Emotionally Intelligent Men Are Choosing Better Partners; Here's Why
Two young people are sitting on the riverbank in New York City. (Photo by)
In a dating landscape shaped by apps, emotional fatigue and shifting gender norms, emotionally intelligent men are standing out, and standing up, as the new architects of healthy love. From the first date to long-term commitment, the way men attune to emotional nuance is fast becoming one of the most potent predictors of relational success.
Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to recognize, understand, manage and use emotions effectively. Its core components, self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy and social skills, are increasingly understood as foundational to intimacy, trust and secure attachment.
A 2024 meta-analysis in Personality and Individual Differences suggested that EI significantly correlated with well-being, relationship quality and interpersonal satisfaction. Among men, EI was primarily associated with adaptive masculinity, lower levels of emotional suppression and greater relational clarity.
The dating world is marked by emotional complexity. Singles are navigating burnout, digital fatigue and rising expectations around communication and emotional availability. Men who lead with emotional intelligence (think those who ask thoughtful questions, regulate their nervous systems, and value relational safety) are no longer rare but subversive, to say the least.
A 2025 study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships found that couples in which male partners exhibit high emotional intelligence experience greater satisfaction, deeper trust and more resilient conflict resolution; pivotal traits for emotional compatibility.
For single men, emotional intelligence is both a personal compass and a relational screen. It enhances discernment, deepens connection and filters out dynamics rooted in chaos or codependence. A man with high EI doesn't just respond well. He chooses well.
Rather than seeking validation or performance-based love, emotionally intelligent men are cultivating relational self-awareness; they value emotional reciprocity, nervous system regulation and shared communication capacity. In doing so, they are raising the standard not only for the partners they attract but for the relationships they create.
Contrary to outdated stereotypes, emotional intelligence does not equal overexposure but regulation. Research from the American Journal of Men's Health shows that emotional fluency in men is linked to better mental health, lower rates of conflict and more secure attachment behaviors, leading to emotional clarity and mental health outcomes at large.
The emotionally intelligent man knows when to speak and when to pause, when to open and when to self-soothe. This depth is not a departure from masculinity but a reintegration.
In the context of relational self-awareness, emotionally intelligent men are no longer choosing partners based on aesthetics, status or performative chemistry. They're seeking emotional reciprocity: a partner who can meet them in-depth, regulate through conflict and communicate with curiosity rather than defense.
The key relational questions have also changed: Can we co-regulate under stress? Can we stay grounded in discomfort without rupture? Do we repair with respect, not reactivity?
This evolution is both personal and cultural. It reframes compatibility as a nervous system alliance, one rooted in mutual attunement, emotional maturity and psychological safety. In this new paradigm, emotional intelligence becomes the architecture of sustainable love, not just an accessory.
As more single men lead with emotional maturity, the dating landscape is being recalibrated. The emotionally intelligent man is available, grounded and intentional. He chooses a connection that honors nervous system regulation, shared emotional labor and relational growth as a co-created practice.
In 2025, strength looks like presence and attunement, an epitome of men embodying wholeness, depth and vulnerability, raising the emotional standard for what love, commitment and connection truly require.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
24 minutes ago
- CNN
How AI Might Be Helping Your Doctor Treat You - Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta - Podcast on CNN Audio
Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:00:03 Welcome to Paging Dr. Gupta. You know, I really love these episodes in large part because they're all about you. Your questions, your concerns, your curiosity, about health and medicine, topics that are near and dear to my heart. Whether it's something in the headlines or something that's happening in your own life, share it and I'll try my best to try and help break it down. New week, new questions, Kyra is back. Who do we have first? Kyra Dahring 00:00:31 Okay, we're kicking things off today with a question from Kim. She's a nurse out in Los Angeles, and she's thinking ahead about how tech might change her day to day. Here's her question: Listener Kim 00:00:41 Hi, Dr. Gupta, my name is Kim and I'm a nurse. Um, with the incoming era of AI, what's in store for the medical community, whether that's medical procedure, a surgical procedure, diagnostics, or even as simple as making our notes on the patient's medical chart. Looking forward to hear what we have. Thank you so much. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:01:10 'Okay, Kim, thank you very much for this. This is a topic that I think about a lot. In full disclosure, I sit on the National Academy of Medicine, and there is a subcommittee on artificial intelligence that I sit on that as well, so I've been pretty immersed in the intersection of AI and healthcare for a while. And I'll tell you two things as top lines. One is that I'm bullish on it. It's here, it's definitely here to stay. And it's already being transformative. And two is that you have probably already been affected by AI in healthcare. If you've had any kind of recent visits to the doctor, to a hospital, to a clinic, your care was probably already impacted by AI in some way. Let me break down a few basics as I often do. You will hear about two main types of AI in health care: Predictive AI and Generative AI. Okay, so predictive AI is basically analyzing large sets of data, everything from age of patients, symptoms, test results, and that can help doctors make more informed decisions. It looks at lots and lots of data. Maybe it finds lots and lot of people who are just like the person they are investigating and they say, okay, here's the problem this person had. Here's the outcomes that we see in thousands, hundreds of thousands of people around the country around the world and that helps predict what we should do best. During colonoscopies AI can for example flag polyps that might otherwise be deemed inconsequential. With mammograms, the FDA has already cleared two dozen AI tools to help spot early signs of breast cancer, predicting breast cancer. In Stroke care AI models now pinpoint the timing of a stroke sometimes twice as accurately as humans, which is really crucial because that will determine in part if someone can receive certain life-saving or life-altering treatments. Hospitals are using AI to catch signs of sepsis before they become obvious. There are also tools a company say can now detect things like bone fractures that may go undetected by the patient, signs of over a thousand diseases that may exist even before symptoms show up. And then there is generative AI, and I think that's what people often think of when they think of the ChatGPT style stuff. It's mostly happening behind the scenes. One big use case for generative AI is documentation. So maybe you've heard of Microsoft's Dragon Copilot, so this is a platform that kind of listens in during a visit and then writes up the clinical note that is generated afterwards, helps draft letters that are sent to insurance companies to get medications or procedures approved. More advanced versions combine AI with real world medical data, that's called ChatRWD, and they are continuously being tested to reliably answer doctor's clinical questions. There's a platform that I use quite a bit and I think about a quarter of physicians in the country now use it called OpenEvidence, which again is looking at these large sets of data and then using that data in real time to answer questions. How long do we wait to start aspirin after a person has had a procedure, had an operation? These are tools that I'm already using. Now, I will tell you one thing that's interesting about these platforms is that there is very high expectations of how well they will work. You know, I think a lot of people think of AI platforms like they think of a computer. If you go to your computer and you ask your computer, you know, any question you might ask... You get an answer, you sort of expect that that answer is accurate. You don't then go to another computer and ask another computer to verify what the first computer said. But AI is a little bit different in this regard. In some ways, it's less like a computer and more like a tool that is trying to replicate human consciousness, which can falter, right? So there's a trust gap. There was this 2023 survey that found most Americans feel discomfort with doctors using AI to manage their care. So high expectations, low trust. There aren't many things in society like that. I would think, for example, autonomous vehicles might fall into that category. Even though there are car accidents all the time, it's one of the leading causes of preventable death in the United States, if an autonomous vehicle gets into an accident, it almost feels existential because the expectations are so much higher. So high expectations, low trust, when it comes to things like AI. AI can make mistakes. It can hallucinate, that's how it's often referred to, especially if the platform's been trained on incomplete data or biased data. Privacy is still an issue. I mean, HIPAA applies to AI platforms and healthcare, but I think that there's concerns about how might that information be stored or shared. So bottom line, Kim, AI is here. I'm bullish on it. I think it's already making an impact. It's already working in the background. It's improving diagnostics, documentation, access. But with many things in life, we often adopt a trust but verify model. And I think AI and healthcare should be treated the same way. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:06:48 Coming up, there are a lot of pain medications out there, but not all of them are right for every kind of pain. It's sometimes surprising what works best for what. I'll break it down after the break. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:07:03 Last week, I told you that I've been working on a book all about pain, it's called "It Doesn't Have to Hurt". It comes out September 2nd. It's something I've thinking about for a long time. Big part of writing a book like this is to try and give you some real takeaways when dealing with pain. And I thought I would start here, this podcast, Paging Dr. Gupta podcast, to share some of what I've learned. And I asked Kyra, in this case, just to give me the first question that came to her mind. Kyra Dahring 00:07:31 All right, Sanjay, well, you know what this sound means. I just had to do it, considering this is my first official page to Dr. Gupta. So my question, I'm asking this for myself and hopefully a lot of the people listening, you know, there are so many pain medications out there with all these different brand names and it's hard to know which ones are alike or when to take what. So my questions is, are they basically all the same and created equal? Or should we actually be picking different ones for different kinds of pain? Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:08:00 'Okay, that is a good place to start, Kyra, thank you. First of all, let me just preface by saying, again, that 20% roughly of the country, one in five people suffers with chronic pain. It's an enormous number. I mean, when you have chronic pain, that is your whole life. You are defined by it. So they're thinking about pain all the time, they're suffering with pain all of the time. Their mood is different, they eat differently. Everything is different because of chronic pain so this is a big issue. But let's break down the different categories. The common ones, acetaminophen, Tylenol reduces fever very well. That is a analgesic pain medication that essentially works in the brain to reduce mild to moderate pain by increasing the body's pain threshold and also changing to some extent how the body senses pain. So it actually makes the threshold at which you experience pain higher and changes the way that you actually sense it. Then you have a very large category of what are called NSAIDs, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. That's ibuprofen, Advil, Motrin, Naprosyn, Aleve. They reduce fever and they also block something known as prostaglandins, which are compounds that cause pain and inflammation. So they work in a different part of the pain cascade. Aspirin is also considered an NSAID, reduces pain, reduces inflammation, also reduces blood clotting. That's why a lot of people will use that as a sort of mild blood thinner. You're gonna wanna avoid NSAIDs like aspirin and ibuprofen if you are already taking blood thinners, okay? Because if you have uncontrolled high blood pressure, if you've ulcers, if you're other bleeding risks, they may thin your blood even a little bit more, probably avoid the non-steroidals. And generally speaking, ibupropin's gonna be a safer choice than aspirin for those with bleeding risks. And then after that, just in the over the counter sort of categories, you have topical pain relievers. These are anesthetics that temporary relief pain at the skin surface. Think of things like Voltaren. Obviously don't use it on open wounds or sores, but a lot of the topical pain relievers are gonna have some component of lidocaine in them. If you've ever had an allergy to lidocain, probably want to avoid this. Now, when should you use each one? So headaches, that's one of the most common sources of pain. Any of these oral painkillers could work for that. Some people will have better luck with some of them other than others. As I mentioned earlier, when it comes to fevers, Tylenol is gonna be probably a better bet. One little pro tip, if you have a headache because you've had a little too much to drink the night before, too much alcohol, then Tylenols not a good option because alcohol and Tylenol both are pretty hard on the liver. So I would avoid Tylenol certainly after a hangover. Really if you can avoid most of those medications for hangover type pain better get hydrated and the pain will pass. Now if you're talking about pain that's caused by things like arthritis, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories is what you should use. They're also best by the way for sunburn. Acetaminophen best for people who. May have gastrointestinal issues because the non-steroidal anti-inflammatories are pretty hard on the stomach. Neuropathic pain or nerve pain. So that's the sort of lancinating pain that might go down your arms or your legs, sort of stabbing or even electric-like pain sometimes. Sometimes the topical pain relievers can help there. Then there are different medications for neuropathetic pain that may require prescription as well. And those types of medications typically change the way the nerve is conducting a signal. And sometimes it just disrupts the conduction of the signal. Sometimes it slows it. But there are different medications that are totally different class of drugs than Tylenol or non-steroidal anti-inflammatories that can help with that nerve sort of pain. You know, a lot of what I write about in the book is how to best choose these medications. But a lot what the book is about is creating strategies where you hopefully never need any of these medications. Obviously everyone's going to have some pain in their life, but you can have a lot less pain, a lot less intense pain, and a much shorter duration of pain, with some pretty simple strategies. And I hope that everyone can get a better understanding of that, how to control pain, how to understand it when my book comes out, September 2nd, "It Doesn't Have To Hurt". Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:12:43 'Big thanks to everyone who sent in the questions, Kyra, thank you. We're still building the show. We're doing it together and I'm glad you're part of it. If there's something health-related you've been curious about, don't be shy, share it, record a voice memo, email it to AskSanjay@ or give us a call at 470-396-0832 and leave a message. Thanks for listening, I'll be back next Tuesday. Chasing Life is a production of CNN Audio. Our podcast is produced by Eryn Mathewson, Jennifer Lai, Grace Walker, Lori Galaretta, Jesse Remedios, Sofia Sanchez, Kyra Dahring, and Madeleine Thompson. Andrea Kane is our medical writer, our senior producer is Dan Bloom, Amanda Sealy is our showrunner, Dan Dzula is our technical director, and the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig. With support from JJamus Andrest, Jon Dianora, Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Leni Steinhardt, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Ben Tinker and Nadia Kounang of CNN Health and Wendy Brundige.
Health Line
32 minutes ago
- Health Line
What Is Complete Heart Block?
Complete heart block means that there's a complete separation of electrical activity between the upper and lower chambers of the heart. Without prompt medical attention, it can be fatal. Your heart has a carefully coordinated electrical system that controls how it beats. When the heart's usual steady flow of electrical signals is interrupted, it can result in potentially dangerous conditions. One of these is a complete heart block, also known as third-degree atrioventricular block. Complete heart block occurs when electrical impulses that begin in the heart's upper chambers (atria) don't travel down to the lower chambers (ventricles). When this happens, the ventricles may not be able to contract properly and pump blood out to the lungs and the rest of the body. Complete heart block is the most serious type of heart block. First-degree heart block is the mildest and is characterized by a slowdown of electrical impulses from the atria to the ventricles. Second-degree heart block means the impulses occasionally don't reach the ventricles at all, causing the heart to skip a beat. Complete heart block is considered a medical emergency. Without prompt medical attention, it can be life threatening. This article will take a closer look at complete heart block and its causes, symptoms, treatment, and outlook. What causes complete heart block? Complete heart block has a variety of possible causes. In many cases, it may be caused by some type of heart disease, such as: a heart attack cardiomyopathy (weakening of the heart muscle) myocardial fibrosis (scarring of heart tissue) heart valve disease Certain medications may also cause complete heart block. Anti-arrhythmic drugs — which doctors prescribe to treat heart rhythms that are too fast, too slow, or unpredictable — can sometimes trigger a heart block. Digoxin, a drug commonly used to treat heart failure, is also associated with heart block. An imbalance of certain electrolytes, such as potassium, can trigger complete heart block. In rare cases, a baby may be born with the condition. Congenital third-degree heart block affects about 1 in 20,000 to 25,000 live births. What are the risk factors? Your risk of developing complete heart block increase with age, especially if you have heart-related issues. An estimated 5% to 10% of people over age 70 who have a history of heart disease develop complete heart block. A 2019 study suggests that people who do not manage their blood pressure or blood glucose levels may also face a greater risk of developing complete heart block. What are the symptoms? Some people with complete heart block experience no noticeable symptoms. For others, symptoms may develop gradually or come on suddenly. Medical emergency Call emergency medical services (9-1-1) in the U.S., if you experience the following symptoms of heart block, and are also associated with heart attack: lightheadedness or dizziness fatigue fainting shortness of breath chest pain or pressure How is complete heart block diagnosed? To diagnose complete heart block, your doctor must be able to assess the electrical activity in the heart. This is usually done with an electrocardiogram (EKG or ECG). An EKG is a noninvasive test that uses electrodes placed on the chest to record your heart's electrical activity. It can detect many types of arrhythmias, including complete heart block. In some cases, an EKG may not diagnose the condition. This is because complete heart block can be intermittent, meaning it may come and go. That's why diagnosis may also involve heart rhythm monitoring. This is done with a Holter monitor or a patch monitor. These devices continuously monitor and record your heart's rate and rhythm for 24 hours or longer. In addition to these diagnostic tests, your doctor will also: review your medical history ask about your symptoms perform a physical examination review the medications you're currently taking What is the treatment for complete heart block? When complete heart block is first diagnosed, doctors may try to restore healthy electrical activity in the heart with the drug atropine. It's given in cases of bradycardia, an atypically slow heart rhythm. The drug can sometimes work in cases where complete heart block is triggered by a heart attack or medications. If complete heart block was caused by a heart attack, a temporary pacemaker may also be used to help restore the heart's rate and rhythm until the heart muscle has recovered and has healthy blood flow. In most cases of complete heart block, however, a permanent implantable pacemaker is the only solution. A pacemaker is a small, battery-powered device that sends electrical signals through thin, flexible leads into the heart to maintain a steady rhythm. If doctors determine that complete heart block is due to a reversible cause, addressing the cause may cause the heart block to go away. For instance, if a medication triggered complete heart block, treatment will likely involve switching to a different medication. How serious is complete heart block? Complete heart block can lead to serious complications, including cardiac arrest, the abrupt halt to heart and lung function. Cardiac arrest can be fatal if not treated immediately. Because complete heart block causes the heart to work harder to pump blood, one complication is heart failure, a chronic weakening of the heart's pumping ability. Complete heart block also means a reduction in blood flow to the brain, which can cause fainting and falls. What is the outlook? The outlook for complete heart block is much more favorable when it's diagnosed and treated as soon as possible. If complete heart block is treated promptly with a pacemaker or other treatment protocols, the outlook for sustained heart health is promising. Similarly, if complete heart block can be reversed by changing or eliminating certain medications or correcting an electrolyte imbalance, the outlook is excellent. However, even with the right treatment, people with complete heart block are at greater risk of heart failure. If you've had complete heart block, it's especially important to work closely with your doctor or cardiologist to make lifestyle changes and to stay on track with any treatment plan. Bottom line Complete heart block is the most serious type of heart block. It means that there's a total block, or separation of electrical activity, between the upper chambers (atria) and lower chambers (ventricles) of the heart. It's considered a medical emergency and can be fatal if not treated right away. Complete heart block is often caused by heart disease or a structural issue with the heart. It may also be caused by medications or an electrolyte imbalance. In rare cases, a baby may be born with this condition.
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Upcoming summer blood drives in the Southern Tier
SOUTHERN TIER, N.Y. (WETM) — If people around the Southern Tier are looking to support a good cause and potentially save lives, a blood drive on Tuesday in both Elmira and Corning may be a good place to start. The Red Cross and WETM 'Summer Blood Drive' is set to take place on Tuesday, June 17, from 1:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at two locations in the Southern Tier. USW Local 1000, located at 100 Nasser Civic Center Plaza in the City of Corning Clarion Inn Elmira, located at 1760 East Water Street in the City of Elmira If people would like to sign up to donate, they can do so by visiting the American Red Cross Website. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
