When it comes to dating and relationship coaching, one of the most common subjects that comes up is the idea of needs.
Recently, I wrote an article: How To Identify Your Emotional Needs In A Relationship.
But while identifying your needs is important, it’s just the first step.
This is the second in a three part article series on needs in a relationship.
We’ve talked about identifying your needs, but how do you know when your needs aren’t being met in your relationship?
It might seem obvious, but it’s important to look at each of these elements separately.
After all, when it comes to understanding what the life of your dreams actually looks like, there’s a lot of introspection to be done.
Mindfulness, vision boards, journaling, meditating, affirmations – these are all tools to help you explore your dream life.
And of course, your dream life is going to be one where your emotional needs are being met.
Let’s take a look at how to recognize when your emotional needs aren’t being met in a relationship, and how your Toronto life coach can help.
What Are The Core Needs We All Have?
What do we actually need?
Seems like a simple question, right?
But if so, why has so much ink been spilled on the topic?
Everybody has a different idea of what our core human needs are.
According to Tony Robbins, the core human needs are:
- Certainty – stability in one’s life
- Uncertainty – needing change, excitement, novelty
- Significance – feeling like your presence matters
- Love – feeling intimate connection with someone or something
- Growth – feeling like your abilities or knowledge are growing
- Contribution – feeling like you can give back
Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, on the other hand, is as follows, in order:
- Physical needs – food, shelter, water, rest
- Security and safety
- Love and belonging – family, romantic, friendships
- Respect – esteem, accomplishment, and freedom
- Self actualization – achieving your full potential
Head over to Amazon and search for “books about human needs” – you’ll find more than 40,000 results.
But if you look closely at those two lists, there’s a lot of overlap – and that’s true of a lot of different lists.
Broadly speaking, we have physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs in relationships.
A couple months ago, we talked about how to identify your emotional needs in a relationship – but those needs aren’t necessarily an island.
Sex, after all, is a physical need.
But it can also meet your emotional, mental, and sometimes even spiritual needs, can’t it?
Take the time to understand what your needs are, and then read on to take a look at some of the signs they’re not being met.
Recognizing your needs is a three step process:
- Identify your needs
- Identify whether they’re being met
- Decide on the next course of action
We’re on the second one.
Let’s take a look at some of the signs your needs aren’t being met.
1. You Feel Resentment Toward Your Partner
If you’re in a relationship where you feel like your needs aren’t being met, it can lead to resentment.
After all, you have the expectation your partner will make you feel a certain way.
But there are two ways you can approach this.
If you feel resentful toward your partner, ask yourself whether it’s coming from your needs not being met.
And if you feel like your needs aren’t being met, ask yourself if you’re feeling resentful toward your partner.
This can come from both sides.
Resentment isn’t a healthy foundation on which to build a relationship, though.
In fact, when you hold resentment in your life, it can manifest itself in other issues as well.
When doing wellness and lifestyle coaching, for example, we look at how emotions can trigger states of dis-ease.
One of those emotions can be resentment.
Take some time to self reflect – recognize where your resentment is coming from, and how it reflects on your needs not having been met.
2. You Start Keeping Score
Relationships are about give and take.
But for the most part, healthy romantic relationships aren’t built on keeping score.
In a healthy relationship, you can feel free to love – and be loved – without worrying about how it will reflect some imaginary scorecard.
But if you feel yourself starting to keep a tally of things, it can be a sign your needs aren’t being met.
Underneath that urge can be a sign you’re feeling hurt, neglected, or unfulfilled.
“I do so much for them, you might think, “I did this, this, this, this, and this! Why can’t they even do that?”
It’s okay to feel this way.
Your feelings are absolutely valid, but the way they’re manifesting isn’t healthy for your relationship.
Keeping score changes your relationship from a free exchange of love to a transactional one – you get this, I get that.
This is where communicating clearly and openly with your partner comes into play.
Be vulnerable and honest with yourself and your partner about how you feel.
It might help to spend some time journaling and meditating on this to get a better understanding of how you feel.
But remember – your goal is to be heard and to work on improving your relationship, not to dump a load of emotional baggage on your partner and make accusations.
3. You Feel Neglected
This is a tricky one.
If you’re feeling neglected, it can be a sign your needs aren’t being met.
But it can also be a story we tell ourselves.
I often tell my clients that the feelings you feel are real and valid, but the thought process that brought you to those feelings might not be.
If you feel neglected by your partner, it’s important to take the time to explore what the root of that feeling is.
It can point to childhood traumas or even intergenerational traumas that you haven’t fully processed.
That doesn’t mean you can’t talk to your partner about such things, but it’s also important to recognize their source.
It’s important to do some deep self reflection on this one.
Fairy tale movies have told us that our partners should be our everything, but we’re learning that that’s not really healthy.
Your partner can’t be your lover, best friend, therapist, confidant, and everything else.
If and when you do talk to your partner about feeling neglected though, remember to use “I” statements instead of “you” statements.
That gives you the opportunity to talk about your own feelings without making your partner feel like you’re pinning it all on them and making them defensive.
4. Other Possible Signs Your Emotional Needs Aren’t Being Met
Here are some other ways to recognize your emotional needs aren’t being met:
- You’re minimizing your needs
- You’re picking fights with your partner over relatively small things
- You start catastrophizing about your relationship
- You fantasize about other relationships
- You start comparing your relationships to others
- You start resenting the relationships others have (or seem to have)
- You’re considering ending your relationship
This isn’t an exhaustive list, of course.
And I could write a whole article about each of them.
In fact, I did! See the links above.
But if you feel like your relationship needs aren’t being met, you might consider breaking up and starting over.
And sometimes, breaking up is the right decision.
But it’s important to reflect on the nature of your relationship, as well as your previous patterns.
Do you keep making the same mistakes in your relationships?
Are you seeking perfection out of a partner?
Do you have issues with guilt tripping, people pleasing, or setting healthy boundaries?
If so, it’s important to take the time to learn from your past relationships as well as your current one.
How are the issues you’re currently facing with your partner different than previous relationships?
How are they different?
And where are they rooted in?
It may be that you’ll be carrying your unresolved emotional baggage right into the next relationship.
And if that’s the case, why not take the time to heal from old relationship wounds?
Why not look inward?
Why not explore what you can control about how you feel?
In many cases, we rely on others to meet the emotional needs that we ourselves can meet.
In other cases, we have trouble communicating our emotional needs with our partner.
We might not even understand what our needs are, or the childhood experiences and intergenerational trauma that lie beneath these needs.
But in the midst of all this, the life of your dreams exists.
If you can imagine it, you can access it.
The universe provides, and through the art of manifesting, we can access the gifts of the universe.
A feeling of limitless wealth and abundance?
The relationship of your dreams?
All of this, and more, can be yours.
You can manifest it.
But if you’re feeling stuck, all this can feel like it’s so far away.
It may feel out of reach.
Impossible.
Like none of this manifestation stuff works.
But it absolutely does.
I’m Evelina Hovich, and I can help.
In my practice as a manifestation life coach, I’ve worked with people here in Toronto and all over the world to manifest the life of their dreams.
It’s time to take your life to the next level.
It’s time to develop yourself, to take a stand.
To rise above mediocrity.
To accept nothing less than an extraordinary life full of limitless potential.
Book your appointment with me, Evelina Hovich, today, and let’s plant the seeds of potential.
The potential for rejuvenation, for growth, for great joy, for ecstasy.
Imagine an awakening of what could be.
I can help you get there.