I have a phrase for you today that feels like
it was basically engineered in a lab to start
a massive argument at a dinner party. Oh, I love
these. Yeah, it's emotional promiscuity. And
I'll be honest, when I first saw the title of
the source material you sent over, I thought
we were doing some sort of, you know, retro cosmopolitan
quiz from 1998. Right, like an are you loving
too much kind of vibe. Exactly. But once I actually
opened the documents, specifically that pretty
chaotic Wikipedia entry, I realized we aren't
just looking at a pop culture buzzword. We're
looking at a battlefield. It really is. It's
a classic case of one single term being fought
over by two completely different groups of people,
groups who honestly have absolutely nothing in
common. Yeah, you have the popular press definition
on one side, which is heavily rooted in a very
specific religious morality. And then on the
other side, you have the scientific literature.
And the scientific side is just trying to turn
it into a measurable descriptive psychological
trait. But they are both using the exact same
words to describe totally different human experiences.
Which makes the Wikipedia page for this a total
mess. It's flagged for multiple issues, which
I always love seeing. It's like the digital version
of police tape. It's trying to build a bridge
between two wildly different sources. Right.
It connects a book from 2007 by Brianne Merck
called Avoiding the Heartbreak and Emotional
Promiscuity with a scientific thesis from 2011
by Daniel Jones. And honestly, those four years
between 2007 and 2011, they might as well be
a century in terms of how differently they approach
the human mind. So for today's deep dive, here
is our mission. We need to figure out if emotional
promiscuity is this moral failing where you need
to guard your heart or if it's just a neutral
personality setting. Like being an introvert
or an extrovert. Exactly. And more importantly
for you listening, I want to get to the end of
this research stack. Because the science actually
suggests that falling in love too fast is a literal
physical health hazard. That link to physical
health is the real pivot point of this whole
topic. But to understand why it's physically
dangerous, we first have to understand what it
actually is. And that depends entirely on who
you ask. So let's start with the 2007 definition.
We're looking at Brianne Merck's book. I read
through this, and it is not a subtle text. No,
it is highly prescriptive. Yeah, it's telling
you exactly how to live your life. And we should
be clear, this is written from a very specific
Christian point of view. The tone is intense.
It falls squarely into what we call the purity
culture framework. In this author's worldview,
Emotional promiscuity is something to be actively
avoided. It's the habit of allowing yourself
to feel romantic connections with too many people.
Right, and Merck argues that doing this, indulging
in these feelings, dilutes your ability to bond
with your future spouse. The phrase that kept
popping up in the text was guarding the heart.
Guarding the heart, yes. It essentially treats
your heart like a bank vault. You have a limited,
finite amount of emotional currency. And if you
spend it on high school crushes or casual flings...
You're bankrupting your future marriage. Exactly.
But there's a deeper claim here that I found
really interesting. Merck's whole argument rests
on the idea that emotions themselves cannot be
trusted. Yes. It takes a very strict view on
self -regulation. The book essentially argues
that your internal check engine light is broken.
So you need to manually override it with these
strict rules. Precisely. It views emotional openness
as a gateway drug. The argument is that if you
allow yourself to be emotionally promiscuous,
you know, sharing deep secrets, dreaming about
a future, feeling that intense connection, you
are inevitably going to slide into sexual promiscuity.
The classic slippery slope argument. Right, first
you're sharing your hopes and dreams, and the
next thing you know, you've crossed a physical
line that the author views as immoral outside
of marriage. So the solution, according to this
2007 text, is to just cut it off at the source.
Don't even let the feelings start. Set strict
physical and emotional boundaries. Which is a
fascinating theory of the mind, because it assumes
you have total conscious control over the onset
of an emotion. It suggests falling in love is
a conscious choice you make, or rather a mistake
you make, by not keeping your guard up high enough.
And I think anyone who has ever developed a crush
on someone, they shouldn't. like a boss or a
friend's partner, knows that the feeling part
doesn't really ask for your permission. No, it
just happens. But Merck's point is that indulging
that feeling is the moral failure. It's a lack
of discipline. Exactly. So that is the prescriptive
religious view. Emotional promiscuity is a behavior
you need to stop. OK, so that's the chapel's
view. But then we fast forward to 2011. The lab
doors open. Enter Daniel Jones and his colleagues.
And they pick up this exact same term. dust it
off and say, actually, let's measure this. And
this is where the definition totally flips. Jones
isn't interested in whether it's good or bad
morally. He wants to know if it's a stable psychological
trait. Right. He moves it from being descriptive
to weight, from prescriptive to descriptive.
He defines emotional promiscuity as the predisposition
to fall in love. easily, fast, and often. Easily,
fast, and often. It sounds like a marketing slogan.
It really does. But the key here is that he separates
this from behavior. It's about how your brain
naturally processes attachment. It's about loving
the feeling of falling in love. And he didn't
just theorize about it. He actually operationalized
it. He created a metric called the emotional
promiscuity scale, the EP scale. Yes. I looked
at some of the questions on this scale. They
asked things like, I feel romantic connections
almost immediately, or I fall in love with people
I hardly know. It's essentially a test to see
how hair -trigger your love response is. But
there is a massive nuance here that usually gets
lost in the cultural conversation, and I know
you spotted this in the source material. The
distinction between emotional and sexual promiscuity.
Yes. Because in Merck's book, and honestly in
most people's minds, those two things are glued
together. If you do one, you automatically do
the other. But the scientific data Specifically
citing research by Simpson and Gangestad from
1991, says they are entirely distinct metrics.
They are totally separate. They are correlated,
meaning they often show up in the same people,
but they are not the same mechanism. This was
my biggest aha moment. You can score off the
charts on the EP scale, falling in love every
week, writing poetry, feeling that intense soulmate
bond, and yet have a sexual partner count of
zero. Absolutely. You can be a serial follower
and lover, but be completely celibate. Because
you are addicted to the romance, not necessarily
the physical act. And the reverse is true too,
right? Yes. There are sociosexual individuals
who score very high on sexual promiscuity, but
very low on emotional promiscuity. They have
many physical partners, but rarely, if ever,
feel that swooning -in -love sensation. So they
are operating on pure biology, whereas the emotionally
promiscuous person is operating on fantasy. Fantasy
and dopamine. Yeah. But there is another major
distinction we need to clear up. because listeners
might be hearing this and thinking, wait, isn't
this just anxious attachment? I will admit that
was my first thought. If you fall in love instantly
with strangers, it sounds like you're just terrified
of being alone. It is a super common mix up.
But Jones cites Hazan and Shaver's 1987 work
on attachment styles to show the psychological
drivers are completely different. Anxious attachment
is fear based. It's a please don't leave me signal.
It's driven by a deep fear of abandonment. You
cling to someone because you are afraid of the
void. So anxious attachment is running away from
pain. Correct. But emotional promiscuity is reward
based. It is running toward pleasure. Oh, wow.
Yeah, these people aren't necessarily scared.
They are thrilled. They love the high of the
spark. They aren't clinging to you because they
feel broken. They are clinging to you because
you are the newest source of that specific emotional
rush. That is such a crucial difference. One
is, I need you to survive. And the other is,
wow, this feeling is amazing. Let's go. Precisely.
The emotionally promiscuous person is often quite
confident. They just have a very, very low threshold
for what they consider love. Okay, so we've established
this is a personality trait. Some people are
just wired to be ranting drag racers. Zero to
60 in three seconds. And if we stop the research
there, it would just be an interesting psychological
fun fact. Right, just a quirky trait. But we
don't stop there. Because in 2012, Jones and
Paulus did a follow -up study that takes this
out of the theoretical realm and into the emergency
room. This is where we hit the dangerous intersection.
Yeah, this part genuinely startled me. We just
talked about how Emotional and sexual promiscuity
are on different scales, but some people do score
high on both. The dual high scores. Exactly.
And the research found that if you are in that
group, meaning you fall in love fast and you
are also comfortable with casual sex, you are
significantly more likely to engage in unprotected
sex. Yes. It creates a very specific vulnerability
to physical health risks. Having a lot of partners
is one thing, but having many unprotected partners
is a massive health hazard. And the reason why
this happens is the most important insight of
the whole deep dive. It isn't just because they
are impulsive. It's a cognitive mechanism. The
study calls it premature trust. Premature trust.
Because normally we assume people have unprotected
casual sex because they are maybe under the influence
or they just don't care about the risks or they
get carried away in the moment. That is the standard
societal assumption. But Jones and Paulus argue
that for the dual high, emotionally promiscuous
person, it isn't about not caring. It's that
their brain has literally tricked them into thinking
the situation is safe. Walk us through that glitch.
How does the feeling of falling in love make
your brain think someone doesn't have an SDI?
Think about how trust is normally built in a
standard relationship. It's a slow accumulation
of data over time. You see how someone handles
stress, you meet their friends, you learn their
relationship history. Over a period of months,
your brain gathers data and says, okay, this
person is safe, we can let our guard down. So
trust is essentially a vetting process. Exactly.
But for the emotionally promiscuous person, the
intense feeling of intimacy arrives almost instantly.
They meet someone, they have a deep two -hour
conversation, the dopamine floods their system,
and they feel that instant soulmate sensation.
And because that intense sensation mimics the
feeling of long -term love, the brain assumes
the vetting process has already happened. It
completely conflates emotional intensity with
actual security. The subconscious logic goes
like this. I feel incredibly close to this person,
therefore I must really know them. If I know
them, they wouldn't hurt me. If they wouldn't
hurt me, I don't need protection. That is terrifying.
It's a literal hallucination of safety. It is
a massive cognitive error. They aren't being
self -destructive on purpose. They're acting
entirely rationally based on a reality that their
own emotions have fabricated. They genuinely
feel safe with a total stranger just because
their internal love dial is turned up to 11?
Yes. It's like giving the keys to your house
to a guy you just met at a bar simply because
he has a really trustworthy smile. You feel great
about it, but the physical lock on your door
does not care about your feelings. That is the
perfect analogy. The virus, the bacteria, they
don't care about the romance. They don't care
that you feel like you've known this person in
a past life. Biology is brutal that way. And
you know, this brings us back in a really weird
full circle way to Brianne Merck and that religious
book from 2007. It really does. Because Merck
started this whole conversation by claiming emotions
cannot be trusted, she meant it in a purely spiritual
sense that unvetted emotions lead to moral failing.
But now the scientists in 2012 are looking at
the data and saying, emotions cannot be trusted
in a biological sense. Because unvetted emotions
lead to health crises. It is a harsh convergence.
But yes, both sides, despite living in totally
different universes, agree on one fundamental
thing. The raw impulse of falling in love is
a terrible guide for actual behavior. Merck says
guard your heart. Science says guard your health.
But the required mechanism is exactly the same.
You have to override the feeling with logic.
You have to insert a manual pause button. You
do. If you know you're someone who scores high
on that EP scale, if you tend to swoon hard and
fast, you have to intellectually accept that
your vibe check is broken. You cannot trust your
gut because your gut is drunk on dopamine. Exactly.
You have to outsource your judgment to protocol.
You have to say, I feel like I love this person,
but the protocol says we talk about testing before
anything happens. You have to be smarter than
your own instincts. Which is, let's be honest,
incredibly unromantic. It's the least romantic
thing possible. But it is the only way to navigate
the modern dating world safely if you carry this
specific personality trait. I do think that's
an empowering way to look at it, though. It takes
all the shame out of the equation. It really
does. Because the religious text relies heavily
on shame. It tells you that you are bad for feeling
this way. But the scientific view is just, hey,
you aren't bad. You are just vulnerable to a
specific optical illusion. Exactly. It removes
the moral judgment entirely. You aren't promiscuous
in a derogatory sense. You are just high connection.
But high connection comes with high risk. Yes,
it does. I want to zoom out for a second before
we wrap up, because this core concept we uncovered
today, this idea of premature trust, once you
see it, you really can't unsee it. And I don't
think it stops at dating. How do you mean? Well,
if our brains are biologically wired to mistake
liking someone for trusting someone, that has
to apply to everything in life. Think about business
deals. Think about sales. Oh, absolutely. We've
all met that one salesperson who is just incredibly
charismatic. You feel like your best friends
after five minutes of talking to them. Right.
And you end up buying the expensive expended
warranty or you sign the contract without even
reading the fine print. Why? Because of premature
trust. That is spot on. The emotional click.
overrides the required due diligence. You assume
that because the interaction feels so good, the
deal itself must be good. Or even hiring people.
You interview a candidate and you just get a
really good feeling about them. They seem amazing,
so you skip calling their references. And then
three months later, you realize they are completely
unqualified for the job. It is the exact same
psychological mechanism at play. You conflated
interpersonal chemistry with professional competence.
It really suggests that emotional promiscuity
might actually be a fantastic lens for looking
at how we make bad decisions in general. We prioritize
the immediate emotional payoff over the boring
logistical reality. It tells us that guarding
the heart, if we strip away all the religious
baggage from that phrase, is actually a crucial
critical thinking skill. It's the ability to
pause and say, I feel really good about this,
but I am going to verify it anyway. Trust but
verify. It worked for the Cold War, and it apparently
works for dating and hiring. It is quite literally
the only safety net we have against our own biology.
So for you listening, here's the big takeaway.
If you are the kind of person who falls head
over heels in love with a new partner, a new
business idea, or even a new hobby every other
week. Enjoy the ride. The feeling is fantastic.
It is. But maybe, just maybe don't sign the contract
or skip the protection until the dopamine actually
wears off. Maintain a very healthy skepticism
of your own joy. Thanks for diving deep with
us today. Hopefully we didn't break your heart,
but maybe we saved you a trip to the clinic.
Stay curious and stay safe. We'll catch you on
the next deep dive.