Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Friendship is Your Stepping Stone to Romance

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

We’re back with another Language of Love session! In this episode, I chat with a 40-something-year-old listener who wants to find love but feels an aversion to dating. She’s never dated and never been physically intimate with someone.  As we explore some of her childhood and current attitude toward men, we unpack the things that might have landed her where she is today. I also break down some tools to begin practicing to open her heart to love vulnerability, like fostering your friendships first!  In this session, we discuss: How our parents’ marriage can deeply affect our perception of love and care  What we are really craving in the search for emotional and physical intimacy  Why friendship can be a wonderful stepping stone to romance How vulnerability and open heartedness with our pets can heal some of the wounds blocking us from love  The power of somatic experiencing in healing our blocks to love If you’re curious about somatic experiences, check out the Hakomi Institute or Somatic Experiencing International for more information.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself, and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Jennifer, what is up for you? How can I help? I am in my 40s and have never really dated or

been in a romantic relationship. I'd like a few things that people get out of relationships, companionship, emotional connection, and probably sex. So I have this sense that I want to explore a relationship, but I have no desire to date. So I seem to still be holding myself back a bit. And so I'm looking for two things, A, how to get over that hump of not being interested in the thing that might lead to a relationship. And B, if I get over that hump, how do I actually approach this. Okay. And when you say that thing you want, I think if I understand you correctly, you mean you think you want a relationship, but the hump you're trying to get over is dating. Yes. Well, I think I want the emotional connection, the companionship and the sex and

the models that I'm around that people usually get that from their primary relationship. Yeah. Okay. And you said you're in your forties. Yes. Okay. And so have you ever been in a relationship no okay have you ever had sex no sensual sex let's start there no no okay and have you ever had unconsensual sexual relationships no usually someone doesn't get to age 40 not having been in a relationship or having sex or anything without feeling aversive like an aversion to sexual contact, to connecting with people. And usually that's related to, we're typically not born with that aversion. It's conditioned into us or it's traumatized into us. So when you've thought about this, and I'm sure you have, what do you come up with as the issues or as the

reasons? I wouldn't say I'm averse to sex, but I, of the three things that I want out of a relationship, I would say I feel sexually attracted to men, but I don't necessarily feel like the companionship or the emotional connection is something that I want to pursue with men. So is it possible you're asexual? Do you have thoughts, fantasies, motivation to be sexual? Do you have a sex drive where you have thoughts and fantasies? Yes. I wouldn't say I'm an extremely sexual person, but I also wouldn't guess that I'm asexual. Yeah.

Okay. So you do have those thoughts and feelings. And it sounds like while you're more emotionally and intellectually attracted to women, but you're physically and sexually attracted to men. Yes. I think also with men, I don't see myself very easily being vulnerable emotionally with men. Okay. So that's where the aversion comes in. And I, when I say aversion, I don't mean like, it's like a phobia. I mean, it could be, but I mean that it's, it's something that is not

attractive to you that you don't feel pulled to that. In fact, you tend to avoid and you have avoided it for 40-something years, right? So where is, where, I'm guessing it started with your father or maybe modeling that happened in your relationship growing up, but where did the messages begin and even the experiences begin that men are unsafe to get vulnerable with or that they're not capable of really meeting you where you are emotionally and taking care of your emotional safety I would say probably in middle school a lot of the men that are a lot of the boys that I was around seemed like they were interested in interacting with girls for more like physical stuff and I would also they seemed more interested in the physical you mean

than the national. Yeah. Which probably is the case with, you know, most kids are teenagers. Most middle school teenage boys. Yes. Yeah. Doesn't make it any easier for the girls. What about with your dad? What was happening with him? I would say that my parents are still married, but for most of my teens and twenties, I, and thirties even, I would say I thought that they should get divorced. So they didn't seem to be getting anything from each other other than sort of security. Okay. And I get that. And that's part of it, right? That you didn't have a model of what a healthy relationship looks like, but that's not enough to land you where you are. So what about your relationship with your dad? I would say my dad certainly took care of,

you know, provided for the family and everything like that. But so I could rely on both of my parents to, you know, for my sort of physical, give you food and shelter. Yes. Yes. But I would say that was about the extent of it in terms of emotional support, I would say. And were they absent emotionally or were they harmful emotionally? Because there's a, you know, there's a continuum there obviously but I'm guessing it's more than indifference and it's more than emotional indifference and emotional neglect which I'm sure there was both of those things even though they were there for you and they took care of your needs and you know it was obviously they were invested in you that's this piece of emotional connection emotional safety

I can show up as my authentic self and I am loved because of and for my authentic self and the people who are my primary caregivers and my safety in the world see me. I am seen. I am understood. I am loved for who I am. And I am emotionally safe. That was not there. So why was that not what was going on that gave you the message that those were? And by the way, I feel you tiptoeing around this and I'm like kind of a bulldozer and just go right to the issue, as you know, but let me help with your tiptoeing and clarify my bulldozing that none of this is to say that your parents are bad parents or bad people. They did or didn't do because in many cases, it's what parents don't do. Right. Often, I think in your case, it's both. But they we do

and we don't do what we do and don't do as parents that harm our children. Ninety nine point nine percent of the time. I mean, in the rare, rare, rare occasion, is it intentional? It's almost always unintentional. And it's almost always secondary to our blind spots and our traumas and our wounds that we are dealing with that we got from our parents and they got from their parents and they got from their parents. Right. So none of this probing I'm doing is intended to paint your parents as bad people or wrong or bad parents. Right. We just want to understand where your wounds are. So prefacing this question with that, what is it in the nature of specific to you? And I think it's really specific to your dad that it may be both of them, but it's a lot around men

and dad, right? Was he critical? Was he completely indifferent? Was he impossible to connect with? What was it? I would say, so particularly in my high school years, I believe he was depressed, but no one said that. And so he would come home from work. He went to work very early, came home relatively early in the afternoon and would go straight to bed and would maybe get up to eat some food. But yeah, otherwise, you had already made this decision inside yourself way before your teenage years. and the stuff you were seeing with the boys at school and them kind of objectifying the girls and not safe emotionally because of that was just like confirmation to you. This would have been

as early, even pre-conscious, I think beyond your memory, like age two, three, but even as early as five, six, seven, what I'm sensing is that there were a lot of times, and maybe it was because he was depressed or had other stuff going on, but there were a lot of times where you often and always where you made what therapists call a bid. You made an emotional bid for engaging. Daddy, look at me or daddy, look at the picture I drew or you're dancing around. Daddy, look at my dance, you know, like little kids do. And you were met with a wall. That's what I'm getting. And I don't know if that's true or not. And that's the metaphor I'm seeing. Like it was like you were met with stoicism and indifference and annoyance but not affection enthusiasm and safety i can't

really remember what i experienced with that with with any bids but i can say that everything that you just said i observed between my mother and him and do you have any memories of him when you were little of positive emotional connecting moments with him when you were little riding on his shoulders sitting on his lap giggling with him taking a walk with him holding his hand and talking to him any memories like that there are pictures of him kind of leaning down there's one one picture in particular of him leaning down and talking to me and we're both smiling when I was like two or less so I have that as sort of a interaction and like we did things together we took a trip when I was 10 and that was just the two of us but I don't necessarily remember

like actual connection it was more like I knew that he was proud of me because he would videotape my events but i i don't know and he would do things but i don't know that i felt a connection with him outside of and what happened on that trip when you went on that trip do you have memories of like talking to him about important stuff or was it more like you just were kind of side by side and not really engaged side by side and experiencing the place that we were as tourists i wouldn't say we had any real deep conversations yeah and so who did you did you confide in either of your parents or talk to either of your parents when you ran into trouble or were having issues with friends or worried about your grades or any of the things that kids

face growing up? To a certain point until sort of early middle school, when I remember the last time that I confided in my mother was about a party that I had been to that the kids were kind of making out and stuff. And it was, it was a lot and I was overwhelmed and upset by it. And I came back and told her about it. And her reaction was to call the parents of the kids involved and inform them of their kids' behavior, which of course got back to the kids, which got back to me. A lot of trouble. Yeah. And you learned in that moment, maybe. Did she give you any comfort? No, she typically skipped the comfort to being angry either at me. In this case, she wasn't angry at me, but she was, yeah, she skipped right over the comfort to support. This

is bad. And I'm going to go do something about it. And have you had any relationships with girls, women, whatever, who that are like, are you, do you have friendships that are emotionally supportive and good? To an extent. And I also make friends with women who are sort of similarly professional, similarly kind of self-aware, but I can't say that I've had someone, I've had relationships where I've very easily been able to be completely vulnerable, particularly around like feelings basically yeah yeah and chances are you're choosing and attracted to and attracting in friends who are at your same level of emotional availability and so they don't ask that they don't need that and you don't either right so it keeps everything superficial

and the key to so what you started off telling me is that you like let's just put sex aside sex would be great, right? Sex is easy to get. That's not the problem. The problem is that you are bereft of deep emotional intimacy in your life and your soul and your heart is craving that, which is good news as painful as that is, because a lot of people would have just shut that down completely. And maybe in the dark nights or once in a while wish for things could be different, but they're so disconnected from the heart center that they don't even crave it or want it. What really inspires me about you and your question is that you want it, right? But you've never had it. You've never had it because it wasn't available in your family of origin growing

up. And that's where we learn that it's okay to take emotional risks, that my feelings will be held with reverence and and support you didn't get that right that someone wants to hear about my feelings and will take care of them when they receive my feelings didn't get that right and so to me there's like a stepwise progression here and it's less about it's less about getting into a love relationship like that's the highest stakes in my opinion forget about sex stay with self stimulation and fantasy for now. Cause when you do have sex, I want you to have it with someone who you really trust and are safe with. Okay. And that's not beyond the realm of possibilities, but if you were okay with casual sex, you would have had it by now. Right. And you don't want

that clearly. Correct. Right. Okay. Hey, don't forget to go to drlauraberman.com. You can find so much great information there and sign up for my newsletter. So you get weekly updates on how to love and be loved better. And also on my website, you can get my brand new ebook. You're not crazy. You're just ascending. It's a practical guide to spiritual awakening that many of us are going through right now. And it's enough to make you feel crazy. So check it out. I'm here for you. Always helping you learn to love and be loved better. So what I really want for you is for you to focus less on a romantic relationship and more on calling in

at least just one friendship that can hold emotional intimacy. If you can start there, right? Then you start to build the muscle, the muscle that's really atrophied in you from your, you know, it was being built like every child in childhood and then it got cut off

and then that muscle has atrophied is the muscle of vulnerability. Right. And vulnerability is the key to intimacy. Intimacy is into me see, right? So you can't be emotionally intimate with someone with whom you can't be vulnerable. It's impossible, right? That's what you're talking about when you talk about these friendships that are nice and lovely and shared interests and goals, but there isn't a closeness there. There isn't an intimacy there because there isn't authentic vulnerability there. that's okay I hear that and I'm glad I was going to ask you if you have a pet because that's even tier one like being intimate vulnerable with your pet sometimes I've worked with people where that's the first step like do you have a pet who you can feel emotionally safe with right and who you can tell your problems to do you do that with your cat I wouldn't say I tell my problem don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know, the same way you can skip

an ad? I get it. I'm Siaya and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride stream a new episode of north of north tuesdays on cbc gem problems to her but i i definitely have shared like physical connection and cuddling and stuff like that that is that i yeah well that's great now start also practicing telling her your secrets telling her your fears telling her your your insecurities or the things that that make you feel being vulnerable with her, right? And my guess is early on in your pet owning or pet partnering career,

or you probably were struggled with the physical affection, right? So you're able to have physical affection with her, with the cat, now have emotional connection, even if it's one-sided, she's not going to talk back to you, but believe me, they understand, right? And then it's about moving into friendships. And maybe there's some existing friends that you have that you can maybe try this out with where you just share something. It doesn't have to be like your deepest, darkest secret, but like something a little embarrassing, something a little something silly or stupid you did, not necessarily, you know, a huge revelation. Right. But something small at first where you admit or acknowledge or share something that's vulnerable, right? And you know what

I mean by vulnerable, right? Yes. I think for a long time, I thought I was being vulnerable with people because I was very honest about virtually everything in terms of like if I messed up or if I, but I think there's a difference about talking about it analytically and being emotionally vulnerable. Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, you are being vulnerable when you admit your flaws, right? Or your mistakes or the things you screwed up.

That's a level of vulnerability that a lot of people struggle with right there, right? And then the next level, which is what I think you're talking about, is I did this thing that messed up and I felt really scared, right? Or I sometimes wonder if, I sometimes have a hard time wondering

if I'm ever really going to find love. And sometimes I just feel really lonely or I'm feeling really sad today because X, Y, or Z happened, right? So do you know how you feel moment to moment? Are you in tune with how you feel and you're withholding that? Or is it that you're not even consistently making that connection? I would say yes, but it's inconsistent. I'd say I'm getting better at it, at recognizing it, but it would still be somewhat inconsistent. Yeah, well, that makes sense. You know, I just recently, my interview with him is coming out sometime soon, but I did an interview with Gabor Mate about his book, The Myth of Normal, which is actually would

be a good book for you to read. And he talks about how there are all of these small and large ways. He too, like I, calls it big T and little t traumas. All these ways in which our bids for affection and connection and our ability to feel safe being ourselves and being authentic and feeling our feelings. if there wasn't a receptacle for that, if our parents couldn't hold it or didn't allow it, or like in my situation would shame me or make fun of me or feel over, you know, or feel burdened by my emotions because they were so late in themselves, right? You learn to just like, ah, I'm just, the child has two choices, either decide, okay, these grownups are effed up. They're incapable of taking care of my emotional needs. And I'm on my own right now,

which in a child's mind means death. Like that's petrifying. That's terrifying, right? So we're not going to think that. What we think is, oh, okay, so I'll just do this. I'll make myself really small. I won't have needs. Oh, they react to me this way when I have feelings. All right. I won't share my feelings anymore. It's not safe to have feelings. Oh, wait, there's nowhere to put these feelings because there's no grownup around me and I'm too small to hold these myself. There's no one around that can help me hold them. Okay, I'll just disassociate from them and repress them. I just won't feel them, right?

Because what's the point? First of all, it's really uncomfortable. It's petrifying because I'm handling this. I'm like this little boo-boo that has no idea how to handle all of this. And I'm like, I don't know what to do with all this. And there's no one around me that's showing me. And there's no one around me that can help me. And I'm totally on my own.

So, okay, I'm just going to like squish this down into the bottom of me and go on with my day and become stoic, right? And that's what you did. God bless you. You wouldn't have survived your childhood. But now if you want to work toward that ultimate goal of deep and abiding intimacy, connection, companionship with anyone, including a romantic partner,

you got to start unraveling the knots in there that keep your emotions repressed. And you have to start connecting to how you feel moment to moment. Step one. Step two, telling the cat how you feel when you're with her. Step three, telling a friend how you, even if it's a stranger in the grocery store, I don't care. Just somebody saying out loud, claiming how you feel out loud, being vulnerable, right? And then doing it in a little bit of a higher stakes situation, maybe where you really care about that person or like them or the friendship is important to you and so on and so on. And as you get to those higher

stakes situations, and I want you to stay at that level with the friendships for like three to six months where you're really practicing and you're even saying to that friend, listen, I've realized that like most of my life I have disassociated from and repressed my feelings. And so I've made a commitment to myself to really start tuning into, you know, what is that like for you? Do you know what are you someone who understand like this is what it's been like for me and i'm wondering if like would you be willing to just like let me tell you how i'm feeling because it's really scary for me i mean kind of silly but it's really scary for me to say what i'm feeling right and get their buy-in their safety in their buy-in you don't have to like give them your

feeling and worry that they're not willing to hold it or that they haven't signed up for this or whatever else right so that's the lower stakes version of the higher stakes friendship sharing right and as you my guess is so one of two things will happen as you do this with your existing friends let's say one which is probably the most likely is that those friendships will deepen so you will actually start developing some real emotional intimacy and they'll disclose and you'll disclose and it'll be the nature of the furniture the other is that that person is so bereft and disassociated themselves that they can't handle it and then they'll drift away and make room for you to call in more friends who really can meet you where you are right and so there probably is

going to be a period and this is true for all of us I mean it's happened in my life several times at several different phases of my life at this point where as I evolve and my personal and emotional needs expand and shift and change, then often friends who totally met my needs and I met theirs before, it's not like we have a falling out or we decide, you know, I hate you. We're not gonna be friends anymore, but it's just like, it's not a frequency match anymore. And those people kind of drift away or you drift away from them. And then there's a pause, right? And so I'm saying this so that you don't panic in the pause. There is a pause where like before the new friends show up and when the old friends are dropping off and someone who's has some trauma around

self-disclosure and sharing their true emotions may get scared like, oh, shit, I'm scaring everyone off. You're not scaring everyone off. You're scaring off the people that you've attracted in who were a frequency match for someone who shut down from their emotions. Right. So there may be a period of where you can't see who the new friends are and the old friends are drifting away. But if you hold steady and you stay committed to it, you will actually start attracting in new friends who are at that vibration of openheartedness, emotional maturity, emotional availability. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. So I think to me, what you're really craving is being in relationship. Sex is only one small part of a larger relationship. And we're not I don't even think we're talking about romantic relationships yet, although I'm sure you want one of those.

But like you said, the reason I think I want a romantic relationship is because what I really want is someone who I can trust, be my authentic self with, and feel deeply emotionally connected to, right? And the easiest way to start practicing that, building that, strengthening that muscle, and setting yourself up for success in romantic love is to do that with friendships. Sounds good. Well, it's not easy, but. Yeah, it's not easy, but you just start bit by bit, right? Like you start with your pet, then you move to your existing friends or strangers, even if that's less scary than friends. Some people, strangers are more scary than friends, right? You choose. And then more meaningful friendships, right? And then after that and after you've sustained, you know, for like six months to a year, one, at least one real friendship where you are your true self with them and are telling them how you feel and they're telling you how they feel and they have empathy for you and you have empathy for them. Then you can think about dating. OK. And the other thing that will really help you because you are someone, my guess is you have a very, do you have like an intellectual job?

Yes. Yeah. So you're, you're super left brain and I think super smart, right? And you keep it close enough to the vest that you get along with everyone and don't piss anyone off because no one ever really knows what you're thinking and feeling. But what's going to happen? That has been said, yes. yes so and there's good reason for that it was never safe to do that that was your survival strategy so what we want now is to unlock to do what we can to unlock what heretofore has been shut down and so one of the things that i think will be really helpful to you and i talk about this a lot on the show you've probably heard me in other sessions is somatic experiencing because you're you and I was a big intellectualizer too I'm less so now at this point in my life only

because I've been doing a lot of this work I'm asking you to do but it would be really easy for you and talk therapy I mean you were even doing it with me in the beginning like you can articulate everything really really well but that like they say in the course of miracles everything I don't I'm paraphrasing but the longest distance is the distance between the brain and the heart And what I want is for you to really start moving into your body, attuning to how you're feeling, attuning to your emotions, learning to just hold your own emotions and care for your own emotions. And you're going to need some support and continuing to practice that because it's not easy when you've been blocking them your whole life. So somatic experiencing gets you, it's not talk therapy. It gets you out of your thinking mind. So you can't talk about how you're feeling.

You're actually processing physically how you're feeling because every emotion we have resides in our body. That's where we feel them. We don't feel emotions in our brains. We feel them in our bodies, but you are cut off from the neck down. And so I really want you to explore somatic experiencing. So you can go to HakomiInstitute.com or TraumaHealing.org. And in either of those somatic experiencing organizations, you can find a clinician near

you who can help. But I think that would be really, really helpful. And let me just see what this book is called. I feel like you need to understand your parents better because there's a way in which you have, I don't think you did this consciously, but unconsciously, like children do, we're sweet little narcissists and we think everything is because of us as children, right? So there's a way in which you internalized their rejection of your emotional life as being a symbol or a symptom of how worthy of love you are or not. Like you internalized it as your fault and that will affect

your self-esteem that will affect your confidence that will affect your willingness to put yourself out there so there's a book called adult children of emotionally immature parents how to heal from distant rejecting or self-involved parents and it's by a woman named lindsey gibson i really like that book right okay so will you practice that check back in with me in like six to twelve weeks okay after you start somatic experiencing and practicing with your cat I want to hear within three months that you are starting to put yourself out there if not before with friendships all right we got a deal yep thank you very much you're so welcome we're cheering you on I went to the doctor, said I'm crazy for your look

Wrote me a prescription, but there's no cure for a cry