One of the many things I learned after my recent breakup was that I have emotional needs, and when they are not met I become very frustrated. My needs are numerous and intense and nothing like an average person’s needs. And I’ve come to accept this last fact and even the implication of it: that I will most probably live out my days alone, or even if I find that love, I will have to accept that there are some things they just simply won’t be able to give me, some things I have to find a way to give myself or come to terms with their absence in my life. It’s frightening to come to this realization, to embrace this reality, but it has given me some perspective and made me confront some of my biggest fears.
In the past few days, I have been trying to articulate my needs. What are these things I need from people I share my life with? What are these things I need to thrive in a relationship? I found that in most of my previous relationships, I struggled to name what exactly I needed from my partners, and because I didn’t know what I needed from them, I couldn’t directly ask them, and because I couldn’t ask them for what I needed, I was unfulfilled and this manifested in other ways like resentment, passive-aggression, impatience, withdrawal. You can’t fight your demons if you don’t know them, if you can’t name them. And so, I have been trying to name my needs, to be as clear as possible about how they make me feel, and I have as well been thinking about what it means to have them, where they come from.
When I get into a relationship with someone, I want to be acknowledged and seen by them. Perhaps, I myself do not know what it means for someone to see me, but I do know that I need to have a sense that I matter to the person I’m with, that the person wants to be fully present in my life. Again, this is more intuitive than logical. It’s something you just sense. It’s also not something sweet words can take care of. It has to be felt. In any case, whatever being seen means, I want to be seen. I remember how, in my previous relationship, I did not feel seen many times and tried to voice it, and how I was told, “I see you, babe.” When someone tells you they do not feel you see them, your response should not be that you see them. Do not use that opportunity to make yourself feel good. Your response, if you need to have one, is to find out what it means to see them, to listen, because chances are you have no clue, and to try, to work towards acquiring what it takes to see them. It’s a difficult thing, this seeing business. It requires being present, paying great attention, listening and absorbing details, remembering. You will not see the person you’re with if you are all over the place and not being mindful and thoughtful, or forgetting almost every little detail they tell you about themselves, or mostly aloof. Seeing also requires a reckless sort of acceptance, but it’s an acceptance that comes with reason. “I accept this person because of so, so, and so.”You will need to think of this reason now and again, to remind yourself of it.
On the list of the things I need, and on the same category with being seen, is my love for long messages and emails in which I am told random things, things that matter, things that don’t matter (say, for example, about a book my partner is reading or a movie they are seeing and how it made them feel or what it made them think). I want to be able to do this as well: write this special person long messages often and on, baring my heart and my soul, feeling intimately and infinitely connected to them. I can do without calls, but I cannot do without messages: intimate, romantic messages, in which I immerse myself and feel the heart of my partner, in which I drown myself and come out feeling on top of the world. Starve me with your voice, but do not starve me with your words. Messages are thoughtful. To write good messages, you have to sit down and think. You have to spend some time collecting your thoughts. You have to be thoughtful and intentional. Anyone can call. Anyone can lift their phone and dial my number, but it takes a great degree of mindfulness and emotional presence to sit down and compose a message that reflects exactly what you are thinking or feeling. Do not think that calls will ever replace this process. They never will.
Honest conversations are important to me. I want us to talk, really talk. I want to feel that I can have ANY conversation with the person I call mine, any conversation at all, about the things I like in the relationship and the things I don’t like, about my fears and anxieties, about the things that make me happy. I need a gist buddy, a conversation partner, someone who enjoys spending long minutes over the phone, who never gets bored with chatting, who thinks about new ways of making conversations refreshing and interesting. The last thing I want is to be involved with someone I even slightly fear, someone that the thought of telling how they have treated me or made me feel scares me. That would be a disaster, and I would be repeating patterns from my childhood that I have tried so hard to flee from.
There are other things I need from a relationship, like surprises, like someone who really listens to me, like safety, like reassurance. I need to be told I am good-looking and brilliant and kind. Not that I don’t know these things myself, but it’s good to hear them from someone else, especially a significant other.
My needs are many and monstrous; these are only some of them. I think I’ve got them under control when a relationship is just starting out, and then they pop out, unleashing their terror. I have often thought that maybe I am just too needy and too desperately seeking affection, that my needs are much more than I can manage, more than people in my life can manage, and I have wondered why. Why am I not able to get by with what is offered? Why do I not accept what is given with gratitude? Does this have anything to do with my childhood, with growing up feeling unloved, starved of affection, begging for it but never getting it? Is that why I go through life looking for affection from other people — strangers, friends, teachers, mentors — never really finding it, at least not as wholesome as I want it to be, never really achieving that intimacy in relationships? Is this what it is, childhood trauma that has followed me into adulthood?
When we get into relationships, we always look out for parts of the other person that will fill up something in us. We want them to do things for us that we are not able to do for ourselves. Some people think this is selfish because instead of looking outward, instead of focusing on giving love, we focus on ourselves, on receiving love. But the thing is, no matter how good or selfless we try to be, no matter how much we dissociate our needs from the relationship and focus on pleasing the other person and making the other person happy, we will come back one day, in full circle, to the place where the relationship began, a place of loneliness and longing and an ache to be seen and heard, maybe now tinted with resentment. We are emotional beings. We are all somewhat selfish. We need certain needs to be met in order to be fulfilled in a relationship. The person getting into a relationship with us also needs certain needs to be met emotionally, physically, and mentally. We cannot deny it, cannot pretend that those needs do not exist, cannot simply wish them away. We do so at our own peril. The very least we can do is acknowledge them, and dialogue about ways to fulfill them; else, we remain deeply unsatisfied, and what a sad way to live.
THE MOON-CAVE BLOG 