106. Love Me Better: Why Wanting More Feels Risky

Why does wanting more love feel so risky, even when connection is the thing you want most?

In this episode of Speak Honest, I explore what happens inside us when desire, asking, and receiving love start to feel loaded, especially around Valentine’s Day. We slow things down and look at why love doesn’t always land, even when it’s offered, and what begins to shift when you stop overriding yourself in the process of staying connected.

You might want to listen if:

• You want deeper connection but feel guilty or selfish for wanting more
• You often shrink, over-explain, or apologize when you try to ask for what you need
• You’re good at giving love but struggle to fully receive it
• Love shows up, but it doesn’t always land or feel nourishing
• You’re tired of abandoning yourself just to keep the peace in relationships

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DISCLAIMER:  Speak Honest podcast content is informational, not professional or medical advice. Jenn is an ICF relationship coach, not a licensed therapist. Consult health professionals for specific concerns. Client opinions do not reflect Speak Honest’s stance. We aim for accuracy but are not liable for errors or outcomes from this information. 

Transcript

Redefining Love Before Valentine’s Day

Invitation To Speak Honest Academy

Awareness Over Fixing

The Weight Of Valentine’s Expectations

It’s Not About Saying It Better

Academy Offer And Community Support

Why Wanting Love Feels Loaded

Step One: Stay With Your Wants

Interruption Vs Discernment

Step Two: Ask With Clarity

Protective Communication Blurs The Message

Regulate And Make Clear Asks

Step Three: Learn To Receive

Let Effort Count And Feel Safe

Putting The Three Steps Together

Final Invitation And Support

Reviews, Sharing, And Closing Reflection

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, and welcome to Speak Honest. I am your host and certified relationship coach, Jennifer Noble. It has been my passion for over a decade to help women like you heal. What's been holding you back from having the relationships you deserve? Are you struggling with a relationship where you can't seem to voice your emotions, needs, and boundaries without having it blow up in your face? Then you have found the right podcast, my friend. Get ready for practical tips, empowering truths, and honest conversations. Now, let's dive in. Hello, ladies, and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest. I am Jen Noble, your go-to relationship coach and author of Dance of Attachment. And today, we are gonna be talking about love because Valentine's Day is coming up, so why not? But I don't want to talk about the romanticized version of love and not the hustle for it type of love, but the kind of love that actually feels safe to want, to ask for, and to receive. And today's episode is about why wanting love can feel so uncomfortable, why asking for it often comes from guilt or even over-explaining, and why even when love does show up for you, you don't always feel it. So if you've ever thought, why does this feel harder than it should, then this episode is for you. But before we go any further, I want to invite you to stay connected beyond this episode. If this conversation resonates with you, you'll love the work that we do inside of the Speak Honest Academy. It's where we slow down, we regulate what's happening in our bodies, and we learn how to relate to love without abandoning yourself in the process. Now you can learn more about how to join the Speak Honest Academy over at SpeakHonestacademy.com, or you can scroll on down to the show notes and click there. I just want you to know there's no pressure, you never have to join us. You're always welcome to be a part of our community. This is just a place to land when you see that you need support. Now, as you're listening today, I don't want you to fix anything just yet. I just want you to notice. Notice where you've learned to talk yourself out of wanting more. Notice where you lessen yourself or apologize or minimize who you are and what you need. Notice where love shows up, but you stay braced instead of letting it in. There's nothing you need to do with this yet. Let's just have some awareness. Now let's dive in. Hello, ladies, and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest. I am Jen Noble, your go-to relationship coach and author of Dance of Attachment, and today I want to talk about love. Because Valentine's Day is coming up in just a couple of days. And while I know this holiday can feel sweet and exciting for some people, I also know that for a lot of women it carries a much heavier weight. It can bring up a lot of pressure and comparison, old disappointments. That quiet question of why does this still feel hard for me? Maybe you're in a relationship and feeling like you should be happier than you actually are. Maybe you're single and you're bracing yourself for another year of disappointment. Or maybe you have a partnership, but you're feeling unseen in ways that you can't quite put words to. And what I see so often around this time of year is women turning inward and asking themselves, what's wrong with me? Why can't I just be easier to love? So today's episode isn't about saying the right thing or communicating better or fixing anything about your partner. It's about something deeper. Because this isn't about saying it better. It's about feeling safe enough to say it at all. And this episode is for the women who want deeper connection but feel like wanting more somehow comes with guilt. For the women who know how to be understanding and patient and flexible, but struggle to let themselves actually want what they want without immediately talking themselves out of it. So today we're going to slow this way down. Now, before we get started, I do want to remind you that if you are following along on today's episode and you're nodding your head and you're getting so much out of it, and you love the way that I explain things and you really resonate with so many of the women's stories here, that I want to invite you to come and join us inside of the Speak Honest Academy. That is the safe container that I hold for women in our community to be able to explore these feelings in real time. We go through twice weekly group coaching. There are courses for you to go through, as well as a community of women who understand your lived experience. Now, if that sounds like something you want to do, go ahead and head over to speakhonestacademy.com or scroll on down to the show notes and click on the link there. But what I want to make sure you really understand is that today, during this episode, we are going to talk about why wanting, asking for, and receiving love can feel so loaded. Why love doesn't always land and even when it's offered, it can be hard to feel. And what shifts when you stop abandoning yourself in the process of trying to stay connected. Now remember, this isn't a how to episode. It's a come home to yourself episode. So take a breath and settle in, and let this be a space where nothing needs to be fixed. Now let's dive in. So let's talk about the first step to learning how to feel more loved in your relationships. This step is about letting yourself want what you want and staying with that long enough to actually understand what that means. See, most women, they don't struggle because they don't know what they want. They struggle because the moment that desire, that need, that want shows up, all of a sudden they're overriding themselves. Something real comes online, but instead of getting curious and actually wanting it, they immediately start to correct it. Now what does this actually look like? Maybe it looks like, hey, you notice you want more reassurance in your relationship, but you tell yourself it's not a big deal, you know, just be grateful for what you have. Ugh, right? Or maybe you're sitting there and you're like, you know what, for Valentine's Day this year, I just I really want more connection. But then you decide, you know what, I don't want to make a big deal out of this. I already get enough. Or maybe what you really want is just more consistency overall in your relationship, but then you convince yourself, oh, I just need to be more patient. Here's the thing, okay? This isn't discernment yet. It's interruption. See, discernment comes after you understand what you want, not before. But so many women that I coach skip that step entirely. They move straight from desire to self-management. And in doing so, they lose the information the desire was trying to give them in the first place. See, a want is a signal. It's not a command and it's not a flaw. It's just something that's showcasing to us this is what we want. Think about it like physical pain. See, if something hurts and your first response is to tell yourself it shouldn't, you don't get stronger. You just disconnect from what your body is actually trying to tell you. Desire works the exact same way. When women don't let themselves stay with their wants, something pretty predictable starts to happen. They don't feel more grounded, they feel quieter, more distant, less connected, less themselves, less alive in their relationships, not because they want too much, but because they never gave themselves permission to understand what they wanted in the first place. So this first step right here is that there is nothing you need to act on, no conversations you have to have and no decisions you have to make. This is simply about internally looking inward and saying, something in me wants more here, and I'm going to stay curious instead of correcting myself. That's where feeling more loved actually begins. Now, once you let yourself understand what you want, the next step is learning how to ask for it with clarity. And this is where a lot of women get stuck. We talk about this a lot inside of the Speak Honest Academy about, well, how do I actually know what I want, Jen? And, you know, how am I supposed to ask for this? Now, here's where we get into it, okay? This is happening not because they don't know how to communicate, but because asking feels too scary. For so many women, asking has been associated with really bad feelings like tension, disappointment, rejection, being seen as too much, maybe being seen as too critical. So instead of asking directly, they shrink, they overexplain, they manage the other person's reaction before it even happens. And you might recognize this in yourself as well. You bring something up carefully, you add context, and then you apologize before you even finish the sentence, or you say, Oh, never mind, it's not a big deal. I see this a lot in my clients. They'll say, Hey, maybe if you have time, but it's not a big deal, but maybe like if you're able to actually take me out on a date, that would feel really nice, but not if you're busy. Do you hear that? This isn't about poor communication, though. This is about protective communication. But here's what happens when asking gets wrapped up in apology or over-explaining. The message gets blurred. It doesn't make any sense anymore. The other person doesn't actually know what matters to you, and you're left feeling exposed and still unmet, and they're left feeling confused as hell. Clarity is not about being demanding, it's about being honest. Clear asking gives a relationship a real chance to respond. It takes the guesswork out of the dynamic that's happening. So it allows both people to see what's actually being requested instead of navigating passively around what's actually being implied. Think about it this way, okay? If you are trying to give someone directions, but you keep changing the route mid-sentence, they're not going to know where they're going. Imagine if you're like, well, I mean, you could take a left if you want to, but maybe you actually want to take a right, but you look like you want to take a left, so go ahead and take a left. What? What are we doing? That doesn't mean that the destination is wrong. It just means that the directions weren't clear. And so we have to be more clear, more direct, and more efficient in our communication to get across what we need. See, asking with clarity starts internally. It comes from regulating enough to say what you mean without cushioning it or performing for approval. And just like the first step, this doesn't mean every ask should be honored. It means it should be expressed honestly. A clear ask sounds simple. Not perfect, not polished, just real. Try it out. Say something like, hey, I want to spend more time with you. I really want to spend Valentine's Day with you. Do you think you could cook me a meal for this Valentine's Day? I would really love flowers for Valentine's Day. Hey, I need more consistency in the relationship. What can we do together? You know, I really want to feel more connected to you. Can we just watch a movie tonight? See, when you ask with clarity, you're not forcing an outcome. You're creating an honest environment to bring up what you both need. And that's what makes connection possible. Now the third and final step is learning how to receive love when it actually shows up for you. And this is often the quietest and hardest part. A lot of women are very good at giving. Oh my God, so many of us are so good at giving. It's how we've been taught to live. We know how to show up, we know how to support, we know how to anticipate other people's needs, but receiving that can actually feel really weirdly uncomfortable. When care is offered, we will scan for what's missing, right? We will be waiting for the other shoe to drop. We notice the effort wasn't quite right, or the timing, it wasn't ideal, or it didn't come in the way that we imagined. So even when love is present, it doesn't fully register. I'll tell you a quick story about me that happened in my first marriage, which is I told him how much I loved flowers, and I really want him to bring me flowers. And he would try. But then he would bring me home like yellow roses, and I would get so angry that the roses were yellow. Like, right? Like, what was I even doing? I was saying I wanted flowers, but going back to point number two, I wasn't being clear apparently on what type of flowers, and I was setting him up for failure. He didn't know what kind of flowers that I wanted. He was getting me flowers, but they weren't good enough for me. Do you see what I'm doing there? Do you see why I'm pushing it away? And this doesn't happen because the love isn't real. It's because our nervous system is bracing for impact. When we're used to inconsistency or disappointment, our nervous system stays alert, looking for what might go wrong instead of letting what's right settle into our bodies. Receiving requires safety. And safety requires allowing yourself to be impacted in a vulnerable way. It's much scarier than you realize. So I want you to think about it like this if someone hands you a warm cup of tea and you keep holding it at arm's length, you're never going to feel the warmth. Not because the tea isn't hot, but because you never let yourself take the first sip. Letting love land doesn't mean lowering your standards or pretending everything is perfect or all right. It means just allowing the effort, the care, and the affection that he's giving you to count, even when it doesn't look exactly like you had hoped it to. All right, so I want you to think about that this Valentine's Day, when you're struggling to receive what he's giving you. I want you instead to look at what is there instead, right? Where is the love? Let's practice receiving the love that he's giving us. It's choosing to notice when the care is present. It's letting yourself feel it in your body instead of immediately evaluating it. And over time, this is what helps love feel steadier, not more intense. So when you put these three steps together, something shifts. Letting yourself want, it creates clarity. Asking clearly creates honesty. And then receiving openly creates nourishment. Love will start to feel different when you stop abandoning yourself in the process of trying to stay connected. You don't need to want less. All right, I really want you to hear that. You do not need to want less. Being needy does not mean having needs. And you don't need to explain yourself any better. You don't need to over-explain or try to get him to understand you. And listen, you don't need to brace for disappointment before it even happens, girl. I really want us to all cut that out. You just need to stay with yourself long enough to let love meet you where you are. And if this episode stirred something inside of you right now, you don't have to work through this alone. Remember, inside of the Speak Honest Academy is where we slow these patterns down. We build regulation together as a community, and we practice these shifts in real time with real live support. You get me in there every week, twice a week, actually. I am in there, in the trenches with you, working through this with you one on one. This isn't like other programs you might join where you are just a number in the program, where you just join and you never actually get to talk to the coach. She looks so far away, you know, she's on a Zoom call, but there's hundreds of people before you and you never get your question asked. In the Speak Honest Academy, you get your question answered. I am here for you, okay? And that's what I want you to know. So if you want to learn more, I want you to go to speakhonestacademy.com, scroll on down to the show notes, click on the link right there. And if this episode did help you out in any way, please go ahead and follow the podcast, leave a review, and share it with a friend who might need this right now. Maybe you have someone who's quietly wondering why love still feels so hard, and she might need to hear this. So it would be such an honor if you passed this along to her. All right, everyone, I will speak with you all next week. I hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day. Take care. As we wrap up today's conversation, always remember that healing is a journey, not a destination. And it is an honor to be a part of your healing journey. If you want to dig deeper into the topics we covered today, be sure to head over to our show notes where you can find all of the valuable information mentioned in today's episode right there. And please remember to rate, review, and subscribe if you enjoyed today's podcast. Your feedback means the world to us and helps others discover our podcast. Until next time, remember to speak up and speak honest.