Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - When You (Or Your Partner) Can’t Communicate

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, I'm sex, love and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the last 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Bites, where I tackle your most asked questions and requested topics. These episodes are designed to be fun, quick and to the point. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. So I get this question all the time. How can I get my partner to open up more about their feeling?

Starting point is 00:00:35 Right. And it is important in order for there to be true emotional intimacy, which is a big part of even physical intimacy. There has to be open heartedness, open communication and sharing your feelings about things is one of the key ways that emotional intimacy is built, especially with women, but really with all people. There are basically three reasons why people have trouble talking about their feelings. Number one, they were humiliated or marginalized or ignored or not taken care of when they expressed feelings as children. So they learned early that there was no gain in doing that. In fact, often they were mistreated or teased or humiliated or punished when they expressed their feelings. So they learned in their family systems that it's safer

Starting point is 00:01:27 to just bottle that stuff up and not express it. Okay. Number two, society, right? We find that men in general, even men under the age of 35, but certainly men over the age of 35 were not raised in an environment where they were even given a vocabulary to express their feelings or articulate their feelings or given permission or understood that boys have feelings too, right? It's not just a feminine thing. It's an everyone thing. Every living being, right? Every animal has feelings as well. We all have feelings. And the third reason why I find that people have trouble expressing their feelings is because they have no freaking idea what they're feeling. They've never been given permission or maybe they've experienced trauma or they've learned

Starting point is 00:02:18 to disassociate from their bodies. I can't tell you how many people I've had sitting in my office. It is mostly men, but also women who say this, where they literally can't tell you in the moment how they're feeling. And so it's important to understand the reasons because you can see that not talking about your feelings is not because someone wants to keep you at a distance or doesn't really want intimacy. It's that they don't have the path or the practice or the vocabulary to even talk about their feelings. Listen, regardless of your sexual orientation or your gender or your relationship

Starting point is 00:02:59 status, every single one of us has struggled at one point or another with a lackluster or disconnected sex life or difficulty finding the partner that we most desire. So I have designed an amazing program for you, Seven Days to Better Sex. Each day, you're going to get a video and an information packet, all designed to help you jumpstart your love life. Just go to www.drlauraberman.com. So how do you support someone in doing that? Well, first, you make it really, really safe. right? For them to express their feelings. So that means you don't judge them, right? Even if they're sharing with you that they were hurt by something you said or did, or something made them angry or something made them sad and maybe upsets you because of what happened, or you feel like

Starting point is 00:03:51 it's unjust or unfair, what they may be quote unquote accusing you of, right? If your agenda and your intention is to support your partner in building that feeling vocabulary and getting comfortable expressing feelings and creating that emotional intimacy, you have to create space for all their feelings, not just the lovey-dovey one. You have to be able to hold their anger, their sadness, their fear, and be totally okay with that, right? And everybody has different needs in terms of how they want their feelings held, right? So it's very typical with men and women, not all, I don't mean to generalize, but, you know, in a general sense, when a woman comes to a man with difficult feelings, really upset from something that happened at work or with their

Starting point is 00:04:41 family or with the kids, what a man will typically do is try to fix it. So she comes home, I had this horrible day, I got in a fight with my boss. And then he goes immediately to, well, you need to tell your boss such and such. Have you thought about such and such? Because his way is to solve the problem, right? Where what she typically wants is just someone to cuddle her, hold her, empathize with her feeling and give her space to vent. That's all she really needs. And if she needs advice, she'll ask for it, right? So that's a typical miscommunication. Or a man may be sharing his feelings and really want some ideas, but she's just saying, oh, I'm so sorry. And then he thinks, Well, what am I supposed to do with that?

Starting point is 00:05:28 So really being communicative with each other about not only how you're feeling, but how you want to be supported in your feelings, even moment to moment, because it may change at each incident, right? One day you may want the advice. Another day you just want to be able to vent. So saying, I just want to be able to vent to you right now, or I want to tell you what's going on and how I'm feeling. And then I really would love some thoughts about what I can do about it, right?

Starting point is 00:05:53 So you articulate going into it, and you can model this for your partner, not only what the feelings are, but how you want to be supported. So you've made room for their feelings. You're getting clear on how they want to be supported and the expression of their feelings. And then you sometimes have to help them figure out what they're feeling if your partner is one of those people that doesn't know what they're feeling, right? So certainly any kind of embodiment practice like breath work or yoga, anything that gets you back into your body, you could even do this as a couple, can be really helpful in coming back

Starting point is 00:06:28 into your body and starting to attune to the sensations in it and therefore the feelings in it. Because one of the reasons we don't know what we're feeling is not just practice because we're not really in our bodies. So any practice that brings you back into your body is going to allow you to more easily access your feelings. But also understanding that the body is a great barometer or compass for how you are feeling. So I do this with people in my office all the time. Like I said, typically men, you know, some people are like, so how do you feel about that? Or how are you feeling right now? I don't know. Okay. So scan your body. Where do you feel pain or tightness or density? And they'll say, oh, in my back. Okay. So if it's in your back, it's probably anger.

Starting point is 00:07:12 If it's in your chest or your belly, it's probably fear. If you have narrowing or tightness in your throat or pain in your face or behind your eyes, it's probably sadness. And so you can actually use your body as a barometer to figure out how you're feeling. And then you can express those feelings first with words and then with somatic expression, which is the final frontier that, you know, I'm happy if you just get to the words. But if you want to fully be in the feelings and the expression of the feelings and the release of those feelings from your body, then comes the expression of them. So I'm really sad about what

Starting point is 00:07:57 happened. So I'm going to let myself cry right now. Or I'm really angry. So I'm going to beat the crap out of a bunch of pillows, right, rather than take it out on my partner. That's the more advanced level. If you just get to the level where you're articulating your feelings, that's more than half the game. And if you can do that with each other in a safe way and hold each other's feelings, that is the path to true intimacy. If you want to learn more about that or anything else having to do with love, sex, relationships, you know I'm always here for you learning to love and be loved better. I went to the doctor

Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - When You (Or Your Partner) Can’t Communicate

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