What Are Reasonable Needs?
In this article, I’m going to help you get clear in your mind exactly what reasonable needs are, how to communicate them to your partner, and what to do if they continue to go unmet.
Firstly it’s worth saying that generally your health, lifestyle, relationship with yourself, and sense of purpose are your responsibility, not your partners. It’s not their job to ensure that you are making sense of your own existence, that is well and truly yours.
But it is their responsibility as a loving partner, to meet certain emotional or physical needs that you have. Providing of course, that you are meeting theirs. That’s the deal. Good old-fashioned reciprocity.
Human beings are attachment creatures. We are hardwired to need secure bonds with others to feel well. Despite popular belief, this doesn’t just apply to infants and their caregivers, but also to both partners in intimate adult relationships.
As Levine and Heller explain in their book ‘Attached’:
“Numerous studies show that once we become attached to someone, the two of us form one physiological unit. Our partner regulates our blood pressure, our heart rate, our breathing, and the levels of hormones in our blood. We are no longer separate entities. The emphasis on differentiation that is held by most of today’s popular psychology approaches to adult relationships does not hold water from a biology perspective. Dependency is a fact; it is not a choice or a preference.”
Needing closeness with your partner and wanting them to meet reasonable emotional needs for you is not weakness or co-dependency, it’s attachment and it’s our shared nature. When our needs are consistently met by our partners, we feel secure, and our bonds grow stronger. Our nervous systems regulate, we’re less stressed, and we experience better physical health and all-round wellbeing. On the other hand, when our needs are not met, our sense of security is damaged, we feel isolated, disconnected and anxious and our health will deteriorate if this is goes on.
Over time, you might start to feel resentful, withdraw, act out or look for attention elsewhere. Maybe your needs have gone unmet for so long that you’ve completely given up asking. That’s is no way to live and if it hasn’t already, it will eventually begin to affect your physical health and even your lifespan.
So, this is serious and not something to bury your head in the sand about. Asking your partner to meet certain needs is a form of self-care and therefore healthy. An essential aspect of a life well lived. So here are some steps to help you develop the skill of asking for what you need from your partner.
STANDING UP FOR YOUR NEEDS
1. Identify Your Needs Clearly to Yourself.
Think carefully about what you NEED from your partner to feel fulfilled. Needs that you can’t meet yourself and that you can’t go outside the relationship for. Make sure your expectations are reasonable and fair before you begin the discussion. For example, if you’re treating your partner like a doormat and then wondering why he or she isn’t doing that thing you like, you’re going to need to address that first. Or if you are placing unrealistic demands on you partner to meet needs that would be better met yourself, again, set to work on that as an individual.
Once you’re clear in your mind about what your needs are, and you’re certain they’re reasonable, then you’re going to have to have the conversation.
In case you’re not quite sure what needs are reasonable, then here’s a list of examples:
- Trust
- Commitment
- Affection
- Appreciation
- Empathy
- Friendship
- Satisfying Sex
- Compromise
- Respect
- Quality Time
- Kindness
- Generosity
If any of those things are missing from your relationship then you have a right to ask for them.
2. Communicate Them to Your Partner
Pick an appropriate time when you are both calm and you have some space. I’m going to use sex as an example as so many of you have strong feelings about that, but it really doesn’t matter, the process is exactly the same for any need.
Set a neutral tone and keep it about your feelings. Avoid blaming, shaming or criticising your partner which might just lead to them becoming defensive, shutting down and withdrawing. This is a conversation, not an attack, so try to stay calm and on topic.
Start with Positivity
“I really enjoy being with you and I still find you very attractive.”
Use “I” statements
“but I feel isolated and frustrated”
Explain WHY
“because we don’t have sex”
Clarify your need
“And I need sex to feel love and connection with you”
Make an Invitation
“Would you be willing to consider having more sex in our relationship”
Ask for Feedback
“Is there something I’m doing or not doing that’s causing you not to want to be intimate with me?”
You can have the conversation many times, in a healthy relationship, such conversations should be welcomed as they are understood to be healthy and necessary. Be prepared to listen to feedback without defensiveness if your partner has something valid to say about your part in the situation.
3. Take Care of Yourself
If you’ve established and clearly communicated your needs to your partner and very little or nothing changes, then it’s time to take more serious action. You need to be honest with yourself about whether you’re willing to permanently give up something you love and need to be with this person who’s so far either incapable or unwilling to love you in the way you need to be loved. If you can’t, then you’re going to have to tell them at some point that you can’t agree to the current terms of the relationship, and that you’re unwilling to continue the relationship unless things change.
Before we get to that it’s important during this time to look after yourself as best you can. It’s probably going to be quite stressful and painful but that’s no reason to stop taking care of yourself.
Talk to friends or professionals about your situation if you need to, it might be good to have some support and listen to others’ opinions. Don’t check out with alcohol or drugs if you’re prone to self-medicating, or Netflix or gambling apps if you are more prone to process addictions. Go to the gym, get therapy, build up your strength, your sanity and your sense of self, and keep your relationship with yourself in order. This will ensure that you’ll be in a good state of mind and health to continually push with this ultimately healthy, and positive course of action.
Also, don’t resort to sulking, withholding or being hostile towards your partner. As I said earlier, try to keep your side of the street clean.
Equally, if you find yourself scurrying around doing far more than your fair share in the vague hope of reciprocity then stop. Begging for breadcrumbs isn’t the answer here, you’ll just end up disappointed and more resentful. Self-esteem, integrity and equality is key.
4. Work Out Who You’re Dealing With
Next, you need to work out exactly who you’re dealing with. It might be tempting to jump to the conclusion that your partner has some kind of personality disorder but that’s statistically unlikely. (1-5% NPD UK)
Occasionally exhibiting narcissistic traits does not necessarily mean someone has full blown narcissistic personality disorder. So be careful about mislabelling which can be harmful. There’s plenty of information about this topic on other channels if you’re convinced that’s what you’re dealing with though. Normal people are capable of being occasionally self-important, arrogant, resistant to change and low on empathy.
There can be all kinds of reasons for your partners lack of interest in your wellbeing, but you have every right to find out what they are and insist that the situation changes.
Here are some things to consider:
- Are they unhealthy, medicated, drinking too much or using drugs?
- Do they have personal issues they haven’t dealt with like trauma or abuse?
- Are they an avoidant personality type?
- Do they look after themselves, sleep and manage stress well?
- Are they addicted to screens or distracted in other ways?
The purpose of this exercise is to carefully work out exactly why they don’t seem to care about your wellbeing so that you can bring up these concerns when you talk to them, which is next.
5. Set an ultimatum
Again, pick an appropriate time when you’re both calm and you have some space and no distractions.
Make it clear, again, that you believe what you’ve been asking for is reasonable and non-negotiable and that you’re concerned that nothing has changed. If you believe any of their lifestyle choices or undealt with issues are contributing, then now’s the time to bring those up and insist that they’re addressed.
- Ask them to join a 12 Step programme or get therapy for their addictions.
- Ask them to join a gym, get a personal trainer, join a running club, or speak to a professional about nutrition.
- Insist they go to therapy for help with adverse childhood experiences, attachment disorders or any other traumas.
- Ask them to see their doctor about any psychiatric drugs that might be interfering with their ability to tune into their loved one’s wellbeing.
Then set time limits and explicitly establish boundaries.
For example:
“I can’t tolerate being in this relationship under these conditions because it’s making me miserable. I deserve better, so if things don’t improve in the next 6 months I’m going to have to leave.”
I know this is not easy. Maybe you have children and you don’t want to break your family apart for their sakes. But again, you have to work out what you’re willing to give up, perhaps forever, in order to stay with this person. And, if you do have children, it’s worth considering what kind of example you are setting for them regarding intimate relationships.
You Are Worth Fighting For
It is not healthy to tolerate misery long-term in relationships. Think carefully about why you would chose to do this.
Are you afraid of conflict?
Are you too agreeable?
Are you a people pleaser?
Do you have dreadful self-esteem, or are you unconsciously living out a pattern of relationships that you witnessed as a child?
These are all things that you would need to address if you want to resolve the situation.
Having a partner that consistently cares about our needs, and our wellbeing is extremely exciting and deeply satisfying. It is what we all hope for when we marry, and certainly what we pray our children will find when they do. When our partners love us enough to consistently give us what we desire, we will feel, in some fundamental way, that our lives are where we want them to be. We’ll feel more content, more confident and more secure. Life will feel more manageable, more meaningful and more pleasurable. You can tell if you are being cared for because your life will improve.
When we feel cared for, we feel valued, we feel relaxed, and we feel more peaceful. Our nervous systems regulate, and our heartbeats slow. Our health improves and our outlook becomes more positive.
Giving up caring is dishonourable. None of us would agree that it would be okay to be lazy or ambivalent towards our children, yet we do it to our partners all too easily. You should feel better when you are with your partner, not worse.
Some people are so obviously uncared for that they have the look of a stray animal. Desperate, hungry and searching. Desperate for an end to their suffering, hungry for a scrap of sustenance, searching for someone to help and to comfort them. Who would be content to leave a fellow human being in that state? Or who, or why would someone allow themselves to get into that state? I guess these are the serious questions we are grappling with here.
The world is improved when we take care of each other, and greatly impoverished when we don’t. I am not confused about that. When both partners understand that meeting their loved one’s needs is the most valuable thing they can offer them, they create an ever upward motion towards greater and greater sanity and mutual life satisfaction. Children being raised in this environment and with this as a model, will undoubtedly thrive, and who in their right mind wouldn’t want that.
If you found this article helpful then you might also enjoy last week’s, where I talk about the importance of generosity in relationships.
As always, to yourself and to others, Tell The Truth.
