If dating apps have left you feeling judged, discouraged, or just tired of the whole process, this video is for you. A lot of the advice we hear sounds helpful on the surface, but when it’s applied the wrong way, it can actually leave you feeling more stuck, not more hopeful.
In this video, I share a more human way to find love offline, even if you’re introverted, busy, or over forcing yourself to “try harder.” These are small, realistic shifts that keep you in the game without burning you out.
Matthew Hussey:
You might have been told that in order to find love, you should find a hobby, or that you’ll find it when you least expect it. The problem with all of this advice is that it lacks nuance, and if it’s applied the wrong way, it can actually end up doing us more harm than good. What inspired me to make this video is hearing that one of the biggest frustrations of people today is that they cannot seem to find success in online dating.
They hate the apps, and if you’re a guy, maybe it’s because you get filtered out for your height or your job. If you’re a woman, maybe you feel you get filtered out for your age or your looks. We are all being judged on things we cannot control, and these apps are not designed for people to gauge us on things that we can control, or things that we have worked on about ourselves, like how kind we are or how much value we have to bring to someone’s life.
I have been in love life coach for nearly 20 years, and I have coached hundreds of thousands of people in this area and only recently have such large numbers of people said to me, Matthew, I am having trouble getting even a first date. Well, I can help you. I met my wife, Audrey, offline, and as someone who is now happily married, who, when they were single, could not use the apps, I have some tips that I can share with you on how you can find love offline in a way that feels effortless.
And I know because I was doing these things myself. By the way, subscribe and like this video. So the other people in your situation can find it too. It is not that the find a hobby advice is necessarily wrong. It’s great to have a diversified life and the hobbies that we’re into. It’s just that this advice is often given as a response to our grievances about finding love.
If you’re talking to a friend about a phone call, you had with someone you met on a dating app, a phone call in which that person asked you over to their apartment, instead of asking you out on a date, your friend might respond by saying, get off the apps. Have you tried joining a running club? I know a married couple that met that way.
Your friend may be well-meaning, but the idea of a running club might want to make you slap your friend in the face. Or if you’re an introvert, or if you don’t have the time because you’re a single parent who’s just trying to make ends meet, the advice can leave you feeling frustrated and unseen. Now, on the opposite end of the spectrum, we get the advice that tells us that we’ll find love when we’re not looking for it, which implies that the Great Master key to finding love unlike any other area of our life where we want to achieve something is passivity.
But exactly how do we sit back passively when love and a meaningful relationship is something we want more than anything in the world? How do we give up our agency and our power in making that goal happen? Yes, there’s luck involved in meeting someone, but we also know that there are things that we can do to increase our chances of it happening.
And in this video, I want to show you how you can increase your chances of lying if the online world isn’t for you. In a recent live event I did, I mentioned something I call the Flame method and how we should be applying it to 2026. And in the flame method, I talked about the importance of community when it comes to finding love.
But how can you build that community if you’re an introvert or if you have limited time, or if you simply prefer to watch TV and scroll your phone? I want to introduce you to four ways to increase offline interactions and reframe how you think about them and stick around for the last one, because it is very personal to me.
Number one, how to not look for love and find love at the same time. In a video I recently did on oblique a T, I talk about the concept in detail. Oblique T means getting to our goals indirectly by focusing on other things that don’t always seem connected, but bring you that goal as a byproduct. This is where the concept of something like joining a running club has merit, but where this advice doesn’t work is if you join that running club with the sole purpose of meeting someone at that running club.
If you do that, you’re not only going to burn out pretty quickly and get jaded when it doesn’t happen, but your focus on finding love will make you think that every conversation you have with someone in that running club could be the love of your life, and that’s going to make you behave unnaturally. A key concept I first heard from Tim Ferriss was the idea of having more than one way to win.
When we do something. So if you get involved in a hobby you’re genuinely interested in, and you walk into it thinking, I don’t care if the love of my life is here or not, I just really want to learn pottery. Then the win is that by going, you’re creating a rich life, or becoming a more interesting person, or taking home a delightful new key dish.
You’re no longer solely attached to the one outcome of finding love. Which means you don’t burn out after three bad vases with inadequate wedging and neglected compression. And the only QE there is already taken and has a kid like you? Yes. My wife Audrey. Do you think I over fired this? And it’s not enough to just invest in things we’d like to do, or be game to try?
It’s important to also be present in those moments when we are there. In a world where we’re glued to our phones or our wireless AirPods. It is so easy to avoid being in the room. So instead of talking to other people at the pottery class, you might be tempted to put in an AirPod and listen to a song instead of starting up a conversation with someone on that trip to the museum.
You might be tempted to just scroll on your phone, take photos, and leave instead while you’re doing that hobby or trying something new. Practice what I call micro interactions with people. Micro interactions are minimal risk, outcome independent, and socially connective. And like I said, while you’re always open to the idea that anything you’re doing in your life could lead to the love of your life, you’re not doing any of it solely for that reason.
And when you have more than one way of winning the game, your energy is constantly being replenished because you’re always winning in one way or another. And the irony of that is that it keeps you in the game longer, which makes it far more likely that you’ll find love. Okay, so maybe you’re saying, Matthew, I have no hobbies.
I don’t want to learn pottery or join a running club or play pickleball. Maybe you’re the kind of person that likes sitting at home and reading or watching TV and ordering food, which essentially describes me and my wife. Well, that brings me to point number two. Do the social version of the thing you already do. If you enjoy reading, great.
Go read a gorgeous coffee shop where you’re going to be around other people. If you enjoy watching educational YouTube content, go see your favorite creator live on tour. Or you could attend a lecture at your local community college on a subject that you’re interested in. If you enjoy ordering food at home once in a while, it doesn’t have to be every time go to a local park and just sit and eat it in an area where other people are, or even as a baby step, rather than ordering the food to your house.
Go pick it up at the restaurant. I know it sounds small, and the idea of going to pick up your takeout feels like nothing, but you’re only ever one life affirming interaction, away from feeling good about yourself or feeling proud that you did it. You can just have a great conversation with a waiter and think, I’m proud of me.
I feel a little bit more confident now. I’ve got a bit of momentum. You’re ready to talk to another person. Because of that, I almost think about it like when you’re standing on the edge of a swimming pool and the idea of jumping in if the water’s a little bit cold feels like a big deal. But once you’re in the pool, you can’t imagine standing dry on the side of the pool anymore.
It’s just about getting in the pool. By the way, if you are watching this video, there is a chance that you’re already doing some of these things. And as a result, you did meet someone, which is amazing. And maybe you’re fond of them and they’re fond of you. You’ve been seeing each other every week, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
In that case, you may be asking, how can I go from casual dating to actually getting a commitment? I have a free training program that is designed for exactly that challenge. It is called Casual to Committed and thousands of people have now been through this. This training is really simple. I show you how to take a loose and casual connection, or situationship, to a place where there is a genuine commitment, while still keeping your respect intact and in a way where it doesn’t feel like you’re chasing someone for that commitment.
You can go watch this now for free at GetCommitment.com. Okay, let’s get to the last one. Number three practice saying yes. I met my wife, Audrey, at a friend’s engagement party. I didn’t want to go, but I thought I should get out of my pajamas that night in a cold December and go and do something. And I’m glad I did, because if I hadn’t said yes to that party, I would never have met the love of my life and I wouldn’t have met my son.
I didn’t expect to meet her there. I just expected to hang out with some old friends from high school. What I took for granted was the fact that during those years where we hadn’t seen each other, those old friends had met new friends, and one of those new friends was a woman who I would see and end up talking to for about 7 or 8 hours that night.
Actually, Audrey was the one who came up to me first. She asked me about a boxing match that was on the TV in the pub we were in. Not once has she ever asked me a question about boxing since that day. But it worked. And here we are. And by the way, for anyone asking, did you know she was the one when you met her?
Of course I did. And I just was talking to an awesome person. The funny thing about meeting Audrey was that it was a lesson I had been sharing for over a decade before that, which is that meeting the person who changes our life is something that really can happen in any moment. And if we give up on our love lives too soon, we may miss those moments because we become completely closed off.
I think the key is to stay alive. Not literally, but to stay alive in the game, to stay alive to opportunities as they present themselves and to not burn out so much in the process, or become so disillusioned that we become closed off. Everything I’ve said in this video is designed to integrate seamlessly into your life in a way that is sustainable, so that you don’t get burned out or frustrated in a matter of weeks and then take yourself out of the game.
They are also designed to increase our sense of community, which is the best way to find relationships offline. One might argue that the only reason I was invited to that engagement party was community. Despite the fact that my relationship to that community was one that I hadn’t really nurtured. The fact that I was part of a community with old friends from another era was the reason I got asked, and what community does, whether it’s an old community or a brand new community.
And by the way, typically new ones are better. Is it creates context, openness and repeated exposure to the same people. And what that does is it leads us to meaningful connections that go beyond the shallow dating metrics like height and age, with which we disqualify each other online. Let me know in the comments which one of these three ideas you need to do more of and why?
And who knows, maybe your comment will give someone else the courage to try it too. I will be in the comments when this video comes out reading and responding, so I look forward to reading them. I will see you next time.
