Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / Is Physical Touch The Most Important Love Language?

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Is Physical Touch The Most Important Love Language? · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the dr.
• 0:08
  Psych mom show. So today I realized that I said
• 0:13
  in my description of this podcast, I said that one of my
• 0:17
  unpopular opinions includes a physical touch maybe the most
• 0:21
  important, love language but then I never even did a podcast
• 0:25
  on that even though I have done a post on it.
• 0:28
  But I wanted to talk about what physical touch, maybe in fact
• 0:32
  the most important love language according to me And so, you
• 0:38
  know, there are five love languages which everybody who
• 0:41
  listens to this, or who is a sentient noncom toast being in
• 0:45
  the world. Today knows, there are five love
• 0:47
  languages. They are gifts, which no one
• 0:50
  ever admits to liking but everybody not, everybody women
• 0:56
  women like gifts. I mean, like it's kind of
• 0:58
  socialized to, like gift flowers that kind of thing.
• 1:01
  Not every woman, but, you know not.
• 1:04
  Every man doesn't like It's like a lot of people like gifts, but
• 1:07
  most people don't say that's their number one quality time,
• 1:12
  which means hanging out with each other doing shit together.
• 1:16
  Active service, which always example is getting somebody's
• 1:19
  oil changed in their car. Of course that's like really
• 1:22
  infrequent. So it should be something like
• 1:25
  cooking dinner, which happens all the time, you know, but
• 1:28
  anything like that, then there's physical touch and then there's
• 1:32
  words of affirmation. So we're Of affirmation means
• 1:36
  saying nice things like you are so handsome and you know,
• 1:40
  whatever else so or to the woman, you know?
• 1:44
  You're the best mom and like all of these kinds of things.
• 1:47
  So those are the five love languages.
• 1:49
  Hopefully, I got all of them. I'm trying to really quick.
• 1:54
  Remember if I just said five or four?
• 1:57
  Yes, I got them. So, alright, cool.
• 2:00
  So anyway, those are all good and women frequently We have the
• 2:05
  words of affirmation one and Men frequently.
• 2:09
  Have the physical touch one, but some women have the physical
• 2:12
  touch one. So as I say a lot, a third of
• 2:15
  the couples that I talked to the woman wants more sex than the
• 2:19
  man. And now if you're saying, well,
• 2:21
  I thought you meant physical touch is any touch not just sex?
• 2:24
  Well yeah, you're right. Like it is any touch but the
• 2:27
  people who really like hugs and kisses usually like sex.
• 2:31
  So I mean this is one construct really.
• 2:34
  So I am Physical touch love language person.
• 2:37
  As I'm sure is evident from the fact that I can deeply
• 2:41
  understand, the people who have physical touch has a lot of
• 2:44
  language. And speaking, as a physical
• 2:46
  touch love language person and a woman.
• 2:49
  I mean it's really hard to feel like you are in an intimate
• 2:55
  relationship. If you have this love language,
• 2:58
  when there is no touch going on, like, women don't say, I barely
• 3:04
  even feel Mary. Read because he didn't get me
• 3:07
  flowers. If their love language is gift,
• 3:10
  they don't really even say I barely feel married because he
• 3:13
  doesn't tell me I'm beautiful, they may say my husband isn't
• 3:17
  asshole because he doesn't tell me that I'm beautiful but that
• 3:21
  is a really good point. You know, he is, I agree but it
• 3:26
  is really hard for somebody with a physical touch.
• 3:29
  Love language to feel even married or even like you are not
• 3:34
  just like Existing like roommates if you do not touch
• 3:40
  and if you don't have sex and it is really difficult to keep any
• 3:46
  momentum going for the physical touch partner to do any of the
• 3:50
  other Love Languages because you literally don't even feel like
• 3:54
  you're in a relationship, you know?
• 3:57
  And it's kind of like and the physical Touch, by the way,
• 4:01
  transcends everything. So for me, Me, for example, I
• 4:07
  really wanted to spend a lot of physical time touching my kids.
• 4:10
  When they were little, you can cuddling with them and holding
• 4:13
  them and it wasn't and that really informed, quite honestly,
• 4:19
  a lot of my decision to be part-time.
• 4:21
  When I had really little kids is I physically didn't want to be
• 4:25
  away from them, you know, because to me when I'm like,
• 4:30
  thinking about it in retrospect now because they are now 12 10
• 4:35
  and They don't do quite as much cuddling, although the younger
• 4:38
  to have the same love language. They do more cuddling maybe than
• 4:43
  average, but either way, I realized that that physical
• 4:47
  touch made it feel like when I wasn't touching them.
• 4:50
  It was almost like, painful, you know, and I think that, and I've
• 4:56
  made this analogy before, maybe not as explicitly, but I think
• 4:59
  that the way that women feel about their kids needs is kind
• 5:04
  of really a analogous to the way that men feel about women in
• 5:08
  marriages at least that work or in marriages where people are
• 5:12
  allowed to say non politically correct things because women
• 5:17
  love their kids, super unconditionally usually and if a
• 5:23
  relationship is going to work out between a man and a woman,
• 5:26
  it seems like the man has to love the woman in that way and I
• 5:29
  could write a whole post on that or another blog another podcast
• 5:33
  rather because I And Lee do explicitly make the analogy that
• 5:38
  if your house was on fire, the woman.
• 5:42
  Like let's say like you're all in there and it's a fire, right?
• 5:45
  So let's say the wife and mother got out first.
• 5:49
  She's going back in, for her kids, if her kids are out.
• 5:52
  I mean, you know, like she loves you husband, but the odds of her
• 5:57
  Golem back in, risking her life, and leaving her kids motherless
• 6:01
  because you couldn't get your ass out is really low.
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  However, As a man, I know very few men who after getting their
• 6:09
  kids out would not go back in for their wives and this is a
• 6:16
  really big difference and some wives may not even want the man
• 6:18
  to do that because then the kid would be left fatherless in
• 6:21
  this. Horrible morbid hypothetical
• 6:23
  scenario, you know, but the man would do it.
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  If he loves his wife, he would go back because men have in a
• 6:30
  best-case scenario, a protective Instinct that is a really big
• 6:34
  Power. L to how women feel about the
• 6:36
  kids. So when I felt like I had to
• 6:39
  just hug and touch my kids and I was like how in the world?
• 6:43
  Could I ever go back to work full time?
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  Oh my God, that would be so horrible.
• 6:50
  And that is a lot. Like how a man would feel when
• 6:55
  he's told that he cannot would not be able to touch his female
• 6:58
  partner for like an extended amount of time and to a lesser
• 7:03
  degree I feel that way about A male partner about a husband.
• 7:07
  If we do not touch and we don't connect for like a day, then
• 7:12
  that would be like really strange and would make me feel
• 7:16
  pretty disconnected. And so I being a woman, I'm in a
• 7:20
  privileged position privilege, big catchword now.
• 7:24
  So I'm in a privileged position because it would not be hard for
• 7:27
  me as a female to find a man that wants to touch all the
• 7:31
  time, right? Because men frequently out that
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  love language. Now men are not Such a
• 7:35
  privileged position. So they have to kind of there is
• 7:40
  harder for young men on The Dating market place that it is
• 7:43
  for young women. Although post-divorce it, evens
• 7:46
  out, then men are really the catch, but anyhow.
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  So a man has to deal with a woman's libido dropping
• 7:56
  precipitously in monogamy, and she may not have been as into
• 8:01
  touch at the beginning as him either.
• 8:03
  So, then, once it drops And he's really in a desert and he can
• 8:08
  just say, I need a hug or I need to have sex with you because the
• 8:15
  woman may look at him with the sort of discussed that, you
• 8:20
  know, was usually reserved for some sort of primordial ooze.
• 8:24
  And she's not going to do it and she's not going to feel like she
• 8:27
  has to do it in a way that a man like, okay, so when I talk to
• 8:32
  men within a couples counseling where their wife It's more sex
• 8:36
  than them. This is like a problem.
• 8:38
  We know, it's a problem. All three of us are on the same
• 8:41
  page. She should not be begging him
• 8:44
  for sex, that's bad, we all know it and some men will say that
• 8:49
  they can't because they can't have sex because some other
• 8:52
  thing in the marriage is bad, this usually means there are as
• 8:55
  a low sex drive Problem by the way because usually men can they
• 8:59
  don't really care as much if there's a problem in the
• 9:01
  marriage they could still have sex.
• 9:02
  So but either way, all three of us know, Know that it does not
• 9:06
  make sense that a woman is begging for sex and not getting
• 9:09
  it. And a lot of the reason that all
• 9:11
  three of us, know that in the room, me as a couple's counselor
• 9:14
  and them the couple is because the woman could just go out on
• 9:18
  the street with a sign that says, you know, have sex with me
• 9:21
  and like, 40 men would rush up in the first 30 seconds, so it's
• 9:27
  kind of like understood on a practical level that this woman
• 9:30
  is in like a shitty situation that she doesn't have to be in
• 9:33
  whereas in the inverse Men that go out with a t-shirt that says,
• 9:37
  have sex with me. Women are going to look at them
• 9:40
  with revulsion, you know? So things are not equal in that
• 9:44
  domain and so a things are not equal in that domain for men.
• 9:48
  But why do I feel that physical touch is the most important love
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  language besides, saying that it really makes a person with that
• 9:56
  love language feel that they are not even in a relationship
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  because it's the only one you can get from anyone else within
• 10:04
  monogamy. Me, you can get your words of
• 10:07
  affirmation tank. Filled up at work by your
• 10:10
  friends, by your kids, you could get gift, you can buy the damn
• 10:14
  gifts for yourself but other people can buy you gift, you
• 10:18
  know, your parents, your siblings, your friends,
• 10:22
  whatever, you know, secret santa, that's a thing there is
• 10:25
  not a secret santa of sex like that would make work parties.
• 10:30
  Certainly a lot better, but there is no such thing where
• 10:34
  everybody just picked. Name out of a hat and go screws
• 10:36
  that person in the closet. So there is no way for you to
• 10:39
  get your physical touch. Oh, an act of service you could
• 10:43
  hire somebody to do acts of service and it isn't a
• 10:46
  prostitute, which is what you would have to hire to get your
• 10:49
  physical touch need met if you wanted to.
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  So the only one that you can't get met by somebody else quality
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  time goes without saying, that's your kids, your friends,
• 11:00
  whatever is sex. Really for men, it's physical
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  Touch of any sort. Men are not I like snuggling
• 11:06
  with each other the way that like female friends, will cuddle
• 11:08
  up on the couch, and watch a show or give each other a hug.
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  When they see each other men, barely touch each other.
• 11:13
  So for most men that don't have tiny little kids, they cannot
• 11:16
  get their physical touch. Non-sexual need met, never mind
• 11:21
  their sexual need, but if they get their sexual needs met
• 11:23
  outside marriage, they are now a monster and Unfaithful monster.
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  So men are screwed in that way because this is, the only love
• 11:32
  language that they cannot get met and of Women.
• 11:35
  They can make be able to get the non-sexual touch met but if
• 11:38
  they're trying to be faithful and monogamous and the guy won't
• 11:41
  have sex with you. What are you going to do?
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  You can't just cheat, you shouldn't just cheat, but you
• 11:47
  can't get him to have sex with you.
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  So this is the only one where, one partner not liking
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  something. Means that the other partner
• 11:55
  they cannot have that thing in any way.
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  This is not nice and this is not ethical really at all because
• 12:05
  Because it's very imbalanced. So one person, it's like when I
• 12:08
  talk about the no kissing. If one partner decides not to
• 12:11
  kiss anymore and I have a podcast about kissing, the other
• 12:15
  partner has to go to their grave never kissing another person.
• 12:18
  This is not fair. That is not a real life that I
• 12:21
  would recommend. You know, I mean, that is not
• 12:23
  ethical, that's not fair. That is not why you were placed
• 12:27
  on this Earth to never kiss anybody again.
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  So that would have to be a situation where you say, well,
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  that doesn't I work for me, you know?
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  And people that would say oh my God.
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  Like would you like really recommend ending a relationship
• 12:44
  over somebody not kissing you? Yeah, you know, I would like, I
• 12:48
  think that that is something that I mean I would most
• 12:52
  certainly end a relationship or somebody refused to kiss me
• 12:55
  again. I have the quote privilege of
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  being a woman and knowing that I could next find somebody who
• 12:59
  would kiss me and that all of the world would concur that it
• 13:02
  was a terrible sin that my husband not kiss.
• 13:05
  Me. But that does not happen in the
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  inverse as much as it should, you know, first of all men don't
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  even talk much about things that go on internally in their
• 13:14
  marriages, as much as women do. So they don't get that social
• 13:17
  support. But also people just really tend
• 13:20
  in today's day to diminish men's needs for sex or for affection
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  or for intimacy, you know, I think that things went very far
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  in the opposite direction. From yes, there was a time where
• 13:34
  men go. More of their needs met than
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  women. I don't think we're there
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  anymore. I think now it's the inverse at
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  least among a lot of the upper middle-class couples that I work
• 13:43
  with. So, what I think is that, if
• 13:47
  this resonated with you that it should really spark some deep
• 13:51
  internal work about why you are staying in a relationship where
• 13:56
  you don't get any of your needs met physically and you're not
• 13:59
  allowed to go get them at anywhere else.
• 14:03
  It's not that is not a fair. Our situation.
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  Now I have about 1 million podcast and blog posts about how
• 14:10
  to be a person that is just better in every way toward your
• 14:13
  partner. In terms of communication
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  empathy validation meeting their needs understanding their
• 14:18
  perspective, real concrete evidence for evidence of ways
• 14:24
  for men to be more romantic. I've all of these things.
• 14:27
  So, I'm not saying that somebody shouldn't be trying to be the
• 14:30
  best person they could be, but if they are trying and the other
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  Just diminishes their need for physical affection or touch or
• 14:40
  that's just considered to not be real or really important or
• 14:45
  serious. Then, this is really a losing
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  proposition for long-term happiness, because you are in a
• 14:53
  no-win situation. So if you are in a no-win
• 14:57
  situation, you're going to overtime, be consumed with
• 15:01
  resentment, bitterness and just, you're going to start doing.
• 15:05
  Doing weird passive aggressive shit to your spouse and like
• 15:08
  this is not a world that you want to live in.
• 15:11
  I wouldn't live in it and all of the men that deny their the the
• 15:16
  reality of their own deep need for physical intimacy.
• 15:20
  By the way, they would all be so flabbergasted and angered by a
• 15:28
  woman and their exact situation. That's like the funniest thing
• 15:31
  when I talk to people, you talk to men, they're miserable,
• 15:34
  they're not getting their Needs met at all and they're like,
• 15:37
  well, you know what, I guess it is what it is, and blah blah.
• 15:41
  This is always men with low self-esteem that will put up
• 15:43
  with this, by the way, but they'll say, well, I guess it is
• 15:48
  what it is. You know, there's some there's
• 15:50
  really no changing her and you know, maybe I'm really not even
• 15:53
  that good of a partner. Then I'll be like, oh what would
• 15:56
  you tell a woman who was in your situation?
• 15:59
  That was begging for physical touch and not getting it.
• 16:02
  That was begging to be kissed by her husband and two.
• 16:05
  Be sexually satisfied by her. Husband wasn't getting it.
• 16:08
  They'll be like, oh my God, that poor woman.
• 16:10
  That woman is such a terrible situation.
• 16:12
  Why would that woman consent to being treated like that?
• 16:14
  I wish I could treat that woman better.
• 16:17
  It's like, where is kind of the self-esteem and the pride that
• 16:22
  you need. I mean, obviously it comes from
• 16:24
  having not such a great upbringing but you know, that is
• 16:27
  what I say all the time, self-esteem is rooted in
• 16:30
  upbringing so usually men and women that will You to stay in a
• 16:37
  relationship where their sexual needs are never being met.
• 16:40
  They are used to not getting their needs met because that's
• 16:43
  all they ever knew. They grew up in situation,
• 16:47
  likely raised by a self-absorbed parent.
• 16:50
  Not that person's fault that parent had their own shit going
• 16:53
  on. But raised in a situation where
• 16:56
  their needs were never addressed or met, they were never
• 16:58
  empathize with her validated in any way for having needs or
• 17:02
  being a normal needing person and Therefore they, they say in
• 17:07
  a marriage where they don't get their needs met.
• 17:08
  I mean it's pretty simple and sad.
• 17:11
  So in this case, where this resonates with you and my
• 17:14
  explanation resonates with you, if you think deeply then
• 17:17
  therapy, you know, not to sound like a broken record but therapy
• 17:21
  can be very transformative and allowing people to finally
• 17:25
  access their own self-worth and their needs and to express and
• 17:30
  verbalize even just to themselves that they are a
• 17:34
  person Worthy. The of affection Love intimacy
• 17:38
  and connection just as anybody else is and for a lower libido
• 17:42
  partner that's listening to this podcast or if you're higher
• 17:46
  libido, partner shared it with you.
• 17:48
  Really try to use this as sparking, some new deeper level
• 17:54
  of understanding on your end for a person in this no-win
• 17:58
  situation and how it feels for a person who has a physical touch
• 18:03
  love language to be denied. Guide that feels like you're not
• 18:07
  even in a relationship. Like as though, you're a mother
• 18:11
  of a baby, but you're never allowed to touch the baby.
• 18:14
  The baby's behind glass, never allowed to touch her.
• 18:16
  How many mothers would would feel frantic and insane in that
• 18:21
  situation? It sounds like something out of
• 18:22
  the handmaid's tale. Sounds horrible to even discuss.
• 18:25
  But that is how a man feels when he's not allowed access to his
• 18:29
  wife, or a woman who's not allowed access to her husband,
• 18:33
  because she's in the 1/3 of women with the Higher libido.
• 18:36
  Also, I tell this to my clients but if you really want to know
• 18:40
  how people feel in this in this situation and you don't, or if
• 18:44
  you just want social support for the Reddit Forum dead bedrooms,
• 18:49
  it's filled with people who are in this situation.
• 18:51
  If you read enough of these stories you're going to see a
• 18:53
  lot of patterns and you may understand on a deeper level,
• 18:57
  what people go through when they are in this situation where they
• 19:01
  have this love language. But it's consistently denied and
• 19:04
  your Also, going to see if you look with a psychological, I,
• 19:08
  how many of these people have very, very low self-esteem and
• 19:11
  self-worth that really predates the marriage, although, they may
• 19:14
  not recognize that they may rooted in the rejection in the
• 19:17
  marriage, but it usually predates that and they just
• 19:20
  can't see a way out because they don't really think that they're
• 19:23
  worth more, which is very sad. So, anyhow, thanks for listening
• 19:28
  guys. Please like and rate and
• 19:31
  subscribe to my podcast. I just made a paid subscribers,
• 19:34
  only episode Today about how to find a fulfilling life, how to
• 19:39
  see if your life is deeply fulfilling or not.
• 19:41
  And I talked through some brief principles of acceptance and
• 19:44
  commitment therapy, which in my style is not very difficult to
• 19:50
  comprehend. I made it super basic and easy
• 19:54
  to digest and also follow me on Instagram if you don't, it's Dr.
• 19:58
  Dot psych. Mom, and I just didn't Instagram
• 20:00
  live this morning about why not to let your kids treat you like
• 20:03
  shit but I couldn't say shit. I didn't want to be censored.
• 20:07
  So I said garbage. So anyhow, thanks guys and have
• 20:10
  a great day. Bye.