Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Every Rose Has its Thorn

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

On this episode of “The Language of Love,” Dr. Laura Berman talks about one of her favorite topics: How our emotional wounds impact the way we love and receive love in our relationships. Dr. Berman explains that most of us are carrying “thorns” within our souls from our earliest experiences onward. These include not only our own thorns, but the thorns of unworthiness that our family also passed down to us. Many families carry a legacy of unworthiness that they unintentionally pass down generation to generation. On this episode you will learn: • How to identify your thorns and trace their origins • How to identify common thorns in your family line and connect them back to your present struggles • How to learn your partner’s thorns and find how your thorns may complement or exacerbate each other’s pain • How to undo these stories of unworthiness, and how to reclaim our birthright of love and forgiveness. • How our thorns often give us the greatest possible opportunity for growth and meaning here on this earth Most importantly, says Dr. Berman, we don’t have to be ashamed of our thorns or wish them away. In fact, our thorns are often the places where we can find the most light and purpose, provided we are willing to excavate those wounds and do the soul-work needed to heal these hurts. “Healing from these thorny stories will not be simple,” says Dr. Laura Berman. “It is often the work of a lifetime. But, here’s the amazing thing: Our thorns can often end up being our secret superpower.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

hey i'm dr laura berman a sex and relationship therapist and for the past three decades i've been helping people learn how to love and be loved better that's what we're doing here on the language of love where i get to answer calls and emails from people just like you my goal with the language of love is to help you discover more meaningful emotional and physical intimacy and to help you build more awareness of how precious and sacred your sexuality really is. Be sure to email me or reach out with your very own love sex relationship questions

and I might just answer them live on the air. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. I'm really excited to answer your questions on this week's episode because we're getting into the nitty gritty of how our wounds and our insecurities and our fears of vulnerability and everything else in between, how our emotional wounds impact us in love relationships. And this is what a lot of people's fear is when they start going down a personal empowerment or healing path, is that

as your vibration rises and your healing occurs, first of all, many people will just suddenly drop out of your life just because they're, you know, you can only have in your life people that are in a harmonic frequency with you. So if your frequency is much higher than some of your colleagues or friends, they probably will just naturally drift away from you. In your closest relationship, those people will either rise to you over time. If you hold space for them to do that, they will rise. I think you get into trouble. We all get into trouble when you rush ahead. Oh, shoot what's going to happen if he doesn't rise to the occasion, right? He's not doing his work. I'm doing mine right now. It's okay. What if one day it's not? Don't think that way. Just keep

doing your work. And eventually part of your work is going to be starting to say to him, look, I need some things in our relationship to change. I need to be able to have these kinds of conversations with you. I want this in my life. Are you willing to work with me on that? And it may not be therapy or may be therapy, whatever it is, but just saying to him, come to therapy, isn't necessarily going to work on someone who doesn't want to go to therapy. But noticing those things as you move along that you want to shift and change in your relationship dynamic or in your relationship experience and calling on him to rise to that is totally allowed and expected. And if he can't do that, then that becomes the focus of a little bit of therapy, not to like

fix you, but because you can't figure out how to meet me here on this issue. So let's go together and figure this out. And then the therapist engages him. And if in fact he does need some therapy on his own. Some of the ice has been broken and he or she can usually engage them. But what I see happen is people really start practicing this and really doing their own work and taking responsibility for their own vibration and their own happiness and their own wholeness in relationships still, but definitely taking responsibility for their own stuff. More often than not, the love relationship will rise to the occasion. And if it doesn't, it will just eventually become crystal clear. It's not going to be something you have to guess

at. Just call on him to rise with you. I cannot tell you how many times my husband has surprised me. I mean, we've been together 20 years and I've been growing and changing the whole time. And there have been so many times where I've come to him with something and thought, there's no freaking way he's going to be able to handle this or to move with this or to ride with this. And he has, he keeps surprising me. So I think you'll be surprised when someone really cares about you and, you know, they may not like the idea of therapy, but that doesn't mean they're not willing to do the work. So of course, talking about your feelings is a certain kind of vulnerability and being your true authentic self with all your warts and scabs and everything else

is another form of vulnerability. But another form of deep vulnerability is acknowledging you have needs and putting those needs on the table. Why? Because they may not be met or you might be shamed for having those needs. And this is someone, I recognize this because I was the same way. I was, you know, you're not allowed to have needs when you're raised in a family that shuns needs. Either they're so burning the candle at both ends, working 80 jobs, you know, like, what do you mean needs? I just got back from one shift and I'm going to another and there's no room for needs. Or the parents were so emotionally immature and or abusive that when you had needs, you were either shamed or you were expected to be more of the parent to the parents than the

parents were parents to you. You learned along the way that you would get a lot of kudos for taking care of other people's needs above your own, and that if you had needs, they probably wouldn't be met. To answer part of your question, yes, that's definitely in the family of vulnerability. To answer the second part of your question that I think is inherent there is how do you move through that, right? And you move through that by starting to take risks, and you take low-stakes risks at first. So you may not say something that's really cringy or scary for you to ask for versus, I really need you to put the kids to bed tonight or to give me one night a week where I can go to bed early and not have to worry about getting the kids ready or whatever it is. It

could be something practical at first and something lower stakes without as big emotional stakes and tell your husband what you're doing. Share with him. I'm noticing that as much as I thought I was an open book, there are ways in which I hold things back from you. I feel too vulnerable to ask for what I need and want. And then I get angry at you for not giving it to me. And that's putting you in a double bind that isn't fair. So I would love your agreement and your permission to just start telling you when I have a need in hopes that you will be willing to meet it. And I want you to tell me your needs, too. Right. And you make that agreement ahead of time. And then you start with those lower stakes needs and you work your way up to the scarier

needs to voice. Keep peeling those layers of the onion away, baby. It gets better and better. We never get fully cooked. We're always evolving and growing. All right. We got Sarah here. Sarah, what's on your mind? My husband and I have been together for 15 years and married for eight. and we have two breathtaking children and I feel like somewhere along the way we stopped having fun it's like ships passing the night very logistical he is my absolute soulmate and I'm his and so I'm not worried about like the length of our relationship but I am worried about right now the quality of it and the quality of the intimacy and fun and so I'm curious like when the kids are young, how do we kind of keep them? How old are they? Five and two. Oh, God.

I mean, you're basically in a war zone right now. So let's just start with realistic. You know, I think if you are someone, you know, and I'm this way, too, who really values the play and the intimacy and the spontaneity and all of that, it's really scary when it's not there for a very good reason. You are literally in survival mode when you have young children at this stage. They're 24-hour need machines and you're freaking exhausted all the time and there's no time. It's a very natural ebb in the ebb and flow of the connection and relationships over time. It's a very natural ebb. I don't know anyone with children that age who care about their children and don't leave them 24-7 with someone else who really have a ton of play

and excitement and spontaneity in their lives. And I think where you run into trouble is when you start to make too much meaning from that. So there's a balance, right? You don't want to just sweep it under the rug and pretend it's not happening and not do anything about it. But you also want to be realistic

and not create judgments and assume you've lost it forever and it's not coming back because this is just a period of time. And there are things you can do to help. Most importantly, and the biggest thing you can do and the thing that people who love spontaneity have the biggest trouble doing is scheduling

your playtime and your sexual time, often hand in hand. So, if you are waiting for those things to happen spontaneously when you have young children, you will be waiting years, okay? If you want a regular infusion of play and physical intimacy and emotional intimacy in your relationship when you have children under 10, you must schedule it. And that means once a week you have two hours where you are uninterrupted, even if it's when the kids are asleep. If you can't afford a babysitter or to get out of the house, be in the back porch or on the living room while the kids are asleep. But there's no technology. You're hopefully doing something fun and playful together. You're having intimate time together. And it starts to be something that

you can look forward to and that you can count on and that will sustain you through this time. You make appointments to work out, to be with your friends, to have meetings. You have to make appointments for intimacy at this stage in your life. And the other thing that is extremely helpful is to just take 15 minutes every day you are home. I know some nights, one or the other, you may not be home, but if you can, every night, just 15 minutes with no technology, you're not allowed to talk either on that date or during these 15 minutes

about your kids or about your to-do list or about the logistics of your lives. But for 15 minutes, you are listening to music, talking about things other than those topics, kissing, cuddling. It shouldn't even lead to sex. It should just be playful connection time. Maybe you play a little game together. Maybe you joke together. Maybe you just have a conversation about where do we see ourselves in five years? What's a trip you'd still love to take? But it's not about the drudgery and the details of your life. Most couples don't talk more than 15 minutes a week about things other than the

logistics of their lives. So if you're doing that every day or even three days a week, you're way ahead of the game. And it will get better, but this sustains the connection while you're in the middle of this war zone of raising kids. Because emotionally and physically, that's in many ways wonderful as it is. I mean, it's beautiful and it's fabulous, but it's a lot and it's hard to have energy for anything else and you can be spontaneous like you can still surprise him on your dates you can even make a fun plan of doing something kooky and crazy or you cannot even plan and say let's see what wants to happen during these two hours but you know you have the time put aside okay we have an anonymous question here where she is asking how

does she stop an addiction to dark partners, partners with narcissistic personality disorder? She's been in therapy, but she says that she continues to be in relationships despite all of her best efforts with people who are severe narcissists. So I love that you're in therapy, but so what you're talking about is a pattern. I'm so happy you're recognizing this pattern, But my guess is if you've been in therapy for any length of time and this is still happening, that you haven't gotten to the core issue, which is your codependence. Because you don't stay in a relationship with a narcissist or continue to be in relationship with narcissists if you aren't codependent. Take it from a recovering codependent. That's the truth.

It pretty much means that you were raised by a narcissist, your mother or your father, that you were the codependent and the emotional placeholder in the family, that you were the emotional caretaker and peacemaker, and that these relationships at first, this is why I always say to you, especially, really for anyone, but especially if you have one of these patterns where you keep attracting in addicts or narcissists or abusers or cheaters or whatever it is, the next time you start dating, and I don't want you to date for some time until you do some real trauma healing, because you have some trauma in there just from these relationships, much less the original relationship that set you up for this.

So you and your therapist should be doing work on codependence. You should be going to anonymous, and you should be reading up on codependence, and you should be doing some trauma work, which is part of the underpinning of what creates codependence. So you don't want to date until then. Give yourself at least six months to a year to really do that work and really fall in love with yourself and really become whole with yourself so you're not swept away by someone who makes you whole, right?

You have to be your whole delicious cake first. But when you do date and you go out with someone and you feel like you've known him all your life, run. when you go out with someone and you feel butterflies and it's like you've always known them. Run. That is your body's warning system. That is your system telling you this is not right and people mistake it for excitement and romance, but really what they're doing is repeating those old patterns. I hope that helps. Call back if it doesn't or email. You can always leave a voicemail on speak pipe or you can send an email question you can do all that if you go to drlauraberman.com

it's right there on the home page all right ari what's on your mind my question is i noticed that like when i'm by myself like i'm good or just like talk to guys deeply that's when like things are coming up and like i think that i'm healed and then when i talk to a guy it's like oh no there's some things you need to work through so would you guys suggest like working through that like single or like and so what kind are there themes that keep coming up with and do the guys point this out or is it something that you realize it's something that I realize what how would you describe the issues well I have like commitment issues like I pull away sometimes also I can get really bratty I guess being selfish a little bit or entitled I feel like but it only comes out when

I'm in a relationship or talking to a guy. It's never like that in real life. So I thought that was really weird. And have you had a real life relationship where you're in a committed relationship with someone yet? Yeah, I've had one. And how long did that last? It was about two years. And so you did commit in that case, right? Did you cheat on him or anything or were you committed? I was committed. And did something happen? What ended that relationship? Well, we just outgrew each other. I mean, what issues came up in that relationship, if any? I played the mom role a lot. Well, there's something that happened. I mean, that can play a role, obviously, too, to you really. I mean, the way that if you were reacting

to that, that could explain some of the brattiness and the entitlement, right? That you expect the person who loves you to meet all your needs and to be there for you and to try to read your mind and to notice when you're upset and all of those things. But the other way it can work is that you feel smothered and then you have a hard time letting people in. But I don't think the fear of commitment would come from that or the quote unquote selfishness that you refer to. I don't know if you call yourself selfish or other people call you selfish, but what I've noticed is that when someone is really focused on what their needs are and what they want and worried that there, you know, making sure they get theirs. Very often they were raised in a family. And by

the way, you can be raised in a family with a helicopter parent who never let you know you were enough, who helicoptered you by telling you how you could improve on your looks and your grades and your actions and your resume and everything else, but never really told you on a consistent basis about how amazing you were and how complete you are and how lovable you are and how approval worthy you are. So just because someone is a helicopter parent and extremely involved in your life does not mean that you had an abundance of approval. So my guess is that they're still, I mean, it seems counterintuitive that you have a parent who's always home, always on top of you, always involved in your life. And yet you still live in a place of

fear and scarcity when it comes to love. You're afraid of getting too close, maybe because you feel like you'll be swallowed up into that other person. But my guess is it's because you don't really believe you're going to have your needs met in love. Right. That's why you like the mom role. That's what I mean. That's what's comfortable to you. I'm not saying you liked it objectively and that you wanted to stay in that for the rest of your life, but it's comfortable. It's what you know. By the way, it's also how some of us try to keep control. If I'm the giver in the relationship, then the other person needs me. And so they won't hurt me and they won't abandon me and they'll let me call the shots because they need me.

So where I would say that your work is, and it would be totally worth exploring this in therapy, is around opening your heart to getting hurt, around your sense of worthiness of love in and of yourself as your whole person, you know, where someone else is more of the icing on the cake and getting to the bottom of why you're so uncomfortable. And not that any of us are super comfortable with this, but why you're so uncomfortable or fearful about not having your needs met, because that tells me there's some trauma around that. And if you can resolve that, then it gets released and it's not in the middle as a barrier between you and love.

I love this conversation with you, and you can keep the conversation going. Definitely subscribe to the podcast, The Language of Love. You'll get it every week. And if you like it, make sure to rate it and subscribe to it so it'll come regularly. And you can also go to drlauraberman.com where you can click on the links to leave me a voicemail message if you have a question or a comment or an email message if you want to write it. And I will be back here next week, same time, same place for more learning to love and be loved better on the Language of Love.

Thanks for watching!