On Meeting Our Needs

All of us, in any relationship — romantic or professional — carry needs we want met but never quite see fulfilled. For example:

— The need for support and inspiration.

— The need for unconditional acceptance.

— The need for visible care.

— The need for sex.

— The need for material things.

— The need for help.

— The need for praise.

— The need for safety.

— The need to be heard.

— The need for attention.

— The need for travel and new experiences.

— The need to do things together, to spend time side by side.

Each of these needs can, if we choose, be clearly named and said out loud. And yet, in practice, here is what we often see instead:

— People don’t shape their needs into words.

— People don’t voice their needs to the very person they expect to meet them.

— People sometimes, sincerely and wholeheartedly, fill some of another person’s needs — just not the ones that person truly needs filled.

— Unmet needs pile up over years, until they spill over into a feeling of emptiness and helplessness.

There’s no reason to be shy about naming what we need — we are not telepaths yet, after all. What a beautiful world it would be if everyone had the skill to say their needs plainly and to hear them from others!

Saying our expectations out loud and then honoring them is the road to a good relationship of any kind. That doesn’t rule out doing something “extra” on your own initiative, out of imagination and desire — but only once the stated needs are already met, not instead of them.

But why does it happen that a person names their needs clearly, gets them across, and still receives something else entirely? Because some of us take the harder path and sincerely believe that what we want for another person is better for them than what they want for themselves. Whether that’s true is hard to say. I won’t rule out cases where it turns out to be right. But more often it looks like this: in reality, on an unconscious level, we’re doing it for ourselves — filling our own need to play that toxic teacher role.

I’ve been through this many times myself, when I tried hard, poured all of me — time, emotion, money — into something, and met only a polite, cool response to my effort. I felt emotionally drained and betrayed, when in fact I was the one who set off down the wrong path from the start, never checking whether the other person even wanted it. Does that feeling sound familiar?

Here’s a simple game I’d suggest: turn away from each other and, over five minutes, describe in as much detail as you can three of your reasonably achievable needs, then hand them to the other person. And then carry out what you received, exactly as written, with no discussion, no judgment, no extra questions. Not necessarily everything at once — but carry it out. And then make this a regular practice.

Here’s to naming our own needs, and to meeting the needs of the people we care about, who are waiting for exactly that from us! 😎