Ep47~ Emotionally Slutty

The phrase "Emotionally Slutty" is from a Sex and the City episode... Carrie Bradshaw says, "I revealed too much too soon. I was emotionally slutty."

In this episode, I talk about the habit some of us are in of giving it up too early... You know, sharing intimate details of our lives with people we don't know very well. I share with you why I think it is both a blessing and a curse that I wear my heart on my sleeve. I also tell a story of how this played out on a date I went on one time. Lastly, I share some tips and ideas on dos/donts from a dating coach perspective and vulnerability in communication, in general. 

I believe my ability to share a lot of myself with others freely is a gift of mine. Has it also bitten me in the ass more than once? Yes! I think I'm vulnerable in conversation because I want others to be vulnerable with me. I appreciate deep, thoughtful, conversation over small talk any day. 

The so-called dating experts (as well as licensed professionals in therapy/psychology) tell us that these more revealing conversations should be reserved for later in a relationship as trust is built. However, most of us bond over common ground... Often, we end up talking about our marriages, divorces, or we get triggered by something that leads to conversation about our pasts. We also talk about the common ground of dating & how challenging it can be. I've found myself swapping online dating stories many times while on a date. I think this is all very normal and we shouldn't beat ourselves up when it happens.

Next, I share intimate details of how I received a text message recently from a guy I had gone on one date with right after my separation in spring of 2020.  He shared with me a backhanded compliment that he thought I was growing in my divorce journey after having revealed too much too soon about my divorces on our date. As it turns out, I thought he talked an awful lot about his divorce! Perspective is everything and we're all learning here.

Herein lies the difference from a good date and a friendship date where we bond over divorce and being single... When there's sexual attraction, chemistry, giddy feelings, we don't talk about this stuff! When there's a spark, the conversation has NOTHING to do with the negative stuff of our pasts or our exes.

I'm a "relationship person".  I care about people I get to know in my personal life as well as my professional life. I recently learned some communication skills from a group called The Black Swan Group. The skills were originally developed for hostage negotiations but can be used in sales or in everyday life. I give some examples of using what they call, Labels & Mirrors, to learn more about the other person and to get the other person to open up . 

At the end of the day, I still believe vulnerability begets vulnerability. Being Emotionally Slutty isn't for everyone... Not everyone appreciates deep, thought-provoking, intimate conversations. Some people judge me and think I'm inappropriate or too vulnerable. That's ok! They're just not my people.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to man shopping with Stacy, where I share my real transparent dating and life experiences for your amusement and inspiration. I'm your host, Stacy weer, and you are listening to season two, episode two, emotionally slutty. Hmm. Hey, I get it. Those are some strong words, strong words, indeed, but they're not mine. I can't, uh, I can't be responsible for them. They were part of a line from one of my favorite shows, um, sex and the city season five episode eight, Carrie Bradshaw says I revealed too much too soon. I was emotionally slutty. Okay. I get it in 2022. We don't use words like anymore. Pretty shameful, pretty vulgar, disgusting word, but it does make a strong point in, uh, in this frame of reference. I hope, where am I going with this? Hmm. Talking about that all too common habit. Some of us are in of, uh, giving it up a little too early. Hmm. By giving it up. I mean, sharing the details of your life, the stuff that should be reserved for people who might stick around in our lives for a while. So in this episode, I am going to share with you what this means to me and how it seems to be a blessing and a curse that I wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm also going to tell you a very in depth story of, um, how this played out on a date that I went on one time, and then I'm gonna talk about this from the aspect of like dating coaches, dos and don'ts communication styles. And, uh, just this idea of vulnerability and communication in general. So if you know me at all, you know that I am totally using this podcast as a tool for self discovery, self-reflection growth, all of those things. So here we go. about to get real mm-hmm<affirmative>. So I actually, I've talked about my vision board before on this podcast, and I have to tell you, I have been really bad about updating it. And, uh, I'm pretty much operating off of 2020s vision board. And quite frankly, it's all kind of still the same stuff anyway, but for some reason, you guys, for some reason,<laugh> this quote from Carrie Bradshaw is on my vision board. Now, is that like a warning to myself? Like, like, look out Stacy, um, you do this, like, watch yourself, don't give it up too quickly. Or is it on my vision board? Because it's also a gift of mine that I do share a lot of myself with others. And I do consider it to be more of a blessing than a curse I do. This is me. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm an open book. Yeah. But has it bit me in the more than once. Of course it has, you know, you, when you make yourself vulnerable and you give information freely of yourself, um, if you're like me, I think I do this, um, especially in one, on one, you know, in person conversation. I think that I am vulnerable in conversation because I want others to be vulnerable with me. I just have a huge preference for depth and conversation. I can small talk with the best of them. I can talk about sports, the stock market politics, whatever, um, things that are on the news in the headlines. But I would much rather get to know someone what makes them tick? What motivates them, what inspires them, why they are the way they are. And so put me on a date and just guess what happens?<laugh> I try real hard, like to get to the heart of things. I enjoy it. I even the, even the difficult conversations talking about, um, stressed relationships with family members, exes children, challenges, um, obstacles. I, I enjoy that kind of conversation. It's meaningful. It's impactful. I think it, it helps me to become a better person when I can hear other people's hardships too. Not only to know that I'm not alone, but also to know, you know, what they did to get through them. I think it makes us all better people when we can connect on a deep level, but I'm also not an idiot. I'm self aware. I know what all of the experts, you know, the dating coaches, the self best, you know, dating experts out there. Um, but also<laugh> licensed therapists, psychologists, people with lots of education and credentials behind their name, all of them would tell us that we need to reserve these serious conversations for someone, you know, later, someone who sticks around someone that we go on multiple dates with that we try to build a relationship with. Those are the people that we would have these conversations with. I know I'm not a dumb. Like I get it. I know that that's what they say to do. But if you've been on some dates after divorce, you also know exactly what happens.<laugh> you bond over common ground. This is human nature. This is what we are up against. You know, sometimes we get caught off guard with a very direct question. Oh, you know, how, how did your marriage end? How long have you been single? When did you know that your marriage was over? I mean, for real, this happens, you get a direct question and then there you are kind of pulled into a conversation about your divorce or it can happen more subtly. And I think, you know, the more organic way that this can happen is you get triggered by something, you know? Um, oh, I just got my private pilot's license, blah, blah, blah. Oh, well,<laugh> I know a thing or two about aircraft to Elaine's dad's a pilot and I sat right seat for hundreds of hours. Yeah. That's a real conversation I've had before. Mm-hmm<affirmative> so you can see, I, I know I don't even have to tell you you've been there. You've done that. It happens. And then sometimes we leave these dates, like beating ourselves up, like, oh my God, I do it all the time. I'll talk to my friends. I'm like, I probably talked about that for too long. That could have been taken negatively. Oh yeah. The mood shifted when we started talking about that. It's normal. It's part of it's part of the process. I don't know. I don't know that it ever ends, you know, you take out big chunks of your life, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years of being in serious relationships sometimes longer. How do you, how do you omit all of that? I don't know. Redirect the conversation. I suppose some people would say make a clear statement. You know what? I don't wanna talk about that tonight. Let's talk about you. What's your favorite color? You know what I mean? And then the other thing that I think happens a lot, a lot, a lot is we find common ground with why we're here, we're here because we met on Bumble<laugh> so then you start sharing your online dating stories. And usually you tell the funny ones and it's, you know, again, something in common that you can both talk about. So clearly there are ways to avoid these subjects, objects and to steer conversations on first dates, around happier, more pleasant, fun topics. And that's what we should be focusing on. Right. But let me tell you about a date where it didn't quite go that way. I'm going to kind of approach this backwards. And I'm going to tell it in this direction, because I recently received a text message from a guy that I had gone on a date with back in spring of 2020. Now my divorce was final mid-February of 2020. So it's been a minute and this was one of the early, you know, dates that I went on. And I, when he texted me, let me just tell you, it caught me off guard. I'm gonna go ahead and read to you.<laugh> read to you what he texted. Okay. Hi, Stacy. Hope you are well, I was listening to a couple of your podcasts and thought back to our date back in spring 2020, I think anyway, I remember coming away from the date thinking all we did was talk about your two divorces for the two hour date. I had to admit, I left shaking my head. It wasn't until I was listening to one of your episodes that it dawned on me that maybe that's what she was needing at that time. She was working through what we all have to work through. At some point, this text isn't to be taken as spiteful, rather it's to say, I am happy for you because it sounds like you are finding your groove. Now this divorce processing stuff sucks, and it takes a while, but you appear to be on your way, congrats on all the success. How do you think I reacted to that text message? You know, it's kind of like when someone comes up to you and says, I don't mean to sound like an, but now I don't want you to take this wrong, but I mean, I'm not trying to be a jerk, but right. That text had me feeling all sorts of defensive. First. I had to like dust off the cobwebs and think back to the date. And it's funny because all I could remember was his divorce story. I remembered tons of details as I was all fired up. After I read this text message and I was trying to like sort through my feelings and why, why I took it the way that I did, which was very negative<laugh> I was telling my friends, I was like, oh my God, I could tell you everything about the end of his marriage and how he felt about it. He used the word murderous. I remember I remember the word murderous coming out of his mouth. And so my friends were like, well, maybe he's just trying to be nice. And until you congratulations, I'm like, no, that's not how I take it. Not at all. Maybe I'm wrong, not how I took it. So, funny thing, I had written a chapter about him.<laugh> in my book. That's almost done man. Shopping with Stacy. Yep. He has a whole chapter based on one short date. And it's funny. It's really funny how much I captured because I was in the habit of recording stuff from my dates right after they took place. So, um, I had some, uh, very detailed notes and iRead through them<laugh> and felt, felt very vindicated. Like, yeah, this was a two-sided conversation. And isn't this an interesting little dynamic that he walked away feeling as though I talked all night about my divorces and I walked away.<laugh> feeling like he talked a lot about his. So when I responded, this is what I said. I said, you know, it's funny perspective is everything. While I have no doubt, I likely overshared about my divorce. I was barely divorced from number two when we met, what I remember most from our conversation is the story of your wife, cheating on you with her personal trainer and your murderous feelings thereafter. I can't help thinking as though this was indeed a backhanded compliment, despite your preface that you are not spiteful, I will take your congratulations anyway, because I am quite proud of the success of my podcast. And more importantly, my personal growth. Thank you. I wish you all the best. And I do. I thought it was quite weird that he texted that the way that he did, like if he wanted to send me something congratulatory and kind, he probably would've left out some of those details that I, you know, talked for two hours about my divorce, but that's okay. That's okay. We're all learning here. Right. So I will tell you, we went on to text back and forth a couple more times and it was all cordial and kind, and hopefully that air's cleared now. Right? So that's the first text message that I've received like that from somebody that I've gone out with in the past. I mean, we all know typically when someone resurfaces it's because they wanna ask you out again, or, you know, they've been thinking about you or something, whatever. And I, I get it like he, he was thinking of me because he'd listened to the podcast and that was the point of it. But I guess where I'm going with this is, you know, we had a short date where we learned about each other's divorces. It wasn't romantic. Um, it was just a brief encounter, you know, with someone at the same spot in life. And I think therein lies the difference between some of the dates that I've gone on. I've had plenty of dates where I've learned a lot about the other person's, um, divorce, how they're feeling throughout everything, even, you know, finances and money that they've spent on things and issues with children. I mean some tough stuff. And I, I think as I'm working through this right now with you here,<laugh> I think that those dates were destined to be like friendship dates. Like I, I found myself like wanting to meet someone for the sake of meeting someone to make a connection because they asked me out and I was more than willing to meet them. But I probably went into the date knowing that there was not going to be that romantic sexual attraction, chemistry spark that we're all looking for. And I do think that when there's a spark, when there is that giddy, Ooh, this is fun. I kinda like this person. We don't talk about this. We don't talk about our exes. We don't talk about the divorce. We, we don't lean on them like a friend because we're into'em and we, we just wanna know more about them. Haha. There's there's my little epiphany that, that I didn't know really was coming, but I do think that's true. So, huh. I think I just learned a little something about myself and I hope maybe if you think back to some of your dates where you, uh, gave up a lot about yourself and your past a little too quickly, um, if it led to an ongoing romantic relationship or if there was no date number two,<laugh>, it'd be interesting to see if we can all find some patterns there. Right? So I'm gonna take this in a little bit of a different direction. So I'm in sales, right? And I do not consider myself to be an aggressive, aggressive sale. I just combined two words, aggressive salesy type of person at all. I'm a relationship person always have been, always will be. I care about the people that I get to know when I go into doctor's offices, the receptionists, the nurses, the MAs, the doctors, the nurse practitioners, everyone in the office. They're like my coworkers, they're my people. I see them on a regular basis. I don't have coworkers in my city. Um, so I, I befriend them. Um, we have the same mission, which is to help patients. There's a little bit of a weird aspect that they know I'm there representing a drug that I'm hoping they will use for their patients. But over time I try very hard to earn the trust of all of them. I wouldn't represent something that I didn't believe would help a certain number of appropriate patients. Right? So it's, it's a little bit of an interesting dynamic in my workplace. And I have learned a lot of different sales techniques and communication styles and ways of sharing information and stuff over the years, as you can imagine. And I know that there are a, a, a disproportionate number of pharmaceutical and medical device sales people that listen to my podcast. So I hope that I hope that if you're in that world, this all obviously will ring true with you. But if you, um, if you are not, I think you'll follow just fine. So at a, at a recent meeting for work, um, we had a workshop with a group called the black Swan group and they talked to us about a communication, um, technique. And it is based on the book by Chris Vos, never split the difference. So the tactics that they taught us were coming from a background of hostage negotiations. That's, that's the background of, of the men involved in the book and the presentation that I was a part of. And so obviously most of us are not skilled in that type of a negotiation, but we could relate the skills that they taught us to our interpersonal communications, whether it be, um, you know, with our family members, our spouses, our significant others, or in our place of work. So essentially the, the main tactics that I learned about, and they have several different skills, but they spent an extraordinary amount of time teaching us what they call labeling and mirrors within conversation. Okay. So hear me out. This is, we're still on the emotionally slutty topic.<laugh> so one way I have just learned to avoid spewing out personal information and really trying to learn someone else's motivations, um, or to use some of these tactics. So this is kind of how it works. So you're on a date and someone says to you, you know, I was married for 10 years and in that amount of time, I think I golfed twice once was at a charity tournament. And the other time was like, I, I took a day off and I paid my greens fees in cash and I just ducked out and, uh, never spoke of it. It was like under a covert operation, undercover, um, golf outing, because I just could never get time to myself to golf. And so now I'm divorced and, and I golf all the time. So a labeling technique in this situation for you to reply would be, it sounds like you value your ability to spend your free time, however you like in particular playing golf. And when you say something like that, it tends to make the con it perpetuates the conversation. Well, yeah, I never got to do, you know, make decisions on my own and I like wasn't allowed, I had to ask permission to golf. So I never got to play because, you know, she would always come up with something else for me to do around the house and I'd never get to go. And then an example of a mirror would be never get to go. And he would say, right, like, never, like I just told you, I only went two times in 10 years. Okay. So essentially labeling and mirroring mirroring is like repeating the last few words that they say to kind of add inflection at the end as a question to get them to go on and on and on. And then labeling is like listening to the words that they're saying and calling it what it is. And in this style of conversation, again, it's all about you not talking and getting them to dish more on themselves. Hmm. So while I was sitting at the table with my coworkers and friends from, from my work, as we were all learning this together, I mean, it was, it was laughable at times because of the conversations that we found ourselves having. But it is just so outside of our comfort zones, because most of us, I mean, my degree is in communications. Most of, most of us are taught again to find common ground, to find a subject that, you know, when he says golf, I say, you know, it's funny I don't play, but I really enjoy the game. Yeah. I love watching it on television. I've only been to one PGA tournament, but I would love to go to more, you know, have you ever been to a PGA tournament? Like in my experience, that's how I communicate. Like you kind of listen for those cues that are relatable. You add something to it and you ask a question, right. And, and then you go back and forth asking one another questions politely. So this is totally different. Um, and I do think that it has its place for sure. I think it's a, it it's valuable. And I think that I definitely walked well, I know I walked away, um, with some different ideas of, you know, essentially how I could, how I could handle some difficult conversations, but I just couldn't help. But thinking at the end of all of it, I am still such a believer that vulnerability begets vulnerability. And if you want someone to give of themselves, you have to be willing. You have to be willing to give of yourself too. Right. Okay. So to kind of tie this up with a bow, doesn't it make sense then when I circled back thinking about that date that I went on a couple years ago that I, it wasn't just me who dumped my divorce story on him. He shared his divorce story too. That's what we talked about for the couple of hours that we were on that date, probably because one or both of us did not feel like we were on a date. We felt like we were making a new friend. That's how I felt. I can't speak for how he felt. That's why it went that way. It wasn't some ludicrous. I just went on and on and on ranting for two hours about everything I was going through. And he shared nothing. It was much, much more balanced than that. And then let's just talk about this epiphany of mine. I just mentioned it. If I was into him, if I was sexually attracted to him, if I wanted to go on more dates with him, wouldn't I have talked about something else. Yeah. Naturally I think we all would in summation<laugh> I think in my case being emotionally slutty, I will just say it. I think it's more of a blessing than a curse. It's not for everyone. Not everyone wants to talk about really emotionally charged, difficult to talk about things. Deep thought provoking, um, conversations. Not everyone is up for that. And that's okay. They're just probably not my people. Uh, especially if they wanna judge me for how willing I am to be open about my life. They're not for me. And that's okay. So I'm gonna keep on being vulnerable, being transparent, giving of myself and hoping to get the same in return from the people I care about and choose to spend time with. But I am going to continue to work on my level of self awareness. You know, not talking about things that don't need to be talked about with someone that I, you know, just met. Some of this stuff can, can, uh, be shared with people I'm closer with. And I recognize that too. I hope that this has resonated with you guys, um, while you're thinking about your own communication practices with other people and how some of your dates have gone, which dates did you talk about your past? Which dates did you focus on? The connection that you have with the person right next to you? Can't wait to hear your stories. And as always, I appreciate you all so much for listening to season two, episode two, emotionally slutty, you guys are the best. And I so appreciate you sharing the podcast with your friends and loved ones. Anyone that you think would enjoy it, just send the link. Will ya? That's how podcasts grow. Just like a good book that you, uh, tell people about. Um, so please do share and coming up next season two, episode three influencer for good.