Connor Beaton gives coaching-style therapeutic advice for relationship communication: practice an exposure-style exercise where you start by asking for very small things to build capacity to request needs and desires directly. He frames secure relationships as those with "zero guesswork" and warns against attempting large requests too early.
Take action. You are going to for a period of time, you are going to go through some form of therapeutic process, but you're going to just put yourself into situations where you are asking for what you need and what you want as clearly and directly as possible. Now, my recommendation is that you start with things that are very easy, right? You start with things that are so small. Where a lot of guys go wrong with this is they're like, I've been waiting to ask my partner for this thing for years, and I'm going to try and start there. And they freeze and they get delayed in the process. So you need to go through a period of exposure, therapy, of exposing your needs, exposing your wants, exposing what it is that you desire in the relationship. A very, very good frame to hold in your relationship is that the best relationships and the securest attachments, there's zero guesswork.
How to Raise Strong, Unshakable Boys in Today's Culture, with Dr. Shefali Tsabary
