Lessons In Owning & Expressing My Needs
In my last blog, I talked about my foray into owning and expressing my needs. And let me just say, working on my needs project continues to challenge my edges. It’s been some work for sure. To bring fun and add some light to this sometimes heavy feeling endeavor, I named my project “The Needs of The Needless”.
As I shared previously, it was an effort to look deep into myself and own that I actually had needs. This was really my starting point: accepting my humanity and allowing myself to have needs. I also had to acknowledge that in this process I will make mistakes and it’s totally ok.
Once I got past this, I was confronted with taking responsibility for my needs — especially as I saw how I set myself up and others to fail to meet them.
Acknowledging My Needs
I began by identifying areas in my life where I had needs and then listed out my specific requirements for each category. I covered areas like my relationship, career, well-being, etc. (I talked more in depth about how to do this here in my last post.)
After creating my list of specific needs, I felt lost as to what to do next. I decided to look at the places where these needs actually may be being met already and where I may be choosing to overlook them. I even entertained the idea that I might be holding the belief that these needs were impossible to have met. A mindset that would absolutely get in the way of creating what I desire. I asked myself: Do I even believe it is possible to have these needs fulfilled?
To start with I focused mostly on my relationship with my significant other, Robin. I selected several areas where I had wants and desires in our relationship. Here’s the list I came up with: the need to feel loved, important, safe, seen, put first, trusted, enough, attractive, supported, regarded as a partner, sexy, a man and present.
My Need to Feel Loved — What I Discovered
I’d say my biggest discovery was in my need to feel loved. Robin does an amazing job of telling me how much she loves me. She is always saying the words “I love you, which is Robin’s primary way of expressing love. What I also realized was there were times when she’d say these words to me and not only did I not feel loved, I’d also sense my own feelings self-loathing rising up.
This insight left me perplexed. After some thought, I realized that two things were happening:
1. My deep-rooted unwillingness to love myself was getting in the way.
By not feeling love and compassion for myself, I actually blocked myself from receiving the love that was being offered to me. This was quite a revelation! My ability to love myself has a very direct correlation to the love I can receive from others. (I was intrigued to look further at the places this might be showing up outside of my relationship with Robin too.)
2. I was making Robin wrong for expressing love in her own way.
Unlike Robin, my love language is not words of affirmation. (If you’re not familiar with love languages, you can learn more about them here.) I recognized that her words were not filling my need to feel loved because my love language is different. I was also making her “wrong” for the way she was expressing her love to me instead of simply understanding our differences. Just becoming aware of this was tremendously helpful. It also helped me to see that learning more about both of our love languages would really serve our relationship.
More Discoveries
The next need I looked at was my desire to feel that I’m important to Robin. To me, this means that I need to be clearly put first from time to time — sometimes even before the children, work, and Robin herself. Another revelation here! I was not making any requests or communicating this need which was a total set up for Robin.
Basically, I expected her to be a mind reader and just know what I wanted. To top it all off, everything I witnessed Robin do for others fueled my feelings of resentment. I took this as confirmation that I was not important. I realized what a jerk I was being here, and that I needed to communicate my needs and make some specific requests.
The Breakthrough
Understanding my needs and wants and practicing communicating them has been a big breakthrough for me. It’s lead to a deeper connection and a stronger and more honest relationship with Robin.
It’s also led to a better relationship with myself. I feel more loving and trusting of myself and I’ve noticed I feel more compassion for myself as well. The more I look, the more I see the places to claim responsibility for my own stuff. It’s become very clear to me that the things I require in my relationship with Robin are often a reflection of my needs in my relationship with my self too.
Where Robin is concerned, any need that I have in our relationship has to be discussed in partnership with Robin. This means framing our conversation in a positive way and in the spirit of creating together — leaving the blame complaining out of it. I have to allow her to show up in her own way and stop making her wrong. This is an easy task, if I can approach the conversation — both with my words and my tone — from partnership, and remember to place any blame or criticism aside.
Here are some of the big lessons I’ve learned so far in my “Needs of the Needless” project:
Accepting that I have needs and being aware of what they are is ground zero. Denying my wants and desires is a disservice to myself and to my partner.
I must be intentional about my relationship with my partner. This means clearly expressing my needs and listening to Robin’s too.
It’s helpful to understand my partner’s love language and my own — and allow for our ways of expressing love to be unique.
It’s so much better to approach my relationship from the spirit of partnership and co-creation. This means resisting the temptation to find fault and instead focus on opportunity and connection. Communicating what I do want — not what I don’t want — is the key.
The process might be rocky and it’s all ok. I’m human and I will make mistakes along the way.
Being a coach is truly amazing. It challenges me to do my own personal growth work and stretches my comfort zone — all in service of my ultimate commitment to living with purpose and peace. Robin and I have had several of these “needs” conversations over the past few weeks. And as a result, we continue to grow our partnership and relationship.
Asking for what I need is certainly messy. The good news is the more I practice and express what I need, the smaller the mess I make. This is a new skill that I continue to develop as I go and I plan to report back on my progress.
Would you like some free support with this? I can help you. Click here to sign up for a Possibilities Conversation with me. We’ll spend 30 minutes together and talk about where you are right now and the steps you can take to get yourself back into integrity with your needs.