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

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
I've heard you say that avoidant culture is changing relationship expectations.

**Mercedes Coffman** (0:05)
Yes.

**Chris Williamson** (0:05)
How so?

**Mercedes Coffman** (0:06)
Well, there's a couple of different reasons. I mean, I think avoidance culture is making people have to minimize themselves, because we're interconnected human beings. We need to be connected to other beings, right? It regulates our nervous system. It makes us feel good. It stabilizes us. And so nowadays, with everything being expedited, we live in an era of immediacy.
And everything is geared towards reinforcing avoidance versus intimacy.
Everything is about instant gratification, getting results right away. And so people, especially emotionally available people, which is who I largely work with as far as my clientele, they're noticing that they're lowering their standards in order to keep a relationship. And so the only way that now people see an opportunity for a relationship and maintaining a relationship is by changing their standards. Otherwise, they feel like there's no hope left. Because especially in dating apps, everything is about convenience and speed, about disposability, and nobody really wants to take the time to have gradual development.

**Chris Williamson** (1:15)
Is that avoidant culture? Yes. Is that how you would define avoidant culture?

**Mercedes Coffman** (1:18)
Yes. So avoidant culture is really just avoiding anything that's inconveniencing or anything that causes discomfort. Meaning anything that takes too much time, anything that requires too much effort, anything that requires consistency or follow through, that would basically fall into avoidant culture.
Nowadays, especially on most of the dating apps, they're designed for that. They're designed for rewarding avoidance because it's all about novelty, it's about dopamine, it's about new matches every single day, and nobody really spends the time to emotionally invest in one particular relationship anymore.

**Chris Williamson** (1:55)
How does being with someone avoidant psychologically transform you?

**Mercedes Coffman** (2:00)
Well, there's several different ways. It's terrible for the nervous system first because an avoidant person, although, for example, an emotionally unavailable person who largely is avoidant, they don't just present themselves as emotionally unavailable. They usually present themselves with intensity, with love bombing, and so you get pulled into that dynamic pretty quickly. Even if you're an emotionally available person. And so now you're getting attached to an emotionally unavailable person.
But once you start requiring effort and consistency and substance of the relationship, a lot of these people tend to reveal their true selves, which is a lack of capacity.
They cannot sustain relationship responsibilities. And so your nervous system has this, you know, it starts to get attached. And then it slowly starts to have to withdraw, which is kind of like this dopamine spike of excitement. But then there's a crash because this emotionally unavailable person pulls away, they become more and more avoidant. And what tends to happen is you're now dealing with microgrief. You're now wondering what happened. And your nervous system now is spiking in cortisol, which is your stress hormones. And so a lot of the times this changes people because they are experiencing fatigue, mood disorders, sleep disturbances, appetite disorders. So I think that avoidance in general and emotional unavailability is changing people's nervous system and it is much more harmful than we think it actually is.

**Chris Williamson** (3:31)
In that way, does modern dating punish emotionally available people?

**Mercedes Coffman** (3:35)
Yes.
Yes. And it doesn't, it's not that modern dating apps are designed to punish emotionally available people. It's that it is reinforcing emotional unavailability. So the people who are emotionally unavailable have a much better time on dating apps than the emotionally available people.

**Chris Williamson** (3:52)
Why?

**Mercedes Coffman** (3:52)
Because emotionally unavailable people are looking for dopamine. They're looking for comfort. They do not want to put in a lot of effort in a relationship. They do not have the capacity to put a lot of effort into it. Whereas emotionally available people are looking for consistency and follow through and to focus on one person at a time. And dating apps and swipe culture is all about the dopamine of more and more and more. And the more options we have, the less invested we are in those options.

**Chris Williamson** (4:20)
Why are emotionally available people particularly vulnerable? What is it about them that makes them on the receiving end of this?

**Mercedes Coffman** (4:29)
Because emotionally available people are looking for depth.
And there is very little of that in modern dating or modern day in general. Everybody is looking for quick results and nobody's really looking to invest in things that causes discomfort or inconvenience. So, emotionally available people, they want something of substance. They want a relationship that will go the whole way. They want the slow burn. They want gradual development. Yet, what happens is they get pulled in by an emotionally unavailable person.