Kevin Anthony 0:05
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 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 0:27
All right, welcome back to the Love Lab podcast. This is episode 412, and it is titled “Is Emotional Intelligence the Key to Lasting Relationships? So today we’re going to be talking about emotional intelligence, and we’re going to be talking about why it is so important to having the relationship of your dreams, which of course also means the best sex of your life. And the idea for today’s show came from I did a live stream about emotional intelligence a few weeks ago, and I covered you know the five core components of what emotional intelligence is, but I had so much more content I wanted to talk about that I didn’t get to in the live stream, and so I thought, let’s just do a whole podcast on it because I really do believe that it is that important.

Kevin Anthony 1:29
So we’re going to talk about, you know, what emotional intelligence actually is, why emotional intelligence matters, the five core components, signs of low emotional intelligence, signs of high emotional intelligence. Examples of what emotional intelligence looks like in relationships. We’ll bust some common myths about it. We’ll talk about practical ways to improve it. So there’s a lot to cover today. I hope I can get it all in. If you could take away just one thing from this episode, it’s that taking the time to really work on and master and take your emotional intelligence to the highest level you can really is important not only for your intimate relationship but for all of the relationships that you have in your life, and I think I am going to make a case for that throughout this episode. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Kevin Anthony 2:30
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Kevin Anthony 3:45
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Kevin Anthony 4:45
Okay, we’re talking about emotional intelligence today, so first we need to define it. What are we actually talking about? Well, emotional intelligence, which is also often referred to as EQ. EQ is the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and effectively express your emotions while also understanding and responding to the emotions of others. So there’s two key components in there that are important to understand. One is your own ability to recognize, understand, and manage your own emotions.

Kevin Anthony 5:21
So, and we’ll talk about this a whole lot more as we go through this episode. But the ability for you to be able to go, I’m having an emotion. Okay, what emotion am I having? Okay, now I know what emotion I’m having. Why am I having this emotion? Where does it come from? And then saying, okay, I can manage that emotion in a way where I’m not going to cause further damage to myself or my relationship. That’s one half. The other half is recognizing my partner is having an emotion, and you know, where is that emotion coming from? If I can figure that out, and how do I stay calm? How do I respond effectively? So that’s emotional intelligence.

Kevin Anthony 6:05
And the reason why I wanted to do this episode is that if you think about it, every relationship has stuff that comes up that just does. You’re going to be, you know, potentially living with the person. You’re going to be, you know, interacting with them on a regular basis. You’re going to be having sex with them. Maybe you’re raising kids with them. Maybe you’re running a business with them, or all of those things. And there’s going to be stuff that needs to be managed. Things are going to come up. Emotions are going to come up. How you handle those determines whether or not you have a successful relationship or an unsuccessful relationship, and so EQ is critically important to how you manage the situations that come up. So I have a note here: it says your IQ may get you opportunities, but your EQ determines the quality of your relationships, and that’s kind of important, right?

Kevin Anthony 7:05
Because it’s not just about, you know, using your intelligence to get somebody to go on a date with you or anything like that. It’s really about how you show up in those moments. So it’s a skill. It’s not necessarily a personality trait, and it can be developed at any age. It’s kind of interesting because sometimes people say, “Well, you know, they’ve just always been like that. Well, you know, that’s just how they grew up, or whatever. And it’s like, look-it’s just-it’s a skill. Now, some people had better examples of that skill growing up than others. Some people maybe have, you know, a natural tendency to be better at it from the start, just like with anything else. Some people are just naturally good when they start at a musical instrument or some other art or talent, but that doesn’t mean that other people can’t learn it. It’s just a skill, and you know, I think singing is a great example of that, because if you ask most people, “Can you sing? You will get one of two opposite answers. They will say, “Yeah, I can sing, or they’ll say, “Absolutely not. Nobody wants to hear me sing. Trust me, right?

Kevin Anthony 8:21
Like those are really the only two answers you ever get when you ask somebody that question. But the reality is, everybody can sing. Does that mean everybody can sing like Andrea Bocelli, or you know, I don’t know, pick your favorite pop star who’s super popular who has a great voice? Like no, that doesn’t mean that. But everybody can learn to sing, and it’s the same thing with emotional intelligence. I’m not saying everybody will, you know, become the ultimate master of emotional intelligence, but everybody has the ability to learn emotional intelligence because it is a skill, and you can learn it at any time. It just means having access to the right information and the willingness to work on it.

Kevin Anthony 9:10
Because like any skill, you gotta work at it. Okay, so that’s what emotional intelligence is, right? The ability to recognize, understand, manage, and effectively express your emotions while also understanding and responding to the emotions of others, and we have determined that it is a skill that you can learn. So the next question, of course, becomes, why is this really important? I mean, I kind of touched on it a little bit already, but let’s get a little bit more specific about why emotional intelligence matters. Why is it so important to be good at this? Well, first of all, you will absolutely have better relationships, and you’ll have better relationships across the board. Of course, you know, on this show, since we talk about sex, love, and relationships, we’re primarily talking.

Kevin Anthony 9:59
About your intimate relationship with your partner, that will absolutely get better. But if you have a high level of emotional intelligence, your relationships with your family, your relationships with your kids, your relationships with your friends, your relationships with coworkers-all of that will get better. All of that will get better. So there’s just you will see improvements all across your life because if you think about it, every interaction you have with other humans is a form of a relationship. Yes, it’s not an intimate relationship, but it’s still a relationship. Whether it’s a, you know, boss-employee relationship, or teacher-student relationship, or friend relationship, they’re all relationships. Meaning that we have to relate with these people, and if we can do it in a way that is intelligent, emotionally intelligent, we’re going to relate better. We’re going to have less conflict, right?

Kevin Anthony 11:06
So, of course, that leads me to the next one on the list, which is stronger communication. So, if you have really worked on your emotional intelligence, you’ll communicate better with all of the people in your life. Which, as I just said a moment ago, will lead to less unnecessary conflict. Man, this is something I really see in coaching, and I work a lot on this. I have said, and I know it’s a bit of a cliche, but I have said so many times in coaching, you know, the old cliche of it’s not necessarily what you say, but how you say it, in the sense that you know I’ve watched couples many, many, many, many times have a disagreement about something, and from a third-party point of view, I’m sitting there listening to both sides, and I can see like you know they’re not that far off, or they might even sometimes be mostly on the same page, but the way they communicate to their partner what it is they’re needing or how they’re feeling is what is causing the problem.

Kevin Anthony 12:13
And so a lot of times we just work on how can we say things in a way that is not triggering, in a way that enrolls our partner in the conversation, or to, you know, help us meet the need that we’re seeking met. So you will absolutely have less conflict simply by improving your communication and your emotional intelligence. Here’s another interesting one. You know, I was doing some research, obviously, to help me put this together. I guess I shouldn’t say obviously, because I will say, 412 episodes, the overwhelming majority of them just I just wrote out of my head, unless I needed like statistics or facts or something like that, and of course, when Celine was here, she and I would write them together for half of the episodes that we’ve done, you know, based on our studies and you know our extensive work in the field, and then I usually will do some research just to supplement that.

Kevin Anthony 13:19
So you know that’s what I was doing with this episode as well, and one of the things that came up is that when you have a high level of emotional intelligence, you will make better decisions under stress, and that’s something I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of to write down if I were just prepping this by myself, but it made absolute sense when I read. I go, yeah, absolutely, because what happens is when stress kicks in, right? And you know, again, we’re mostly talking about relationships here, which means that the stress is often a perceived stress. In other words, we use this, you know, example all the time when we talk about our nervous system, but you know there isn’t a saber-tooth tiger, you know, hunting you down in the jungle when you’re having a disagreement with your partner. There just isn’t.

Kevin Anthony 14:14
However, your nervous system will often react as if there is, and the problem with that is once you get into that fight, flight, or freeze, or as they say now, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Once you get into that space in your nervous system, for many people, the ability to make good decisions just goes right out the window, and it starts becoming old patterns that are driving the response. And those old patterns may not necessarily be healthy patterns, and they may cause you to act in ways that you’ll regret later on. You see this in practice.

Kevin Anthony 15:00
Every single movie, you know, they get into a big argument, and they say a bunch of really mean things, and then half an hour later, you know, they get back together, and they apologize, and they say, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean all those horrible things I said. Please forgive me, take me back, or whatever other bullshit they do in those things, but why? Why did they say those things to begin with? And we’ve explored that a little bit on the show. A lot of times, it’s because they’re hurting and they just want to inflict pain on the other person so that they hurt too. That’s part of it.

Kevin Anthony 15:34
But the reality is, is that when they’re under stress and they’ve been triggered in that moment, their ability to make good decisions about what’s an appropriate thing to say and what’s not an appropriate thing to say, or what’s an appropriate thing to do and what’s not an appropriate thing to do, just goes out the window, and they start defaulting to all those, you know, unconscious, you know, patterns that they’ve been doing for ever that are not serving them that actually create more disconnect. So that’s an important one to understand, like why this matters. And then of course, you know, we already talked about. I have another on, you know, more satisfying friendships and family relationships. I kind of covered that with better relationships in general, right?

Kevin Anthony 16:22
So all of your relationships will improve. You’ll make better decisions under stress. You’ll have less unnecessary conflict. You’ll have better communication, and you know if you if you take all of that and kind of put it together, what you realize is you’re really just going to have smoother, more harmonious relationships, and you’ll look back and you go, you know, I don’t remember the last time that we had an argument, and even when we did, it really wasn’t that big a deal, right? That’s what you’ll start to notice as you start improving on your emotional intelligence. And remember, the less conflict you have, the better decisions you make under stress, the less yelling and arguments and emotional reactions you have, the less damage you do, which means the less healing you have to do in your relationship.

Kevin Anthony 17:13
So a pattern that you often see with people is that they’re constantly stuck in this pattern of doing damage to the relationship and then having to repair it, and then being good for a little while and then doing more damage to the relationship and then having to repair it. If you can really master your emotional intelligence, then that cycle doesn’t happen anymore, and you’re not constantly in this place of trying to figure out how to repair your relationship, and you know, think about it this way: if you’re always trying to repair your relationship, then you’re never really growing it to the levels it could be, because all your time and energy is focused on just trying to repair it and get it back to where it was, as opposed to once you’ve broken that cycle, now you can focus your energy and attention on taking the relationship to new higher levels, right?

Kevin Anthony 18:12
So think about, you know, your business. If all you’re ever doing is putting out fires, solving problems that are constantly coming up, do you have the resources and the bandwidth to try to grow the business? No, you’re just trying to keep it afloat. You’re in survival mode all the time. But what if you weren’t trying to keep it afloat and stuck in survival mode, and you could actually use that energy and those resources towards building something even bigger and better? So those are some, I think, very compelling reasons why emotional intelligence is important, and why we should all be striving to master it, to get better at it. And nobody’s perfect at it. Believe me, nobody is perfect at it, especially when you get triggered. It takes effort, but the effort is worth it. So let’s talk now a little bit about the five core components of it, right? So we’re talking about emotional intelligence. I kind of gave you the definition of what it is, but there are some what we call core components of it. Things, you know, the sort of core pieces that make somebody emotionally Intelligent. So number one, self-awareness.

Kevin Anthony 19:24
So remember when we read the definition at the beginning, the ability to recognize, understand, and manage. And you know there was more to it than that. But that ability to recognize and understand is this self-awareness piece. You have to be able to recognize what you’re feeling and why. That is crucially important, and one of the things that you see in people who have lower emotional intelligence is, you know, from an outside perspective as an observer, you can clearly see that they are having a major emotional response to what’s happening, right?

Kevin Anthony 20:00
Now, but if you ask them, they’ll absolutely flat out deny it. I’m not just being emotional. I’m justified in this, and there’s a reason why I feel this way. They have no self-awareness whatsoever of the emotional reaction that they’re having in that moment, much less why they’re having it. So self-awareness is a really key component to recognizing and understanding why you’re having that emotional reaction. Because you know, very, very often, I was going to say nine times out of 10, maybe not nine out of 10, but probably the majority of times you’re dealing with something in your relationship, and you’re having an emotional reaction to it. It has nothing to do with what’s happening in that moment. It’s just that what’s happening in that moment triggered something, right?

Kevin Anthony 20:57
That’s been there for a long time. Some deep-seated pattern from the past, maybe some, you know, childhood trauma, whatever it is. And if you’re not aware of that, you think that what’s happening in that moment is the big thing. That is the reason why I feel this way. But you’re never really going to effectively deal with the emotions you’re feeling that way if you think what the reason you’re having them is a different reason than the real reason why you’re actually having them, so the self-awareness piece is huge and it’s really important. So I would say if anybody’s really working on, you know, increasing their emotional intelligence and they want to get better at this. Just start with having the awareness. A difficult situation comes up. Just find a way to be able to pause in the moment and just bring that awareness. I realize I’m having an emotional moment. I’m triggered by something my partner just said or did. If you can take it a step further and go, I’m realizing it triggers me because in past relationships, blah blah blah, or when I was a kid, blah blah blah. I mean, that’s great too. That is just the first place to start. Just at least having the awareness of what’s going on in the moment.

Kevin Anthony 22:23
All right, core component number two: self-regulation, which is responding intentionally instead of reacting impulsively. So, if you’ve ever done any sort of like new, I’m going to say new age parenting class or anything like that. What are one of the things that they teach you in there? They teach you basically how to teach your children self-regulation, right? So if you’ve ever been a parent, whether or not you’ve been formally trained in this or not, if you really think about it, a lot of what you teach your children when they’re young is how to self-regulate, right? And you’ve probably heard yourself saying to your kids things like, you know, use your words. How are you feeling right now? What’s going on? You know, or you know, maybe even it might not be the healthiest, but saying, you know, it’s not that big a deal. You’re have you’re just overreacting, you know, things like that. A lot of stuff that we heard from our parents as we were kids, but all of those things are attempts to get your child to self-regulate.

Kevin Anthony 23:36
Well, the funny thing about that is that most people, most adults, struggle with this as well. Most adults struggle with self-regulation, regulating their emotions when they get triggered, when they’re feeling a strong emotional reaction. A lot of times, the emotions will overtake them, and they’ll just they’ll lash out with a reaction. So, learning self-regulation is critically important because, okay, great, I have awareness about this emotion I’m having. I may even understand why I’m having it. But if I still allow that emotion to dictate my behavior and make me say things and do things that are not good, then it’s still a problem.

Kevin Anthony 24:23
So self-regulation is important. Next, motivation. This is the third core component of emotional intelligence: acting according to your values rather than your emotions. And so you have self-awareness. You’re you’ve learned to self-regulate. Now you have to have the motivation to act in accordance with your values. So what are your values? Which, by the way, if you don’t know what your values are, this is critically important. Probably should have emphasized that a bit more. More in this episode, but as I’m going through it now and and explaining it to you all, like I’m, it just hit me sort of how important it is to know what your values are, because if you don’t really know what your values are, you don’t really know what’s important to you and what’s not important to you, and it might cause you to really have strong emotional reactions to things that, if you really thought about it, aren’t actually that important to you. It’s not one of your core values, even.

Kevin Anthony 25:32
And so, again, if you can have that self-awareness, you’re feeling a big emotional reaction come up. You can take a step back and then go, “Why am I so bothered by this? Like this isn’t even one of my core values. This isn’t even that important to me. And then you might be able to at that point go. Oh, okay. I can let that go. You know, I don’t really need to stress over that or make a big deal out of it. So anyway, if you don’t know what your core values are, I strongly suggest that you spend some time figuring out what they are. I had a guy named Nick Broncato on the show. He wrote a book called “Prioritize Us” up there on the shelf. I don’t know that you can see it there in the background, but you know it’s based on relationships. But a lot of it is about figuring out what your priorities slash core values are, and there are some steps in there to help you figure that out. So that’s one potential way you could figure that out. So motivation, acting according to your values, empathy is the next sort of core component. Understanding another person’s emotional experience without necessarily agreeing with it, which is important. We’ll talk more about that later.

Kevin Anthony 26:46
But just because you tell somebody, “Okay, I understand what you’re saying, doesn’t mean that you’re saying, “I agree with you. It just means that you understand. And of course, it’s one thing to say that you understand; it’s another thing to actually understand, and so there are some strategies you can use about, you know, repeating back to somebody what you heard, naming the emotions. That was a podcast that got released about never fighting in your relationship again. About how you can name the other person’s emotions. Oh, you’re feeling this way right now, right? As a way to get instant sort of validation and understanding in that moment. So empathy is another core component, and then of course the last one that we’re calling social skills, which is communicating, resolving conflict, and building trust. So it’s all the skills that you need to be able to navigate that. So you have the self-awareness, you pull back, you self-regulate, you have the motivation to act in accordance with your values. You are then using your skills to communicate, to give some empathy, to resolve conflict, to rebuild trust and that sort of thing. So, those are what we are naming as the four core components of emotional intelligence.

Kevin Anthony 28:13
So, I would say take a look at yourself, where you’re at, and you know, be honest. Ask yourself: Out of these five core components, which ones am I good at, and which ones am I not good at? Which ones could I really use some extra work on? And maybe which ones am I doing really well with? Like, you know, I’m really good at self-regulating. Okay, great. But maybe I’m not that great at empathy or communicating, right? And we’ve all got our areas where we’re really strong, and where we’re really not. Just to take myself as an example, I’m gonna I’m going to say what I think I’m best at. My partner may have a different idea about that, but I think I do a really good job with self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation.

Kevin Anthony 29:08
I also think I do a good job with communicating, but I also think that sometimes I can lack a little empathy in my responses. So that’s an area where I strive to do better, to have a bit more understanding and empathy for, you know, how my partner’s feeling and where they’re at, especially in moments where I don’t agree with the reaction that they’re having. So you know, it’s easy when you completely agree with them. It’s when somebody’s having an emotional reaction, and you don’t believe that that emotional reaction really fits the situation. Like it’s not really appropriate. Like that’s when it’s harder to have, you know, empathy and to really say to somebody, I understand, because you’re like, I don’t understand. This is ridiculous, you know. Like that’s where it gets more challenging.

Kevin Anthony 30:03
So that’s where I think I work, you know, to try to improve my skills the most is in that area. But everybody’s got their own. So look at this list and figure out where, you know, where do you need to do a little bit more work? And it’s okay. It’s okay if you find places where you need to do more work. In fact, if you didn’t, I would be surprised. And you know, even though I say I think I do a pretty good job at, you know, some of them, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement, right? So you know, for me, like I feel like I do a really good job with the self-awareness piece. But sometimes it doesn’t happen for me in that immediate moment. Sometimes I need a little bit of time after the moment to really think about it and process it, and then it comes to me like, oh, okay. So another area of improvement potentially for myself is to be able to do that faster, to be able to bring the awareness and recognize what I’m feeling and why faster, so that it’s easier to self-regulate and motivate and empathy and all that stuff in the moment. So, just some examples, you know, from my own personal experience.

Kevin Anthony 31:20
All right, about halfway through the show, I need to pause for a break. When we come back, I want to talk about, you know, signs of low emotional intelligence and high emotional intelligence. That way, you can recognize either in yourself or in other people that you relate with who is a bit lacking in emotional intelligence and who is not. That’s going to help you figure out the best course of action when it comes to dealing with people, because you’ll have a better understanding of where they’re at and why they are acting the way that they are. And then I want to get into some examples of emotional intelligence in relationships and bust some myths and talk about some practical ways to improve EQ. So that’s a lot to do in the second half of the show, but it’s good stuff. So hang in there, and we’ll get to it on the other side of this break.

Kevin Anthony 32:14
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Kevin Anthony 33:35
Okay, so what are some signs of low emotional intelligence? We’re not going to spend a ton of time on the signs because I really want to focus on some of the other things. But as I said before the break, I feel like it’s helpful to be able to recognize where people are at, so we know how to respond appropriately. So some signs of low emotional intelligence: becoming defensive when receiving feedback, somebody who’s emotionally intelligent should be able, as much as we don’t like it, and trust me, none of us like it, but as much as we don’t like it, we should be able to listen and receive the feedback, allow the other person to finish it, right, and then not immediately jump into defense. If we have a higher level of emotional intelligence and we tend to agree with what they share, we might say, “You know, you’re right. I get it. I like. I’m not. I’m not disagreeing with that. Right?

Kevin Anthony 34:34
I know I have to work in that area more. That takes a pretty high level, but it’s possible. Blaming others for your emotions. This is the one we see a lot, man. I wish I had a dime for every time I saw people do that, where they have an emotional reaction. They’re having an emotion about something. And it’s all turned around on the other person. The reason they’re having that emotion is that the other person did this or didn’t do that or whatever it is, you know. But it all gets projected out onto the other person. That is definitely a sign of low emotional intelligence. Difficulty apologizing.

Kevin Anthony 35:18
Oh man, I had a partner years ago who, no matter what, could not apologize. And there were a couple of times over the time that we dated, where something would happen, and you know I would show her conclusively that what she was accusing me of was absolutely incorrect. Like had the receipts and didn’t do it in a way that was me, like, you know, yelling at her or anything like that. Just saying like, whoa whoa whoa, hold on a second here. That didn’t actually happen. Let me show you: here’s the and I remember the best I could ever get out of her is she would just stop. Whatever she was mad about, she would just stop, and she’d never say another word about it again. But absolutely could not apologize. Could never say, “Oh, I see. I’m sorry about that. The words “I’m sorry” never once ever came out of her mouth, and that was a big issue for me. One of the many reasons we broke up, but you know the fact that she couldn’t even acknowledge that she had made a mistake was something I really couldn’t live with in a relationship. We all make mistakes, right?

Kevin Anthony 36:40
Next, constant emotional reactions instead of thoughtful responses. This is a big telltale sign. When somebody has emotional reactions and cannot self-regulate, and instead just, you know, has these constant, like, emotional outbursts, you know that is a sign of low emotional intelligence, struggling to identify what you’re actually feeling. So again, this speaks to a low awareness of your emotions and where they come from, why you’re having them, invalidating other people’s emotions, and letting emotions dictate your behavior-that is a really big one. You know, emotions. I used to when I was much younger. I, oh, I’m admitting something here. I don’t even really want to admit.

Kevin Anthony 37:35
But when I was much younger, I used to think emotions were awful, and I used to say things like, and I’m talking very young, you know, like teens into early 20s. I used to say, you know, humans would be so much better if we didn’t have emotions. And the reason I would say that is because honestly, I just had a bunch of bad examples of people whose emotions dictated their behaviors in really unhealthy ways. But once I had better examples, and once I learned the beauty of emotions, I completely changed my mind on that. I just realized that the key, the difference, is how you react to the emotions, and you know if you’re, if you’re a nihilist or somebody out there who is like, yeah, you’re right. We should, we would be better off without emotions.

Kevin Anthony 38:25
You re you realize, well, I hope you would realize anyway, that you would miss out on some of the most amazing experiences of life. You know, when you have those amazing positive emotions, there’s just nothing. There’s nothing that comes close to that in the human experience. So by shutting that down, you’d really be missing that. But by opening up to the flow of emotions, you open up to the positive ones and the negative ones, and therefore you have to really get good at regulating, right? Self-regulating and not allowing things when they get bad to, you know, dictate our behavior, especially in negative ways. So, yeah, letting your emotions dictate your behavior is definitely a sign of low emotional intelligence.

Kevin Anthony 39:15
Oh, I hate to say this, but as I’m reading that list, like there are faces of people I know popping into my mind, and I’m thinking, man, I’m describing a few people I know all too well with this list of low emotional intelligence stuff, which I guess is why it was easy to write the list. I just had to think about people I know and how they behave in ways that are not really quite so good, but anyway, those are signs of low emotional intelligence. So hopefully, by you know understanding what those are, it will give you some idea of where the people you’re interacting with might be at, and that’ll help you recognize. Okay, I realize this person has low emotional intelligence, so I need to step. But my game, I need to communicate better. Or in some cases, if it’s not, say, your spouse or family or child, you might say, “I choose to not interact with this person anymore because their emotional intelligence is too low and it’s creating too much stress in my life.

Kevin Anthony 40:15
So, you know, understanding what it is like, what those signs are, can be really helpful in letting you know how to approach a situation with somebody. All right, what are some signs of high emotional intelligence? You pause before reacting, maybe take a deep breath or two. You’re able to name your emotions with clarity, at least relative clarity. I mean, obviously, the more clarity you can have, the better. But you know, you can at least say, “Hey, I’m feeling really hurt right now because that thing that you did, you know, makes me feel unsafe or makes me feel like you don’t love me or you know whatever it is. And notice the way I phrased that too. I didn’t phrase it, you know, I feel sad because you don’t love me. I said, you know, I feel sad because what happened makes me feel like you don’t love me, and that’s a big distinction-one that we don’t really have time to go into today.

Kevin Anthony 41:15
But I’ve talked about it on the show before. Let’s see. You stay curious during disagreements, so you want to know what the other person’s side is, or how they feel, or why they feel the way they feel. You take responsibility for your behavior, which you know taking responsibility for your behavior is easy when you’re able to self-regulate because you haven’t done anything that’s hard to admit to, right? It’s hard to take responsibility for your behavior when you know you did some shit you shouldn’t have done. You said something, you did something you shouldn’t have done. It’s a lot harder to take responsibility for it because then you’ve got to admit you did some stuff or said some stuff you shouldn’t have done.

Kevin Anthony 42:02
But if you are able to emotionally regulate, then it’s easy to take responsibility because there shouldn’t be anything too challenging to take responsibility for. All right, you communicate your needs directly. You can disagree without attacking. You can recover from emotional setbacks more quickly, and you make others feel heard. So those are some signs of high emotional intelligence. So those are qualities that you want to look for. Let’s say you’re out there in the dating space, and you’re getting to know somebody. Inevitably, things are going to come up. Do you recognize any of these signs of high emotional intelligence? Because if you do, then that’s a good sign that this is somebody you might actually want to be in a relationship with.

Kevin Anthony 42:59
So those are signs of high emotional intelligence, as well as signs of low emotional intelligence, and I hope that will make it easier for you to recognize where people are at, and that can help you figure out how to respond in a given situation. All right, I had this thing on. I was calling it examples of emotional intelligence. There’s just like some ways that emotional intelligence might show up. Like your partner doesn’t need you to fix every problem, right?

Kevin Anthony 43:36
So in other words, the situation is coming up, and you realize that you know you don’t have to fix the problem in a moment. That maybe what they just need is for you to hold space, or maybe what you need is just for them to hold some space for you, or whatever it is. Like that’s a way that emotional intelligence might show up. Is like, oh, I’m realizing that there’s a problem here, but I don’t need it fixed right now. Or how this usually shows up, especially for men, is, hey, I realize there’s a problem here, and I’m realizing that I, as many of us men are, like we’re problem solvers; we’re fix it. I want to go in there and fix it, but I’m recognizing that’s not what’s needed in this moment, so I’m not going to try to solve the problem. And I mentioned this earlier: validation is not an agreement.

Kevin Anthony 44:33
So just because you might be validating somebody’s feelings doesn’t mean that you agree with them, and just because they’re having feelings about something in particular doesn’t mean the thing that they’re having feelings about even actually happened. Sometimes they’re having feelings based on something they perceive happened, but that didn’t actually happen. The important part to understand, however, is that the feelings are still valid in the sense that the person is feeling them. So. So you don’t want to invalidate those feelings by saying, “Well, that never happened, so therefore you shouldn’t be feeling this way. You know, you can say, “Well, okay, that didn’t happen, but I understand that you know you still have these feelings, so let’s work with the feelings and see if we can figure out how to emotionally self-regulate them. Let’s see. Curiosity, having curiosity in a way that builds more connection, so that you’re not making assumptions.

Kevin Anthony 45:36
So, how would that look exactly? Well, you know, it’s easy to make assumptions about what somebody else is thinking or feeling, you know, especially when you’re only getting limited pieces of information. But we never really know if those assumptions are correct or not, and so the idea of curiosity, which is basically just like asking some questions, if you think something’s going on, you know, ask them. Hey, I have a feeling that maybe, you know, here’s what’s happening, and then they might say, absolutely not. That’s ridiculous. Okay, all right. Well, I just wanted to check in. Now that may or may not be true, but you know, rather than creating assumptions, why don’t you get curious and ask some Questions. Another way that emotional intelligence, another example of how that might show up, is recognizing that the conflict itself isn’t the problem, but the poor emotional regulation is.

Kevin Anthony 46:37
So I’ve had a bunch of experts on the show, and a lot of them have all said the same thing: that conflict in a relationship is healthy, and they’re generally very skeptical when there is no conflict in a relationship because, to most therapists, they will say, “Well, that probably means that they’re suppressing a lot of what they’re feeling, which will eventually kind of burst out later on in a more challenging way, and sometimes that is true, and you know sometimes it’s not. I don’t think having no conflict necessarily means that something is wrong, and I say that just from my own experience because, in all the years that Celine and I were together, I think we maybe had two or three disagreements. None of them were arguments, really, and all of them were easily solved. But we were very compatible. We both spent a lot of time, you know, working on our own stuff, and you know, our communication styles were compatible, and it was just easy for us to deal with things when they came up.

Kevin Anthony 47:44
And so, you know, we would often talk about that on this show, and in coaching, and in, you know, interviews and stuff. And I could tell people were skeptical of it, but it was real, and that was the dynamic that we had. And I was very fortunate to have had that. But she’s the only person I’ve had that with, and so in every other relationship I’ve ever had, it takes more work, and that’s okay. So now we get back to the way most therapists see it, which is that conflict is normal. What is not normal is sometimes how people handle it. So it’s more about how you handle it than whether or not you have any conflict. The one caveat I personally would put on that would be that if you’re having frequent conflict over and over and over and over again, I would suggest that that is not healthy and that there are some problems there that need to be solved. I don’t think that healthy relationships should have frequent conflict, but they will have some conflict from time to time.

Kevin Anthony 48:49
And so, recognizing that that’s not the problem, but it’s you know how you’re handling it that’s potentially the problem, is another way that emotional intelligence can show up because you can realize, like, hey, it’s not the fact that we’re disagreeing on this that’s the issue; it’s how we’re handling the situation, and maybe we can do better. So, yeah, recognizing conflict isn’t necessarily a problem. Emotional safety creates emotional and sexual intimacy, and that is absolutely true. I did an entire episode here on the Love Lab about safety and what that actually means in relationships, and I covered all the different aspects. It’s not just physical safety; it’s also emotional safety and a bunch of other things as well. So, you know, if you’re like, “Wait a minute, I don’t. He just kind of threw it out there. Emotional safety creates emotional and sexual. They say, “Ah, what does he really mean by emotional safety? Just go listen to that episode. It breaks it down extensively as to what I mean by safety in a relationship.

Kevin Anthony 49:55
Okay, so a couple of ways in which emotional intelligence might show up in your Relationship. Let’s bust a couple of myths real quick here, and then get on to practical ways to improve EQ. A myth about emotional intelligence is that it means suppressing your emotions. So when we talk about self-regulation, it means Oh, you just got to suppress your emotions. No, we’re not talking about suppressing the emotions. We’re not talking about locking them away. We’re not talking about ignoring them and pretending they don’t exist. We are just talking about managing them in a healthy, mature way. You still feel the emotions, but you’re able to process them. You don’t allow them to dictate your behavior. You don’t allow them to, you know, cause you to have outbursts, emotional outbursts, where you say or do things that are inappropriate, right?

Kevin Anthony 50:48
So, no, it doesn’t mean suppressing your emotions. That’s really important to understand. Next, it doesn’t even necessarily mean staying Calm. In other words, like people tend to think that I just have to stay completely calm, and I have to keep a monotone of my voice, and I’m not allowed to show any emotion because this is what I need to calm the situation. I don’t necessarily agree with that. I do think you have to moderate your reaction, but I do think that it’s okay to be animated to show that you feel that this is important. I don’t think you should allow that to go to the other end of the spectrum, where you’re yelling at the other person, where you appear threatening, or you know unstable in some way. I don’t think that’s acceptable either.

Kevin Anthony 51:51
But somewhere in the middle of, I just need to stay calm, and what are you doing? Right, somewhere in the middle of that is okay. Next myth. Well, if I really get good at providing empathy, I’m just going to be a doormat. No, empathy does not mean letting people walk all over you. That is not what it means at all. If you’re unsure of that, please just just go go research empathy. It’s actually kind of rather misunderstood, and a lot of people really do empathy poorly.

Kevin Anthony 52:30
I actually am not even the hugest fan of the term empathy. I kind of prefer the term compassion a little bit more. There’s a reason for that. If we went into the actual definitions of them and how they work, I think it’s a little better to really provide more compassion for the person, necessarily, than just empathy. But that’s a discussion for another day. All you really need to know when it comes to busting the myths is we’re not asking you to be a doormat and let people walk all over you. Next, it does not mean emotional intelligence. That is, it does not mean avoiding conflict. So it doesn’t mean trying to find every which way that you can, even if it’s an intelligent way to avoid the situation. I would say that’s the exact opposite of emotional intelligence, because emotional intelligence says there’s something here that’s important that needs to be dealt with, and we are going to bring it out into the light, and we’re going to deal with it as two emotionally mature adults.

Kevin Anthony 53:36
So it definitely does not mean trying to avoid conflict at all costs, and then another one is logic and emotion are partners, not opposites. This is kind of an interesting one. This one also came from a suggestion from the research I was doing because, you know, sometimes in these situations the partner who’s really logical gets accused of having no emotion, and you know they’re just stuck in their logical brain, and they’re not understanding. And then on the opposite end of that, you know, people who are stuck totally in emotion and can’t see the logic in any of it get accused of exactly the opposite. And you know, as is often the case in so many of these things, you know, the middle ground or the middle way is often the right way. Like you can’t be lost in just emotion all the time, but you can’t be stuck in like pure Spock, no emotion logic either.

Kevin Anthony 54:36
You’ve got to have a way to blend the two of them, where you can bring some logic in, but you can also have space for feeling the emotions, holding the emotions. Right, those two can coexist at the same time. And I’ll tell you that in a lot of situations, when one person is stuck on one side or the other, they have a really hard time understanding that those two things. Can indeed coexist at the same time, but they can. So it’s something that you want to strive for as a balance between those things in any conflict that you’re dealing with. So those are some myths. Hopefully, you don’t still believe in any of those. Good to just bust those, get those out of the way, so they’re not in the way. Now let’s talk about some practical ways that you can improve your EQ.

Kevin Anthony 55:28
So these are some things you can literally use right now, right here, the very next time that you have any sort of conflict or situation that you have to deal with. Here are some things that you can do. I love the first one on here; I think it’s really important. Pause before responding. I think that’s really important. Pause before responding. If you start to feel the emotions coming up, and you’re like, pause, take a deep breath or two. I think I’ve said that at least three times throughout the course of this episode: pause. Take a couple of deep breaths. Just that alone often will prevent you from saying something that you shouldn’t say and don’t really want to say. So that’s something that you can do right away. The next time you’re feeling challenged in a situation, and you want to immediately jump in, just pause for a moment, take a deep breath.

Kevin Anthony 56:23
Next one, name your emotion. I feel disappointed. I feel unsafe. I feel unloved. I feel whatever it is that you’re actually feeling. It’s good to name that. It’s way better than just saying I’m angry or I’m just sad, or I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why I’m upset with you. You know, it’s very helpful if you can name your emotion. Sometimes taking the pause gives you an opportunity to feel what that emotion is and put a name to it, so that you can actually voice it.

Kevin Anthony 57:01
One way that you can do that is to ask yourself, “What story am I telling myself right now? That’s an important one. What story am I telling myself right now? Again, these all have to do with that very first piece, that core concept of awareness. So, if you can pause, if you can name an emotion, if you can understand what story you’re telling yourself, that’s all part of the awareness stuff. So, those are some ways that you can practice awareness right now. Notice where you feel your emotions in your body. Ooh, this is a good one. That can often give you a clue as to what you’re feeling and where it’s coming from. Just by noticing where it is in your body, you can also potentially give you a clue as to how to remove it. You know, if I had somebody on here who was an expert at somatics, which I’ve had multiple people on the show over the years talking about different forms of somatic therapy, this is a big one for them. They’ll often ask you to, you know, name where in your body you’re feeling the emotion. So that’s a helpful tool as well.

Kevin Anthony 58:13
You want to listen to understand rather than to respond. I have covered this extensively on this show. The idea of listening to understand doesn’t mean you can’t have a response. That’s fine. And if you need to, like, take some notes and write down the things you want to make sure you respond to, do it so that you can let it go and actually listen, right? And you can even ask your partner, say, okay, pause that for one moment. I gotta I gotta write this down, or I gotta type it in my phone, or dictate it to my phone, or whatever, because I don’t want to forget this. Okay, got it. Now go right because I want to make sure I’m listening so that I can understand what it is you’re actually saying. That’s a big one. You want to ask more questions? I had a guy on my show, drawing a blank on his name right now, but it was basically the whole thing was about, you know, how to ask better questions, right?

Kevin Anthony 59:07
And if you go into the channel wherever you’re listening to this and search within it and just type in questions, because I think we called it like there were two there were two episodes about like how to ask better questions. One had a guest. I think the other one I did on my own. There’s a ton of questions there that you can ask in order to get more clarity about a situation and bring more understanding into it. So asking questions is really, really, really good. It’s the opposite of making assumptions. Rather than assuming you know what’s happening, you’re actually going to pause to ask questions. And the more questions you ask, especially if they’re good questions, the more your partner will feel seen, heard, and understood. Right, and actually, it will often help them get clear on, you know, what it is they’re feeling.

Kevin Anthony 59:58
So especially if they’re stuck in an. Emotional trigger moment, and they might not be totally aware of what they’re feeling and what’s happening. And so, by you simply asking them questions, it will often kind of break the response pattern that they’re having and get them to pause for a moment and start to think about it. And that can really help them get clear on where they’re at, what they’re feeling, and what they actually need, and then, you know, basically taking accountability for your end of the stuff, whatever it is. Like everybody’s got an end of the stuff, so you know, taking accountability. And you know, there I will admit there are some situations where, you know, the other person is absolutely at fault, right? And so those are the hardest ones for people to take accountability for because they’re just like, I didn’t actually do anything wrong here, right? Like, there’s nothing for me to actually take accountability for.

Kevin Anthony 1:00:56
But if you really think about it, there’s always something that you can take some accountability for, like, you know, maybe the way you reacted, or maybe you did absolutely nothing wrong, and you did communicate the thing that that you’re being accused of not communicating, and maybe you even communicated it in in an efficient manner, but maybe it’s a manner that doesn’t work for the person you are trying to communicate it too. In which case, you would say, you know, I’ll take responsibility for not realizing that the way I communicated that to you was not a way that worked for you. And had I realized that, I could have tried better to communicate it differently than I did. Right?

Kevin Anthony 1:01:36
So you’re not saying you actually did anything wrong because you didn’t. Like you you may have followed my communication master class perfectly and communicated in a highly efficient manner, but if it didn’t land on the other side, you know. And now some people may say, “Well, that’s not my problem. Well, it is if you want to be heard. It’s not your problem that they misinterpreted, but it’s your job to find a way to communicate it in a way that actually lands and works for them, so you might have to try more than one way. So that’s one way that you could take accountability, even in a situation where you feel like you didn’t actually do anything wrong and you feel like you handled it well, right? And sometimes just finding smaller things like that can really help diffuse the situation because then the other person feels like, okay, well, it’s not just me. See, they are taking some responsibility. Sometimes, if nothing else, it just makes them feel better about it and calms them down a little bit.

Kevin Anthony 1:02:37
So, whoo! All right, we covered a lot there today. I hope you found that valuable. I personally think emotional intelligence is just so important, as I said at the start of this episode, and it’s a work in progress for all of us. We are all constantly doing our best, or at least we should be, to try to improve our emotional intelligence. And I can honestly tell you throughout my life, the more emphasis I put on this, the better I got at it. The better my relationships got. Does that mean they’re all perfect? Absolutely not. Does that mean that I can control what the other person’s doing on the other side? No, but it means how I show up is better. It means I make better choices about who I choose to engage with and how I choose to engage with them, and so yeah, I hope that you got some value out of that.

Kevin Anthony 1:03:33
So we covered what emotional intelligence is, why it matters, the core components of it, signs of low and high, some examples of how it might show up. We busted some myths. We talked about some practical ways to improve it. So, covered a lot of ground there. I will just say that this is not necessarily an easy road, especially if you’re looking at that list of signs of low emotional intelligence and you’re honest with yourself and you’re going, “Damn, I got a lot of work to do. It’s not that easy, but it can be done, and I strongly suggest that if you’re having challenges with it, get some help, get an accountability buddy, hire a coach, somebody that can really help you figure out what the patterns underneath this are, and help you remove those, and really significantly uplevel your emotional intelligence.

Kevin Anthony 1:04:23
All right, everybody. I hope you found that valuable, and that is all I have for this week for this week’s episode. And I will see you next week.

Kevin Anthony 1:04:40
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!”