Emotional needs

[Valerie Brewster]

I've been listening to the podcasts on Relationship and Conflict

Relationship and Conflict

This time through, I'm listening because my partner and I are having some issues we'd like to work out and I'm looking for a framework. My partner expressed interest in listening to them too, so that's great. In some ways, just sharing the listening may create the framework.

Anyway, we were talking about the first one, and the idea that you can't get your emotional needs met in relationship. I've heard Ken say several times that we can't get our emotional needs met, those needs were set in us in early childhood, and you can't fix the past with the present. Okay. . .

When I look at intimate relationship, I come up with a short-list of emotional needs that I'm hoping to have satisfied in that kind of relationship: to love and be loved, to be part of family/larger group, to be known --- There's probably many more that I might perceive if I opened up to it.

Certainly some of these needs are there because I am a human (the psychology of herd animals, Maslow and all that). I don't think those needs are going away. So I have a hard time with the idea that these needs are never going to be met, because from time to time, they are met. So, what does this idea "your emotional needs will not be met" point to? The unsatisfactory nature of human existence? The transitory nature of existence (sometimes I'm loved, sometimes not)? What's the appropriate response?

As a coda, Woody Allen pops in mind, from "Annie Hall":

"I thought of that old joke: This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, my brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken.' And the doctor says, 'Well why don't you turn him in?' and the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.' Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. They're totally irrational and crazy and absurd, but I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs."

[Leslie Ellestad]

As time goes on, my life experience is telling me that Ken is right. Relating to those close to me with the idea of getting a need met creates suffering. At times, when my practice is in a peaceful place and there is a lot of free flowing energy available, I have no sense of need. There are still the same issues in my close relationships and I see that the "flaws" or "not wanted" stuff is still there, but I remain free of a sense of suffering and I don't react. This is the time where things can actually open up and change in the relationship because the other person experiences a shift in the energy and opens up to more possibilities in themselves.

I have begun to think of these experiences as similar to my own internal process. As I increase my capacity for attention(which requires a higher level of energy), I can gradually gain freedom from my habituated patterns. A relationship is two people's habits rubbing up against each other. If I can bring that level of energy/attention/compassion to the relationship, the interlocking patterns have an opportunity to shift, whether or not the other person is working on things consciously(movement is faster if they are). It becomes really interesting watching as the friction points keep recurring. If you are like me, you have plenty of opportunity to try again because conditioned patterns die hard!

After many years of marriage, my husband went away for a month(a retreat and we had no contact). For me, it is definitely better to have intimacy. It gives life so much more flavor.

[Turning Falcon of Passionate Intensity (Ann)]

I feel reticent to relate personal experiences, partly because it feels uncomfortable but also because it seems to go against Ken's advice on how to interact with others in a practice environment -- i.e. to focus on helping others get clear about what are experiencing rather than talking about one's own experience. Anyway ..just throw some tomatoes if this is out of place...

When I first met my current partner, my habits included having several relationships at once, leaving the minute anyone started "getting serious," holding a belief that nobody had a "right" to know where I was or what I did "on my own time" -- and that anything that happened outside a particular relationship had no bearing on it.

Suddenly I was with someone who said a very clear " NO" to all this. My habits became evident to him when he realised that I had been with someone I'd been seeing before we met. His response was simple and extremely straightforward. He said, " With me, it's got to be all or nothing. If this doesn't work for you, then let's not go any further." Well, being a child of the drug, sex and rock 'n roll era -- this was a shock -- simply not a part of the culture. But something told me that I should try this out, make the commitment.

The next thing that came along as we spent more time together was that I noticed how very self contained he was. He didn't need anything from me. This drove me nuts. My way of relating to men was based on being the centre of attention. He wasn't dependent, didn't praise me, and when something wasn't going well, he brought it up -- straight out. I wasn't used to any of this and it felt very uncomfortable. Another challenge was that he seemed to be more focused on his interests (the news, what was happening in the world) than on me. That's how I saw it anyway. I was, quite literally, jealous of the BBC World Service (we met in Colombia and in those days he got his news from a short wave radio that went everywhere with him).

Eventually I started to see that my expectations, demands and needs were the problem. Here was a person who was honest, open hearted, had a wonderful sense humour, lively intelligence and was completely faithful. And I was expecting him to talk to me all the time, dote on me, praise me, focus on me, me, me, me. I started to see that not only did he have many positive qualities, but also that his absence of clinging gave me space to do what I was interested in. (Other people I'd been with had been concerned about how my interests in international development and research would affect the relationship). This man not only had no qualms about my leaving Colombia to write my dissertation, but encouraged me to do so, even though it meant we wouldn't see each other for a year. It's amazing what can happen when somebody gives you space.......to make a long story short. I married him and we've been together very happily for 24 yrs. There's always been a lot of space -- we've both traveled extensively and have spent long periods apart. Most recently I lived in another city for 2.5 yrs while he stayed with our daughter, who did not want to change schools yet again.

Ours is not a mutual benefit relationship (to refer to Ken's framework in Waking up in Relationship and Conflict) -- we are together because of some mysterious emotional connection that we both feel. It turns out that there is ongoing mutual benefit (our abilities , interests, and knowledge are very complementary and that helps both of us) and we have had two children (now young adults) so each of us has negotiated our emotional connection relationship in the context of shared aim relationships involving two children.

My life experience has shown me that the emotional connection is compromised by two things (as Ken points out): clinging to the expectation that things will be good all the time and by lack of clarity about the basis for relationship. It is very easy to for the mutual benefit mode to take over and predominate, and when this happens the emotional connection will fade and die.

In Relationship and Conflict Ken talks about four ways of working out conflict in relationships: pacification, enrichment, magnestisation and destruction. It seems to me that they are all about space. In pacification we give the other person (or eachother) space to be heard. In enrichment we bring in resources to create space for new possibilities (space) to emerge. In magnetisation we use personal energy or power to point to possibilities (space) for resolution, and in destruction -- things have not worked, and leaving or ending things creates space for both people to start anew.

I agree with Leslie that even if two people are not working in a conscious, concerted way, that when one person makes space, things can change very dramatically.

[Leslie (Mature Stapler of Fulsome Absenteeism)]

Ann,
Reading your description of your partner, your relationship, and your own responses to it has helped me greatly. Thank you.

[Chou Dog of Dis-illusioned Allegory]

Valerie, you write: "When I look at intimate relationship, I come up with a short-list of emotional needs that I'm hoping to have satisfied in that kind of relationship: to love and be loved, to be part of family/larger group, to be known..."
Three out of the four 'emotional needs' you list there are passive, 'to be...'--so those must be the things you want other people to do for you.
My questions are: How do you expect the other person in an intimate relationship to do those things for you? How will you know when they have done them?
And also, are these 'needs' or 'wants'? A 'need' is something necessary to sustain life. A 'want' is a desire for something that is not necessary to sustain life. In my experience, much of what I think I 'need', I only 'want'.

[Valerie Brewster]

CD: Thank you for pointing out the distinction between need and want. Ken says you can never have your "emotional needs" met, not "emotional wants". I'm thinking that my short-list of emotional needs, while it is possible to live without them, may have been conditioned at a time in life when they really were necessary to sustain life -- which would help explain why imagining living without them can evoke tearing, searing, physical sensations.

I don't feel/think that my expression of them in the infinitive means that I expect to have others do them for me. Someone can't "do" feeling for me. Sometimes in relationship the conditions arise where (I) feel "wow that person loves me," "I am included," "I am known." That's how I know.