Kevin Anthony 0:00
Kevin, welcome to the Love Lab podcast, the place to be for honest and real talk about relationships and sex, whether you’re a man or woman, single or a couple, this is the show for you. I am your host, Kevin Anthony, and I am here to help you have the relationship of your dreams and the best sex of your life.

Kevin Anthony 0:26
All right, welcome back to the Love Lab podcast. This is episode 381 and it is titled, Are You in a Relationship with an Emotional Vampire? This is going to be interesting. I don’t know how many people are really familiar with the term emotional vampire, or sometimes you’ll hear people use the term like energy vampire. Like, yes, suck that energy, you know, from you. But I mean, in spiritual circles, we hear people talk about those things all the time, but maybe, maybe some of you haven’t heard that yet. So we’re going to talk today about, you know, what is an emotional vampire. And there are different kinds. So we’ll go over some of the different kinds. We’ll talk about how you can tell if you’re in a relationship with somebody who’s an emotional vampire now, and of course, what you can do about it. Right? So it’s going to be an interesting subject. I have a guest to help me with it today, who I will introduce in just a moment. He’s actually written a book on Emotional Vampires that we’re going to be talking about.

Kevin Anthony 1:24
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Daniel Ratner 2:39
So that’s how I wrote mine, my self-esteem book. Yeah, I wasn’t gonna write one. Next thing I know, I have to do it, a huge, viral video.

Kevin Anthony 2:47
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Kevin Anthony 4:03
Okay, my guest today is Daniel Ratner. He is a relationship coach, speaker, and author, helping people build healthier connections by recognizing draining patterns and setting stronger boundaries. A former entrepreneur turned personal growth expert, he is the author of Sunscreen Love, the four phases to find the love you want and never feel unloved again, symptoms and strategies to cure low self-esteem, with his upcoming book, Emotional Vampires, teaching readers how to protect their happiness from toxic people. Through his coaching books and public talks, Daniel provides clear, practical tools for improving self-esteem, cultivating keepers, and creating relationships that fuel joy. Welcome to the show, Daniel.

Daniel Ratner 4:47
Thank you very much, Kevin, for having me on. Appreciate it.

Kevin Anthony 4:51
All right, so we’re talking about Emotional Vampires here. So, you know, I have a very logical brain. I like to step through things kind of, you know, one point at a time. Time. And so to me, it makes most sense to define to the audience what we mean, what we are talking about when we say emotional vampire. So what is an emotional vampire?

Daniel Ratner 5:11
So first of all, thanks for having me on. It’s great to be here as your guest. An emotional vampire is someone who drains you of energy. And these are people that are not just your boyfriend, girlfriend, or you know, husband or wife. They could be your friends, they could be your family, they could be your coworkers. And the idea is to recognize the different categories of Emotional Vampires. Decide if you have to have in your life, for example, of course, your spouse, you have to have in your life to find a way to make it healthy, or your parent, or your boss.

Daniel Ratner 5:43
But there are a lot of people in your life that don’t have to be in your life. And there are your friends, because most of your friends come from circumstances or events. And you have to think, do I need to have this person in my life? So you first have to determine what kind of vampire they are? And I have 12 different categories, from the most dangerous, which is the narcissist, to other ones that are not so bad, which is like the overly dependent or the drama queen. And recognizing who’s an emotional vampire in life puts you in control of your life, because you have to protect your happiness. There’s no one else who can protect your happiness except yourself.

Kevin Anthony 6:16
Yeah. So that, of course, brings me to my next question, which is, okay. So we Emotional Vampires exist now we know what they are, but what are some of the problems that can arise in our relationships if we are in a relationship with an emotional vampire, like, why is that necessarily about?

Daniel Ratner 6:33
Well, it’s good to recognize that if you’re not married, that maybe this is not a good person you should marry. Excuse me, for example, the being a narcissist is a very, very dangerous trait, and the reason why it’s so dangerous is because when you’re someone who’s empathetic and wants to give and loves giving of your time, of your energy and your emotions, like you want to share your emotions and you want to take other people’s emotional baggage in and listen to them, narcissists look at them like Shark Bait to a shark, and they put their claws in them. And most narcissists are very charismatic, and they love bomb you. They get you to fall in love with you. And next thing, you’re not in a relationship, you’re in a manipulation ship.

Daniel Ratner 7:14
And that’s why it can be so dangerous a narcissist. The reason I wrote this book, because we had, we host a lot of meals at our house. We have a lot of people that I noticed, when they leave, I’m happy to leave. These are more like the socially awkward people, because when you’re in your 40s and 50s, you’re going to need a place for a meal. They come to us and like and we’re very nice to people. We host them. But like I noticed that sometimes they drain me of energy. That’s actually one of the categories, is socially awkward people. So we had a woman our life that was drainage of energy, and my wife finally said, woke up one morning and said, I want to find the keepers in my life. You know, one of the things I do and I teach in dating and marriage and also in self-esteem, if I’m going to give you a problem, I’m going to give you the solution.

Daniel Ratner 7:59
So the solution for Emotional Vampires is to define the keepers, and that is an acronym. It stands for you. First, you have to get rid of the two E’s, which is envy and ego. You don’t want them in your life. You don’t want to marry someone who has envy. They’re never going to be happy. They’re not going to have that car, that job, that house, that body, that wife, that money, that whatever it is they’re happy with, and you don’t need someone with ego, because in a relationship, your ego is not your Amigo. It’ll crush you in relationships. And now, by the way, you talk about you know, you know, having success in the bedroom, it doesn’t start in the bedroom. Success in the bedroom starts in the kitchen, in the living room, right?

Daniel Ratner 8:40
It’s about understanding what opens up someone emotionally. Because physicality. Yes, you can have someone’s sex with someone you don’t like. Okay, you might enjoy it for three minutes, but you want them out of the room. But when you’re in a great relationship, not only is the sex good, but you want to not you don’t want them to leave. You know you want to do it again and again and again, and it’s passionate, and that really starts in places like the kitchen. So the keep, the finishing, the acronym of keepers, it stands for kind, you were the two ease, and being ego. You’re left with kind, peaceful, empathetic, and respectful. If you can find someone like that in your life, they’re a keeper.

Kevin Anthony 9:19
Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s really great. I completely agree. And you know, in my Power & Mastery Course, which was the second ad that I read, you know, I don’t go into in those ads, details in what’s in there, but there is a whole section in there about intimacy before, during, and after, right? So it’s like you’re saying that intimacy starts long before you get into the bedroom. So it’s not just about that’s why I kind of call it sexual mastery, as opposed to say, like performance mastery. Like, yeah, there’s some performance stuff in there, but if you really want to be good at it, it starts long before you ever get in the bedroom, and it continues on the second you get out of bed. Your room, right?

Kevin Anthony 10:00
So completely agree with all of that. So let’s talk about, you mentioned narcissists. Okay? And I’ve had some people on the show to talk about narcissism specifically over the years, so we know that I shouldn’t really say this, but I want to say, like, that’s a bit more obvious to people, right? What’s going on with narcissists and how dangerous they can potentially be, but there are, there are several others that people might encounter in their relationships, their personal relationships, that may not be quite as obvious as somebody like a narcissist. So let’s talk about some of those. What are some of those?

Daniel Ratner 10:41
So some of the categories I put in there were the perpetual, excuse me, the perpetual victim. These are people who always blame everything in life on somebody else and never take responsibility. And they can be very difficult to be with and to have as a partner, because you don’t want someone to take responsibility for their own life, and they’re blaming somebody else, and it’s always someone else’s fault. They’re always doing people and they never, and they never get anywhere in life. Excuse me. Another one is called the drama queen. Excuse me for a second.

Kevin Anthony 11:15
Well, let’s, let’s, let’s stay on the Oh, the victim people for sure before we move on too quickly, because this is actually pervasive in society right now we, yeah, a lot of people who are in this sort of victim mentality, where nothing is ever their fault and they haven’t learned to take responsibility for well, pretty much anything right now, I’ve never been in an intimate relationship with somebody like that, but I’ve definitely known people in my life like that. Yeah, and it drives me insane, because it’s like, you know, in the beginning, you hear that stuff as you’re getting to know them, and you’re kind of giving them the benefit of the doubt, and you’re like, Yeah, that does sound kind of sucky.

Kevin Anthony 12:04
And that person does sound like kind of an asshole, you know, like, but then after a while, you start seeing the pattern, right? And when you see the pattern, then you want, of course, to find ways to help your friend here and gently point out to them. Hey, you know, maybe this, that, and that just never seems to go well with people who are in that perpetual victimhood. So I can only imagine what it would be like to be in an intimate relationship like a really close relationship, like that, like that. Would that be crazy? And I would assume too that, yes, they’re going to be blaming everybody in their life, but you’re the closest person to them, which means they’re probably going to be blaming you.

Daniel Ratner 12:48
Yeah, it can be very difficult, and usually, by the way, a lot of these categories cross over, like you’ll find that a narcissist can also play the victim card a lot. My wife likes to call it injustice collectors. Everyone does injustice. Collect, and they collect. And I had to sign a book. There are better things to collect. Collect coins, collecting justice all done to you. And the reason why is that it’s when you’re bearing a grudge. It is hard to move forward in life when you’re just holding on because it becomes more painful and more painful when you’re just blaming people. You can’t move forward in life. You’re not gonna see it in life, and some things you’re not gonna win. I One of the things I talk about in the book is that sometimes you’re right and you don’t win, and that is part of life. You’re right. I made, let’s say I made the best book ever in the world. No one buys it. Well, I did a great book, but it doesn’t mean I lost. It just means it doesn’t mean it works out the way you want. You know you can play the best football game in the world, play the best and still lose a game. You know, you seem to happen in sports, one team plays better and still lose it. And that’s part of life, and accepting that is one way to move forward in life. That’s part of life. I was right, and I still lost absolutely.

Kevin Anthony 13:56
That is a huge, huge lesson. That’s a big truth bomb. I haven’t been doing my sound effects. I used to do sound effects on the show, and I had the truth bomb. I’d be hitting that button right now for that one. Because you’re right. Life doesn’t always work out, you know, the way that it should, or the way that you think it should. But the other thing I find with these people is that, you know, being in perpetual victimhood is incredibly disempowering, because you’re putting all the power in somebody else, right? They did this thing, it’s their fault, that you’re wherever you are, which then means, well, there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re just stuck here, which is complete bullshit.

Daniel Ratner 14:31
Yeah, that’s correct. So another one, another category that I find kind of funny, which is not a dangerous category, or what I call the drama queens. And these are obviously King also, but these are people who oversell, overplay everything. The traffic was so bad. Their flight was the worst ever. The line at the at the, you know, DMV was so long, and they oversell everything. I like being drama, Jason, like I like. A lot of drama, because for me, it’s fun, but I don’t want to be married to one.

Kevin Anthony 15:04
Yeah, here’s an interesting thing: tell me if you think this is sort of part of that same category. So yeah, there’s people that that, you know, every like you said everything was the worst. And like, you know, they’re basically hyperbolic in all of their, you know, descriptions of everything that happens in life. But another way that I often will see that play out in relationships, when you’re talking about intimate relationships, is if the relationship is too calm, if things are too normal, they’ll just find reasons to inject chaos, drama in because, because, most likely, because they, you know, grew up in a household full of, you know, chaos and drama, and somehow that feels normal to them, and when things actually are smooth and good, they’re uncomfortable, so they create drama. But I have been in a relationship with somebody like that, and it is exhausting.

Daniel Ratner 16:01
Yeah, draining, very draining. It just drains your energy. It just drains you. And like I said, I like drama queens, but just not to be married to one.

Kevin Anthony 16:12
You know, honestly, I don’t even really like having them in my friend circle. It’s a lot of work for me.

Daniel Ratner 16:19
I don’t mind them.

Kevin Anthony 16:24
The thing is, is that they’re always bringing up drama, right? And like, to some extent, you can distance yourself a bit, right? You can kind of put up a little, a little wall between you and them. It’s like, hey, that’s your stuff, not my stuff. I’m not going to get on that kind of thing. But the problem is that, knowing what I do for a living, they’re always seeking advice from me. And I love to help people. I am always helping my friends with everything, but at a certain point, you’re just like, enough already, you know, like I’m not your on-call 24/7 therapist.

Daniel Ratner 16:56
And another one is what I call socially awkward. And these, these people drain me of energy, not because they’re mean or anything, but when you’re with them a long time, and the first words out of their mouth are top 10 Dungeons and Dragons games, or they take over the conversation at the dinner table, talking about why almond milk is dangerous. It just starts to bother me after a while, and the reason why I figured this out because I’ve had people come to me who’ve been in my life, who’ve Asperger’s, and they admit they have Asperger’s, and they’ve had help for it. And they’re not my favorite people, obviously, but they’re very tolerable and very nice and very kind, and I can handle the situation. It’s when you don’t know that you have a social disease, when you don’t admit that you’re socially awkward, that you have no idea what’s going on.

Daniel Ratner 17:47
And most of these people are men in their 50s and 60s, and by the way, men have, I think, a four-to-one higher likelihood of having Asperger’s than women. Interesting, I didn’t know that. Yeah, and, and it’s, it’s these guys with the singles advance, and they can’t get married, and they’re awkward. The problem is they can make great husbands, but they also have another category, what I call Emotional Vampires. Is emotional constipation, which means they have a hard time opening up their feelings, sharing feelings, and accepting someone else’s feelings and emotions, and when you’re married, you know you can handle someone who doesn’t really share feelings for 5, 10 years. What happens is, after 15, 20 years, as you said, you want to have passion in the bedroom. There’s not much passion in that bedroom, I can tell you right now, because if they’re not opening up emotionally and sharing their feelings and accepting their spouse’s feelings, that sex isn’t going to be awesome. It’s just not right.

Daniel Ratner 18:43
And this is why the biggest thing I didn’t get to this when I talk about marriages and relationships, it’s based on four things. It stands for the acronym, PIES, physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. And when there’s a physical problem in a relationship, it’s not physical; generally, it is emotional, right? When men have problem with, you know, with, you know, getting it up, it’s an emotional problem. It can stress many things. It’s not a physical problem unless, you know, your 80s, obviously, then you’re on, you know, taking drugs for it, but it is an emotional problem, and we want to, and I want to protect myself, because I feel sometimes you feel bad for people who are single and they’re alone. You want to do things for them and invite them to your parties and social events.

Daniel Ratner 19:32
But as I say, I call them. I call them super, super Uber goobers. They’re better off at someone else’s party, right? And they can destroy your party. Don’t store it. But like it, but like, they’re awkward, and we all have them in our lives. They could be our brother or sister, or they could be a friend of ours at one time. But I don’t know if you’ve had to deal with this, but I deal with it a lot. And again, they can have emotional constipation, but really the one of the biggest categories of emotional vamp. Desires is brothers, siblings, parents, and in-laws, because this is a relationship that you want to have, this relationship that can be very difficult.

Kevin Anthony 20:11
And these are relationships you can’t necessarily get away from. In other words, you have a friend in your life, or even a partner you know, somebody that you’re dating or whatever? Oh, sure, you shift out of those relationships. Yes, you can’t shift. You’re right. You can’t shift out away from, you know, your parents, your in-laws, you know, your siblings. I mean, some people do, to some extent, they’ll say, Well, I distance myself from them, and, you know, I don’t really talk to them anymore, but they’re always going to be in your life to some extent.

Daniel Ratner 20:43
And there’s no, there’s no unsubscribe button for family. Yeah, exactly. There’s not. So the book discusses how to make those relationships healthy, because obviously, a person you’re dating, if they’re causing your stress, you find their narcissism or they’re emotionally awkward, you can get rid of them. You can, you can, you can phase them out of your life, or even a friend, but really a brother or a sister, or even an in-law, a parent, you don’t want to phase out of your life. So what do you have to do? You have to redefine the word healthy. Because just like I can imagine, like an Italian family, where all the kids come to the mom’s house every Sunday night to eat meatballs and spaghetti. Well, maybe that is not healthy for you and your wife to come to your mom’s house every Sunday night. And now, how many has to be once a month, twice a year, and you have to redefine that relationship. I get different tools in the books on how to make those relationships healthy. But you want to have your you want to have your you want to have your family in your life. It’s very important to have them in your life. It just means maybe not as much as you wanted. Yeah. Well, what it mean?

Kevin Anthony 21:42
It means is setting good boundaries, right? Yes, yes. And if you’ve been going to your mom’s for spaghetti every Sunday your entire life, that’s going to be a little bit challenging. She’s probably not going to like the fact that you’re setting that boundary and changing, but it is critical for the health, for, you know, your own sanity as well as the health of your relationship.

Daniel Ratner 22:02
It’s funny because when I was writing the book, I started thinking to myself about all the boundaries that I have put in my life without even thinking about them. I do things to make sure that I’m happy. I remember one of them was when I traveled for trade shows back when my travels were for the coin business, and at these conventions, everyone wanted to go to dinner. Oh, let’s go to dinner. And next thing you know, you have 12 people going to dinner, and by the time the show ends at seven o’clock, you go back to your hotel room, you wash up, and you get to the restaurant at eight o’clock. Of course, a party at 12 takes forever, and you’re still eating appetizers at 1039, and everyone orders expensive bottles of wine. And next thing you know, you’re eating till midnight, and you feel miserable. So I had how to put a rule. I had to put a rule in my life: if I’m going to dinner, it can’t be with more than four people. And I held by it, because I think it’s too much for me. Yeah, just like, week going to weddings. I don’t go to weddings. I go to the nuptials, and I’m gone. I like music’s too loud for me. I don’t like eating dinner 11 o’clock at night. So I like, I’ll go to the nutshells. I’m going home.

Kevin Anthony 23:02
You know, what’s interesting about that is, you know, sometimes people would say, Oh, well, that’s selfish, you know, blah, blah, blah. But the reality is, is that setting appropriate boundaries is actually in your and their best interest. Yes. So, you know, there’s a saying in the consent world, like, say in polyamory, like if somebody approaches you and propositions you with something that they want you to know that it’s okay to say no. So if you say no, their response is, Thank you for taking care of yourself, right? And that’s really the way that we should view this, rather than getting angry at somebody because, well, they set a boundary, and they’re not coming to, you know, the after-wedding party, blah, blah, blah, we should look at it and go, I get it. I understand you’re, you know, maybe a highly sensitive person. You’re more introverted, whatever it is, sure, just thank you for taking care of yourself.

Daniel Ratner 23:54
Yeah, and I do, and I do, put up boundaries now to protect my family and my wife. I take my wife into consideration. When people come to me for meals, I take into consideration how many people I have, because it’s not marriage is not about me. Marriage is about we. And I have to be able to see things from her perspective, and that’s what makes a great relationship.

Kevin Anthony 24:16
Yeah, absolutely okay. I’m gonna pause for a break, and when I come back, I want to talk about, you know, how you can tell if you’re in a relationship with one of these types? And then I want to go into some solutions, like what can people do? We’ve kind of hinted at some of it already, like we were just talking about boundaries, but I want to go into a little bit more depth on that when we come back from the other side of this break.

Kevin Anthony 24:41
All right, are you a couple? Are your relationship and sex life where you want them to be? Are there changes you would like to make, but you just don’t know how? Maybe you think there is nothing that can be done you’re not 100% happy with your relationship or sex life. Then get help today and change your life. Go to https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/couples/ and schedule a strategy call with me today so we can map out a strategy and get you where you want to be, so you can have it all your way. It is https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/couples/. We get to work on so much amazing stuff and boundaries and some of the things we’re talking about today are definitely things that we work on a lot when it comes to coaching couples. So go check that out. Link is in the description.

Kevin Anthony 25:29
All right. So as I mentioned before the break, let’s talk about how does somebody recognize because, you know, we said earlier, like, okay, narcissist fairly easy to recognize. Well, at least it’s easy to recognize the dangers of a narcissist…….

Daniel Ratner 25:44
Not always, actually.

Kevin Anthony 25:46
That’s why I started backtracking after I said that, to be honest, because it’s easy to recognize that being in a relationship with a narcissist is bad. However, it’s not always easy to recognize that you’re in a relationship with a narcissist, so a narcissist aside, like we have all these other categories too. What are your things that people could look for that would give them a clue that somebody in their life is potentially an emotional vampire who’s draining their energy?

Daniel Ratner 26:15
When they send you a text and you dread having to answer or an email or when they leave your house and you feel like a brick has been lifted off your back, that’s kind of the general idea that when you feel like you’ve been drained, and you don’t always see it when the first few years of relationship, especially their friends, but after a while, you start to become, you know, and I don’t know about you, but like I noticed as most people age, they Have less friends in their life, and that’s by choice, not because they’re more introverted. By choice. You have you now recognize that there are people who are not good for you and your relationships. And when you’re 20 years old, and you’re going to college, you’re going to be taking classes somewhere, at work, oh, it’s happy hour, hanging out together. These are all my friends, like, you know, these are my friends. And now you’re 51 years old, and I can guarantee you would have fewer friends now than you did 20, 30 years ago.

Kevin Anthony 27:05
I have fewer friends now than I had 10 years ago.

Daniel Ratner 27:09
And that’s because now you’re being more you don’t, you don’t think about this, but you are now being more cognizant of who’s in your life, because you’re now more aware of your happiness. Another thing is, you know, I have in the book, it’s called the narcissist sniff test. And the reason why I said it’s not so easy sometimes is that they’re very, very engaging. They can be very charismatic. Everyone loves them, and then, as I said, they pull you in. And next thing you know, you’re not in a relationship, you’re in a manipulation ship. And this is why that is the most dangerous of them, but socially awkward, you’ll know pretty quickly. But some of them use like, you know, why is that? Why do I feel like, when they leave, I’m really happy, like, and so that is, like, really the clue to know if someone is really draining your energy. And how do you know what some of the solutions?

Kevin Anthony 27:59
Well, before we go, before we go to solutions, let’s. Yes, let’s slow down just a little bit here. And I do definitely want to get into solutions, but I want to, I want to come back to some of the things that you just said about how you can recognize so one of the big ones, I think, is how you feel afterwards. So you’ve just spent time with this person, how do you feel? Do you feel like, Thank God that’s over, or do you feel like I got to take a nap? Do you feel like I have to go have a drink? You know? Like, if you have any of those types of feelings, that’s a clue, right?

Daniel Ratner 28:36
So I know. Like, you know, when I used to date, I dated till I was I met my wife when I was 34 got married. At 36 I got married late, but I would have girlfriends, a lot of them in my 20s, and when I would, if I happened to break up with one, and when the breakup went okay, and like, I literally felt like a giant load of pricks off my back. I knew it wasn’t a healthy relationship. Now, with Emotional Vampires that in your life or your friends, it’s not, it’s not that severe, right? It’s not like, but you just feel like, you know? I just, I think they just talk to my like, one of my, one of my categories, by the way, is non stop talkers, like the I remember I was my 20s. I dated a girl she would not stop talking. I thought I was on camera. I thought, this cannot be real. There’s no one can talk this non stop. Thank God she got married. Poor guy. You know, my point is, is that, uh, is, is that you feel like you’ve trained after they leave, you feel like or you feel like you get it you want to take a nap like, Okay, I just need peace and quiet.

Kevin Anthony 29:38
So how you feel after you’ve engaged with somebody is a good sign. Yeah, you mentioned narcissists as well. Obviously, one of the signs of a narcissist is something you mentioned at the very beginning, which is that love bombing, right? Yeah. So those people who just jump in head first, 100 miles an hour, just love bombing, like all of that in you. Know, it’s, it’s overwhelming, and for especially when it’s, you know, a male narcissist, you know, courting a female she’s never had anybody that you know…….

Daniel Ratner 30:08
No, she probably has low self-esteem, so she loves the attention, and she loves the validation, and she and of course, she loves to give so then this is just to be a nightmare relationship, and this is I have what I call my Nadar, my narcissist radar. When I meet men who are in their 40s and single, been married twice, and are outgoing, I haven’t my Nadar up because I’m like, Why did your relationships fail before? And these are different clues in my narcissist sniff test, like you can ask them some questions, why were your last relationships? Why do they fail? They change the subject, or they deflect, or they say, all our exes are crazy. It’s probably because they made them crazy, right? Most people who are real, most people who are who have, I call emotionally stable, can take some sort of blame for a past relationship. You know, most people will say, well, she did this, she’s there’s his truth. Hit her truth, and the truth was usually somewhere in the middle, right?

Kevin Anthony 31:08
Yeah, I’ve had that conversation with so many therapists I’ve had on this show where they tell stories about clients that come in and they’re like, Oh, my ex-wife was crazy. And they’re like, Oh, that’s interesting. Well, what about you know, your wife number one before that was crazy too. And you know, now that I think about it, all my exes are crazy, right? It’s like, right? What’s the common denominator here? Exactly?

Daniel Ratner 31:31
And you have to step back. And that’s the thing about, you know, when you’re coaching people, which I love doing, is trying to find the truth somewhere between the couples. And I actually coached a lot of single people who are dating, and he was asked, Should I marry this guy? Should I marry this girl? And then we go through and try to find out if this is a good person for them. But again, when you’re talking about marriage itself, you know, people look at it one side and don’t see that. Sometimes don’t see it aside. Now there are people who admit I just wasn’t a good husband. I didn’t pay attention to her. I just show her affection, and they commit it. And that’s that’s not a narcissist, right? And narcissists do not admit they’re narcissists, right?

Kevin Anthony 32:09
No, never. And you know, the other thing the narcissist will do, too, when the relationship ends, this is something I see a lot, is they will go out to the person who left them and finally got the courage to leave. They’ll go out to all their friends and try to, like, tell their version of the story, and try to do the conversation right, and place all the blame on the person who left, and try to get ahead of the narrative. Yeah, interestingly enough, we see politicians do that a lot, too. That’s a total aside.

Daniel Ratner 32:37
Well, you know, I don’t want to get the politics here, but yes, we have, you know, I live in Israel, so we’re very happy with Donald Trump, but he’s a definite narcissist. I mean, it’s like he can’t, and by the way, nurses can’t say I’m sorry, they can’t say I love you. They can’t they can’t say I love you, they can’t say I’m sorry or I forgive you. They can’t admit mistakes,

Kevin Anthony 32:57
Of course not, because it’s everybody else’s fault. They’re perfect. Yeah, you know, there are some times when political subjects intersect with what we’re talking about here on this show, but I do a really good job of trying to keep that separate, because I don’t, yeah, I don’t talk about it. I don’t want to lose the message.

Daniel Ratner 33:17
So I lose half my family, I’ll lose half my family.

Kevin Anthony 33:21
It’s so polarizing. And my work here really is to help people, and I don’t want them to lose the value of what we’re trying to share today because they don’t like a political point of view or something.

Daniel Ratner 33:32
I might have another book coming out in a few months called When Botox met Bezos, and I talk about the manipulation of news because I started thinking about this, people talk about fake news. I don’t mean that fake news, but it’s really manipulation. Because nowadays, back when we were young, you had, back in 1980s, you had three, you know, news shows, NBC, CBS, and ABC, for half an hour of the night, you know, the evening news, and half an hour local news or an hour of local news, and that’s a 24 hour news cycle. And now we’re reading everything online, and because we’re reading everything online, they know what triggers us, the journalism companies know what triggers us.

Daniel Ratner 34:11
And journalism is about making money, let’s be honest. And when you put eyes on something, they’re going to feed you more things that align with your views. And so confirmation bias gets heavier and heavier and heavier, and suddenly there’s no black and there’s no gray area. It’s all black and white. Either he’s the best president ever, the worst guy ever, there’s like no middle ground. And we live in this whole thing with in all sorts of aspects of our political, and if you do politics, it’s black. There’s no gray. And it’s true, there’s gray in everything.

Kevin Anthony 34:44
Sure, there is. Well, you know that’s, that’s the least evil of their motives, like just the profit motive. It’s one of them, for sure. And it’s not the only one, and it’s, believe it or not, the least evil the media’s motives. But anyway, we digress. Let’s come back to……

Kevin Anthony 35:05
Believe me, we could go a whole show just on that media topic alone. Let’s come back then to what people can actually do about it. So there’s going to be two situations here, the situation where somebody’s dating somebody, or they’ve got a friend in their life, or a person in their life that they realize is an emotional vampire. So there’s dealing, how do they deal with it? Then there’s the other scenario where, you know, you’re, say, married to somebody you know, who’s an emotional vampire. Like, how do you deal with that? So let’s, let’s take somebody that’s just in your life first, right? Then the second one.

Daniel Ratner 35:42
So what the chapter is called is friend audit. What’s a friend audit? I asked different questions about these people. Where do they come from? Because most your friends in your life come from either an event or circumstance. You really didn’t pick them. You went to school with them. Your parents are friends. You grew up with them. Whatever it was, you met them in class or at the gym, and they became your friends. And as you become friends longer and get older, you’re like, maybe this person doesn’t mean doesn’t need to be in my life. Now, what I see a lot of are people who are friends in high school and college, who are now in their 40s and 50s, and they’re still friends with them because they parted together. They had a great time together, and they want to relive those moments.

Daniel Ratner 36:24
So every time they invite them to their birthday party or invite them to a wedding of their son or something like that. Like, Hey, how’s it going? Nice to see you. But like, let’s decide, is the price of admission worth it? Maybe the price of the mission is not worth it to relive those memories back in my 20s, now in my 50s, and biting because I was friends at one time, and I don’t have to be friends with them now. And you have to decide, do I need this person in my life now? Obviously, if they’re your big client or your boss or co-worker, you have to find ways to manage those things. But if they’re not, you know, you don’t have to have these friends in your life anymore. You have to protect your happiness, and you have to protect like just like you have a lock to protect your valuables and your jewelry and your cash, you have to lock. You have to put a fence around your happiness and keep things in to make you happy and keep things in that don’t out, that don’t make you happy, and no one else can do it except you.

Daniel Ratner 37:16
So you have to make a decision. Have I had this person in my life? I don’t I need to find a way to get it on my life. Then we’re gonna talk about now, if you have to have in your life like you married one, I’m gonna tell you. And this is why I’m I am really most of my talks and most of my classes are about dating and marriage, because most people spend more time learning how to get a driver’s license, they do learning what it means to be in a passionate relationship. 98% of arguments and marriages are about the stupidest little things, and the other 2% should have been discussed before you got married. And then once you start to understand that most arguments married about stupid little things, you’ll start to recognize that I have a whole you know, I give seminars on this. You’ll start to say, You know what? There’s a reason why I fell in love with a person like I tell my students all the time, who are usually in their early 20s, when you think you’re going to marry somebody or going to ask them to marry you, you better be aligned on the definition of the word love and marriage.

Daniel Ratner 38:21
I’ve been on many podcasts with PhDs, mostly divorced women in their 50s, and ask them, What’s the definition of love is, and they can’t tell me, and if you can’t define love, how you lose when you find it. And so I tell them my I tell my students what the definition of love is and the definition of marriage, and you don’t agree with me, but at least agree with the person you’re going to marry, and you’ll find once you start focusing on why you fell in love with them in the first place, the idiosyncrasies that you’re going to find, the anger issues, the throwing underwear on the floor, maybe nothing listen to. You’re going to overlook them and just focus on why you fell in love with them. And you’ll be in a relationship that’s passionate forever, and there’s no reason that you can’t make that bedroom rock in your 60s and 70s and 80s. Okay, not as much, obviously, but when you understand, well, yeah, like, whatever. So, so, so, like, you know, when you look at the kit, like I said, the kitchen is not just a place. The kitchen is a place of sensuality. The kitchen is a place where you can really show and have your wife and your husband’s back as far as the awareness of the needs, because you’re in the kitchen so much cooking three meals a day. I say the kitchen isn’t just a place for mixing, it’s a place of transition where you’re itching for the missionary position.

Kevin Anthony 39:34
Very good, very good. Yeah, I totally agree. The kitchen and everywhere else, right? It’s like we talked earlier in the show, you know the the intimacy starts long before you make it to the bedroom. Absolutely, it does.

Daniel Ratner 39:50
Let’s say Mary is like drama queen, very common, like, she’s drama I oversell. Oh my gosh, I’m so crowded today, I can’t believe like, Hey, wait half an hour, whatever it is, right? Well, you. You know that when you got married, but there’s a reason why you married her. Focus on the reasons why you marry her and those things. You know, you overlook them. You know you have to have a little bit of Teflon going to a marriage, because even great marriages are going to go through friction and turbulence. It’s part of life. It’s part of life. Just going to you being with someone, Forever Living with them, it’s going to go and that you don’t know how to manage it. I gotta say, everyone thinks they know how to be in a relationship. But there’s a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is and I give the wisdom over knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit cake if you don’t have the proper understanding what it means. What is love to one person, the fact that men need to be respected and women need attention, affection, appreciation, and awareness. If you don’t have that wisdom, you’re the fruitcake, and don’t be a fruitcake.

Kevin Anthony 40:53
You’re cracking me up today. Yes, don’t, don’t be a fruitcake.

Daniel Ratner 40:58
Most, most marriages fail. I mean, when I mean fail. I mean, if you take 100 marriages in the world today, and then in California, in LA, half get maybe more in LA, let’s not use LA. Let’s use Phoenix, right? Half get divorced. The halves are not divorced. How many of them do you think are passionate, loving relationships? And I would probably say it’s about 10. That means you’re walking down the aisle today to go to say your nuptials and you’re in love, and you think that love is gonna last forever. Do you know why you’re 25, 30 years old? It’s easy, but the longer you’re married, if you don’t romance that relationship, if you don’t turn that infatuation, lust, and desire and turn to love, because you get busy in life with hobbies and careers and children, if you don’t turn to love, your relationship is gonna burn.

Kevin Anthony 41:39
And this is the way I try to avoid, you’re absolutely right, and that is honestly the majority of the focus of the work that I do. And you’re right. People, I don’t know that. I would say people think they know how to do a relationship. They just don’t really think much about it. It’s like nobody really thinks about how they walk, right? They just know. They know how to walk, because they’ve been doing it, you know, pretty much their entire life. Yes, and they do the same thing with relationships. It’s like, well, I know how to do relationships. I know how to date, because I’ve been doing it since I was in my teens, right? But the reality is, is they never got any formal education on it, nope. They learned through trial and error, right?

Kevin Anthony 42:19
And most of what they do hasn’t worked out right. So they keep repeating the same mistakes. And so a huge part of the work that I do, and obviously, very obviously, the same work that you do, is helping people realize that you don’t know what you don’t know. And if you really want to have great relationships, it takes effort. You’re going to have to learn some new stuff. You’re gonna have to change some behavior patterns. You’re gonna have to learn some new behavior patterns that might require reading some books, that might require hiring a coach like you or I, right? Like, what is amazing to me too, and I don’t know, I mean, I see it shifting a little bit in the world, but it still has a long way to go, which is that, like people will think nothing of hiring a personal trainer because they decided they wanted to……..

Daniel Ratner 43:06
That’s ridiculous. You’re making me mad, right?

Kevin Anthony 43:10
And so hire a golf pro and go see them once a week for years, because they want to improve their golf game, right? But then one of the most important things in their entire life, which is their intimate relationship with their partner, right? They’re just, I’m just gonna wing it. I’ll figure it out.

Daniel Ratner 43:32
You know, I’m dying to speak for like five hours, right? Tell you the average Fortune 500 company in America spends like 100 $250 million a month on consultants like Damon company. Why could they help them make more micros of it? What do people who are married get consultants when things are falling apart? And this is the crazy thing. You know, all my students who are single, here I am. They all say coach. They all call me coach. Everyone should read your book, sunscreen, live before they get married. Everyone’s got to read because no one knows they’re doing and this is why I wrote the book, to give and I assume there’s other books like it out there, I guess.

Daniel Ratner 44:06
But I go through dating. It’s called the called sunscreen love, the four phases of love that love goes for different phases and understanding each phase and how it relates in the relationship. And ultimately, the commitment is not the final phase. It’s called never leaving the point in your relationship, you’ve been married 2025 years, maybe in 10 years, and you realize your spouse isn’t perfect. There’s someone better in every single category. There’s something that better opens up more emotionally, someone’s better in bed, someone’s a better cook, more money, skinnier, fat or whatever you want, right? But your spouse isn’t perfect, but they’re perfect for you, and this is the point I want everyone to get to in the relationship, so that they don’t have string eyes and they put their relationship on a pedestal a marriage. I call it infinite marriage, and they basically do everything to protect that marriage, because the most important thing we have in our life is our relationship to our spouse, and when that’s going well, your life is going well.

Kevin Anthony 44:58
So so true. Haha, which is why it’s always sort of dumbfounded me that people don’t put more energy and effort into it, because I know in my life for sure, the times when my life was going the best, where it felt the easiest, where it felt the most in flow, where I had the most happiness, the most joy, were when my relationship was really working.

Daniel Ratner 45:21
Yes, I tell my students I’ve been married 24, years. I got the love having my wife now does not compare to 24 years ago. I had no idea what was doing. 24 years at 30 36, years old, I had no idea what I was doing. Now I’m 60. Now I know what love really means, you know, and I do everything to constantly nurture and protect that relationship.

Kevin Anthony 45:41
Yeah, and that’s that really is the only way that you will have a long term healthy, successful relationship. You can have a long term miserable relationship, but the only way to have a long term healthy, successful one is to do all of those things that you’re talking about, that structuring all along the way. Okay, I got two last questions on Emotional Vampires themselves, that I’m just curious about. Number one, can Emotional Vampires change, or will they always be Emotional Vampires?

Daniel Ratner 46:13
I would tell you that you can change. I was a very impatient person, and now I’ve become very patient. I had a hard time listening to people because I’d lose interest very quickly. And now I’m focused. I am zeroing in on people. It comes with age. Obviously, the narcissist is probably the most difficult to get over. They never admit it, and it takes the longest to get over with. But the problem is, if you are married, if you have someone in your life who’s in their 50s and 60s, and they’re a drama queen, it’s unlikely they’re going to change, because it happens as you age. You know, right now you have a filter. You’re walking down the street in LA right, you see a beautiful woman with nice body, like, Ah, it’s really nice.

Daniel Ratner 46:53
But, like, you don’t say anything, you don’t do anything. You just look it up for a second. You’ll turn away, right? But when you get to be 85 years old, you want to grab her tush like, and you lose your filter and just go and that’s what they call dirty old men. You grab her tush like you can’t control yourself, right? You lose your filter. So it gets harder and harder as you age. I think the time to do this is in your 30s and 40s. I think that’s the time that you can really develop yourself into not being a vampire and to and to not be draining for other people. But if you can’t admit it, if you’re socially awkward and don’t know you’re socially awkward, you’re not gonna change.

Kevin Anthony 47:27
It’s gonna be so sort of, just to sum up, it is possible for most people to change, although the longer you’re stuck in a in a particular pattern, the harder it’s going to be to actually make that change.

Daniel Ratner 47:41
I would tell you that if you are emotionally healthy and you have a spouse that’s telling you you have some issues, and you are happy to you as a person, and you have strong self-esteem, and you have no ego. I said before, your ego is not your Amigo. If your ego is not so big, I think you can certainly improve yourself and become a much more calmer, more enjoyable person to be around, but the ego is the not knowing and admitting and the eagle get in the way.

Kevin Anthony 48:08
So that actually brings me to the second question that I had when it comes to emotional vampires, which is, how could somebody potentially recognize that they themselves are the emotional vampire?

Daniel Ratner 48:21
Yeah, so that’s in the book. So I have, I have a chapter called, it’s called, Are You an Emotional Vampire? And I, when I wrote the book, I was laughing, because at the end of the chapter, I’m like, maybe you’re, if you have no Emotional Vampires in your life, maybe you’re the emotional vampire, because everyone has them. If you can’t recognize them, you’re probably one of them.

Kevin Anthony 48:44
That’s a good place to start. I would say for sure. Yep, you’re probably one of them. All right, any last things that you want to share about Emotional Vampires or anything else that we talked about, any last advice you want to give the audience?

Daniel Ratner 48:59
I would say that the most important thing is to put a fence around your happiness. We have more people on antidepressants or more people. We have more therapists than any time in history the world per capita. And we have, we have access to the most information, shelter, food, everything. By the way, more people are dying in America from overeating than undereating. You know, my point is, and but more people are unhappy. And one of the reasons is, you know, social media certainly doesn’t help. It’s become, and this is why narsim has gotten to be very large, because become very, very self indulged. And I think the best thing to do is protect your happiness.

Daniel Ratner 49:34
So in my self-esteem book, I talk about 12 ways to improve your self-esteem, and one of them is, is to get rid of things that are making unhappy, like you go on Instagram make you unhappy. Get off of Instagram if and again, with Emotional Vampires, if someone in your life is not making you happy, you need to find a way for them not being your life, unless it’s obviously your relative. So my words of wisdom is to protect your happiness, you have to be strong. Know, you have to be strong in your early 20s. You don’t have the strength emotional strength. But as you get into your 30s and 40s, you’re like, you know what? I need to do things to protect myself, and I’m gonna put a fence up and keep things out that make me unhappy and bring things in that make me happy.

Kevin Anthony 50:14
Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, we talked earlier about how as we get older, we have less friends. I mean, that’s really what it comes down to. It’s the idea that the older we get, the more we value the quality over the quantity. So, you know, when you’re young, especially if you’re like, say, in your 20s, it’s all about how many friends you have, right? Who are those friends? Right? Yeah, they may be terrible friends, but because they’re like, a popular person or something, then, oh, well, look, he’s my friend. You know, as we get older, we don’t care about that anymore. We start going this one, this one, this one, this you’re out, right? This one, this one, okay, you’ve been cool, you’re in. Like, we just we there’s a part of losing that filter that’s a good thing, and it can be a not good thing. But the good part about it is we stopped caring so much about what other people think and we do, we tend to do more what’s best for us, which I think is great. Yeah, excellent advice. Obviously, you have the new book coming out, Emotional Vampires.

Daniel Ratner 51:15
It’s available January 13, 2026 on Amazon and on Barnes Noble and as an ebook and a paperback, I actually my other two previous books I’ve actually printed here locally in town where I am. I’ve given about two I’ve given about 2000 paper books out of my book, sunscreen, love and emotional vampire, and never feel in love again. But now that I’m trying to promote. I’m trying to really promote my material. I have a manager. He’s like, You can’t give this book away. You have to sell it. So I you got a free coffee. I sent you a coffee, and there’ll be a be on Amazon.

Daniel Ratner 51:53
And then I have whole slew of new books coming out in next few years. One’s actually, you like this one I mentioned to you also when Botox meets Bezos, when low self esteem, narcissism and massive wealth collide. And then I have a book after that called kosher climax, which will be basically what you discuss, how to make the bedroom hot, you know, not temperature-wise, as you know what I mean. And I write a book called crack out is secrets of the Billion Dollar Coin Industry, because I’m a rare coin dealer, and this is what I do for my work, my coaching and my book writing is just a hobby. I don’t make any money doing it so…

Kevin Anthony 52:30
Well, you know, again, that’s an amazing and wonderful fact that you know you’re doing this. You’re putting all of this energy and effort out there, really just to help people, and it’s not even you know what you’re doing to make a living, which I think is amazing and beautiful. And thank you for doing that. Thank you. Thank you. Is there a main place? Because you got a lot of stuff coming out in the future, I do, I do a main place where people can keep up with all that’s happening.

Daniel Ratner 52:56
So right now, coach ratner.com R, A, T, N, E, R. Coach ratner.com is my website as a list of my classes and usually links to my books. I also have a podcast called The coach Ratner podcast on Spotify, Apple and YouTube, and I have now hired a new photographer, and we’ve been starting to for I took off about a year or two just because I was just doing a lot of writing and I wasn’t focusing on doing any podcasts, and so now I’m doing classes or getting videoed. I’m putting up online on my Spotify. Yeah, I don’t have a huge following, but my stuff, I think, is very insightful. And some of my talks, some of my talks and relationships are can be very, very funny. I have a lot of not like, I’m a natural funny guy, but I do bring a lot of humor into my talks.

Kevin Anthony 53:42
Well, I’ve certainly enjoyed the conversation. I found it entertaining, and I will say that the advice that you’ve been giving is tried and true, time tested, relationship advice. I didn’t hear you say anything that I was like. I don’t know about that, so I actually thought it was a great conversation. I appreciate it, and thank you for coming on here and having that comment. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me All right, everybody that’s all the time I have for this episode, and I will see you next week.

Kevin Anthony 54:16
I hope you liked this episode of the Love Lab podcast. If you enjoy this show, subscribe, leave me a review and share it with your friends, and for more free exclusive content, join me in the passion vault at https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault/. That’s https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault/. Thanks for listening, and remember, as Celine used to say, you’re amazing!