Why You’re Obsessed, Anxious, And Still Single - Mercedes Coffman - #1092

Summary

Modern Wisdom #1092

Why You’re Obsessed, Anxious, & Still Single — Mercedes Coffman (May 2, 2026)

Episode Overview

Host Chris Williamson is joined by psychotherapist Mercedes Coffman to unravel the impact of avoidant culture on modern relationships, the epidemic of loneliness, and why emotionally available people are suffering most in today’s dating world. Drawing from her experience with clients and vivid cultural observations, Mercedes explains the nervous system’s role in attachment, the pitfalls of dating app dynamics, and how healing past trauma and self-abandonment are central to healthier love. The conversation intertwines neuroscience, pop culture, practical advice, and vulnerable honesty, offering concrete frameworks for listeners seeking to find or rebuild healthy, lasting connections.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Avoidant Culture and Modern Relationship Dynamics

[00:05–04:20]

• Avoidant culture rewards instant gratification, novelty, and disposability, especially on dating apps.
• Emotional avoidance is incentivized—relationships become about what’s easy, fast, and low-effort.
• Emotionally available people lower their standards to maintain hope for a relationship:

  "People are lowering their standards in order to keep a relationship… The only way now is by changing their standards." — Mercedes ([00:45])

• Emotional investment is replaced by the search for dopamine spikes via new matches.

2. Psychological Cost for the Emotionally Available

[04:20–06:18]

• Dating now creates a "race to the bottom": emotionally available people are damaged or discouraged, leaving behind a pool dominated by avoidant dating styles.
• Emotionally available individuals seek depth, but get punished in swipe culture that amplifies low investment and trust issues.
• Chronic loneliness from opting out of dating becomes as harmful as involvement in toxic relationships.

3. Detecting Emotional Availability

[08:52–10:58]

• Early dating red flags/green flags:
  • Delay gratification: Watch behavior when there is no quick reward.
  • Notice patience: How do they treat others when things go wrong?
  • Patterns over potential: Don’t ignore recurring behaviors.
• Emotional standards—not just physical standards—are the new benchmark.

4. Assessing Compatibility Beyond Chemistry

[12:00–15:30]

• Emotional Availability (Time + Willingness to Invest)
• Capacity (Holding their own and your emotions)
• Maturity (Handling rejection, feedback, discomfort)
• Chemistry-first attachments create heartache; values alignment needs more emphasis.

5. Addictive Cycles and the Biology of Obsession

[19:16–22:47]

• Modern dating conditions us like addiction: rapid cycles of dopamine highs and lows, especially with avoidant or unavailable partners.
• Mercedes' "MOP" Framework for avoiding obsessive attachment:
  1. Match effort—don’t over-invest early.
  2. Observe for patterns—see consistency over time.
  3. Pace access—don’t rush physical intimacy.

“If you match effort… you will become a full-blown addict at that point [if you don’t].” — Mercedes ([19:53])

6. Discernment and Self-Protection

[22:47–27:27]

• Being too understanding, empathic, or hopeful makes you particularly vulnerable.
• Women tend to trust words; men watch behaviors—creating unique risks for each.
• Clarity is the antidote: lack of clarity and consistency is a red flag.

“Discernment is basically a kind of proactive healthcare for yourself.” — Chris ([25:28])

7. Role of Beauty and Status: The Reality Distortion Field

[27:27–32:31]

• Beauty and status warp interactions—beautiful women and high-status men rarely get normal, honest feedback.
• The “Kanye/beautiful woman” analogy: people overlook huge flaws for intoxicating attributes, echoing how chemistry overrides discernment in romance.

“The universe didn’t just give us biochemistry… it also gave us a frontal lobe.” — Mercedes ([30:00])

8. Romance Tropes and Influences from Media

[32:31–39:55]

• Speed, intensity, and drama are glamorized in romance media (e.g., The Notebook), skewing expectations.
• Stability is coded as boring; intensity as love—is this why people can’t settle for calm relationships?
• “Romantasy” books (fantasy + romance) now set standards for emotional experience, especially among women.

“It’s almost like staying in the casino and not leaving when you win a good prize… We don’t know when to leave.” — Mercedes ([64:54])

9. Emotional Capacity vs. Readiness

[39:55–42:53]

• Desire for relationship ≠ Capacity to sustain one.
• Many hold onto relationships with “potential” partners, ignoring lack of capacity or maturity.

“Desire in most relationships now outpaces capacity and emotional maturity. So now you have misalignment.” — Mercedes ([40:01])

10. Ghosting, Self-Sabotage, and Trauma

[42:53–47:10]

• Ghosting is normalized, creating high anxiety and grief—feeding cycles of self-sabotage or withdrawal.
• Two extremes: enduring too much or avoiding too soon.
• Growing emotional capacity requires sitting with discomfort, maintaining discipline, and not overloading one’s life.

11. Self-Abandonment and Compassion as Self-Harm

[49:37–55:55]

• Self-abandonment manifests as relentless people-pleasing and over-empathy.
• “Nice” people often are overextending from unresolved trauma—a dynamic rarely questioned by those who benefit from it.
• Society celebrates self-abandoning kindness, not realizing the toll it takes.

“At some point in adulthood, they start becoming the perpetrator to their own pain.” — Mercedes ([51:38])

12. Hidden Metrics of Fulfillment and Social Competition

[56:17–61:32]

• Observable metrics (title, money, looks) are valued more than hidden metrics (peace of mind, quality of sleep, healthy relationships).
• Social comparison leads people to minimize themselves to belong, even at the cost of authenticity.

13. The Safe vs. Exciting Binary in Choosing Partners

[64:06–66:10]

• Many swing between “exciting but unsafe” and “safe but boring” partners.
• Overstimulation and numbness make people crave drama for the sake of feeling alive, but it’s all nervous system activation.

14. Obsession, Love Bombing, and Limerence

[67:41–76:08]

• Intense obsession in early dating signals nervous system dysregulation—not real love.
• “Butterflies” are often chemistry masking chaos.
• Limerence: emotional fixation and ruminating thoughts driven by unpredictability, heightened in those with anxious attachments or highly imaginative personalities.

15. Childhood Patterns and Dating Dynamics

[77:36–80:10]

• Unpredictable praise or affection in childhood creates adults who are hypervigilant and crave validation.
• Over-giving and self-abandonment in adulthood often mirror these early family dynamics.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Avoidant Culture:
  "Everything is about instant gratification, getting results right away. People... are noticing that they're lowering their standards in order to keep a relationship." — Mercedes ([00:45])

• On Biochemical Hijack:
  "The universe didn’t just give us that, it also gave us a frontal lobe… but that requires pause." — Mercedes ([30:00])

• On Boundary-Setting:
  “Boundaries are not pushing good relationships out, they’re just protecting good relationships.” — Mercedes ([89:45])

• On Self-Abandonment as Harm:
  "At some point in adulthood, they start becoming the perpetrator to their own pain." — Mercedes ([51:38])

• On Romantic Discernment:
  “Romantic discernment is a form of preventative health care.” — Chris ([31:21])

• On Obsessive Attachment:
  "Obsession is rarely ever about the other person. Obsession is about nervous system activation." — Mercedes ([67:41])

• On Limerence:
  "Limerence is an emotional fixation with a person that is usually fueled by uncertainty." — Mercedes ([74:21])

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Key Timestamps

• 00:05–04:20 — Definition and consequences of avoidant culture in modern dating
• 08:56–10:58 — Early signs of emotional availability
• 19:16–22:47 — Dating as addiction; the “MOP” framework
• 27:27–32:31 — Beauty, status, and reality distortion fields
• 39:55–42:53 — Emotional capacity vs. relational readiness
• 49:37–51:13 — Self-trust, self-abandonment, and compassion’s dark side
• 64:54–66:10 — The “safe but bored vs. excited but fearful” dichotomy
• 67:41–69:47 — Love bombing, obsession, and the roots of romantic fixations
• 74:21–76:08 — Limerence and those most vulnerable

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Actionable Lessons & Takeaways

• Pause before investing quickly in new romantic interests; match effort and watch for patterns.
• Value and seek out partners with emotional maturity and capacity—not just chemistry.
• Build discernment as a vital self-care tool; clarity and boundaries protect both you and your relationship.
• Prioritize your own needs and reflect after relationships to rebuild self-trust.
• Be wary of confusing addictive chemistry with genuine compatibility.
• Recognize that self-abandonment in the name of compassion can be self-harm.
• Support and check in with the "nice" people in your orbit, and don't pigeonhole yourself or others into static roles.

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Further Resources

• Mercedes Coffman Therapy on Instagram
• Chris Williamson’s 100 Life-Changing Books

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Summary prepared for listeners who want a deep, practical, and insightful look at why modern love hurts—and how to heal it.

Transcript

[A]

I've heard you say that avoidant culture is changing relationship expectations.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

How so?

[B]

Well, there's a couple of different reasons. I mean, I think avoidance culture is making people have to minimize themselves because we're interconnected human beings, we need to be connected to other beings. Right. It regulates our nervous system, it makes us feel good, it stabilizes us. And so nowadays, with everything being expedited, we live in an era of immediacy, and everything is geared towards reinforcing avoidance versus intimacy. Everything is about instant gratification, getting results right away. And so people, especially emotionally available people, which is who I largely work with as far as my clientele, they're noticing that they're lowering their standards in order to keep a relationship. And so the only way that now people see an opportunity for a relationship or maintaining a relationship is by changing their standards. Otherwise they feel like there's no hope left. Because especially in dating apps, everything is about convenience and speed, about disposability, and nobody really wants to take the time to have gradual development.

[A]

Is that avoidant culture?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Is that how you would define avoidant culture?

[B]

Yes. So avoidant culture is really just avoiding anything that's inconveniencing or anything that causes discomfort, meaning anything that takes too much time, anything that requires too much effort, anything that requires consistency or follow through that would basically fall into avoidant culture. And nowadays, especially on most of the dating apps, they're designed for that. They're designed for rewarding avoidance because it's all about novelty. It's about dopamine, it's about new matches every single day, and nobody really spends the time to emotionally invest in one particular relationship anymore.

[A]

How does being with someone avoidant psychologically transform you?

[B]

Well, there's several different ways. It's terrible for the nervous system. First, because an avoidant person, although, for example, an emotionally unavailable person, who largely is avoidant, they don't just present themselves as emotionally unavailable. They usually present themselves with intensity, with love bombing. And so you get pulled into that dynamic pretty quickly, even if you're an emotionally available person. And so now you're getting attached to an emotionally unavailable person. But once you start requiring effort and consistency and substance of the relationship, a lot of these people tend to reveal their true selves, which is a lack of capacity. They cannot sustain relationship responsibilities. And so your nervous system has this, you know, it starts to get attached and then it slowly starts to have to withdraw, which is kind of like this dopamine spike of excitement, but then there's a crash because this emotionally Unavailable person pulls away, they become more and more avoidant. And what tends to happen is you're now dealing with micro grief, you're now wondering what happened. And your nervous system now is spiking in cortisol, which is your stress hormones. And so a lot of the times this changes people because they are experiencing fatigue, mood disorders, sleep disturbances, appetite disorders. So I think that avoidance in general and emotional unavailability is changing people's nervous system and it is much more harmful than we think it actually is.

[A]

In that way, does modern dating punish emotionally available people?

[B]

Yes. Yes. And it doesn't. It's not that modern dating apps are designed to punish emotionally available people. It's that it is reinforcing emotional unavailability. So the people who are emotionally unavailable have a much better time on dating apps than the emotionally available people.

[A]

Why?

[B]

Because emotionally unavailable people are looking for dopamine, they're looking for comfort. They do not want to put in a lot of effort in a relationship, they do not have the capacity to put a lot of effort into it. Whereas emotionally available people are looking for consistency and follow through and to focus on one person at a time. And dating apps and swipe culture is all about the dopamine of more and more and more. And the more options we have, the less invested we are in those options.

[A]

Why are emotionally available people particularly vulnerable? What is it about them that makes them on the receiving end of this?

[B]

Because emotionally available people are looking for depth and there is very little of that in modern dating or modern day in general. Everybody is looking for quick results and nobody's really looking to invest in things that causes discomfort or inconvenience. So emotionally available people, they want something of substance. They want a relationship that will go the whole way. They want the slow burn, they want gradual development. Yet what happens is they get pulled in by an emotionally unavailable person and then contact slowly starts to decrease and eventually ghosting starts to occur, which is detrimental to the nervous system. And then a lot of emotionally, emotionally available people deal with these crashes where they just do not trust themselves anymore and they don't trust the dating sites or dating in general. And so that's why I think there's this loneliness that we're seeing in modern day now, because emotionally available people don't trust it and emotionally unavailable people don't sustain any particular connection.

[A]

Presumably, then if emotionally available people leave the dating pool or become damaged and become emotionally unavailable or closed off, that's bad for everyone. It's kind of like a race to the Bottom where the few emotionally unavailable people, very few emotionally unavailable people become emotionally available by dating someone who's emotionally available. But way more available people drop out or become hurt by it. So it's kind of this entropy in the system where the people who are prepared to be open say, this is what I want. The likelihood of them becoming damaged. It's a one way street. Rarely do people that are broken get fixed, but people that are already fixed become broken.

[B]

Yes, sadly. And it doesn't mean that there aren't emotionally available people in the world or under dating. I work with lots of emotionally available clients, males and females. The issue is that they're not easy to find. And nowadays we're looking for what's easy to find, what's convenient. Right. If you look at everything is expedited. We want to find somebody on a dating app. We don't go out to meet people anymore. We don't really have social groups and social circles or community events. And so a lot of us and a lot of people are relying on dating apps to find a match and to find someone who's compatible. The issue with that is, is that that is built for speed. And so emotionally available people do not have a community where they can go and say, oh, these are other emotionally available people who want to go the distance, who want to just focus on me and don't have five or 15 other matches in their app.

[A]

Wouldn't it be good if there was some sort of psychometric evaluation that people had to go through or you had to keep some sort of running CV like a trust pilot score? Got to have a trust pilot skill. You've got an emotional availability score out of five and if you manage to stay above a four, you get to be on the app. And if not, you have to go away and build up your Uber rating back to above a four and then you can come back in.

[B]

I am working on a dating app for emotionally available people because I've noticed how discouraging it is and how most of my emotionally available clients are just not interested in dating anymore. And they, they are completely fatigued and discouraged and you know, whenever you slide too much in one direction, it's not good for your health. Right? So emotionally available people now are not dating at all, a lot of them. And chronic loneliness is just as unhealthy for the nervous system as dating or being in situationships because neither one of them are really tending to your needs. So what's happening is emotionally available people, although they have the right intentions being lonely right now and having that chronic loneliness is just as detrimental to their health. And so we need to figure something out and design a system where they can meet partners who are held accountable. Because there's no accountability in the dating apps nowadays. There is low effort because there are so many options, which means there's more disposability. And so if we have a place where these emotionally available people could go and be seen and don't feel so disposable, I think that they'll believe in love again.

[A]

How can you work out whether or not someone is or is not emotionally available?

[B]

There are some signs that you could detect in early dating. So one of the ways is, I think, delaying gratification. So if you meet someone and you're on a date with a person, watch for patterns instead of potential. So don't just rely on the intensity or the chemistry that you might immediately feel with the person, but notice how they react when there is no physical reward at the end of the night. Know how they are with the waiter if the food is a little too late. What's their patience like? Right. So you could assess for their capacity. And once you see that this person could manage their emotions, this person could talk about intentions, they could deal with feedback without withdrawing or avoiding that. Those are some of the quick ways that I tell clients to assess for emotional availability and capacity in early dating.

[A]

It's interesting, you said use the word standards earlier on. People have to sort of lower their standards. And I think when you first hear that, it sounds like something to do with physical standards, height, income, age. But what you're talking about here is emotional standards. And this is a. It's a weird thing to talk about, I guess the prevalence of therapy culture, in a good way, the good side of therapy culture has made people realize, well, ultimately someone's looks are a depreciating asset, but their mind is an appreciating asset. And my relationship is basically one long conversation. It's one long shared nervous system. And then we'll add some other beings in maybe to this nervous system, and if theirs is fucked, it is making my job significantly harder. So, yeah, when it comes to emotional standards, I guess we could call it. Yeah, it's just an interesting element that I don't think that people were necessarily thinking about before. Maybe because it was less important. You know, our parents generation weren't thinking about relating in quite the same way.

[B]

No, and I agree with you. I think nowadays we have to assess for different things. And a lot of the dating apps now, you know, I've done my research that a lot of them, if you look at a profile, most of the things that they advertise on a profile, if you were to go on there and look at someone's profile, it'll talk about the person's age, the things they enjoy doing, but it doesn't talk about what's their conflict repair, what's their love language, what's their emotional availability, what's their emotional capacity, what's their emotional maturity. It doesn't assess for any of those things. And so what happens is people are bonding over surface level things. Oh, we went to the same school, we live in the same town, you like the same food I like, you know, or physical attraction. But it's not really assessing any compatibility regarding relationship values. And I think that's where a lot of people are getting attached to the wrong people because it's a misalignment, because we're not really doing the assessment on relationship values before attaching to a person that we meet.

[A]

What does true alignment look like? Let's say that you were going to give the gold standard for someone to try and work out whether them and this, this person are a good match emotionally. What does that look like? What matters? What doesn't matter?

[B]

Emotional availability is the first. Are they willing to be invested in this relationship? Meaning do they have good work, life balance, do they have time for a relationship? Someone could be interested in you, they could be emotionally intelligent, they could have emotional capacity, they could be emotionally mature. But if they do not have time for a relationship, it doesn't matter. You will not be aligned with that person if you're emotionally available. So the willingness to have time to invest time in a relationship is the first thing I would tell people to assess for. The second is capacity. Can they hold their own emotions and your emotions as well? Meaning can they deal with discomfort without retreating, without withdrawing, without avoiding? Right. So whenever a conversation gets uncomfortable, whatever, it's a conversation about growth or intentions, can they sit through those feelings in that conversation without avoiding or getting, getting defensive? And then emotional maturity, I would say is third on the list. How emotionally mature is this person? That's about, can they manage rejection? Do they get aggressive? Do they get reactive? Or can they remain responsive? And you could detect that early on in conversation as well. So that would be the gold standard, an emotionally available, high capacity, emotionally mature person.

[A]

Mm. That doesn't seem to me to be much about compatibility. More so just these are some green flags from an emotional standpoint. Is there something to say about why two people who fit all of those criteria might not be. I mean, there's a million reasons, right? Like for physical attractiveness, age, life direction, all the rest of it. But again, from an emotional, you used love, language, attachment style, stuff like that. What are the next levels of how does this meal come together from the ingredients? How can some meals that have great ingredients not work when they're put into a dish?

[B]

Yes. So I think that some of the things that will, if you have all those things aligned and we both have those qualities and those relationship values, some of the things that would hinder that would be unresolved stuff. So unresolved stuff in me. Unresolved stuff in you. If that's worked out and all the surface level things, as far as chemistry and physical attraction is intact, the relationship has a really good shot. Right. But I think that we're not attaching based on that, we're attaching based on chemistry and intensity first. And I think it's backwards because there's a lot of broken hearts because people attach to the wrong things first. And we can't blame the world because everything is about speed. It's about, hey, are we a match or are we not? I don't want to waste my time. Right. And so we have this thing of time is of the essence. And so you mentioned earlier generations. Yeah, I think back in the day, the difference is, is that social circles were more connected back in the days and they were more interconnected, they were smaller, which means there was more accountability. There's much less accountability nowadays in dating, which means that people could just ghost with a tap on their phone.

[A]

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[B]

Yes. And it's very hard. I mean, the good thing is I worked a lot with addicts and alcoholics, and I see a lot of that happening in dating nowadays. Is that a lot of what's happening is kind of conditioning people into that cycle of addiction. Right. Because of the obsession. Everything is very obsessive nowadays. And you're right, there are biological components. Evolution kind of geared us towards that. I think that one of the ways to prevent a person from getting too attached and then by the time they have kids with this person, they're like, oh, my God, I don't even like this.

[A]

Fell backward into a golden retriever and a house and a marriage and childhood.

[B]

Right. So there's ways to slow down. I kind of give my clients the framework mop. M O P M stands for match effort. Right. So don't go overboard. When chemistry hits and you feel attached to a person, you want to go overboard. You want to over give because you want to hold to it. You feel like you found your person. And that over investment is when you fall into that addiction even faster, that starts clouding your mental clarity more and more. So if you match effort, second O means observe for patterns. A lot of times people don't wait until they've discovered what a person's patterns are. If you give it a couple of weeks or months, you'll see what a person's patterns are. You'll be able to maintain clarity at that point. And then the last one is pace access. Because the moment you give someone especially physical access, you are much more likely to get into that dopamine fix. Clarity goes backwards, and you will become a full blown addict at that point. And so I think that at that point, you know, justification and minimizing stuff in order to maintain the relationship is all things that that person will use to keep that attachment. But if we stay anchored in our own reality and we watch a person from the framework of, yeah, they're beautiful and they're handsome and they're incredible and they're emotionally intelligent. But I want to match their effort. If he's not going overboard, I'm not going overboard. If he isn't making an initiation or effort, I'm not giving more effort than he's Giving and vice versa. So to be reciprocal and not to overinvest, that will keep you grounded.

[A]

Does that not create a war of attrition where both people don't move?

[B]

No, because naturally it will move. You'll want to move. As long as you remain authentic, you'll want to move. Hey, you know, you want to go out? Sure, no problem. We should do this again. Let's do this next time. But I'm not going to say, hey, oh, my God, we should do this all the time, and we should get married and have kids, because I don't want to let go of this dopamine and this euphoria that I feel right now. So when the desire outpaces the effort is when you should know that you're now in a biochemical cycle and not in a mental cycle.

[A]

Yeah. Being too understanding can hurt your dating life in that regard. As you tumble through those stages of attachment and things begin to be excused, this behavior that normal, you would have seen as abhorrent or just unacceptable. Now, well, you know, they were busy. They've got a lot on their plate. Or that. He didn't mean it like that, I'm sure, because what he said about the thing and it's his mum, it's his mum, you know, it's because he's got a thing. You go, okay, your ability to be discerning gets worse and worse.

[B]

Absolutely. Because the dopamine gets higher. And the problem is serotonin gets lower. Serotonin gets lower, dopamine gets higher. And so kind of one of the excuses you just used, right? Oh, he's just busy. I often hear my female clients say that, oh, he's busy. He told me he's busy. Right. And so women tend to trust words a lot more than men do. Men kind of just look at behaviors because that's how they bond amongst themselves. Women tend to believe words, right. Because for evolutionary reasons, we were supposed to believe the words that men told us. And so what's happening now is that a man could say he's busy and therefore doesn't have time. And a lot of times women can't discern, is he really busy, or am I just a low priority? And one of the ways I tell people to recognize the difference is that no matter how busy a man is, a man who's genuinely interested in you will give you clarity on his busiest days, you will know exactly what you mean to him. A man who thinks of you as a low priority, you'll continue in this confusion. You'll attach to words. He'll tell you excuses, you'll minimize your feelings only to keep that attachment. And so I think it's always important to go, do you have clarity? If you don't have clarity, this might be a misalignment.

[A]

Well, what also is a misalignment? I really appreciate that you said time is the first element here, that there are sort of two things going on. One is someone's ability to prioritize you around their level of busyness. The other is just how busy they are. There is a world in which someone is simply too busy to be in a relationship with you at the level that you want to be, regardless of how much they want to be in it. And that's a difficult one, I think, because if you're an empathetic person that's sensitive and sees the good in others, what you're going to see in this person is, well, they really want this, but through, fine, but they may not be able to commit the time they may be giving. 110% of 10%.

[B]

It's a capacity issue at that point. So he really wants to. In a lot of the situations, the desire is really there. It's really genuine. So it's not as though these people are just malicious and dating a man could be, or a woman could be really busy with their career and really want to make this relationship work with this partner. But at that point, when there's no work life balance and their work takes up all of their time, they just don't have the capacity to meet your needs. And at that point, you need to be honest with the fact that it's misaligned because you're gonna put pressure on them and they're gonna start building resentments against you.

[A]

Discernment is basically a kind of proactive healthcare for yourself. In that way, if you are unable to work out who is good for your life and who is bad for your life, you are condemning a future version of you to damage.

[B]

Absolutely. And discernment, I think a lot of times people feel as though that should also mean being understanding of other people's limitations. And two things could be true at the same time. I could be understanding of people's limitations and still know what I need and still advocate for what I need. Right. So if I am looking for a particular type of relationship, no matter how much I understand your limitations, it's just not compatible.

[A]

It's still not your obligation to accept them.

[B]

Exactly. And a lot of people have a hard time with that because they really want that person A lot of times people will tell me that they are attracted to a person and they go, but Mercedes, he's such a good person, or she's such a beautiful person. I'm like, I know, but they're not your beautiful person. You know, they could be great in every other area of life, but they're just not emotionally available enough for what you want.

[A]

I'm gonna draw a parallel here between Kanye west and beautiful people in dating. You weren't expecting that. You know, ye just sold out SoFi Stadium two nights out of three a couple of weeks ago in LA. Look, he's not exactly showered himself in glory over the last few years. He's got bangers. And because he's got bangers, people are just gonna turn up. And I think that music is a unique area of psychological hacking, that it's really hard to not like a song that slaps regardless of how much you hate the person that made it.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

It's much easier to say that person's comedy set. I didn't enjoy that person's podcast that their talk that they gave, like, ah, that's actually not that, you know, but for some reason music is so penetrating and it's so like, emotionally charged. You just can't do that. Right. It's real hard to do that with music. And I think that beauty is one of those other things. This person is a fucking asshole. They all they do is make my life worse. They ruin my sleep, they hurt me. I, I, I, I'm permanently on edge. So beautiful. And that is this weird reality distortion field. I mean, I, I think about this to do with, you know, beautiful women, really beautiful women. It must be so, like, disconcerting for them to move through the world because they basically have this weird sphere that sort of follows them around. And a room is completely normal functioning as it's supposed to, and then they arrive in it and everything goes haywire. No one can behave normally. I think the equivalent for men is somebody who's of very high status. I've been in Mitzi's, which is the bar downstairs in the comedy mothership here in Austin. Rogan's place. Rogan's not there. The bar functions normally. Joe walks in, everybody turns weird. Everyone turns weird. There's this odd sphere that sort of follows him around and there's a few people that are his friends and that know him very well that are kind of able to withstand this distortion field. Yeah, this distortion field that sort of follows him. But the same thing's true for women. And they are Never going to have a beautiful woman is never going to have a normal interaction with men. For the most part. Maybe they're. Find a person who doesn't care. The guy that's gay, maybe. But even the guy that's gay is actually so hot, like, beautiful. Tell me what you do for your skin. Like, you know, and that fact that there are certain. There are certain unlocks in the back of sort of the human system that allow you to sort of face plant as hard as Kanye has over the last half decade and then go and sell out in a stadium two nights in a row and crush it, and everyone go, that was amazing. Look at how good the songs were. Look at the performance, the stage show. And the same thing is true for you. Trying to work out this person is not good for me. But they're beautiful. I don't like Kanye's politics, but he's got bangers. He's got bangers.

[B]

Yeah. Yep. I mean, I agree, and I love that you kind of gave that parallel, because it's true. That's the balance between when you become biochemically hijacked, right? Where you just. The chemistry just feels so intense, and you're like, but I just want that person. Like, I just want that person. And it becomes a challenge. And everything in you is giving off the pheromones that, hey, I'm available to you. Right? And so there's a. Sure. That's one part of us is our biochemistry. But. But the universe didn't just give us that. It also gave us a frontal lobe. And that part goes, hmm, yeah, this drug might give me energy, but it also will make me lose all my money. Or, this person is incredibly handsome, but they're gonna break my heart. Right. But that requires pause. It requires processing. It requires going. I know what I'm feeling. I'm feeling attracted to this person. But let me take a pause. Let me think about it. Let me step away, because if I act right now, I'm gonna act on biochemistry. And that has nothing to do with mental clarity. It just has to do with the feelings, the sphere you just described. And that doesn't tell me anything about how this person's gonna treat me.

[A]

Yeah. Romantic discernment is a form of preventative health care.

[B]

Absolutely. Absolutely.

[A]

You just have to do.

[B]

And that pause just. It doesn' Happen anymore. People don't pause. I mean, I just watched. I don't know if it was. Was it Matt Damon and one of his new movies where he talked about. Because I used to watch movies, and I love Gradual development. I love seeing character development. I love kind of psychological thrillers are my thing. I like to know how people think and solve an issue. Nowadays movies start in the middle at the most emotionally gripping part of the story because we don't have the attention span to sit through character development anymore. And that's the same with, we want to know the most intense part first because we don't want to sit through, I gotta take her on another date and I gotta find out where she's from and I gotta find out what he's into and what was his life like and his childhood. Because people just want to know, is he making me feel the biochemistry that I'm used to? When I get Amazon next day delivery, when I get Uber eats, when I get Instacart, when I fast forward commercials, that's what I want. I want it right away and I don't want to wait.

[A]

It's interesting that that's what people want, but probably not what they need. Because if you speedrun the first few dates, everybody asks that question, so how do you guys meet? So how'd you meet? And if you say drunk in a club at three in the morning, you go, ah, yeah. What were the first few dates like Netflix and Chill. It's like that is embedded in your relational history for the rest of time. If this is the. If you're trying to do this, if you're not trying to do this, Seriously, club at three in the morning. I ran nightclubs forever, right? I have seen the various states of disrepair that happen after one in the morning. And it's interesting. A quick aside, There is a stat that genuinely surprised me when I first heard it. 95% of people don't get enough fiber. Not because they're being careless, but because hitting your daily fiber target through food alone is actually quite hard. But that's why Momentous built Fiber Plus. See, fiber isn't just a digestion thing. It's the foundation of your gut health, which drives how well you absorb nutrients, how stable your energy is, and how quickly you recover. If your gut isn't dialed in, everything else that you're doing is working at a fraction of its potential. Fiber plus is a three in one formula built to address digestion, gut barrier strength and blood sugar stability all at once. And this cinnamon flavor is unreal. You might think fiber. Wow. I bet that tastes great. Well, yeah, actually it does. Doubters, I really enjoyed this. Best of all, Momentous offers a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you're not sure, you can buy Fiber. Try it for 29 days. If you don't love it, they'll just give you your money back. And they ship internationally. Right now you can get up to 35% off your first subscription and that 30 day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's L I V E M O M E N t o u s.com ModernWisdom and ModernWisdom at checkout. Talking about sort of modern media culture and stuff. What do you make of the influence that romance movies have had on the sort of men that women choose? I'm gonna guess the vast majority of the consumers of these sort of romantic movies are going to be women. And if you look at some of the archetypes, Titanic, the Notebook, I don't know. I'm not sure if women would choose that for their friends or for their daughters.

[B]

Yeah. So Notebook is pretty good. I think we would choose him.

[A]

You would. So question on that, which is an interesting one. She says no to the guy that's a decorated war veteran who is a accountant and lawyer, but chooses the guy that's kind of emotionally up and down. Now it ends up working out great. Titanic obviously ends the way that it does. I don't know, I just think it's whatever the subtext is of that, that stable is boring, that regulated means no spark, that what you actually want is something closer to a roller coaster. You need to fix him. Somebody who isn't there but makes you feel. Is that not the exact recipe that you're worried about for a disaster?

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

You were finessed by the Notebook.

[B]

Yes, I was finessed by it. But the thing is this is that, you know, I think that because. And women say this all the time, we wanted both of the guys from the Notebook to be put in a blender and become our ideal guy. He just doesn't exist. Just like that perfect woman doesn't exist. Right. And so I think that we are seeing more and more, you know, what media did to women as far as what women started looking for is what dating apps do for men, social media do for men only, fans do for men. Right. It's that idea of what a typical woman. They don't all look like that. Right. But it's the same thing as with movies, romantic movies or rom coms. Women want that emotional intensity. The guy that will sing her a song and write her poetry and go deeper with her. Because they're looking for depth. And sometimes they forget that depth isn't the only thing. And so in a lot of these movies, if you notice, Chris, these guys aren't their only guy. It is only that they get with the Jack and Noah because the other guy didn't have the emotional availability and the romance per se that they needed.

[A]

There's a trend of romantasy at the moment, you know, romantasy. Romantasy is cultural appropriation of women of the longstanding male literary genre of fantasy. So it's turned something about orcs and warlocks and it's written for autists like me that like to read it in their bedroom. And it's made it into softcore porn. And there's a trend on the Internet at the moment of talking about the standards that are set for women in both fiction and in porn. And guys have decided to use that to kind of highlight what they're seeing when it comes to literature as well.

[B]

Oh, the mother's dead, but in water mice dead with balloons. Father's dead. The father's dead. I like the idea for this video. Now I'm gonna do one with books.

[A]

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 thing, but he's an. He's got a big thing and he's a stalker.

[B]

He's got big fingers.

[A]

He's got a big thing with wings. He's got a big thing with Dr. Dragons. He's got a big thing and likes to murder people.

[B]

They all have big things, but you never see them. Oh my God.

[A]

Yeah. I think it's so good. And there's an endless number of those videos. That dude's just like run it back over and over. The official Stephen Walker. Fucking crushing it there.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

Yeah. But yeah, look, I think the opportunity for people's desires to be turned up to 11 has happened with porn, video games, but it's also happening emotionally. And that's really. If you're doing it through a book. You're so involved, right? You're creating these situations, these environments yourself. It's almost like a self generated movie, right as you read it. It doesn't give you the story. You make the story yourself. And I, and I would be fascinated to see what the levels of relational satisfaction are for women that are deep in romance. Romantasy, dark romance. I wonder whether that is giving them more inspiration or creating a standard of 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 thing and like wings.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I would like to see kind of what that turns into because things are constantly changing, right? So it changes people's expectations. And I am noticing how a lot of my clients, both males and females, are adapting, constantly trying to adapt to what's expected nowadays. And they're losing themselves because there's more and more of a disconnection because you're like, okay, well I guess I gotta keep up what, what the new thing is now. I mean, even the reading of books, I, I wish that people would do more of that because that in and of itself delays gratification. It stabilizes us and it makes us more patient. And people aren't really doing it as much anymore, sadly.

[A]

How is emotional capacity not the same thing as emotional or relational readiness?

[B]

So emotional readiness is a person simply saying that they would want to be in a relationship with you or that they actually have what it takes. Now emotional capacity is very important because it determines if a person could actually sit through what a relationship needs, which is the growing pains of it. Can they sit through an argument? Can they sit through unresolved conflict that you might trigger about their past or their traumas? And a lot of people have desire, but it outpaces their capacity. So they want to make the relationship work. But desire in most relationship now outpaces capacity and emotional maturity. So now you have misalignment. Not because people don't want the person they're with, it's just that they can't sustain a relationship with the person they're with.

[A]

And I suppose that's one of the times where somebody that sees the best in another person is going to be really damaged because they go, well, they want it, yes. I just need to believe in their potential to be able to get there. But we can't see potential. No, we can't see whether or not this person is going to. This realization was done immediately. There was a Instagram post I saw the other day from some guy saying, spending my time at the gym as opposed to writing a 2000 word text message to an emotionally avoidant person on how to love me properly. And you know, there's something about that dynamic of Alain de Botton's got this great video where he says after a while, the late night couples counseling and the co journaling sessions and the. We just need to work through this. You probably just need to admit, like this Is this is just not the right fit, or this person is just not where I am.

[B]

And it's hard to do that because the thing is, is that, that a lot of the times a person could start off with emotional capacity and emotional availability. Serotonin's high, dopamine's high in the beginning, novelty is high, and they have the high desire. So everything is aligned in the beginning. It's just that once consistency, effort and follow through is required and now you're talking about a future and maybe moving in together. That's when people's limitations are, are revealed. So it's not as though. And so that's why people want to stay and hold on to something longer. Because they go, I seen it in the beginning. He had all those qualities in the beginning, so they gotta be there. I'm just gonna remain patient until they return. And the truth is, is that, well, no, he could have genuinely had them at that time, but now you're on a different level and he might not have the fuels for this level. And then we have to accept it, you know, and kind of just go, okay, we're at the fork of the road. You don't have any more energy to. And it was great while it lasted, but we have to be honest with ourselves.

[A]

I saw some research suggesting that relationship self Sabotage affects about 63% of people at some point. 2021 study published in the Journal of Couples and Relationship Therapy based on interviews with about 700 people, found that the most common drivers were fear of getting hurt, fear of rejection, and low self esteem, often leading people to end relationships before they could get too attached.

[B]

Yes, and I think the reason why there's such a fear of rejection is because ghosting is such a normalized thing now, which wasn't the case before. It's not like people are inherently more insecure or have lower self esteem now. That's not the case. It's that ghosting has become more normalized than it's ever been before. There were ghosters back in the day and you know, years ago. The difference is that it wasn't a normal thing and there was some shame attached to it. Nowadays it could happen almost anonymously and you never have to see the person again. And so a lot of people are afraid of that rejection because it does trigger grief. Being ghosted isn't just something that you get over because you're like, oh, I just known him for two weeks. You biochemically are going through withdrawals. You're dealing with grief and all the stages of grief and so I do think that a lot of people fear that. Oh my gosh, if the narrative now is there's no good men left in the world, there's no good women left in dating apps. Apps, everybody's saying, well, why would I get in that pool? And so they start self sabotaging the moment they see something because they have the confirmatory bias of it's probably not going to work out. And so the confirmatory bias is going to see what confirms the bias. So the moment he is delayed in his response, or she seems like she's not capable of sustaining attention, people start self sabotaging. Ah, this is better off because people don't want to get rejected again.

[A]

Interesting. You've got sort of two barbells going on at the same time. People who will continue to withstand stuff that they shouldn't, and people that can't withstand stuff that they should.

[B]

Yes. And those people who can't, they don't ever grow their capacity. So although it gives instant gratification to just not enter the pool and not have to deal with the discomfort, I'm safe now. They're safe. Right. But it's instant relief. The thing is, they never grow their emotional capacity or their emotional maturity.

[A]

What does growing your emotional capacity look like? How can people do that?

[B]

So one of the things is sitting through uncomfortable conversations, even if you feel anxious, even if you, whether that's a first date, whether that is a conversation about growth, whether that is someone giving you constructive feedback, learning how to just sit through your feelings and recognizing that they're not going to swallow you whole. If you cry today, you're not going to be crying all day. So just kind of recognizing what you're feeling and sitting in that. Another thing is not to overload your life because you could have capacity during the good times, but if your, whether it's work, life balance or your life is overloaded and your nervous system is stressed out with cortisol, you will not have the capacity for connection or conflict repair. So never overload your life. Practice things for your nervous system stabilization. So whether that's meditation, have a gym routine, have a workout routine, discipline, which is another thing that is disappearing more and more. So I think that if we do that, our nervous systems tends to regulate itself and you'll be able to build your capacity over time.

[A]

Talk to me about the relationship between unresolved trauma and self sabotage.

[B]

Yes. So a lot of the times, if unresolved trauma is a big pool of things. Right. So it could be whether it was abuse or neglect. So there's lots of different things that fit in that category. But whenever there's unresolved trauma, the narrative that is created from that is I can't trust intimacy. I can't trust connection. And so when a person then gets in a relationship, no matter how good the partner is, there's always that hyper vigilance in the nervous system that just waits for this person to abandon or for this person to leave or harm them. And so I think a lot of people who have not healed their trauma tend to re injure their own wounds subconsciously by doing that.

[A]

How do you explain to someone that they have trauma when they don't see themselves as a traumatized person? I think there's probably two buckets of people. There's people who aren't traumatized but say that they do have it, and there's people who are traumatized but don't realize it.

[B]

Yes. So the thing I think the reason why a lot of people do not want to explore their trauma is because they think that trauma has to look a certain way. Right. They think it has to be these big events, whether that was terrible physical or sexual abuse. And that's not always the case. Trauma could be anything that made you feel incredibly dysregulated in your life at any point in your life. It doesn't have to just be childhood. And so a lot of people have a discomfort talking about it. And one of the ways that you could tell that there's unresolved trauma is based on a person's reactivity. So a person who doesn't have trauma typically could sit through their feelings and not get easily triggered. But when. When relationships become increasingly more intimate and they get reactive in those relationships, it's usually unresolved trauma from childhood relationships with either a parent or a caregiver. So that's a way that you could tell. Okay, there's some unhealed stuff here. If I tend to get reactive when someone just said something very simple to me, I probably need to look at what that is.

[A]

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[B]

One of the ways is to always be honest with ourselves. Right. So that requires self reflections after every relationship. Because I think relationships are beautiful mirrors. Right? They're great ways to look at ourselves. How a person treats me is a reflection or it's a reflection of what I allow, what I tolerate. So the relationships that I'm in are a good way to start looking at how much do I value myself, how much do I trust myself based on how these people in my life that I value treat me? That's one way. Another way is to build your emotional language. What am I feeling at any given moment? I always give people an emotional wheel because there's so many more emotions than just mad, glad, sad, angry, Right? So there's all these things that we don't really tend to internally because we're so focused on external. And because of that, we're trusting other people, places and things much more than we trust ourselves because there's so much self abandonment. Even the most confident person has probably some level of self abandonment that they're not even aware of.

[A]

What are some of the small ways self abandonment shows up?

[B]

Prioritizing other people, places or things. Not really taking a pause to ask yourself, am I okay with it? Do I feel safe in this environment? Do I feel safe with this person? Do I really want to go to this party? Or am I just people pleasing? Every time that we override that and we go against what we feel is right or regulating to ourselves is the way that we self abandon.

[A]

Yeah. It's strange to think about how people that are really thoughtful often end up thinking themselves out of prioritization. Like I see the best in this person. They made me happy. They make me happy sometimes. So I'll just continue to sort of shunt my own needs to one side. I'll put them over here.

[B]

Yes. And then they self abandon and the Thing is, I mean, one of my favorite quotes that I love, that I tell a lot of my empathic clients or understanding clients, is suffering breeds compassion. The more a person has suffered in their own life, usually the more compassionate they become to others because they don't want anybody else to suffer the way they did. Right. So oftentimes over giving and being over considerate is a reflection of how you were abandoned and how you're still abandoning yourselves. A lot of people will continue the trauma that was inflicted on them, but they do it themselves. At some point in adulthood, they start becoming the perpetrator to their own pain.

[A]

It's a unique kind of self harm though, because it's one that society would see from the outside as something noble.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Isn't that so strange?

[B]

Absolutely. They're like, it's so kind. You're so kind. And that's. I love Dr. Gabor Matei. He talks a lot about that where he says, if you go and look at all the eulogies of people who died an early death, they'll talk about how this man would give the shirt off his back to anyone. He was the kindest person and nobody looks at. Well, that may have led to the self abandonment that increased his inflammation, suppressed his immune system and eventually got him to be dead. Now.

[A]

Yeah, it's strange. A lot of the things that are pro social are abandoning to the South. So Joe Hudson has told this story to me, which is, it's so great. His daughter kept on crying in the bathroom when she was nine years old. And he went in and while she was crying she sounded also, she was yelling and he said, hey, are you sad or are you pissed off? She says, I'm pissed off. So. Well, how come you're crying? She says, well, when I get angry, my sister runs away, but when I cry, she comes and gives me a hug and it's this weird the sort of pro social nature or the anti social nature of making a displeasure. No, of prioritizing yourself and the sort of pro social nature of domesticating that. And that usually means turning outward discontent, rage, anger, displeasure, criticism into something that's just a bit more palatable for people. Right. You don't get mad, you get sad, you don't get angry at the world, you get angry at yourself. And it makes people less confronted. It means that they don't need to deal with their shit in the same way the people around you, because they get to still be the hero. They don't have to be the bad guy in quite the same way. Even if you're sad about something that you're justified in being sad about that your partner did to you, they still get to kind of be the hero because they get to come in and save you and fix it.

[B]

And that's the thing, I think that we don't look at that enough. And I think it just keeps us becoming even more and more isolated from ourselves. Right. And so the question then becomes, how can we expect ourselves to get in aligned connections when we're misaligned within ourselves? Right? Because everything's a reflection. If I'm not aligned with what I want and going after what I want, or my nervous system is disconnected from what my brain says I want, then how can I find connection in another person or alignment in another person? I'm probably going to find the same misalignment. It's just like the example you gave is that we, we. What we ultimately want as human beings is belonging. We want to feel like we belong to a person. So a lot of the times, the crying and the anger thing is that it's easier to be sad, which is why you'll oftentimes see people. I, I see that too. Where on social media, people have an easier time sharing tragic situations or illnesses than they have sharing their victories. Because there's such a judgment sometimes on how, ugh, don't get too cocky, don't get too confident. It could be taken away at any moment. But there's such a, ah, at least we're all struggling, right? And there's this belonging of shared suffering versus, well, why don't we do both? Why don't we continue to be compassionate towards the suffering of others and ourselves, but also uplift ourselves and others.

[A]

People feel like they need to caveat their accomplishments with the. But this was me five years ago when I was living. I was sleeping on the bedroom floor. Absolutely. Yeah. The immediate, oh, easy for you to say. That's lucky for you to say, but that's there because again, it throws into sharp contrast. If we have something, it reminds people what they don't have.

[B]

Absolutely. And a lot of people are unhealed with that because they can't just say, well, Chris has that, but I have this other thing. Right? And because we don't self explore and we don't anchor ourselves in our self's worth enough, we constantly are looking like the crap's in the bucket. Like the moment one crab goes to the top and starts talking about, I'm doing good, they're like, no, no, no, come down here. You're not that Great.

[A]

Also because the landscape of success has been flattened to only a really small bucket of things, it's very difficult for you to flex the quality of relationship you have with your grandmother. Right? Like inasmuch as your grandmother can be aesthetic on Instagram, perhaps, but there's usually an upper bound of that. How much do other people rely on you? How reliable are you as a friend? How much do you make your local community feel valued? How much are you a member of that, that contributes, that gives more than you take? How good are you with money in a responsible way? Not in a, I've accumulated shit, tons of wealth. Like it's small things. And because, yeah, the landscape for what people want to advertise, people will often trade observable metrics for hidden metrics. So observable metric, job title, car that you drive, postcode you live in, size and square footage of house, annual salary, hidden metrics, quality of relationship with your partner, amount of spare time, peace in your mind as you go to sleep at night, amount of time that you spend asleep at night, you know, and we will often trade the stuff that's hidden for the stuff that's observable because that's the ultimate game. People can see this, but they can't see this. And it's a radical thing to say. I'm satisfied now. It's one of the most radical statements he's got.

[B]

I'm good, I'm good. It's tough because everybody, just like you talk about with good looking people, right? There's different standards for good looking people. They can't, they can't. They have to minimize themselves to a certain degree. They have to go, you know, I think I saw something you did. Where? I did research. I was like, who is this Chris guy? I did research. So I saw something.

[A]

How far back did you go?

[B]

No, I didn't go too far back, but I saw something you did where someone, when someone asked you about your looks or something and you're like, well, I mean, yeah, sometimes it's easy to get certain things, but you get two

[A]

biscuits on a plate.

[B]

And then you were like, very humble, trying to still be like, no, but you know, it's not sometimes. And then I was like, that's exactly what we're talking about right here. Where you just, you can't just go, yeah, I'm a good looking guy and I know it, right? Like you, you can't just say that because something in us says we have to still belong, whether that is to our followers or community or clientele. And so there's this thing where we don't want to outshine because belonging is the most important human need. And I just think it's pretty sad because it's self abandoning to a certain degree and it kind of censors our authenticity to a certain degree as well.

[A]

It feels very gauche to do that. It's also, I'm British, so sort of self fellating is. We're kind of averse to that. You know, we don't have a massive culture of ego in the same way that America might do. And still people will minimize themselves in America. But yeah, it feels, I think the main reason for me, and I have thought about this a lot because, you know, for a long time I was a commercial male model for over a decade, a dj, a nightclub promoter. I was all of the red flags you don't want in your future son in law. And I'd collected them like Pokemon cards. But you. There is a kind of dislike that anybody has for someone that seems like they got something that they didn't work for. There is a difference between somebody who's good looking and somebody who's got a good body from the gym and people who train really, really hard and show their body off on Instagram. They'll get some criticisms. But people understand that nobody's born with a great figure in that sort of a way. Same thing's not true when it comes to just straight beauty. Women can kind of respect it in other women, but they secretly really, really don't like it. I think that it triggers a type of visceral competitiveness and rivalry that beautiful women know and no one is going to ever give them sympathy for. If you're a good looking woman, you are Persona non grata and almost always going to be on the receiving end of other women's ire. Men will open every door in the world for you because you've got your reality distortion field that follows you around. But I would maybe even go as far as to say that beautiful women are disadvantaged by women more than they're advantaged by men. That's total. I mean, actually. Hang on.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. I would say that beautiful women are more disadvantaged by other women than they are advantaged by men. I put these on when I need to say something insane or something that might get clipped out of context. And the reason is female intrasexual competition is almost always hidden. Male intersexual competition is out front. There's this great study from Tracy Vi and where she says female basketball players. There was a study done the physical affection of female basketball players. Female basketball players on the same team showed less affection to each other physically than male basketball players on opposing teams because the rivalry is very hidden. And this paints a very sort of ugly picture of women. Right? Which, you know, men can be bastards too and are a lot of the time. However, however beautiful women have this weird cost that they have to pay and sorry I'm putting you off with these.

[B]

I was like, I'm getting used to this new guy.

[A]

Yeah, that's true. He's nice.

[B]

He's actually nicer. I like him. No, I'm just joking, Chris, I'm joking.

[A]

What was that that you just said?

[B]

But it's true and I think it's quite sad because I do. I see it with my female clients and my male clients that there's just different rules that people have to play by. Right. And I think kind of like you said, we do want to see that people have worked for stuff like the gym example. We want to know that, okay, this body was. It was hard work that got him there. And those people get great comments, typically feedback wise on social media. But at the same time, when it comes to people's personal lives, they want to bypass that gradual process. They want to bypass it and get the quick fixes. And that's the same for beauty, that's the same for jobs, that's the same for money. Nobody really wants to do anything that takes time or discomfort anymore. And I think that's the issue. We say we want the job that will pay us for the rest of our lives. We say we want the relationship that's going to last us a lifetime. But our nervous system is like, I've had clients who are emotionally available, will go on a date with a guy and come back and say, I just, it just wasn't really intense. Like, I just, I'm just used to that intensity and I just didn't feel it. But I know what intensity from past patterns they're talking about. The emotionally unavailable.

[A]

The reason that you're in fucking therapy, the reason that you're here with me is because of that. That intensity.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

How do you. That's a great point. There is a world of dating for certain people where if you were to draw a timeline of their dating life, it would be relationships with people who are, to them superbly exciting and totally terrifying and dysregulating, and relationships with people who think that they're wonderful and they hate because of how boring they seem, punctuated with brief periods of terrifying loneliness in between. It and they just sort of swing between partners that they fear but are excited by and those they feel safe but bored with.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Talk to me about this. Avatar, the safe but bored. Excited but fearful.

[B]

So, yes, I think that the reason why that happens is because people have created a belief that our partner is supposed to be our everything. They're supposed to bring us excitement and stability and fire and calm. And there are other areas in our life that could give us that. If your relationship is stable but not intense or exciting enough, have an exciting career, go bungee jumping, do exciting hobbies and activities, have friendships that are exciting. I just think that we have. We. It's almost like staying in the casino and not leaving when you win a good prize. Cause you're like, I feel like there's a better prize out there 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 when to go. No. But this is stable and this is good. I'll get my excitement elsewhere. Because all intensity and excitement nowadays is nervous system activation. It's not that this person is so much more exciting. They give you the love bombing intensity and that makes you feel alive. Because we've become very numb nowadays. We're overstimulated. And so when you're overstimulated, it's almost like being shot with an anesthetic. You need something really hard to awaken.

[A]

You're a masochist at a sex party who needs car batteries clamped on his nipples before he can get stuck.

[B]

Because you feel something. Yes. I'm not even gonna ask you where you've seen that. But I believe everything you said.

[A]

You said seen. I may have. The guy wearing this nose and mustache may have experienced it before we continue. As you're probably aware, I'm not a massive drinker. At least not anymore. But even if you too are not drinking, sometimes you just want something cold, frosty and tasty without the fear of a hangover the next day. Which is. I'm such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Company. Thank you very much. Their non alcoholic brews taste just as good as the real thing. They've got IPAs, Hazy Goldens. They're so good that you'll forget that there's no alcohol in them until you wake up the next day feeling fantastic. It means that you can enjoy the ritual without the wreckage. No hangover. No 3am panic. No wasted Sunday. Recovering from Saturday. That is why I partnered with them. You can find Athletic Brewing Company's bestselling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you or best option, you can get the full variety pack of four flavors flavors shipped right to your door. Right now, get up to 15% off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to athleticbrewing.com ModernWisdom using the code ModernWisdom at checkout, that's athleticbrewing.com ModernWiry and ModernWisdom at checkout near Beer Terms and conditions apply. Athletic Brewing Company Fit for all times why is the feeling obsessed, the love bombing thing in early dating a red flag?

[B]

Because obsession is rarely ever about the other person. Obsession is about nervous system activation. Because in early dating you do not have enough data to know if this person is compatible with you. You do not know enough about their patterns. You do not know enough about alignment between you two. And so if you're feeling obsessed in early dating, meaning you can't stop thinking about this person, you're having intrusive thoughts about this person. You're constantly waiting for their messages and rereading mess. That's your nervous system saying something is uncertain. And the nervous system is designed to create certainty out of uncertainty. So when a person is inconsistent and they don't give you enough clarity, the likelihood of obsession is much higher in that situation, in that connection, than a person who gives you stability and clarity early on.

[A]

Isn't that so interesting that what people are looking for a lot of the time, which is the spot and the rush, is that the presence of that is highly predictive of this person not being good for you, as opposed to being good for you. What a cruel trick.

[B]

And but you know why? Because we started saying these things that confuse children and teens by saying we started calling it butterflies and that's so pretty and cute. Oh, he gives me butterflies. No, he. He activates your nervous system. He's not good for you. Right. And so we don't say it as that. So everybody starts being conditioned into the belief that when I feel a lot for this person and I'm feeling anxious around them, that this might mean that this is my guy or this is my woman.

[A]

You think it's that much due to sort of modern cultural conditioning? There's a lot of push, pull, dynamic, intermittent variable, schedule, reward. I mean, this is the same tempo that slot machines use. It's the same dynamic that social media companies use. So I don't disagree that referring to chaos as chemistry is not good. Repatterning.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

But this is bottom of the brain stem stuff too. Right. So, again, the reason that I say that when people hear explanations for situations that they've been through, a lot of the time, time the self blame comes up and you go, I get it would be great if you could break this pattern. I'm sure that you can. There's a long history. How many of your ancestors have done that? You would not be here if it wasn't for this dynamic.

[B]

Absolutely. It's not easy. It's not easy.

[A]

You are the proud progeny of people that were gaslit into thinking that they loved the person they were with.

[B]

Yes. And it's not easy. The difference, though, is that. That I think with awareness, we could just learn to marry the limbic system and the primitive part of the brain with the front of the brain. That's all it is. It's integration. If we could just integrate. And the best way to do that is to take space. Whatever we feel, to just say, it feels really good. This person is number one on the list right now, but they're not my only one. And I'm not completely emotionally investing in this person because. Because I now know that this is biochemistry more so than this is clarity. Right. And so awareness is how we break generational patterns. It's how we. That's why. I don't know if you read it, but birth rate is extremely low right now. Because of that, I think I've gotten

[A]

lots of trouble for talking about this. My. Put the glasses on. Thank you. Thank you. That's. Birth rates. Go on.

[B]

Am I gonna get in trouble? Should I wear that, too?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

No, no, no.

[A]

We got another one. Yes. You're gonna look great.

[B]

I'll let you do it. No, no, no.

[A]

It would go with your ass.

[B]

No, no, no.

[A]

Okay, okay. They can live that.

[B]

So. Yeah, I mean, I. I think that because there's more emotional literacy than ever before, there's more therapy than ever before, there's more social media awareness and education about relationship dynamics than before. And so, you know, our fathers ghosted women or mothers before things like that happened. It's just that there was shame attached to it at that point. There was vulnerability, and it was very vulnerability.

[A]

It was really costly. You know, it's the equivalent when you were saying it before about how easy it is for people to ghost now. It made me think about the difference between a drone operator being able to press a button from some industrial estate in middle America and it's done, and a guy who's got a gun or a knife and has to.

[B]

And do the effort and that's the thing we don't. Everything is built for convenience nowadays, which means that the things that actually matter, which is how to keep a job that is sustainable, a career, a relationship, children, like a lot of the things that require effort, are no longer interesting to people anymore.

[A]

The crazy thing is when you look at the dynamic between you and even somebody that you really, really like, that this person gives you the butterflies and the chemistry and all the rest of it, but makes you feel highly dysregulated. I was talking to a friend who recently went through a breakup, and he said what he realized was the pattern that him and his partner were going through at the moment was going to be the model for love that their kids were going to see. And would you choose this person for your kids to have as their role model for love? Forget the kind of abstract thing of would you want your best friend to be in a relationship with this person? Would you want your kids to be in a relationship with this person? Or whatever. Much more direct than that is the way that you and this person communicate, relate and disagree are going to be what your kids think Romances. That's what they're going to think a mummy and a daddy do?

[B]

Absolutely. But not just that. That's what their identity is going to be. They're going to associate their identity with the identity of whoever you choose to have children with. And so it's not just a, oh, we would make cute babies. It is. I mean, what are we teaching them as far as what love means and hard work and conflict repair and emotional availability and what kind of person to be? I just think that a lot of times people make big decisions and take big risks back in the day, and I think a lot now, too, based on just the chemistry of it, because everything is about. We're just a bunch of addicts at this point. You know, it's all about what feels good. And if it feels good, we'll figure out how to deal with it later.

[A]

Car batteries.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Can we talk about limerence?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This is a term that I only learned pretty recently, but is. Is just fascinating. What's limerence?

[B]

Limerence is an emotional fixation with a person that is usually fueled by uncertainty. So it is, you know, some of the signs of limerence is a unusual fixation with the person, constant ruminating thoughts about the person, extreme highs and lows in your mood regarding this person, waiting and craving their validation. And this usually happens very early on in dating. So you don't really even know the person fully, but you Just notice a deep obsession with, with this person and that would qualify as limerence, which we're seeing more and more nowadays.

[A]

Is there a certain type of person who's more vulnerable to limerence?

[B]

Yes. So several different people. So the first group of people are the people who have unresolved issues as far as unresolved wounds. So people with certain attachment styles are more likely to fall for limerence because limerence is oftentimes based on uncertainty and inconsistency. So if you had a childhood where love was given only only sometimes and it was unpredictable, there was emotional unavailability there, you're much more likely to fall into limerence. If you are a highly imaginative person, you're much more likely to fall into limerence because you fall for the fantasy of a person and you could imagine what life with them could be like or intimacy with them would be like. So those types of people, as far as a person who is either emotionally intelligent or highly imaginative, they typically not. They tend to fall for limerence because they build a story around the chemistry they feel for a person, a highly empathic person, because they extend understanding. I understand why he's not always available, I understand why he's inconsistent. So they're much more likely to fall into limerence as well.

[A]

Large scale surveys found that 64% overall prevalence for limerence with 32% experiencing at the level of full person attention addiction, far higher than the previously circulated estimate of 5%. Anxiously attached people were significantly overrepresented. An analysis of two and a half thousand self identified limerents found personality types that were dramatically overrepresented. Highly intuitive feeling oriented people were the most prone. INFPs, INFPs, INTPs, INTPs, ENFPs. So it's the intuitive, it's the feel. The most common personality type types, esfj, ESTJ and isfj, those are the most common ones, barely represented at all, which is interesting. So it's out on the tails.

[B]

Yes, Introverts, the introverted ones, more likely to eyes, more likely because they're more introspective, more empathic, oftentimes also more imaginative. And so same with anxiously attached people because anxiously attached people usually come from childhoods where there was lots of unpredictability and, and people who they typically fall into limerence with are unavailable people. So there is a resemblance to familiar patterns from the childhood. So anxiously attached people, introspective people, introverted people, much more likely to fall into full addiction with another person.

[A]

Interesting. I was thinking the other day about some of the Ways that sort of chaos or unpredictability in the home might show up, that people might not realize one of them being an unpredictability around praise and what performance and doing well is because every kid just wants mum and dad to say, you did a good job. But if you don't know what the standards are for you to be able to do that, that's a kind of unpredictability that strikes pretty close to the heart of what a kid cares about. Yeah, the basement has a trapdoor and a slide that goes down all the way to neglect and abuse and stuff like that.

[B]

That.

[A]

But assuming that that's kind of niche for the reason that it's horrible. A much more common way that this might happen is, well, you played a sports game and you got in the car with mom and dad and 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. And that's a type of unpredictability and chaos. I think that gets kids who then become adults to try and work out, what or what do I need to do? I just want to feel like I matter, like I belong, like I'm good, like things are predictable and stable. It doesn't feel like that. So how do I need to just reconstruct and deconstruct this thing so that I feel safe?

[B]

Absolutely. I think that a lot of those children, I mean, I write about it in my book too, because a lot of kids, I mean, I find kids fascinating because that's really where a lot of dysregulation occurs. Right. I think that a lot of children who had this praise where it's unpredictable when you're gonna be seen, when you're gonna feel valued, because belonging is the most important thing for children too. A kid won't stop loving a parent, no matter how abusive the parent is, they'll stop loving themselves. Right. And so a lot of the times a child will start turning inward and going, what did I do wrong? How can I be better? This creates a hypervigilant nervous system, which is, I'm always alert to make sure that everybod pleased with me, whatever room I walk into. And then they bring that into dating where it's, oh, this person doesn't seem happy with me today. What can I do to keep them happy? And so not only is there self abandonment that's been in the making for a long time, since childhood, but now there is this dopamine. Every time this person looks at you, responds Even if it's days later, you are now biochemically addicted to this other person because your parents didn't give you the consistency to anchor into your own identity.

[A]

And it's strange that this very pro social, very giving, very charitable, very reciprocally altruistic, you know, kin selectiony type thing is self destructive. You don't know whether someone is doing something that's pro social and caring and charitable because they want to or because they need to. And would it be great if there were more people being pro social in the world? Yeah. But at what level of self abandonment is that going to happen if those people are doing it from a place of desperate desire for you to see me because I can't exist with your displeasure. Even if you deserve it? Yes, even if you deserve this displeasure. I keep on picking up loads that aren't mine to carry and then wondering why my shoulders ache all the time.

[B]

Absolutely. I think that. And that's where I as a therapist oftentimes am heartbroken for clients like that because I know that their kindness comes from a wounded place. Right. The overextending comes from a wounded place. The issue is that nobody really takes the time in everyday life to go, oh, this person's so nice. I am curious what happened to them that made like, how did they suffer deeply, that made them now want to make sure nobody else suffers? What people just go is, there's a, whenever I need a nice person, I'm just gonna call that person again.

[A]

Yeah. Because we don't want to talk about the cost of someone's niceness. I'm benefiting from it. It seems to be pro social. It seems to be coming from a good place. And I don't think, for the most part, I think this is self deception, not sort of conscious deception. I don't think that we're shoving to one side someone's obvious drug addiction because they are a good hang at parties. The equivalent here is he's just great. He's always supportive. He makes sure that I'm never upset. Whenever I need to ring him, he's always, there you go. We don't know. We don't recognize that that's coming from a place that could be pretty broken.

[B]

And we don't ask. That's the thing. I think that if I had to suggest or encourage anything, it would be check on your nice friends, ask them what they need. Actually don't even ask. Just do nice things for them. You know, the person who always listens, listen to them. The person who always does do for Them, the person who always pays, pay for them, you know, because the thing is, is that we, the brain looks for shortcuts in identification. We want to know that this friend is good at this, this friend is good at this. Because the brain can't go. Sometimes they're good at it, sometimes they're not. We want certainty. So if the friend is always nice, we're like, they're the nice friend. We don't need to change it. Right? Because if we change that now, we got to change something about ourselves, and that's just too dysregulated. And so we want people to play certain roles in our lives, and that causes self abandonment in and of itself. Because now I know that I have to always show up as the therapist. You have to show up as all the things that you show up as. Right. And so it doesn't allow for flexibility to be all that we are. Sometimes I don't want to listen, Sometimes I want to be heard. And so I just think that we need to give people more of that space to be all of who they are, instead of just relying on them to remain the same person that we may or may not have benefited from.

[A]

One of my friends wrote a tweet that I did a little essay about that I want to tell you about. You are a different character in the mind of each person who knows you, because their impression of you is made of the bare bones of what they've seen, fleshed out by their knowledge of themselves. So I've got this idea, the lonely chapter, which is when you're so developed that you don't resonate with your old set of friendships, friends, but you're not yet sufficiently developed that you've got a new one. But the lonely chapter has another perspective to it as well, which is, as you grow, you don't fit in with your friends. But this means that they don't fit in with you either, and this causes a reaction from their side. So the hardest part of changing yourself isn't just improving your habits. It's escaping the people who keep handing you your old costume. And others don't remember who you were. They informed, which is why reinvention so often feels like trying to break out of a prison that you can't unsee.

[B]

I love that. I do want to read that. If you could, wherever we could find

[A]

it, I certainly can.

[B]

But I agree. I mean, even when I worked in a recovery center, a treatment center, it would go as far as the extremes of parents bringing their addicted child to treatment, and they've been used to this child relapsing for years. And they've always been the identified patient. Now this adult is in treatment, recovering, goes back home, doesn't drink anymore. And they don't like that person who's sober. They're used to him when he was drunk. And so what do they do at the first party they have? They hand him a drink. And they're the people who make them relapse because they're used to the old person. Kind of like you said, they give you the old costume back because it's easier for you to be who you once were to us, because our identity is built on that identity. And so I just think that we're not flexible enough in our minds, in our identities, in our feelings, in order to really kind of sustain things that will give us the safety and the space to be who we truly are.

[A]

Why do you say that? The wrong people are the hardest to

[B]

get over because they're the most addicting. And the reason why is not because they're so great. It's because. Because the wrong people oftentimes are the emotionally unavailable people, the people who do not have the capacity to sustain something substantial with you. So whenever there's uncertainty and unpredictability, there's dopamine spikes, which is highly addicting. There's also cortisol spikes, which is highly stressful. And then there is nervous system dysregulation, because the nervous system is designed for certainty. So the wrong person triggers uncertainty in you. And all your brain and your nervous system wants to do is focus in on this person. Person to get clarity. And so you're really chasing clarity, but you're now reframing it as, I must really love this person, and I can't get over. I can't stop thinking about them. So I'm wondering if they were my person all along. No, that's just your nervous system trying to regulate itself. That's why it's obsessed. Yes. After the breakup, because your nervous system is saying, I felt this intense high with this person that I haven't felt with anybody else. Sins. There must be something meaningful there. And I am not ready really to let this go. Also, whenever there's uncertainty, there's all these gaps of clarity, which makes projecting a fantasy much easier. You could paint anything on a blank canvas. So if someone just gives you limited pieces of themselves, you're like, ah, he told me he likes me. But I also think that what he really likes is this, this, this, and this. He never said that. But because he didn't give you enough. Now your brain is going to fill in the gaps with a fantasy that works for you. And if we have to choose fantasy or reality, we're much more likely to want to hold onto a fantasy and not be able to get over a fantasy than a reality.

[A]

That is so good. What do you say to people who feel like they're regularly a bad picker?

[B]

I tell them not to be so hard on themselves because I think it goes back to the self blame. Right. Like it's not that, you know, we like to say our picker is broken, but I don't think that our picker is necessarily broken. I just think that our nervous system has, is starting from a dysregulated baseline. And that's because modern day has conditioned a baseline that is determined by dysregulation. There's so much uncertainty and there's not enough clarity. And so what we're picking is probably gonna be uncertainty. We're probably going to pick based on intensity and chemistry. And so I think that the people who feel like they have a history of misaligned relationships, I would say take a pause, do some self reflection. Therapy is always helpful. I'm always pro therapy and really kind of just learn what your patterns are, are, and find out what your standards are. Because usually bad people who are bad picks or emotionally unavailable, they usually overstep boundaries, they usually disrespect the person and we just kind of let it go. So realign with yourself and what your standards and your boundaries are and you'll start picking better people.

[A]

What about when it comes time to hold about boundary? As someone who is emotionally available, empathetic, sees the best in others and the fear, the who am I to? Is this me being too demanding? My needs usually don't matter? How do you advise someone in that moment? Boundary needs enforcing. Not passive aggressively, three days later, not resentfully. After the dinner's finished. How do you advise someone in that moment to become more comfortable?

[B]

Great question. Because oftentimes people have a hard time setting boundaries because of fear of abandonment. Right. Which is pretty normal.

[A]

It's the tactical problem we're talking. We can throw pithy aphorisms around all day, but ultimately this is going to come into conflict with your nervous system. How does someone get better at being the bad guy?

[B]

You reframe it and say, my boundaries are not going to push them away. My boundaries are, are going to keep the good person and it's going to protect the relationship. Because boundaries are not pushing good relationships out they're just protecting good relationships. So speaking up and saying, hey, Chris, you did this one thing and it hurt my feelings and I would like for us not to do that. That's me saying, if you want to stay in a relationship with me and if I want to protect this relationship between us, I have to say this. That's my advocacy for what we have. But most people see a boundary as I'm gonna hurt their feelings and they might then reject me and they don't really consider. But the relationship has its own needs. And if you don't speak up and you don't say what that boundary is, you are abandoning that relationship and its needs.

[A]

So good. Mercedes Kaufman, ladies and gentlemen. You rule.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Everyone should go and check out your Instagram. I love it. I think the stuff that you put out is fantastic. Where else do you want Instagram is good.

[B]

Mercedes Kaufman therapy. And then they could also go to my website, which is on my Instagram.

[A]

Heck yeah. Mercedes, I appreciate you.

[B]

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Chris. It was an honor.

[A]

All right, goodbye, people.

[B]

Bye, people. This is fun.

[A]

You nailed it. That was.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Epic. I get asked all the time for book suggestions. People want to get into reading fiction or non fiction or real life stories. Stories. And that's why I made a list of 100 of the most interesting and impactful books that I've ever read. These are the most life changing reads that I've ever found. And there's descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And it's completely free and you can get it right now by going to ChrisWillX.com books that's ChrisWillX.com books.