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Needs like feeling loved, validated, worthy, important, significant, etc.

I am guessing most of you started thinking about the people in your life who you think are supposed to do that for you.

While it may be a popular theory in the world of relationships, I am not a believer. I think it is our responsibility to take care of our needs. Not our partners, not our kid. Ours and ours alone.

I wonder where we got the idea that it was someone else’s job.

Oh wait. Maybe from society in general. Or our parents? Maybe from movies or books. Possibly from a lot of advice out there from people with more degrees than I have.

So hey – call me a rebel.

In terms of our relationship with our partner, many of us live in a world where we try to focus on their needs, they try to focus on our needs, and inevitably, someone doesn’t get it right. Again.

We end up being rather need-y and seriously, do you want to be a needy person? We all have people like that in our lives. And honestly, they might not be our favorite people to be around.

There is a part of our relationship that begins to look like a tennis match. We fall into the idea of score-keeping. We can do things for our partner, but only if they are doing something for us. The ball gets lobbed back and forth and someone always ends up losing.

Can this really be the foundation of a long and successful union?

I read once that this whole notion of meeting each other’s needs was based on an early marital arrangement. When the man was thought to be able to ‘prove’ his ability to protect and provide (her primary need) that the woman was then obligated to provide for his primary need – sex.

But times have changed, and I think we need to as well.

When we take the time to unpack ‘our needs’, so many of the issues we deal with come back to not feeling worthy. Please know that this is an issue that comes with being human. None of us are unique in feeling as though we are not enough. And seriously, how can anyone make us feel worthy if we don’t feel that way ourselves?

If feeling worthy is at the core of all of our suffering, why oh why would we want to give that power to another person? We try to categorize it as intimacy or trust but at the end of the day, it is not our partner’s jobs is to make us feel validated. To make us feel worthy.

It is ours.

We all want to feel better about who we are and about our lives in general. We want the people around us to act in certain ways so we can feel better. I think it is a lot of unnecessary pressure on a relationship.

Personally, I like the idea of two strong independent people who find magic in the places where they overlap.

It really can be a beautiful things.