Your Partner is Not (Solely) Responsible for Meeting Your Needs

Around the time in my career when I began to gain more experience working with couples, I put a status on my social media page that read: "Another person or a relationship is not supposed to meet your needs. You're supposed to get your needs met through your inner self and your spiritual life. Once you learn to lean on those things as a primary source, then everything another person does is just the cherry on top. If people could figure that out, I think relationships would be way less stressful because we wouldn't be so hard on each other."

By working with couples, I noticed a pattern when it came to the lack of relationship satisfaction
- blaming. When a partner's expectations of a relationship - their beliefs about what they would get from a partnership - are not met, they become upest and resentful. And the focus of therapy became how to get needs -  such as affection, attention, and support - met through their partner. This becomes very stressful on both individuals! One partner is not living up to the other's demands and feels overwhelmed, like they are walking on egg shells. And the other is constantly disappointed and hurt.

When the focus is taken off the romantic relationship and placed on self - asking questions like, "How am I making myself feel secure?" "In what ways do I encourage myself?" "What things do I do to celebrate my accomplishments?" "How do I show love and care to myself?" - the couple begins to see a reduction in stress levels and an increase in relationship satisfaction. Self-nurturing and finding other means of support allows for either partner to have a break every now and then. No partner is perfect, and they have outside stressors - work, finances, children, extended family - that may not always allow them to meet your needs as sufficiently as you would like. With outside sources of support, this is okay. The relationship becomes what it is intended to be - a place for comfort and love, but not THE ONLY place you receive these things.

- written by Nakya Reeves, LMFT. I am a therapist and owner of a private practice where my main focus is working with families on communication issues, especially the parent-teen relationship. I also utilize PhotoTherapy techniques in my practice, which integrates bringing in photos that the client has taken or collected as a part of the therapy process. I can be contacted any time at csolutionstherapy@gmail.com