5 Powerful Ways to Get Your Needs Met In Relationships

In this article, we want to answer the question: what are 5 powerful ways to get your needs met in relationship? We often think that what we really really want has to do with another person satisfying our needs.For example, I really want my partner to respect me.

Many times to get your needs met, you may project what you are really wanting on to another person. Whenever you project what you are wanting on to another person, you are giving responsibility to get your needs met to another person. This potentially puts you in the role of being the victim, and then you go into all of the victim dialogue and the victim feelings.When you’re in the victim mode, you’re going to naturally swing to the victimizer, where you will  attack, judge, and shame your partner to get your needs met. Then you will cycle back to the victim, feeling like you’re not getting any of your needs met, which puts you back into the victimizer mode.

You can spend a lot of time cycling back and forth between the victim and the victimizer because you projected your needs externally.To stop this vicious and painful relationship cycle, explore the question of what you really want? Many people have suffered some emotional, narcissistic wounds.They’ve been in abusive relationships and emotionally invalidated as children. They come into adulthood with this hole inside them and that needs to be filled. That leads, of course, to addiction and other kinds of behavior unhealthy behaviors as attempts to get your needs met How do you shift out of that, so that you can be happy and whole again?

Step One: Crank Up Your Courage Dial To Get Your Needs Met

Working on a healthy, co-creative way to get your needs met takes a lot of courage. This is not easy and can be very scary. Crank up your courage dial.

Step Two: Become Aware Of Your Unmet Needs

If you are not aware of your unmet needs and you do not recognize the victim-victimizer cycle, you cannot get your needs met in relationship. Once you are aware and understand yourself, then you can start navigating, behaving, and using tools that will get your needs met in your relationship or marriage.

So step one, crank up the courage. Imagine that you have a courage, dial in front of you and crank it  to 100. Step two recognize, “Oh, I have this need. I want these people in my life to meet this need,” and name it. Write it down. The big needs are safety, connection, support, freedom, and respect.

Take a moment and think about how many people in your life are not meeting that need for you. “Oh that person doesn’t really respect me,” or “I don’t feel really safe with that person.”

I don’t feel supported by that person, that person and that person and that person, but just with that one need think about all the people in your life and who really meets that need there might be one or two.

If you’re lucky, but maybe no one does not to the degree that you want it and then, as you get really clear on that process, now take a moment and feel into how that creates a grief, a sadness, a pain.

Step Three: Make A Conscious Choice To Get Your Needs Met

The choice is, “I’m going to retrieve that responsibility for getting my needs met needs off of others. I’m going to meet that need deep in my core. I’m, going to connect with something deep inside me that I really value respect it feel where it is my safe space.”

Think about a quality that you have inside yourself that you deeply value like kindness or curiosity, or courage, or resilience or strength. Imagining that qaulity creates a safe space inside yourself, and you are cultivating a stronger inner world. You are meeting your needs deep inside instead of wanting to get your needs met from your relationship. This stops the pain cycle of the victim and the victimizer, the abuser and the abused.

Step Four: Become Aware Of Your Underlying Emotions

If you are aware of your emotional experience and can name it, you will be much closer in your journey to get your needs met. There are many people who, if you ask them to name an emotion can’t do it. They are in a condition called alexithymia, which is the inability to recognize and name your emotions. It’s a condition that can be fixed through emotional competency training.

As a child, you were probably told that emotions are bad, evil, or weak. You were taught that it’s not okay for you to be angry. Yeah, Dad can be angry, but it’s not okay you as a kid to be angry. In fact, being angry is bad behavior for which you get sent to your room with no dinner.

You carry this notion into adulthood so that you never learn to recognize, that when you feel disrespected you become angry, frustrated, confused, sad, shamed and embarrassed. The Awakened Empath: 6 Paths to Powerful Enlightenment

For example, if you’re feeling “Oh, they they hate me. They don’t respect me. They don’t like me,” ask yourself what emotions come up. Label, all of the emotions that you imagine might come up around that thought. Keep doing it over and over again. As you become conscious of your emotions, you become conscious that you have a need that you to be met. As you become emotionally aware, you will find that you get your needs met.

Step Five: Abandon Your Infancy

As an infant, when you cried because you’re hungry, somebody eventually fed you. When you cried, because you’ve pooped in your diaper, someone eventually cleaned up the mess. When you cried because you’re tired. someone eventually held you and soothed you to sleep. You learned as an infant that you have these very basic physical needs that will be met by somebody else.

The problem is that there are a lot of people that never grow out of that. We even have cultural myths that perpetuate the infant mindset. For example, little girls think about being fairy princesses and and a Prince Charming will come to take care of them forever. That’s an infantile mindset. It’s subversive and disempowering.

When you’re thinking that my partner doesn’t respect me, one of the things you need to be very honest about is: are you reverting back to that infantile demand that your needs be met by other people. Are you failing to take personal responsibility for your needs met yourself.

The flip side is that sometimes you can ask for your needs to be met. There is no rule that says you need to have to be met by anybody else, especially as an adult. You are responsible for getting your own needs met. Even if somebody does meet your needs, it’s, never enough, because what you really want is to meet your own needs.

There is another problem you’ve got to overcome in getting your needs met. At around two years old, your mindset was abrubtly shifted from having all of your needs met without asking to learning not to be selfish.  If you asked for stuff, you’re selfish and being selfish was bad  You were programmed as a little child to stop asking for for your needs to be met. You carry that into your relationships so that you are shamed and fearful of asking your partner for your need to be met.

You can get caught in this trap of saying well, “He can read my mind. She should clearly know what I need and just provide it without me even having to ask for it,”  which is the infantile mindset. This leads to resentment such as ,”How come how come you never care for me? How come you never talk to me? How come you never do this for me?” On the other hand, you can be ashamed to get your needs met by asking because you were taught to not be selfish.

The healthy way to get your needs met is to be courageous, become aware of your needs, understand and be aware of the emotions underneath your needs, take the responsibility for getting your needs met off your partner, avoid the infantile mindset, and be brave enough to get your needs met by consciously asking your partner to meet them.