Latest / D/s and BDSM Communication Archives • Loving BDSM / Emotional Intelligence and Power Exchange

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Emotional Intelligence and Power Exchange · D/s and BDSM Communication Archives • Loving BDSM

• 0:10
  You're listening to the Loving BDSM podcast episode
• 0:13
  four seventy three. Kayla Lords here with the
• 0:15
  one, the only you're giving me another look
• 0:18
  even though this is now our second take.
• 0:19
  John Brownstone.
• 0:22
  What the hell, man?
• 0:24
  I can't look at you? No. You can
• 0:26
  look at me, but I don't think that
• 0:28
  expression is supposed to be on your face
• 0:30
  when you
• 0:33
  do.
• 0:37
  Anyhoo. Anyway, this week,
• 0:39
  we're talking about emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, and
• 0:42
  what any of that has to do with
• 0:44
  power exchange.
• 0:45
  Welcome to the Loving BDSM podcast. If this
• 0:47
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  Okay. Before we get into this week's topic,
• 1:33
  which is very note heavy Mhmm. I took
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• 4:39
  Y'all,
• 4:40
  only YouTube folks can see it. My eyes
• 4:42
  are disappearing
• 4:44
  the longer I talk. I just it hit
• 4:46
  me out of nowhere,
• 4:56
  okay. So the concept of emotional intelligence, emotional
• 4:59
  regulation,
• 5:01
  which is a form of emotional intelligence
• 5:04
  for YouTube folk,
• 5:06
  the the screen went blank again. We know.
• 5:08
  JB's fixing it. I'm gonna keep talking.
• 5:12
  Emotional regulation comes from some level of,
• 5:16
  emotional intelligence.
• 5:18
  We're gonna talk about what those things are
• 5:20
  based on the resources
• 5:21
  that I found that seemed credible,
• 5:28
  while also then
• 5:30
  talking about how that would pertain to power
• 5:32
  exchange. So we're gonna discuss specifically emotional intelligence,
• 5:36
  and then we're gonna talk about, emotional regulation.
• 5:39
  And in between all of these explanation
• 5:42
  kind of things,
• 5:44
  then we will talk about how the hell
• 5:46
  that would relate to power exchange.
• 5:49
  All the links that I used for resources,
• 5:53
  they are linked in the places
• 5:55
  down below in the description box for YouTube
• 5:57
  folks, in the show notes page for podcast
• 6:00
  listeners.
• 6:02
  And the show notes page does live on
• 6:04
  our website.
• 6:06
  And if you are a if you're subscribed
• 6:09
  to our email newsletter, you get a link
• 6:10
  to the show notes page every week.
• 6:13
  Maybe not this week. I might be out
• 6:14
  of I'll be out of town. We'll figure
• 6:16
  it out. Fucking hell. We'll figure it out.
• 6:20
  So let's
• 6:22
  talk about what
• 6:23
  emotional intelligence
• 6:26
  is. I'm gonna try and give JB a
• 6:28
  second because I want him to be listening
• 6:31
  and being able to focus, and he's having
• 6:33
  to do other things and play tech support.
• 6:40
  So
• 6:42
  and now I'm pausing. Somebody has said that
• 6:46
  sound is gone,
• 6:48
  but I see the green bar moving.
• 6:52
  Okay. JB just held up his finger to
• 6:54
  me. Get there. He's doing his thing.
• 6:56
  I'm stalling
• 6:58
  badly.
• 7:01
  I have audio fine. Okay. And silent confirms
• 7:04
  she has audio as well. And podcast listeners
• 7:06
  are like, well, we've been have fucking audio.
• 7:08
  I know. Y'all are special,
• 7:10
  in the good kind of special. Okay.
• 7:12
  So
• 7:14
  I I don't know why that is switching
• 7:16
  out all of a sudden like that. But
• 7:18
  Yeah. It's gonna be a fun roller coaster
• 7:20
  for Away we go. YouTube video. Okay.
• 7:23
  Let's talk about what
• 7:25
  how emotional intelligence is defined
• 7:29
  and then what it sort of looks like
• 7:31
  in practice Okay.
• 7:33
  And in relationships. And we're gonna start with
• 7:36
  emotional intelligence and then we're gonna go into
• 7:38
  emotional regulation.
• 7:39
  Okay? So emotional intelligence. One of the first
• 7:42
  places from, a site called helpguide.org.
• 7:47
  Emotional intelligence is your ability to identify and
• 7:50
  manage your emotions to improve relationships, manage stress,
• 7:53
  make better decisions, and enhance your personal and
• 7:56
  social well-being.
• 7:58
  The Gottman Institute defines emotional intelligence, which is
• 8:01
  also
• 8:02
  known as EQ
• 8:04
  as opposed to IQ, y'all.
• 8:06
  EQ? In relationships is being able to recognize,
• 8:09
  understand, and manage your own emotions and to
• 8:12
  attune to your partner's emotions. It's not just
• 8:14
  about staying calm or being a, quote, good
• 8:16
  communicator.
• 8:17
  This is about noticing what you're feeling, making
• 8:20
  space for your partner's experience, and navigating emotional
• 8:23
  moments with care and intention,
• 8:27
  which sounds very sweet, and I like like
• 8:28
  it. Mhmm. That definition is delightful and doesn't
• 8:31
  really,
• 8:33
  leave room for the times when you also
• 8:35
  snap at your partner,
• 8:37
  or you you get your feelings hurt by
• 8:39
  tone, or you're, like, in a room somewhere
• 8:41
  going, why did I respond that way? Like,
• 8:44
  that's the lived part of any level of
• 8:46
  emotional intelligence.
• 8:48
  So what does emotional intelligence look like? It
• 8:51
  is noticing that your partner is
• 8:56
  feeling anxious while they're sharing. You know, you're
• 8:59
  talking about desires, wants, kinks. Here's the things
• 9:02
  we wanna do, and they're anxious about it.
• 9:04
  Right? You covered my notes, and I need
• 9:06
  those. Oh, sorry.
• 9:09
  And then you as the
• 9:11
  ideally emotionally intelligent partner, not only noting that,
• 9:14
  okay, they're clearly anxious, but then finding ways
• 9:18
  to
• 9:19
  help them express themselves, giving them space to
• 9:22
  kind of work through some of that.
• 9:24
  Doms with subs who find it very hard
• 9:26
  to say what we want,
• 9:28
  if you are getting that information out of
• 9:30
  your partner with any amount of care
• 9:33
  and they still like you at the end
• 9:34
  of that conversation,
• 9:35
  I promise you we're exhibiting some level of
• 9:38
  emotional
• 9:39
  intelligence.
• 9:40
  Half of it is just noticing that they're
• 9:43
  not speaking up. They're not saying something probably
• 9:46
  because of some level of anxiety.
• 9:48
  Using empathy and communication with a partner when
• 9:51
  they're upset about something and that's within or
• 9:53
  they're upset about something happening in the relationship
• 9:56
  or something happening outside of the relationship. Right?
• 9:59
  You
• 10:00
  it's it's a matter
• 10:02
  of noticing
• 10:04
  even if you don't completely understand, trying to
• 10:06
  understand,
• 10:07
  expressing
• 10:08
  and
• 10:09
  and feeling empathy towards your partner,
• 10:12
  a thing that
• 10:14
  the relationship side of my algorithm on Instagram
• 10:17
  likes to has reminded me of a few
• 10:18
  times is you can have empathy for a
• 10:21
  partner, you can validate their feelings and you
• 10:24
  can still disagree with them. So that's like
• 10:26
  you're in the middle of an argument and
• 10:27
  you're like, they are flat ass fucking wrong
• 10:30
  but they're clearly upset and you care about
• 10:32
  them and you want this relationship to keep
• 10:34
  working and so
• 10:35
  you express empathy, you know? That must be
• 10:38
  hard. That must hurt. That you know?
• 10:41
  And, yeah, I could see why you would
• 10:42
  feel that way. And yet you could do
• 10:44
  all that and still think,
• 10:46
  Kayla is a crazy bitch, and I do
• 10:47
  not know why she's crying right now.
• 10:52
  That age old question.
• 10:57
  And then emotional intelligence in practice is identifying
• 11:00
  and managing your own emotions
• 11:03
  and stress
• 11:04
  to reduce or avoid escalating a situation, like
• 11:07
  an argument. There goes the camera again.
• 11:13
  So,
• 11:14
  we have this I I go through
• 11:17
  this mostly frequently these days because I don't
• 11:19
  want to have an argument with JB. I
• 11:22
  don't I don't want us to fuss with
• 11:24
  one another. I don't I don't want any
• 11:26
  of that.
• 11:29
  And so when I can feel that kind
• 11:32
  of coming up within me, I can feel
• 11:34
  it in my body. I can, you know,
• 11:35
  get intense. I can hear it in my
• 11:37
  voice.
• 11:39
  Most of the time we're not arguing about
• 11:41
  anything of that of that matters. Right? Our
• 11:44
  argument is something either silly or it's not
• 11:47
  actually about the moment we're stressed about something
• 11:49
  else. And when I can sense that within
• 11:51
  myself,
• 11:53
  then I'm doing my best to stay calm
• 11:55
  to maybe I remove myself.
• 11:58
  Maybe I just change my tone a little
• 12:00
  bit because
• 12:02
  everybody in a relationship
• 12:03
  knows or you will find out at some
• 12:05
  point. Sometimes it's not what's happening. It's the
• 12:08
  tone you think you hear in your partner's
• 12:10
  voice that you are. We don't like that
• 12:13
  tone to come out of their mouth and
• 12:14
  now we're fussing at one another
• 12:17
  and it's not actually about anything. So,
• 12:20
  you know, emotional intelligence is recognizing what you're
• 12:23
  feeling
• 12:24
  and then
• 12:26
  without invalidating yourself or repressing
• 12:29
  anything or denying your own
• 12:32
  reality or feelings or anything,
• 12:35
  it's
• 12:36
  sort of I don't want to say self
• 12:37
  soothe, but it's a way to sort of
• 12:39
  acknowledge those emotions and go wait there's a
• 12:41
  better way to handle this moment and I,
• 12:44
  as the person who
• 12:45
  can sense what's happening,
• 12:47
  don't want this to escalate. So I will
• 12:50
  change my tone, remove myself, whatever, whatever.
• 12:54
  Poor
• 12:55
  JD is clicking
• 12:58
  buttons. Can I thank you? I can drive
• 13:00
  again. Okay.
• 13:01
  Does
• 13:02
  does any of what I've described before I
• 13:04
  know you've had to run a rush around
• 13:05
  doing tech support. Do do I start making
• 13:08
  a lot more sense
• 13:11
  just hearing what emotional intelligence could look like?
• 13:15
  Have I been managing JB since the day
• 13:17
  we got together? Kind
• 13:19
  of. Kind
• 13:20
  of.
• 13:22
  I don't think it's uncommon for in a
• 13:25
  relationship for one of you to maybe have
• 13:27
  a higher
• 13:28
  level of emotional intelligence,
• 13:30
  whether that's
• 13:32
  something innate within you and that, you know,
• 13:34
  you had somehow a great childhood and your
• 13:37
  parents brought that out in you and here
• 13:39
  you are as a fully,
• 13:41
  formed adult and you can just you can
• 13:43
  move through the world with some level of
• 13:44
  emotional intelligence. Some of us, we had to
• 13:44
  fight for it.
• 13:52
  Crap. We had to reteach ourselves because
• 13:55
  our you know, the way we were raised,
• 13:58
  there was no emotional intelligence.
• 14:01
  And, certainly, nobody teaching me emotional regulation when
• 14:04
  we get to it. Oh my lord.
• 14:07
  But
• 14:08
  the first time I heard about emotional intelligence,
• 14:10
  it was
• 14:11
  I think it was in college years
• 14:14
  because it was
• 14:16
  the I can't remember. I don't know where
• 14:18
  it comes from originally. Like, who started saying
• 14:21
  emotional intelligence,
• 14:22
  a k a EQ.
• 14:24
  But it was sort of a way to
• 14:26
  push back against IQ,
• 14:29
  the intelligence quotient,
• 14:31
  being the only way to
• 14:34
  map intelligence,
• 14:35
  to be intelligent. Like, there are all kinds
• 14:37
  of different ways
• 14:38
  to,
• 14:40
  have understanding
• 14:41
  of not just concepts, ways of being, how
• 14:44
  to move through the world. And I always
• 14:46
  liked the emotional
• 14:47
  one because it was like, oh, yeah. You
• 14:49
  understand
• 14:50
  what's happening to you and maybe why if
• 14:52
  you're lucky and you can work through it.
• 14:53
  But it was not been until the last
• 14:56
  from from my algorithms, probably five to ten
• 14:59
  years that I've seen it
• 15:01
  dissected like this and really, like, pulled apart.
• 15:04
  And some of us are doing it and
• 15:06
  we don't know we're doing it. And some
• 15:07
  of us,
• 15:10
  don't think about our emotions. And I'll tell
• 15:12
  you right now that's probably a problem.
• 15:15
  What is what emotional intelligence is not,
• 15:18
  it's not repressing your emotions.
• 15:20
  You are not,
• 15:23
  working through something
• 15:24
  in an emotionally intelligent way if what you're
• 15:27
  telling yourself is don't feel it. Just push
• 15:29
  it down. If you make it go away,
• 15:31
  it's not there anymore. Look. I'm calm. I've
• 15:33
  clearly and we'll get to it. Regulated my
• 15:35
  emotions. No. You have not. You have repressed
• 15:37
  them. They will come out
• 15:39
  when you least expect it.
• 15:41
  They it will be ugly. It will not
• 15:42
  be what you mean. And if you are
• 15:44
  in a power exchange, it will a 100%,
• 15:47
  impact your relationship and can a 100% impact
• 15:50
  your power exchange.
• 15:52
  If your repressed emotions burst out of you
• 15:55
  when you least expect it, well, now you're
• 15:57
  yelling about a thing that isn't even worth
• 15:59
  yelling about because you're not yelling about the
• 16:01
  thing right here in front of you. You're
• 16:02
  yelling about the thing that didn't get resolved
• 16:05
  six weeks ago. Right? Or that's happened eight
• 16:08
  times, which you've never just sat down, owned
• 16:11
  your own emotions, talked it out with your
• 16:12
  partner, had them hear you, had them reciprocate,
• 16:15
  done the back and forth, the work, the
• 16:17
  emotional work of this is pissing me off.
• 16:19
  Okay. Is it is there something I need
• 16:19
  to do? Is it something you? It you
• 16:19
  know, what is it? How do we repair?
• 16:22
  Something I need to do? Is it something
• 16:23
  you it you know, what is it? How
• 16:24
  do we repair? How do we make it
• 16:26
  work?
• 16:26
  And the next thing you know, you're, like,
• 16:28
  standing in your kitchen crying about, I don't
• 16:30
  know,
• 16:31
  paper napkins and that's not what you're actually
• 16:33
  upset about.
• 16:36
  So emotional intelligence is very important. It is
• 16:40
  I don't like it being called intelligence
• 16:42
  Mhmm. Because and I'm sure not everybody feels
• 16:44
  this way about that term.
• 16:46
  The way I have sort of been brought
• 16:49
  up to think about intelligence is like it's
• 16:51
  some sort of innate thing that it's not
• 16:53
  skills based and you don't learn it. You
• 16:54
  just are it.
• 16:56
  And that's not true at all. How about
• 16:58
  instead maybe emotional awareness?
• 17:01
  I think that there's something to it. I
• 17:03
  don't think intelligence is a bad word. I
• 17:05
  do think that what it might do for
• 17:08
  people who have that kind of similar thought
• 17:10
  that I have about
• 17:12
  there's something being innate to intelligence. There's not.
• 17:14
  Not really.
• 17:15
  Is that it is a skill that you
• 17:17
  can learn. You can learn maybe with the
• 17:19
  help of a a therapist,
• 17:21
  maybe just by reading a couple of books.
• 17:24
  I don't know. You can learn how to
• 17:27
  acknowledge your own emotions, sit with your own
• 17:29
  emotions,
• 17:31
  kind of figure out, wait. Is that a
• 17:33
  helpful way to handle the situation? Maybe I
• 17:35
  shouldn't just scream my full head off at
• 17:38
  a partner.
• 17:40
  Maybe that's not helping anything. Right?
• 17:43
  So I I say that to say that
• 17:46
  if you
• 17:47
  do not see yourself in these definitions air
• 17:49
  quote those because there's these are not the
• 17:51
  only sources around. There's lots of things said
• 17:53
  about emotional intelligence. If you don't see yourself
• 17:56
  in any of this, it's not a hopeless
• 17:58
  case. It is a thing that can be
• 18:00
  learned. You'll have to be bad at it
• 18:02
  before you get good at it.
• 18:04
  It might always be tough, you know. There's
• 18:06
  sometimes it's just how we're wired. It's not
• 18:08
  ease these things are not easy.
• 18:11
  Sometimes we need somebody who can walk us
• 18:13
  through it, you know,
• 18:15
  a therapist or
• 18:17
  a trusted partner or somebody who gets it.
• 18:19
  Right?
• 18:21
  But I just feel like it's important to
• 18:23
  point out. It is a skill. You can
• 18:25
  learn emotional intelligence.
• 18:27
  Now,
• 18:29
  according to the Gottmans, I we've been talking
• 18:31
  about the Gottmans a lot in the past
• 18:34
  probably year or so
• 18:37
  they've been doing decades of research on couples.
• 18:40
  This is what, to the Gottmans, emotional intelligence
• 18:43
  can look like in a
• 18:46
  You get through disagreements without lashing out or
• 18:49
  shutting down.
• 18:50
  We still work on that, y'all.
• 18:53
  You show up for each other emotionally, especially
• 18:56
  during stressful times, which is when we need
• 18:58
  it most.
• 18:59
  That can look like
• 19:01
  I'm not doing it perfectly right now. JB
• 19:03
  is stressing out about this tech stuff. So
• 19:05
  my job is to not get in his
• 19:06
  damn way and to kinda stay calm. Right?
• 19:09
  If I start getting stressed out while he's
• 19:11
  stressed out, now we're all freaking out and
• 19:14
  it's not good for anybody.
• 19:17
  To be able to express your feelings in
• 19:19
  ways that feel constructive and respectful.
• 19:21
  That's
• 19:22
  that's a good skill to have in general.
• 19:24
  That's part of good clear communication, which is
• 19:26
  hopefully a skill you're working on in your
• 19:28
  power exchange anyway.
• 19:31
  I think
• 19:32
  from my personal experience, that has been the
• 19:34
  hardest one, expressing my feelings
• 19:38
  in a way that feels constructive and respectful.
• 19:40
  Not the respectful part. Mhmm.
• 19:42
  It's more the owning my own feelings, naming
• 19:44
  them for myself because what'll happen is I
• 19:47
  have had a couple of moments like this
• 19:49
  recently where I'll feel the emotion and my
• 19:52
  brain will tell me, you shouldn't feel that.
• 19:54
  What is wrong with you? That's stupid. That's
• 19:56
  this and that. And now I've shut myself
• 19:59
  down from just this sense of shame. How
• 20:01
  the hell am I supposed to talk about
• 20:02
  it with JB if that's even necessary?
• 20:05
  Sometimes I have feelings that don't there doesn't
• 20:07
  need to be a debrief. We don't have
• 20:09
  to talk about it. I will get into
• 20:11
  it. I need to regulate my damn self
• 20:13
  and then we'll be fine.
• 20:17
  This one is a harder one for some
• 20:19
  people and I know that it's a thing
• 20:21
  that takes time to learn, which is understanding
• 20:23
  your partner's emotional needs without always needing them
• 20:27
  spelled out.
• 20:28
  I think some people, based on wiring, might
• 20:31
  need them spelled out until their brain catches
• 20:33
  on to the pattern. Or if the pattern
• 20:35
  changes within their partner and their partner is
• 20:38
  reacting in a way they've not seen before,
• 20:40
  they might still need it spelled out. But
• 20:42
  there's a difference between, okay.
• 20:46
  I'm not
• 20:47
  I don't
• 20:49
  there's a difference between it taking longer to
• 20:51
  learn a skill and needing more help getting
• 20:54
  there versus not caring at all in the
• 20:56
  first place and having been told what this
• 20:59
  means, what this looks like, why your partner
• 21:01
  is feeling emotional and not giving a crap
• 21:03
  to to retain the information
• 21:05
  versus, wait,
• 21:07
  naming and understanding and seeing emotions is not
• 21:09
  always easy for me. So I'm gonna need
• 21:12
  like a cheat code for this. I'm gonna
• 21:14
  need we're gonna need to talk about it
• 21:16
  more in-depth until Sure. I mean, you know,
• 21:18
  even even with you, we do this to
• 21:20
  each other, you know, can tell something's wrong,
• 21:24
  you know, you haven't said anything. I'm like,
• 21:26
  you know, is everything alright? Is there anything
• 21:28
  you wanna talk about? Mhmm. Mhmm.
• 21:31
  The other one and I
• 21:33
  I didn't think that we did this and
• 21:34
  then I did this just earlier today and
• 21:36
  I went, oh look at me, which was
• 21:38
  is,
• 21:39
  emotional intelligence, what it looks like in relationships,
• 21:41
  staying curious and open minded even when things
• 21:44
  get tense. Now I think I know for
• 21:47
  myself, maybe it's because I can be a
• 21:48
  little literal sometimes. I think about things getting
• 21:50
  tense. I'm in relation to a relationship. I'm
• 21:53
  thinking of, oh, we're in an argument, and
• 21:54
  that's why it's tense. Y'all,
• 21:56
  she gets tense all the time. It has
• 21:58
  nothing to do with you and your partner
• 22:00
  going at it. JB was tense earlier. I
• 22:02
  do not remember the situation now. That's what
• 22:05
  happens when you have Swiss cheese for brains.
• 22:07
  And
• 22:08
  I could feel his tension and my
• 22:12
  gut instinct most of the time with JB
• 22:14
  is I wanna try and fix something,
• 22:16
  which
• 22:18
  is not using my emotional intelligence skills sometimes
• 22:21
  because what JB wants is not for me
• 22:23
  to fix something. He just needs to feel
• 22:25
  his feelings, and then we'll work it out
• 22:27
  or he'll work it out.
• 22:28
  Something was happening, and I could sense that
• 22:31
  he was
• 22:32
  not stressed like to a a max point,
• 22:34
  but like rising tension.
• 22:37
  And what I did,
• 22:38
  I just asked a damn question. I didn't
• 22:40
  swoop in like I knew the answer. I
• 22:42
  didn't try to offer a fix.
• 22:45
  I didn't
• 22:48
  beg or ask
• 22:49
  questions
• 22:50
  with, how are you feeling? Is everything okay?
• 22:53
  Like, some of those I do those out
• 22:54
  of an instinct of, oh my gosh. I
• 22:56
  have to fix this problem. I can't let
• 22:57
  my daddy be upset about anything. Yes. The
• 22:59
  fuck I can. He's a grown man. He'll
• 23:01
  be fine. We'll work through it.
• 23:03
  She said to everybody else who can relate
• 23:05
  to that.
• 23:06
  And I asked a question about the situation.
• 23:09
  JB answered it. And while answering it, I
• 23:12
  felt the tension come down. Like, he calmed
• 23:14
  down a little bit because, like, don't know.
• 23:15
  I don't know if the question was something
• 23:16
  you could work through or it just helped
• 23:18
  you, like,
• 23:20
  almost did that break in your mind between
• 23:22
  rising tension and, oh, let me just provide
• 23:24
  some information real quick. Right.
• 23:26
  And for once, I didn't swoop in and
• 23:28
  try and fix a thing, which only annoys
• 23:29
  the shit out of him, only annoys the
• 23:32
  shit out of him.
• 23:33
  When he wants my help, he'll ask.
• 23:36
  And I do.
• 23:37
  But also because nothing is nothing is all
• 23:39
  or nothing. There's so many nuances. Sometimes what
• 23:42
  he does need is for me to be
• 23:43
  the one to, like,
• 23:45
  interrupt the spiral.
• 23:47
  Yeah. The ways to do that vary
• 23:50
  from moment to moment. Sometimes I can interject
• 23:52
  humor and he'll I can get him to
• 23:54
  laugh,
• 23:55
  and then he you know, the tension comes
• 23:56
  down a little bit. Sometimes I ask questions.
• 23:59
  Sometimes
• 24:01
  I use my
• 24:03
  that's doesn't sound very submissive to me voice.
• 24:07
  Yeah. It is all situation dependent, and it's
• 24:09
  stuff that I've learned
• 24:12
  over all these years, and I still get
• 24:14
  it wrong. Sometimes I try to slide some
• 24:16
  humor in there, and he's like, this is
• 24:17
  not the moment for him. Like You don't
• 24:19
  wanna go there. Oh, got that wrong.
• 24:22
  Now here's the thing. Emotional intelligence means I
• 24:25
  also recognize when I get defensive because of
• 24:27
  that, I'm trying to slide in some humor
• 24:30
  to diffuse his tension so that he can
• 24:32
  whatever's going on. Right? I've air quote helped,
• 24:36
  air quote that big fat fucking air quotes.
• 24:39
  And then he'll snap,
• 24:41
  not at me really, but more like,
• 24:43
  I don't want the humor. And sometimes it's
• 24:45
  just a firm boundary. And I get to
• 24:47
  be one of those people who's like, oh,
• 24:49
  you used a firm,
• 24:51
  although respectful tone.
• 24:53
  Why are you yelling at me, and why
• 24:55
  do you hate me now? Those are my
• 24:57
  own issues. Okay?
• 24:59
  But since I know that about myself,
• 25:02
  when I feel defensiveness
• 25:04
  pop up because that thing comes up in
• 25:06
  my head, it's like, well, I was just
• 25:07
  trying to help, and I was just trying
• 25:09
  to be funny. And I didn't mean anything
• 25:10
  by it. Anybody recognize some of that kind
• 25:13
  of self talk? Yeah. I know I'm not
• 25:14
  alone.
• 25:15
  I've gotten better at going, hoo. Take a
• 25:17
  breath. This is not about you. He wasn't
• 25:19
  yelling at you. You're not in trouble.
• 25:22
  Let him work through whatever the hell's happening.
• 25:26
  And then maybe later when he's calm, and
• 25:28
  sometimes I can, I'll go, you know, I've
• 25:30
  that joke I was making earlier, it's like
• 25:31
  it wasn't funny then. I know. But is
• 25:33
  it funny now? If I tell it now,
• 25:35
  can we laugh?
• 25:36
  I just don't allow. Yeah. Now how much
• 25:39
  of that is
• 25:41
  all of my own personal emotional baggage and
• 25:43
  trauma from early childhood?
• 25:45
  How much of that is service sub ness?
• 25:49
  Like, I'm trying to help and serve and
• 25:51
  fix and make things better, and that is
• 25:53
  not always
• 25:54
  you think that's what you're doing and that's
• 25:56
  not what you're doing. You're making things worse.
• 25:59
  I don't always know. There's a lot of
• 26:01
  overlap with that. Some of it is me
• 26:03
  me being triggered and responding to the trigger
• 26:06
  and not realizing it until after the words
• 26:08
  have come out of my mouth. Yeah. And
• 26:09
  then I'm pulling back going, oh, shit. You
• 26:11
  just got triggered. And now we're in a
• 26:13
  moment that was unnecessary.
• 26:16
  He needed a moment to himself. I needed
• 26:18
  to shut the
• 26:21
  Mhmm. Sometimes emotional intelligence is is, figuring out
• 26:23
  what you did, not to stopping yourself at
• 26:23
  a moment. It's
• 26:25
  figuring out what you did, not to stopping
• 26:27
  yourself at a moment. It's looking back going,
• 26:29
  oh, that was not helpful.
• 26:32
  Okay. Let me let me do something different.
• 26:35
  Now in some of these things about what
• 26:37
  it can look like,
• 26:39
  from your perspective as a dom, where, like,
• 26:41
  where
• 26:42
  dealing with me,
• 26:44
  yourself in general, like, what do you see
• 26:46
  from our experiences?
• 26:48
  Or
• 26:51
  You know, it changes day to day. It
• 26:53
  really does. It really does change day to
• 26:55
  day. You know, it it's not something you
• 26:56
  say, this is how it is and this
• 26:58
  is what it does. And and
• 27:00
  and that's not
• 27:02
  not accurate. That would not be accurate because
• 27:04
  it it changes. It's,
• 27:08
  you know, there there are
• 27:11
  moments when you when I wanna look to
• 27:14
  see if they're get
• 27:15
  there really bond in there?
• 27:17
  It's all silver, baby.
• 27:22
  So,
• 27:23
  you know, it's,
• 27:24
  it's
• 27:27
  I'll tell you what what's been difficult for
• 27:29
  me
• 27:31
  with this because, you know, listening to you
• 27:33
  talk about what, you know, you took away
• 27:35
  as a kid.
• 27:37
  For me,
• 27:40
  it was kind of the opposite.
• 27:42
  By inserting yourself into seeing if everything was
• 27:45
  okay, if anybody needed something, you risk turning
• 27:49
  that having it turned on you. Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:51
  Yeah. Yeah. I totally get that. I totally
• 27:53
  get that. So I learned to
• 27:55
  You're not touching that with a 10 foot
• 27:57
  pole. Yeah. Which is funny
• 27:59
  because
• 28:00
  when you're not thinking that hard and you're
• 28:02
  not that in your head,
• 28:04
  you are,
• 28:05
  I don't know if intuitive is the right
• 28:07
  word, but it feels intuitive. Like, you're looking
• 28:10
  at me going, are you okay? What do
• 28:12
  you need?
• 28:13
  And then sometimes
• 28:14
  and maybe it's you're caught up in
• 28:16
  the the stuff from childhood. Maybe it's your
• 28:19
  head somewhere else because people are you know,
• 28:21
  we're all living in our heads in some
• 28:22
  way.
• 28:25
  I I have a 100% had moments where
• 28:27
  I'm like, I think I could be on
• 28:28
  fire in front of him. I don't think
• 28:30
  he would know
• 28:33
  what is happening. But, you know, here's the
• 28:35
  difference between
• 28:36
  learning to use your words and not or
• 28:38
  not. Yeah.
• 28:39
  I was
• 28:40
  a kid who did this, and I have
• 28:42
  been a partner in the past who did
• 28:43
  this, which is
• 28:44
  sound and look pitiful
• 28:47
  until you get some attention, until somebody turns
• 28:49
  to you and goes, what's wrong? And then
• 28:51
  I have this really annoying habit of going,
• 28:53
  nothing. Now what the fuck I was seeking
• 28:55
  for looking for and hoping would happen? I
• 28:57
  honestly don't know. I need a mental health
• 28:59
  professional to tell me because I don't know.
• 29:01
  But I have so many memories from childhood
• 29:05
  and into,
• 29:06
  you know, my twenties and before you and
• 29:08
  I got together,
• 29:09
  those relationships of doing things like that. Like,
• 29:13
  a woe is me or as a kid
• 29:16
  there was lots of sighing. I do it
• 29:17
  now as a joke because I know what
• 29:19
  I'm doing now because it's not effective with
• 29:21
  JB. If I don't fucking tell him,
• 29:25
  he probably is not gonna notice. And if
• 29:27
  he hears me dramatically
• 29:29
  sighing in the background,
• 29:31
  he's like, what is wrong with this
• 29:33
  this with baby girl? What what is she
• 29:35
  fucking around with? So
• 29:37
  these days, now that I have the skills
• 29:40
  to communicate and I feel safe to communicate,
• 29:42
  and I will say this forever and fucking
• 29:44
  ever,
• 29:45
  part of
• 29:46
  the ability to communicate
• 29:48
  and be intimate and vulnerable and say the
• 29:50
  hard things and use your emotional intelligence or
• 29:53
  even fucking feel it is having the safety
• 29:56
  to tell your partner a thing without knowing
• 29:59
  how they might respond, especially when
• 30:02
  the responses you've gotten from the past were
• 30:04
  definitely not good.
• 30:06
  So I don't need to go around being
• 30:07
  dramatic to get attention. I might be dramatic
• 30:10
  as a bit. I might have some fun
• 30:12
  with it. But if I need to just
• 30:14
  tell him something, I'm just gonna
• 30:17
  tell him something.
• 30:19
  But that that was years in the making.
• 30:21
  That was years of not doing it and
• 30:23
  then not getting my needs met and then
• 30:25
  being pissed off about it
• 30:27
  and then
• 30:28
  slowly easing into it with you,
• 30:31
  which is we go back I go back
• 30:33
  to when we talk about different ways to
• 30:35
  communicate. It's why for a very long time
• 30:37
  when I had to say something that felt
• 30:39
  very big or very difficult or I felt
• 30:41
  very vulnerable saying because it had never worked
• 30:44
  out well in the past. I wrote it
• 30:46
  down. So I was communicating it, and then
• 30:49
  I was walking away. And I didn't have
• 30:50
  to witness
• 30:51
  whatever the response was gonna be. So
• 30:55
  that sounds like nothing but communication skills, but
• 30:58
  there's an emotional intelligence in there. There's an
• 31:01
  understanding
• 31:02
  on both sides. I knew I had to
• 31:04
  say these things. We had to have these
• 31:06
  conversations.
• 31:07
  I had to admit how I was feeling
• 31:09
  so we could work through it together if
• 31:10
  that was even necessary.
• 31:12
  So I wasn't being
• 31:13
  weighed down with the things I was not
• 31:15
  expressing.
• 31:17
  But I also understood myself enough to know
• 31:20
  I cannot watch this man's face while I'm
• 31:22
  trying to say it, especially if I'm gonna
• 31:24
  like fall all over my own words or
• 31:26
  not get my point across. Or if it
• 31:28
  is gonna bother him initially
• 31:31
  to hear that I'm unhappy about something or
• 31:33
  something's not going well,
• 31:36
  he gets to have that emotional response without
• 31:38
  me witnessing
• 31:39
  it so that
• 31:40
  I don't carry with me because
• 31:42
  I I know myself.
• 31:44
  If I saw some it happens all the
• 31:46
  time. If an initial response to something he
• 31:49
  has
• 31:50
  appears
• 31:50
  negative and quite frankly y'all, it could just
• 31:52
  be he's confused, but my brain is gone.
• 31:55
  He hates it. He's angry.
• 31:57
  He thinks it's like, I'm interpreting all of
• 31:59
  these things. None of them are helpful.
• 32:01
  Then that's what I'm carrying with me and
• 32:03
  now that's the chip in my shoulder that
• 32:04
  I gotta work around and that's an extra
• 32:06
  layer
• 32:07
  of stuff to unpack.
• 32:09
  Whereas if he could just have his own
• 32:12
  reaction privately
• 32:13
  first, his initial reaction, and then he can
• 32:17
  work through his feelings or his thoughts about
• 32:19
  it, and then we could come together,
• 32:21
  we always had a better outcome. Mhmm.
• 32:25
  So for anybody who's like, I don't know
• 32:27
  how to express my emotions and say the
• 32:29
  hard things.
• 32:30
  Find a way to do it so you
• 32:31
  don't have to stare them in the eyeballs
• 32:34
  or hear their voice as you're explaining yourself.
• 32:37
  I I that is how I learned he
• 32:40
  was safe because I could tell him what
• 32:41
  I had to tell him.
• 32:43
  He would take in the information,
• 32:45
  and then we would come back later
• 32:47
  when everybody was calm and then we could
• 32:49
  have these conversations that maybe we fixed something
• 32:51
  or maybe
• 32:53
  too often he was like, you have been
• 32:54
  stressed over nothing. I am not upset.
• 33:01
  But if I had never said anything and
• 33:03
  I'd carry that around or I'd carry that
• 33:05
  false belief that he was upset about something,
• 33:07
  that I had done something wrong or that
• 33:09
  something was not quite right or he like,
• 33:12
  whatever the issue might have been, if I
• 33:14
  don't if that didn't get talked through and
• 33:17
  there hadn't hadn't had an understanding to come
• 33:20
  to,
• 33:21
  then that's repressed stuff that's coming out in
• 33:23
  other ways. That's mistrust.
• 33:25
  That's
• 33:26
  so many assumptions about what other
• 33:29
  facial expressions mean, tones of voice mean, words
• 33:31
  used mean, and it none of it is
• 33:34
  clear communication to move forward.
• 33:36
  But that all took time. Yeah. And now,
• 33:39
  woe to you that you are the safest
• 33:41
  person I have in my life. You get
• 33:43
  to hear so many unfiltered things. And see
• 33:46
  That the rest of the world And I
• 33:50
  and I was just gonna say, you know,
• 33:52
  over over time in our relationship, you know,
• 33:55
  I have, not emotionally run away. Right. I
• 33:58
  have learned that you are safe for me.
• 34:02
  Yes. Okay? You know, you're not gonna throw
• 34:04
  everything right back Mhmm. At me like everyone
• 34:07
  else has ever done. And,
• 34:10
  you know, yeah. It's
• 34:14
  and I I still slip sometimes. We all
• 34:16
  do. We all do. I mean, there's
• 34:19
  to me, personally, there's nothing more frustrating
• 34:23
  than understanding
• 34:24
  what I'm feeling, where that feeling came from,
• 34:27
  you know, why, who, what, where, when, how,
• 34:30
  and still
• 34:32
  being a dumbass about it in the middle
• 34:33
  of a conversation. It's like, goddamn it. I
• 34:35
  know better.
• 34:37
  It still happens. We it happens to us
• 34:39
  a lot less than it used to.
• 34:43
  It does help that we don't have a
• 34:44
  lot of conflict to work through. Usually, it's
• 34:46
  stress related. Yeah. Peak stress,
• 34:49
  we are snapping at one another.
• 34:51
  I wanna say out of all of the
• 34:53
  years we've been together, I think twice maybe
• 34:55
  we've yelled at one another. Mhmm. And neither
• 34:57
  of us liked that feeling. Neither of us
• 34:59
  liked that anger towards one another. So once
• 35:01
  we were able to calm down, then we
• 35:03
  could have a conversation about it and apologize
• 35:06
  if needed and talk about what how the
• 35:09
  other one felt. One of the
• 35:12
  I don't know how other people feel about
• 35:13
  it, but I know from my perspective the
• 35:15
  way it has been for me is sometimes
• 35:17
  one of the scariest things
• 35:19
  is to have to hear
• 35:22
  how I made JV feel when I was
• 35:24
  not at my best. Yes.
• 35:27
  I don't want I don't want to, but
• 35:29
  it's an important part of it. It's an
• 35:31
  important part of
• 35:33
  fixing things that need to be fixed. It's
• 35:35
  an important part of owning your own actions,
• 35:39
  about learning about one another. Because once we're
• 35:41
  calm about it,
• 35:42
  you know, the important part is you apologize,
• 35:44
  you know, do your best never to do
• 35:46
  it again.
• 35:47
  But we can have those conversations about where
• 35:49
  that stuff comes from too. And that doesn't
• 35:51
  excuse it. That doesn't make it go away.
• 35:53
  It doesn't mean we shouldn't have to learn
• 35:56
  how to handle our emotions better. Mhmm. But
• 35:59
  it does give context. You know?
• 36:02
  Finally being able to say and admit to
• 36:04
  myself and then to JB,
• 36:06
  I am, to this day, even though I'm
• 36:07
  constantly working on trying to be better about
• 36:09
  it, I am
• 36:10
  genuinely,
• 36:11
  emotionally, mentally triggered by
• 36:14
  voices raised in what I perceive to be
• 36:16
  anger. And poor JB, he's just a loud
• 36:19
  Italian.
• 36:22
  What are you talking about?
• 36:25
  And sometimes when he gets excited, it sounds
• 36:27
  aggressive.
• 36:31
  But in the beginning, before I could understand
• 36:33
  that within myself and before I could help
• 36:35
  him understand
• 36:36
  Yeah. We were in air quote arguments, and
• 36:38
  he was just, like, asking for basic stuff.
• 36:41
  And it was never, thankfully, within our power
• 36:44
  exchange.
• 36:45
  If we get to that point where fussing
• 36:46
  with one another,
• 36:48
  we're not in a scene.
• 36:49
  We're not deep in a moment that is
• 36:52
  clearly dom sub
• 36:54
  interaction. It's kind of us just living our
• 36:56
  life where the power exchange is always there.
• 36:58
  It's part of the undercurrent.
• 37:01
  And that's where I have to admit that,
• 37:03
  yeah, the rule might be that I'm always
• 37:05
  supposed to speak respectfully.
• 37:07
  But sometimes
• 37:10
  when you're triggered and or
• 37:12
  your emotion you're not when we'll get to
• 37:14
  an emotional regulation, you're dysregulated.
• 37:17
  It surely does not sound respectful
• 37:20
  when I'm having
• 37:22
  a moment.
• 37:24
  Now
• 37:26
  let's
• 37:27
  the last part of the emotional intelligence stuff
• 37:30
  before I want to maybe speak specifically to
• 37:33
  responsibilities and power exchange and things I've I've
• 37:35
  been thinking about is how to increase your
• 37:37
  emotional intelligence.
• 37:39
  Now this is straight from the Gottmans. I
• 37:41
  if any of this sounds, like, foreign
• 37:44
  to
• 37:45
  you, I'm I'm sure there are other sources.
• 37:46
  It might be that you do need, you
• 37:48
  know,
• 37:49
  help from, a mental health professional
• 37:52
  therapy to work through some stuff. Maybe it's
• 37:53
  about your wiring and it's like, okay. I
• 37:55
  need to go learn more about that part
• 37:57
  of myself and why this is harder, whatever.
• 37:59
  But these are just some things that can
• 38:01
  help,
• 38:03
  that I know that I have done before.
• 38:05
  One is pause, check-in with yourself,
• 38:09
  and name your emotion.
• 38:12
  I've gotten better at recognizing in the moment
• 38:15
  when I am responding in a way that
• 38:17
  is outsized to the moment.
• 38:20
  Mhmm. That that was a while getting there.
• 38:22
  I had to do it
• 38:24
  looking back in reverse before I could start
• 38:26
  kind of noticing it in the moment. The
• 38:28
  higher the emotions, the harder that is.
• 38:31
  One of the best things you can do
• 38:32
  for yourself if you're feeling a heightened emotion
• 38:35
  and it's it's not sound feeling very emotionally
• 38:37
  intelligent, right,
• 38:39
  is to take that pause. JB is the
• 38:41
  one that taught it to me, and I
• 38:42
  fucking hated it. The first time he was
• 38:44
  like, look. I am angry. You are angry.
• 38:46
  We're gonna both walk away until we calm
• 38:48
  down, and we'll come back and we'll talk
• 38:50
  about it. And I fucking hated it. My
• 38:53
  brain and my body thought it was rejection.
• 38:55
  It was not. It was not. And and
• 38:58
  you took it
• 38:59
  at at first, you took it as meaning
• 39:01
  I was just at brushing it off. Mhmm.
• 39:05
  That's because some people will. And that's the
• 39:06
  thing you as an individual have to be
• 39:08
  careful of with a partner. Is this genuinely
• 39:11
  a a drawing down, a backing off to
• 39:13
  calm down and you'll come back and talk
• 39:15
  about it when you're calm?
• 39:17
  Or is this a way to
• 39:19
  sweep sweep it under the rug? Maybe we'll
• 39:20
  just never talk about it. That is that
• 39:22
  is no good for anybody.
• 39:24
  That's it's gonna come back out. It's just
• 39:26
  another form of repressing emotions.
• 39:30
  This one was also
• 39:31
  difficult for me. I don't know if it
• 39:33
  was difficult for you.
• 39:35
  Listen to understand your partner, not defend your
• 39:38
  position. Yeah. That is yeah. That is difficult.
• 39:41
  Because that's in conflict. That's when emotions are
• 39:43
  high and you're pissed or you're confused
• 39:46
  or there's stress
• 39:48
  and something's been said or an expression a
• 39:51
  look on their face and now you're mad.
• 39:53
  It
• 39:54
  takes,
• 39:55
  you know, when when emotions are high,
• 40:00
  it is difficult to really listen. Mhmm. You
• 40:03
  know?
• 40:04
  And and that's
• 40:07
  bad.
• 40:08
  Right? Yeah. It's bad. Yeah. Bad. Sound like
• 40:10
  a broken record. It's not gonna help anything.
• 40:13
  No. It's not gonna work out the way
• 40:15
  you think it will. And I
• 40:17
  still struggle with this because I
• 40:20
  am a person who, the moment you start
• 40:22
  talking, my brain is finishing your sentences for
• 40:25
  you. I've gotten better at doing that in
• 40:26
  my head and not out loud, and I've
• 40:28
  already moved on to solutions.
• 40:30
  And, yeah, for some things, there needs to
• 40:33
  be a solution at the end. Yeah. But
• 40:35
  for keeping this relationship
• 40:37
  steady, strong for for
• 40:40
  everybody
• 40:41
  in the relationship to have the opportunity to
• 40:43
  feel seen and heard Mhmm. And validated and,
• 40:46
  you know, actual empathy.
• 40:48
  Sometimes you just gotta fucking let them say
• 40:50
  the thing. You know what the solution's gonna
• 40:52
  be. You're gonna get to it, she says
• 40:54
  to herself. You
• 40:55
  there'll be opportunities
• 40:57
  for fixes or even apologies. And sometimes,
• 41:01
  you know, I'm I try to be quick
• 41:03
  to apologize once I can admit to myself
• 41:06
  that I'm wrong. That is also a hard
• 41:08
  thing.
• 41:09
  But I have found that you'll accept the
• 41:12
  apology, but
• 41:13
  you still want to be able to say
• 41:15
  what you need to say. I'm the same
• 41:17
  way. I need to be able to say
• 41:19
  this. I need to be able to express
• 41:21
  this to you. Not for guilt trips, not
• 41:24
  for,
• 41:25
  you know,
• 41:27
  woe is me, not for not for any
• 41:29
  of that, but to know that I said
• 41:31
  it and that you heard it. And so
• 41:34
  the one of the hardest communication skills is
• 41:37
  to listen
• 41:39
  and and not be thinking about what you're
• 41:41
  about to say. Right?
• 41:42
  No. Don't,
• 41:44
  we we actually use this expression in a
• 41:46
  few things, and I can't think of it
• 41:47
  exactly. But basically, it's,
• 41:50
  listening
• 41:51
  listening
• 41:52
  to what they're saying and not just waiting
• 41:55
  your turn to respond? Because there's a difference
• 41:57
  between the two. People call it active listening?
• 42:00
  Yeah. It's part of active listening, but there's,
• 42:01
  like, an expression that we've used before, and
• 42:03
  I can't think of what it is.
• 42:05
  And it's hard.
• 42:06
  It is. Mhmm.
• 42:08
  Here's the one I get stuck on, and
• 42:10
  you know you know I do.
• 42:13
  Validate before fixing.
• 42:15
  And then, of course, here's the the lesson
• 42:17
  I had to learn. Ask if they even
• 42:19
  wanna fix in the first place.
• 42:21
  If you
• 42:22
  fuck up
• 42:23
  and your partner is upset with you and
• 42:26
  y'all got to talk about it and you
• 42:28
  can admit to yourself, oops.
• 42:31
  That was my bad. I was wrong. Here's
• 42:33
  maybe how I can fix it.
• 42:35
  I know what I need to do or
• 42:37
  I think I know what I need to
• 42:38
  do.
• 42:39
  Do not come out of the gate with,
• 42:40
  yeah. I done fucked up here. Here's the
• 42:42
  fix.
• 42:43
  Validate the emotions. That's part of understanding
• 42:46
  emotions, your own and your partner's. Right? It's
• 42:49
  part of having empathy. It's part of being
• 42:51
  able to hold that information
• 42:53
  and not reject it and not repress it
• 42:55
  and not deny it. Right? Because most people
• 42:57
  just wanna be heard and they wanna be
• 42:59
  validated. And you're who wants more validation than
• 43:02
  anybody and deserves it? Your partner. Right? They
• 43:02
  want to know that you see them and
• 43:02
  you see
• 43:04
  want to know that you see them and
• 43:06
  you see their pain and their anger,
• 43:08
  maybe how you fucked up, whatever it is.
• 43:11
  I am really bad at that because I
• 43:13
  don't I I feel physical pain within my
• 43:17
  body when I've done something wrong. That is
• 43:19
  for me and a therapist in the future.
• 43:22
  I am I still have that little kid
• 43:23
  thing of I'm gonna get in trouble, and
• 43:25
  I've gotta make sure I don't get in
• 43:26
  trouble because getting in trouble was a very
• 43:29
  bad thing at one point in my life.
• 43:32
  And so I barrel in with, yeah. I
• 43:34
  did the bad thing. I'm so sorry. Here's
• 43:35
  the fix.
• 43:37
  And that's
• 43:38
  that's fine to have a fix. It's fine
• 43:40
  to offer a fix. But
• 43:42
  if I never fix wanted or needed. And
• 43:44
  if I never stop and just let him
• 43:46
  say,
• 43:47
  I did not like that. That bothered me.
• 43:49
  That hurt my feelings. That was not very
• 43:52
  submissive. Oh, I hate that one. Stab me
• 43:54
  in the heart. I hate that one.
• 43:58
  I mean, I think the only thing you
• 43:59
  could say worse that would make me, like,
• 44:00
  wanna
• 44:01
  just, melt and die is you were not
• 44:03
  a very good girl. Like, ah.
• 44:06
  Just don't do it. Don't do it. Don't
• 44:08
  do it.
• 44:10
  And then we kinda talk about this,
• 44:12
  at the with the pausing and checking in
• 44:14
  with yourself, which is to take a break
• 44:15
  when emotions aren't high.
• 44:17
  I really don't like that one. Yeah. It's
• 44:19
  it works. It does. I'm I know what
• 44:21
  I'm gonna say. Every because every time we
• 44:23
  have done that,
• 44:26
  we've we've walked away. We've are, you know,
• 44:30
  taking a breath. It's been a better outcome.
• 44:32
  And and the outcome was better and there
• 44:34
  was no,
• 44:37
  you know
• 44:39
  I know. I hate it.
• 44:40
  I hate it.
• 44:42
  I hate it. And I know for some
• 44:43
  folks we're like you're like, how does this
• 44:45
  have anything to do with emotional intelligence? This
• 44:47
  is just just good communication skills. This is
• 44:50
  just being a responsible adult. This is just
• 44:52
  being a good partner. Yeah. Because all of
• 44:54
  those things require
• 44:57
  some level of emotional
• 44:59
  intelligence.
• 45:00
  Right. Some level
• 45:02
  of,
• 45:03
  you know, knowing your your own emotions and
• 45:05
  being able to identify your emotions and then
• 45:08
  being able to ideally identify your partners
• 45:11
  or when they identify them go, oh, okay.
• 45:14
  And take in that information and have empathy
• 45:15
  with what they might be experiencing and feeling
• 45:18
  and yeah. All of that's part of it.
• 45:22
  Within
• 45:23
  power exchange specifically though,
• 45:28
  When I was telling JB I wanted to
• 45:30
  do this
• 45:31
  this topic and I was
• 45:33
  riffing with what I was thinking,
• 45:35
  he was he's just looking at me and
• 45:37
  he's smiling a little bit like he's doing
• 45:39
  now. And I said something and I don't
• 45:40
  even remember what it is anymore because y'all
• 45:42
  know me and the Swiss cheese brain. And
• 45:44
  I was like, I is it gonna just
• 45:48
  be me lecturing doms for an hour? And
• 45:51
  he goes, it sounds like so I want
• 45:54
  I do wanna talk about emotional intelligence from
• 45:57
  both sides of the slash.
• 46:00
  So
• 46:01
  let's start with doms though.
• 46:03
  Okay. Because there are those
• 46:06
  folks out there who think, well, I'm the
• 46:08
  dom.
• 46:09
  I'm in charge. Mhmm. What I say goes,
• 46:12
  and if you don't like it or if
• 46:14
  it rubs you the wrong way or
• 46:17
  you have strong feelings about it,
• 46:20
  who cares? I'm the dumb.
• 46:22
  I'm in charge. I'm in control.
• 46:25
  I'm a tell you.
• 46:27
  I don't like that at all. Not just
• 46:29
  on a personal level. I could not have
• 46:31
  a dom like that.
• 46:33
  Yes.
• 46:35
  Yes.
• 46:36
  But also,
• 46:38
  from a
• 46:40
  perspective of I don't think you do yourself
• 46:42
  or your partner
• 46:44
  any favors
• 46:45
  when you
• 46:47
  see things that way.
• 46:50
  You know, when you when you kind of
• 46:52
  have the it's my way or the highway
• 46:55
  sort of vibe
• 46:59
  not always. It can't always. You are a
• 47:02
  fallible human being. You can fuck up.
• 47:06
  You can be misinterpreted,
• 47:07
  you can use a tone that if you
• 47:09
  don't understand your partner and you haven't cared
• 47:12
  enough to learn
• 47:14
  who they are and what they need and
• 47:16
  their own triggers and all these things, then
• 47:18
  you're just like bulldozing over a partner
• 47:21
  and I don't you don't become their safe
• 47:23
  person. I'm not sure how you get peak
• 47:26
  vulnerability and intimacy from them.
• 47:29
  I'm just not a fan
• 47:32
  of
• 47:33
  it. Like, you can have the I am
• 47:35
  ultimately in charge because this is what we've
• 47:37
  negotiated and still
• 47:39
  have emotional intelligence and give
• 47:41
  a fuck about
• 47:43
  where how what your partner feels, your part
• 47:46
  and how your partner feels, when you fuck
• 47:48
  it up and how to fix it.
• 47:52
  Yeah.
• 47:53
  Now,
• 47:54
  what would you say to that before I
• 47:55
  get into the side of this box? I
• 47:58
  I agree with what you said. Mhmm.
• 48:00
  You know,
• 48:01
  and I I know this is something
• 48:04
  that I wrestle with, you know. I have
• 48:07
  always said
• 48:10
  how do I say it?
• 48:14
  Shit, I can't think of it right now.
• 48:16
  But anyway,
• 48:17
  you know, with
• 48:19
  it's tough and even even as a dom,
• 48:21
  you know, yeah it's it's easy to say,
• 48:23
  oh you know, you gotta do everything I
• 48:25
  say.
• 48:26
  But it's
• 48:27
  it's it's not and
• 48:29
  you know, this is something I'm working on
• 48:31
  myself,
• 48:32
  okay, with the emotional regular regulation. Which we'll
• 48:35
  get into. Yeah. Which, you know, which we
• 48:36
  kinda saw this morning a little bit. Because
• 48:38
  you know I got thoughts on that. Right.
• 48:39
  Mhmm.
• 48:40
  So,
• 48:43
  you know, it's it's something that I think,
• 48:46
  you know, big d's need to work on
• 48:49
  Mhmm. Should work on. Mhmm. You know, it's
• 48:55
  it kinda goes hand in hand with, you
• 48:56
  know, we we talk about communication
• 48:59
  a lot.
• 49:00
  But bringing the emotions
• 49:02
  into it
• 49:04
  then kind of
• 49:05
  brings it together.
• 49:07
  Yes. Because, you know, there's something to be
• 49:09
  said for stoicism
• 49:10
  and and being stoic, but and I will
• 49:12
  not pretend I understand
• 49:15
  anything about being stoic. I am not capable
• 49:17
  of it.
• 49:18
  I don't think that means you turn off
• 49:20
  emotions. I have come across too many
• 49:22
  either actual doms who are just fucking trying
• 49:24
  to figure it out or the air quote
• 49:26
  kind,
• 49:27
  who think that if showing emotion is weakness,
• 49:30
  admitting to
• 49:32
  fault is weakness,
• 49:34
  telling their submissive partner, apologizing to their submissive
• 49:38
  partner, admitting that they've done wrong is a
• 49:40
  weakness.
• 49:41
  Yeah. Yeah. Get away from me. I that
• 49:44
  does not sound safe to me. Because if
• 49:46
  you think you are above
• 49:48
  all of that emotional work, then
• 49:51
  it might not happen today, it might happen
• 49:53
  tomorrow, but you are on track to cause
• 49:56
  harm
• 49:57
  to the person, to the relationship,
• 50:00
  because the whole thing is emotional on some
• 50:09
  loving relationships where you're maybe trying to build
• 50:11
  a life together, you're trying to raise a
• 50:13
  child together, you're trying to do all these
• 50:15
  things together and emotions are inherently involved.
• 50:18
  But even when we're just talking about singing
• 50:20
  together, that both of you are bearing yourself
• 50:23
  to vulnerabilities. You are being intimate in a
• 50:25
  way that
• 50:27
  it's not just about, you know,
• 50:29
  use toy on body and bottom
• 50:33
  responds appropriately.
• 50:34
  They you know, things come up in those
• 50:36
  moments. Memories come up.
• 50:41
  Repressed emotions can come up. Triggers can come
• 50:43
  up. And
• 50:46
  if you, the dom, think you are somehow
• 50:48
  above that level of work and care,
• 50:51
  then you're you're a shit fucking dom.
• 50:54
  You just are because
• 50:57
  the responsibility
• 50:59
  of
• 51:00
  being in charge,
• 51:02
  doing the thing in the scene, whatever it
• 51:03
  is,
• 51:05
  the responsibility
• 51:06
  is not just to make sure that the
• 51:08
  person walks out of there physically,
• 51:10
  ideally, air quote, safe,
• 51:12
  you know, with risk mitigated, air quote, unharmed.
• 51:15
  There's the emotional and mental as well. Now
• 51:19
  the other side of the slash, yes, submissives
• 51:21
  and bottoms are responsible for their own,
• 51:24
  you know, emotions and
• 51:26
  and risk mitigation and, you know, all of
• 51:29
  that, which is where emotional intelligence becomes very
• 51:31
  important for submissives as well. Submissives,
• 51:35
  not all of us, but many of us
• 51:37
  and I am in this category,
• 51:38
  fucking struggle to just say hardship,
• 51:41
  to say that they're angry or to say
• 51:44
  that they're disappointed
• 51:45
  or to say I don't like this.
• 51:48
  And, you know, it comes from a lot
• 51:49
  of different places. My experience is it comes
• 51:52
  from a fear of rejection. Right? I'm gonna
• 51:53
  tell you I don't like a thing and
• 51:54
  you're gonna say, well, I'm never fucking doing
• 51:56
  that again. And, what you know? Right? Or
• 51:58
  it's stuff from childhood or it's whatever. Wherever
• 52:01
  that those fears come from, if you are
• 52:03
  a person who can relate to that.
• 52:06
  What that tends to be is that I
• 52:07
  see, myself included, submissives will repress shit because
• 52:11
  they don't wanna disappoint.
• 52:12
  They don't wanna be rejected. They don't wanna
• 52:14
  make their partner angry. They don't wanna disappoint
• 52:17
  them.
• 52:18
  Well, you're doing
• 52:19
  neither of you any good if you can't
• 52:22
  find ways to communicate that stuff.
• 52:25
  And it is in the finding ways to
• 52:27
  communicate that stuff that you kinda learn who
• 52:29
  the fuck your partner is and what kind
• 52:31
  of dom they are. Because if they can't
• 52:33
  handle
• 52:34
  your emotions, which will not always come out
• 52:38
  smooth and clean and, you know, real coherent,
• 52:40
  sometimes it'll come out messy and we're gonna
• 52:42
  get into emotional regulation in a moment.
• 52:46
  You know, that gives you a lot of
• 52:47
  information that you need. Right?
• 52:49
  Mhmm.
• 52:51
  JB is this my the safest person I've
• 52:54
  ever had in my life where I can
• 52:56
  be my weirdest fucking self. I can I
• 52:59
  still struggle to cry in front of people,
• 53:01
  but I am better kind of at crying
• 53:03
  in front of him? That's between me and
• 53:04
  a future therapist.
• 53:07
  But I can say you've pissed me off.
• 53:09
  I can say
• 53:10
  I think that was wrong. I can say
• 53:13
  the hard stuff, the the stuff I don't
• 53:15
  wanna be true. I've said this many times
• 53:17
  in the podcast.
• 53:19
  I physically hate it, and it hurts body
• 53:22
  and soul when I have to admit to
• 53:24
  myself that JB fucked up and did something
• 53:27
  wrong or was wrong. I don't want him
• 53:29
  to ever be wrong. But the dumbest shit
• 53:32
  I could do is to pretend that he's
• 53:34
  not,
• 53:35
  to act like he's not.
• 53:37
  I have to, like, go, nope. I gotta
• 53:39
  tell you in hopefully a kind way, hopefully
• 53:42
  an emotionally intelligent, calm way,
• 53:46
  that was wrong. That I don't like that.
• 53:48
  That hurt my feelings.
• 53:50
  And he has had to found find ways
• 53:52
  of telling me
• 53:54
  his version of that, the equivalent of that
• 53:57
  without,
• 53:58
  like, crushing my spirit because that's that's the
• 54:01
  thing the power that doms have. Right? Mhmm.
• 54:04
  Depending on who the submissive is and how
• 54:06
  they're wired and the things that that they're
• 54:08
  that dom
• 54:12
  tells you,
• 54:13
  I'm upset. I'm disappointed.
• 54:15
  That was wrong.
• 54:18
  That can that could crush a soul if
• 54:20
  not handled properly.
• 54:23
  So it's it's both it's both sides of
• 54:26
  the slash. I was watching I wish I
• 54:27
  had saved it. I was watching a reel,
• 54:30
  and I somehow managed to get on the
• 54:31
  kink side of the algorithm. And it was
• 54:34
  somebody, and I can see their face in
• 54:36
  my head, and I don't know their name.
• 54:36
  I'd never come across it before. And they
• 54:38
  were talking about the importance
• 54:41
  of submissives
• 54:42
  owning their own emotions and owning
• 54:45
  owning that side of themselves.
• 54:47
  And I wanna say they were talking about
• 54:49
  it with respect to
• 54:52
  I think they were talking about it actually
• 54:53
  in terms of, like,
• 54:56
  aftercare
• 54:57
  and
• 54:59
  subspace and negotiating scenes
• 55:01
  where
• 55:02
  there are submissives who will kind of just
• 55:04
  make all of that
• 55:05
  the responsibility of the dom, and they don't
• 55:08
  interact with it, and they don't negotiate it,
• 55:10
  and they don't participate in it. Like, in
• 55:12
  some space, once once you've gone offline,
• 55:15
  you're kind of at the mercy of your
• 55:17
  dom. Maybe you can't speak, maybe you can't
• 55:19
  move. Yeah. But as you come back online
• 55:21
  or in the preparation for that, in the
• 55:22
  negotiation part, you know, or,
• 55:26
  in the making sure you get what you
• 55:27
  need whether your dom can give it to
• 55:29
  you or not, you know, there's still a
• 55:31
  responsibility
• 55:32
  for submissives to be able to
• 55:34
  understand themselves, to communicate those needs, to own
• 55:38
  their needs, to do the work on themselves
• 55:40
  that they need to do. They're that I
• 55:42
  think I'm also thinking of another creator who
• 55:44
  was talking about
• 55:46
  too many submissives, not all, of course, but
• 55:49
  too many submissives
• 55:50
  kind of just wanna go
• 55:52
  hand all of that off to their dom
• 55:54
  and go, you're in charge of everything, including
• 55:56
  how I feel and how I'm gonna respond
• 55:57
  to everything. And I just don't wanna have
• 55:59
  to think, now look. Am I a fan
• 56:01
  of turning off my brain and following like
• 56:03
  a little duckling? Yes.
• 56:05
  But that does not
• 56:08
  excuse me from the responsibility of owning my
• 56:10
  own shit. Right? Communicating my own needs,
• 56:14
  communicating when, things are going well and when
• 56:17
  things are not going well. You know? Communicating
• 56:20
  when I'm off in some way, and it's
• 56:23
  a 100% going to affect the dynamic. That
• 56:25
  is not JB's responsibility
• 56:27
  to know all of that stuff and to
• 56:29
  pull it out of me all of the
• 56:30
  time.
• 56:31
  Both sides of the slash have to participate
• 56:33
  equally.
• 56:35
  It's true.
• 56:37
  So look. I ended up lecturing the subs
• 56:39
  more than the time.
• 56:42
  So emotional intelligence. Let's just do. Let me
• 56:44
  back up real quick as a reminder
• 56:46
  of what the fuck that even is. Right?
• 56:48
  It's your ability to identify and manage your
• 56:51
  emotions, to improve relationships, manage stress, make better
• 56:54
  decisions,
• 56:54
  enhance your personal and social well-being. Right?
• 56:58
  The key thing is you've got to identify
• 57:00
  and manage your emotions, and that can sometimes
• 57:03
  fucking suck, and I won't
• 57:05
  pretend otherwise.
• 57:06
  It does. But it could also be freeing
• 57:08
  when you're with somebody where you can say
• 57:12
  with no,
• 57:13
  like, fear of or actual repercussion,
• 57:16
  hey. I didn't like how that went. I
• 57:18
  didn't like that conversation. That this is how
• 57:20
  I felt. Right?
• 57:22
  To be able to to say that and
• 57:24
  know that there will not be a rejection
• 57:25
  on the other end, and you can have
• 57:27
  the adult conversation back and forth
• 57:30
  about what that might mean. And look. Look.
• 57:31
  Sometimes you're gonna say, I didn't like that,
• 57:33
  and this is how I felt about it.
• 57:34
  And your partner's gonna go, I did not
• 57:36
  agree, and I did not think that's what
• 57:37
  happened. You're gonna do this back and forth
• 57:39
  thing. But the important part is are you
• 57:41
  listening to one another to understand?
• 57:44
  Are you taking that beat to make sure
• 57:47
  you're addressing this calmly?
• 57:49
  Right?
• 57:50
  And sometimes you agree to disagree, but you
• 57:52
  decide, okay. We won't do that thing that
• 57:55
  way anymore. Right?
• 57:57
  And all that's fucking tough.
• 57:59
  That's hard fucking work. It's not I like
• 58:02
  it because I like the outcome of it.
• 58:04
  I like the kind of relationship
• 58:05
  we have. In in the trenches of it,
• 58:08
  sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it sucks. But it's
• 58:11
  important. Sometimes it's not pretty. No.
• 58:13
  No. So let's talk about emotional regulation.
• 58:17
  Now why did I wanna talk about emotional
• 58:19
  regulation with regards to emotional intelligence?
• 58:23
  Because what can one thing of many that
• 58:25
  can come from emotional intelligence is the ability
• 58:28
  to emotionally regulate.
• 58:30
  And
• 58:31
  and that becomes important for
• 58:33
  all kinksters, all sides of slashes.
• 58:37
  But when I think about that, part of
• 58:39
  why this is important,
• 58:41
  it goes back to when we tell doms,
• 58:43
  do not dom when you're pissed. Do not
• 58:45
  punish when you're pissed. Because guess what? When
• 58:47
  you're pissed and you're doing those things, you're
• 58:48
  probably not emotionally regulated, and that's when bad
• 58:50
  shit happens. Yeah. And I remembered what I
• 58:53
  wanted to mention earlier.
• 58:56
  You know, it's not about being
• 58:58
  controlling. Mhmm.
• 59:00
  It's about being in control. Like self control.
• 59:03
  So but just as much in control of
• 59:05
  yourself. Yes. Yes. Yes. A 100% agree. Okay.
• 59:09
  Let's talk about emotional regulation.
• 59:11
  Emotional regulation is an important part of emotional
• 59:13
  intelligence and refers to your ability to manage
• 59:16
  your emotions in a healthy way. You're able
• 59:18
  to recognize when you're stressed, angry, or feeling
• 59:21
  overwhelmed and take action to manage your emotions
• 59:23
  and soothe yourself in a healthy way. Healthy
• 59:26
  is doing a lot of heavy lifting in
• 59:27
  some of these and it's like, okay. Can
• 59:29
  what does that mean? And Yeah. The other,
• 59:34
  part of the definition from another source, effective
• 59:36
  emotional regulation requires self awareness,
• 59:40
  self control,
• 59:41
  and the ability to empathize with others.
• 59:46
  Okay.
• 59:47
  Emotional regulation
• 59:50
  is it's the work you do with yourself
• 59:53
  on yourself. Okay?
• 59:55
  I had this pitiful little moment the other
• 59:58
  day, and then I realized what I was
• 59:59
  doing. I was like, look. I hope I
• 1:00:01
  remember this so I can use this as
• 1:00:02
  an example because it had nothing to do
• 1:00:03
  with our power exchange. Had everything to do
• 1:00:05
  with me and my triggers and the gunk
• 1:00:07
  that still lives in my head after all
• 1:00:09
  these years.
• 1:00:10
  I don't exactly remember.
• 1:00:13
  Oh, I wanted to tell JB some ideas
• 1:00:15
  I had because we're traveling and there's a
• 1:00:17
  lot to organize. We have not traveled since
• 1:00:19
  2019. There's a lot to organize.
• 1:00:21
  And,
• 1:00:23
  he asked and I have learned to just
• 1:00:25
  ask, can I tell you this? Like, are
• 1:00:27
  are you in a space to hear this?
• 1:00:30
  Now normally,
• 1:00:31
  when I when I do that and I
• 1:00:32
  use my big girl words and I'm very
• 1:00:34
  mature about it,
• 1:00:36
  he says, why, yes. Give me a few
• 1:00:38
  minutes. Or,
• 1:00:39
  yes. We'll do it at this time. And
• 1:00:41
  he gives me a time. This time, that
• 1:00:43
  was not where his head was at. And
• 1:00:44
  he went, I do wanna hear what you
• 1:00:46
  think, but not right now. And it was
• 1:00:47
  a very firm boundary.
• 1:00:49
  And my feelings got hurt. Now can I
• 1:00:52
  explain why? Not really. Not not without the
• 1:00:54
  presence of a therapist I don't have.
• 1:00:57
  What I did though because I immediately had
• 1:00:59
  this feeling of my feelings are hurt and
• 1:01:01
  also that doesn't
• 1:01:02
  that doesn't make sense for this moment because
• 1:01:04
  Jimmy didn't do anything wrong. We were not
• 1:01:05
  arguing.
• 1:01:06
  He just said, no. Not right now. And
• 1:01:08
  it was a pretty firm boundary. I walk
• 1:01:10
  into the bedroom by myself
• 1:01:12
  and I can feel myself welling up. Now
• 1:01:13
  here's the problem with emotional intelligence and emotional
• 1:01:16
  regulation. This is why I said it when
• 1:01:17
  we're talking about emotional intelligence. Sometimes you're gonna
• 1:01:19
  feel an emotion and your brain is gonna
• 1:01:21
  tell you you're not supposed to,
• 1:01:23
  you shouldn't, that's a dumb emotion,
• 1:01:25
  You're you it's you know, you're blowing something
• 1:01:27
  out of proportion. It's gonna tell you all
• 1:01:29
  those things. And for me, when it's doing
• 1:01:32
  that, it's like it's I'm shaming myself into
• 1:01:34
  not feeling it, into negating the emotion. That
• 1:01:37
  is no. That's no good.
• 1:01:39
  Own it. Feel it. You can then kind
• 1:01:43
  of on your own or with a friend
• 1:01:44
  or some you know, whatever, a mental health
• 1:01:47
  professional,
• 1:01:48
  work through where that came from and why
• 1:01:50
  later.
• 1:01:51
  But I
• 1:01:52
  the moment I named it that my feelings
• 1:01:55
  were hurt Yeah. The moment I didn't shy
• 1:01:57
  away from that feeling of shame of I
• 1:01:59
  shouldn't be feeling that because I understood it
• 1:02:01
  when I was blowing it out of proportion,
• 1:02:03
  I immediately could calm down a little bit.
• 1:02:04
  Now did I let myself cry? Silly little
• 1:02:06
  tears. Yes. I did. And then I took
• 1:02:08
  some deep breaths. And then I went,
• 1:02:11
  he was just holding the boundary. You're gonna
• 1:02:12
  talk about it.
• 1:02:14
  He wasn't mad at you. Y'all aren't in
• 1:02:16
  an argument. And and that for me was
• 1:02:18
  part of the emotional regulation. I was
• 1:02:20
  telling myself
• 1:02:21
  instead of what my brain was trying to
• 1:02:23
  conjure up, telling myself what I was literally
• 1:02:25
  witnessing, what had actually happened.
• 1:02:27
  And I had my moment and I took
• 1:02:29
  some deep breaths,
• 1:02:30
  and then I was fine. I went, look
• 1:02:32
  at me. Now can I do that all
• 1:02:34
  the fucking time? No. No. It it is,
• 1:02:36
  you know, because
• 1:02:37
  it is it is
• 1:02:39
  too easy.
• 1:02:40
  Unfortunately,
• 1:02:41
  it is so much easier to get caught
• 1:02:43
  up in the emotion Mhmm.
• 1:02:46
  Than to get caught
• 1:02:52
  some very brief things because there are
• 1:02:55
  a a lot a lot a lot of
• 1:02:57
  ways to emotionally regulate and all of the
• 1:03:00
  different ways
• 1:03:01
  that are are even possibly out there.
• 1:03:05
  There was a study, I think I linked
• 1:03:06
  to it in my resources,
• 1:03:08
  a study in the past few years that
• 1:03:10
  talked about how people who have higher emotional
• 1:03:12
  intelligence
• 1:03:13
  and a higher ability to emotionally
• 1:03:15
  self regulate
• 1:03:17
  use a wide variety of methods of regulation,
• 1:03:21
  and it and they
• 1:03:23
  modify and adapt and switch their methods
• 1:03:26
  based on
• 1:03:27
  a ton of different details. Like, every situation
• 1:03:30
  is a little different, so sometimes every
• 1:03:33
  every time they self regulate, it's a little
• 1:03:35
  bit different and they adapt to what's happening.
• 1:03:37
  Right? K. So
• 1:03:40
  the big ones, the big top level, how
• 1:03:42
  do I emotionally regulate?
• 1:03:44
  Self talk. Fucking talk to yourself. Go into
• 1:03:46
  a room where you're by yourself
• 1:03:48
  and talk it through with yourself. I do
• 1:03:50
  out loud and I do in my head.
• 1:03:51
  A lot in my head. So much of
• 1:03:53
  my head. Deep breathing.
• 1:03:55
  It sounds cliche to just take a deep
• 1:03:57
  breath or to count to 10,
• 1:04:00
  whatever.
• 1:04:00
  That,
• 1:04:02
  that little bit of pause can sometimes just
• 1:04:04
  help you kind of
• 1:04:06
  get out of the freak out and back
• 1:04:08
  into, like, oh, okay. Here I am. I'm
• 1:04:10
  in my body. Here's what I'm feeling. And
• 1:04:12
  then you can start naming things. Right? Meditation.
• 1:04:15
  I don't do well with just sit in
• 1:04:17
  in silence and, you know, don't let your
• 1:04:20
  mind whatever whatever. Like, I'm more of a
• 1:04:22
  physical meditator.
• 1:04:24
  There's an I don't think I'm using the
• 1:04:26
  I'm saying it right, but there's a term
• 1:04:29
  for it. And it used to be,
• 1:04:32
  when I did cross stitch, if I was
• 1:04:33
  doing, like, a big color block and it
• 1:04:35
  was just tons of stitches and I didn't
• 1:04:38
  have to chain, and I could get into
• 1:04:39
  a flow state. And that's how I was
• 1:04:42
  meditating, and that's my mind would kinda clear
• 1:04:44
  out, and I could I could take deeper
• 1:04:46
  breaths. And I Okay. Some of the stresses
• 1:04:49
  kind of just went to the background. And
• 1:04:51
  when I got done doing that physical activity,
• 1:04:54
  walking is another good one for some people.
• 1:04:56
  Mhmm.
• 1:04:57
  I could think clear. I could name those
• 1:04:59
  emotions. I could think more clearly about why
• 1:05:01
  the hell I've just been pissed off or
• 1:05:03
  sad or freaked out. Right?
• 1:05:05
  Healthy coping mechanisms,
• 1:05:07
  exercise.
• 1:05:09
  Fucking exercise that actually does do good shit,
• 1:05:13
  and I hate that about it.
• 1:05:14
  Your hobbies, social support,
• 1:05:17
  you know, being able to I'm not good
• 1:05:19
  at this because
• 1:05:20
  I'm not a person who has a lot
• 1:05:22
  of, like, friend friends. But if you are
• 1:05:24
  and you have people that you're, like you
• 1:05:26
  have the group chat and you can be
• 1:05:27
  like, oh my god. Let me tell you
• 1:05:28
  this crazy thing. And you're talking through something.
• 1:05:31
  It can be a form of,
• 1:05:33
  emotion regulation.
• 1:05:35
  And then there's therapy, right, that can offer
• 1:05:37
  outside support and teach you more about self
• 1:05:39
  regulating.
• 1:05:40
  Now,
• 1:05:43
  one thing I wanna talk about
• 1:05:46
  before we get into
• 1:05:48
  oh, no. We'll get to it because we're
• 1:05:49
  gonna talk about dysregulation. Because why do you
• 1:05:51
  need to emotionally regulate? Probably because you were
• 1:05:53
  dysregulated.
• 1:05:55
  And maybe you're in freak out mode. Maybe
• 1:05:58
  you have been triggered and now your mind
• 1:06:00
  is spinning up all of the things that
• 1:06:02
  maybe are not actually the reality in front
• 1:06:04
  of you, but your mind has taken over.
• 1:06:05
  Your emotions have taken over. But I wanna
• 1:06:08
  talk about,
• 1:06:11
  where and why and how
• 1:06:13
  emotional intelligence and specifically regulation matters in power
• 1:06:16
  exchange.
• 1:06:18
  And the first one that came to my
• 1:06:19
  mind when I was writing this list Mhmm.
• 1:06:21
  Negotiations
• 1:06:22
  and understanding
• 1:06:23
  that your partner might be holding back. Mhmm.
• 1:06:25
  Understanding when your partner might be
• 1:06:29
  I call it freak out mode. Right? Like,
• 1:06:30
  they're they have remembered something or they are
• 1:06:33
  assuming a thing that you've said something and
• 1:06:35
  they've made an assumption about what that means.
• 1:06:37
  And that assumption is now we're in panic,
• 1:06:39
  now we're in fear, now we're in sadness,
• 1:06:42
  now like, whatever the big emotion
• 1:06:46
  is, you know, the ability to regulate yourself,
• 1:06:50
  especially in the face of what might be
• 1:06:52
  your partner's fear or,
• 1:06:55
  sadness
• 1:06:56
  or anger or whatever
• 1:06:58
  makes it easier for maybe you to help
• 1:07:00
  them regulate
• 1:07:01
  or you to assess, oh, this is happening.
• 1:07:04
  I said something the wrong way. Something came
• 1:07:07
  up that I didn't know.
• 1:07:10
  Whatever. Right? We've touched on a hurt point,
• 1:07:12
  and
• 1:07:14
  they're not regulated right now. If you can
• 1:07:16
  it's very I I have this happen to
• 1:07:18
  me all the time. JB gets dysregulated, and
• 1:07:20
  now I
• 1:07:21
  if I'm not careful,
• 1:07:23
  I am now there with him. I'm now
• 1:07:25
  it it's a feedback loop with one another.
• 1:07:28
  I have
• 1:07:29
  gotten better
• 1:07:31
  at recognizing when it's happening to you, and
• 1:07:33
  then I annoy the fuck out of you
• 1:07:35
  by trying to help you regulate and you
• 1:07:38
  didn't want that right then.
• 1:07:40
  You wanted to have your moment to freak
• 1:07:42
  out. Mhmm.
• 1:07:44
  And see, I I have learned on the
• 1:07:46
  other hand that when you have
• 1:07:49
  those moments,
• 1:07:51
  that's when I need to step back. Mhmm.
• 1:07:54
  Because I will get myself under control. I
• 1:07:55
  will get myself there. But it for me,
• 1:07:58
  it is easier if I can name the
• 1:08:00
  emotion. Right. When somebody else names the emotion
• 1:08:02
  at me, I'm like, what the fuck do
• 1:08:04
  you know? You're not in my fucking head.
• 1:08:06
  And if you're right, I hate that even
• 1:08:07
  more. Right. Yeah, man.
• 1:08:10
  Yeah. I'm not saying I'm always right or
• 1:08:12
  healthy about these things. Okay? But I do
• 1:08:13
  think it's important to be able to admit
• 1:08:15
  it and name it. Arguments and conflict are
• 1:08:18
  huge are huge because every single one of
• 1:08:20
  us has our
• 1:08:22
  default way, maybe from childhood, maybe from past
• 1:08:24
  experience, maybe from whatever, that we respond to
• 1:08:27
  conflict in a relationship
• 1:08:29
  and then add
• 1:08:31
  whatever your default is. Some people get loud
• 1:08:32
  and angry and shouty. Some people withdraw and
• 1:08:35
  won't talk at all. You know? Some people
• 1:08:37
  will act like nothing's wrong. Like, there everybody
• 1:08:39
  has a different way of responding to this
• 1:08:41
  stuff.
• 1:08:43
  But then add the layer
• 1:08:45
  of power exchange on it. You've got doms
• 1:08:48
  who maybe are not well regulated and they
• 1:08:50
  think they're right and they're supposed to always
• 1:08:51
  be right because they're the dom. So then
• 1:08:54
  if they recognize that they're wrong, what feelings
• 1:08:57
  come up that are freaking them out and
• 1:08:58
  now they can't
• 1:09:00
  have this this good back and forth. Submissives
• 1:09:03
  who just maybe just wanna please their dom.
• 1:09:05
  Well, if their brain is telling them
• 1:09:08
  they were wrong about this and and you're
• 1:09:10
  kind of it's you're right to be unhappy
• 1:09:13
  or upset about this, but the another part
• 1:09:15
  of their brain is going, but they're the
• 1:09:16
  dom and I'm the submissive. Now you've got
• 1:09:18
  a cognitive dissonance that can really fuck you
• 1:09:20
  up.
• 1:09:21
  Again, some people,
• 1:09:22
  submissives,
• 1:09:23
  run and hide. Right? They don't wanna talk
• 1:09:25
  about it. Some overcompensate out of anxiety to
• 1:09:29
  make try and make it better.
• 1:09:31
  My thing used to be this is how
• 1:09:32
  I knew I felt safe with JB.
• 1:09:35
  I don't yell. I don't like to yell.
• 1:09:37
  I don't like to be yelled at, so
• 1:09:38
  I don't like to yell.
• 1:09:41
  But there have been two men in my
• 1:09:42
  life who could get me so pissed off
• 1:09:44
  I yelled.
• 1:09:45
  I divorced one of them because
• 1:09:48
  that was happening too fucking often.
• 1:09:50
  I think twice in our relationship, I have
• 1:09:52
  yelled
• 1:09:54
  and not submissively and not respectfully. And they
• 1:09:56
  we had to work through that
• 1:09:59
  because he got himself so worked up, and
• 1:10:01
  I was disregulating, got myself so worked up.
• 1:10:03
  Damn. It was it was bad time for
• 1:10:05
  everybody. Yeah. Yeah. It was. But the power
• 1:10:07
  exchange layer can really fuck with
• 1:10:11
  not necessarily how you respond, but sometimes it
• 1:10:14
  can, but how you feel about it. So
• 1:10:15
  you're already having your feeling about the argument
• 1:10:18
  and the conflict, and then there's feelings on
• 1:10:20
  top about how what you have told yourself
• 1:10:23
  an air quote good sub or good dom
• 1:10:25
  will is supposed to do, and then if
• 1:10:28
  you are not
• 1:10:29
  behaving in a way that matches that, now
• 1:10:31
  we've got another layer of freak out to
• 1:10:34
  that has to be worked through.
• 1:10:36
  It's important
• 1:10:38
  if you can, when you can, to bring
• 1:10:40
  yourself back to center, which in argument and
• 1:10:43
  conflict, the big thing is go to separate
• 1:10:45
  corners. Go to separate corners so you calm
• 1:10:47
  the fuck down, and you can have that
• 1:10:49
  moment to take a deep breath, to name
• 1:10:51
  the emotions, to walk yourself through it. I
• 1:10:53
  love to figure it out for myself why
• 1:10:55
  I'm what I'm feeling, why I'm feeling that
• 1:10:57
  way, where I think that came from,
• 1:11:00
  take some deep breaths,
• 1:11:02
  work through any sense of shame I feel
• 1:11:04
  over whatever the fuck I was feeling, and
• 1:11:05
  then come back. Because now
• 1:11:08
  we're gonna dissect these feelings together and, you
• 1:11:11
  know, JB really loves that.
• 1:11:13
  I wanna sit down and dissect our feelings
• 1:11:15
  together. Whoo. It's his favorite thing.
• 1:11:18
  Navigating triggers.
• 1:11:20
  So you could be doing everything right and
• 1:11:22
  then you've accidentally tripped the landmine.
• 1:11:25
  Your partner's in freak out mode, maybe they're
• 1:11:27
  not regulating yet because they have to go
• 1:11:29
  through that moment of
• 1:11:31
  whatever has come up for them. If you
• 1:11:34
  can be emotionally regulated and mostly calm, even
• 1:11:37
  if you're feeling bad that it happened, even
• 1:11:39
  if you're worried you've done some harm to
• 1:11:41
  your partner,
• 1:11:42
  the calmer you can be,
• 1:11:45
  sometimes it's a little bit easier for your
• 1:11:47
  partner to come back to their baseline
• 1:11:50
  and to to move through it. They gotta
• 1:11:51
  go through it. A trigger is no fucking
• 1:11:53
  joke. No fucking joke. It can it can
• 1:11:56
  stick with you for a long time. It
• 1:11:57
  can be a blip. It's different for everybody.
• 1:12:00
  It's different in different situations for the same
• 1:12:02
  person.
• 1:12:03
  But if one of you can stay calm
• 1:12:05
  through that,
• 1:12:07
  it's gonna be a little bit easier
• 1:12:10
  to get back
• 1:12:11
  to whatever center is.
• 1:12:13
  And then
• 1:12:16
  this one is really for the doms, but
• 1:12:17
  I think subs can you can use this
• 1:12:19
  too.
• 1:12:20
  Emotional intelligence and regulation.
• 1:12:22
  Understanding your partner as well as you possibly
• 1:12:25
  can outside of a scene Mhmm. So you
• 1:12:27
  can air quote read them better in scene.
• 1:12:29
  Now being able to read your partner does
• 1:12:31
  not negate check ins
• 1:12:33
  Correct. Correct. Traffic light systems, safe words, nah
• 1:12:36
  nah nah nah nah. Those are should always
• 1:12:38
  still just be there. I mean, no matter,
• 1:12:40
  you know, even now, I still check-in with
• 1:12:42
  you. Mhmm. But you for sure should know
• 1:12:45
  when I've been triggered by something. Oh, yeah.
• 1:12:47
  You can tell you can sometimes tell before
• 1:12:49
  I am if I'm, like, panicking over something.
• 1:12:52
  Mhmm. If something is off,
• 1:12:54
  you might not know what caused it. But
• 1:12:56
  I know something is not what it should
• 1:12:58
  be. Right. Right. And having that ability to
• 1:13:03
  have the emotional intelligence and to yourself,
• 1:13:06
  doms, tops, be regulated in the moment, you're
• 1:13:09
  gonna do a little bit better at reading
• 1:13:11
  your partner when something goes wrong. Do not
• 1:13:13
  fucking rely on just being able to read
• 1:13:16
  your partner. That's bullshit. You can get it
• 1:13:18
  wrong. You need all of the other tools
• 1:13:21
  in the safety risk assessment, risk mitigation toolbox,
• 1:13:25
  but it can help.
• 1:13:27
  I can tell when JB's vibe goes off.
• 1:13:30
  It's very rare. I can the one time
• 1:13:32
  I can think of and I can't remember
• 1:13:35
  it was a scene we had. It was
• 1:13:36
  right after your sister died and you were
• 1:13:38
  trying to work through some stress and I
• 1:13:40
  didn't know what was going on. I'm
• 1:13:43
  ass up face down on a spanking bench,
• 1:13:45
  but I could feel the vibe shift. Yeah.
• 1:13:48
  And you very quickly after that were like,
• 1:13:49
  okay. I'm done. We're done. We're it's over.
• 1:13:51
  Right. And you were able to
• 1:13:53
  to stay
• 1:13:55
  mostly calm. Yeah. And, you know, we got
• 1:13:57
  out of there. I think we did eat.
• 1:14:00
  Mhmm. You were in your head for a
• 1:14:02
  while, which is fine, and then we talked
• 1:14:03
  about it. Right. That is an ideal situation.
• 1:14:06
  That is a Mhmm. That is a, oh,
• 1:14:08
  I hope that happens for everybody all the
• 1:14:09
  time. But the real world, he coulda had
• 1:14:12
  a freak out. It would have been valid.
• 1:14:14
  Like, he was grieving, and he was trying
• 1:14:16
  to do this other thing to take his
• 1:14:17
  mind off of it, and it didn't work.
• 1:14:19
  Right?
• 1:14:21
  And it's okay if you have the freak
• 1:14:22
  out. It the freak out itself is not
• 1:14:24
  bad. It's do you keep trying to
• 1:14:27
  top in a scene while you're having a
• 1:14:30
  freak out? Or you go, I gotta call
• 1:14:32
  it because I am not in the right
• 1:14:34
  place. Right.
• 1:14:35
  That was that was like the time
• 1:14:38
  a couple several years ago when, you were
• 1:14:41
  triggered.
• 1:14:42
  Which time?
• 1:14:44
  Which time? Well, I mean,
• 1:14:46
  the time I was pressing down on you.
• 1:14:48
  Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Panic attack city. You had
• 1:14:51
  a a really severe panic attack.
• 1:14:54
  Everything at that moment stopped. Mhmm. I I
• 1:14:57
  stopped. Everything nope. Mhmm. And,
• 1:15:00
  you know, I went right into aftercare mode
• 1:15:03
  with you. Because emotional intelligence
• 1:15:06
  says,
• 1:15:07
  I'm having the panic attack. He is
• 1:15:10
  doing what he can. It's not his job
• 1:15:12
  to start trying to talk me through that
• 1:15:14
  in that moment. That's not the right thing.
• 1:15:16
  No. I had to like, he could be
• 1:15:18
  there in in whatever way worked for me
• 1:15:20
  and us in the moment for support, of
• 1:15:22
  course. But mostly, I had to, like, get
• 1:15:24
  back in my own body again. It wasn't
• 1:15:26
  until the next morning that I really said,
• 1:15:28
  you know, when when you're ready to talk
• 1:15:30
  about this, you know, you can.
• 1:15:32
  Right. So there
• 1:15:34
  are infinite number of ways and places within
• 1:15:37
  a power exchange that these things work together.
• 1:15:40
  And if at least one of you
• 1:15:43
  can get yourself back to a a mostly
• 1:15:45
  calm point where you can acknowledge
• 1:15:49
  righting
• 1:15:50
  you,
• 1:15:52
  it's a little bit easier. It's not always
• 1:15:54
  perfect. It won't always work. Man, it really
• 1:15:56
  sucks when you're both dysregulated. I'm just playing.
• 1:15:59
  I do I, when I'm and when I
• 1:16:02
  have had freak outs, get pissy when he
• 1:16:04
  is super calm? Yeah. It happens.
• 1:16:06
  I'm like, why am I the only one
• 1:16:09
  freaking the fuck out?
• 1:16:13
  But it again, I could in the middle
• 1:16:15
  of a freak out, I could say that
• 1:16:16
  to him. We have that level of communication.
• 1:16:19
  And he's probably gonna laugh and then I'm
• 1:16:21
  gonna laugh. And man,
• 1:16:23
  I don't know how it works. I don't
• 1:16:24
  know I don't know how to tell anybody
• 1:16:26
  to get themselves to do it because I've
• 1:16:27
  never done it purposefully.
• 1:16:29
  If I can crack a fucking joke
• 1:16:32
  in the middle of one of those moments,
• 1:16:35
  even if it's a it's gallows humor or
• 1:16:37
  just it's dark or if it's inappropriate,
• 1:16:41
  if I can crack a joke and one
• 1:16:43
  or both of us can
• 1:16:44
  even just chuckle Yeah. I can break through
• 1:16:46
  some of that for myself.
• 1:16:49
  But I can't count on that because I
• 1:16:51
  don't know what that mechanism is. I understand
• 1:16:53
  taking a deep breath. I understand going into
• 1:16:55
  a quiet place to think. I understand self
• 1:16:58
  talk. I don't understand where how the humor
• 1:17:00
  part works. If if anybody out there is
• 1:17:02
  a professional and can explain that? Great. I
• 1:17:04
  I I would think you
• 1:17:06
  would call it an interrupter because it it
• 1:17:08
  Maybe so. It breaks the chain of the
• 1:17:11
  Maybe. Of what is happening.
• 1:17:14
  So we talk about regulation, emotional regulation, because
• 1:17:17
  the opposite, the thing that you are trying
• 1:17:19
  to do when you're trying to regulate is
• 1:17:21
  from emotional
• 1:17:22
  dysregulation.
• 1:17:23
  Every human being on the planet will experience
• 1:17:25
  emotional dysregulation
• 1:17:26
  from time to time. Mhmm. There is such
• 1:17:29
  a thing as chronic dysregulation.
• 1:17:33
  What I I'm sure this is just a
• 1:17:35
  short list. I'm sure there are other
• 1:17:39
  conditions,
• 1:17:40
  divergencies,
• 1:17:41
  whatever whatever
• 1:17:43
  that would come under this, but the ones
• 1:17:45
  that were named the most that I went,
• 1:17:47
  oh, okay. PTSD,
• 1:17:50
  god help you, especially with triggers,
• 1:17:52
  ADHD,
• 1:17:53
  borderline personality disorder or BPD, and depression. And
• 1:17:57
  I
• 1:17:57
  say this when I saw that, I went,
• 1:17:59
  oh my god. That
• 1:18:01
  that makes sense.
• 1:18:02
  Here's what I was thinking. The most dysregulated
• 1:18:05
  I've seen JB and the most times
• 1:18:07
  I'm either trying to help him or he's
• 1:18:09
  taken a moment to to self regulate
• 1:18:12
  has been through these years when he's dealt
• 1:18:14
  the most of the depression. Mhmm. He is
• 1:18:16
  he is
• 1:18:17
  sometimes in a bad moment, he's harsher.
• 1:18:20
  He's quick to snap. He's
• 1:18:23
  quick to kind of push away. And I've
• 1:18:25
  gotten better at sometimes just going, whoop, he's
• 1:18:27
  gotta have that moment because you are able
• 1:18:28
  to self regulate. You can
• 1:18:31
  get yourself kind of I'm I'm getting better
• 1:18:33
  at recognizing
• 1:18:34
  Mhmm. When I have those Mhmm. Those dips.
• 1:18:38
  But folks who
• 1:18:40
  experience
• 1:18:41
  chronic dysregulation,
• 1:18:43
  these, like,
• 1:18:44
  top level things we're talking about are may
• 1:18:47
  not work
• 1:18:48
  at all or often enough, and that's where
• 1:18:51
  there's medications,
• 1:18:53
  there's medical there's medical interventions. Let's say there's
• 1:18:55
  therapy, there's different things that may be needed.
• 1:19:00
  If you are the partner of somebody who
• 1:19:02
  experiences
• 1:19:05
  consistent dysregulation
• 1:19:06
  like this,
• 1:19:08
  y'all are gonna have to work together about
• 1:19:10
  how to work through that together because a
• 1:19:12
  person who's going through it more often than,
• 1:19:14
  like, a one off here and there
• 1:19:16
  is gonna have to has probably figured out
• 1:19:18
  or gonna need to figure out
• 1:19:21
  methods specific to their needs, and that's a
• 1:19:23
  let's work let's work together on this.
• 1:19:27
  And what two random podcasters are saying on
• 1:19:30
  a random Wednesday afternoon is not gonna help
• 1:19:33
  somebody who has to live with this, and
• 1:19:35
  they know
• 1:19:36
  it's coming at some point.
• 1:19:38
  Now
• 1:19:39
  just,
• 1:19:40
  to kind of help if you're like, well,
• 1:19:42
  how do I know if a partner is
• 1:19:43
  dysregulated?
• 1:19:44
  Here are some things that came up. They
• 1:19:46
  in from the resource I can't remember which
• 1:19:48
  one it is, but I know I linked
• 1:19:49
  it. They were talking more about chronic dysregulation,
• 1:19:53
  but I recognize this for
• 1:19:56
  my own
• 1:19:57
  experiences, which are not chronic.
• 1:19:59
  So intense reactions to small things. Mhmm. Every
• 1:20:03
  time when I read that, I know I
• 1:20:04
  do it. I know I do it, but
• 1:20:06
  I always think of JB.
• 1:20:07
  Because the joke
• 1:20:09
  is I always say it feels like he
• 1:20:11
  has is gnawing on my head. He's chewing
• 1:20:14
  bite my head off, right, is the expression.
• 1:20:16
  I'm like, you didn't just bite my head
• 1:20:17
  off. You are gnawing on me and your
• 1:20:19
  back molar like I'm gristle.
• 1:20:22
  Now can I say that in the moment
• 1:20:24
  when he is having this intense reaction to
• 1:20:26
  a small thing? No. I have to wait
• 1:20:28
  until he's regulated again and he's better. Remember
• 1:20:31
  later on in there, they all chuckle. Yeah.
• 1:20:37
  Difficulty letting things go or calming down after
• 1:20:39
  a conflict.
• 1:20:40
  Right? Like the Yeah. Like the conflict doesn't
• 1:20:42
  just it kinda never ends. You hold on
• 1:20:45
  to it a little bit like,
• 1:20:47
  I always think of like a miser with
• 1:20:49
  gold. Like, this this is not your golem
• 1:20:51
  with the fucking ring, you know. But it's
• 1:20:53
  not healthy for you to hold on. Right?
• 1:20:55
  It's not. There, you know, there
• 1:20:57
  needs to be resolution. And when you have
• 1:20:59
  resolution, that's it. You know, you have to
• 1:21:01
  let go.
• 1:21:02
  Even like in DS, you know, you talk
• 1:21:04
  about when there's when there's punishment.
• 1:21:07
  Okay? Yep. You know, you you
• 1:21:12
  you did what you did. You got the
• 1:21:13
  punishment whatever that may be. But when the
• 1:21:15
  punishment's over,
• 1:21:17
  that all should be put behind. It's done
• 1:21:20
  and over and Right. Yeah. And
• 1:21:22
  you hopefully move you move on, you've learned
• 1:21:24
  the lesson. Ideally, you don't repeat whatever that
• 1:21:26
  might be. Which just goes back to why
• 1:21:28
  we tell Dom's, do you do not do
• 1:21:30
  consequences, punishment, whatever. When you are pissed off,
• 1:21:32
  get yourself calm again. Right.
• 1:21:35
  And then
• 1:21:37
  work through that other. Now remember, just as
• 1:21:39
  a reminder,
• 1:21:40
  consequences, punishments are not required and all power
• 1:21:42
  exchange and they are negotiated just like everything
• 1:21:44
  else is. So you don't have to do
• 1:21:45
  that at all, by the way. Black and
• 1:21:47
  white thinking, things are all good or all
• 1:21:50
  bad.
• 1:21:51
  I recognize that within myself in the times
• 1:21:53
  when I've I call them freak outs, but
• 1:21:55
  I'm at peak freak out.
• 1:21:57
  I go into all or nothing thinking.
• 1:22:01
  And the world just isn't that way. It's
• 1:22:03
  too there's too many fucking
• 1:22:05
  nuances.
• 1:22:06
  So if you find yourself stuck in that,
• 1:22:08
  it can be a sign of dysregulation.
• 1:22:11
  Frequent shifts in mood and or how you
• 1:22:14
  see yourself.
• 1:22:16
  Yeah.
• 1:22:18
  Yeah. I
• 1:22:20
  I recognize some of that. Some of that
• 1:22:21
  I have worked through over the years.
• 1:22:25
  Chronic feelings of loneliness
• 1:22:27
  or emptiness,
• 1:22:29
  which can then lead to impulsive behaviors to
• 1:22:32
  fill that void.
• 1:22:33
  One of the examples I gave was seeking
• 1:22:35
  external validation,
• 1:22:37
  like doing whatever
• 1:22:39
  so that you can be
• 1:22:41
  good, air quote, that or enough or get
• 1:22:43
  the the gold star kind of feeling from
• 1:22:46
  whomever. And it's often in ways that are
• 1:22:49
  not good for you. Or,
• 1:22:51
  you know, maybe from outwardly, they're not they
• 1:22:53
  don't look air quote bad, but they're internally,
• 1:22:56
  it's not good for you because it's not
• 1:22:58
  coming from this place of
• 1:23:00
  a calm center. Like, you there's
• 1:23:04
  there's a dysregulation
• 1:23:05
  there.
• 1:23:07
  That one I I am sure I've gone
• 1:23:09
  through. I cannot I have less experience with
• 1:23:11
  that. And again, these signs of emotional dysregulation
• 1:23:14
  came from a list of what they were
• 1:23:16
  talking about, people who are going through who
• 1:23:17
  are dysregulated
• 1:23:18
  often, and these things come up again
• 1:23:22
  and again. Two random podcasters are not the
• 1:23:24
  ones who can help you through that. But
• 1:23:26
  No. We are not qualified. And also that's
• 1:23:28
  a can be
• 1:23:29
  all of it's serious. But when it you're
• 1:23:32
  you live through this back and forth
• 1:23:35
  consistently, that is a thing that changes your
• 1:23:37
  light, alters your life, and alters your relationships.
• 1:23:40
  And so I, you know, I hope anybody
• 1:23:42
  who sees themself in this
• 1:23:45
  can have access to the care that will
• 1:23:48
  help them.
• 1:23:49
  The one offs, the you're you find yourself
• 1:23:51
  in an argument and you both are like
• 1:23:53
  dogs with bones and you can't let go,
• 1:23:56
  that's a one off, and hopefully, some of
• 1:23:57
  these tips will help.
• 1:24:00
  I was trying to think of times
• 1:24:03
  within our power exchange where I have been
• 1:24:05
  not regulated, and I used my emotional intelligence,
• 1:24:08
  and I talked myself through.
• 1:24:10
  And the one that comes up for me,
• 1:24:11
  and I've used this example many times, we
• 1:24:13
  are non monogamous, not currently practicing,
• 1:24:16
  but in theory we are.
• 1:24:18
  And
• 1:24:19
  every
• 1:24:20
  time JB would go off with a new
• 1:24:21
  partner, I would have some form of
• 1:24:25
  an internal on my own meltdown.
• 1:24:28
  Every time it got easier, it got better,
• 1:24:30
  I got better over time, I'd like calm
• 1:24:32
  down at a certain point. And some people
• 1:24:34
  would say, oh, well, if you're having those
• 1:24:35
  feelings, you shouldn't be, you know, non monogamous.
• 1:24:38
  No. No. No. No. So these feelings come
• 1:24:40
  from places that have nothing to do with
• 1:24:41
  our relationship
• 1:24:42
  and everything to do with my own internal
• 1:24:44
  shit.
• 1:24:46
  But the way I chose to deal with
• 1:24:48
  it was not to ignore the feelings
• 1:24:50
  because
• 1:24:51
  that's where shame lives. Right? Mhmm. I did
• 1:24:54
  have to that is where I started learning
• 1:24:56
  how to name a hard feeling that I
• 1:24:57
  didn't want to feel or didn't think I
• 1:24:59
  was supposed to feel. Because there right before
• 1:25:02
  I would name it, there'd be that feeling
• 1:25:03
  of shame, and it feels so yucky. And
• 1:25:06
  then I could name it for what it
• 1:25:07
  was and just fucking own it. And I
• 1:25:09
  was by myself. You were gone. I was
• 1:25:11
  in the bedroom. Right?
• 1:25:13
  And I could feel a little bit better
• 1:25:14
  because it felt like clarity. I'm like, okay.
• 1:25:15
  That's what I'm feeling. Now what do I
• 1:25:17
  do about that? Right? That's where my brain
• 1:25:19
  goes.
• 1:25:20
  But the
• 1:25:21
  the thing I decided
• 1:25:24
  very early on
• 1:25:25
  Mhmm. Was whatever I was feeling when you
• 1:25:28
  were off with a different partner
• 1:25:30
  playing or dating or whatever whatever
• 1:25:33
  was I was not going to make
• 1:25:35
  my big
• 1:25:36
  feelings
• 1:25:38
  your problem. They were my problem because you
• 1:25:40
  were not doing anything to air quote cause
• 1:25:42
  them. Them. We had discussed it. There had
• 1:25:44
  been full communication. It was with full consent.
• 1:25:46
  I understood what was happening. Did we tweak
• 1:25:48
  things over time? Things I had I learned
• 1:25:50
  that would I felt like I needed Mhmm.
• 1:25:53
  To, you know, have less of a freak
• 1:25:54
  out? Sure.
• 1:25:56
  But that was a time in our power
• 1:25:59
  exchange where I knew I knew as you're
• 1:26:02
  submissive,
• 1:26:03
  if I daddied you by text or voice
• 1:26:05
  mail, you would drop everything for me,
• 1:26:09
  which would have been so fucking unfair to
• 1:26:11
  both of you. And I recognized it and
• 1:26:12
  I understood I understood the
• 1:26:14
  power that I had, right, within the relationship
• 1:26:17
  that, yeah, a teary
• 1:26:19
  baby girl crying in voice mail, you were
• 1:26:22
  gonna try to fix that from where you
• 1:26:25
  were. Right?
• 1:26:26
  And I had to do
• 1:26:28
  the hard thing, and it was hard. I
• 1:26:31
  wanted I I'm a baby girl. I want
• 1:26:33
  my daddy to come, like, fucking take care
• 1:26:35
  of me. Right?
• 1:26:36
  I don't wanna feel bad things and hard
• 1:26:38
  things. Most people don't.
• 1:26:40
  And it was when I went, no. These
• 1:26:42
  are my feelings, and I have to deal
• 1:26:44
  with them. And I have to sit with
• 1:26:46
  them. And I am not ruining his good
• 1:26:48
  time that I have consented to. Because if
• 1:26:50
  I stopped consenting to it, then we would
• 1:26:51
  talk about it when you fucking got home.
• 1:26:53
  Yeah. You know?
• 1:26:56
  I think that's where
• 1:26:58
  I started
• 1:27:00
  working on self regulation more
• 1:27:02
  and working on my own
• 1:27:06
  understanding of my own emotions more and more.
• 1:27:08
  I've I've always I don't know. You're gonna
• 1:27:10
  be shocked by this. I've always been an
• 1:27:11
  introspective person.
• 1:27:14
  I would have never guessed. But I there's
• 1:27:16
  something about
• 1:27:18
  having had a few times, multiple times, had
• 1:27:21
  had to face my own insecurities
• 1:27:22
  Mhmm. In a relationship where I know that
• 1:27:25
  I am loved and I am valued and
• 1:27:27
  I am cherished. I know my place in
• 1:27:29
  that relationship and there was never any doubt.
• 1:27:31
  And I still had those insecurities. Like, that
• 1:27:34
  was that was a me job. That was
• 1:27:36
  a me thing.
• 1:27:38
  That does not mean I did not cry.
• 1:27:40
  I cried. I cried so much, until I
• 1:27:43
  didn't. Until I kinda went, okay. I understand
• 1:27:45
  this for for me, and everybody's different.
• 1:27:48
  When same ish similar issues would come up,
• 1:27:51
  and I have to regulate through them each
• 1:27:53
  time and because I had kids at home.
• 1:27:55
  I still had to be a mom. I
• 1:27:56
  still had to do work. I still had
• 1:27:57
  to do these things. Right? Like, I had
• 1:27:58
  to get my shit together,
• 1:28:00
  but try to do it in a healthy
• 1:28:01
  way.
• 1:28:03
  Each time
• 1:28:04
  a similar feeling comes up that I have
• 1:28:07
  to work myself work through myself,
• 1:28:09
  it gets easier each time. It does not
• 1:28:12
  always get easy. Let's let's not let's not
• 1:28:15
  lie to ourselves. But it just get easier
• 1:28:17
  because things are familiar, and I remember things
• 1:28:19
  that worked before.
• 1:28:20
  And I go, okay. Take that breath. Okay.
• 1:28:22
  Mhmm. Say the name the fucking emotion. Do
• 1:28:25
  not be afraid to name the emotion.
• 1:28:28
  And that's how by the time
• 1:28:31
  I don't know if you you remember this
• 1:28:33
  or recognize this. The first time you went
• 1:28:35
  off,
• 1:28:36
  after we lived in this town, not in
• 1:28:37
  this house, but in the town, you went
• 1:28:39
  off with,
• 1:28:40
  somebody to a play party. You came home,
• 1:28:43
  and I was very
• 1:28:45
  what's the word I want?
• 1:28:48
  Fragile.
• 1:28:49
  Like, I I was I was not
• 1:28:51
  emoting at you, but it wouldn't have taken
• 1:28:53
  much for me to just, like, fall over.
• 1:28:55
  Right?
• 1:28:56
  And
• 1:28:58
  very soon after you got home and got
• 1:28:59
  settled, I needed to talk about it. Mhmm.
• 1:29:01
  Well, then the next time,
• 1:29:03
  I was less emotionally fragile when you came
• 1:29:05
  in. Mhmm. And it I waited much longer.
• 1:29:08
  I was like, hey. Now that you're home
• 1:29:09
  and you're rested and you've unpacked and we
• 1:29:11
  did these errands and, like, it's two days
• 1:29:13
  that can we talk about this? Right? And,
• 1:29:16
  like, each time
• 1:29:18
  got
• 1:29:19
  it got easier for me to handle in
• 1:29:20
  the moment until there was nothing to handle.
• 1:29:23
  And then it got easier to talk about
• 1:29:25
  without
• 1:29:26
  in in a regulated way so that it
• 1:29:28
  was a calm conversation of, hey. I have
• 1:29:30
  figured out this would help me feel a
• 1:29:32
  little bit better about you being not in
• 1:29:33
  town. Right? You being not in the fucking
• 1:29:36
  state. You know what I mean? Like, or
• 1:29:38
  or wherever you were going. Right?
• 1:29:40
  And then we could modify it that way.
• 1:29:42
  Right.
• 1:29:44
  So that is one of my experiences
• 1:29:47
  with emotional intelligence and regulation.
• 1:29:50
  It's the it's the example that
• 1:29:53
  kept coming up when I was going through
• 1:29:54
  this. Okay. So it's a very complicated topic.
• 1:29:57
  Mhmm. And I think it's important. I think
• 1:29:59
  that,
• 1:30:00
  anybody who it resonates with, but you're like,
• 1:30:02
  I'm fucking clueless. I don't know what to
• 1:30:04
  do. There's so much information available
• 1:30:07
  online. There are people who talk about it.
• 1:30:08
  There are people who write about it.
• 1:30:10
  You can
• 1:30:11
  the resources there start with the links that
• 1:30:13
  I I used
• 1:30:15
  and go from there.
• 1:30:17
  But it is a skill. It is a
• 1:30:18
  thing you have to learn. You have to
• 1:30:20
  do it enough times until you go, okay.
• 1:30:22
  I kinda understand what this is. Right.
• 1:30:24
  So
• 1:30:25
  It's like anything else. You have to work
• 1:30:26
  at it till it becomes muscle memory. Mhmm.
• 1:30:29
  Mhmm. And for some people, you'll pick it
• 1:30:31
  up quicker Mhmm. Than other people. You'll be
• 1:30:33
  working you'll
• 1:30:34
  it'll be a challenge and for a little
• 1:30:36
  bit longer. It's the same with communication skills.
• 1:30:38
  Yep. But I promise you, if you can
• 1:30:40
  get your emotional
• 1:30:41
  skills
• 1:30:42
  improved, the communication skills, those two things, everything's
• 1:30:45
  enhanced by that. Oh, yeah. So Yep.
• 1:30:50
  So, So that's my topic.
• 1:30:55
  Do you have anything you would like to
• 1:30:56
  add? Nope. Okay.
• 1:30:59
  I'm happy to do a bonus section. Okay.
• 1:31:02
  So,
• 1:31:03
  are we good?
• 1:31:05
  I guess.
• 1:31:07
  Keep it geeky, y'all. I will see you
• 1:31:09
  next week.
• 1:31:22
  Daddy, can I talk about crickets?
• 1:31:24
  Yeah.
• 1:31:26
  I don't know what to talk about.
• 1:31:32
  I get to feel all of my feelings
• 1:31:35
  about travel anxiety for, like, thirty six hours.
• 1:31:38
  Actually, in the week leading up to this
• 1:31:39
  whole week. And then it's thirty six hours
• 1:31:41
  of our life. It's like, I've never traveled
• 1:31:44
  out and back this fucking fast. Me either.
• 1:31:46
  Yeah. I am a give me two nights
• 1:31:48
  in a hotel room
• 1:31:50
  kinda girl, and we did not do that
• 1:31:52
  this time. Yeah. But it's all new. And
• 1:31:55
  so
• 1:31:56
  yeah. Yeah. The anxiety's
• 1:32:00
  Anxiety's riding me. I didn't sleep last night.
• 1:32:01
  I I listened
• 1:32:02
  to the whole forty two minute sleep story,
• 1:32:04
  and
• 1:32:05
  then I kept being awake after that.
• 1:32:08
  And you tossed and turned a few times.
• 1:32:10
  You elbowed me a couple times, you kneed
• 1:32:12
  me a couple times, I shoved you a
• 1:32:14
  couple times. We love one another. And,
• 1:32:17
  and I was awake through all of that
• 1:32:18
  and then I clearly fell asleep at some
• 1:32:20
  point, and then I woke up and I
• 1:32:22
  needed to pee and I said, not today,
• 1:32:23
  Satan. And I tried to make myself go
• 1:32:26
  back to sleep, and then your alarm went
• 1:32:28
  off. And I went,
• 1:32:30
  no. I'm not getting
• 1:32:33
  and I think I fell back asleep for,
• 1:32:35
  like, fifteen more minutes. Oh, god. Oh, which
• 1:32:37
  is the worst. Like,
• 1:32:39
  I don't know. Everybody's different. I have learned
• 1:32:42
  over the years, if I
• 1:32:44
  am gonna fall back asleep, I better get,
• 1:32:46
  like, that full fucking REM cycle. Better get,
• 1:32:48
  like, the hour and a half or whatever
• 1:32:49
  it is. Because if it's less than that,
• 1:32:51
  exhausted.
• 1:32:52
  Exhausted
• 1:32:53
  when I wake up.
• 1:32:59
  But, yeah.
• 1:33:00
  So now we're doing all the details of
• 1:33:03
  what we need to pack because we don't
• 1:33:04
  wanna forget anything.
• 1:33:06
  And because it's a tight turnaround, it there's
• 1:33:08
  some things it doesn't make sense to bring,
• 1:33:10
  but there's some things that if we forget
• 1:33:11
  it, it won't make sense to just go
• 1:33:13
  buy it because we're not there that long,
• 1:33:15
  but it means you have to be without
• 1:33:16
  it.
• 1:33:18
  And we're
• 1:33:19
  not gonna be in our typical climate,
• 1:33:22
  so we're watching weather forecast and I don't
• 1:33:24
  own a jacket.
• 1:33:26
  I'm like,
• 1:33:27
  look, I do good if I wear a
• 1:33:29
  hoodie
• 1:33:30
  and a t shirt underneath said hoodie. That's
• 1:33:32
  enough layers. I mean, thank god for, you
• 1:33:35
  know, the extra padding and and running hot
• 1:33:38
  naturally.
• 1:33:39
  I'll mostly be fine.
• 1:33:42
  Yeah. Going to airports we've not traveled to
• 1:33:45
  and from before. Mhmm. So I'm doing that
• 1:33:47
  thing. Not everybody does it. I know. But
• 1:33:49
  I script stuff in my head. I script
• 1:33:52
  conversations
• 1:33:53
  always.
• 1:33:54
  But I also
• 1:33:56
  script out of my head, like, what should
• 1:33:58
  happen from point a to point b? What's
• 1:34:00
  the day supposed to look like? What is
• 1:34:01
  this event supposed to look like? What what
• 1:34:03
  happens then and then what happens next? And
• 1:34:04
  we go to the and I do that
• 1:34:06
  in my head all the time. And with
• 1:34:07
  travel, when I have never been to a
• 1:34:10
  location before, and it can be as something
• 1:34:12
  as simple as never having been to the
• 1:34:14
  airport before,
• 1:34:15
  I can't script it, and so I am
• 1:34:16
  then on fucking edge.
• 1:34:19
  Like but how do I prepare myself for
• 1:34:21
  what might happen if I don't know what
• 1:34:23
  might happen?
• 1:34:25
  How do I, like,
• 1:34:27
  make sure that I'm prepared for any event
• 1:34:30
  possible
• 1:34:32
  if I don't know what to expect? Now
• 1:34:34
  once we do this one this trip out
• 1:34:36
  and back once, I'll be fine.
• 1:34:38
  I I will be a 100% fine.
• 1:34:41
  But I gotta go through this one. And
• 1:34:42
  apparently, that means I'm not gonna be sleeping.
• 1:34:45
  Do this one. Did our screen go black
• 1:34:47
  again?
• 1:34:48
  No.
• 1:34:49
  That's weird. I think it might be the
• 1:34:51
  delay. It hasn't caught up. Maybe.
• 1:34:54
  So yeah.
• 1:34:56
  That'll be a good trip. We'll come back.
• 1:34:59
  We'll probably rock up into our own driveway
• 1:35:01
  at, like, 2AM on Saturday.
• 1:35:03
  We've already decided that we are doing no
• 1:35:06
  chores. We We are doing no errands on
• 1:35:08
  Saturday. We are laying still on Saturday.
• 1:35:11
  And then Sunday,
• 1:35:13
  the oldest has a big it's like the
• 1:35:16
  big recital of his
• 1:35:18
  college degree.
• 1:35:19
  Mhmm.
• 1:35:21
  And we're gonna be there for that,
• 1:35:24
  which I'm excited about. Yeah. I I get
• 1:35:26
  nervous, like, as like
• 1:35:29
  so
• 1:35:30
  I get nervous for him because I know
• 1:35:32
  he doesn't wanna make mistakes.
• 1:35:34
  And I also get nervous is the wrong
• 1:35:36
  word. Like, I'm happy for him. I'm excited.
• 1:35:37
  I can't wait to watch him. But I
• 1:35:39
  do that, like, on edge thing because I
• 1:35:41
  remember
• 1:35:42
  middle school and high school versions of him
• 1:35:44
  where you they would practice really hard and
• 1:35:46
  there'd still be, like, a crack in a
• 1:35:47
  note or a thing would go wrong. And
• 1:35:49
  he always hated it, and I hated it
• 1:35:50
  for him. I wanted it to be brilliant
• 1:35:52
  and perfect now. We are on year three
• 1:35:54
  of listening to this child play a musical
• 1:35:56
  instrument at the college level. And, yeah, he
• 1:35:58
  still has blips and moments, but
• 1:36:00
  it is so
• 1:36:02
  far and above and beyond the high school
• 1:36:05
  experience
• 1:36:06
  that I think he sounds magical
• 1:36:08
  every time, and I cry at every solo
• 1:36:12
  he has, at every big boy thing he
• 1:36:14
  does at the college level. And this one
• 1:36:17
  is an hour of
• 1:36:19
  him playing multiple pieces, sometimes alone, sometimes with
• 1:36:22
  the,
• 1:36:23
  piano accompanist, sometimes in, like, a trio or
• 1:36:26
  a duet or whatever whatever. Like, he's had
• 1:36:29
  to put together this recital, and he is
• 1:36:31
  the center of it, of every piece.
• 1:36:34
  And I know he's gonna be amazing and
• 1:36:36
  it's gonna be great and it's a lot
• 1:36:37
  of pressure and he pretty much handles pressure
• 1:36:38
  well, but I will be on the edge
• 1:36:40
  of my seat for that entire hour. I
• 1:36:43
  will feel like I have run a marathon
• 1:36:45
  by the time we're done. Now I didn't
• 1:36:47
  have to do fucking nothing except sit there.
• 1:36:50
  So Yeah. I I remember when he,
• 1:36:52
  first started with an instrument and you practiced
• 1:36:55
  in the closet.
• 1:36:58
  I don't remember that. In the condo. He
• 1:37:01
  used to go in the closet. I don't
• 1:37:02
  remember that. Okay. You don't remember that? No.
• 1:37:04
  I don't remember that.
• 1:37:06
  Um-mm.
• 1:37:07
  I think it might be coming back to
• 1:37:08
  me now, but no. I did not remember
• 1:37:10
  that for sure. Yeah.
• 1:37:12
  I know.
• 1:37:14
  So strange.
• 1:37:16
  So
• 1:37:17
  yeah.
• 1:37:19
  I can.
• 1:37:21
  Last week was a rough week because we
• 1:37:22
  had a family member in the hospital.
• 1:37:24
  They appear to be on the mend. It
• 1:37:26
  was critical. It was scary for a few
• 1:37:28
  days. Yeah. And now
• 1:37:30
  and see, before it got scary for them,
• 1:37:32
  they were already there for, like, some serious
• 1:37:34
  injuries.
• 1:37:35
  And they had surgery, and they got it
• 1:37:37
  went downhill very fucking quickly. And now it
• 1:37:40
  seems like they're
• 1:37:42
  they've recovered from that critical moment, but they
• 1:37:44
  still have the injuries that had them at
• 1:37:46
  the hospital to be able to recover from.
• 1:37:50
  So
• 1:37:51
  yeah. This is the longest my mom's ever
• 1:37:53
  been in town. By the time she leaves
• 1:37:55
  next week, it'll have been two weeks. She's
• 1:37:56
  not usually here for two weeks. Mm-mm.
• 1:37:58
  She was prepared to stay for however long
• 1:38:00
  she needed to.
• 1:38:02
  Because it chance she was gonna leave and
• 1:38:04
  then Have to come right back now. Come
• 1:38:06
  right back
• 1:38:07
  too. So Yeah. I'm glad that
• 1:38:10
  smoothed itself out. Mhmm. Anything is still possible,
• 1:38:13
  of course Yeah. Knowing
• 1:38:16
  this person's history, anything really is still possible.
• 1:38:18
  But But right now, things look very good.
• 1:38:19
  Yeah. I mean, we were we were gonna
• 1:38:21
  travel no matter what because a lot of
• 1:38:24
  a lot of fucking money got spent on
• 1:38:26
  plane tickets in a in a single hotel
• 1:38:28
  room. Yeah.
• 1:38:30
  But I
• 1:38:31
  I was prepared for, like,
• 1:38:34
  chaos right before we left and and some
• 1:38:36
  you know, whatever right when we got back,
• 1:38:38
  and
• 1:38:39
  I feel better about leaving town Yeah. If
• 1:38:41
  that helps. Yeah. So yeah. It's it's a
• 1:38:45
  weird week. Mhmm. I just wanna get a
• 1:38:47
  good night's sleep, and I probably will not
• 1:38:48
  until we're back on Saturday. That'll probably be
• 1:38:51
  when I, like, just
• 1:38:53
  get knocked out in sleep sleep. But it's
• 1:38:55
  okay. We're it'll be fine. It'll be an
• 1:38:57
  adventure. You will.
• 1:38:58
  I don't like change, and I don't like
• 1:39:00
  not knowing what's coming. But sure. Great. I
• 1:39:02
  can't wait to have an adventure.
• 1:39:05
  An adventure shall be.
• 1:39:08
  Look. The only reason this is gonna happen
• 1:39:10
  with any level of success is because JB
• 1:39:12
  is gonna be there. And when
• 1:39:15
  two putting pressure on me now, please. No.
• 1:39:18
  Look. When two of the three of us
• 1:39:20
  are, like, wide eyed and we don't know
• 1:39:21
  what's supposed to happen next, this man if
• 1:39:24
  nothing else, it might not always be the
• 1:39:25
  right decision, but he will make a decision
• 1:39:27
  and we will move forward from there.
• 1:39:30
  Me and the youngest, we get stuck. We
• 1:39:32
  we get in freeze mode if I don't
• 1:39:33
  know what I'm supposed to do next.
• 1:39:36
  JB don't live like that. I I don't
• 1:39:38
  know if they still do it, but if,
• 1:39:40
  I feel but it makes me feel like
• 1:39:42
  Mhmm. I think it was the Peabody
• 1:39:44
  in Orlando where they had the daily walking
• 1:39:47
  of the ducks. Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. They're
• 1:39:50
  gonna come out. And and Dylan would walk
• 1:39:52
  and the ducks would fall into the fountain.
• 1:39:54
  Right. Because we were like opening up the
• 1:39:56
  and that's what I feel like with y'all,
• 1:39:57
  you know, just yeah. I try to make
• 1:39:59
  it so you don't have to have that
• 1:40:01
  full responsibility before we go. Like, I try
• 1:40:03
  to plan things, and, like, I booked the
• 1:40:05
  rental cars, and I booked the Yeah. Plane,
• 1:40:07
  and I I did all of the things,
• 1:40:09
  and then I will read, like, a good
• 1:40:10
  submissive. I'll relay all the information.
• 1:40:13
  But there will come moments where I'm like,
• 1:40:14
  I couldn't plan for this. I don't know
• 1:40:16
  what we do next.
• 1:40:19
  But what the thing the thing we will
• 1:40:20
  tell ourselves probably when we get in the
• 1:40:22
  car to drive to Orlando for the airport,
• 1:40:26
  on Thursday,
• 1:40:27
  is we will have a pep talk that
• 1:40:28
  we do a lot when we know we're
• 1:40:29
  going into a high stress situation. Mhmm.
• 1:40:32
  We will go,
• 1:40:33
  we love one another. We wanna keep loving
• 1:40:36
  one another. We wanna stay together.
• 1:40:38
  So we will remember
• 1:40:40
  that it's not you versus me. It is
• 1:40:43
  us versus the chaos.
• 1:40:45
  And, you know, when we do that,
• 1:40:47
  it's mostly fine. What'll happen is one of
• 1:40:49
  us if one of us gets snappy,
• 1:40:52
  the other one will crack a joke, like,
• 1:40:54
  to remind
• 1:40:56
  the other that wait. Wait. Wait. We're not
• 1:40:58
  being stressed with one another. We're being stressed
• 1:41:00
  at the problem.
• 1:41:01
  Right. And and it helps. So
• 1:41:04
  yeah.
• 1:41:06
  So anyway Yep.
• 1:41:09
  That's us about to go on an adventure.
• 1:41:10
  Mhmm. So, yeah, we're, we're getting ready to
• 1:41:12
  do all that.
• 1:41:14
  Lola will be going to
• 1:41:17
  be boarded. Mhmm. Mhmm. And
• 1:41:20
  at the the big luxury package
• 1:41:22
  Yeah. She'll get the bigger
• 1:41:25
  room. Mhmm. She'll get,
• 1:41:27
  we'll get updates at least one a day
• 1:41:29
  with a picture or video, one of the
• 1:41:31
  two. She'll get special treats. She will get
• 1:41:34
  one on one time with humans, which she
• 1:41:36
  fucking loves. Mhmm. She'll get minimal time with
• 1:41:38
  other dogs because she doesn't mind other dogs,
• 1:41:40
  but apparently, the high energy dogs
• 1:41:43
  She's a chill out a little bit. Yeah.
• 1:41:44
  Right. And I'm just like, you know what?
• 1:41:46
  Same. She's an older gal now. So, you
• 1:41:48
  know, she's I don't have all that energy
• 1:41:49
  bullshit. Yeah.
• 1:41:51
  My mom is gonna feed the cats. I
• 1:41:52
  did not know if I would get to
• 1:41:54
  ask her to do that because I didn't
• 1:41:55
  know what all was going on or how
• 1:41:56
  long she'd be here, and she's gonna feed
• 1:41:58
  the cats for us. So,
• 1:42:01
  I really hope she does not get nosy
• 1:42:04
  and walk around the house. She's not usually
• 1:42:05
  that tight, but I am currently sitting here
• 1:42:07
  next to JB staring at
• 1:42:09
  a giant purple dick with giant purple balls.
• 1:42:12
  Mhmm. And I don't wanna have the conversation
• 1:42:15
  with my mother if she happens to walk
• 1:42:17
  in this office
• 1:42:18
  about
• 1:42:19
  why.
• 1:42:21
  First of all, she would either
• 1:42:23
  be in denial or is kind of innocent,
• 1:42:25
  but I think it'd be denial, and would
• 1:42:27
  not be able to name it as a
• 1:42:28
  giant purple dick. Okay?
• 1:42:32
  She she I don't think she would. I
• 1:42:34
  think it would I think it would be
• 1:42:35
  denial. She's not an idiot. Well, if it
• 1:42:37
  makes it feel I will put sir Richard
• 1:42:39
  away. Okay. Well, I hope we don't find
• 1:42:41
  out that my mother is nosy in general.
• 1:42:43
  Yeah.
• 1:42:45
  But I was just gonna close off all
• 1:42:47
  the outer rooms Yeah. So Ella does not
• 1:42:49
  pee in every corner while I was on.
• 1:42:53
  I love that cat. I love that cat.
• 1:42:55
  Yeah.
• 1:42:56
  But if my mom's like, oh, I never
• 1:42:58
  get to walk around here. Well, maybe you
• 1:42:59
  shouldn't because you're gonna see big, giant, purple
• 1:43:01
  dicks. Okay?
• 1:43:06
  You never know. You never know what you're
• 1:43:08
  gonna find. Not around here. Right?
• 1:43:11
  Not around here. The youngest, the 16 year
• 1:43:14
  old, she asked one day, she goes,
• 1:43:16
  is everything you make and sell some sex
• 1:43:19
  thing?
• 1:43:20
  I said, kink, but yeah. She goes, everything?
• 1:43:23
  Even the candles? I said, especially the candles.
• 1:43:28
  She was like, goddamn it. I thought that
• 1:43:30
  was like one of the normal fake scenes
• 1:43:32
  on the table. No. No.
• 1:43:39
  Sorry.
• 1:43:40
  Yeah.
• 1:43:41
  Anyway. Anywho.
• 1:43:43
  We're gonna go. Yep.
• 1:43:45
  I'm sure I've got 85 texts from my
• 1:43:47
  mom about dinner because we're going with my
• 1:43:49
  mom tonight. And I gotta feed the, fur
• 1:43:51
  babies. Mhmm. And we have to do all
• 1:43:53
  the things that we would do Thursday and
• 1:43:54
  Friday today Mhmm. Work wise.
• 1:43:57
  So it'd be fun times. Yeah. Thanks for
• 1:43:59
  being here with us. Mhmm.
• 1:44:02
  If you felt especially called out in any
• 1:44:04
  part of the emotional intelligence regulation conversation, I
• 1:44:07
  feel you. Same.
• 1:44:09
  Hopefully, it's helpful to somebody. And we will
• 1:44:11
  be back next week. And,
• 1:44:14
  yeah. Sorry about the little glitches in the
• 1:44:16
  video.
• 1:44:18
  Not sure what that was.
• 1:44:19
  Podcasts will be fine.
• 1:44:21
  Yeah. So,
• 1:44:23
  anyhoo.
• 1:44:24
  Yeah.
• 1:44:26
  Okay. Okay. We're gonna go.
• 1:44:28
  Bye y'all. Bye y'all.