How to Have Your Relationship Needs Met

Relationships can be disappointing. Often we look for something from others and don’t receive it. At work this might be having a job well done or consistently achieved business goals go unrecognized. In personal relationships it could be our partner is not expressing love in the way we want to receive it. When we deeply desire or need to receive recognition or love and it doesn’t happen, we feel hurt and conflict arises.

Let’s define desire as something we would like to have happen, but are unattached to it happening, and need as being attached to an outcome. In many cases the other person is not aware of your desire to begin with so the first thing to remember in getting what we want is to communicate with a clear request. From the female perspective, it might be: “I would love you to give me a hug when you get home from work.”

If we make the request and are not attached to whether our partner gives us a hug or not it remains a desire. However, an unmet desire escalates to a need when charged emotional energy is attached to the outcome. “The mind writes a story that sounds something like, “My partner doesn’t show me any love, I have asked him to hug me and he never hugs me, I really need him to show me love, I feel empty inside because he is not connecting with me.”

On the other hand, men generally have a desire to decompress and be silent when they get home from a long day at work. They may have been in meetings all day, battled bumper to bumper traffic on the way home and just want to chill out when they walk in the door. In fact, they might have a need to talk about how bad their day was before zoning out in front of the TV or retreating to the garage. Heaven forbid if she wants to share her day first!

This almost guarantees a communication breakdown, especially if being heard is a need occurring on both the feminine and masculine side. A cycle of conflict begins when he feels unloved because she is not giving him space nor is she showing him respect by listening to his concerns about work. That’s when the man starts to withdraw from the relationship. At the same time the woman feels unloved because he is not showing her affection nor listening to her when he comes home. Now both have unmet needs and believe that if the other person really loved them, they would recognize and respond to their needs.

Once you recognize the downward spiral of feeling unloved is occurring, there are two ways to deal with it. First, have a conversation about it and come to an agreement about how to deal with this dynamic. This is applying a logical outcome to what is largely an emotional situation. The second solution is to resolve the underlying emotional conditioning that has both people caught in a need rather than a desire.

To implement the communication strategy, the first step is recognizing the dynamic is occurring and then come to a mutual understanding about it. Second you need to share in behaviorally specific terms what you want to have happen and make this specific request of your partner without any attachment that he/she will agree. When you have made the request you also need to listen to what the other person wants and define a scenario that would work for both of you. This can be a challenge if you both have to have your specific needs met ‘your way’ in order to feel loved.

The second solution is resolving the underlying emotional conditioning that causes both partners to feel unloved in the first place. Requiring a partner to express love in a certain way is connected to our need to feel loved in order to be whole and complete. When we feel the need to be loved, we are looking for love outside of ourselves, rather than feeling a sense of love from within. When we feel love from within, we may have a desire for certain actions from our partner, but we can be very flexible with what a negotiated solution looks likes. Having the outcome be the way we want it, has nothing to do with love.

When we have resolved our underlying conditioning and make clear requests of our partners with no attachment to the outcome we arrive at optimum solutions for the relationship. We are able to express ourselves lovingly and be more flexible in our requirements of the relationship. Maybe you can offer to give the hug you want instead of asking for it!

Wishing you much love,
 
Lynne Brisdon
http://www.livinginvision.com/