Blocked Love Talk ?

 

Mini-Love-Lesson #293

Synopsis: Erasing embarrassment programs, anti-love talk habit replacement, tender and tough love talk and growing a bigger, better love talk custom are all briefly and helpfully touched on in this quick Mini-Love-Lesson.

Families that talk love together, do love better.  Couples do too.  On the other hand, some people grow up in families in which no one is talking about love, sex, emotions or any other intimate aspects of life.  For many, those and similar topics can trigger embarrassment and its awkward discomfort.

Erasing Embarrassment Programming

If we do something which embarrasses us often enough, the embarrassment lessens and may even disappear.  We all can break through our embarrassment barriers with “I can do it” self-talk, repetition and some work.  We can think about the words and subjects we have been programmed to be embarrassment about.  Emotional programming is governed by subconscious conditioning, whereas, reasoned choice can be ruled by the conscious mind.  Whatever was not talked about in the family we grew up in, programmed us to not talk about those things.  If the topic of love was one of those subjects, we would do well to overcome that conditioning and free ourselves to be at ease talking our love.  Not talking about love can diminish or even block love and the amount of love in our lives.

Anti-Love Talk Habits

We would do well to examine whether we might have any anti-love-talking habits.  A couple examples are seeing love-talk as too mushy or too intimate.  Another habit is feeling uncomfortable talking about love related emotions like affection, intimacy, vulnerability and so forth.  Once we realize habits like these interfere with growing and improving love in our lives, we can start to interrupt and replace them with new habits of speaking up about these uncomfortable topics.  Thereby, the uncomfortable becomes more comfortable.  Mindfulness is the way we can catch an old habit when it pops up and replace it with a new one.

Tender and Tough

Another block, particularly love-damaging in some men’s lives, is that power emotion talk is OK but tender emotion talk is taboo.  In many social spheres, this problem appears to be diminishing but in other spheres it still rears its ugly head.

To keep some gender equality here, let’s address a female issue.  In some circles some women seem comfortable only talking about the mild, tender or soft aspects of love and shy away from tough love issues and intense expressions of love.  It seems now more women are becoming more at ease with the stronger assertions of love.  

Love Talk as a New Custom     

In family therapy, one of the most common issues tackled is overcoming blocks to actually saying “I love you” to family members.  If that has been the unspoken custom and the topic silently avoided in a family, encouragement to directly bring it up and create a new custom of talking love frequently and meaningfully is the best practice.  Once in a while, when people make the commitment to go tell some family member that they are loved, they may say they did it and at first it was awful but usually they finish by saying it got good or even wonderful.  They often declare that it led to a breakthrough in communications, that they held hands for the first time since they were a child and that they finally felt accepted.  Statements like “We got close and it was so meaningful”, “I’m really glad I got that said before she died” and “It seems we now have started a real relationship” are among the things heard when people start talking their love.

One More Thing

How about telling someone about this mini-love-lesson and this website about love?  Spreading the positives about love really might make your world more love enriched. 

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: For you, who is it hardest and who is it easiest to talk love feelings to, and do you know why?