Tenderoni Hotline #36: Why I Call You “My Love” (And Why I’m Not Stopping)
Welcome back to another heartfelt installment of the Tenderoni Hotline, your weekly infusion of somatic support, nervous system insight, and loving feminist coaching. Every Tuesday, I answer your real-life questions, the brave and tender ones, drawing from my work in Anchored, The Somatic Studio, and your beautiful messages. If you have a question you would like me to answer, send it to podcast@beatrizalbina.com and I will add it to the list for a future episode. Let’s get into it.
Why I Call You "My Love"
A listener recently wrote to me with a thoughtful piece of feedback. She shared that hearing me call listeners "my love" or "my beauty" makes her uncomfortable. As a survivor of sexual assault, she explained that terms of endearment from someone she doesn't know personally can feel too intimate and even triggering. She asked if I would consider stopping.
I received her message with care. Truly. It was honest, vulnerable, and clearly rooted in her lived experience.
But it also opened the door to a much larger conversation than whether or not I should use pet names on a podcast.
What If Love Didn't Need to Be Earned?
At the heart of her message was a statement that caught my attention: "I don't know you, so I'm not your anything."
And I found myself wondering, what if we lived in a different world?
What if every person was our relation? What if every human being was worthy of tenderness, care, and warmth simply because they exist? What if being called beloved wasn't something reserved for a select few people who had earned their way into our inner circle, but something we offered one another freely?
When I call someone "my love," I'm not making a claim on them. I'm not asking for intimacy. I'm not crossing a boundary. I'm extending warmth. I'm saying, you belong here. You are welcome here. You are worthy of kindness.
I think many of us move through a world that is already overflowing with criticism, judgment, indifference, and disconnection. We rarely question those things. Yet when someone offers tenderness, suddenly we become suspicious. We ask whether it's appropriate. Whether it's earned. Whether it's too much.
That curiosity fascinates me.
Because underneath it lives a deeper question: Why does tenderness feel so uncomfortable for so many of us?
When Tenderness Feels Unsafe
For some people, the answer is trauma.
When your nervous system has learned that closeness comes with danger, it makes perfect sense that certain expressions of care might feel activating. Trauma teaches us to scan for threats. It teaches us to associate experiences that once accompanied harm with the possibility of future harm. The body remembers. The nervous system remembers.
And that deserves compassion.
At the same time, one of the things I know from years of studying nervous system regulation, trauma recovery, and behavior change is that healing eventually asks more of us than avoidance.
There are absolutely seasons when creating distance from triggers is the right choice. There are moments when safety means reducing exposure and focusing entirely on stabilization. But long-term healing isn't built solely by making sure we never encounter discomfort.
Healing happens when new experiences are allowed to meet old beliefs.
Healing happens when the nervous system gets fresh information.
When a person who learned that closeness equals danger slowly discovers that some forms of closeness are actually safe. When someone who learned that care always comes with strings attached begins to experience care that asks for nothing in return. When the body gets enough evidence to update an old story.
Emotional Outsourcing in Real Time
That's part of why I found this listener's message so poignant. The request wasn't simply about language. It reflected one of the central themes I talk about every week on this podcast: emotional outsourcing.
So many of us have learned to seek safety outside ourselves. We look to other people, circumstances, systems, and environments to create the emotional experiences we want to have. We unconsciously believe that if everyone else would just change, we'd finally feel okay.
If my partner behaved differently, I'd feel secure.
If my family understood me, I'd feel worthy.
If my boss approved of me, I'd feel confident.
If this podcaster stopped saying "my love," I'd feel comfortable.
And to be clear, this isn't a criticism. It's a deeply human tendency. Most of us do it in countless ways without realizing it.
But eventually healing asks a different question.
What happens when we stop organizing our lives around controlling the outside world and start building safety from within?
What happens when we learn to stay connected to ourselves even when discomfort arises?
What happens when we trust ourselves enough to feel our feelings without immediately demanding that someone else remove them?
That is where self-trust begins.
The Cultural Context Matters
There is another layer to this conversation that feels important to name.
For me, speaking this way is not a branding choice. It's not something a marketing consultant recommended. It's not a strategic decision designed to increase engagement.
It's cultural.
It's personal.
It's who I am.
As an Argentine woman, terms of endearment are woven into the fabric of how I relate to people. Warmth isn't reserved for a tiny handful of intimate relationships. It's part of everyday life. It's how community is built. It's how care is communicated. It's how belonging is signaled.
When people hear "my love," they're hearing more than a phrase. They're hearing a cultural inheritance. They're hearing a worldview that believes people deserve warmth before they've earned it.
And I think there is something worth examining when women, particularly women from cultures that value emotional expressiveness, are asked to become more restrained, more detached, more professional, or more palatable.
Warmth Is Not the Opposite of Intelligence
We live in a culture that often mistakes emotional distance for intelligence.
We have been taught that warmth undermines credibility. That tenderness is somehow less serious than rigor. That care is soft while logic is strong.
Those ideas are not neutral.
They are deeply connected to the ways our culture has historically devalued care work, emotional labor, and forms of intelligence traditionally associated with women and feminized labor.
I reject that framework entirely.
Warmth and intelligence can coexist.
Compassion and expertise can coexist.
Tenderness and rigor can coexist.
In fact, I would argue that some of the most transformative healing happens precisely because they coexist.
People do not heal through information alone.
They heal when information is paired with safety, connection, and care.
The Question Beneath the Question
At the end of the day, this conversation isn't really about pet names.
It's about our relationship with tenderness.
It's about what happens inside us when someone offers kindness with no expectation attached.
It's about whether we believe belonging must be earned or whether we are willing to consider that it might be our birthright.
It's about whether we want to continue living inside old stories that tell us love is dangerous, scarce, or conditional.
And it's about what becomes possible when we begin writing new ones.
So yes, I hear the feedback.
I receive it with care.
And I'm still going to call you "my love."
Not because I want anything from you.
Not because I know you.
But because I don't need to know you to believe you're worthy of tenderness.
I don't need to know you to believe you belong here.
And I don't need to know you to love you.
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Tags: nervous system healing, emotional outsourcing, self trust, trauma healing, people pleasing recovery, codependency recovery, emotional regulation, somatic healing, boundaries, feminist wellness