The truth about unmet needs
Love is a need.
Belonging is a need.
Attention, control over your life are legitimate needs.
Many of my clients have unmet needs and feel stuck when their spouse WILL NOT provide them in the way they need to hear it.
When you have a need that feels like air...you can feel like you are drowning without it.
Many times, when I come across a client with this, they have spent YEARS demeaning themselves for having these needs.
For wanting things in a certain way.
They call themselves high-maintenance
Petty
Demanding
Needy
And before I can begin helping them, we get one thing clear:
Your needs, your feelings, your desires are valid.
They matter.
You matter.
There is nothing wrong with you.
It is okay to have needs. You are a human being.
Needs are not weaknesses.
Because the next steps require strength from inside and it is hard to take those steps when you are breaking yourself down from the inside out.
Once you clear the shame of being a human with needs and expectations we can start the work of clearing some things up and sorting them out.
Let's make some piles, Marie Condo style, and get ready to clean up.
The things that can spark joy: Keep 'em
Your God-given agency to feel anything you choose to. There are things you won't WANT to feel good about. Abuse being the main one.
Your ability to show up as the spouse YOU want, which may or may not be the spouse they want. You can be considerate to BOTH of you when you are being a considerate spouse.
Your emotional independence or ability to create new feelings by choosing to think new things on purpose (not just the first, default thing that comes to your mind)
Your ability to only take responsibility and ownership over things you legitimately can control. Their thoughts, feelings, and actions just aren't on that list.
Discard:
The belief that "good wives or husbands" do A, B, or C
The belief that there is a "right way" to show love.
The belief that shame about not being a certain way will help your relationship at all.
Hand Back:
Their responsibility for how they choose to think, act, or feel about what you choose to do
My friend,
Here is some tough love that I mean with all of my heart.
I know it feels like you are doing all of the work.
They they are doing it wrong sometimes.
That they could and should do so much more to help you.
But you are strong.
You are capable.
You don't need to depend on them changing to feel
When you come to a relationship dependant, you don't come as an equal.
You come, asking another human who is probably struggling to figure their mind out, to fill you.
To do work you can, and only you can, do.
Have your expectations
But don't rely on them to make you feel loved.
They will never always do it just right
And sometimes the reason they say no is because they are filling their own buckets at the moment
BUT YOU DESERVE TO FEEL LOVE.
NO MATTER WHAT.
If you can find ways to fill your bucket externally...awesome.
If they say yes and you feel filled...awesome.
But in the end...DEPEND ON YOU to do the work of making sure
You are thoroughly, deeply, completely loved
And then the rest is just the sprinkles.
If you need help to stop making your spouse's actions or inactions the source of your sense of self-worth, security and confidence.
Need the tools for those are inside jobs
Click below to schedule a Relationship Reset call.
I've got you until you do.
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