I'm chiming in as an Emotional Intelligence Coach & Assessor - firstly, what is the relationship between the people in this story? If I ask a student of mine how they're feeling, for example, I will expect something like "not too bad" - if they start to give me a run-down of the full rainbow of their emotional life over the past few hours, I would probably feel a little uncomfortable (or start to charge them my coaching rates). However, I think you're referring to someone that one is dating or close friends to?

Some good points, although overall I felt this was rather judgemental. It also assumes that the author or reader has excellent emotional intelligence and other people are therefore to be judged by this standard - what about "how to tell if YOU have low emotional intelligence?" (actually, I'll go write that as my next post). Under the Six Seconds model, which I use, one of the core pillars of EQ is Empathy...