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Podcast

The Endless Pain of Emotionally Immature Partners - Mercedes Coffman -

Modern Wisdom

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  • How Avoidant Culture Rewires Dating
    • Avoidant culture rewards speed and novelty, which pushes people to minimise themselves and lower emotional standards to keep relationships.
    • Dating apps and instant-gratification systems amplify avoidance by incentivising dopamine-driven novelty over gradual emotional investment. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman 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. Chris Williamson Is that avoidant culture? Yes. Is that how you would define avoidant culture? Yes. Mercedes Coffman 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. (Time 0:00:06)
  • Emotional Unavailability Harms Your Nervous System
    • Dating avoidant people dysregulates your nervous system via cycles of approach, withdrawal, dopamine spikes and cortisol crashes.
    • This micro-grief leads to fatigue, mood and sleep disturbances when avoidance becomes repeated. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman 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. 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. (Time 0:02:01)
  • Why Emotionally Available People Get Penalised
    • Modern dating indirectly punishes emotionally available people because apps reward short-term dopamine and disposability.
    • Emotionally unavailable people thrive on novelty while emotionally available people seek consistency and follow-through. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman Yes. Yes. And 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. Why? 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. (Time 0:03:35)
  • Test Emotional Availability By Observing Patterns
    • Assess emotional availability by observing patterns not potential: watch patience, reactions to delay, and feedback handling.
    • Test for capacity by noting behaviour when there’s no immediate reward or when service is slow. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman 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. (Time 0:08:57)
  • Time Is The First Relationship Standard
    • Prioritise time, capacity, and emotional maturity when judging alignment: someone intelligent but chronically unavailable is misaligned.
    • Check willingness to invest time first, then their ability to sit with discomfort and manage rejection. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman 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 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. (Time 0:12:20)
  • MOP Framework To Avoid Early Attachment
    • Slow down attachment with the MOP framework: Match effort, Observe for patterns, Pace access to avoid biochemical addiction.
    • Avoid overgiving when chemistry hits and limit physical access until patterns emerge. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman 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 on 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. (Time 0:20:02)
  • High Desire With Low Effort Is A Red Flag
    • Desire that outpaces effort signals biochemical addiction rather than healthy connection.
    • When you justify bad behaviour as “busy” or “stress”, you’re likely mistaking chemistry for alignment. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman 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. Yeah. Chris Williamson 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 he didn’t mean it like that. He didn’t mean, I’m sure, because what he said about the thing, and it’s his mom. It’s his mom, you know, it’s because he’s got a thing. You go, okay, your ability be discerning gets worse and worse absolutely (Time 0:21:59)
  • Romantic Media Trains Us To Love Chaos
    • Rom-coms and romance culture inflate the value of intensity and unpredictability, teaching people to prefer chaos over stability.
    • Media conditions us to label nervous-system activation as ‘butterflies’ and mistake it for true compatibility. Transcript: Chris Williamson 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 going to 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. Mercedes Coffman Yeah. So, Notebook is pretty good. I think we would choose him. Chris Williamson 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 an 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 disaster. Absolutely. You were finessed by the notebook. (Time 0:34:23)
  • Choose Capacity Over Mere Readiness
    • Distinguish emotional readiness from capacity: desire alone doesn’t ensure someone can handle long-term relationship growth.
    • Prioritise partners who can endure conflict repair, consistency, and life stress without withdrawing. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman 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. (Time 0:40:01)
  • Ghosting Fuels Relationship Self-Sabotage
    • Ghosting normalisation increases fear of rejection and drives preemptive self-sabotage to avoid future pain.
    • People withdraw from dating pools, preventing growth of emotional capacity and worsening loneliness. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman 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 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. Chris Williamson 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. Yes. Mercedes Coffman And those people who can’t, they don’t ever grow their capacity. (Time 0:43:18)
  • Build Capacity By Sitting With Discomfort
    • Grow emotional capacity by sitting through uncomfortable conversations and stabilising your nervous system.
    • Use practices like meditation, disciplined exercise, and avoiding life overload to preserve capacity for connection. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman 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. 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. (Time 0:45:13)
  • Self-Trust Comes From Honesty And Emotional Language
    • Rebuild self-trust through honesty and relationship reflection; relationships mirror what you tolerate.
    • Develop nuanced emotional vocabulary so you can recognise feelings beyond basic labels and stop outsourcing internal validation. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman Of the ways is to always be honest with ourselves, right? So that requires self-reflections after every relationship, 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, 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 are 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 the 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. (Time 0:49:38)
  • Kindness Can Mask Deep Self-Abandonment
    • Overgiving often stems from past abandonment: kindness can be a mask for self-abandonment that increases illness and isolation.
    • Suffering breeds compassion, but chronic self-sacrifice harms physical and mental health. Transcript: Chris Williamson It’s a unique kind of self-harm though, because it’s one that society would see from the outside as something noble. Absolutely. Isn’t that so strange? Mercedes Coffman Absolutely. It’s so funny. They’re like, it’s so kind. So you’re so kind. And that’s, I love Dr. Gabor Mate. 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 anybody. 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. Chris Williamson 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. I said, 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 antisocial nature of making your displeasure known, of prioritizing yourself and the sort of pro-social nature of domesticating That and that usually means turning outward discontent (Time 0:52:21)
  • Don’t Expect One Person To Be Everything
    • Expecting one partner to provide both stability and extreme excitement is unrealistic; distribute excitement across career and hobbies.
    • Use safe relationships for base stability and seek novelty elsewhere to avoid chasing love-bombing intensity. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman 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 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. (Time 1:04:54)
  • Obsession Signals Uncertainty Not True Compatibility
    • Early obsession is driven by nervous-system activation and uncertainty, not by accurate information about a partner.
    • Limited data plus inconsistent signals produce limerence, which the brain mistakes for deep love. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman 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 messages, 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 isn’t (Time 1:07:41)
  • Who Falls Hardest Into Limerence
    • Limerence is an intense fixation fuelled by uncertainty and intermittent reward schedules, hitting introspective, empathic, and anxiously attached people hardest.
    • Highly imaginative types project fantasies onto sparse signals, making them vulnerable to addiction-like attachment. Transcript: Mercedes Coffman 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 this person. And that would qualify as limerence, which we’re seeing more and more nowadays. Chris Williamson Is there a certain type of person who’s more vulnerable to limerence? Yes. Mercedes Coffman 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 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 tend to fall for limerence because they build a story around the chemistry They feel for a person. (Time 1:14:22)