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