ERP 053: How To Build Emotional Assertiveness In Relationship

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Welcome to the Empowered Relationship Podcast – helping you turn relationship challenges into opportunities and setting you up for relationship success.  Your host, Dr. Jessica Higgins, is a licensed psychologist and relationship coach, who shares valuable tips, tools, and resources for you to dramatically improve your relationship.

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Dr. Jessica Higgins:  Hi.  Thank you for joining me today.  As always, I am so grateful to share this time with you.

Before we get started, again I want to remind you that I have a special gift that I’m giving people.  In the theme of Valentine’s Day as well as to celebrate the anniversary of the Empowered Relationship Podcast, I have opened up 40 spots for strategy sessions for you to take advantage of getting some individualized attention from me to target specific areas in your relationship that you would like to improve and grow.

I’ve had a number of people already reached out to me.  I still have spaces yet, and part of the reason why I’m limiting it to 40 sessions is just again my schedule is limited in what I can offer – my individual time.  So this is a gift to you.  If you’d like to take advantage of it, I encourage you to reach out to me and please don’t worry, like if you’re concerned about getting in or if you’re contacting me and the amount of time, just reach out to me if you’re interested and I will do my best to fit everyone in.

Also, I just want to share with you, next Thursday is our first live Q&A.  The number that you can call in on is on my contact page, and you can see the live Q&A and it gives you the phone number to call and the participant code.  I look forward to answering your questions and offering laser coaching live.  How fun will that be?

To share with you a couple of responses that I got this last week, one from a listener:  “You really have a tremendous gift, Jessica.  The clarity of your messages are truly a gift to me.  Just want to say thank you.”

The second one is:  “Today, I’ve listened to your wonderful podcast on the subject that I had requested.”  So this is actually the listener that posed the question for last week’s episode, which was episode 52.  She writes, “You spoke to my heart.  I truly appreciate it, as well as taking the time and effort to do such a great podcast with backup material such as your research paper about attachment styles, which I look forward to reading.”

Thank you both so much.  I love hearing from listeners.  It just really helps me feel connected to you when I do this podcast.  I can think of you and feel you and have you in mind.  It’s a really nice way to get feedback.  I appreciate that.  Thank you.

Again, just one more plug, if you want to join me next Thursday noon, 12 p.m. Pacific Time, and that’s next Thursday.  Please find the phone number on my contact page.  There’s a number as well as a participant code.  Have your questions ready and I look forward to meeting you live on the call.

If you don’t have a chance to make this call, you can still submit questions to me and I will be reading those if I don’t have enough participants this first time around, so you will get your question answered.  It’s a great opportunity to get just a little spotlight on maybe some of your wonderings.  Again, I will post that next Friday, so if you miss it, you’ll have a chance to catch up to speed with that next Friday.

So again, in the theme of this celebration that I’m doing to celebrate the year anniversary of the Empowered Relationship Podcast as well as just Valentine’s Day, I thought it would be fun to do a series.  This is part 2 of a series where I am looking at the three number one biggest concerns that couples struggle with when they reach out to me.

This one’s a little bit of a twist because I really wanted to discuss how to get outside the power struggle.  This is more of that second-stage relationship where we see each other’s differences; it feels like a threat.  We struggle with each other and it feels really conflictual.

So if you’re wanting some more information about this and you’re on my newsletter, you’re going to get those in my newsletter this week.  If you’re not on my newsletter, I highly encourage you to sign up and you can do that by getting a free gift and I will put that on the show notes page.  Again, you can find my show notes page on my website which is drjessicahiggins.com, and click on PODCAST.  You can find the most recent episode there of the topic and this is episode 53, and you will get a free relationship guide by signing up for my newsletter.  So, again, you’re going to get a little more information around how to get outside of the power struggle.

But in order to answer your questions, I’m leaving you this question about emotional assertiveness.

So today’s podcast title is “How to Build Emotional Assertiveness in Relationship”.

This comes from a listener who would like to remain anonymous.  He writes:

“I know that walking on eggshells is a bad thing.  Because whether or not you are doing it, the issue will come up eventually, and if put off it will only be more dramatic later.  I’ve always been such an assertive person, but lately, with my girlfriend, I’ve not been emotionally assertive.  That frustrates my girlfriend and it makes me shame myself.  So a couple of things: I know that I need to not shame myself, and I don’t want to be emotionally unassertive, like I make too many assumptions about how she might react to something.”

He gives me an example about his power of going out and not communicating with her, sitting in the dark, with no internet, no lights, and just her feeling frustrated like, “Why don’t you let me know?”

So then he writes:

“Then I get caught in this terrible spiral.  I don’t want to burden her with my problems, so I’m walking on eggshells, and then when I finally do tell her, another issue has arisen because I am not good about being clear with her what I need and what I want.

I don’t know why I do this and I don’t want to do it.  And then I realize that in my fear of bothering her and in my head thinking she won’t want to be with me, I exacerbate the situation even more and it feeds into itself, which sucks.  My main question to you is – do you have any tips for how I can let my girlfriend know that I am assertive, emotionally and otherwise, and how I can stop myself from shaming myself for having needs?”

Well, listener, thank you so much for posing this question.  There’s so many things in here that I would like to address.  First of all is just how long have you guys been together and when you say lately, it makes me wonder what’s happened that has changed things for you – if you’ve been assertive in the past.  But if I’m reading this correctly, I’m imagining you guys have been together for a period of time.  Maybe you’re entering into this power struggle stage which typically happens around 18 months, maybe anywhere from like a year to three years.

So if you’re now approaching this phase where you’re negotiating some of these more sensitive dynamics, then it’s completely natural to feel tentative and to feel cautious and not know how to broach these topics or even these needs that you’re speaking of.

First of all, I just want to acknowledge your keen awareness around the opportunity that’s available to you, that this isn’t feeling good, that you’re not enjoying what’s getting created around your having a need or having something that is going on for you, that you’re having difficulty talking to your girlfriend about and what happens around that.  So just kudos to you for even articulating the question, being in the wondering, because I think this is where answers come.  The quality of the question is going to give you the type of answer and the solution that you’re looking for.

I have a couple of thoughts and then I have some tips to share with you.

When we are dating, particularly when I think about a stereotypical guy, there’s often in our Western/American culture the desire to be seen as strong – not needy.  So this concept of not wanting to burden your girlfriend perhaps might be coming from this place of wanting to be seen in a particular way.

Traditionally, I believe both men and women, regardless of your sexual orientation, have masculine and feminine aspects to themselves.  The masculine is much more of the provider, it’s much more of the doer, and it’s the strong, capable, self-sufficient, independent kind of energy – so not needing anything.  On the converse, the female is more of the receiving and more of the accepting and allowing and flow energy, if you will.

One of the things here that I think is happening is this sense of reciprocity.  Even in traditional gender-normed relationships, where the man is more of the provider, more of the creator in the world, and the woman – if we’re talking in a heterosexual relationship – is more of the nurturer or more of the home, domestic partner and is much more in the feminine qualities, there’s still a complementary quality that’s reciprocal.  They’re both contributing to a dynamic that’s working.

When we’re dating, I think in this very kind of open state that we’re at in our culture where there’s a lot of different relationship models, it can be a little unclear around how we’re creating the giving and the receiving – the reciprocity.  This even goes to who pays for the first date?  There’s still a lot of guys and a lot of women that like for the man to pay for the first date in the beginning, but not everybody is like that, right?  So there’s a lot of norms that are up in question.

If we’re talking about creating a lasting partnership and a type of relationship you’re wanting to create, I think that’s key to just contemplate first of all, but also I think the underlying principle here that I’m trying to get at is the sense of reciprocity, so that there’s a give and take.  I do believe in life, we can see this modeled in nature – even in our own bodies.  Just with the simple inhale and the exhale, we’re taking in and then we’re giving out, and it does this flow.

So in any relationship, you would want that type of flow.  Again, even in those traditional, gender-normed relationships, where the man is out in the world creating and providing for his family, there is still a sense of receiving.  The house is taken care of.  He is receiving meals.  He is receiving nurturing.  There’s a give and take.  It could be a great exercise to think about who do you want to be in a relationship.  So this is almost thinking about your future self.

If you think about the type of man you want to be in a relationship, are you strong?  Are you communicative?  There’s this concept of interdependence.  So this is where each person feels a sense of independence and strength individually, but they also feel comfortable relying on each other.  But again there’s a dance here of the reciprocity, so it’s not completely dependent or co-dependent.  It’s mutual dependency at times.  There’s give and take and there’s reciprocity.  You don’t want one person always giving and one person always taking.  You want a balance here.

I was looking at an article and it’s by Barton Goldsmith.  He was writing an article about interdependence, but it was close to July 4th, so he called it “Interdependence Day:  How to Create a Balanced Relationship” and he writes:  “The healthiest way we can interact with those close to us is by being truly interdependent.  This is where two people, both strong individuals, are involved with each other, but without sacrificing themselves or compromising their values.”

I would again that there’s the ability to give and receive reciprocally.  I have a family member.  He’s kind of a father figure to me and he’s successful in his life.  I just find him to be one of the most amazing individuals and just has such high character and is just a high-caliber person.  He’s pretty much taken care of.  He doesn’t need a lot, but it’s fine to watch him receive and it’s also really fun to watch him give because he is in a place in his life where it’s just for the sake of joy and expression.

If he’s receiving, it’s really being accepting of what someone has to give and how they’re giving it.  It’s more of a reflection of them.  And so being willing to graciously receive that as a gift and then as well as to be able to give from his heart and extend in ways that just really true to who he is and what he’s feeling.

I know that’s a little nondescript.  He was actually the person and his significant other my husband and I went to go visit in St. Bart’s for a week, and so that’s a huge gift.  Just the ways that I’m learning from him of this strong, very capable, masculine, but the ability to be in the joy of relationship, and then giving and receiving is truly beautiful.  I think the thing I’m wanting to say here is just a model of – in this scenario where this listener who is a man and being able to be in a giving and receiving – that’s just one thought that I have.  And so striving for it, if it’s congruent to you, to think about interdependence and what that looks like.

Another thought that I have here is how to feel worthy of receiving someone’s love and someone’s care.  I’m talking about for men stereotypically when it comes to emotions, so it would make sense that you are feeling this disconnect between being assertive in all these other areas of your life and then emotionally feeling unassertive.  This could feel very foreign – a territory that many men don’t really subscribe to wanting to be vulnerable emotionally.  That’s just very counter-intuitive to what a lot man had been taught or modeled.

If we’re going to talk about some of these relationship principles, I’m going to get into in a moment of tips around how to be clear about what you’re needing and what you’re wanting, and what your preferences are and to reveal those, especially if it feels like there’s desire which could feel needy or reliance.  That’s going to feel vulnerable.

So I will say though, how is your partner going to get to know you?  What’s uniquely you?  All of you – the softer parts, the more vulnerable parts.  If you’ve listened to any Bernie Brown’s work – I think she does a really great job to talk about the humanness of our vulnerability, our feeling not good enough, and our tendency to want to hide that and want to put the best foot forward and create a facade.

And I think when we’re dating – I have a client who is extremely wrapped up in what he looks like, what he is saying, doing the right thing, playing all his right cards.  I encourage him to look at, “Okay, there’s absolute truth in that.”  And if your long-term goal is to create a relationship that’s really true to you, like they’re getting to know you –because you want them to fall in love with you, not just the facade of you, or you’re playing all your cards right, like you want to give them the opportunity to really know what’s real for you so that they can love you.

If we’re going talk rejection and acceptance, if we’re revealing something that we’re not proud of, and then our loved one validates and acknowledges and leans into that, that’s healing.  That’s love.  That’s beautiful.  The kind of partnership that someone can love all parts of your being.

It does require doing some uncomfortable work in the interest of growth.  So if we’re going to look at this future possibility, it does require doing some difficult work around like, “Oh, I don’t know.  Is it okay to ask?  Do I feel worthy of it?” and all of these things that might feel really shaky.

But again, if we’re going to test the waters a little, and I think this is really what dating is all about – how does this person show up when you have a need?  Like allowing your partner to know you and even when things are not pretty.  How do they give to you?  How do they show up when you’re in need?  You want a partner that’s going to want to be there for you.  This is asking you to get out of the superman syndrome a little bit, like if you can be strong and play all your cards right – you get the logic there, right?  The likelihood of the relationship continuing seems more probable, right?  We don’t want to give anybody any reason to turn them off or for them to say no or reject us.  So that’s real.

I get the desire to want to be your best self, but again if we’re running the risk of hiding or avoiding or not being really true, then I think we’re taking ourselves out of the mix a little bit.  We’re taking ourselves out of the game, where we’re now again running the risk of the person is having a relationship with your facade rather than you.

Again, just one more note here about rejection, again I understand feeling afraid of getting rejected or being too much, needing too much, or wanting too much.  But again, if we can deal with that and face it, and speak from what’s real and half-wobbly knees , like not knowing how they’re going to respond and that feels like we’re out on a limb and on a ledge, but we’re doing our difficult work of being vulnerable.

It’s almost like – again, I don’t know if I have said this in my podcast, but with this particular client that I mentioned who is very preoccupied with playing all his cards correctly, I was inviting him to think about playing catch with a ball.  So when you’re dating, it’s nice to think about when you have the ball, you can say or do something, but then you want to pass the ball.  You want to allow them to catch the ball and allow them to do something and throw it back so that they’re contributing.

Again, this is another concept of the reciprocity, where you don’t want to feel responsible to do all the work and carry the relationship.  You want to have mutual participation and contribution because really what are you creating together?  This is a unique relationship of you and your significant other.  There’s no other way that that can get created.  There’s no other you and there’s no other your partner.  So the mix of what you create together is really unique, and if your partner is going to reject you or you’re afraid of being rejected, you don’t even pass the ball, it’s like you preemptively stopping the game because of the fear of being rejected.  But that’s really taking yourself out of the game completely.  So you’re almost rejecting yourself before they even have the possibility to reject you.

Again, I totally get it that I’m speaking these things and it’s so much easier for me to sit in front of my computer and my mic and talk about these principles.  Yet when we’re in it and we’re really feeling the risks of someone we cared deeply about, and the risk of having any love lost and how shaking, and nervous, and paralyzing that can feel at times – I get.

But again, if I can invite you to think about the longer-term goal.  You don’t want a relationship – you’re talking about eggshells.  You want to build a foundation that’s solid, that’s true, that’s real.  You don’t want to build a foundation on facade or eggshells.  You want to know that it’s okay, that it’s safe to bring up something that might not look so pretty at times, and that you’re creating a climate in your relationship where that’s okay, that’s safe to do.

I have four tips.  I’m giggling to myself because I think I can get a little carried away here.  [This is bringing it back in].

Tip #1 is just awareness which, my friend, I do feel like you are aware, so part of the next step for you – and this isn’t part of my tips; this is just part of awareness – is really just getting clear with yourself, and I think the next step for you could be just even identifying it for yourself.

Like, “I’m wanting to reach out to come spend a night at her house.”  Or “I feel bad that my powers out and I would love to just have comfort of electricity.”  Or “I want to reach out, but I’m afraid that she’s going to judge me.”

Why this is helpful to just bring awareness and get clear about what you’re feeling and about what you’re wanting is that it begins to take the sting out of it.  So if we’re trying to be someone different, or be stronger, or be less ourselves in this situation, we are disowning it, and it’s kind of just brewing and festering, and we’re not really accepting it.

So step 2 or Tip #2 is acceptance.  The encouragement here is when we are accepting – again we’re not trying to hide.  This is where the shame comes in.  We’re wanting to be different.  We’re not accepting what’s real.

I think the irony is so interesting at times in relationships.  If we’re worried about getting abandoned, sometimes the key work is how to not abandon ourselves.  Or if we’re worried about, in this scenario, our partner rejecting or not accepting us, sometimes the work is accepting ourselves.

So if we recognize and can ask questions around, “Okay, what if they were all good?  What if the situation isn’t necessarily a reflection of who I am?  It’s happening to me but it’s not me.  Despite this current circumstance, things are okay.  This is just part of what I’m going through at the moment.  It doesn’t define who I am.”

Again, I know this is difficult when we’re dating because it seems like everything is up for evaluation.  But again, if you can give yourself that self-acceptance, I think people take cues from us.  If you’re okay with it, then she’ll be like, “Oh, wow.  That sucks.  Too bad.  Come on over.”  If you’re like, “Oh, my gosh.  I don’t know what happened, this and that– hey, are you up for a visitor tonight?”

If you’re accepting of it yourself, she’s going to be that much more likely to just take your cue with it.  Like, “Yeah, this is not fine.  This is not ideal, but let’s roll with it.  This is kind of what happens in life.  Things don’t always go the way we planned.”

So again number one tip, awareness – so how you’re feeling, what you’re wanting, and just really acknowledging what’s true.

Number two, acceptance – so almost that unconditional regard of self-compassion, self-respect around like, “This is where I’m at.  This is real.”  “It might not be my preference, but it’s real, and I’m going to just acknowledge that and be with it.”

Tip #3 is being communicative, and I think this is what you were getting at, listener.  It is a possibility at some point in the relationship.  Obviously, I think it might be a little too much.  If it’s like date 3, to have a conversation like I’m going to suggest.  But if you’ve been in a relationship for a while and you’re noticing certain patterns, I think it’s a great idea to be proactive when things are calm, meaning there’s nothing up, like you’re not in the middle of a situation, or you’re not having to deal with it for a couple of days and trying to figure out how I’m going to talk about this.

But let’s say just everything is calm.  There’s no little rift and to just be in a reflective state and say, “Hey, I’ve noticed that I’ve had this pattern of when something happens for me, I’m not doing the best job of communicating with you.  While I’m assertive in all these other areas in my life, I realize I care about you so much and I’m wanting to not burden you, and I’m wanting to be independent and self-sufficient, and I just realize the side effect of that is not including you.  It’s not involving you.”

“I want to work towards a relationship that’s more interdependent.  I want us to open up our relationship for us to be able to talk about things we’re wanting or not wanting.  To have the dialogue around what’s working, what’s not working.”

This is giving you a language.  This is giving you the space to talk about what’s feeling hard and what’s feeling good.  This is a life-long skill that will help you thick and thin to have the ability to talk openly about these things.

So to broach the topic – this is more of like a meta-conversation where you’re talking about talking.  So this is talking about, “Let’s develop a system together.  Let’s develop a protocol together.  That if either one of us have something that’s going on, how do we want to bring that up with each other?”

I was just meeting with a couple and they’ve been negotiating getting a pet, one of them is not really that interested.  The other one is super interested.  I’ve been helping them develop a way to negotiate a win-win.  But within that conversation, we’ve established that they would like to have a monthly check-in – what’s going well, what’s not going well about having this pet.

Something that’s really great when it’s already planned is that neither one has to feel like they’re doing the difficult work of initiating the conversation because initiating it can feel really difficult at times.  But if you’re in the habit and you already have a way of talking about what’s working well and what needs tweaking, then there’s already a paradigm around.  This is really good work.  This is a great conversation.  It’s going to serve us to just further improve our relationship.  Essentially there is buying around this being a proactive step or something that’s beneficial in the relationship.

Again, I want to reiterate the important point here that I think this creates a climate of welcoming uncomfortable difficult topics, that it’s building a foundation – a safe container for lasting relationship.  Because if you’re already noticing a pattern of avoiding, I can tell you over time this is an even more difficult dynamic to overcome.  It’s like any habit.  The more established the habit is, the more difficult it is to overcome.  So the sooner you can start tweaking and adjusting it, the better off you’re going to be at longer term.  You’re creating safety in the relationship that you feel stronger because you can talk about some of these difficult topics.

It makes me think of what I did.  I had a whole career working with teenagers and I would lead these retreats.  I remember talking to a fellow.  They were a leader in a different capacity and I said, “It’s so fascinating to me.  I can tell how great the retreat is going to be just by the first few hours, and it’s all about creating the safe space that allows these kids to drop in to a deeper level of intimacy.”  So it’s getting the rules down.  How are we going to talk about, how are we going to deal with something if it comes up that’s hard?  How are we going to try to speak with honesty and respect?  So we’re creating the foundation for the whole weekend.

Or if you even think about teachers, like grade school teachers or even high school or middle school teachers, where they’ll tell you that, “If I don’t set the tone in the beginning first few weeks, it’s so hard to get the kids back on track.”  It’s like the teachers that want to be a little more strict on the front end, so they have the kids lined up and where the teacher has the respect of the kids, that it’s so much easier to run the classroom than it is to try to really work to get it back.

I’m sharing this example just to emphasize the sooner that you can address this – and I know it’s uncomfortable – but the sooner that you can just speak what’s real and start to open up the space in your relationship to talk about these things, like “Hey, are you interested in that?  Asking your significant other, your girlfriend, “Is is this something that you’re interested in, and if so, what’s a good way for us to do that?”  You can create that together.  But again, this is in the interest of your future relationship.  What kind of relationship are you wanting to build?

Does it have interdependence?  Is it honest?  This requires a level of investment.  It’s not just going to happen as a default.  Most of us don’t have these skills developed.  So our default is probably going to be more avoiding conflict and those type of things.

To summarize here again:  Tip #1 is awareness.  Tip #2 is acceptance.  Tip #3 is being communicative, and Tip #4 is act with your future relationship in mind.

So if you want to look up that article or look at the show notes, you can find all of these written up, as well as the transcript on my website which is drjessicahiggins.com and click on PODCAST, then you can find the most recent episode there at the top.  This is Episode 53, “How to Build Emotional Assertiveness in Your Relationship.”

If you have a question that you would like me to speak to or a topic in an upcoming podcast, you can reach me by email at [email protected], or on my website – click CONTACT, you can find all the ways to reach me there, and I would look forward to hearing from you.  I know that if you’re having a question, it will benefit many, many other people.

Thank you for listening and, again, if you can join me next Thursday at noon Pacific Time, I would love to meet you and hear your question and speak with you live.

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