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Modern Wisdom

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

02 May 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: How is avoidant culture changing relationship expectations?

0.166 - 4.294 Chris Williamson

I've heard you say that avoidant culture is changing relationship expectations.

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5.261 - 5.543 Mercedes Coffman

Yes.

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Chapter 2: Does modern dating punish emotionally available people?

5.684 - 6.328 Chris Williamson

How so?

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6.46 - 8.462 Mercedes Coffman

Well, there's a couple of different reasons.

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Chapter 3: What makes emotionally available people vulnerable in dating?

8.542 - 23.299 Mercedes Coffman

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.

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Chapter 4: How can you spot emotional availability in a partner?

23.339 - 42.235 Mercedes Coffman

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.

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Chapter 5: What does true alignment in a relationship look like?

42.295 - 63.745 Mercedes Coffman

And so people, especially emotionally available people, which is who I largely work with as far as my clientele, they're noticing that they're lowering their standards in order to keep a relationship. And so the only way that now people see an opportunity for a relationship or maintaining a relationship is by changing their standards. Otherwise, they feel like there's no hope left.

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64.246 - 75.06 Mercedes Coffman

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.

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75.192 - 76.614 Chris Williamson

Is that avoidant culture?

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76.914 - 77.174 Mercedes Coffman

Yes.

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77.194 - 78.776 Chris Williamson

Is that how you would define avoidant culture?

79.036 - 101.401 Mercedes Coffman

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. And nowadays, especially on most of the dating apps, They're designed for that.

101.441 - 115.1 Mercedes Coffman

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.

115.701 - 119.847 Chris Williamson

How does being with someone avoidant psychologically transform you?

120.839 - 136.761 Mercedes Coffman

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.

Chapter 6: Why do we self-sabotage in relationships?

187.31 - 206.798 Mercedes Coffman

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.

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Chapter 7: How can you build emotional capacity for better relationships?

207.218 - 210.283 Mercedes Coffman

And it is much more harmful than we think it actually is.

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211.745 - 214.869 Chris Williamson

In that way, does modern dating punish emotionally available people?

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215.13 - 232.07 Mercedes Coffman

Yes. Yes. And it's not that modern dating apps are designed to punish emotionally available people. It's that it is reinforcing emotional unavailability. So the people who are emotionally unavailable have a much better time on dating apps than the emotionally available people.

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232.09 - 232.35 Unknown

Why?

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232.951 - 249.652 Mercedes Coffman

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.

250.093 - 259.566 Mercedes Coffman

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.

Chapter 8: What are the signs of limerence and who is most vulnerable?

260.448 - 268.839 Chris Williamson

Why are emotionally available people particularly vulnerable? What is it about them that makes them on the receiving end of this?

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269.48 - 292.732 Mercedes Coffman

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.

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292.812 - 311.156 Mercedes Coffman

They want the slow burn. They want gradual development. Yet what happens is they get pulled in by an emotionally unavailable person And then contact slowly starts to decrease and eventually ghosting starts to occur, which is detrimental to the nervous system.

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311.357 - 328.568 Mercedes Coffman

And then a lot of emotionally available people deal with these crashes where they just do not trust themselves anymore and they don't trust the dating process. sites or dating in general. And so that's why I think there's this loneliness that we're seeing in modern day now, because emotionally available people don't trust it.

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329.109 - 333.94 Mercedes Coffman

And emotionally unavailable people don't sustain any particular connection.

334.713 - 357.424 Chris Williamson

Presumably then, if emotionally available people leave the dating pool or become damaged and become emotionally unavailable or closed off, that's bad for everyone. It's kind of like a race to the bottom where the few emotionally unavailable people, very few emotionally unavailable people become emotionally available by dating someone who's emotionally available.

357.745 - 357.885 Unknown

Mm-hmm.

358.237 - 378.568 Chris Williamson

but way more available people drop out or become hurt by it. So it's kind of this entropy in the system where the people who are prepared to be open say, this is what I want. The likelihood of them becoming damaged, it's a one-way street. Rarely do people that are broken get fixed, but people that are already fixed become broken.

378.848 - 402.263 Mercedes Coffman

Yes, sadly. And it doesn't mean that there aren't emotionally available people in the world or in the dating. I work with lots of emotionally available clients, males and females. The issue is that... they're not easy to find, right? And nowadays we're looking for what's easy to find, what's convenient, right? If you look at everything is expedited, we want to find somebody on a dating app.

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