#07 Red FLAG or Red HERRING... Is His Trauma History A DEALBREAKER?

Summary
In this episode of The Tinder Project, hosts Mark and Teal explore the dynamics of online dating, sharing insights from their experiences with various dating apps. They discuss the effectiveness of different platforms, personal growth through dating, and the complexities of trauma in relationships. The conversation emphasizes the importance of understanding relationship skills and the impact of past trauma on current dynamics, encouraging listeners to approach these topics with discernment and compassion.

Takeaways

The effectiveness of dating apps can vary significantly.
Personal growth is a key benefit of dating experiences.
Trauma can be contagious and affect relationship dynamics.
It's important to assess how trauma impacts relationship skills.
Men often need a safe space to express their emotions.
Women should not feel responsible for fixing men's trauma.
Understanding the nuances of rejection can enhance dating experiences.
Being authentic can attract positive attention in dating.
It's crucial to communicate clearly about interest and boundaries.
Compassion and discernment are essential when dealing with trauma in relationships.

0:00 Introduction
1:03 Match Vs Bumble for a 57-Year-Old Client
7:08 Teal's Most Profound '1st-date' Learning
12:10 Mark's Most Profound '1st-date' Learning
19:26 HIS Trauma - Red FLAG or Red HERRING?
30:52 Book A Call To Speak To Us

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:03 Match Vs Bumble for a 57-Year-Old Client
• 7:08 Teal's Most Profound '1st-date' Learning
• 12:03 Mark's Most Profound '1st-date' Learning
• 19:26 His TRAUMA - Red FLAG or Red HERRING?
• 30:52 Book A Call To Speak With Us!

Transcript

[Speaker 1]
G'day and welcome to The Tinder Project, the podcast where a straight Aussie man attempts to survive 365 days dating online as an American woman. I'm your host, Mark Rosenfeld, Australia's dating coach for women. I'm here with my sidekick, self-love coach, Teal Elizabeth, and together we have one mission to make meeting good men fun and easy for you.

Let's give it a go. Can I survive 365 straight days dating online as a woman? What is our most profound single date learning?

And is a man who has a history of major trauma a red flag? Welcome back to The Tinder Project. It is fantastic to have you here.

I'm glad you joined us and I have someone very special with me. The amazing, the wonderful, the beautiful Teal Elizabeth.

[Speaker 2]
Hi guys. Good to be back.

[Speaker 1]
It's great to have you back Teal. How are you? Are you well?

[Speaker 2]
I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Yes.

[Speaker 1]
Good. Good. Well, we have a bit of an update on the project for you Teal.

I promised this for you last week. Please tell me all the details. Are you ready for this?

Okay. So guys, we went through June technically was still a warm-up month, but I want it to be a good warm-up month. Technically I started my clock on the 1st of July, but June was the warm-up month.

And so I said in June, I want to compare two different apps just to get a feel for the project and feel what I'm going to be doing for the next year. So I asked one of my clients for her permission. She is 57.

She's from Boston. And I said, Hey, we'll call her Linda. Hey, Linda, can I borrow two of your accounts please?

Or can I take two of them over as more to the point and run a warm-up of a Tinder project on that? She said, Mark, go for your life. So Teal, this part of the experiment was I did not actually want to take Tinder for this part because I just finished a different warm-up on Tinder.

So I wanted to jump over to Bumble and feel that out and compare it to Match.com. Slightly more mature age group. It's typically sort of common knowledge that Match would do better.

My hypothesis was though that some of the apps such as Bumble and Tinder are leaning towards a little bit of a more mature crowd as well, if nothing else from simply the sheer number and volume of users and that these apps would do pretty similarly in their performance. Um, well, my hypothesis was proven wrong, Teal.

[Speaker 2]
No way.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it was proven quite wrong. So across the month I ran both of these apps for the client. Now the rule was half an hour a day, no more than that on the app.

So I kept to that boundary and I was basically being the same person using the same profile. Everything else was pretty much the same. So here's what happened across the two apps.

Across, uh, we'll start with Match. Across Match, we spoke across the month. We, as in we chatted to 26 men, 26 men across the month of June.

And of those eight turned into phone calls for the client. Those are good numbers, I'd say. Pretty solid.

Pretty solid. It was about 33% and we viewed about 86 people to get that many. So 86, we basically had about 86 people.

We looked at, we had nine that ended up turning into essentially dates, phone dates.

[Speaker 2]
When you say looked at, are you saying matched with as well?

[Speaker 1]
No, just viewed. Literally just viewed. Just the very starting point, literally just viewed.

Matched with was the 26 basically that we chatted to. That's about 9% of the total that we viewed becoming chats and about 30-ish percent of the ones we're chatting to becoming phone calls. So pretty good.

And actually very similar to my numbers on Tinder the month before. About one third of chats turned into a phone call. Bumble was a completely different story.

Chats were not getting off the ground using the same strategy. The men were not as responsive. And in the end, despite multiple different attempts, we only ended up with one phone call for the month.

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
And this is under Linda's profile, correct?

[Speaker 1]
Both under Linda's, same profile, same everything else, same strategy. So we had about 10 times the success on Match compared to Bumble, which I did not expect. I thought Match might be a little bit better, but it was really interesting to see.

And I can't help but wonder, Bumble is changing their algorithm around at the moment to allow men to message first, which is a very interesting change after many, many years. Their original strategy was, well, we don't want to be Tinder. These women are getting their inbox overflowed.

We're going to have women control the inbox. And that seemed to help. And certainly lots of people appreciated that.

It's still a huge app. But now I find it interesting that they are foregoing that model and they're giving it up. And I suspect this is the reason.

I suspect women are becoming increasingly frustrated at men not taking more of the masculine role and have started to voice that. And we've seen a few Bumble protests recently and how poorly Bumble has handled it. And it does seem, at least from my experiment in this more mature age group, that in this case, the men were a lot less active.

[Speaker 2]
Interesting.

[Speaker 1]
What I suspect is also happening is Bumble is accentuating the effect that if your profile isn't an absolute standout, like if it's not in the top sort of 3% to 5% of profiles, the general type of guy that Bumble is going to attract is going to get you less responses than that same profile might on another app because Bumble leans a little bit towards those guys that go, oh, I want the woman to take the lead. If you're, or if you can't get your profile to be an absolute standout bombshell, I think Bumble is going to be real tough, especially in this age group.

So final results match close to 10 times as effective as Bumble for this month. We got significantly more dates, way better return on our time, and we had less guys to go through to get there.

[Speaker 2]
Wow. That is really, really interesting. I love that you're just beta testing exactly like this.

We can see real time what's going on. And I've always had that sneaking suspicion anyways about Bumble. I never actually encouraged or was excited about the Bumble style for exactly that reason.

It's not encouraging men to step up and lean in. And it's actually doing the opposite. It's encouraging women to be the initiators, which we're not wanting to encourage.

So it's interesting that they're actually switching their setup now. And I'm curious to see if that will change over time or if they've kind of already laid their bed with what they're known for, and now they're getting screwed.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I agree. It's been interesting watching their share price. It hasn't been great lately with other apps like Hinge taking over a bigger percentage of the market, but there's a lot to still be seen there.

So we will see what's in the future of Bumble there. But I do have to say, based on this experiment, I'm much more hesitant to recommend it to my more mature age group clients at the very least. And to be honest, a general group of clients in general, it's gone down my list a little bit.

Look, I still say I've seen success on all the apps, but I have to say being a woman in this experiment on Bumble, and then also I've been comparing it more recently to Hinge, Tinder, and even Match, I've seen a notable difference.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. And guys, we are not being affiliates for any of these programs.

[Speaker 1]
None of them are paying us anything.

[Speaker 2]
Although maybe we should.

[Speaker 1]
Maybe we should ask for that, guys. Like and subscribe, and then we can be an affiliate for someone who actually does a really good job bringing men and women back together. I want to move on.

You made a comment a couple of weeks back on the podcast and you said, well, I find dating as a wonderful personal growth exercise because it teaches you about yourself. I wanted to grab onto that for an episode because I loved that. And it's just one of the many results that we get from dating without necessarily meeting a partner today or tomorrow.

So my question today, the topic that I wanted to bring to the table is what has been one of your most profound learnings from a single date? And it can't be someone you ended up partnering with. It has to be someone where there wasn't a quote-unquote long-term relationship result.

It was just a short-term learning. What you got for me?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. So there's two learnings. I think one is the one that I learned that I was doing things wrong.

And one of them was learning the learning that I did things right. Right. So I kind of want to compare and contrast.

[Speaker 1]
Do share.

[Speaker 2]
So the one where I was doing things wrong, I was, I mean, anyone watching and listening, I used to be that woman that was just so over-initiating on everything. If I wanted something, I was going to go after it. I was going to make it happen.

I was going to get it right. So I remember one date, somehow I kept seeming to attract men that lived like two hours away. I think that was part of my emotional unavailability.

If you live far away, then I don't have to do so much. I don't have to worry about this actually being something. But I can still get all the nice yummy affection and attention.

[Speaker 1]
It's a geographical emotional safety barrier is what that is. Nicely done.

[Speaker 2]
But even still, even though I put up that safety barrier, I still was the one initiating all the time. And I just, I remember just there being this moment where I would reach out and I would try and initiate something. And I'd say, I'll drive to you.

I'll come to you. I'll make the plan. I'll make the date.

And just feeling that emptiness on the opposite side and hearing, and not even hearing him say anything, but just feeling the kind of feeling from him. Every time I would do that, just really in hindsight, I now see what a big learning that was for myself, of just how much I was in this leaning forward, desperate energy. Even though I thought I was being totally cool.

I was like, I got this. I'm a project planner. I love planning things.

I'm going to make this romantic. I thought I was doing everything right. But I could literally see now just the energetic pushback that was coming through as I was trying to make things happen.

So I think that that was a really important one in the early phases. And then later on, many, many moons, many, many years later, I remember there being a time I was living in a whole nother part of the state. And I just decided I was making new friends.

And I got invited into this friend group that had a bunch of men and women all hanging out together. They'd all been friends for a while. And I just decided, you know what?

I'm not going to try and make anything happen with any people in this friend group. I'm just going to show up and be my most authentic self and just see what happens. And it was so beautiful to see the shift and see how many men were just drawn to me in this friend group without me trying at all.

And I purposely took my brain out of the equation. I shut it off. I said, do not overthink or obsess about any one of these guys.

None of them are on limits. Like they're all off limits. And that attitude was so magnetic.

And I just remember that specifically with one of the guys that ended up taking me out and whining and dining me for a long time. We didn't end up together, but it was just such a shift in him pursuing me without me having to really do anything.

[Speaker 1]
So it was really how you absorbed, I can be safe and be chased and be okay. And I don't have to take, I don't have to poke it to make it happen, basically. I don't have to take full responsibility for this.

I can trust it and it will still happen.

[Speaker 2]
Yes, I can trust it and it can still happen. That is a beautiful way to articulate it. And I know that is such a thing that so many women struggle with, actually trusting if I don't do this, it will still happen for me, right?

Because it's like, if we don't focus on it, then how is it supposed to happen? But it's kind of counterintuitive, but that's exactly right.

[Speaker 1]
And often that's been their reality from the past, right? Is they've grown up in a world where they couldn't trust something would happen. To go a little deep here, there's been either a parent, a caregiver, or perhaps an ex where when they leaned back, nothing did happen and they actually couldn't trust the world.

So it's a new frame of reference and it can feel really very foreign sometimes to go, well, no, that doesn't make sense. When I lean back, the whole, you know, everything collapses, the whole world burns down. And it's kind of that idea that you can lean back and let the world burn.

And now, unlike when you're a child, you're gonna be much more okay and you're gonna be fine and you're gonna be safe. And then suddenly you go, oh my God, I can let the world burn a little bit. Not intervene, I'm all right.

And suddenly you go, great, I'm good where I am. And guys go, oh, she's good where she is. I want a part of that.

[Speaker 2]
Yes, yes. With the caveat being that you do actually have to be okay with who you are. And I think that that's the self-growth piece that's really necessary is that I get to actually lean back, not trying to make things happen with others in the outside world, but lean back into really grounding into my sense of self and security within me and then let the rest unfold.

[Speaker 1]
Good, I love that. Would you like to hear mine, Teal?

[Speaker 2]
I would.

[Speaker 1]
It's a little more superficial than yours, but it could be a good one for the listeners based on a man's experience. So as you know, I had a lot of anxiety and a lot of social anxiety, especially around women. And so when I was first starting to go out, I think it was about 50, 60 nights, I started getting more confident meeting people.

And it just, the whole concept of, okay, I can like potentially kiss someone or hook up with someone I've just met felt extremely foreign to me. And I kept getting into these situations where I'd actually meet women or groups of women and meet one that I was interested in and interact with them. And so my buddies often would be somewhere else in the bar or the club and this would go on for a while and then it'd take however long it took.

And then I'd leave and say, oh yeah, we swapped numbers. And the guys from a distance away would say, Mark, why did you not try to kiss her? She was practically like leaning and begging you.

I was like, was she? I don't know that she was, guys, I don't know. So after a while I started to think, well, maybe they're actually right here, but I couldn't bloody get myself to do it.

I was too shy. These women would give me signals. I'm like, I don't want to get rejected.

I'm too shy here. So eventually I gave my mate a hundred bucks and I said, if I do not attempt to kiss at least two women by the end of the night, you're keeping that, you promise? And that's what kind of got me over the threshold.

That particular night I did get rejected both times, but it taught me a very important lesson. That rejection is fine. That you're okay.

That it's no big deal. And so I took that lesson and it flowed, this is a date lesson specifically, it flowed into a date for me. And I was with this woman and she seemed interested.

I think I might have told her like a little bit of some of the story before. We were sitting on a park bench down by the river and she seemed to be really enjoying herself. So I'm thinking, okay, if she likes me, she's probably going to appreciate me at least trying, at least going for it.

So I went for it. She turned to cheat, no biggie. I kind of figured out that rejection was okay now.

But what shocked me and I felt a bit uncomfortable. I was like, oh God, this isn't a nightclub. But what shocked me is she seemed still very comfortable and she didn't really go anywhere.

So I'd made no big deal of it, kept talking about whatever. And then I think half an hour later, I went, all right, she's still here. She's still being kind of flirty.

I'm going to try again and get rejected again. I'm like, all right, she's definitely going now. I've lost her now.

I'm a creeper. I'm bad, whatever. She didn't go anywhere.

I'm like, what is this? Does she like me or not? I was very confused at this point, but I'm like, she's still here.

She seems fine. Okay. Half an hour later again, same bloody thing happened.

And this went on till the entire afternoon to the point where it became a joke inside my head. I'm like, am I like living in some sort of strange reality here where I get rejected and she still likes me? This happened, I swear to God, like six or seven times.

And I think it was about the eighth time. Five or six hours later, where this date was supposed to end after like two hours, she kissed me back and I went, oh, something really interesting just downloaded into my male psychology. Now keep in mind, this is like the fourth date I've ever been on.

So I'm very inexperienced at this point. So the big lesson for me was, and actually the date lasted all night. We ended up going home together.

We didn't have sex, but it was very intimate. And this whole experience, I never forgot it because it taught me if in doubt as a man, try. And up until that point, I'd been living in, if in doubt, don't try because you don't want to make her uncomfortable.

And I kind of realized that unfortunately as a man, we need to take that risk. Like women are not going to do it for us. We've got to figure out how to get over our stuff and try.

So that was a big one. And it's kind of controversial to say this. So I mean it in a good way.

But in this case, it taught me that sometimes no, in the right circumstances where she feels safe does mean not yet. And you have to read her body language. You have to read her signals.

But there are times when a woman is interested in you. And if she feels safe, where as a man, you need to read that no means not yet and adjust to her signals without just curling into a ball and rolling away. That was big for me.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, that takes a lot of emotional intelligence to be able to read those body signals. And I love how much you really did want to hold her in that place of safety. This was never coming from any sleaziness at all.

But that too, you were really holding yourself in that masculine presence, which she was wanting at the end of the day.

[Speaker 1]
Right. And it's interesting you say that because I wasn't actually attached to the outcome. And I think that was also why she felt safe because it didn't bother me.

I knew I wanted to kiss her, but I can honestly say it didn't phase me if I got a kiss or not. I was zero attached to the outcome. And I think women can pick that up in your energy if you're attached to getting something versus if you're just kind of speaking from your own truth, even if it's with your actions.

And that was a really important key for me to realize as a man.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. I have a curious follow-up question to that. Do you think you would have ever brought it up to her in that date, in that moment and been like, hey, just wondering here.

Or did you feel like it was better to just keep it under the radar and just keep trying?

[Speaker 1]
I think, no, I never would have done that by the time I wouldn't have the confidence. But I think I said something. I think I made a little joke like, like, damn it, that's fine.

That's all right. You know, kind of played it off as no big deal. Because to me, it actually wasn't a big deal and I wasn't too attached to it.

And by like the fourth time I went, that's all right, I'm good. So where are we walking now? And I just didn't make a big deal of it.

But no, I never thought to bring it up at the time.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Yeah. Because for me, I think in those kinds of moments, I tend to lean, just lean into the awkwardness and just be like, what's this awkwardness?

This is weird, right? But obviously everyone has their own style.

[Speaker 1]
And I would say I didn't find it awkward at the time. It was, we made it fun. So it was kind of playful.

I never felt like she got awkward or weird about it. And I think that was important.

[Speaker 2]
And another takeaway for ladies listening to this, let's just make it extra clear for men, whether we're interested or not. Let's not make them question because the poor guys, they're trying their hardest. They don't want to get rejected.

So if you are interested, make it well-known, make your hand available to be held, stroke their arm, do something to let them know that you're interested. And if you're clearly not interested, give the clear vibes and signals that you're not.

[Speaker 1]
I think it brings up an interesting topic, Teal, because sometimes there will be genuine uncertainty about the interest. And I think that's where, if you know you're interested, great. You can do the little triangle gaze or touch the arm as you say, whatever it is.

If you know you're not interested, great. You spend whatever time you get to spend there and say, thanks for your time. Probably wasn't feeling the connection, but it is that gray zone where you're not sure if you're interested yet, or maybe you're interested enough, but not so interested you want to kiss.

I think that's the sort of gray zone where it is important that the men as well have a good sense. And honestly, this just takes practice and awareness of women. I think that I've seen a lot of guys get coaching around this too.

It's like pick up on a woman's sort of senses to a degree. If you're not sure you can try as a man, and I think it's better to lean on the side of trying as opposed to not trying if you're genuinely unsure, but be ready to get rejected and handle it well and keep us safe.

[Speaker 2]
Yes, yes. Beautifully said. Well, I'm really curious to kind of transition into our topic of the week, which is all about trauma, but not, I know we talk a lot of, you know, and we handle a lot of women going through trauma, but I'm curious about what happens when men have been through trauma.

And do you think that if men have been through trauma in their past, Mark, that this is a red flag that women should run the other way from, or should they have compassion and open their hearts up to it?

[Speaker 1]
I love this question, Tia. Thank you for bringing it. So trauma, guys, can be contagious and it can spread.

If you have not had your needs met, or let's say a parent of yours hasn't had their needs met, and so they've had to push down the parts of themselves that had needs, then if you as a child have needs, then it can really flare that wound in the parent. And if the parent's not able to heal that wound, suddenly the parent instead will dismiss your needs and that's how trauma gets passed on. Trauma can also get passed on cross-generationally where let's say a man was cheated on by his ex, now he becomes very untrusting and controlling of you.

So you lose your autonomy being around him and then you get minimized because his trauma has not been fully healed. So trauma is dangerous and it is contagious. That being said, we all have trauma to a degree.

And this is very important. Some of the people who have been through the worst trauma on the planet come out as some of the best people. And in many cases, some people who have had what objectively might be seen as quite minor infarctions or trauma can be very, very messed up.

Now there's a lot of complex factors that can lead to how someone's affected by trauma. But I think, Teal, the biggest question that I come to with relationships at the end of the day, well, there's really two. It's number one, can you be confident that trauma isn't gonna get passed to you?

And the way you do that is you ask, how is that trauma affecting or not affecting his relationship skills? Because we should do a whole topic on post-traumatic growth. Actually, it doesn't get talked about enough.

But if trauma can be turned into growth, if someone can work through their trauma and if someone can figure out, oh, I had this trauma, now I need to completely relearn how to set boundaries. Now I need to completely relearn how to open my heart to a partner. Now I need to do conflict in a completely different way.

Sometimes trauma, it's like the Nike tick, if you guys can imagine it. Trauma can send you down, but it has the ability to shoot you back up if you can find post-traumatic growth from it. However, if it's not worked on, it can throw you down and just leave you down.

And so the big question I like to ask is, of course, is the trauma contagious? But we find that out by asking, how is it affecting or perhaps not affecting his relationship skillset? Can he show up to the difficult conversations?

How does he treat you when he's stressed? What does he do when he's triggered? What are his protective mechanisms when the trauma gets activated?

Because at that point, you'll be able to tell if they come blasting out at you and you become the collateral damage of his trauma, or if he's done the work to hold space for the trauma, to heal it, to work around it, to at least have some degree of, okay, I know I've got this and I'm going to be consciously aware of what it could do to me and I'm going to work on it so it's not going to spread to my partner.

That's the big key. So I guess to answer the question to you, and I'm curious to hear your take on this, I would call it an orange flag. It can definitely be red or even black.

And it unfortunately is a lot of the time, but it can also turn into a massive green one if it's handled the right way. And I think you need that subtlety of how is trauma being activated for this person? When is it being activated?

And how does it relate to their relationship skills to answer that question?

[Speaker 2]
I couldn't agree more. I love the way you articulated that. And I think just what I'm hearing is like really having discernment, not just running the other way as soon as you notice it, but just seeing how is it affecting their relationship skills, like you said.

I think one thing that I think is important to add to this too is that sometimes women can get into the place of wanting to rescue men and wanting to change them. And so it's really, it's an important thing to just be even more discerning about not only how are they able to move through their own trauma, but are you coming in to make them feel better about themselves or feel like you can kind of fill that void that you're seeing within them? I think that trauma can be a really beautiful thing, like you said, in giving both people an opportunity to be on this self-development track.

And if a man has moved it and moved through it in a healthy way, it's actually one of the most important parts of a relationship is how you both can relate to what you've been through and bond you even more so together and be able to continue to grow in your relationship together because you know the skills and the tools. But yeah, I think everything you mentioned about, it's either gonna be something that you can move through together or it's gonna pull you down, like you said, contagious. I've never heard that reference point before, but I think that's a great way of putting it.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, well said, Teal. And I just wanna highlight that point as well. It's not your problem.

And if you've got fixed tendencies, if you tend to take on others' difficult emotions, that's an emotional boundary you're gonna have to set for yourself, which is, I can hold space for this. And look, if your partner opens up to you about trauma, the last thing you wanna do is say, well, it's not my problem. You've gotta handle it yourself.

You wanna hold space. You're not your partner's therapist, but let's be honest. One of the main benefits of going to therapy is to have a safe space just to talk to someone and not feel judged.

You could basically have a friend or a therapist and it's not that much difference. The point of it is to go to have a safe space and not feel judged. So you also don't want your partner to bring up a trauma or something very vulnerable and then sort of snort at it or go, oh, well, it's your problem, or say, oh, it doesn't matter, harden up, buttercup.

Those things are just gonna make him push it back into the corner and it's gonna be very, very hard to get it out of that corner if it gets pushed down by you and your relationship. So if he brings it up, sometimes it can be hard to hear. Sometimes it might activate stuff in you.

I had a client where that happened recently and she really struggled to hear it because it was bringing up all this stuff for her and she had to go back to her man the next day and basically say, hey, my reaction when you said that, it was absolutely not shaming you. There was nothing wrong with what you said. In fact, I appreciated your honesty.

My reaction, unfortunately, was because some of mine got activated as well. And that's my stuff to deal with. It's nothing you did wrong.

And I really appreciated you bringing that up. So you still wanna hold a safe space for it? If you can, you can be curious about it and understand it and that'll give you good information for your intuition as to whether or not, oh, this could really affect his relationship skills or whether he's done some work around it, work through it.

So hold an open, safe space. But remember, at the end of the day, it's not your problem. You can support him on working on it himself and just holding a safe space is helpful with that.

But if you're a fixer type, if you tend to go in and find the broken ones, this is not your place. It's his trauma. It's his problem.

It's his thing to work through. That doesn't mean you don't make it safe, but you're not the one to fix it. Very important.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. And I think to add to that too, there is such a beauty in that divine feminine energy that can hold a man in so much space, a safe space to drop into his heart space. And honestly, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what men really are craving and desiring in a partnership.

They're wanting that safe space from a woman.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Cause we can't get that from our buddies most of the time. I sort of have one buddy where I can be really, you know, in my feelings and not feel judged for it.

But as men, we don't have a ton of people who are like that. As women, you tend to, it's your forte. You talk about your feelings with your girlfriends.

You process things verbally. Most men don't really have that place. They may, if they go to therapy, they may, if they have a best friend who's more emotionally open-minded.

But a lot of times, and there's some biological precedent for this, you know, emotions are seen by other male groups as not helpful. They can be harmful in war. They can make you vulnerable.

There's various reasons why male groups do not promote the use of emotions and connection the same way a female group would. So in many cases, for many men, and this actually goes back to why men appreciate their former relationships often so much more than women. Because in many cases, many men, it's the girlfriend, the wife is the only place they have that can hold that wide emotional space where they can just sort of dally around in it and explore a little bit and not feel judged, not feel that they're incompetent or weak.

For most men, you can't really do that around your buddies without being made fun of. So that's a beautiful safe space you create. Just to highlight Teal's point here, it's why it's so important that you do that emotional, feminine energy work, because a man is very rarely going to feel safe if his emotional breadth is wider than yours.

You want to be able to hold that space for him.

[Speaker 2]
And with that being said, also, we don't want to pry because this is another part that I hear from women. They're like, oh, I just want to open him up. I just want to get in there.

I just want to hear it all. Like, tell me all your trauma. I want to be here for it.

Right. We have to let that open up naturally and organically.

[Speaker 1]
Is that the fix it energy coming in? If I know it, I can be useful to him. I can be, you know, I can fix it.

[Speaker 2]
I can be necessary. Or I think just craving that deep connection, that real deep heart to heart bonding moment. Like we just thrive in that kind of energy.

And men are not necessarily going to be the ones to jump in and be like, let me tell you all my trauma on the first date. So lots of times, volunteering little bits of vulnerability of your own first is a great way to be able to just test and see the waters. Does he have the capacity to go there without fully prying and digging into his heart space is a great kind of little tool.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. You going into your vulnerable emotions, even if it's just a touch, talking about a time you felt sad or a time you felt scared or a time you felt guilty. You putting that out there makes that space safe for him to go, maybe I could go there too.

Because if she's already gone there, then she's unlikely to judge me for going there as well. So he feels safe to kind of, it's a little bit like Teal, I talk about the physical, emotional paradox, which is men tend to explore the physical space and make the physical space safe. And it's like, if you're in a dark alley or a dark room, you want the man to kind of like open all the closets, you know, look at stuff.

And then once he's done that, you're like, all right, I'll go around in here, even if it's a little dark, it's cool. With emotional world, the shoe is on the other foot, which is when you've shown that emotional breadth, a man will tend to go, okay, all right, I'll push around with a little sadness. So we'll see what that's like.

All right, maybe I'll go into a little fear, we'll see.

[Speaker 2]
I love how you explain that, it's beautiful.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, you as a woman though, make that space first. And then he doesn't feel like the feminine or like he's going to be judged or called a pussy or anything when he goes there with you.

[Speaker 2]
And I will say, ladies, that is the most juicy feeling, to just be in that space with them, to make them feel safe. It is one of my...