Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman

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:

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 [email protected] 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.

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Your relationship is going well. The bills are paid. Good sex is there. The laughter comes easily.

You love your partner.

You’re building a life together that looks good on paper.

And often feels good in real life, too.

But every so often, a quiet ache shows up.

A wish for more adventure.

More affection.

More of something you can’t quite name.

Maybe you’re the one who wants spontaneous weekend plans.

They’d rather curl up with a book.

Maybe you’re reaching for more touch, more depth, more play.

They seem perfectly content.

And then the question slips in.

Soft but relentless.

Did I choose wrong?

Am I asking too much?

Or am I settling for too little?

I’ve sat with that question more times than I can count.

And I’ve learned that it rarely means what people think it means.

If you’ve ever loved someone deeply and still felt a little alone in the life you’re building together, this episode is for you.

In this Language of Love Bite, I share a framework I use with clients that completely reframes what’s "missing" in a relationship, and it has almost nothing to do with your partner's shortcomings. It has everything to do with something modern life has quietly stolen from all of us.

Because somewhere along the way, we stopped leaning on friends, community, and connection outside our relationship, and started expecting one person to be all of it. Our best friend. Our therapist. Our adventure buddy. Our spiritual guide. Our everything.

No relationship was ever built to carry that much weight alone.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why “am I asking too much?” is often the wrong question

The hidden pressure we put on one person to be our everything

How to tell the difference between a relationship problem and a life problem

What your quiet frustration might be trying to tell you

The one question I ask that can turn resentment into clarity

How to protect what matters most in your partnership while building a life that feels full again

If this hits home, follow The Language of Love wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

If someone came to mind while you were listening, share this episode with them.

You can also email me at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at languageoflovepod.com to have your question answered in a future session.

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Something is happening to our children, and most of us are not paying close enough attention.

The algorithm is reaching them. Predators are reaching them. Drugs are reaching them through the phones we thought were keeping them connected and safe. And for many parents, the first time they realize what is happening is when it is already too late.

If you are a regular listener, you probably know how my son Sammy died. He bought a counterfeit pill laced with fentanyl from a dealer he met on Snapchat. I thought I had done everything I could to keep my home safe. I never imagined that a drug dealer could reach my son through his phone.

But that is the reality parents are facing now.

You may be doing everything you can. Monitoring social media. Limiting screen time. Talking to your kids about strangers, drugs, and online safety. But what happens when the algorithm is reaching them anyway? And what happens when it is reaching their friends, the kids they sit beside at school, play sports with, or spend the night with?

We cannot monitor every conversation. We cannot see every screen. And while all of this is happening, many of us parents are distracted too. We are busy. We are exhausted. We are scrolling.

So how do we raise conscious, grounded daughters and sons in a culture that is constantly competing for their attention?

Dr. Shefali Tsabary joins us  on The Language of Love, and this conversation goes straight into the heart of that question.

Dr. Shefali is a clinical psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, and founder of the Conscious Parenting Movement. For decades, she has challenged parents to look at themselves before trying to fix their children. Now, she is taking on two of the biggest conversations in parenting today: what is happening to our girls, and what is happening to our boys.

Her response came in the form of two books, released at the same time and written in just five and a half months because she believes the moment demands urgency.

In this episode, Dr. Shefali explains why the algorithm targets children differently based on sex, and why it is so effective. We talk about why simply banning social media can give parents a false sense of security, why taking a teenager's phone away overnight can backfire, and what parents can do instead.

Her answer comes down to something that sounds simple, but is incredibly hard to practice: connection.

Real connection. The kind that requires us to put our own phones down, pay attention, and actually be present with our kids.

And then the conversation takes us somewhere many parenting discussions avoid.

We talk about the impossible messages we are sending our boys. Be strong, but do not be domineering. Be vulnerable, but do not appear weak. Be confident, but never intimidating.

Dr. Shefali explains why shaming boys does not teach them to become safer men. It can teach them to hide the very parts of themselves they need to understand.

We also talk about masculinity and femininity, and what it could look like to celebrate these qualities without turning them into rigid boxes. There is room for strength and softness, confidence and vulnerability, masculinity and femininity, and for the many ways those qualities can show up in our children.

This is a conversation about parenting, technology, identity, connection, and the kind of world we are creating for our kids.

And it starts with a question we all need to ask ourselves: Are we really paying attention?

In this episode, we talk about:

If Dr. Shefali’s work resonates with you, you can learn more about her, her two new books, Raising Conscious Daughters and Raising Conscious Sons, and the Conscious Parenting Movement at her website.

Her website also offers resources and tools for parents who want to go deeper, including guidance on conscious parenting, connection, and raising emotionally healthy kids. Whether you have daughters, sons, or both, her work meets you where you are and helps you begin with the most important relationship of all: the one you have with yourself.

For more resources, tools, and upcoming events, visit my website.

And if something from this conversation stays with you, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected].

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You know that feeling when something inside you says, Don’t do this. Get out. Something’s wrong.

Sometimes that feeling is your intuition picking up on something before your conscious mind has caught up. But sometimes it’s anxiety. An old wound gets activated, your nervous system goes on high alert, and suddenly everything in you is saying danger even when you’re not actually in danger.

So how do you tell the difference?

A listener named Angel wrote in with this question, and it’s such an important one because once you’ve been hurt, especially in relationships, trusting your gut can get complicated. Maybe there have been times when your instincts were absolutely right. And there may have been other times when fear convinced you something terrible was happening when it wasn’t.

In this Language of Love Session, I talk about how I distinguish intuition from anxiety and, more importantly, what to do when you genuinely can’t tell which one you’re feeling.

One of the biggest clues is how the message arrives. Anxiety tends to be loud, repetitive and urgent. It wants an answer right now. Intuition is usually quieter and clearer. But when your nervous system is activated, even intuition can get tangled up with fear, which is why I don’t recommend making an important decision from that state.

I walk you through a few simple somatic practices to settle the fear enough that you can listen to what’s underneath it. I also show you how to begin learning your body’s own language of expansion and contraction, including a surprisingly easy exercise you can practice with something as simple as foods you love and foods you hate.

In this episode, I talk about:

If you’ve ever thought, I know something feels wrong, but I don’t know if I should trust that feeling, this episode will give you a way to slow things down and get clearer about what your body is actually telling you.

If you'd like to ask a question or get some advice, email me at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at drlauraberman.com to have your own question answered in a future session. And if you want to go even deeper into somatic work and regulating your nervous system, check out my book, Crying Out Loud, where I dive into even more techniques to help you come back to your body and trust yourself again.

Because you deserve to trust the voice inside you, but first, you have to learn which one is actually yours.

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Butterflies or Red Flags: How to Tell the Difference with Laura Berman

You meet someone and the chemistry is immediate. You can’t stop thinking about them. You’re checking your phone, rereading texts, analyzing what they said, and wondering when you’ll hear from them again.

It feels exciting. Maybe even a little intoxicating.

But is that chemistry? Or is your nervous system getting activated by something that feels very familiar?

In this Language of Love Bite, I’m talking about one of the easiest mistakes to make in dating: assuming that the intensity we feel around someone tells us something about how right they are for us.

Sometimes butterflies really are excitement and attraction. But sometimes what feels like incredible chemistry is uncertainty, anxiety, or an old attachment pattern getting stirred up. And that may also explain why a kind, consistent, emotionally available person can initially feel a little... boring.

So how do you tell the difference?

I’ll show you how to pay attention to what happens after the date, not just during it. Do you leave feeling grounded, open, and more like yourself? Or do you leave preoccupied, anxious, and trying to figure out where you stand?

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Chemistry matters. Attraction matters. But neither one can tell you whether someone is capable of building the kind of relationship you actually want.

And sometimes the person who doesn’t send your nervous system on a roller coaster deserves a second look.

If this conversation resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at languageoflovepod.com.

Like to learn more about how to call healthy love into your life and be a match for it, check out my book Quantum Love

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What happens when you finally have the life you worked so hard for and you realize you’re not okay?

My guest Koya Webb knows this contradiction intimately. Koya is a globally recognized wellness leader, bestselling author, speaker and founder of Get Loved Up, whose work has helped people around the world build healthier, more connected lives. She’s spent years teaching yoga, meditation, movement and holistic wellbeing, working with major brands and bringing these practices to audiences around the world.

She had built a successful career doing work she loved. She was traveling, teaching and helping thousands of other people take better care of themselves.

From the outside, her life looked like it was working.

Behind the scenes, she was losing herself.

At one point, Koya was literally putting vodka in her green juice.

That image says so much about what we talk about in this episode. You can exercise, meditate, eat well and know all the “right” things to do and still use achievement, busyness and even wellness itself to avoid what’s happening inside you.

Koya shares what was really going on during that period of her life and the moment she had to admit that the way she was living wasn’t sustainable. Her book, Wellbeing Rituals, grew in part from what she learned: there’s a difference between doing things that look like self-care and actually knowing how to care for yourself.

And sometimes that means disappointing people.

We talk about people-pleasing and what happens when being loving, helpful and dependable slowly turns into ignoring your own needs. Koya opens up about learning to say no and what happened when people who were accustomed to getting a yes from her didn’t like it.

We also get into grief, emotional honesty and why some of the feelings we’re quickest to push away may be trying to tell us something important. Koya shares the rituals she uses to reconnect with herself, and I share some of mine too, including one that leads us into a pretty unexpected conversation about our bodies and what changes when we stop constantly trying to manage or fix them.

In this episode, we talk about:

If your life looks good on paper but something inside you still doesn’t feel right, I really want you to hear this conversation.

You don’t have to wait until your life falls apart to pay attention to that feeling. And having a lot to be grateful for doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to admit that something is missing, hurting or needs to change.

Sometimes we get so busy building the life we think will make us happy that we forget to stop and ask ourselves:

Am I actually happy living it?

Connect with Koya on her website and Instagram, explore her Wellbeing Rituals tour, and check out Wellbeing Rituals: Science-Backed Practices for Sustainable Healing and Living to go deeper into the practices we discuss.

If you’d like to ask a question or get some advice, email [email protected] or leave a voicemail at languageoflovepod.com to have your own question answered in a future session.

And if grief or loss is part of your story, come find me on my other podcast, Crying Out Loud. I talk with leading experts, healers and people who have lived through profound loss about what grief does to our brains, bodies, relationships and sense of self, and what actually helps us find our way through it. You can find Crying Out Loud wherever you’re listening to The Language of Love.

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What do you do when your partner keeps telling you they love you and want the relationship to work… but you’re the only one actually doing anything to make it better?

You’re the one bringing up what isn’t working. You suggest therapy. You initiate the hard conversations. You try to repair after a fight. You read the books, listen to the podcasts, work on yourself and keep giving them another chance.

And they say they hear you. They may even agree with you.

But then nothing really changes.

That’s the situation Sarah brings to me in this episode, and it raises a question I hear all the time in my practice: How long are you supposed to keep trying when someone says they want the relationship, but their actions tell a different story?

Because love does matter. But love alone doesn’t make a relationship work. At some point, your partner has to be willing to help create the relationship they say they want.

We talk about how to tell the difference between someone who genuinely wants to grow but is struggling, and someone who has gotten comfortable letting you carry the emotional weight of the relationship.

And then there’s the harder question: If you already know this isn’t enough for you, what are you actually afraid will happen if you leave?

For a lot of people, that’s where things get really interesting. We stay because we’ve invested years. Because we’re afraid of starting over. Because we hear a clock ticking. Because some part of us believes an unsatisfying relationship is still safer than the possibility of having no relationship at all.

If you’ve been carrying your relationship and wondering how much longer you’re supposed to keep trying, I want you to hear this:

You don’t have to decide today whether you’re leaving forever.

But you do have to stop confusing someone’s intention to change with actual change.

At some point, you have to pay attention to what they’re doing, not just what they keep promising you they’re going to do.

If you’d like to ask a question or get some advice [email protected] or leave a voicemail at languageoflovepod.com to have your own question answered in a future session. And if you want to go even deeper, check out Codependent No More by Melody Beattie, because you deserve a love that shows up, not one that just talks a big game.

And if grief or loss is part of your story, come find me on my other podcast, Crying Out Loud. I talk with leading experts, healers and people who have lived through profound loss about what grief does to our brains, bodies, relationships and sense of self, and what actually helps us find our way through it. You can find Crying Out Loud wherever you’re listening to The Language of Love.

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There’s a subtle moment in dating when everything can start to change.

At first, you’re paying attention to them. Do I like this person? Do I feel good around them? Are they kind? Interesting? Emotionally available? Do I want to see them again?

Then you start to really like them, and suddenly the focus flips.

Do they like me?

Now you’re checking your phone. Analyzing texts. Wondering why they took three hours to respond. Replaying the date and looking for clues. And without even realizing it, you’ve stopped deciding whether you want them and started trying to figure out how to make sure they want you.

That shift matters.

Because once being chosen becomes the goal, it’s incredibly easy to abandon your own experience. You can overlook how anxious you feel around someone, make excuses for behavior you don’t actually like, or become so focused on whether you’re enough for them that you forget to ask whether they’re enough for you.

And this doesn’t only happen while we’re dating. It’s one of the reasons rejection and breakups can hurt so much. Sometimes we’re grieving the person. But sometimes we’re also grieving the fact that they didn’t choose us, and those are two very different wounds.

In this Language of Love Bite, I’m talking about why we can become so consumed with being wanted, what attachment and old relationship wounds have to do with it, and the question I often ask people after a breakup that can completely change the way they see what they’ve lost.

Because yes, you deserve to be chosen.

But you’re doing some choosing, too.

Whether you have experienced dating anxiety yourself or love someone who has, this episode will help you understand what is really happening beneath the surface and offer practical, compassionate tools to move forward with confidence.

If this hits home, follow The Language of Love wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. If someone came to mind while you were listening, make sure to share this episode with them. You can also email me at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at languageoflovepod.com to have your own question answered in a future session.

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What if some of what you’ve been told about your sexual body, especially as you get older, is wrong?

For decades, women have gone to doctors with questions about disappearing desire, painful sex, orgasm, hormones, and changes they barely recognize in their own bodies. And too often, they’ve left without real answers.

Part of the problem is startling: many of their doctors were never adequately trained in female sexual health either.

My guest on this episode of Language of Love, Dr. Maria Sophocles, is a board-certified gynecologist, menopause specialist, sexual medicine expert, TED speaker, and author of The Bedroom Gap. She has spent more than 30 years caring for women and challenging a medical system that has historically treated female pleasure as an afterthought.

And there is a LOT we need to talk about.

Maria takes us inside the medical blind spots that have shaped women’s sex lives for generations, from the anatomy lessons that barely acknowledged the clitoris to the flawed hormone study that frightened millions of women away from treatment. We talk about why Viagra may have inadvertently widened the “bedroom gap,” what women should understand about testosterone, and why painful sex and loss of desire should never simply be dismissed as the price of getting older.

We also get into something I wish more women heard: your sexual life does not come with an expiration date.

Maria shares why some women are having the best sex of their lives in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, and tells the remarkable story of an 82-year-old patient who finally revealed a desire she had kept secret for six decades.

If you’ve ever wondered, What happened to my desire? Why does sex feel different now? Is this just aging? Why didn’t my doctor tell me any of this? This conversation is for you.

This conversation is a reminder that women deserve more than being told to tolerate the changes in their bodies. We deserve information, options, pleasure, and the freedom to keep discovering our sexuality at every age.

To learn more about Dr. Sophocles and her work, visit her website and pick up a copy of The Bedroom Gap. She's also available on Audible, and she recommends buying an extra copy, one for yourself, and one for your doctor.

If something in this conversation sparked something in you, don't stop here. My website offers more content, tools, and upcoming events to keep the conversation alive.

And if a reflection comes up, or you simply want to reach out, I'd love to hear from you. Find me at [email protected].

This episode is for anyone who's ever wondered if it's too late to rediscover themselves and discovered the answer is no.

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Few discoveries can shake your confidence quite like finding out your partner watches pornography.

Suddenly, it's easy to wonder if you're enough. You start comparing yourself to people on a screen, questioning your body, your desirability, and even your relationship. Even if your partner insists it has nothing to do with you, the hurt can feel very real.

But what if the greatest threat to your relationship isn't pornography itself? What if it's the story your mind begins telling you the moment you discover it?

In this Language of Love Session, I answer a question from Priya, who recently learned that her partner watches porn and doesn't know what to do next. She doesn't want to control his behavior, but she also can't ignore the insecurity, resentment, and self-doubt that have crept into their relationship and into their sex life.

Together, we'll explore why our brains are so quick to compare ourselves to impossible standards, what pornography does and doesn't necessarily mean in a relationship, and how to rebuild your sense of confidence regardless of your partner's choices. We'll also talk about when porn is relatively benign, when it may signal a larger issue, and how to have an honest conversation without shame, blame, or ultimatums.

If this episode brings up a question of your own, email me at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at languageoflovepod.com. Your question could be featured in a future episode.

And if you're ready to stop second-guessing yourself and start building a more secure, connected relationship, check out my book Sex Magic, take a look at Quantum Love, as well as my Quantum Sex Course available on my website. It's designed to help you break free from old patterns, strengthen intimacy, and create the kind of connection that doesn't depend on comparison or self-doubt.

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