HealthyGamerGG - How to Be More Emotionally Available (And Why It’s So Important)

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Do you or a loved one find it difficult to explore and discuss emotions? Do discussions about emotions often lead to fighting or outbursts? In today's video, Dr K. discusses what emotional availability is, how to cultivate it, and how to manifest it in a healthy way. Check out more mental health resources here! https://bit.ly/3xsk6fE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, bro, I have some news for you. I got engaged. And he's like, congrats, man. And I'm like, thank you, bro. And then I went and I talked to my wife after this. And I was like, you know, hey, I told, you know, I called my family, they know we're engaged. And then she's like, oh, like, did you talk to your brother? And I was like, yeah, I talked to my brother.

And he's like, what did he say? She's like, what did he say? She's like, what did he say? And I was like, I don't know. He said, congratulations. And he's like, and then what? And then I was like, he asked if I have someone planning my bachelor party. And I said, no.

And he offered. and I said, thank you. And she's like, what? So if you have a pulse and you're aware of what's going on in the world right now, you know that dating is an absolute mess. If you're one of these unlucky humans who is in the dating pool, then you know better than I do that dating and relationships are an absolute mess. It seems to be getting harder and harder.

There's a set of rules that no one really understands because everyone's set of rules is different. And if you're trying to find love in the world today, it's incredibly challenging. So when I talk to patients who are women who are struggling to date, and when I work with like, you know, friends and family members and things like that, it seems that one of the main complaints that women have are that men are emotionally unavailable. But this doesn't just apply to men. It turns out that about 20 to 25 percent of women probably have something like an avoidant attachment style. And when I work with women who are

highly professionally successful, this is a challenge that they struggle with too. Now, the big problem with being emotionally available is that a lot of people, expect you to be emotionally available, but no one will bother to teach you how to do it. So I see this a lot on like, you know, subreddits where women are discussing their challenges and stuff like that. Fair enough, it's, you know, their place to talk about their things. And one of the most common complaints that I see is I'm dating a man. They don't know how to do this basic thing, whether it's buy groceries, share cognitive

load, or be emotionally available. And also, it's not my responsibility to teach them, right? So this is one of the biggest challenges that I see frequently is that a lot of people will expect things of you, but no one will take the responsibility of helping you bridge the gap between where you are and where they expect you to go. So that's why we're making this video, because chances are you didn't learn how to be emotionally available because your parents didn't teach you that. Maybe your dad didn't teach you that. We as men are actually conditioned to step away from our emotions and to be emotionally unavailable. and yet when we grow up and we become adults, we're sort of left with this conditioning and no one is taking responsibility for helping us fix it. And then this creates all kinds of problems in our relationships.

So today, I am going to do my best at teaching you how to be emotionally available. And I think this is going to work out great because if you learn how to be emotionally available, you will have a leg up on 90% of dudes out there because this is something that a lot of men actively avoid. Hey, y'all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we discuss to your life to actually create change, check out Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health. The guide synthesize my years of training as a monk, along with years of clinical experience as a psychiatrist, to cover common topics like meditation, ADHD, and trauma. The guides include over 100 additional videos that can be navigated based on your needs or interests or in a more open, choose-your-own-adventure format.

The guides are now available in the YouTube source. store below. And if they're a little bit outside of your price point, you can check out a piece of them with our free resource packs, which are also linked below. So definitely check them out. So let's start with, why are people looking for more emotional availability to begin with? So I think over the last, let's say, 100 years, we've seen an equalization between the genders, not complete equalization, but we're moving in that direction. So it used to be that we had a highly segregated society where men sort of bring home the bacon and women take care of the household. So we had separation between what each gender brings to a relationship. In the last 100 years, we've had a lot

of changes, the beginning of which is we no longer necessarily have heterosexual relationships, but we see a lot of equality between men and women. So we'll see, for example, that women earn college degrees at a greater rate than men. Women are now contributing to the workforce in a really robust way. And so as women no longer require men to make money for them, the demands that they're looking for actually increase. We're starting to see more and more partnerships as healthy relationships where both partners are contributing to emotional health, financial independence, stability within the household. So everything's kind of evening out. Fair enough. Whether you think that's good or bad is a conversation for a different day,

but it's my belief that generally speaking, if you learn emotional availability, like this is going to be good for you. It'll be boosting your EQ and it will help you in your relationships. So what does emotional availability even mean? And it comes down to a couple of discrete skills. So let's start with the biggest and oftentimes the one that causes the most problems, which is emotional intimacy in the relationship. Now, this is confusing because we're not really sure if you're a dude and you were like me. You're not sure what emotional intimacy even means. So let's start by understanding a couple of things. So generally speaking, in the average relationship, and there's a lot of variability, we tend to think of women.

as the gatekeepers of physical intimacy, right? So it's like when dudes go out on dates, we have this assumption that men are DTF and women are like, oh, not yet, and, you know, like they want to wait until they feel an emotional connection, whatever. That's fair enough, right? So we think of women as the gatekeepers of physical intimacy. Now, the interesting thing that we don't talk enough about

is that men are oftentimes the gatekeepers of emotional intimacy. And we have this sort of interesting dynamic in society where if one partner says, hey, I don't want to have sex until marriage, this is something that we sort of like completely accept as a viable preference for a human being to have. Fair enough. You want to wait till marriage like you do you. But what we don't say is some men are actually very, very reluctant to engage in emotional intimacy until they're married or late into a relationship. But that seems to be more societally unacceptable. No, you should share your feelings on a second date, on a third date. You should be emotionally vulnerable. And in the worst cases,

I actually see a sense of emotional entitlement to someone else's, like, emotional vulnerabilities. So there's this weird kind of discrepancy here, and we have to kind of start with that, we have to sort of acknowledge that premise, okay? So what this means is that a lot of times people are very unsatisfied. Women are unsatisfied with the lack of emotional intimacy that their partner provides. And this creates all kinds of common problems in relationships. So when I work with men, what they'll oftentimes freak out about, is, you know, your girlfriend or whatever wants you to meet their parents. They want you to meet their

family. They want to plan a life together. They're like, hey, when are we going to get married? When are we going to get engaged? Let's go to a, let's go on a getaway weekend together. And some of that stuff is fine. But when I work with men who come into my office, oftentimes when they talk about these things, they come in somewhat panicked. And that may sound kind of confusing, and this is confusing to a lot of women that I've worked with as well. They're like, I don't see what the big deal is, I want my boyfriend to meet my parents. Like, I don't know why he like dodges this kind of stuff. He always makes up excuses. It creates conflict in the relationship. The other very common thing that we hear is that this is a man who's afraid of commitment. So let's take these

two examples and understand what's going on. So let's take the first one with meeting the parents. So if you're a dude who's dating a woman and they want you to meet their family, oftentimes what I find when I work with men is that there are a lot of associations in your mom. about what this means. So this is a big problem in relationships where when someone says, hey, I want you to meet their parents, that means one thing to them, and it means a different thing to you. Bridging that gap is how we solve this emotional intimacy issue. So for a lot of dudes, this means, okay, this is a serious step in the relationship, and I don't know if I'm ready for this, and then men will have all kinds of other feelings that we suppress and don't talk about. Like,

what if they don't like me? I lack confidence in myself. I'm between jobs right now. I wouldn't respect myself. I disrespect myself right now. I have low self-esteem at this moment. And the last thing that I want to do is show off an unfinished, broken, and or non-optimized version of myself to this woman I love parents, right? I want to be my best self before I even see them. So there are all kinds of internal feelings that we will associate with meeting with the parents

that we don't feel comfortable with, but we have a difficulty explaining that kind of thing to our partner. And let's use a second example of like getting married and fear of commitment. So oftentimes what will happen is men will sort of will get into relationships, right, where we're dating for years and then the relationship starts to stagnate. And a lot of the women that I've worked with will experience this as, okay, like the relationship isn't going anywhere. I want to move it to the next level. There's a lack of emotional intimacy. Like this is what their experiences. Now, there are a lot of reasons why men are afraid of commitment. Okay, so let's understand what that means.

So like when I work with men, right, this is the kind of stuff that I hear. So let's start with the biggest problem, which is the problem of complacency. So oftentimes if you look at how men are conditioned, what sort of nurture what our society teaches us for, it's that, hey, you should do all of these things so that you can pass on your genes, right? Your job as a man is to impregnate the woman. And this is the purpose of your life. So you should make money, you should get sexy, you should be strong, you should be stable. all for the purpose of this relationship. This is what we're taught.

So then what happens is sometimes we end up in a relationship. And the primary motivator for us to get our shit together is to actually find a relationship, right? You'll see this a lot in sort of the Red Pill community, in the pickup artist community, and like men sort of supporting each other. They'll say like, hey, you should do all these things. And they're all talking about dating. And they'll all say like, oh, you should do this for yourself. But it's all in the context of like women aren't going to be attracted to you unless you optimize this. and fix this and take supplements and go to the gym and all this kind of stuff.

It's all in the context of dating, but then they say you should do it for yourself. So the truth of the matter is that many of us are conditioned to work hard for the purpose of finding a mate. And then something really scary happens. Once we find someone who is willing to date us for like five years or six years, our primary motivational drive to improve ourselves starts to decay. We start to become really complacent. Now, then you may be wondering, but Dr. Kay, what on earth does this have to do with marriage?

So when I work with dudes who have become complacent in a relationship, they are terrified that once they get married, this complacency will be locked in. So this is really common where when I work with dudes, marriage means something to them. It means a loss of freedom. It means a stalling of growth. It means I can't explore my options. It means like, you know, now I'm sort of locked into this paying mortgage and raising kids and changing diapers and they're afraid of sort of being locked into this way. right way to kind of work through this is to kind of like, you know, all patients will come into my office and we'll talk through these fears. And this is what's really cool. So all of those fears are actually completely valid, but they don't need to be fixed by you. So I have patients who come into my office and they'll talk about these things. And the good news is that like all of those fears are valid, but they're not necessarily 100% true. So as dudes, we have conceptions of marriage that are based on things that we saw from our dads, right? And so a lot of like men grow up with dads who are sometimes healthy, sometimes unhealthy. You may have seen the men in your life when you were growing up go through things like midlife crises.

You saw how your dad, you know, and then we make all these like kind of toxic misogynistic jokes. Oh, the woman is the ball and chain and like the best years of your life you'll you'll ever have or before you get married. So we're conditioned to dislike marriage, to fear marriage. And why do these men hate marriage? these like dads who are making these kind of like misogynistic jokes, it's because they lack the emotional skill to turn the marriage into something positive, which is exactly what we're going to teach you all today. So if you're afraid of all of this stuff, the answer is actually really simple.

It's not to fix all of those problems, but exactly what your partner is looking for is to share your fears with them. You just need to articulate it. So I'll give you all a simple example. Hey, I want you to meet my parents. hey, I recognize that this is important to you. Part of my reluctance is because I'm not doing my best right now. I'm not at my best self.

You know, I'm between jobs. It's kind of a blow to my confidence. I'm sure I'll get there in the end. But the last thing that I want to do is form a first impression with your parents when I'm kind of not at my A game. So you share that kind of emotional experience. When it comes to something like, hey, like when are you going to ask me to propose? the response to that is also like kind of what we talked about. Hey, so I've noticed that we've been in this relationship for five or six years.

I noticed that I'm getting complacent. A lot of my drive seems to have kind of gone away. I'm noticing maybe you've gotten complacent too, and I'm afraid that if we lock this in right now, that we'll sort of stall growing as people individually as a couple, and that's something that I'd like to work on. That's basically what you do. So this is kind of like an OP technique where like all you have to do is

share the way that you feel with your partner. That's what emotional intimacy is. It's not that you have to force yourself into getting married, which is oftentimes what dudes will do. They'll kind of like psych themselves up and push away all their feelings and then force themselves to get married. That leads to divorce. We don't want to do that. We actually just want to share the way that we feel. Now, if you're a dude who's alive today and I tell you, all you have to do is share what you feel, what you'll probably say is, oh, I tried that and then she broke up with me. Unfortunately, This is actually a very, very, very common issue. Where men are told, on the one hand, we can share our feelings.

And on the other hand, when we do, people break up with us, people leave us behind, people never call us again. It's kind of weird, right? We're told it's okay to share your feelings, and then we do something stupid, which is share your feelings, and we get punished for it. What's the deal? So this is where there's a really important nuance to understand. We're going to teach you this, okay? So emotional dysregulation leads to disrespect.

So sharing your feelings doesn't mean falling apart. part emotionally and like ugly crying, which I think can be helpful at times. It's not actually ugly. I think it's beautiful, but I'm a psychiatrist. This is a big mistake that a lot of dudes make. When they share their feelings, we are so emotionally incapable that we have two modes. We have zero emotion or we have emotional explosion. Once we open that pressure valve, that's when everything blows up.

So oftentimes what men will do is they won't share their feelings in an emotionally regulated way. the only modes that we have are on and off. And when someone is emotionally dysregulated, we can have compassion for them, we can have kindness for them, we can even love them, but what we oftentimes lose is respect for them. And so what a lot of dudes are running into

is that they'll share their feelings and the way that they share their feelings, unfortunately, leads to a loss of respect. That's kind of how things are. And I want you all to just think about this for a second, right? Let's say that you're interviewing someone for a job. And the fact that they had like difficulties in their life is like fair enough and they can share some emotions, maybe shed a tear. But if they come into your office and then like have this emotional meltdown, your likelihood to hire them is going to be like way lower.

It's not that emotions are bad. It's that dysregulated emotions tend to lead to disrespect. I've also seen this when I was like, you know, a resident and reviewing applications and stuff. And we'd have students who would come and rotate with us. And sometimes they would express emotion. And this is like psychiatry, right? So it's like fair enough that you're coming here. you're expressing your emotions, we're accepting of your emotions.

But then we still have this question in the back of our mind, is this person capable enough of regulating their emotions to do the job of a psychiatrist? Are they able to keep them somewhat contained? And it's fine to feel them. It's fine to let them out in the appropriate setting. But do you have that regulatory capacity? This is the big mistake that a lot of dudes made because we aren't taught how to emotionally regulate ourselves.

So when you share your feelings, you need to do so. showing somewhere between 25 and 50% of your emotions is the benchmark that I would give you all. So you don't want to say it like completely emotionless. What you want to do is offer some emotions, but don't go like north of 75% where things are like unable to be handled. Now, what are a couple of things that you can do to do that, right? Because we lack these emotional regulation skills. So the first thing that you can do is think through things and maybe even write them down

ahead of time. Oftentimes the biggest mistake that men make or avoidantly attached women who are CEOs that I've worked with. is that the first time they engage with these emotions is in the conversation. We like, you know, it's kind of like showing up for a marathon without training and then getting absolutely dumpstered. Instead, what we want to do is think through, okay, what am I afraid of? And there are a couple of good questions here.

What does this mean to me, whether it's meeting the parents, getting married, getting engaged, going on a trip, not going on a trip. What does this mean to me? What do I associate with it? Right. So answer those two questions. And then what are the feelings that this brings up? What am I afraid of?

Fear is oftentimes a really solid one. And then there are also a couple of other questions. So if you feel sad or hopeless or angry, ask yourself, what makes me feel sad? What makes me feel angry? What makes me feel angry about meeting my girlfriend's parents? So these are kind of the sequence of questions that you want to ask yourself. And then you want to answer those questions, ideally by writing it out. So once you write it out, this is really important too.

See, when you write something out, you understand it better. because when you just think about something, there's no sensory input. And if we think about a lot of what we learn, we learn through our senses. So when you write it out, you also read it, and it literally activates different regions of the brain where you receive the information that you're putting out. So that's why things like journaling and stuff can be very helpful. The other thing that we generally want to do is just regulate our emotions through more standard emotional regulation techniques.

This involves things like balancing the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. We teach things like alternate nostril breathing. yoga, Tai Chi, all that stuff is really great. You want to do some kind of mind-body, emotionally regulatory practice. We have tons of details on that. You can check out the YouTube channel. The trauma guide, Dr. Kay's guide of trauma, has a lot of lot of detail about emotional regulation and emotional mastery.

So you all can check that out if you want more information. Now, the third aspect of emotional availability is being able to communicate emotionally salient experiences. So this is about fear in the future. That's kind of step number one. and now we're going to talk about something else, which is when we live life, there are the events of life, and then there are the emotional level of those events. And we as men tend to not focus on that emotional level.

And if we want to give our partners emotional availability, we need to start focusing on the emotional level of things, not the practical level. So I'll give you all an example for my personal life. So I got engaged, and I called my brother. And I said, hey, bro, what's up? brother is like, not much, bro, what's up with you? This is like literally so close to the conversation. He said, hey, bro, I have some news for you.

I got engaged. And he's like, congrats, man. And I'm like, thank you, bro. And then he's like, hey, is someone planning your bachelor party? And I was like, no, I hadn't really thought that far. And he's like, do you want me to take care of it? And I was like, that'd be awesome. He's like, cool, man, I got you.

And then it's like, hey, did you watch that StarCraft 2 tournament, by the way? Like, oh, yeah. Or like, I found this great taco place. Like, you should definitely check it out. And then we're like done with the conversation. And then I went and I talked to my wife after this and I was like, you know, hey, I told, you know, I called my family. They know we're engaged. And then she's like, oh, like, did you talk to your brother?

And I was like, yeah, I talked to my brother. And he's like, what did he say? I was like, what do you mean? What did he say? She's like, what did he say? And I was like, I don't know. He said congratulations. And he's like, and she's like, and then what?

And then I was like, he asked if I have someone planning my bachelor party and I said, no. And he offered and I said, thank you. And she's like, what? So this is my brother, whom I love. We're very, very close. we're very emotionally bonded. There's no toxicity here. But this is just how we as men communicate, right? It's like, here is the information. So, like, also I saw a friend of mine from residency that I haven't seen in five years. And then she's asking me like, oh, what did you guys talk about? Like, how is he

doing? Like, what's going on? I was like, oh, he's got two kids. He's doing well. He likes his job. And then me and my friend, like, talked about things that are like relevant to us, which is like, okay, in this particular case, it's like when people engage in psychedelic experiences with the DMT, they start to see things like machine elves. Do you think that's real, not real. And we had a four-hour conversation about the nature of reality, psychedelics, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychosis. Like, this is what we did for four hours. We didn't talk about emotionally relevant things. And that's what, that's kind of like what we need to bridge. Okay. So as we have an experience, there's the practical level of the experience. Hey, bro, I got engaged.

Good job, bro. And then there is the emotional, like, relevance to that experience. And that's the level that we need to discuss. So how do we discuss things? on an emotional level. So this is going to sound kind of weird, but as a dude, what I want y'all to do is include things that are extraneous or superfluous and include things that are narcissistic.

So I know this sounds weird, but here's what I mean. So when I'm thinking about what to communicate, I communicate the important stuff. And then I actually actively remove a lot of the useless crap. And then I also don't want to be narcissistic. That's what we need to fix. We need to reverse that.

So our communication should be more superfluous and more narcissistic. So when my wife asks me, oh, like, what did your brother say? I say, okay, this is what happened. I was so nervous to tell him, you know, because I'm not sure if he likes you or doesn't like you. I was, like, so worried about how he would respond. And then when I told him, he said, congratulations. And then that made me feel amazing.

I felt like I was seen. I felt like I had his approval. I felt like he had my back and I got so excited. And then the next thing that happened is he asked me about the bachelor party. And I hadn't even thought about the bachelor party. I was a little bit worried. about bachelor parties and expectations and would they expect me to go to a strip club? I don't know if I'm comfortable with that. And then like, but thankfully he said he was, he's going to plan it. And I don't

think he's that kind of person. So I'm really looking forward to this bachelor party, which is going to be amazing and we're going to go to a lake and we're going to play D&D and we're going to play mafia. We're going to play mafia. We may go clubbing a little bit, but it's going to be really fun. And I've had these experiences with them before. And I'm really looking forward to superfluous details and narcissism. Here's how I felt. So practically what we want to do is, you know, for the things that you include, how did you feel before the thing? How did you feel after the thing? What did this person say? What did this person stay? And this is what the emotionally salient experience is. Because the crazy thing, if you're a dude, if you really stop and think about it, all that crap is true, right? Like,

we are worried about what will my brother think. We are worried about approval. We are afraid of this kind of stuff. And then we take all of these emotions that we have and we bury them. We keep them in a bottle deep inside us until our hopelessness becomes so powerful that it eventually overwhelms us. So this is actually really healthy for us too. It's just the way that we've been programmed it feels superfluous and narcissistic. So do those two things. That's what emotionally, that's what being, that's what describing or discussing emotionally salient experiences is like. So for whatever is going on in your life, share what how you feel about it, what are your fears, what are your concerns? And then, you know, ask those kinds of questions to your

partner as well. So when they say, like, hey, I got fired instead of saying, okay, how are we going to fix that? Say, like, how does that make you feel? Oh my God, I'm so sorry for you. So be able to discuss things on the emotional level. Now, we're going to go into a little bit more detail about how to do that. How do you discuss things on an emotional level? And this is where we're going to give you all a very powerful technique that we as psychiatrists all learn, which is called holding emotional space. So normally we have me and I am a human and there is another human over here. And men are something called instrumental problem solvers. So here's me. Here's the environment around me and the environment around me will send me a signal. And this signal will make me feel a

negative emotion. Now I'm feeling negative emotion. So then my way of fixing this is I'm going to take a action that changes my environment and then the signal is no longer being given to me. which then takes away the negative emotion. So basically what men do is like, if someone is bullying me, the way to deal with those emotions is to get them to stop by punching them in the face. If someone makes me feel ashamed of myself,

the thing to do is to never see them again, never lay eyes on them again, and never think about them again, right? We want to remove them from our life entirely. So our internal emotional environment is dictated by the external environment and the way that we fix this is by fixing the stuff around us. And another good example of fixing the environment is actually using substances.

So this is one of the reasons why men are more likely to get addicted to substances at a rate of somewhere between two and four times what women get addicted to, or the commonality of how often women get addictive. And the reason for that is because we don't know how to manage this in here. We have to fix something outside of us. So let's talk about holding emotional space. So let's say here's you and then here's your partner. and then what your partner does is your partner says, I had a bad day.

And then she expresses negative emotion. So this is her emotional state. And then what happens is because we are empathic, even though we try to suppress our emotions, when your partner says, I'm having a bad day and then they start crying, you feel bad too. Now you are experiencing negative emotion. So what do you do? Now that you experience negative emotion, you start to activate this complex. I got to fix it.

So then what happens is you give them advice. Here's how to fix it. If you fix it, what that means is that this stuff goes away. And if they feel better, then your negative emotion goes away. This is one of the biggest reasons why men try to help other people fix their problems. Because when someone else has a problem, I feel uncomfortable as a man. And the only way I know how to fix that discomfort is to help you fix it. Then you're happy.

Then from empathically, I'm happy. Everything is fixed. Instead, what we want to do is. is literally just hold space for the conversation. We don't need to do that. When our partner has negativity, what we're going to do is just share the negativity. We're going to say, oh, my God, that must be so hard for you.

We're not going to fix it. We are going to feel that negativity with them. And as you see right here, this is a super cool aspect of human emotions. When someone else shares their negativity with us, we actually absorb some of it and deflate their negative experience. you're actually fixing it by doing nothing but listening. So what I want y'all to do is tank the damage. You don't need to do any DPS, you're just going to tank it with them.

So you want to hold space for their emotions. That means when their emotions come out, you are going to be a gigantic reservoir for their emotions to come out and for you to absorb. Now, if you've worked on emotional regulation, which we talked about earlier, we already gave you all some references, then you'll be able to better handle those emotions. But you don't want to fix the problem.

you just want to hear what they have to say. So you can also use some reflective statements here. Oh my God, that must be so hard for you. I imagine this is how it made you feel. Can you tell me a little bit about how that made you feel? We just want to hold space for emotions. So what that means is we're not trying to fix anything. We're just creating space where we can have an emotional discussion.

And if you do this, it'll transform your life. Like this is a huge part of what oftentimes women are looking for for men. And even if you look at some studies and stuff, I think there's like studies all over the place. There are all kinds of flaws for it. But oftentimes what leads to a successful relationship is having a partner who understands your experience of life. And your experience of life is not just the details. It's a lot of the underlying emotions.

So if you're a man who's struggling to be emotionally available, there are going to be four things that we want you to do. So first thing we want to do is emotional intimacy is difficult because of the associations that we attach to various things like getting married. understand what those associations are and be able to discuss them. Second mistake that a lot of dudes make, share your emotions. Oh my God, I shared my emotions. Now that you shared your emotions with me, I'm breaking up with you. A lot of people can't handle our emotions. That's because we're pretty dysregulated.

And disregulated emotion tends to lead to disrespect. So you want to think through that stuff ahead of time so that when you share it, you can articulate your emotions without being an overwhelming amount of emotional energy. And remember what we just discussed about emotional empathy. If your emotions go from zero to 100 and you're very angry and sad, then your partner will experience that gigantic amount of emotion and it'll reflexively cause them to pull away because that's a lot to handle. So emotional dysregulation leads to emotional disrespect. Or it leads to disrespect, emotional disrespect. Third thing that we want to do is be able to have emotionally salient conversation.

So this is like talk about how you feel, what you were afraid of, all this kind of crap. How did that make you feel? What was your trip like? What did you enjoy about it? This is going to make you a better conversationalist. Like this is going to help you so much in every other dimension of your life as well. And the last thing to consider is holding emotional space. So that's kind of like a piece of the earlier one.

But how do you have an emotionally salient conversation? You don't need to fix anything. And the primary thing that I teach dudes to do is just tank the damage. You're going to feel uncomfortable. they're going to feel uncomfortable, but you're absorbing some of that negative emotion from them, and you're just going to hold the space for it. So it's my hope that if you all learn this stuff, it will make you more competitive in the sexual marketplace. It turns out that what a lot of human beings are looking for, and if you look at the majority of the relationships on the planet, it's not supermodels marrying supermodels.

What it usually is is like human beings who connect with each other, who feel like their partners, who feel like we're on the same team. I feel like this person has my, back. And having your back doesn't just mean dropping everything that you do and showing up when someone needs help. It also means understanding what your experience is. It also means helping this other person combat the loneliness of going through life by themselves and struggling with their problems, right? You're on their team. And oftentimes that's the most important thing for a relationship.