching out. We have a sense of what to do about it. But now, you may be asking, what should she say?

Well, I’ve put together two distinct messages for you that you can text, one for the situation where he gets home and reaches out, and the second for the situation where he gets home and doesn’t reach out.

Let’s say he gets home and within a couple of days, he sends you a text that says, “Hey, I want to see you. Are you free this week?”

Now, a common mistake when we get a message like this is to think, “Yes, they’re back, and they’re thinking of me.”

We get excited, we get a rush of blood to the head, and in that excitement, we send them a message back that says something like, “Oh my God, hi. Yes, I’d love to see you. I can’t wait to hear all about your trip.”

But that’s an inappropriate level of excitement for someone who’s not reached out to you almost at all in the last two weeks while they’ve been away. It’s fine to hope that they had a nice trip, but to suddenly gush and ask them for all of the details just because they sent a message to you on their terms right now is too much.

Instead, here’s what you might say. “Hey, it’s nice to hear from you. Did you have a nice vacation? It would be great to catch up but I’m not free this week. How about next Thursday?”

This message is measured, there’s a little bit of a tongue-in-cheekness about saying “It’s nice to hear from you after having not heard from you.” And it shows that you weren’t waiting around, keeping your week open to see them. You have made plans and yes, you’ll see them, but you’ll see them after you engage with those plans. And if you haven’t got any plans this week, then you weren’t listening to the things I said earlier in this video.

Now, I was going to give you another text for if he came home and didn’t reach out, what could you text him? But I don’t even really want to give you that message because why would you want to text someone who has not been proactive the entire time that they have been away?

AUDREY HUSSEY

Give them a text.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

I’m sorry, what?

AUDREY HUSSEY

Give them a text.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

You can’t just come in here and compel me to give everyone a text that I don’t want to give. No. All right. What are you doing? Okay. That is not a magic wand. That’s a wooden spoon.

AUDREY HUSSEY

Oh, stupid. I was holding it the wrong way around.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Now, the second text that I am super excited to tell you about is the one that you can send when he comes back and doesn’t text you first. This isn’t a text that has to be revolutionary. It’s just something that has to be, once again, measured, but also, it can be a little playful. So, you could send, “Look what I just saw.” And then you can add an in-joke, like for example, if you’d had a joke about some penguins at some point, then you can send a picture of a hilarious penguin that you saw. And then you follow that message up immediately with, “We haven’t seen each other in ages. When are we catching up?”

What I like about this is it’s playful, it’s chill, it’s a little bit assumptive. It points out the elephant in the room, which is that we haven’t seen each other in ages. But it also is very confident and bold about how it handles that. When are we catching up? So, this is a nice way for you to be proactive but in a way that maintains your value in this situation.

Now, it’s kind of fun making this video because in some sense, even though my work has evolved massively, and those of you that have followed me for a long time, you will have seen that we’ve evolved into mental health content, content that’s about deep emotional patterns, trauma, dealing with abusive relationships and how to heal from them. The DNA that I started with on this YouTube channel was really helping people with very specific scenarios in their dating lives that related to them, scenarios where what people wanted to ask me were always some version of what does it mean, what do I do, and what should I say or text. And I’ve enjoyed making videos for all different scenarios, scenarios like the one we’re talking about today where I help people with what to do when someone has gone cold.

YOUTUBE VIDEO

“Now, this is where my friend came to me. So, I said, give me the phone.”

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Or the scenario of what to do when someone flakes on a date. Videos on decoding what it means on a date when a person said certain things.

YOUTUBE VIDEO

“How does a girl like you stay single?”

“Look. I’m attracted to you but I’m insecure. So, do other guys like you or is there something wrong with you I should know about?”

MATTHEW HUSSEY

And videos on what to say when someone tells you they’re not ready for a relationship.

But the inherent challenge of my life in making all of these videos has been two things. One, context. Whenever I make a video like the one I’ve done today, there’s always someone watching who says, “The thing is, Matt, in my situation, it’s slightly different. We haven’t known each other and been dating for four weeks. We’ve been seeing each other for four months.”

People have contexts and details that change the answer I would give. And that person is left wishing that they had a video that was specific for their very personal situation. And the other challenge is that even when I give someone something they can do or say as a next step, there’s always another step after that.

Every dating scenario is an evolving story. It’s not static. So, when we take an action, even when that action is positive and different from the action we have been taking, it gives rise to a new scenario, to a different stage in the story. And then we have questions about that.

So, the bottom line is that as much as I have worked around the clock for 17 years doing this for you, I’m never able to cater to every specific scenario there is, and to answer every question in your evolving story with someone.

Now, this all may seem like a strange thing for me to be saying, given that at the beginning of this video, I asked you to come up with a very specific question you wanted to ask me that I was going to answer. But it’s true and I’m so excited to tell you about this.

We have been developing in the background a revolutionary new tool that allows you to ask me a question and get my answer. It is mind-blowing. And the only people who have had access to this tool so far are my Love Life Club members. So, rather than tell you about this, I want to just show you what I showed them.

This is a demo that me and my wife, Audrey, did for them.

DEMO VIDEO

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Literally, my voice answering the question and your specific, nuanced question. Believe it or not, that’s what we have. And it is called Matthew AI. Guys, you’re genuinely not going to believe this.

AUDREY HUSSEY

Should I ask it a question?

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Yes.

AUDREY HUSSEY

Okay.

MATTHEW AI

Hey, it’s Matthew AI. How can I help?

AUDREY HUSSEY

Hi, Matthew AI. I’m in the bathroom on a date and he’s just asked me to come home with him. But this is only date 2 and I feel a little bit uncomfortable about it. But I also don’t want to turn him off by not going home with him and for him to think that I’m not interested. What should I say and how should I handle this situation?

MATTHEW AI

It’s completely okay to feel uncomfortable about going to someone’s home so early in the dating process. It’s important to listen to your feelings and communicate them honestly. You can express your interest in him and suggest an alternative that makes you feel more comfortable. For example, you might say, “I’m really enjoying getting to know you and I’m interested in spending more time together. But I’m not ready to go to your house just yet. Can we plan another date soon?” This way, you’re clearly communicating your boundaries while also showing your interest in continuing to get to know him. 

Remember, setting boundaries is a healthy part of any relationship and how someone responds to your boundaries can tell you a lot about their respect for their feelings. It’s also a good opportunity to see how he handles your comfort levels which is crucial for building a trusting relationship.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

So, okay. I’m going to go and do that right now. When I get home is there a message I could send by text tomorrow? Like, what would be an example text that I could send tomorrow?

MATTHEW AI

Absolutely, sending a follow-up text that maintains a fun and enjoyable tone is a great way to keep the positive momentum going. You could say something like, “I had a really great time with you last night. Your stories were hilarious. Let’s plan another fun outing soon.” This keeps the communication light, expresses your enjoyment, and opens the door for future plans. It’s always good to be genuine and let them know specifically what you enjoyed about your time together.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

What if I want to be a little, you know, just a hint of sexiness but not too much? I don’t want it to be too sexual but I just want to create a bit of fun, sexual tension.

MATTHEW AI

Absolutely, creating just a hint of fun, sexual tension without going overboard is all about subtlety and playfulness. You might consider sending a text like, “Last night was a blast. Still smiling.” This message is light and flirty, suggesting you’re still thinking about the night in a positive and somewhat playful way. It invites curiosity and a bit of mystery which can gently hint at  a sexual tension you’re looking to create.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Well, that is crazy.

AUDREY HUSSEY

That’s really fun.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

That’s a good message.

AUDREY HUSSEY

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

Still smiling. It’s so simple.

AUDREY HUSSEY

Still smiling.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

But it works.

So, here’s the incredible thing. So far, what you just saw, Matthew AI, has only ever been available to my Love Life members. I released it to them a few months ago. Since then, they have asked it over 200,000 questions. So, they are using it all the time. But it’s never been available to the wider world. In fact, the wider world didn’t even know it existed. But now, you do, and it’s your turn.

I want you to go and ask Matthew AI your question. I want it to help you now. There is a link I want you to go to right now. It is AskMHFirst.com and that gets you on an early bird list, so that when this launches on September the 4th, you are the first to have access and ask your question. Or if you’re watching this and it’s already September the 4th, then you’ll just be able to get access and use it immediately.

Think of it as me being your personal wingman in your pocket any time you need, helping you understand what something means, what you can do about it, and even what you can say. You can even upload your text conversations and it will help you decode them and understand what to do next, what to send next. It can give you exact responses or ways of having conversations.

So, it’s that practical. It’s crazy. It’s going to blow your mind. Go check it out. I can’t wait to hear what you think. I wish I had footage of you reacting to it in real time because it really is going to blow you away what this thing can do.

I can’t be everywhere at once and well, for the first time, this actually gives me a shot at doing that and gives you a unique advantage by having access to me whenever you need me.

Check it out, AskMHFirst.com is the link. I will see you there.

AUDREY HUSSEY

It’s also just amazing to have such a cooperative and obedient version of Matthew who does what you ask of him. It’s a dream.

MATTHEW HUSSEY

How did you get there?

AUDREY HUSSEY

I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Matthew AI.