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Key points
- Everyone has needs but not everyone knows what their needs are or how to ask for what they need.
- Couples who don't get their needs met often experience negative interactions with one another.
- Negative beliefs and behaviors can, in most cases, be turned to positive.
You have every right to need what you need in your relationship. You are not being demanding or unreasonable or even "needy." The what you need is never the issue. It's the how are you asking for what you need that can cause problems.
What are the words you are using? What behaviors are you employing? What tools do you have to communicate what you're needing? How do you act or react when you don't get your needs met?
Although social-emotional programs are being taught in schools these days, many of us adults weren't taught effective skills for communicating our needs in relationships. And, indeed, most of us were taught to ignore our needs in the first place—so how, then, would we be able to communicate effectively about them?
What we couples therapists see all too often are intelligent, high-functioning, loving people who have little to no skill in asking for what they need from their partner while also expecting their mate to "know" what they need. When their partner fails to recognize their needs, clients tell us they are hurt and feel like their partner doesn't "get them."
What Power Struggles Are Really About
Having our needs met in relationships (or not having our needs met) hits us at our core. It's how we gauge not only how much we are loved, but also how loveable we are.
The more each partner pulls on the other to meet their needs, the more they move into a power struggle.
I tell my clients that there's only ever one thing any two people are fighting about: "Who's needs matter more."
Both partners begin putting more energy into being understood and heard than they put into listening and understanding. Both begin pulling for their own needs to be met. So much so that they soon find themselves in a constant state of dissatisfaction. Each makes the other person wrong and attaches some kind of negative storyline like, "Clearly, I'm not important enough for my husband," or, "She's so self-absorbed," or "they don't care what I need."
The anger is covering the hurt each person feels, but these couples have no inkling of how destructive the tug-of-war has the potential to become if not intervened on.
Where People Go Off the Track
When one spouse forgets to empty the dishwasher or keeps putting garbage in an already overflowing garbage can (instead of taking it out and emptying it!) accusations and denigrations begin to be exchanged: "You never help out in the kitchen!" or, "Why do I have to do everything around here? Get your lazy butt up and empty the trash!"
Little by little, each one tears the other down and the more they tell themselves the story that their mate is selfish, lazy or clueless, the more they see evidence to support these notions (we always find what we're looking for). The negativity breeds more negativity and this can go on literally for years.
Right Beliefs and Behaviors Are the Key to Change
Even though these negative interactions can feel daunting to change, I assure you I wouldn't be a therapist if even very deep-seated behaviors and interactions couldn't change. Of course, there are some exceptions (personality disorders, for example, are known to be difficult to treat) but, for the most part, negative patterns can be broken and replaced with more positive ones.
There are two levels I generally intervene on with clients: beliefs (extricating the false narratives and seeing the other as "on the same team), and behaviors (how each treats the other and speaks to the other).
Couples come in to my office with their usually unconscious story running about how their partner doesn't care about what they need. One by one, I help each partner see how distorted or untrue their beliefs are. It can take a while and a great deal of practice for folks to trust that they truly can work together, but I have seen dozens of couples break through to the other side of these beliefs.
Changing behaviors means seeing a breach of trust as a teachable moment rather than using it to shame the other; it means starting with an assumption that your partner in fact does have your best interests in mind, even though they may forget to pick up your dry cleaning or when they tease you in front of the kids.
It doesn't necessarily matter which you start with because, in time, your new beliefs will foster new behaviors and your new behaviors in time would generate new beliefs.
A few books that might be helpful to you in your quest to change include Atomic Habits by James Clear and The Power of Habit by James Duhigg
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