Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - What to Do When Keeping the Peace Costs You Yours

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Have you ever kept quiet just to avoid ruining a good moment? Sometimes keeping the peace actually costs you your own peace. You stay silent to keep things calm, telling yourself it’s not worth bringing up. But the feeling doesn’t go away. It builds quietly, then spills out sideways over something small. In this Language of Love Session, I respond to Naomi, who feels stuck in this exact cycle. She avoids hard conversations because she’s afraid of ruining a good day. But the resentment always comes back. Naomi wants to know: How do I bring things up without it turning into a fight? And how do I stop feeling guilty just for needing to talk about hard things? As a recovering codependent, I know this pattern personally. And after years of working with couples, I can tell you this isn’t about being “too sensitive.” It’s often about a nervous system that learned early on that conflict equals danger. If you grew up around anger, neglect, gaslighting, addiction, or emotional volatility, advocating for yourself can feel terrifying, even when you’re safe. We dive into:  Why growing up in certain environments makes it hard to claim your needs as an adult How to tell if your partner’s annoyance is their trigger or actual mistreatment The three part framework for bringing up anything: Feelings, Story, Solution Why focusing on bodily sensations, not just emotions, changes everything The importance of having a clear ask, not just dumping frustration When the issue is not your delivery but your partner’s capacity for healthy love How to recognize when you need professional support to break patterns that aren’t serving  If you always keep quiet just to avoid rocking the boat… and then find yourself blowing up later over something small, this session is a must-listen. Don’t forget to explore the additional relationship resources on my website, along with the free Quantum Sex course designed to help you deepen emotional intimacy, embodiment, and connection with your partner and yourself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm Dr. Laura Berman, and for more than 30 years, I've worked with individuals and couples to help them build deeper, healthier relationships with one another and with themselves. Welcome to Language of Love Sessions. This is where I work one-on-one with you, my listeners, in real time. These sessions are intimate, personal, and grounded in what's actually happening in your life and relationships. Let's get started and get fluent in the language of love. Here's an email from Naomi.

She's saying, Dr. Berman, I avoid difficult conversations because I'm scared of ruining a good day. If things are calm, I don't want to introduce tension, so I swallow my feelings. But then the resentment builds and I end up snapping over something small. How do I bring up real issues in a way that's honest but not explosive? and how do I stop feeling guilty for needing to talk about hard things? Ooh, Naomi, there's so many directions I could go with this answer right now, but I feel like it's a really important question and it's one that I, as a recovering codependent,

am very familiar with personally as well. When you are someone who has grown up in a home where you were neglected or your needs weren't honored or valued or you were made wrong or bad or you grew up with a narcissist or an addict, or you were gaslit a lot, certainly if there was abuse in the home or of you, you never learned how to advocate for yourself in a way that allows you to stay in your power and to hold your center. And most of us don't learn how to do that even under the best of circumstances. But I feel like many of us struggle with even claiming our own needs. And then we are made to feel guilty or bad or wrong if our partner doesn't acknowledge or even receive our feedback.

So I just want to start there because a lot of times I find that for people who grew up in homes like that, it's not, I'm going to give you how to do this, but it's not necessarily going to be easy for you to do until you kind of unpack and get support moving through how to regulate your own nervous system and how to release some of the trauma of the past so that doesn't take over when you're wanting to have these conversations and you get a little pushback, right? So you got to think as long as your welfare and your safety is not at risk, you got to think about your partner's annoyance as like their trigger, right?

And their responsibility, especially if you're being respectful in the way you're bringing it up. My husband and I first got together, he would have really big anger, not aggressive or mean or mean-spirited or anything like that, but he would show that he was angry. And I grew up in an environment where anger was very dangerous and very scary. So as soon as I would see him feeling angry

or expressing some anger, I would shut down. And that didn't serve anyone. So if your partner gets angry or annoyed, that's okay. Think of it as like just a big harmless bear blowing wind on you, right? I'm not saying you keep agitation going and you make an argument happen, But I'm saying part of the way to make certain that you can get your needs met is that you

can hold your center. And that doesn't mean that you put up with bad treatment or if someone's being really angry or obnoxious to you that you keep going, right? It's also knowing when to stop the conversation and saying, you know what, let's table this for now. This obviously isn't going anywhere and make sure you come back to it. But let's talk just the basics. Yes, you're having a peaceful day.

You don't necessarily want to create tension, but something is happening, right? So you can say to your partner then or later on in the day or the next day, hey, there's something that I'd really love to talk to you about, you know, and I'm wondering if you're open to it now or when a good time to talk about it would be, right? So if you have a partner or a friend who maybe isn't the best at getting feedback or taking feedback, letting them be prepared for it and have some agency in when and how it happens really helps, okay? Let's say they say, yeah, sure.

Let's talk about it now. Then you say, and this is a very specific way of getting your needs met. You're not going to say you made me feel bad when you blah, blah, blah, right? This is how you get your needs met in any relationship. You talk about the feeling you have in your body, okay? Not your, you can talk a little bit about the emotional feeling, but really focus on the bodily sensations. And I'm going to give you an example of this in a minute.

That's number one. Number two is, you've said what the feeling is, what's the story I'm telling myself that's underneath the feeling? You're not pointing the finger of blame at them. You're claiming your interpretation and your story about what's making you feel that feeling. And the third thing is, what do I want? So you're going to say, I'm feeling X, Y, Z, because the story I'm telling myself is ABC. And what I really want is this, the solution, okay? What behavior change or change in the system

you want. Now, there's several benefits to this. First of all, it's hard to argue with someone's feelings and stories, right? You can't get defensive about that because it's their feelings and stories. They're not saying you did this or made me feel that, right? The second thing is you're giving them action to take that can resolve the problem. You're not just laying a big turd in the punch bowl and not telling them what can be done to resolve it. And the third thing is that this requires a little insight and calm in your system and clarification in you before you have the conversation, because you got to get clear on what this story is and what the feelings are that you're bringing, it's bringing up and what you actually want.

Hey, it's Dr. Laura Berman. I've been a sex, love and relationship therapist for over 30 years. And the main question I always get asked is how the heck do we spice it up in a long-term monogamous relationship? Well, if you want to take your love life, your sex life to the next level, whether you're in a relationship or not, check out my free course on quantum sex. It's going to teach you how to take your sexual response to the next level, capable of full body orgasms, how to use sex magic to manifest your dreams, and how to connect on an even deeper level sexually with your partner. Just go to drlauraberman.com and you'll find it right there on the homepage,

the quantum sex free course. Check it out. Let me know what you think. So let's say that I'm making this up. You were having brunch with friends or lunch or a meal with friends and you were telling a story and he cut you off. It was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not, you know, and just went on and took center stage or change the subject or belittled you, you know, you felt belittled in that moment. Okay. Here's how you say it. And I'm just making this up. You'll have to fill in your own. The other day, whenever that time was, when we were having lunch with these people, I noticed at a certain point, I felt like tightness in my chest and a drop in my belly and pain in my back. I was feeling kind of scared and sad. And I realized

It's because I was telling myself the story that when I was talking about blah, blah, and you change the subject and cut me off, that I felt like I had a story that I looked stupid and I had this like embarrassment and fear well up in me. And that my story is that, you know, our friends saw me as someone who like gets belittled as you, by you, or that doesn't have her power in the relationship. And I know that's not your intention, okay? Now you're putting it out there in a way that he's not gonna get defensive.

So what I really want is just for you to pay a little attention so that when I'm speaking or telling a story, maybe let me finish. And if I'm going on too long, let's create a signal, right? Where you touch your nose or you give me a nudge under the table. Or if you feel like I'm saying something that's gonna offend someone,

or maybe there's another reason why you're changing the subject. I want to be sensitive to that so we can have a signal. But what I would really like is if I could really have a voice in the way that I want when we're together with our friends. Done, right? Or when you didn't call me to tell me that you were late, I noticed I was feeling really scared. I was having like tightness in my chest that made it hard to breathe. I felt like almost feelings of panic coming on because I was really scared that something happened to you. And I know that you were just caught in traffic and busy listening to your podcast and that's totally fine. But I told myself the story that something was really

wrong and that something bad had happened to you. So it would mean the world to me that if you're going to be more than, you know, 15, 20 minutes late to a plan that we've made, that you just send me a quick text or a voice note saying, hey, blah, blah, I'm in traffic and I will be home as soon as possible. That would mean the world to me, right? So this is how you talk about those things. You set up an appointment or you make sure they're open to it and you talk about the feeling, the story underneath the feeling that you have and the action that you want. Now, if he is getting explosive no matter what you're bringing up and is not open to your feedback in this way and is just turning it all around on you and saying, you know what, you always are just talking out your butt

and you never say anything valuable. If he's belittling you or if he's trying to gaslight you into feeling too sensitive or too difficult, then this is really a him issue and not a you issue. And it may be time to really get your own support, maybe with a counselor or therapist who can really help you parse out, especially if you have a trauma history, it can be hard to recognize healthy from unhealthy love. And you may be in a relationship with someone who's not really capable of healthy love. And that doesn't mean you have to leave him, but it does mean that the therapist can help you step into your power more, practice that more, and maybe even do some joint sessions to see if the two of you could get some support that would more directly give you

the connection and the communication that you need and deserve. So I hope that helps and definitely keep us posted on how it goes. And if you need any further support or if anyone listening, you can always reach out to us at languageoflovepod at gmail.com. I went to the doctor said I'm crazy