Excerpt from True Love by Daphne Rose Kingma, reprinted with permission.
Ask for What You Need
Asking for what you need is just that: stating that there is something amiss about which you need some care or response. “Would you please close the window? I’m freezing.” “I need you to hold me; I’m scared.” “Will you give me a back rub? My shoulder hurts.” “Can you skip the ball game and go to the movies with me? I’ve been home alone all day and I’m stir crazy.”
Asking for what you need is such a simple yet difficult thing that most of us rarely, if ever, do it. In fact, it is so hard (or easy) that most of us would rather try almost anything else than to ask quite simply and directly for precisely what we need. We would rather presume that our sweetheart will know without our telling, or hope that in time our spouse will, by osmosis, figure it out. Often we’d just as soon give up on getting the thing we need than to actually have to ask for it.
We don’t like to ask because we think of asking as revealing neediness—which is precisely what it is. Asking means we are in a vulnerable state and that we are hoping the other person will care enough to minister to us in our pitiful, imperfect, and inadequate condition.
Unfortunately, when we’re in love we can get into the strange frame of mind that somehow we ought to be perfect and invulnerable. It’s as if we believe that one of the requirements of love is that only people who need absolutely nothing can be loved. In reality, love ministers to our vulnerabilities and the gift of love is that it can do for us what we are unable to do for ourselves.
Asking for what you need reveals the true fragileness of your humanity, and invites the person who loves you to expand the range of his or her own. Responding to a stated request not only gives the needy person the relief of having the need fulfilled, but it also gives the giver a sense of being able to be effective, to offer a gift of value. On these occasions, you are both enjoined to expand the range of your love and your humanity.
However, just because you ask for something doesn’t necessarily mean that you will get it. Asking in itself doesn’t guarantee results—you may ask your spouse to buy you a Porsche, but that doesn’t mean he or her has the wherewithal to provide it. When you’re just learning to ask, not getting results can be discouraging. Just remember that asking does greatly improve your chances; the more you ask, the more the odds increase that you will get your needs met.
Be Emotionally Brave
Too many of us are emotional chickens, afraid to communicate what we are really feeling. Emotional chickens are afraid that what they disclose will be ignored, made fun of, or ridiculed, so rather than taking the risk of spitting it out—whatever it is—they just keep quiet. Often they even defend their shut-down stance, saying that talking about feelings never does any good anyway. Yet emotions kept in, stuffed down, or anaesthetized in various ways always take a physiological, emotional, and spiritual toll on us.
Being an emotional chicken has old, sad origins. It begins when we aren’t listened to as children, when we were told that the things we said were unimportant or when we sensed that no one could feel with us in our private anguish. Feeling this way made us scared. And fear taught us to keep our thoughts and feelings to ourselves.
Being emotionally brave means that now, in spite of the possible adverse effects, you will risk saying the thing that may leave you feeling exposed, and trust in a happy outcome. Chances are things will turn out well, for revealing vulnerabilities most often brings couples closer together.
For example, Lana was afraid to tell Ron that she had been sexually abused as a child. She was terrified he would think of her as soiled, that he would be disgusted and reject her. Instead, when she finally worked up the nerve to tell him, he was filled with compassion. He held her very tenderly and told her how sorry he was, and she had a healing cry in his arms.
It isn’t only the big secrets that we’re afraid to tell. Many of us are uncomfortable saying anything that might be construed as even slightly confrontational: “I don’t want to go to the Taj Mahal Cafe. I want to go to the Bean Sprout Club for dinner”; “I’m angry at you for not making love to me last night”; “Thursday’s my birthday and I hope you’ll remember because I’ll be terribly disappointed if you don’t.” But of course it’s precisely the things you are afraid of telling your sweetheart that will show him or her who you really are.
Here’s how to be emotionally brave: Whenever you’re having the slightly unsettled feeling that comes from not saying what’s on your mind, try asking yourself: What is it that I’m not saying? Usually the words are right in your mind like in one of those little cartoon balloons. Then ask yourself: Why am I not saying it right NOW? Maybe there’s a good reason—he just got fired from his job, the kids are both crying, you have to walk out the door in five minutes for a business meeting, your mother-in-law is on the phone. In such cases, you probably should hold your comments for later. But if there isn’t a good, practical reason for not speaking NOW, just open your mouth and spit out the words that are dying to get out. You’ll feel better—and your relationship will also get better as it holds more of the truth of who you and your sweetheart really are.
Reveal What Makes You Feel Loved
Kirsten fell in love with Tommy because on the first date he showed up at her house wearing a red and black checked flannel shirt, carrying two bottles of German beer, a box of crackers and a wedge of limburger cheese. “It was great,” she said, “he believed me when I told him I loved limburger cheese.”
Her best friend Phyllis wasn’t impressed. “If somebody showed up to court me with limburger cheese,” she said, “I might not be insulted but I certainly wouldn’t be happy. Give me a bouquet of pink carnations any day.”
As the difference between Kristen and Phyllis demonstrate, love doesn’t have its effect if it doesn’t come in the form we need, no matter how much the person who loves us is trying. And all too many of us are sitting around waiting for, or worse yet expecting, that our darlings will automatically know precisely what makes us feel loved, and exactly when, where, how, and in what form to deliver it to us.
The message here is what I call The Limburger Cheese Theory of Love. It states that if limburger cheese is what makes you feel loved, then you’d better tell your mate to give you limburger cheese. It means quite simply that everybody has his or her own particular ordinary (or extraordinary) preferences, and that nobody’s going to make you feel loved if you don’t tell him or her exactly what your preferences are.
Whether we know it or not we all have a secret laundry list of what makes us feel loved: his carrying your photo in his wallet; her scratching the back of your head; his cooking dinner for you; her wearing your favorite blue tee shirt to the gym. What’s on your list? Think about it, write it down, and share it with your partner.
Of course you’ll never be loved exactly, entirely, always, or precisely in the ways you want. But give your sweetheart a chance to make you feel as loved as possible by telling or showing him or her exactly the items on your list.
Although people often say to me, “If I have to tell him or her, then it doesn’t count,” the truth is that nobody can guess the myriad little do-dahs on your particular list. Love laundry lists are as different as our noses, and if you wait for the other person to figure what makes you feel loved, you could live your whole life without getting what you want. Getting the things on your list really does make you feel loved, even if you have to nail the list up on the bathroom wall or publish it in the Sunday Times.
So give your sweetheart a chance to really love you. Make your love laundry list.
True Love: How to Make Your Relationship Sweeter, Deeper, and More Passionate is available from Amazon and Bookshop.