The Brutal Truth About Why They Keep Pulling Away - Mercedes Coffman
CChris Williamson
Mental HealthMarriage
Transcript
00:00:00i've heard you say that avoidant culture is changing relationship expectations
00:00:05yes how so well there's a couple of different reasons i mean i think avoidance culture is
00:00:10making people have to minimize themselves because we're interconnected human beings we need to be
00:00:18connected to other beings right it regulates our nervous system it makes us feel good it stabilizes
00:00:24us and so nowadays with everything being expedited we live in an era of immediacy
00:00:29and everything is geared towards reinforcing avoidance versus intimacy everything is about
00:00:38instant gratification getting results right away and so people especially emotionally
00:00:44available people which is who i largely work with as far as my clientele they're noticing that they're
00:00:50lowering their standards in order to keep a relationship and so the only way that now people
00:00:56see an opportunity for a relationship or maintaining the relationship is by changing their standards
00:01:01otherwise they feel like there's no hope left because especially in dating apps everything is
00:01:06about convenience and speed about disposability and nobody really wants to take the time to have
00:01:13gradual development is that avoidant culture yes is that how you would define avoidant culture yes so
00:01:19avoidant culture is really just avoiding anything that's inconveniencing or anything that causes
00:01:24discomfort meaning anything that takes too much time anything that requires too much effort anything that
00:01:31requires consistency or follow through that would basically fall into avoidant culture and nowadays
00:01:37especially on most of the dating apps they're designed for that they're designed for rewarding avoidance
00:01:43because it's all about novelty it's about dopamine it's about new matches every single day and nobody really
00:01:50spends the time to emotionally invest in one particular relationship anymore how does being with someone avoidant
00:01:58psychologically transform you well there's several different ways it's terrible for the nervous system
00:02:04because an avoidant person although for example an emotionally unavailable person who largely is avoidant
00:02:12they don't just present themselves as emotionally unavailable they usually present themselves with intensity
00:02:19with love bombing and so you get pulled into that dynamic pretty quickly even if you're an emotionally available person
00:02:26and so now you're getting attached to an emotionally unavailable person but once you start requiring effort
00:02:33and consistency and substance of the relationship a lot of these people tend to reveal their true selves
00:02:39which is a lack of capacity they cannot sustain relationship responsibilities and so
00:02:45your nervous system has this you know it starts to get attached and then it slowly starts to have to withdraw
00:02:52which is kind of like this dopamine spike of excitement but then there's a crash because this emotionally
00:02:58unavailable person pulls away they become more and more avoidant and what tends to happen is you're now
00:03:03dealing with micro grief you're now wondering what happened and your nervous system now is spiking in
00:03:08cortisol which is your stress hormones and so a lot of the times this changes people because they are
00:03:14experiencing fatigue mood disorders uh sleep disturbances appetite disorders so i think that avoidance in
00:03:23general and emotional unavailability is changing people's nervous system and it is much more harmful than
00:03:28we think it actually is in that way does modern dating punish emotionally available people yes yes and it doesn't
00:03:36it's not that modern dating apps are designed to punish emotionally available people it's that it is
00:03:43reinforcing emotional unavailability so the people who are emotionally unavailable have a much better time
00:03:49on dating apps than the emotionally available people why because emotionally unavailable people are
00:03:54looking for dopamine they're looking for comfort they do not want to put in a lot of effort in a
00:03:59relationship they do not have the capacity to put a lot of effort into it whereas emotionally available
00:04:04people are looking for consistency and follow-through and to focus on one person at a time and dating apps and
00:04:10swipe culture is all about the dopamine of more and more and more and the more options we have the less
00:04:17invested we are in those options why are emotionally available people particularly vulnerable what is it
00:04:24about them that makes them on the receiving end of this because emotionally available people are looking for
00:04:32depth and there is very little of that in modern dating our modern day in general everybody is looking for quick
00:04:38results and nobody's really looking to invest in things that causes discomfort or inconvenience
00:04:46so emotionally available people they want something of substance they want a relationship that will go the
00:04:52whole way they want the slow burn they want gradual development yet what happens is they get pulled in
00:04:58by an emotionally unavailable person and then contact slowly starts to decrease and eventually ghosting starts
00:05:07to occur which is detrimental to the nervous system and then a lot of emotionally unemotionally available
00:05:14people deal with these crashes where they just do not trust themselves anymore and they don't trust the
00:05:20dating sites or dating in general and so that's why i think there's this loneliness that we're seeing in modern day
00:05:26now because emotionally available people don't trust it and emotionally unavailable people don't sustain any
00:05:32particular connection presumably then if emotionally available people leave the dating pool or become
00:05:40damaged and become emotionally unavailable or closed off that's bad for everyone it's kind of like a race
00:05:45to the bottom where the few emotionally unavailable people the very few emotionally unavailable people become
00:05:54emotionally available by dating someone who's emotionally available but way more available people drop out
00:05:59or become hurt by it so it's kind of this entropy in the system where the people who are prepared to
00:06:06be open say this is what i want the likelihood of them becoming damaged it's a one-way street
00:06:14rarely do people that are broken get fixed but people that are already fixed become broken yes sadly and it
00:06:20doesn't mean that there aren't emotionally available people in the world or under dating i i work with
00:06:26lots of emotionally available clients males and females the issue is is that they're not easy to find
00:06:33right and nowadays we're looking for what's easy to find what's convenient right if you look at
00:06:38everything is expedited we want to find somebody on a dating app we don't go out to meet people anymore we
00:06:44don't really have uh social groups and social circles or community events and so a lot of us and a lot of
00:06:51people are relying on dating apps to find a match and to find someone who's compatible the issue with
00:06:58that is is that that is built for speed and so emotionally available people do not have a community where they
00:07:05can go and say oh these are other emotionally available people who want to go the distance
00:07:10who want to just focus on me and don't have five or 15 other matches in their app wouldn't it be good
00:07:17if there was a some sort of psychometric evaluation that people had to go through or you had to keep
00:07:22some sort of running cv like a trust pilot score we've got to have a trust pilots you've got an emotional
00:07:27availability score out of five yeah and if you manage to stay above a four you get to be on the app and
00:07:33if not you have to go away build up your uber rating back to above a four and then you can come back in
00:07:38i am working on a dating app for emotionally available people because i've noticed how
00:07:44discouraging it is and how most of my emotionally available clients are just not interested in
00:07:49dating anymore and they they are completely fatigued and discouraged and you know whenever you slide too
00:07:58much in one direction it's not good for your health right so emotionally available people now are not
00:08:04dating at all a lot of them and chronic loneliness is just as unhealthy for the nervous system as dating
00:08:12or being in situationships because neither one of them are really tending to your needs so what's
00:08:17happening is emotionally available people although they have the right intentions being lonely right now
00:08:23and having that chronic loneliness is just as detrimental to their health and so we need to figure
00:08:27something out and design a system where they can meet partners who are held accountable because there's no accountability in the dating apps nowadays
00:08:38there is low effort because there are so many options which means there's more disposability
00:08:42and so if we have a place where these emotionally available people could go and be seen and don't
00:08:48feel so disposable i think that they'll believe in love again how can you work out whether or not someone
00:08:54is or is not emotionally available there are some signs that you could detect in early dating
00:08:59so one of the ways is i think delaying gratification so if you meet someone and you're on a date with a person
00:09:07watch for patterns instead of potential so don't just rely on the intensity or the chemistry that
00:09:12you might immediately feel with the person but notice how they react when there is no
00:09:18physical reward at the end of the night know how they are with the waiter if the food is a little too late
00:09:25what's their patience like right so you could assess for their capacity and once you see that this person could
00:09:32manage their emotions this person could talk about intentions they could deal with feedback without
00:09:39withdrawing or avoiding that those are some of the quick ways that i tell clients to assess for
00:09:45emotional availability and capacity and early dating it's interesting you said use the word standards
00:09:51earlier on people have to sort of lower their standards and i think when you first hear that it
00:09:56sounds like something to do with physical standards height income age but what you're talking about
00:10:03here is emotional standards and this is a it's a weird thing to talk about i guess the prevalence of
00:10:10therapy culture in a good way the good side of therapy culture has made people realize well ultimately
00:10:17someone's looks are a depreciating asset but their mind is an appreciating asset and my relationship is
00:10:23basically one long conversation it's one long shared nervous system and then we'll add some other beings
00:10:28in maybe to this nervous system and if theirs is fucked it is making my job significantly harder
00:10:36uh so yeah when it comes to emotional standards i guess we could call it yeah it's just it's an
00:10:44interesting it's an interesting element that i don't think that people were necessarily thinking about
00:10:51before maybe because it was less important you know our parents generation weren't thinking about
00:10:56relating in quite the same way no and i agree with you i think nowadays we have to assess for different
00:11:02things and a lot of the dating apps now you know i've done my research that a lot of them if you look
00:11:09at a profile most of the things that they advertise on a profile if you were to go on there and look at
00:11:15someone's profile it'll talk about the person's age the things they enjoy doing but it doesn't talk
00:11:22about what's their conflict repair what's their love language what's their emotional availability
00:11:27what's their emotional capacity what's their emotional maturity it doesn't assess for any of
00:11:31those things and so what happens is people are bonding over surface level things oh we went to
00:11:36the same school we live in the same town you like the same food i like you know or physical attraction
00:11:42but it's not really assessing any compatibility regarding relationship values and i think that's
00:11:48where a lot of people are getting attached to the wrong people because it's a misalignment because
00:11:53we're not really doing the assessment on relationship values before attaching to a person that we meet
00:12:00what does true alignment look like let's say that you were going to give the gold standard for someone
00:12:05to try and work out whether them and this person are a good match emotionally what does that look
00:12:10like what matters what doesn't matter emotional availability is the first are they willing to be
00:12:17invested in this relationship meaning do they have good work-life balance do they have time for a
00:12:23relationship someone could be interested in you they could be emotionally intelligent they could have
00:12:27emotional capacity they could be emotionally mature but if they do not have time for a relationship it
00:12:32doesn't matter you will not be aligned with that person if you're emotionally available so the
00:12:38willingness to have time to invest time in a relationship is the first thing i would tell
00:12:42people to assess for the second is capacity can they hold their own emotions and your emotions as well
00:12:49meaning can they deal with discomfort without retreating without withdrawing without avoiding
00:12:55right so whenever a conversation gets uncomfortable whatever it's a conversation about growth or
00:13:00intentions can they sit through those feelings in that conversation without avoiding or getting defensive
00:13:06and then emotional maturity i would say is third on the list how emotionally mature is this person
00:13:12that's about can they manage rejection do they get aggressive do they get reactive or can they remain
00:13:22responsive and you could detect that early on in conversation as well so that would be the gold standard an emotionally
00:13:28available high capacity emotionally mature person that doesn't seem to me to be much about compatibility
00:13:37more so just these are some green flags from an emotional standpoint is there something to say about why
00:13:45two people who fit all of those criteria might not i mean there's a million reasons right like for
00:13:52physical attractiveness age life direction all the rest of it but again from an emotional you used love
00:13:57language attachment style stuff like that what are the next levels of uh how does this meal come together
00:14:07from the ingredients how can some meals that have great ingredients not work when they're put into a dish
00:14:12yes so i think that some of the things that will if you have all those things aligned and we both have
00:14:19those qualities and those relationship values some of the things that would hinder that would be
00:14:25unresolved stuff so unresolved stuff in me unresolved stuff in you if that's worked out and all the
00:14:32surface level things as far as chemistry and physical attraction is intact the relationship has a really good
00:14:39shot right but i think that we're not attaching based on that we're attaching based on chemistry and intensity
00:14:47first and i think it's backwards because there's a lot of broken hearts because people attach to the
00:14:54wrong things first and and we can't blame the world because everything is about speed it's about hey are we
00:15:03a match are we not i don't want to waste my time right and so we have this thing of time is of the essence
00:15:08and so you mentioned earlier generations yeah i think back in the day the difference is is that
00:15:16social circles were more connected back in the days and they were more interconnected they were smaller
00:15:22which means there was more accountability there's much less accountability nowadays in dating which means
00:15:27that people could just ghost with a tap on their phone bad behavior doesn't go punished a quick aside
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00:16:39one thing i agree that
00:16:44there is a transactional high speed element to dating at the moment that being said the whole reason
00:16:51that the sort of two modes of attachment that humans have moving from passionate to companionate love
00:17:00you know honeymoon phase to long-term commitment typically between six if you're unlucky and you know
00:17:08a long time like some people say that they're in passionate attachment for the rest of their life
00:17:12i'm not sure if that would actually be very useful but the reason that the system works like that is
00:17:19kind of to con you into seeing this person with rose-colored glasses there's a period of time where
00:17:25you're completely obsessed with them you think that the sun shines out of every different hole that they
00:17:30have and your your goal is to put a baby into them and then by the time that that's happened
00:17:38it's too late for you to actually i i don't know if i like you if we fit all that well so i get it
00:17:47um the reason i say that is people who are thoughtful and reflective i think a lot of the time blame
00:17:54themselves i should have seen the red flags earlier how did i not think a few million years of evolution
00:18:03conspired to convince you that this was your person that is the way that the human attachment
00:18:10system works like this is your soulmate this is everything and only after a while does sort of
00:18:19the veil gets revealed you poke your head above the water of this hormonal fever dream that you've been
00:18:23in and i think people blame themselves a lot for that and you should should you learn lessons from
00:18:30it yeah probably but whipping yourself into submission and saying i should have known better not good
00:18:37your brain conspired to kid you about this thing and yeah are there lessons to learn for the future
00:18:44but basically i think that you need to treat yourself when you're first dating somebody you need to treat
00:18:51yourself as a future drug addict who hasn't yet taken the drug okay i currently have my faculties
00:18:57intact i'm able to use my reasoning my free prefrontal cortex is working correctly i've got
00:19:01the right amount of serotonin to actually deploy this pretty soon all of this is going to go through
00:19:06the floor yep and i'm just going to be this kind of crazy person yep i need to steward my future self
00:19:13well yep and that means being incredibly discerning yes and it's it's very hard i mean the good thing is
00:19:19i worked a lot with addicts and alcoholics and i see a lot of that happening in dating nowadays is that
00:19:26a lot of what's happening is kind of conditioning people into that cycle of addiction right because
00:19:32of the obsession everything is very obsessive nowadays and you're right there are biological components
00:19:38evolution kind of geared us towards that i think that one of the ways to prevent a person from
00:19:44getting too attached and then by the time they have kids with this person they're like oh my god i don't
00:19:49even like this i fell backward into a golden retriever and a house and a marriage and child right so
00:19:54there's ways to slow down i kind of give my clients the framework mop mop m stands for match effort
00:20:02right so don't go overboard when chemistry hits and you feel attached to a person you want to go overboard
00:20:08you want to over gift because you want to hold on to it you feel like you found your person and that
00:20:13over investment is when you fall into that addiction even faster that starts clouding your mental clarity
00:20:19more and more so if you match effort second o means observe for patterns a lot of times people don't
00:20:25wait until they've discovered what a person's patterns are if you give it a couple of weeks or months
00:20:31you'll see what a person's patterns are you'll be able to maintain clarity at that point and then
00:20:36the last one is pace access because the moment you give someone especially physical access you are much
00:20:44more likely to get into that dopamine fix clarity goes backwards and you will become a full-blown addict
00:20:51at that point and so i think that at that point you know justification and minimizing stuff in order to
00:20:59maintain the relationship is all things that that person will use to keep that attachment but if we
00:21:06stay anchored in our own reality and we watch a person from the framework of yeah they're beautiful
00:21:12and they're handsome and they're incredible and they're emotionally intelligent but i want to match
00:21:19their effort if he's not going overboard i'm not going overboard if he isn't making an initiation or effort
00:21:26i'm not giving more effort than he's giving and vice versa so to be reciprocal and not to over invest that
00:21:32will keep you grounded does that not create a war of attrition where both people don't move
00:21:36no because naturally it will move you'll want to move as long as you remain authentic
00:21:42you'll want to move hey you know you want to go out sure no problem we should do this again let's do this
00:21:48next time but i'm not gonna say hey oh my god we should do this all the time and we should get
00:21:53married and have kids because i don't want to let go of this dopamine and this euphoria that i feel
00:21:58right now so when the desire outpaces the effort is when you should know that you're now in a biochemical
00:22:06cycle and not in a mental cycle yeah being too understanding can hurt your dating life in that regard as you
00:22:12tumble through those stages of attachment and things begin to be excused this behavior that normal you
00:22:22would have seen as abhorrent or just unacceptable now well you know they were busy they've got a lot
00:22:30on their plate or that i he he didn't mean it like that he didn't mean i'm sure because what he said
00:22:38about the thing and it's his mom it's his mom you know it's because he's got a thing you go okay
00:22:44your ability to be discerning gets worse and worse absolutely because the dopamine gets higher
00:22:50and the problem serotonin gets lower serotonin gets lower dopamine gets higher and so
00:22:55kind of one of the excuses you just used right oh he's just busy i often hear my female clients say
00:23:01that oh he's busy he told me he's busy right and so women tend to trust words a lot more than men do
00:23:08men kind of just look at behaviors because that's how they bond amongst themselves women tend to
00:23:13believe words right because for evolutionary reasons we were supposed to believe the words that men told
00:23:19us and so what's happening now is that a man could say he's busy and therefore doesn't have time and a lot
00:23:25of times women can't discern is he really busy or am i just a low priority and one of the ways i tell
00:23:31people to recognize the difference is that no matter how busy a man is a man who's genuinely interested in
00:23:37you will give you clarity on his busiest days you will know exactly what you mean to him a man who
00:23:46thinks of you as a low priority you'll continue in this confusion you'll attach to words he'll tell you
00:23:52excuses you'll minimize your feelings only to keep that attachment and so i think it's always important
00:23:59to go do you have clarity if you don't have clarity this might be a misalignment well what also is a
00:24:05misalignment i really appreciate that you said time is the first element here that there are sort of two
00:24:11things going on one is someone's ability to prioritize you around their level of busyness
00:24:19the other is just how busy they are there is a world in which someone is simply too busy absolutely
00:24:25to be in a relationship with you at the level that you want to be regardless of how much they want to
00:24:29be in it and that's a difficult one i think because if you're an empathetic person that's sensitive and
00:24:35sees the good in others what you're going to see in this person is well they really want this that's
00:24:41fine but they may not be able to commit the time they may be giving 110 percent of 10 percent it's a
00:24:49capacity issue at that point so he really wants to and a lot of the situations the desire is really there
00:24:57it's really genuine so it's not as though these people are just malicious and dating a man could be
00:25:03or a woman could be really busy with their career and really want to make this relationship work with
00:25:08this partner but at that point when there's no work-life balance and their work takes up all of
00:25:15their time they just don't have the capacity to meet your needs and at that point you need to be honest
00:25:21with the fact that it's misaligned because you're going to put pressure on them and they're going to
00:25:25start building resentments against you discernment is basically a kind of proactive health care
00:25:33for yourself in that way if you
00:25:39are unable to work out who is good for your life and who is bad for your life
00:25:46you are condemning a future version of you to damage absolutely and discernment i think a lot of times
00:25:55people feel as though that should also mean being understanding of other people's limitations
00:26:02and two things could be true at the same time i could be understanding of people's limitations and
00:26:07still know what i need and still advocate for what i need right so if i am looking for a particular type
00:26:13of relationship no matter how much i understand your limitations it's just not compatible it's still
00:26:21not your obligation to accept them exactly and a lot of people have a hard time with that because
00:26:26they really want that person a lot of times people will tell me that they are attracted to a person
00:26:31and they go but mercedes he's such a good person or she's such a beautiful person i'm like i know but
00:26:37they're not your beautiful person you know they could be great in every other area of life but they're
00:26:43just not emotionally available enough for what you want i'm gonna draw a parallel here between kanye
00:26:48west and beautiful people in dating you weren't expecting that
00:26:53you know yay just sold out uh sofi stadium two nights out of three
00:26:58uh a couple of weeks ago in la
00:27:01look he's not exactly showered himself in glory over the last few years
00:27:05he's got bangers and because he's got bangers people are just going to turn up and i think that
00:27:13music is a unique area of psychological hacking that it's really hard to not like a song that slaps
00:27:24regardless of how much you hate the person that made it absolutely it's much easier to say that
00:27:29person's comedy set i didn't enjoy that person's podcast that their talk that they gave like that's
00:27:35actually not that you know but for some reason music is so penetrating and it's so um like emotionally charged
00:27:43you just can't do that right it's real hard to do that with music and i think that beauty is one of
00:27:47those other things is this person is a fucking asshole they all they do is make my life worse
00:27:54they ruin my sleep they hurt me i i i'm i'm permanently on edge so beautiful and that is
00:28:03this weird reality distortion field i mean i think about this to do with you know beautiful women really
00:28:08beautiful women it must be so like disconcerting for them to move through the world because they
00:28:16basically have this weird sphere that sort of follows them around and a room is completely normal
00:28:23functioning as it's supposed to and then they arrive in it and everything goes haywire no
00:28:29one can behave normally i think the equivalent for men is somebody who's a very high status
00:28:33right i've been in uh mitzi's which is the bar downstairs in uh the comedy mothership here in
00:28:38austin rogan's place rogan's not there the bar functions normally joe walks in everybody turns weird
00:28:47everyone turns weird there's this odd sphere that sort of follows him around and there's a few people
00:28:51that are his friends and that know him very well that are kind of able to withstand this
00:28:58distortion field yeah this distortion field that sort of follows him but the same thing's true for
00:29:02women and um they they are never going to have a beautiful woman is never going to have a normal
00:29:07interaction with men for the most part maybe they find a person who doesn't care the guy that's gay
00:29:15maybe but even the guy that's gay he's so hot like beautiful tell me what you do for your skin like you
00:29:20know and that fact that there are certain
00:29:28there are certain uh unlocks in the back of sort of the human system that allow you
00:29:34to sort of face plant as hard as kanye has over the last half decade and then go and sell out in a
00:29:40stadium two nights in a row and crush it and everyone go that was amazing look how good the
00:29:45songs were look at the performance the stage show and the same thing is true for you trying to work
00:29:51out i this person is not good for me but they're beautiful i don't like kanye's politics but but
00:29:58he's got bangers he's got bangers yeah yep i mean i agree and i love that you kind of gave that parallel
00:30:05because it's true that's the balance between when you become biochemically hijacked right where you
00:30:12just the chemistry just feels so intense and you're like but i just want that person like i just want
00:30:18that person and it becomes a challenge and everything in you is giving off the pheromones that hey i'm
00:30:24available to you right and so there's a sure that's one part of us is our biochemistry but
00:30:31the universe didn't just give us that it also gave us a frontal lope and that part goes hmm yeah this
00:30:38drug might give me energy but it also will make me lose all my money or this person is incredibly handsome
00:30:47but they're gonna break my heart right but that requires pause it requires processing it requires
00:30:55going i know what i'm feeling i'm feeling attracted to this person but let me take a pause let me think
00:31:03about it let me step away because if i act right now i'm going to act on biochemistry and that has
00:31:09nothing to do with mental clarity it just has to do with in the feelings the the sphere you just described
00:31:17and that doesn't tell me anything about how this person is going to treat me yeah romantic discernment
00:31:23is a form of preventative health absolutely absolutely you just have to do it to make that great and that
00:31:28pause just it doesn't happen anymore people don't pause i mean i just watched i don't know if it was
00:31:34was it matt damon and one of his new movies where he talked about because i used to watch movies and i
00:31:39love gradual development i love seeing character development i love kind of psychological thrillers
00:31:45are my thing i like to know how people think and solve an issue nowadays movies start in the middle
00:31:53at the most emotionally gripping part of the story because we don't have the attention span to sit
00:31:58through character development anymore and that's the same with dating we want to know the most intense
00:32:04part first because we don't want to sit through i gotta take her on another date and i gotta find out
00:32:10where she's from and i gotta find out what he's into and what was his life like and his childhood
00:32:16because people just want to know is he making me feel the biochemistry that i'm used to when i get
00:32:20amazon next day delivery when i get uber eats when i get instacart when i fast forward commercials
00:32:27that's what i want i want it right away and i don't want to wait it's interesting that that's what
00:32:32people want but probably not what they need because if you speed run the first few dates
00:32:38everybody asks that question so how do you guys meet so how do you meet and if you say drunk in a
00:32:44club at three in the morning you go ah yeah what were the first few dates like uh netflix and chill
00:32:49it's like that is embedded in your relational history for the rest of time if this is the if you're
00:32:56trying to do this seriously if you're not trying to do this seriously club at three and i ran night
00:32:59clubs forever right i have seen the various states of disrepair that happen after one in the morning
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00:34:12slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout that's l-i-v-e-m-o-m-e-n-t-o-u-s.com
00:34:20and modern wisdom at checkout talking about sort of modern media culture and stuff
00:34:27what do you make of the influence that romance movies have had on the sort of men that women choose
00:34:37so i'm gonna guess the vast majority of the consumers of these sort of romantic movies are
00:34:41going to be women and if you look at some of the archetypes uh titanic the notebook
00:34:51i don't know i'm i'm not sure if women would choose that for their friends or for their daughters
00:34:57yes so nope is pretty good i think we would choose him you would so question on that which is an
00:35:04interesting one she says no to the guy that's a decorated war veteran yeah who is a accountant and
00:35:12lawyer but chooses the guy that's kind of emotionally up and down now it ends up working out great right
00:35:20uh a titanic obviously ends the way that it does uh i don't know i just think it's whatever the
00:35:27subtext is of that that stable is boring that uh regulated uh means no spark that what you actually
00:35:36want is something closer to a roller coaster you need to fix him uh somebody who isn't there but makes
00:35:42you feel is that not the exact recipe that you're worried about disaster absolutely you were finessed
00:35:48by the notebook yes i was finessed by it but the thing is this is that you know i think that because
00:35:55and women say this all the time we wanted both of the guys from the notebook to be put in a blender
00:36:01and become our ideal guy it just he just doesn't exist just like that perfect woman doesn't exist
00:36:08right and so i think that we are seeing more and more you know what media did to women as far as what
00:36:15women started looking for is what dating apps do for men social media do for men only fans do for men
00:36:23right it's that idea of what a typical woman they don't all look like that right but it's the same thing
00:36:29as with movies romantic movies or rom-coms women want that emotional intensity the guy that will sing
00:36:36her a song and write her poetry and go deeper with her because they're looking for depth and sometimes
00:36:42they forget that depth isn't the only thing and so in a lot of these movies if you notice chris these
00:36:48guys aren't their only guy it is only that they get with the jack and noah because their other guy
00:36:57didn't have the emotional availability and the romance per se that they need it there's a
00:37:04trend of romanticity at the moment you know romanticity romanticity is cultural appropriation
00:37:09of women of the long-standing male literary genre of fantasy so it's turned something about orcs and
00:37:17warlocks and it's written for autists like me that like to read it in their bedroom and it's made it
00:37:23into softcore porn and there's a trend on the internet at the moment of talking about the standards that are
00:37:30set for women in both fiction and in porn and guys have decided to use that to kind of highlight
00:37:38what they're seeing when it comes to literature as well oh the mother's dead in water mice dead with
00:37:44balloons father's dead the father's there i like the idea for this video now i'm gonna do one with
00:37:51books he's got a big thing he's got a big thing he's got a big thing and something in his eye he's got a big
00:37:55thing but he's an asshole he's got a big thing and he's a stalker he's got big fingers he's got a big
00:37:59thing with wings he's got a big thing with dragons he's got a big thing he likes to murder people they
00:38:03all have big things but you never see them oh my god yeah i think it's so good and there's an endless
00:38:12number of those videos that dude's just like run it back over and over the official stephen walker
00:38:17fucking crushing it there oh my god yeah um but yeah look i i think the opportunity for uh
00:38:24people's desires to be turned up to 11 has happened with porn video games but it's also happening
00:38:29emotionally and that's really if you're doing it through a book it's so involved right you're you're
00:38:34creating these situations these environments yourself it's almost like a self-generated movie
00:38:41right as you read it it doesn't give you the story you make the story yourself and i uh i know i i would
00:38:47be fascinated to see what the levels of relational satisfaction are for women that are deep in romance
00:38:58romanticy dark romance i wonder whether that is giving them uh more inspiration or creating a standard of
00:39:08he's got a big thing he's got a big thing he's got a big thing and something in his eye he's got a big
00:39:12thing and like wings yeah i mean i i would like to see kind of what that turns into because things
00:39:19are constantly changing right so it changes people's expectations and i am noticing how a lot of my
00:39:26clients both males and females are adapting constantly are trying to adapt to what's expected nowadays and
00:39:33they're losing themselves because there's more and more of a disconnection because you're like okay
00:39:36well i guess i gotta keep up what what the new thing is now i mean even the reading of books i've i wish
00:39:43that people would do more of that because that in and of itself delays gratification it stabilizes us
00:39:50and it makes us more patient and people aren't really doing it as much anymore sadly how is emotional
00:39:56capacity not the same thing as emotional or relational readiness so emotional readiness is a person simply
00:40:03saying that they would want to be in a relationship with you or that they actually have what it takes
00:40:09now emotional capacity is very important because it determines if a person could actually sit through
00:40:18what a relationship needs which is the growing pains of it can they sit through an argument can they
00:40:25sit through unresolved conflict that you might trigger about their past or their traumas and a lot of people have
00:40:32desire but it outpaces their capacity so they want to make the relationship work but desire in most
00:40:37relationship now outpaces capacity and emotional maturity so now you have misalignment not because
00:40:46people don't want the person they're with it's just that they can't sustain a relationship with the
00:40:51person they're with and i suppose that's one of the times where somebody that sees the best
00:40:55in another person is going to be really damaged because they go well they want it yes i just need
00:41:01to believe in their potential to be able to get there yes but we can't see potential no we can't
00:41:05see whether or not this person is going to this realization was done immediately there was a
00:41:13instagram post i saw the other day from some guy saying uh spending my time at the gym as opposed to
00:41:19writing a 2000 word text message to an emotionally avoidant person on how to love me properly
00:41:25and you know there's something about that dynamic of alain de botton's got this great video where he
00:41:30says after a while the late night couples counseling and the co-journaling sessions and the we just need
00:41:39to work through this you probably just need to admit like this is this is just not the right fit or this
00:41:46person is just not where i am and it's hard to do that because the thing is is that a lot of the times
00:41:53a person could start off with emotional capacity and emotional availability serotonin's high dopamine's high
00:41:59in the beginning novelty is high and they have the high desire so everything is aligned in the beginning
00:42:05it's just that once consistency effort and follow through is required and now you're talking about a
00:42:12future and maybe moving in together that's when people's limitations are revealed so it's not as
00:42:18though and so that's why people want to stay and hold on to something longer because they go i seen it in
00:42:24the beginning he had all those qualities in the beginning so they got to be there i'm just going to remain
00:42:29patient until they return and the truth is is that well no he could have genuinely had them at that time
00:42:37but now you're on a different level and he might not have the fuels for this level
00:42:42and then we have to accept it you know and kind of just go okay we're at the fork of the road
00:42:47you don't have any more energy to keep going and it was great while it lasted but we have to be honest
00:42:52with ourselves i saw some research suggesting that relationship self-sabotage affect about 63 of
00:42:59people at some point 2021 study published in the journal of couples and relationship therapy
00:43:04based on interviews with about 700 people found that the most common drivers were fear of getting hurt
00:43:10fear of rejection and low self-esteem often leading people to end relationships before they could get
00:43:16too attached yes and i think the reason why there's such a fear of rejection is because ghosting is
00:43:22such a normalized thing now which wasn't the case before it's not like people are inherently uh more
00:43:30insecure or have lower self-esteem now that's not the case it's that ghosting has become more normalized
00:43:35than it's ever been before there were ghosters back in the day and you know years ago the difference is
00:43:41that it wasn't a normal thing and there was some shame attached to it nowadays it could happen almost
00:43:46anonymously and you never have to see the person again and so a lot of people are afraid of that
00:43:51rejection because it does trigger grief being ghosted isn't just something that you get over because
00:43:58you're like oh i just known him for two weeks you biochemically are going through withdrawals you're
00:44:03dealing with grief and all the stages of grief and so i do think that a lot of people fear that oh my gosh
00:44:10if the narrative now is there's no good men left in the world there's no good women left in dating apps
00:44:16everybody's saying well why would i get in that pool and so they start self-sabotaging the moment
00:44:21they see something because they have the confirmatory bias of it's probably not going to work out and so
00:44:26the confirmatory bias is going to see what confirms the bias so the moment he is delayed in his response or
00:44:34she seems like she's not capable of sustaining attention people start self-sabotaging ah this is
00:44:40better off because people don't want to get rejected again interesting you've got sort of two barbells
00:44:45going on at the same time people who will continue to withstand stuff that they shouldn't and people
00:44:50that can't withstand stuff that they should yes and those people who can't they don't ever grow their
00:44:55capacity so although it gives instant gratification to just not enter the pool and not have to deal with
00:45:02the discomfort i'm safe now they're safe right but it's instant relief the thing is they never grow
00:45:07their emotional capacity or their emotional maturity what does growing your emotional capacity look like
00:45:12how can people do that so one of the things is sitting through uncomfortable conversations
00:45:18even if you feel anxious even if you whether that's a first date whether that is a conversation about
00:45:23growth whether that is someone giving you constructive feedback learning how to just sit through your
00:45:28feelings and recognizing that they're not going to swallow you whole if you cry today you're not
00:45:33going to be crying all day so just kind of recognizing what you're feeling and sitting in that another
00:45:38thing is not to overload your life because you could have capacity during the good times but
00:45:44if your whether it's work-life balance or your life is overloaded and your nervous system is stressed out
00:45:50with cortisol you will not have the capacity for connection or conflict repair so never overload
00:45:56your life practice things for your nervous system stabilization so whether that's meditation have a
00:46:03gym routine have a workout routine discipline which is another thing that is disappearing more and more
00:46:08so i think that if we do that our nervous system tends to regulate itself and you'll be able to build your
00:46:14capacity over time talk to me about the relationship between unresolved trauma and self-sabotage
00:46:21yes so a lot of the times if unresolved trauma is a big pool of things right so it could be
00:46:28whether it was abuse or neglect so there's lots of different things that fit in that category but
00:46:34whenever there's an unresolved trauma the narrative that is created from that is i can't trust intimacy i
00:46:43can't trust connection and so when a person then gets in a relationship no matter how good the partner
00:46:49is there's always that that hyper vigilance in the nervous system that just waits for this person to
00:46:56abandon or for this person to leave or hurt or harm them and so i think a lot of people who have not
00:47:02healed their trauma tend to re-injure their own wounds subconsciously by doing that
00:47:10how do you explain to someone that they have trauma when they don't see themselves as a traumatized
00:47:15person i think there's probably two buckets of people there's people who aren't traumatized but
00:47:20say that they do have it and there's people who are traumatized but don't realize it yes so the thing
00:47:26i think the reason why a lot of people do not want to explore their trauma is because they think that
00:47:32trauma has to look a certain way right they think it has to be these big events uh whether that was
00:47:40terrible physical or sexual abuse and that's not always the case trauma could be anything that made you
00:47:46feel incredibly dysregulated in your life at any point in your life it doesn't have to just be childhood
00:47:52and so a lot of people have a discomfort talking about it and one of the ways that you could tell
00:47:57that there's unresolved trauma is based on a person's reactivity so a person who doesn't have trauma
00:48:03typically could sit through their feelings and not get easily triggered but when relationships become
00:48:10increasingly more intimate and they get reactive in those relationships it's usually unresolved trauma
00:48:16from childhood relationships with either a parent or a caregiver so that's a way that you could tell
00:48:23okay there's some unhealed stuff here if i tend to get reactive when someone just said something very
00:48:28simple to me i probably need to look at what that is in other news shopify powers 10 of all e-commerce
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00:49:27slash modern wisdom all lowercase that's shopify.com slash modern wisdom what's a way that someone can
00:49:33rebuild the self-trust one of the ways is to always be honest with ourselves right so that requires self
00:49:42reflections after every relationship because i think relationships are beautiful mirrors right there are
00:49:47great ways to look at ourselves how a person treats me is a reflection or it's a reflection of what i allow
00:49:56what i tolerate so the relationships that i'm in are a good way to start looking at
00:50:03how much do i value myself how much do i trust myself based on how these people in my life that i value
00:50:08treat me that's one way another way is to build your emotional language what am i feeling at any given
00:50:16moment i always give people an emotional wheel because there's so many more emotions than just
00:50:21mad glad sad angry right so there's all these things that we don't really tend to internally because
00:50:29we're so focused on the external and because of that we're trusting other people places and things
00:50:34much more than we trust ourselves because there's so much self-abandonment even the most confident
00:50:38person has probably some level of self-abandonment that they're not even aware of what what are some of
00:50:44the small ways self-abandonment shows up prioritizing other people places or things not really
00:50:51taken a pause to ask yourself am i okay with it do i feel safe in this environment do i feel safe with
00:50:57this person do i really want to go to this party or am i just people pleasing every time that we override
00:51:04that and we go against what we feel is right or regulating to ourselves is the way that we self-abandon
00:51:13yeah it's uh it's strange to think about how people that are really thoughtful
00:51:20often end up thinking themselves out of prioritization like i i see the best in this person
00:51:28they made me happy they make me happy sometimes so i'll just continue to sort of shunt my own needs
00:51:36to one side i'll put them over here yes and then they self-abandon and the thing is i mean one of my
00:51:42favorite quotes that i love that i tell a lot of my empathic clients or understanding clients is suffering
00:51:48breeds compassion the more a person has suffered in their own life usually the more compassionate they
00:51:54become to others because they don't want anybody else to suffer the way they did right so oftentimes
00:52:01over giving and being over considerate is a reflection of how you were abandoned and how you're still
00:52:07abandoning yourselves a lot of people will continue the trauma that was inflicted on them but they do
00:52:15it themselves at some point in adulthood they start becoming the perpetrator to their own pain it's a
00:52:22unique kind of self-harm though because it's one that society would see from the outside of something
00:52:28noble absolutely not so strange absolutely funny they're like it's so kind so you're so kind and
00:52:33that's i love dr gabor mate he talks a lot about that where he says if you go and look at all the
00:52:40eulogies of people who died an early death they'll talk about how this man would give the shirt off his
00:52:46back to anybody he was the kindest person and nobody looks at well that may have led to the self-abandonment
00:52:54that increased his inflammation suppressed his immune system and eventually got him to be dead now yeah
00:53:02it's strange a lot of the things that are pro-social are abandoning to the south so joe hudson has told
00:53:09this story to me which is it's so great his daughter kept on crying in the bathroom when she was nine
00:53:14years old and he went in and while she was crying she sounded also she was yelling and he said hey are you
00:53:22sad or are you pissed off she says i'm pissed off i said well how come you're crying he says well
00:53:28when i get angry my sister runs away but when i cry she comes and gives me a hug and it's this weird
00:53:35the sort of pro-social nature or the anti-social nature of making your displeasure known of
00:53:41prioritizing yourself and the sort of pro-social nature of domesticating that and that usually means
00:53:46turning outward discontent rage anger displeasure criticism into something that's just a bit more
00:53:55palatable for people right you don't get mad you get sad you don't get angry at the world you get
00:54:00angry at yourself and um that it just it makes people less confronted it means that they don't
00:54:07need to deal with their in the same way the people around you because they they get to still be the hero
00:54:12they don't have to be the bad guy in quite the same way even if you're sad about something that you're
00:54:17justified in being sad about that your partner did to you they still get to kind of be the hero
00:54:23because they get to come in and save you and fix it and that's the thing i think that
00:54:28we don't look at that enough and i think it just keeps us becoming even more and more isolated from
00:54:34ourselves right and so the question then becomes how can we expect ourselves to get in aligned
00:54:42connections when we're misaligned within ourselves right because everything's a reflection if i'm not
00:54:48aligned with what i want and going after what i want or my nervous system is disconnected from what my
00:54:54brain says i want then how can i find connection in another person or alignment in another person i'm
00:54:59probably going to find the same misalignment it's just like the example you gave is that we
00:55:04what we ultimately want as human beings is belonging we want to feel like we belong to a person so a lot
00:55:10of the times the crying and the anger thing is that it's easier to be sad which is why you'll oftentimes
00:55:16see people i i see that too where on social media people have an easier time sharing tragic situations
00:55:24or illnesses than they have sharing their victories because there's such a judgment sometimes on
00:55:33don't get too cocky don't don't get too confident it could be taken away at any moment but there's
00:55:39such a ah at least we're all struggling right and there's this belonging of shared suffering versus well
00:55:47why don't we do both why don't we continue to be compassionate towards the suffering of others
00:55:52and ourselves but also uplift ourselves and others people feel like they need to caveat their
00:55:57accomplishments with the but this was me five years ago when i was living i was sleeping on the bedroom
00:56:02floor absolutely the yeah the immediate oh easy for you to say that's lucky for you to say about that
00:56:09because again it throws into sharp contrast if we have something it reminds people what they don't have
00:56:17absolutely and a lot of people are unhealed with that because they can't just say well chris has that but
00:56:23i have this other thing right and because we don't self-explore and we don't anchor ourselves in ourselves
00:56:28worth enough we constantly are looking like the crap's in the bucket like the moment one crab goes to
00:56:34the top and starts talking about i'm doing good they're like no no come down here you're not that great
00:56:38also because the uh landscape of success has been flattened to only a really small bucket of things
00:56:47very difficult for you to flex the quality of relationship you have with your grandmother
00:56:54right in as much as your grandmother can be aesthetic on instagram perhaps but there's usually an upper
00:57:00bound of that um how much do other people rely on you how reliable are you as a friend uh how much do you
00:57:09make your local community feel valued how much you a member of that that contributes that gives more
00:57:15than you take uh how good are you with money in a responsible way not in a i've accumulated tons of
00:57:22wealth like it's small things and um because yeah the landscape for what people want to advertise
00:57:32people will often trade observable metrics for hidden metrics so observable metric job title car that you
00:57:40drive postcode you live in size and square footage of house annual salary hidden metrics quality of
00:57:47relationship with your partner amount of spare time peace in your mind as you go to sleep at night
00:57:52amount of time that you spend to sleep at night you know and we will often trade the stuff that's
00:57:56hidden for the stuff that's observable because that's the ultimate game people can see this but
00:58:02they can't see this and it's it's a radical thing to say i'm satisfied now it's one of the most radical
00:58:09statements he's got i'm good i'm good it's tough because everybody you know just like you talked about
00:58:16with good-looking people right there's different standards for good-looking people they can't
00:58:22they can't re they have to minimize themselves to a certain degree they have to go you know
00:58:31i saw i think i saw something you did where i did research i was like who is this christ i did
00:58:37research so i saw something how far back did you go no i didn't go too far back but i saw something
00:58:41you did where someone when someone asked you um about your looks or something and you're like well i mean
00:58:49yeah sometimes it's easy to get certain things but and then you were biscuits on a plane and then you
00:58:54were like very humble trying to still be like no but you know it's not sometimes and then i was like
00:59:01that's exactly what we're talking about right here where you just you can't just go yeah i'm a good
00:59:05looking guy and i know it right like you you can't just say that because something in us says we have
00:59:11to still belong whether that is to our followers or community or clientele and so there's this thing
00:59:19where we don't want to outshine because belonging is the most important human need and i just think it's
00:59:27pretty sad because it's self-abandoning to a certain degree and it's kind of sensors our authenticity to
00:59:35a certain degree as well it feels very gauche to do that it's also i'm british so sort of self-folating
00:59:42is we're kind of averse to that you know we don't have a massive culture of ego in the same way that
00:59:48america might do and still people will minimize themselves in america but it feels i think the
00:59:54main reason for me and i have thought about this a lot because you know for a long time i was a
00:59:58commercial male model for over a decade a dj a nightclub promoter i was all of the red flags you
01:00:05don't want in your future son-in-law and i'd collected them like pokemon cards
01:00:14but you there is a kind of dislike that anybody has for someone that seems like they got something
01:00:21that they didn't work for there is a difference between somebody who's good looking and somebody
01:00:27who's got a good body from the gym and people who train really really hard and show their body off
01:00:35on instagram they'll get some criticisms but people understand that nobody's born with a great figure
01:00:42in that sort of a way same thing's not true when it comes to just straight beauty women can kind of
01:00:48respect it in other women uh but they secretly really really don't like it i think that it triggers a
01:00:55type of visceral competitiveness and rivalry that uh beautiful women know and no one is going to ever
01:01:02give them sympathy for if you're a good-looking woman you are persona non grata and almost always
01:01:10going to be on the receiving end of other women's ire men will open every door in the world for you
01:01:17because you've got your reality distortion field that follows you around but i would maybe even go as far as
01:01:22to say that beautiful women are disadvantaged by women more than they're advantaged by men that's
01:01:29total i mean actually hang on yes yeah i would say the beautiful women are more disadvantaged by other
01:01:38women than they are advantaged by men these i put these on when i need to say something insane or something
01:01:44that might get clipped out of context um and the reason is female intersexual competition is almost
01:01:51always hidden the male intersexual competition is out front there's this great study from tracy vyanco
01:01:57where she says female basketball players there's a study done the physical affection of female
01:02:03basketball players female basketball players on the same team showed less affection to each other
01:02:09physically than male basketball players on opposing teams because the rivalry is very hidden
01:02:15and this paints a very sort of ugly picture of women right which you i you know men can be bastards
01:02:21too and are a lot of the time however beautiful women have this weird cost that they have to pay
01:02:29and i'm sorry i'm putting you off with this um i was like i'm getting used to this new guy yeah that's
01:02:35right he's nice he's actually nicer i like him i'm just joking chris i'm joking
01:02:45but it's true and i you know i i think it's quite sad because i do i see it with my female clients and
01:02:53my male clients that there's just different rules that people have to play by right and i think kind
01:02:58of like you said we do want to see that people have worked for stuff yeah like the gym example we
01:03:04want to know that okay this body was it was hard work that got him there and those people get great
01:03:09comments typically feedback wise on social media but at the same time when it comes to people's personal
01:03:16lives they want to bypass that gradual process they want to bypass it and get the quick fixes
01:03:22and that's the same for beauty that's the same for jobs that's the same for money
01:03:26nobody really wants to do anything that takes time or discomfort anymore and i think that's the issue
01:03:32we say we want the job that will pay us for the rest of our lives we say we want the relationship
01:03:37that's going to last us a lifetime but our nervous system is like i've had clients who are emotionally
01:03:43available will go on a date with a guy and come back and say i just it just wasn't really
01:03:51intense like i just i'm just used to that intensity and i just didn't feel it but i know what intensity
01:03:58from past patterns they're talking about the emotionally unavailable the reason that you're
01:04:01in therapy the reason that you're here with me is because of that that intensity yes how do you that's a
01:04:08really great point there is a a world of dating for certain people where if you were to draw a timeline
01:04:17of their dating life it would be relationships with people who are to them superbly exciting and totally
01:04:26terrifying and dysregulating and relationships with people who think that they're wonderful and they hate
01:04:32because of how boring they seem punctuated with brief periods of terrifying loneliness in between it
01:04:39and they just sort of swing between partners that they fear but are excited by and those they feel safe
01:04:46but bored with
01:04:46yes talk to me about this yes avatar the safe but bored excited but fearful
01:04:54so yes i think that the reason why that happens is because people have created a belief that our
01:05:01partner is supposed to be our everything they're supposed to bring us excitement and stability and fire
01:05:08and calm and there are other areas in our life that could give us that if your relationship is stable but
01:05:16not intense or exciting enough have an exciting career go bungee jumping do exciting hobbies and activities
01:05:25have friendships that are exciting i just think that we have we it's almost like staying in the casino and
01:05:32not leaving when you win a good prize because you're like i feel like there's a better prize out
01:05:37there and i want to win more and so that's the issue is like we don't know when to leave we don't know
01:05:42when to go no but this is stable and this is good i'll get my excitement elsewhere because all intensity
01:05:49and excitement nowadays is is nervous system activation it's not that this person is so much more exciting
01:05:55they give you the love bombing intensity and that makes you feel alive because we've become very numb
01:06:01nowadays we're over stimulated and so when you're over stimulated it's almost like being shot with an
01:06:07anesthetic you need something really hard to awaken you you're like a masochist at a sex party who
01:06:13needs car batteries clamped on his nipples before he can get started because you feel something
01:06:18yes i'm not even going to ask you where you where you've seen that but i believe everything you said
01:06:25the guy wearing this nose and mustache may have experienced it
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01:07:33fit for all times why is the feeling obsessed the love bombing thing in early dating a red flag
01:07:41because obsession is rarely ever about the other person obsession is about nervous system activation
01:07:48because in early dating you do not have enough data to know if this person is compatible with you
01:07:56you do not know enough about their patterns you do not know enough about alignment between you two
01:08:01and so if you're feeling obsessed in early dating meaning you can't stop thinking about this person you're
01:08:06having intrusive thoughts about this person you're constantly waiting for their messages and re-reading
01:08:11messages that's your nervous system saying something is uncertain and the nervous system is designed
01:08:17to create certainty out of uncertainty so when a person is inconsistent and they don't give you enough
01:08:24clarity the likelihood of obsession is much higher in that situation in that connection than a person
01:08:31who gives you stability and clarity early on isn't that so interesting that what people are looking for
01:08:36a lot of the time which is the spark and the rush is that the presence of that is highly predictive
01:08:47of this person not being good for you as opposed to being good for you what a cruel trick and
01:08:51you know why because we started saying these things that confuse children and teens by saying
01:08:57we started calling it butterflies and that's so pretty and cute oh he gives me butterflies no he he activates
01:09:05your nervous system he's not good for you right and so we don't say it as that so everybody starts
01:09:12being conditioned into the belief that when i feel a lot for this person and i'm feeling anxious around
01:09:17them that this might mean that this is my guy or this is my woman you think it's that much due to sort
01:09:23of modern cultural conditioning there's a lot of push-pull dynamic intermittent variable schedule reward
01:09:29i mean this is the same tempo that slot machines use it's the same dynamic that social media companies
01:09:37use so i don't disagree that referring to chaos as chemistry is not good re-patterning yep but this is
01:09:50bottom of the brain stem stuff too right so again the reason i say that
01:09:55when people hear explanations for situations that they've been through a lot of the time
01:10:00the self-blame comes up and you go i get it would be great if you could break this pattern i'm sure that
01:10:05you can it's there's a long history how many of your ancestors have done you would not be here if it
01:10:14wasn't for this dynamic absolutely it's not easy you're the proud progeny of people that were gaslit
01:10:19into thinking that they loved the person they were with yes and it's not easy the difference though
01:10:25is is that i think with awareness we could just learn to marry the limbic system and the primitive
01:10:32part of the brain with the front of the brain that's all it is it's integration if we could just
01:10:36integrate and the best way to do that is to take space whatever we feel to just say it feels really
01:10:43good this person is number one on the list right now but they're not my only one and i'm not completely
01:10:50emotionally investing in this person because i now know that this is biochemistry more so than this is
01:10:57clarity right and so awareness is how we break generational patterns it's how we that's why
01:11:03i don't know if you read it but birth rate is extremely low right now because of that i think
01:11:07i got in lots of trouble for talking about this my but the glasses on thank you thank you that's uh
01:11:14birth rates go on well am i going to get in trouble should i wear that too yeah yeah no no no yes
01:11:21yes yes this is good you're gonna look great no no no no i'll let you do it no no no it would go with
01:11:28your outfit no no no okay okay they can live that so um yeah i mean i i think that because there's
01:11:34more emotional literacy than ever before there's more therapy than ever before there's more social
01:11:39media awareness and education about relationship dynamics than before and so you know our fathers ghosted
01:11:47women or mothers before things like that happened it's just that there was shame attached to it at
01:11:54that point there was accountability yeah costly you know it's the equivalent when you were saying it
01:11:59before about how uh easy it is for people to ghost now it made me think about the difference between
01:12:03a drone operator being able to press a button from some industrial estate in middle america and it's done
01:12:10and a guy who's got a gun or a knife and has to yeah and do the effort and that's the thing we don't
01:12:16we don't everything is built for convenience nowadays which means that the things that actually matter
01:12:23which is how to keep a job that is sustainable a career a relationship children like a lot of the
01:12:30things that require effort are no longer interesting to people anymore the crazy thing is when you look at
01:12:37the dynamic between you and even somebody that you really really like that this person gives you the
01:12:42butterflies and the chemistry and all the rest of it but makes you feel highly dysregulated
01:12:46i was talking to a friend who recently went through a breakup and he said what he realized was
01:12:52the pattern that him and his partner were going through at the moment was going to be the model
01:12:55for love that their kids were going to see and would you choose this person for your kids to have as
01:13:05their role model for love forget the kind of abstract thing of would you want your best friend
01:13:09to be in a relationship with this person would you want your kids to be in a relationship with this
01:13:13person or whatever so much more direct than that is the way that you and this person communicate
01:13:18relate and disagree are going to be what your kids think romance is that's what they're going to
01:13:25think of mommy and daddy do absolutely but not just that that's what their identity is going to be
01:13:30they're going to associate their identity with the identity of whoever you choose to have children
01:13:36with and so it's not just a oh we would make cute babies it is i mean what are we teaching them as
01:13:44far as what love means and hard work and conflict repair and emotional availability and how to what kind of
01:13:52person to be i just think that a lot of times people make big decisions and take big risks back in the
01:14:00day and i think a lot now too based on just the chemistry of it because everything is about we're
01:14:06just a bunch of addicts at this point you know it's all about what feels good and if it feels good
01:14:11we'll figure out how to deal with it later car batteries yeah can we talk about limerence yeah
01:14:16this is a term that i only learned pretty recently but is just fascinating what's limerence
01:14:21limerence is an emotional fixation with a person that is usually fueled by uncertainty
01:14:28so it is you know some of the signs of limerence is a unusual fixation with the person constant
01:14:35ruminating thoughts about the person extreme highs and lows in your mood regarding this person waiting
01:14:41and craving their validation and this usually happens very early on in dating so you don't really even
01:14:47know the person fully but you just notice a deep obsession with this person and that would qualify
01:14:53as limerence which we're seeing more and more nowadays is there a certain type of person who's
01:14:58more vulnerable to limerence yes so several different people so the first group of people are the people who
01:15:08have unresolved issues as far as unresolved wounds so people with certain attachment styles are more
01:15:14likely to fall for limerence because limerence is oftentimes based on uncertainty and inconsistency
01:15:20so if you had a childhood where love was given only uh sometimes and it was unpredictable there is
01:15:26emotional unavailability there you're much more likely to fall into limerence if you are a highly
01:15:33imaginative person you're much more likely to fall into limerence because you fall for the fantasy of a
01:15:38person and you could imagine what life with them could be like or intimacy with them would be like
01:15:43so those types of people as far as um a person who is either emotionally intelligent or highly
01:15:49imaginative creative artists they tend to fall for limerence because they build a story around the
01:15:55chemistry they feel for a person um a highly empathic person because they extend understanding i understand
01:16:02why he's not always available i understand why he's inconsistent so they're much more likely to fall into
01:16:07limerence as well large-scale surveys found that 64 overall prevalence for limerence with 32 experiencing at the
01:16:15level of full person addiction far higher than the previously circulated estimate of five percent
01:16:21anxiously attached people were significantly overrepresented an analysis of two and a half thousand
01:16:25self-identified limerence found personality types that were dramatically overrepresented uh highly intuitive
01:16:32feeling oriented people were the most prone infps infjs intjs intjs intps enfp so it's the intuitive it's
01:16:41the feel uh the most common personality types esfj estj and isfj those are the most common ones barely
01:16:52represented at all which is interesting so it's out on the tails yes introverts the introverted ones more
01:16:58more likely to eyes more likely because they're more introspective more empathic oftentimes also more
01:17:05imaginative and so same with anxiously attached people because anxiously attached people usually come
01:17:11from childhoods where there was lots of unpredictability and people who they typically fall into limerence with
01:17:20are unavailable people so there is a resemblance to familiar patterns from the childhood so anxiously
01:17:27attached people introspective people introverted people um much more likely to fall into full
01:17:34addiction with another person interesting i was thinking the other day about some of the ways that
01:17:40sort of chaos or unpredictability in the home might show up that people might not realize one of them being an
01:17:46unpredictability around praise and what performance and doing well is because every kid just wants
01:17:55mom and dad to say you did a good job but if you don't know what the standards are for you to be able
01:18:01to do that that's a kind of unpredictability that strikes pretty close to the heart of what a kid cares
01:18:07about yeah the basement has a trap door and a slide that goes down all the way to neglect and abuse and
01:18:13stuff like that but assuming that that's kind of niche for the reason that it's horrible a much more
01:18:20common way that this might happen is well you played a sports game and you got in the car with mom and dad
01:18:26and you got feedback and you had no idea about why you were a good boy or a bad girl that day you just didn't know
01:18:32and that's a type of unpredictability and chaos i think that gets kids who then become adults to try
01:18:40and work out well what do i need to do i just want to feel like i matter like i belong like i'm good
01:18:46like things are predictable and stable it doesn't feel like that so how do i need to just reconstruct
01:18:52and deconstruct this thing so that i feel safe absolutely i think that a lot of those children i mean
01:18:57i write about it in my book too because a lot of kids i mean i find kids fascinating because
01:19:03that's really where a lot of dysregulation occurs right um i think that a lot of children who had
01:19:11this praise where it's unpredictable when you're going to be seen when you're going to feel valued
01:19:16because belonging is the most important thing for children too a kid won't stop loving a parent no
01:19:22matter how abusive the parent is they'll stop loving themselves right and so a lot of the times a child
01:19:28will start turning inward and going what did i do wrong how can i be better this creates a hyper
01:19:35vigilant nervous system which is i'm always alert to make sure that everybody is pleased with me
01:19:40whatever room i walk into and then they bring that into dating where it's uh oh this person doesn't
01:19:46seem happy with me today what can i do to keep them happy and so not only is there self-abandonment
01:19:51that's been in the making for a long time since childhood but now there is this dopamine every
01:19:57time this person looks at you responds even if it's days later you are now biochemically addicted to this
01:20:04other person because your parents didn't give you the consistency to anchor into your own identity
01:20:09and it's strange that this very pro-social very giving very charitable very reciprocally altruistic
01:20:17you know kin selectiony type thing is self-destructive you don't know whether someone is doing something
01:20:25that's pro-social and caring and charitable because they want to or because they need to and
01:20:34would it be great if there were more people being pro-social in the world yeah but at what level of
01:20:38self-abandonment is that going to happen if those people are doing it from a place of desperate desire
01:20:44for you to see me because i can't exist with your displeasure even if you deserve it yes even if you
01:20:50deserve this displeasure i keep on picking up loads that aren't mine to carry and then wondering why my
01:20:55shoulders ache all the time absolutely i i think that and that's where i as a therapist oftentimes
01:21:03am heartbroken for clients like that because i know that their kindness comes from a wounded place
01:21:09right the over extending comes from a wounded place the issue is that nobody really takes the time
01:21:15in everyday life to go oh this person's so nice i am curious what happened to them that made like how
01:21:24did they suffer deeply that made them now want to make sure nobody else suffers what people just go is
01:21:30they're so nice whenever i need a nice person i'm just going to call that person again yeah because we
01:21:34don't want to talk about the cost of someone's niceness i'm benefiting from it it seems to be
01:21:40pro-social it seems to be coming from a good place and i don't think for the most part i think this is
01:21:45self-deception not sort of conscious deception i don't think that we're shoving to one side someone's
01:21:51obvious drug addiction because they are a good hang at parties the equivalent here is he's just great he's
01:21:58always supportive he makes sure that i'm never upset whenever i need to ring him he's always there you
01:22:05go we don't know we don't recognize that that's coming from a place that could be pretty broken
01:22:10and we don't ask that's the thing i think that if i had to suggest or encourage anything it would be
01:22:16check on your nice friends ask them what they need actually don't even ask just do nice things for them
01:22:22you know the person who always listens listen to them the person who always does do for them the
01:22:27person who always pays pay for them you know because the thing is is that we the brain looks for
01:22:34shortcuts in identification we want to know that this friend is good at this this friend is good at
01:22:40this because the brain can't go sometimes they're good at it sometimes they're not we want certainty so
01:22:45if the friend is always nice we're like they're the nice friend we don't need to change it
01:22:49right because if we change that now we got to change something about ourselves and that's just too
01:22:54dysregulated and so we want people to play certain roles in our lives and that causes self-abandonment
01:23:03in and of itself because now i know that i have to always show up as the therapist you have to show up
01:23:08as all the things that you show up as right and so it doesn't allow for flexibility to be all that we
01:23:13are sometimes i don't want to listen sometimes i want to be heard and so i just think that we need
01:23:19to give people more of that space to be all of who they are instead of just relying on them to remain
01:23:28the same person that we may or may not have benefited from one of my friends wrote a tweet that i did a
01:23:33little essay about that i want to tell you about you are a different character in the mind of each person
01:23:37who knows you because their impression of you is made of the bare bones of what they've seen
01:23:42fleshed out by their knowledge of themselves so i've got this idea of the lonely chapter which is
01:23:47when you're so developed that you don't resonate with your old set of friends but you're not yet
01:23:51sufficiently developed that you've got a new one but the lonely chapter has another perspective
01:23:56to it as well which is as you grow you don't fit in with your friends but this means that they don't
01:24:01fit in with you either and this causes a reaction from their side so the hardest part of changing
01:24:07yourself isn't just improving your habits it's escaping the people who keep handing you your old
01:24:12costume and others don't remember who you were they enforce it which is why reinvention so often
01:24:19feels like trying to break out of a prison that you can't unsee i love that like i do want to read
01:24:24that if you could wherever we could find it i certainly can um but i agree i mean even when i
01:24:30worked in a recovery center a treatment center it would go as far as the extremes of a parents bringing
01:24:37their addicted child to treatment and they've been used to this child relapsing for years and they've
01:24:46always been the identified patient now this adult is in treatment recovering goes back home doesn't drink
01:24:55anymore and they don't like that person who's sober they're used to him when he was drunk and so what
01:25:03do they do at the first party they have they hand them a drink and they're the people who make them
01:25:08relapse because they're used to the old person kind of like you said they give you the old costume back
01:25:13because it's easier for you to be who you once were to us because our identity is built on that identity
01:25:21and so i just think that we're not flexible enough in our minds in our identities in our feelings in
01:25:27order to really kind of sustain things that will give us the safety and the space to be who we truly
01:25:36are why do you say that the wrong people are the hardest to get over because they're the most addicting
01:25:42and the reason why is not because they're so great it's because the wrong people oftentimes are the
01:25:48emotionally unavailable people the people who do not have the capacity to sustain something
01:25:53substantial with you so whenever there's uncertainty and unpredictability there's dopamine spikes which
01:25:59is highly addicting there's also cortisol spikes which is highly stressful and then there is nervous
01:26:06system dysregulation because the nervous system is designed for certainty so the wrong person
01:26:11triggers uncertainty in you and all your brain and your nervous system wants to do is focus in on this
01:26:17person to get clarity and so you're really chasing clarity but you're now reframing it as i must
01:26:24really love this person and i can't get oh i can't stop thinking about them so i'm wondering if they were
01:26:30my person all along no that's just your nervous system trying to regulate itself that's why it's obsessed yes
01:26:36after the breakup because your nervous system is saying i felt this intense high with this person that i
01:26:43haven't felt with anybody else since there must be something meaningful there and i am not ready really
01:26:50to let this go also whenever there's uncertainty there's all these gaps of clarity which makes
01:26:57projecting a fantasy much easier you could paint anything on a blank canvas so if someone just gives you
01:27:03limited pieces of themselves you're like oh he told me he likes me but i also think that what he really
01:27:10likes is this this this and this he never said that but because he didn't give you enough now your
01:27:15brain is going to fill in the gaps with the fantasy that works for you and if we have to choose fantasy
01:27:20or reality we're much more likely to want to hold on to a fantasy and not be able to get over a fantasy
01:27:28than a reality that is so good what do you say to people who feel like they're regularly a bad picker
01:27:35i tell them not to be so hard on themselves because i think it goes back to the self-blame right like
01:27:41it's not that you know we like to say our picker is broken but i don't think that our picker is
01:27:45necessarily broken i just think that our nervous system has is starting from a dysregulated baseline
01:27:54and that's because modern day has conditioned a baseline that is determined by dysregulation
01:28:03there's so much uncertainty and there's not enough clarity and so what we're picking is probably going
01:28:08to be uncertainty we're probably going to pick based on intensity and chemistry and so i think that the
01:28:15people who feel like they have a history of misaligned relationships i would say take a pause do some
01:28:23self-reflection therapy is always helpful i'm always pro-therapy and really kind of just learn what your
01:28:30patterns are and find out what your standards are because usually bad people who are bad picks or emotionally
01:28:39unavailable they usually overstep boundaries they usually disrespect the person and we just kind of
01:28:45let it go so realign with yourself and what your standards and your boundaries are and you'll start
01:28:51picking better people what about when it comes time to hold a boundary as someone who is emotionally
01:29:01available empathetic sees the best in others and the the fear the who am i to is this me being too
01:29:11demanding my needs usually don't matter how do you advise someone in that moment boundary needs enforcing
01:29:18not passive aggressively three days later not resentfully after the dinner's finished
01:29:23how do you advise someone in that moment to become more comfortable great question because oftentimes people
01:29:30have a hard time setting boundaries because of fear of abandonment right which is pretty normal it's a
01:29:34tactical problem like we're talking we can throw pithy aphorisms around all day but ultimately this
01:29:40is going to come into conflict with your nervous system how does someone get better at being the bad
01:29:45guy you reframe it and say my boundaries are not going to push them away my boundaries are going to
01:29:50keep the good person and it's going to protect the relationship because boundaries are not pushing good
01:29:56relationships out they're just protecting good relationships so speaking up and saying hey chris
01:30:02you did this one thing and it hurt my feelings and i would like for us not to do that that's me saying
01:30:07if you want to stay in a relationship with me and if i want to protect this relationship between us i have
01:30:12to say this that's my advocacy for what we have but most people see a boundary as i'm going to hurt their
01:30:19feelings and they might then reject me and they don't really consider but the relationship has its own
01:30:25needs and if you don't speak up and you don't say what that boundary is you are abandoning that
01:30:31relationship and its needs so good mercedes kaufmann ladies and gentlemen you rule thank you everyone
01:30:37should go and check out your instagram i love it i think the stuff that you put out is fantastic where
01:30:41else do you want people to go instagram is good mercedes kaufmann therapy and then they could also go to my
01:30:47website which is on my instagram heck yeah sadie's i appreciate you thank you thank you thank you chris
01:30:51it was an honor all right goodbye people bye people this is fun you nailed it that was so fucking thank
01:30:58you epic thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode another one that i know you love
01:31:06it's just here
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