I’m about to share something very cool with you in today’s video, including some of my most powerful communication tools for having the difficult “exclusivity conversation” with a guy.

But first… The response to my last video about the stages of commitment has been truly incredible, and I want to sincerely thank you for all your heartfelt and honest messages. My team and I have read hundreds of your responses, and we couldn’t be more  moved and excited about the number of women who are ready to say “no” to being casual, to find a real relationship, and to take control again in love.

I am so done with wasting time this year – are you? I hope so…

We’ve been talking about many things over the last couple of weeks. We’ve been talking about current dating culture and the toxicity of it. We’ve been talking about how the fear of being alone and no one good coming along, making us overvalue the connection we have, and when we overvalue the connection that we have instead of real investment, we start to lower our standard to keep it. We don’t get real relationships anymore. We get pseudo relationships. We get flaking, breadcrumbing, ghosting. We get poor treatment. When we lower our standards, we don’t get people’s respect. We don’t get real relationships. We get the scraps. If we want to change that, we have to start changing our standard.

Now, people have been loving what we’ve been saying. Tons of you loved the castle. The amount of castle emojis I have seen in the last week, Jameson, I’ll be honest, it’s the most I’ve ever seen. In case you’re not aware of the castle metaphor from the last video, I talked about how a real relationship is two people building a castle together, two builders, but if you’re just there building a castle and the person that you have a connection with is nowhere to be found, then you’re trying to build a castle on your own. That’s not a relationship. That’s why it’s dangerous to overvalue the connection and undervalue the castle.

What you’re about to see is a prime example of someone who created her own kind of hell because she overvalued the connection and undervalued the castle. By the way, for those of you who have been saying in the comments, “Matt, I 1,000% agree with you. I want to raise my standard. I want to ask for something different, but I want to be able to do it in a way that doesn’t just drive everyone away. How do I communicate these standards?” At the end of this clip, I’m going to show you exactly how.

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Audience Guest: “So, I work with a guy that I’ve been dating, and we’ve been together for about two and a half years, but he’s still not ready.”

Matthew: “You’ve been dating him for two and a half years.”

Audience Guest: “Yes.”

Matthew: “And he’s still not ready for what?”

Audience Guest: “To be in a relationship, but we’re much further than that. I know.”

Matthew: “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, that’s okay. Save the moans because you’re all doing stupid shit too. [Audience laughter]. Me too, by the way. Trust me, me too.

“Right now, you’re in a situation that’s not working for you, right?”

Audience Guest: “Yeah.”

Matthew: “Logically, you want to be done with it.”

Audience Guest: “I think so.”

Matthew: “Emotionally, you don’t, which is why you said, ‘I think so.’”

Audience Guest: “Yeah. Yeah.”

Matthew: “Correct? Right.”

Audience Guest: “Like it’s probably the right thing to do, but I can’t do it.”

Matthew: “Because I’m sure you’ve had conversations with him about this where you’ve talked about how much it sucks for you.”

Audience Guest: “Yeah.”

Matthew: “In those moments, do you think, is he an emotionally intelligent enough man to recognize the pain he’s causing and for him to feel that pain as well?”

Audience Guest: “Yeah. So, a lot of our conversations when it comes to that, like I’m not the only one that’s in tears—”

Matthew: “Yes. Okay, good.”

Audience Guest: “… and then it makes it worse for me.”

Matthew: “Yep. Well, now, you go, ‘Now, I don’t even know who the victim is.’ Yeah.”

Audience Guest: “Yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly what it is. Yeah.”

Matthew: “So, yeah. Let’s look at the reality of this from what I can see a distance, right, and forgive me what I don’t know. This doesn’t work for you.”

Audience Guest: “No.”

Matthew: “It doesn’t really work for him either. I would bet money on the fact that he wishes he had the guts to walk away, but he doesn’t either. Whatever it is about this situation isn’t working for him. Now, we don’t know why. You might have some insight into why, but we don’t know why, but we could take two or three easy guesses.

“One, he has negative associations with relationships and feels like a relationship would trap him, and he doesn’t want to be trapped.

“Two, he is still, in his mind, living out some fantasy of the single man he wants to be, and he still thinks somewhere in here, he’s going to be James Bond or live out a bunch of sexual adventures or things that are going to happen for him, and he can’t quite settle down just yet because he hasn’t done that yet, and he’s worried if he does settle down with you right now, he’ll always regret that, and he won’t be able to be faithful in that relationship, so it’s easier for him to be in this limbo with you—”

Audience Guest: “Yeah. I think you’re right.”

Matthew: “… than to hate himself even more by making a promise he can’t keep. He already doesn’t like himself, by the way, because when you’re doing this to someone, especially someone you care about and if you’ve been doing this for two and a half years, I’m pretty sure he cares about you. He doesn’t like doing this to someone he cares about, but he still can’t figure out what he wants

“Or THREE, you’re not the right person for him, and he’s going to leave you when he finally has the guts to, and four weeks later, he meets someone else who’s more right for him, and he’ll be in a relationship, and you’ll be like, ‘What the fuck?’”

Audience Guest: “Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah.”

Matthew: “Right? So, I don’t know it could be any of those, it could be all of those. We don’t know. What we know is that this isn’t working for you, it’s not working for him, and neither of you has had the strength to leave. So, one of you has to get stronger, and you would be crazy to hope that one day he’s going to be strong enough to do what you can’t do because he may never get that strong, and he might do this to you forever. When you get strong enough to walk away, he’ll find someone else he can do it to, and he’ll feel just as bad with her, right? You can’t wait around for him to get strong. I need you to start valuing this whole thing differently when you look at your life. How old are you right now?”

Audience Guest: “I’m 25.”

Matthew: “You’re 25. Okay. You’re young, right?”

Audience Guest: “Yeah.”

Matthew: “That won’t last long.”

Audience Guest: “Definitely not.”

Matthew: “It will go. It will go. When you’re 40, you’ll be looking at a picture of yourself when you’re 25 saying, ‘Oh, my God. What was I thinking?’ When you’re 60, you’ll look at a picture of yourself at 40, and you’ll go, ‘Oh, my God. What was I thinking?’ When you’re 80, you’ll look at a picture of yourself at 60, and you’ll say, ‘What was I thinking?’ Right?

“These are not years now to be wasted. By the way, go make mistakes. Do that. Go make a ton of mistakes, but make some new fucking mistakes. [Audience clapping].”

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Ladies, my friends, we don’t have time. We sit there wasting time, addicted to comfort, addicted to the connection we have even though it’s not nourishing us, it’s not giving us what we want, even though deep down, it’s making us unhappy. We’re addicted to the comfort of it, but I promise you, a different kind of pain is coming. The pain of regret, the pain of lost time, the pain of the dreams you had for your relationship, for having a family, for doing the things you wanted to do in your love life not coming true, and that pain is so much worse than the pain of just having a standard right now.

I know that so many people are afraid to have a standard because they say, ‘Matt, I don’t know how to employ my standard. Even if I decide right now, I’m going to set a new standard with this person or with the men I date in my life, I don’t know how to do it.’ I had a comment just like this that was sent to me after my last video.

“Hey, Matt. Great video, completely identified with it, but I have some questions on the last bit of it. If he’s not treating you right, how do you send the message of, ‘Hey, I don’t accept this,’ without literally saying that and then getting him to value you more? Thanks. Laura.”

Well, I’m going to show you because the first step is deciding to have a new standard. The second step is coming with me right now and learning how to communicate your new standard confidently and competently.

I have a video training for you that I’m going to give you for free that shows you how to navigate one of the most popular questions I get asked, how to go from casual to exclusive, how to go from seeing someone you have a great connection with to actually being in a relationship with them. I walk one of my clients through this step by step, and as you watch me coach her, you’re going to see a completely new way of communicating your standards, so come with me now to watch that free video training. It’s at HowToGetExclusive.com.

All I ask in return is to leave me a comment under that video. Let me know how it impacted you. Go to HowToGetExclusive.com. Let’s graduate from theory, and start actually putting this into practice in your life.

I’ll see you there.