Instructions: Just click on the icon in the box to activate the audio, text, or video segment. Not all questions will contain all three elements. Most sections will contain an audio segment which can be heard via Real Audio Player.

Back to Index

Help with Real Audio

BART: Or bought an outfit of Victoria's Secret and dance to me, it's something visual.

GUEST: Right.

BART: Now, understand that we can be all three. We all are like all three.

GUEST: And everybody has a primary one, especially when it comes to love.

BART: Especially with love there is a strategy. And I don't know if it would occur when you were five. I've got a little secret for those ladies, assuming that they meet me at a seminar some day. But my Mom used to walk up behind me and stroke my hair very, very lightly. And very few of my girlfriends ever did that. But the few that did, I noticed that, man, I just kept a smile on my face. It wasn't sexual; it was just tender. And I remember that and then I saw my mom once recently and she did that, and I go, oh, my God, that's where it came from.

GUEST: That's what it is.

BART: Why do I like that while holding my hand doesn't that much for me or vice versa. And the reason is, it was anchored when I was very young. Therefore, for me, a light touch on the head is a kinesthetic anchor that makes me feel loved.

GUEST: So someone told you repeatedly that they loved you, they may not get the message across the way that a touch would fee.

BART: Well, you know, I hear it, and I appreciate it, but it doesn't give me as warm fuzzes like that simple stroke on the head does. And, again, it's not a choice. This is just how I end up being wired. But see I'm confident enough now to know this is how I'm wired, therefore, this is kind of what I want.

GUEST: So if I want to know how my partner knows that they loved, what I would want to ask is, can you remember a time when you were really loved, when you really knew you were loved?

BART: Yeah. Can you give me a time when you felt really loved?

GUEST: Yeah. What was it that made you realize that you were loved, okay? So then they'll say, well, it's because so and so told me that they really appreciated being with me or because the way that he held my hand, the way that she hugged me.

BART: People will not break it down. They'll say, yeah, I remember the day I got married I just felt really loved. And what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to begin to ask very specific questions. Say, what specifically happened the moment that he said I love you? And you have to break it down, because people just don't know and people don't think in these terms unless you ask them specifically.

GUEST: Yeah.

BART: So you say, well, let me ask you, how was he holding your hand? What did he whisper? What tonality did he use when he said "I love you" or "I do"? What was the situation? And as you break that apart, you realize that one part of it actually has more impact than the other part of it.

GUEST: Yes. And you're going to notice if it's visual... if it's something that they saw, "the moment I saw her, I just knew that she loved me," the way he look in her eyes; Or if it's something that is kinesthetic that "when we touched, that was it, I knew when I held her hand"; or, "it was the sound of her voice that let me know that I was okay that, you know, I'm in love. So it's going to be visual, auditory, or kinesthetic.

BART: And why is this important? The reason this is important is because somebody's love strategy is what it takes to make them feel fulfilled in a relationship. If you don't know their love strategy, and they don't know your love strategy, you just love them the way you want to be loved.

GUEST: That's right. So the husband says, "Well, why don't you think I love you?" "I tell you every day that I love you, how can you possibly say that I don't love you? I tell you all the time."

BART: Or how do you not feel that, and sometimes our negative behavior, our bitchiness, our crankiness is out of a feeling of not being loved if the husband is saying it every day.

GUEST: Right. And in her case, it's because you just don't touch me anymore, you don't hug me, you don't hold me. I need to be held, I told you that I loved you, but for her, she's got to be touched.

BART: There's a secret of why a lot of men and women don't have intimate relationships, or they're just really young for that, that fling, that we can fling. Because when we first date somebody new, we tend to, we touch, we tell, we feel, we explore every avenue, and we do all of it. But then we get lazy. Then we move in and two years later, guess what, if the work is important, the money is short, we have stress, and now we only do what comes natural, we're not doing all of it because we're trying to impress them anymore. See, when you're trying to impress somebody, you do everything.

GUEST: And then you're going to hit on one of their strategies.

BART: And they wonder why you don't treat them like you did when you first got engaged. Well, you can eliminate some of that stuff and make sure you're treating her the way that she wants to be loved and the way he needs to feel loved.

GUEST: How do I get a man to express his feelings of love for me?

BART: Well, that's a very, very good question, because there's many men... If you think of all the single complaints that women have against men. It's a lot of times men just aren't as expressive; they tend to pent up; they're not as vulnerable; they're not as intimate; and these are masculine qualities.

GUEST: And they don't express their feelings, they just don't know how to express their emotions.

BART: They don't know how to feel vulnerable. They feel maybe feminine. They just, you know, they don't want to be watching one of those chick movies. It just doesn't make them feel comfortable. So really the question is, how do I get a man to express love for me? Again, you should refer to the last section where you talk about love strategy because he may be expressing his love in his way; and you, as a woman, are not recognizing it, and he's not you say, by the way, you touch me all the time, but you never tell me, or vice versa, would you play this game for me for a week. Would you make it a point to call and tell me you love me once a day? I know you're doing it because I'm asking you, but I want to see if it makes me feel better. Most men in a relationship will say, sure, honey, I'll do what it takes. I mean it's not like a huge effort to put an extra hug or a kiss or a phone call.

GUEST: And in most cases the man just doesn't know that that's needed; and it's not because he's trying to be neglectful, he just doesn't know that that's what you need. So it's kind of a woman's job to maybe take care of that part of the relationship. And not always, you know, things can be in reverse. But generally the woman wants to have some way of expressing emotions from a man. So she needs to make it her job in order to make it happen. Now, one way that it could happen is like a couple who has been married for over 50 years said that every night before they went to bed they both wrote down five things that they loved about the other person, and they would talk about them. And the last thing that they did before they went to sleep is to do well on those positive reasons why they loved each other and it gave both of them a reason to communicate how and why they loved each other. So that's one way to do that.

BART: And the exercise is you commitment for every night or every Friday night before you got to bed and it's a great place to do it by the way, in the bedroom, because that's where you want all these positive.

GUEST: Positive, yeah.

BART: Okay, let's write down five things and share them each other. That gets us all focused in a very positive state.

GUEST: And in a relationship, it is somebody's job to do this, to really keep things focused, keep things growing, so it doesn't get stale. Another couple used an empty fish bowl that they had like in the kitchen. In a central location. Throughout the day they would put little notes in it, little questions they wanted to ask each other, or things that they would want the other person to do for them, little ideas. So then they had a ritual of a time. And I believe it was once a week when they would sit down and they would pull some of these things at random out of the fish bowl. And if it was one of my questions that I had written for you, it would say, tell me what you love about me the most. And those questions are hard to ask. But if we have them as a little, almost game, then it gives us an excuse. And it's actually practicing for a man or a woman to express those things that are often hard to express. Now, in there you could also have little sexual things that you want to know about, ideas or, you know, would you be willing to meet me in a bar as a stranger and pick me up on a date.

BART: Right.

GUEST: And, you could do those things and so you open the discussion.

BART: Well, here is the bottom line, if somebody really has to ask this question, how do I get my line-on-the-expressway feelings, then this relationship really has a little bit of a communication breakdown, and you're not communicating. And that's a huge and very common problem.

GUEST: Absolutely.

BART: For two people to be living in the same house, to be making love to each other, but never communicating. And any and all of our exercises pick up any book in the bookstore about communication, and they're all useful at some level if you're having dialogue.

GUEST: Yeah. And it's a matter of somebody taking the initiative to do it, because it's not going to happen magically. It is more comfortable to just let things get stale and kind of dwindle. It takes some effort, but it's worth it, because that's the thing that will keep the relationship strong.