Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Why You Chase People Who Don’t Want You with Laura Berman

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

You meet someone kind to you. They’re consistent. They call when they say they will. They make it clear they like you. They actually show up. And somehow... you’re not sure how you feel about them. Maybe you start looking for reasons something is wrong. You lose interest. You tell yourself there’s no chemistry. Then someone else comes along who is inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, or keeps you guessing, and suddenly you can’t stop thinking about them. You wait for their texts. You analyze every interaction. You wonder what they’re feeling. The less certain you are about how they feel about you, the more certain you become that you want them. And eventually you start asking yourself: Why am I like this? Why does healthy love feel boring while complicated love feels exciting? Why do I keep wanting people who make me feel like I have to earn their love? I’ve heard some version of this question countless times in my practice. And what makes this pattern especially frustrating is that you may already understand exactly where it came from. Maybe love was inconsistent when you were growing up. Maybe you had to work for attention, affection, or approval. Maybe you learned very early that love comes with uncertainty. You can understand all of that intellectually and still find yourself wildly attracted to the person who keeps you guessing. Because insight alone doesn’t necessarily change what your nervous system has learned to recognize as love. In this Language of Love Session, I answer a question from Pam, who sees this pattern clearly in herself. When someone is kind and available, she becomes bored or suspicious. When someone is inconsistent, she becomes obsessed. So how do you change what you’re attracted to? How do you stop sabotaging something healthy because it doesn’t give you the emotional highs and lows you’ve learned to associate with chemistry? And how do you teach your mind and body that calm, consistent love doesn’t mean something is missing? We talk about how those early patterns get wired into us and what it actually takes to begin changing them, including therapy, somatic work, self-love, and sometimes simply staying long enough to give a healthy person a real chance. Because if your internal compass was calibrated around inconsistent love, following your instincts can keep leading you back to the very relationships you’re trying to stop choosing. In this episode, you’ll learn: Why understanding your childhood patterns may not be enough to change them How your earliest experiences of love can shape who you’re attracted to and what you expect from relationships Why healthy, available love can sometimes make you suspicious, restless, or want to run Why inconsistency can feel like chemistry when it activates an old attachment pattern How trauma and attachment patterns can live in the body, and how somatic experiencing, EMDR, and talk therapy may help How we sometimes sabotage a healthy relationship so we can leave before someone has the chance to leave us Why believing you don’t deserve healthy love can make kind, available people feel strangely unappealing How building self-love can begin to change what you’re willing to accept from other people Why giving someone four or five dates instead of trusting your immediate reaction may give attraction a chance to develop How to interrupt old neural pathways and begin practicing a different way of loving while you’re actually dating If this resonates, subscribe to The Language of Love on your favorite podcast platform. If someone you know needs to hear this, send them this episode. You can reach me at [e-mail] or leave a voicemail at languageoflovepod.com, and your question could be answered in a future session. For additional support, you can find somatic experiencing practitioners at traumahealing.org, and EMDR therapy and talk therapy can also help you work through the patterns we talked about today. 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. Language of love session time where I get to your questions about whatever's on your mind, about love, sex, relationships, dating, connection, growth. I love hearing from you. You can always email me at Language of Lovepod at gmail.com or go to Dr. Laura

berman.com where you can leave me a voicemail or you can arrange to come on the show with me. I have lots of emails from you all that I'm slowly working my way through. here is one from Angel. She says, Dr. Berman, how do you know the difference between your intuition and your anxiety? I've been in relationships where my gut was right, but I've also been in situations where my fear made me assume the worst. Now I don't trust myself. When I feel that tightness in my chest or that urge to pull away, I can't tell if my body is warning me or if my old wounds are taking over. How do I learn the difference. Angel, this is such a good question. And I'm going to tell you a really clear way in just a minute to tell the difference between anxiety and intuition. And believe me, I myself

struggled with this in the beginning as an anxious person. If you tend toward anxiety, this is a tough one to figure out because we all have access to divine guidance. But how do you tell the difference? Okay. So here's the thing. First of all, the truth is indeed always held in the body. The body is the bridge to the soul and it will not lead you wrong, but you have to move anxiety out of the way. All right. So first of all, number one and most important, true intuition will never feel like fear. If you have fearful feelings, now that doesn't mean that the intuitive hit doesn't make you feel a little anxious, like, oh, poop, I'm going to have to do X, Y, Z, or I'm going to have to pull away from ABC, and that scares me. You know, that's fine.

But the information itself should not come wrapped in fear. Your intuition is from your higher self, your soul, your angels, your guidance, whatever you want to call it. And that is pure love. It is never delivered to you in an anxious way. It is delivered to you in a compassionate and almost lovingly detached way. It is just information. And then we wrap anxiety around that information. But when it comes through, so if all of a sudden you're feeling anxious, that may be your body noticing something or your unconscious mind noticing something. And I'm not saying you totally disregard that. You maybe want to look at it and make sure it's real. But it's not intuition. Intuition will never be scary or negative. It is lovingly detached information.

that then we may have feelings about. Okay, so that's a big difference. The other is to, I always say, run it through your heart because your heart won't lead you wrong. However, in order to really know what it's saying, you have to ground yourself in your body and calm your nervous system down and then tune in, all right? So how do you do that, first of all? Well, first you have to ground to come into your body to even know what you're a

intuition is telling you. So you can do that in several ways. I'll tell you some of my favorites. The first is calm your nervous system down and get into your body with the four or six breaths. So you breathe in for the count of four and breathe out for the count of six for three minutes. Set a timer for three minutes. Think of something that you feel totally uncomplicated love and appreciation for, a flower, a pet, your grandma, whatever it is. Think about that thing or person for three minutes with appreciation and love while you breathe in for the count of four out for the count of six. 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 QuaSachau. 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 Dr. LauraBerman.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. These are two physical ways you can do it. One is take a deep breath in and just do this three times.

Take a deep breath in and then clench every single muscle you can think of in your body from your forehead to your toes, your butt, your thighs, every single, your belly, like your face squinch it up, like tense everything really, really tight, tight, tight for like 10 seconds. And then big, loud exhale. out, okay, breathe in again, 10 seconds, out one more time, three breaths like that. If you measure, like before you do this, you say to yourself, okay, how much would I say I'm in my body right now on a scale of 1 to 10? And then you, like, how much do I feel like I'm in my body?

And then you do that after these exercises. You will notice a big difference. So that's the second one is that clenching one. And the third one you can try is what we call splitting the earth. And this is great to do if you have any, you can do it on the floor, but it's great if you have any earth or grass nearby and you can do it barefoot. But you go out, same thing three times, take a deep breath in, bend your knees a little bit, tuck your pelvis and imagine splitting the earth apart with your feet. Your feet are parallel, but you're almost trying to split the earth by pushing them outward while your feet are on the ground. And do that for 10 seconds.

and then big sigh, do that three times. Any one of those will bring you into your body, okay? And calm your nervous system down. And then you hold the question. So let's say you got anxious or you got some, what you think may be an intuitive hit, or you're wanting to ask a question. And then you say, you try it on.

Okay, I'm taking this new job. I'm going on this trip. I'm entering this new relationship or this new business deal or whatever. and just say it out loud like it's fact and notice what you feel in your heart. Okay. So if you feel any kind of constriction or tightening, that is usually a no. If you're feeling an expansion, that is usually a yes.

So you can even say, all right, I just got this feeling that I shouldn't go on this trip. Right. So or I shouldn't go to this event. Right. So you say to yourself, I'm going to this event and envision yourself at that event and notice what happens in your heart center, in the center of your chest. If it softens and spreads and kind of bubbles a little bit and it can be very subtle at first, that's a yes. You are right. If it tightens, constricts any kind of tightness there, that's usually a no. And you can practice this and start to recognize what yes and no feels like in your heart. center with other things that are lower stakes, right? Even if you practice just saying the word yes,

yes to yourself and imagining your favorite food that you'd love to eat no matter what, you can feel that spreading. And then no, absolutely not say to yourself and imagine your least favorite food that you never want to eat and feel what that feels like. That is how you can start to recognize your body's cues. And your body, without your brain getting in the way, your body in its grounded state is really the key to really knowing what your intuition is telling you. It will not lead you astray. Your brain will come up with all kinds of stories, but your body won't. Your body is unbelievably wise.

So I hope that that gives you a chance to kind of dissect further, the tightness, the fear you feel. And really start exploring more what we call somatic therapy. therapies, somatic activities that can help you regulate your nervous system come out of anxiety. There are so many options. I get into a lot of them in my book crying out loud. There are lots of books out there as well that are focused on somatic experiencing and how to regulate the nervous system. And that will really help you with the anxiety reactions and help you read your intuition more clearly. All right, Angel. It's a great name for talking about intuition, by the way. I love that.

So you let us know how that goes. And remember, if you have a question, we are always here for you on the Language of Love. Just reach out to me at Language of Love pod at gmail.com.