No Conversation With Your Love

Having fulfilling conversations isn't about running through a list of popular topics.  In order to have meaningful talks, you both need to focus on communicating your feelings to each other.  Your conversations will feel rich, deep and intimate when you engage in emotional communications in which you speak to each other from the heart about your deepest feelings, needs, wishes, thoughts, desires, etc..   

In order to be able to open up like this, you both need to first know yourselves.  Then you can open up to each other from a place of self-awareness.  As you can see, there is work required on both your parts in order to achieve what I am talking about.    It is possible that you will find yourselves at a loss for words because you are afraid to say what is on your minds.  Sometimes couples clam up when they are angry.  Other times they don't speak because they are afraid to become too intimate (see my Advice Archives to understand the reasons why people are afraid to become too close.  These include fears of dependency, abandonment, rejection, and so much more.)  

It is also possible that you both don't know how to talk because you lack a \model\ for how to do so.  Lacking a model means that you both probably came from families that didn't demonstrate the type of emotional sharing that I am encouraging.  If your parents didn't share with each other or with their children, then you both will be at a complete loss for how to do so.    As I said before, you can't share until you are self-aware.  Joining a therapy group will help you both learn to put words to your thoughts and feeling.   

You can also develop self-awareness by checking in with yourselves every fifteen minutes or so and asking, \What am I thinking and feeling?\ Eventually, you will know what is going on inside yourselves from moment to moment.  Letting each other know what is inside your heads and hearts will be easy once you both are aware.    When you are together, start taking turns telling each other what is going on emotionally.  You can talk about your childhood experiences, your hopes and dreams, or whatever else is emotionally real to you both.  You also should put into words what you love about each other. 

There is much to say on this topic, so start talking about this!  In my book, Till Death Do Us Part (Unless I Kill You First), there are many exercises that show how to disclose inner feelings and how to listen to a partner's feelings when they are offered.  Read my book for additional help.  I know that it is tempting to memorize a list of topics.  Even if I gave you a list, you will still find yourself feeling empty and deprived of the kind of real connection that human beings crave. 

Do the work I describe and you will no longer need a conversational jump start.