S2 EP212 – My Partner is Not Meeting My Needs

Transcription:

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Today I’m addressing an issue that I hear about often in my work with couples, and that is what needs you can expect, or not expect, to have met in a relationship, and what is the difference between needs and neediness.

My client, Ted, consulted with me because his wife, Sandra, told him again, that she wants to end their marriage. “Sandra wants to end our marriage,” Ted told me in our Zoom session, “because she says that I am not meeting her needs.”

How did we get the idea that marriage is about the other person meeting our needs, or about our meeting the other person’s needs? How did we get so far away from personal responsibility for meeting our own needs that we expect others to do it for us? I asked Ted what these “needs” are that he was not meeting for Sandra? 

“She said that I don’t make her feel good enough about herself, and that I don’t make her feel secure,” he said. “She tells me that it’s my fault that she doesn’t feel special. She is not happy and blames me for her unhappiness. She’s angry that we don’t have sex very often, and that I’m not often affectionate and that sometimes I shut down, especially when she’s angry. I agree that I’m often not turned on to her and sometimes I don’t feel affection toward her, but I find it hard to feel that way toward her when she’s angry at me and blaming me. But she believes that the problems are all my fault, and maybe they are. I try to make her happy but it’s not working. I try to show her affection and say things to make her feel good about herself, but it seems it’s never enough.”

“Ted,” I said, “The problem is that neither of you are taking responsibility for your own feelings. Sandra is making you responsible for her unhappiness, and you think you are responsible for her feelings rather than for your own. If you were to focus on meeting your needs to feel happy, peaceful, and secure, and Sandra were to take responsibility for learning how to make herself feel good about herself, then both of you could begin to meet each other’s need for emotional intimacy and connection. Affection and sexuality would come out of your emotional intimacy, rather than something you have to do to prove to Sandra that you love her.”

“But what if Sandra doesn’t want to take this responsibility for herself? What if she just wants to find someone else to meet her needs?” Ted asked.

“How often has Sandra threatened to leave the marriage?” I asked

“Oh, at least every 6 months,” he answered.

“So,” I said “the chances are it is a manipulation to get you to do what she wants. Instead of giving yourself up to caretake her, why not start to do your own Inner Bonding work and learn how to take responsibility for your own feelings of adequacy and worth? Since giving yourself up or withdrawing isn’t working, what do you have to lose by learning how to take responsibility for yourself? You never know – you might feel much more loving toward her even if she doesn’t change – if you learn to take loving care of yourself! I know that you believe that your lack of affectionate and sexual feelings for her are because of her anger and blame, but it might also be about giving yourself up and withdrawing. You can’t feel turned on to her when you have given your power away to her and shut down. As you move into your personal power through your Inner Bonding practice, you will likely feel totally differently toward her, regardless of whether or not she changes.”

Ted was willing to do the work he needed to do to learn to stop taking responsibility for Sandra’s happiness and learn to take responsibility for his own. As he stopped caretaking Sandra and started to take care of himself and speak up for himself, he began to feel much better toward her, which led to much less withdrawal and more affection. He was surprised and delighted to feel warmth toward her that he hadn’t felt since first meeting her. It was challenging for him to let go of his withdrawal and caretaking addictions as his forms of trying to have control over getting approval from Sandra, and it didn’t happen all at once. But over time, Ted could see great improvement in their relationship. He found it paradoxical that when he stopped trying to meet Sandra’s “needs,” things got much better!

I received the following request from a member of Inner Bonding Village.

“Hi Dr. Paul. I’m interested in understanding the difference between having needs vs. being needy.

“I was brought up to be ashamed of my needs. I was supposed to be self-sufficient. As a result, I am ashamed of neediness and often don’t recognize my own needs. I also don’t know how to tell if others are “being needy” or simply expressing a need.

“What I am learning is that humans are inter-dependent, and everyone has needs that can only be filled by another person.

“So I can take care of myself, but I think my ‘self-sufficiency toolbox’ isn’t complete if I can’t recognize valid needs, express them to others, and ask for help from them. So I need clarity on what is a valid need and what is neediness.”

The woman asking this question is referring to emotional needs – needs beyond the basic physical needs such as food, water, air, shelter, and so on.

We do not thrive without love, so I consider sharing love with others a basic need. Even though we might muddle through without sharing love, I believe that many people get ill and die from a lack of sharing love with loved ones – dying of heartbreak and loneliness.

Most of us know that infants and small children need love to survive and thrive. Many babies have died or suffered brain damage, due to not being held with love. “Failure to thrive” is the term used when an infant dies due to not being held with love.

There are times when we need another to hold us and empathically help us through the existential pain of life such as heartbreak and grief. There are times when we are ill and need another to help us and soothe us. This kind of loving care is a basic need. 

As I said, the sharing of love is also a basic need. However, there is a huge difference between trying to get someone else to love us, and our need to share love.

We all need to learn to bring love to ourselves through our spiritual connection. It is only when we can fill ourselves up with from our source of love that we have love to share. When are not taking responsibility for developing our spiritual connection and learning to fill ourselves up with love, then we become needy.

When someone is not taking responsibility for their own feelings and pulling on others for attention and approval, they are being needy. You know they are being needy because it feels like they are draining you rather than sharing with you. You know you are being needy when you feel empty inside and upset with others when you don’t get what you want from them.

Part of taking loving care of ourselves is to recognize our need to share love and reach out to others who also want to share love. But asking for help from an empty place, hoping that another person will fill you up and make you feel worthy and safe, is needy. We are needy when we emotionally abandon ourselves and expect others to give us the attention and approval what we are not giving to ourselves. We are legitimately asking to have a need met when we reach out to others to share love, or to receive the help we might need to heal. Our need to share love and affection can only be met by another person.

Along with sharing love, we need others to learn and grow with, to laugh with and cry with, and to have each other’s back. We are lonely when we don’t have these in our life.  

The difference between need and needy is mostly about energy. We are needy when we are empty because we have abandoned ourselves by not taking responsibility for our own feelings. We are expressing a need when we are taking loving care of ourselves and sharing our love with others or reaching out for legitimate help. While the actions of need and neediness may look the same, the energy behind the actions are completely different, because the intent behind the actions is completely different. There is a huge energetic difference between the intent to get love, and the intent to share love.

The issue of meeting needs in relationships comes up frequently around sexual needs.

A member of our website asked the following question:

“What does it mean and what does it look like to take personal responsibility for your own sexual needs?”

First, let’s define the difference between sexual needs and sexual wants.
 
A sexual need is a physical need for a sexual release. You do not need to have sex with another person to meet your sexual needs. Taking personal responsibility for your own sexual needs may mean masturbating when you need a sexual release rather than expecting someone else to provide you with a release. This can get complicated if you believe that masturbation is wrong. It can put a lot of stress on a relationship when, for example, a man expects his wife to always take care of his sexual needs because he believes that masturbation is wrong or that it’s his wife’s ‘duty’ to take care of his sexual needs.

Taking responsibility for your own sexual needs means doing whatever you need to do for yourself in a way that does not harm another or make another responsible for you and is in integrity with your own values and your own soul. If it is against your religion to masturbate, then your body will probably take care of the need through dreams. But expecting someone else to meet your need may create conflict in a relationship. 

A sexual want is a desire to share love with a loved one in a sexual way. This is not the same as a physical need, and it is not something we can do for ourselves. Sharing love with another person is one of the greatest joys in life. Of course, there are many ways of sharing love – sexuality is just one way.

Sharing love is not something that happens on demand. It is the outgrowth of a safe relationship space that is created when two people take full responsibility for their own feelings and needs. In fact, when a partner in a relationship becomes demanding regarding his or her sexual needs, the sharing of love becomes elusive. Controlling, demanding behavior and the sharing of love are mutually exclusive.

A dutiful partner might capitulate and have sex when he or she does not want to – out of fear, obligation, or guilt. The controlling partner might convince himself or herself that they are sharing love, but this is not love. This is one person overtly controlling by making demands and the other person covertly controlling by complying. While they might achieve orgasm and have the desired physical release, they will not feel satisfied on an emotional or spiritual level. There will likely be an emptiness which the overtly controlling partner may seek to get filled with more sex. This is how sex can become addictive – when it is being used to fill an emptiness that can only be filled by love. 

Part of taking responsibility for your own sexual needs is taking responsibility for yourself in general.

The more you are willing to take responsibility for your physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing, the more love you will have to share with your partner. If your partner is also taking personal emotional, physical, and spiritual responsibility, he or she will also have much love to share. Together, you will create a loving circle that allows your sexuality to flow freely between you. When partners are both taking responsibility for their own feelings, their sexual wants and needs are frequently met. The meeting of sexual wants and needs may become a problem when one or both people are not taking loving care of themselves.

I have found in my work with couples that sexuality is rarely the primary problem. Rather, sexual problems in relationships are a symptom of deeper personal and relationship problems. Generally, the sexual problems resolve when each person takes loving action for themselves and opens to learning with each other.

I have worked with couples for 54 years, and one thing I can tell you for sure: relationships are a system, and each partner has an equal part of the system. People come together at their common level of woundedness – which is their common level of self-abandonment. In many relationships, each partner is very aware of the other person’s end of the system, but completely unaware of their own end. They tend to trigger the other person’s wounded self with their own wounded self, but they often don’t recognize their own wounded self, and they end up hurting each other and not meeting each other’s legitimate needs. Here is an example of this:

Allison asked:

“How do you suggest telling someone they’re doing something that hurts your feelings and to ask them to stop? My husband recently accused me of finding a way to blame my depressed feelings on him. He believes that I wake up in the morning feeling depressed and then try to find something to pin it on. My experience is that if he says something that bothers me and I don’t say something right when it happens or if he tells me I’m being defensive and I shut down, that I often wake up feeling resentful the next day, but when I tell him that I’m upset he gets defensive and tells me I have a problem.”

I’m going to take each part of this question separately, to exemplify the common level of self-abandonment in this system that results in hurting each other and not meeting each other’s needs.

“How do you suggest telling someone they’re doing something that hurts your feelings and to ask them to stop?” Allison asked.

In a loving relationship, each person can simply say to their partner, “When you do that or say that, it hurts me.” Sometimes, it’s important to add, “and there must be a good reason you are saying or doing that.” When there is loving and caring between them, they each want to know what hurts the other and they will be motivated to not do the hurtful thing or explore any underlying issues.

However, if you have to ponder how to tell your partner he or she is hurting you, then something else is going on in the system.

Allison went on to say, “My husband recently accused me of finding a way to blame my depressed feelings on him. He believes that I wake up in the morning feeling depressed and then try to find something to pin it on.”

What’s evident here is that Allison is depressed but is not taking responsibility for how she is treating herself that may be causing her depression.

She then goes on to say, “My experience is that if he says something that bothers me and I don’t say something right when it happens or if he tells me I’m being defensive and I shut down, that I often wake up feeling resentful the next day…”

Here Allison is explaining how she is not taking responsibility for her feelings. Instead of either speaking up for herself in the moment or compassionately going inside to take care of her feelings, she abandons herself by not speaking up or getting defensive and shutting down. Then she wakes up resentful due to not taking loving care of herself. She believes she is resentful toward her husband – that she is a victim and he is causing her feelings, rather than that her inner child is resentful toward her for not taking loving care of herself.

She then says, “…when I tell him that I’m upset he gets defensive and tells me I have a problem.”

Here she is blaming her husband and denying that he is accurate in the fact that she is blaming him. She is telling him she is upset in order to blame him and make it his fault. She has no intent to learn.

Then he responds from his wounded self, getting defensive and telling her she has a problem, rather than taking responsibility for his pain at being blamed or moving into an intent to learn with her.

In this system, neither are taking loving care of their feelings, both are defending themselves and blaming the other. Both are equally in their wounded selves.

Here is what I would say to Allison:

“Allison, instead of focusing on what to say to your husband, why not focus on taking loving care of your own feelings? If you were to do this, it would completely change your dysfunctional system. You can’t stop him from saying hurtful things – you don’t have that control – but you do have control over your own intent to compassionately love yourself or to abandon yourself by blaming him. Learning how to love yourself through your Inner Bonding practice will change everything, because his behavior toward you may be reflecting how you are rejecting yourself. And anywhere along the way of your interactions, you can move into an intent to learn with your husband.”

If Allison learns to love herself, she might be happily surprised at the improvement in her relationship!

I’ve spoken previously about the difference between hurt feelings and hurt heart, and I want to speak about it again now. Our feelings are hurt when we take another’s unloving behavior personally, but another’s unloving behavior will always hurt our heart. If you learned as a child to shut down to your heartbreak, then you will likely have a hard time meeting your partner’s real need for the sharing of love.

My client Clifford, 42, married with children, told me during a phone session that he was tired of not feeling happy and joyous.

“As a small child,” he told me, “I remember being so happy and excited about life. But my parents didn’t receive me at all. They were indifferent to my creativity and excitement.”

“Clifford, how did you feel when they didn’t receive you?” I asked him.

“Shattered,” he replied.

Yes, shattered. And the shattered feeling was too big for a sensitive little boy, so Clifford learned to put a lid on his joy to protect himself from feeling shattered.

He also learned to protect himself by taking his parents’ indifference personally, deciding that he wasn’t good enough or important enough to be received.

Clifford learned to take his parents’ rejection personally as a way to feel in control of their unloving behavior: “It’s my fault,” he told himself as a small child, “that they are not loving me, so if I can just figure out the right way to be, I can get love and avoid pain.” When he took his parents’ behavior personally, his feelings got hurt. He learned to prefer getting his feelings hurt rather than experience the existential life feeling of feeling shattered.

If you look inside, you may discover that underneath hurt feelings is a deeper hurt – the kind of hurt that feels shattering, the kind of hurt that hurts the heart.

When you are in your wounded ego self, it is easy to have your feelings hurt from telling yourself that you are wrong or bad or that it is your fault that you are being treated unlovingly. You feel hurt feelings whenever you take another’s unloving behavior personally.

Now, as an adult, you likely need to revisit the heart hurt that you might have been protecting against all these years. Heart hurt is the authentic existential life feeling that is under hurt feelings.

Heart hurt shows up as loneliness, heartache, heartbreak, sorrow, sadness, and grief in response to the loss of loved ones, to others’ unloving behavior toward us and others, to helplessness over others’ unloving behavior toward us and others.

These are the feelings that were too hard to feel as a small child. These are the feelings we now need to feel and show up for as a kind and compassionate loving adult. These are the feeling that addictive and controlling behavior cover up.

The moment we try to cover these feelings, we are in our wounded self. When we decide to feel our authentic feelings, we open to our true soul self with deep kindness and compassion for our heart hurt.

As long as you do not have the courage to feel the painful existential feelings of life – the heart hurt – you will continue to give yourself up, get angry, blaming and defensive, and turn to substances and activities to avoid your authentic feelings, which can lead to hurt feelings. And you will continue to hurt others with your controlling behavior and feel needy in your relationships. You will be unable to meet a partner’s legitimate need for the sharing of love and affection with this level of self-abandonment.

Yet, when you finally decide to be with your truth and feel the heart hurt of others’ unloving behavior, as well as the anxiety and depression of your own unloving behavior toward yourself and others, you are well on the journey toward personal power, emotional freedom, and the ability to share love.

Heart hurt HURTS – a lot. Which is why you’ve learned to avoid it. But when you learn to connect with your spiritual guidance and embrace it with love, kindness, caring and compassion, you can learn to lovingly manage it. When you do, you move beyond fear and dependency and neediness and into your power, freedom, and ability to love.

I invite you join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership.

And I invite you to heal your relationships with my 30-Day online video relationship course: Wildly, Deeply, Joyously in Love.

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my new book, Lonely No More, and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.