I am going to say something somewhat controversial. We have very few needs in our relationships. I might even go so far as to say we don’t need anything from our partner.
We need air to breathe and food to eat. This is the level of need. It is associated with our survival. Language is powerful. This is why, when we use the word need to express what we want in relationships, it has the energy of ‘must-have urgency’ behind it. It can be experienced as a demand.
Let’s compare expressions for a moment. I need your attention vs I want your attention or can I have your attention? Take a moment to say each phrase out loud and notice any difference in how you feel in your body. Ask your partner to say them to you, and take time to notice the difference in your response. How easily can you say you are unavailable, or accept that someone is unavailable?
What the focus on needs can lead to
Psychology and the self-help industry have put a lot of emphasis on people expressing their needs. Unfortunately, I think this has created a sense of entitlement to things we want from each other and feelings of shame and guilt when we can’t ‘meet our partner’s needs’. In other words, needs can be used as a way of control.
Eric Fromm wrote a lovely little book on The Art of Loving that first came out in 1956. He distinguished between relationships based on love vs need and need as an immature basis for intimate relationships. Even though the book has outdated aspects this is still very relevant for our present-day relationship struggles.
Terry Real (Founder of Relational Life Therapy) talks about three different parts of us operating in communication, the wounded part, the adaptive part, and our wise presence. Most of us come from the wounded and adaptive parts when we are in conflict in relationships. Our wounded and adaptive parts are rooted in our needs from childhood. As a child not getting attention is a matter of survival. So when we express that we need something, consciously or unconsciously, it activates our childhood experience and that something bad will happen if we don’t get it. This is why conflict is so difficult for a lot of people.
A few words about the difference in these parts.
Wounded part. This part carries the pain of our unmet needs in childhood and wants to be taken care of. In addition to food and shelter, a child needs attention, safety, comfort, and protection to thrive and develop secure attachments. This also supports our authenticity because when we have these things taken care of we are free to explore our experience and be vulnerable.
Adaptive part. This is also rooted in childhood and can be conceived of as the part of us that is a child in adult clothing. This is the part of us that stepped in to take over what adults failed to do. For example, if our environment was unsafe we might develop ways of comforting ourselves or distracting ourselves to protect ourselves and not feel fear.
How do these two parts play out in our adult relationships?
Let’s take an example. Wanting attention from our partner is a common request and where we often can feel neglected in our adult relationships. So when we express that we need attention and don’t get it our wounded part will be activated. This might be experienced as hurt, fear, or shame. The ways we learned to deal with this in childhood, and since, then come into action to protect us from feeling this pain. A few typical examples of ways we do this might be;
- to make our partner wrong for not being available,
- shut down, and withdraw to feel safe
These behaviours to protect ourselves will then activate other parts of our partner.
When their lack of availability is rejected (by criticism or withdrawal) their wounded part will be activated. This is also likely to activate feelings of shame, or fear and the adaptive part that tries to protect them. Examples might be;
- express anger and resentment
- try to fix it by agreeing to spend time when they don’t want to
- feeling they are never going to be good enough and give up trying
So in this example, we can see how expressing what we want from each other as needs, in this case, attention and acceptance, can affect the dynamic. Our wounded part experiences the disappointment as a childhood neglect/wound and our adaptive part moves into urgent action to try and pressure our partner to give us what we want.
How do we come from our wise/present self and what does that look like?
If we use this example of wanting attention from our partner. Our adult mature self understands that we don’t need attention. It’s great when we get it; many would agree it makes life more bearable. Not getting attention might feel disappointing or if it was consistent result in a decision that a relationship does not fit for us, but demanding it is immature and controlling.
The key comes when we understand that our desires and ‘needs’ are negotiable and not something we must have, or that the other person should meet. It brings in freedom for each partner to be truthful, authentic, and respond with willingness and compassion. When something is demanded it makes it hard to stay in our truth when we respond because there is less space and acceptance that we have a choice. True choice occurs when we have the ability to say either yes or no. Our wiser self can withstand the reactions of others to stay steady in our own experience and choices. This is the shift into our wise/present self in conflict.
Ironically, when we can free ourselves from the shame of not meeting others’ needs we can experience our willingness to be there rather than trying to protect ourselves from their expectations which causes us to be less likely to want to be there.
Final Thoughts
This post highlights how needs can be expressed and felt as demands in relationships and used to control and manipulate. When we see our needs as having to be met for the relationship to be good there is often an attempt to avoid the pain of our unmet childhood needs by making our partner (and others) responsible for them.
This doesn’t mean partners should be uncaring; rather, being relational means continually negotiating what we want from each other and be free to say what we can or can’t do. I would argue that as we come more from a place of freedom then our true genuine heartfelt responses can be felt.
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