Emotional Needs - A Need for Love

As human beings we all have needs.  Aside of basic ones such as air, food, water and warmth, we all have a complex woven web of emotional needs that direct us throughout our lives.  Many of us don’t even realise the breadth and depth of our emotional needs until we experience a major emotional change in our loves, for example separating from a long term partner.

So what needs do you have that you are either allowing your partner to fulfil, or indeed looking to be fulfilled by your partner, and yet are feeling dissatisfied and a lack of fulfilment?

Many of the emotional needs we feel centre around a sense of security.  Most of us do not enjoy change; we like to know where we stand and what is likely to happen in any eventuality.  Imagine if your partner started acting unusually in every day occurrences in your life, such as the way he or she gets dressed, or liking different foods.  Many people find a red danger light ignites when their partner behaves differently in this way.  This feeling stems from fear, a fear of the unknown (this type of behaviour is unfamiliar, so I am not sure what it means), a fear of losing what we have (is he seeing someone else), or indeed simply a sense of unpredictability that we find both uncomfortable and scary.

Have you ever stopped and thought about what needs you have that you are actually looking to your partner to fulfil?  What emotional dependencies are you putting upon them that can be served by yourself?

Many problems in relationships stem from using our partners behaviour to trigger negative feelings about ourselves, and our apparent need for them to help us feel secure and valued.  After all, if you were totally confident in yourself, knew that you were a valuable person in your partner’s life, would you be so concerned with them being subjected to flirtatious behaviour by some other member of the opposite sex? Or indeed, would you need the presence of your partner to feel you were able to feel love, feel able to achieve in other areas of your life?

Once we feel confident and indeed happy with ourselves, who we are, when we recognise and believe in ourselves, we no longer rely on misinterpreted and “complex equivocal" signs from our partners. Our needs to feel secure and valuable come from our own recognition and value of ourselves.

This in itself makes loving us much less dependant upon our partner. They are able to love us for the person we are, not for who they help us to be. Being wanted is much more healthy than being needed.

Be you, know you, believe in you, know that you can rely on you.

Indeed love you, and you will be loved.

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