Oh, come here to me. Let’s talk about this.
First thing I want you to know is that being afraid to express your feelings to your partner is one of the most human things I hear in my office. You are not broken. You are not weak. And I am absolutely not going to pathologize you for it.
Here is what I think is actually happening. Somewhere along the way, probably long before this relationship, you learned that having feelings and expressing them was dangerous. Maybe when you were little and you reached toward someone with your needs, they got mad. Or they disappeared. Or they just weren’t there. And so your nervous system did the most intelligent thing it could do. It said, “Okay. Having needs, showing feelings, asking for things, that makes me bad. Or unsafe. Or alone.” And it hardwired that in.
So now you walk into your relationship with this invisible filter over your eyes. Everything you see is tinted by that old lesson. Even if your partner is the kindest, most available person on the planet, part of you is absolutely convinced they cannot hold what you are carrying. That if you show them what is really going on inside you, something bad will happen.
And here is the thing I really want you to sit with. That part of you that is scared? That is not a flaw. That is a little one inside you who did not get what they needed, and who has been protecting you ever since. I have so much tenderness for that part of you. I will not hear you call it weak or pathetic or codependent or any other label that makes it the villain of your story.
What I would want to do with you, if you were sitting across from me right now, is help you get close to how sad that actually is. Not to wallow in it, but to feel it properly, maybe for the first time. Because here is the thing, the path to expressing your feelings to your partner does not start with courage exactly. It starts with grief. Grieving that there was a little you who needed to be felt and heard and just was not. And from that place, something shifts. From that place, asking starts to feel less like a threat and more like something you actually deserve.
The goal is not to become someone who just blurts out every feeling without a care. We are talking about something much smaller and much braver than that. We are talking about 25% more openness. One moment where you let your partner see a little of what is actually happening inside you. And you give them the chance to show up.
Because the relationship can only go as deep as you are willing to be seen. And right now, your partner is being held at arm’s length, not because you do not love them, but because love has felt like a place where you get hurt.
You deserve to find out if it can be different this time. That is the whole epic task of this. And you are already asking the right questions.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
