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by Julia n Reisinger
Emotional Starvation:
The Plague of Our Time

I am the guy behind Love Life Solved,
which I run just for fun as a way to
share my personal experiences from
well over 10 years in the dating & love
advice industry as a client, assistant
to a coach, business owner, and
published writer. All for free.

My main job is being a co-founder
over at Reconnected, a full circle
coaching agency for all things love,
social, and personal life. It’s unlike
anything else in the industry.
CHECK IT OUT

One of the strongest motivators in
life is our desire to get positive
emotional attention from others.

It's the reason people want to be famous even though
everyone knows it doesn't make them happy.

But what does make us
(temporarily) happy is the vision
of other people looking at us like
we are the shit.

Emotional Starvation: The Plague of Our Time

I, myself, am not immune to it
either.

How good would it feel if people approached me on the street
with, "Are you Julian Reisinger from Lovelifesolved.com?"

Just the mere thought of
it makes me feel warm
and fuzzy inside.

But wanting to be famous so
people respect and admire you is
by far not the only example of
positive emotional attention:

Your boss shows her
appreciation for a job well-
done.

A family member or friend
who asks, "What's wrong?"
upon noticing that you aren't
your usual happy self.

A beautiful woman showing
interest in you.

A colleague or fellow student
who asks you for advice.

A random compliment from
a guy on the street.

Others listening to you
closely when you tell a
story.

Someone remembering
your name.

A sexual partner showing
you she gets pleasure from
sleeping with you.

A loved one hugging you
(touch in general).

Someone asking if you want
to hang out together.

All of us need emotional attention
like we need air to breathe.

However, in our modern time,
people become increasingly
incapable of getting enough
emotional attention.
How much we get
How much we need

What results is a phenomenon I
like to call emotional starvation.

And, as you’ll see, its results are
horrendous.

So what exactly is
emotional starvation?

Emotional starvation sets in when
you get too little emotional
attention over a prolonged
period of time.

This sounds like emotional
starvation happens only to nerds
who live with their parents and
play video games in a dark room
all day.

But I’ll show you with a personal
example that emotional
starvation can happen to anyone.

At one of our coaching retreats in Barcelona, we went to a
nice restaurant in this gorgeous plaça.

Outside of the restaurant, they had
a reception desk that was manned
by a stunningly beautiful brunette in
her late 20s.

I was the first one who talked to her.

She was friendly and professional
but there was no emotional
connection at all.

“No biggie,” I thought. “After all, I’m
in a happy relationship and don’t
need every cute girl to want me.”

But then something happened that
changed the situation.

When she talked, she
revealed a lip frenulum
piercing.
By Lip_frenulum_piercing.jpg: Jean-Rene
Vauzelle from Australiaderivative work: Nicor
[CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Our friend and business partner Nick
Notas – who is an experienced dating
coach – spotted it first and he
immediately started talking to her.

HE: "I like your piercing. It seems
like a lot of Spanish girls have
this kind now.”
SHE: "Thx! [smiles] But, actually,
I'm Italian."

With just this one remark, Nick had
triggered an emotional response and
the receptionist went on to stroke her
hair, looked into his eyes intensely,
and smiled so much that we got to see
her piercing some more.

Clearly, Nick and the receptionist
had a brief connection but that's not
the point. The point is that I stood
next to them and felt like a loser.

For a moment, I was brought
back into my young adult years,
when I struggled to connect with
women.

When I was talking to her, she seemed
standoffish and a few seconds later
she giggles because of the most
obvious compliment ever.

I was jealous. Not because I
wanted to be with her but
because I also wanted to feel
desirable in that moment.

You see, even though I'm in
a relationship with a
beautiful woman I still want
other attractive women to
find me attractive.

People want to feel desired —
and not only by their partners.

We want to know that, even
though we’re in a relationship,
we’re still attractive to other
people we find appealing.

We want this even though we’d
never act on it.

Most guys are like that. And
when we don't get this sexual
attention, but another man
does, we don't feel too great.

Wanting to feel desirable, even
though you are in a relationship,
is not exclusively a male
phenomenon, though.

A close friend of ours is a
photographer who has been
in a relationship for years.

She is a good-looking woman
but she told us that when she
went to Miami Beach for a
photo shoot with two of her
models, they got invited to
drinks all the time and she got
ignored.

Obviously, this was nagging her
just like Nick’s harmless flirt was
nagging me.

Now that you have an idea of
what emotional starvation is, let’s
talk about what problems it can
cause.

L E S S O N # 1
All humans crave positive
emotional connection. And when
we don't get it over a period of
time, we starve.

What are the
consequences of
emotional starvation?

I’m sure you have heard of this
horrifying experiment:

“In the United States, 1944, an
experiment was conducted on 40
newborn infants to determine
whether individuals could thrive
alone on basic physiological
needs without affection.”
Source: https://stpauls.vxcommunity.com/Issue/Us-Experiment-On-Infants-
Withholding-Aﬀection/13213

“Twenty newborn infants were
housed in a special facility
where they had caregivers who
would go in to feed them, bathe
them and change their diapers,
but they would do nothing else.”

“The caregivers had been
instructed not to look at or
touch the babies more than
what was necessary, never
communicating with them.”

“All their physical needs were
attended to scrupulously and
the environment was kept
sterile, none of the babies
becoming ill.”

“The experiment was halted after
four months, by which time, at least
half of the babies had died at that
point. At least two more died even
after being rescued and brought
into a more natural familial
environment.”

“There was no physiological
cause for the babies' deaths; they
were all physically very healthy.”

“Before each baby died, there was a
period where they would stop
verbalizing and trying to engage with
their caregivers, generally stop moving,
nor cry or even change expression;
death would follow shortly.”

“The babies who had "given up"
before being rescued, died in the
same manner, even though they
had been removed from the
experimental conditions.”
Source: https://stpauls.vxcommunity.com/Issue/Us-Experiment-On-Infants-
Withholding-Aﬀection/13213

Of course, an adult won’t actually
die from emotional starvation.

But emotionally starving adults
react shockingly similar to the
dying babies:

They seize to communicate with others and become isolated.

They become depressed and indifferent.

They stop practically all physical activity and just sit around
or sleep all day.

They become unable to maintain even the simplest activities,
like answering the phone when a family member calls, or
throwing out the trash.

What leads to emotional
starvation?

When we grow up we are
forced to engage with
others. At first with our
family and later with our
peers in kindergarten,
school, and university.

But as we grow up and
become adults we work long
hours and struggle to find
enough time to see friends,
meet new people, and
socialize with strangers.

What’s more, modern
technology has given us a
myriad of options to avoid
others. And because we are
becoming increasingly socially
anxious as a society, we gladly
use them.

We work remotely.
We live in the city and never meet our next
door neighbors.
We arrange dates over apps.
We rather text then talk.
When we ride the subway we plug-in our
earphones and blast our ears with music
created by a computer.
How we avoid contact to other humans:

But our isolated behavior comes
back at us like a boomerang.

Because the less we socialize with
others the less we learn to develop
the tools that allow us to express
ourselves and connect on an
emotional level.

Nowadays, we know how to describe our mental conditions
and numerous anxieties to our therapist but we don’t know
what to talk about with our friends.

We know how to program an app but can’t tell others what’s
exciting about it.

We spend thousands of dollars on spiritual enlightenment
and the pursuit of happiness, yet we don’t spend time with
friends and family for months at a time.

And we rather capture the moment than enjoy it.

And as a result of our self-isolation,
we become emotionally helpless and
starve on the inside, just like those
poor babies did.

L E S S O N # 2
Human connection doesn’t
work without other humans
and it can’t be subsidized by
technology. (yet)

Emotional starvation is
situational

It’s easy to think that if you get a
lot of positive emotional attention
in one area of your life you are a
happy camper in general.

But, as you saw with my personal
example, that’s not necessarily
true.

You could have the best
relationship ever and still
crave having close friends.

You could have friends like
Joe, Phoebe, Ross, Gendler,
and Rachel in the TV-series
but suffer from a lack of
sexual attention from women.

You could be the CEO of a
Fortune 500 company and
have thousands of employees
working for you and feel lonely
every day.

As you can see, just one little
area lacking emotional attention
can create a huge problem.

I had friends, I had a loving
family, I had the respect of
my peers, I had romantic
attention from women I
wasn’t interested in. But I
still felt like an ugly loser
because the women I
wanted didn’t want me.

Because to be emotionally
satisfied you need a steady
supply of positive emotional
attention from a variety of
sources.

A supportive social circle consisting of
friends, acquaintances, and family
Frequent displays of romantic interest from
people you find attractive
Respect from colleagues and superiors
Random exchanges with strangers
Public recognition (speech, presentation,
interview,…)
Some sources of positive emotional attention:

From the outside, it’s hard to tell
if someone is suffering
emotionally.

You know how you feel on the inside. You can feel the pain.
But to an outsider, someone suffering from emotional
starvation just looks grumpy, low-energy, or arrogant.

Thus, the solution has a few
elements which need to be
completed in the right sequence.

1. Break the vicious
circle of emotional
suffering
What makes the problem worse
is the fact that positive, happy
people usually try to stay away
from negativity.

So when you feel emotionally
starved, it doubly urges others to
avoid you. And so the downward
spiral begins:

To break out of this vicious circle,
you need to stop the self-
isolation and slowly build a
lifestyle that gives you energy to
tackle the next steps.

My preferred way of doing this is
by simply moving as many
activities as possible from the
inside to the outside and trying
to do them together with others.

This way you distract yourself
from self-defeating thoughts
and emotions and you give
yourself the chance to meet
people who can help you get
back on your feet.

After this first step you need to
focus on yourself and your
emotional needs until you don’t
repel positive people anymore.

2. Practice self-care
until others want to be
around you
One of the most inﬂuential
concepts in my own life has been
self-care.

Self-care is a practical way of
making sure all your basic
emotional needs are met. It
usually comes in the form of a
plan and involves daily practice.

As you can imagine, everyone’s
needs are different. Therefore, a
self-care plan is different for
every person.

But it usually involves activities
such as working out, getting a
haircut, eating well, getting 8
hours of sleep,… basically
everything that is healthy and
feels good.

At this point, the vicious cycle tips
and slowly turns into a virtuous
cycle.

3. Build social and
emotional confidence
In the final step, you increase
your social and emotional
confidence until you are able to
show authentic vulnerability.

Sounds like ﬂuff advice, I know.
“Just talk about your emotions
and everything will be dandy.”
But there is more to it.

You can’t just stand in the middle of the subway and yell out
loud, “Attention, please: I’m feeling shitty today!”

You need to develop a sense of
when to open up about what and
with whom.

And there are no general rules
or guidelines for that. You need
to become socially and
emotionally skilled.

The best way to do this is by talking to people — male and
female, old and young, beautiful and not so beautiful —
whenever you get the chance.

This will get you into the habit of
socializing with strangers.

Just through this first step alone
your social confidence will soar.

Leaves the question: “Why do
you have to be the one who
should open up to others
first?”

Because most people SUCK at
reading body language and
sensing how others are feeling.

Therefore, you need to help
them out with unambiguous
communication, i.e., saying what
you are feeling.

I know, the prospect of having to
meet new people can be
terrifying.

But remember:
Every relationship, every sexual
adventure, and every friendship
started with strangers getting to
know each other.

Before I wrap this presentation
up, I would like to give you one
last tip.

L E S S O N # 3
Decide to take care of your
emotions like you decide to
take care of your body.

Once you do, women, friends, co-
workers, and strangers will start to
give you the emotional attention
you deserve.

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whole thing!

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Emotional Starvation: The Plague of Our Time

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Emotional Starvation: The Plague of Our Time