"Do I have to choose between being in a relationship or getting my needs met?"

Have you ever had a moment when you felt like everything was going great for you?

You were focused on your career and making progress in it, or building your business. You were in the best shape you’d ever been in, and  taking great care of your health. Your social life and friendships were fantastic. You were even getting along with your family (including that one family member you usually didn’t get along with)? A phase when everything was going well or at least heading in the right direction.

Then you met someone and started a relationship with them.

After getting used to life as a single person, who could do whatever you wanted and prioritizing your own needs, suddenly you were back in a relationship. And gradually, so gradually you maybe didn’t even notice it, you began to lose a lot of the things that were going great for you when you’d met him. 

Perhaps you stopped exercising and eating as healthily. Or you stopped seeing your friends as often. Gave up some of the hobbies you’d been passionate about and growing through, whether those were social dance, professional development classes, learning a language or like one client of mine who had stopped attending her Stanford alumni events. Or maybe you lost some stea, in your business or career once you were less focused on it (granted, that may have been because you had been overworking up til then!). But the point is, you HAD been what felt like the BEST version of yourself, with ALL of your needs (except romance) getting met… then you met HIM, got involved and the best version of you started to get put aside.

All of it may have left you thinking, “I’m better off when I’m not in a relationship.”

When we have experiences like this, especially if we start to take better care of ourselves and meeting all of our needs again after the relationship (inevitably) ends, it reinforces the story that we are better off without a man. But is that really the choice? Be my best self OR have a relationship?

If we grew up in households where there was narcissism, codependency and modeling of putting your needs last,  then it certainly feels like that’s “just the way it is.“ We end up with a false dichotomy that we really believe, because we have life experiences that seem to back it up!

THE FALSE DICHOTOMY: “I can either be in a relationship or be the healthiest best me. I can’t have both at the same time.”

The TRUTH is that when we were growing up, our role models did not show us how to get our needs met while in a relationship. Maybe Mom and Dad were divorced, maybe Mom and Dad fought over who would get their needs met, maybe Mom AND Dad both gave up what they really needed just to hang onto a relationship where neither was fulfilled. Or you might’ve had a single parent who taught you that the only way to really get your needs met was to be alone (they may have said this aloud or just demonstrated it as you saw how they put themselves last whenever they got involved with a new person). Sometimes, your parents were good role models but a life experience sent you for a tailspin, like some of my clients who suffered abuse and traumatic experiences as children or teens. Typically, however, our adult beliefs about romantic relationships are either emulating a parental influence, or reacting and rebelling against our perception of them. For example, you may have even promised yourself that you would never end up like them! 

Later in our lives, if we had any life experiences with partners, husbands, marriages, relationships that didn’t work out or staying in ones where our needs aren’t being met, then we seem to have PLENTY of evidence to reinforce the false dichotomy.

But I am here to tell you, and promise you, that it is not only possible, but it is true that many people get our needs met as two individuals within a relationship, while still meeting the needs of the relationship. That said, dear reader, there are a few things you must learn to be able to do this! Please pay attention.. I’m about to share them with you.

#1 Know What You Need

This may have been trained out of you, because it’s too painful need something and not get it over-and-over again as kids and teens. So, if you come from a home, or past relationships, where your needs felt like they didn’t matter, where you weren’t safe getting them met, the you may have convinced yourself that you don’t need what you DO really need! Answer this question, did you have to get really good at saying “I’m fine” when you’re really not fine, deep down? If so, then this part is for you. Your first priority now is to work through the layers that have prevented you from admitting to yourself that it’s OK to knnow and admit to yourself that you have needs that aren’t being met.

We must know and acknowledge our unmet needs before we can do anything to meet them.

#2  Identify the REAL Need, Not The Surface ‘Want’

If we want to go on a trip to Hawaii, deeper down what we may really need is a break from being responsible for everything and everyone — our partner, our kids, our employees, etc. The real, deep needs is not Hawaii, but to simply receive and enjoy pleasure without feeling responsible for things that have to get done (and that no one else seems to be doing). No matter what the external thing is that you think you need, there is usually a bigger, deeper REAL need underneath it. Like the new client who had an intense desire to find the right man as soon as possible, but whose REAL need was to feel validated, wanted, loved and accepted. For her, we taughht her how to get this need met internally in a healthy way which took the pressure off getting the man — she did still date, but was able to relax and attract a much healthier guy for a lasting relationship rather than date-down as she had done in the past. By addressing her REAL need, not her externalized want, she got her real need met AND what she wanted too. 

I’ve had clients with a deep desire to become a mother and have a child, but confused that deep desire with being in love with a partner who was a poor fit for them. Too often, the thing we want is what we are aware of but we remain unaware of the real need we are trying to meet through it. 

The surface want has a deeper real need under it. 

If we just focus on meeting the ‘want’ that isn’t the real need then we are left feeling unsatisfied. This is why so many high-achievers reach their goals, then feel a surprising sense of emptiness, let down, or thing ‘now what?’ ‘is this all there is to it?’ Even if you’ve finally gotten the big promotion you’ve worked and sacrified so hard to get, or sold your start up company for a windfall, or even won a gold medal or Oscar (as one of my clients had), you can still end up not feel the deep fulfillment or lasting satisfaction you’d expected. This is because high-achievers use achievement as a way to meet to temporarily meet a real need, without REALLY meeting it! It might be that the real need is to feel significant and ‘good enough’, but once the initial excitement of reaching that new level wears off, we are left seeking another award to chase in order to feel good enough again.

The only solution is to realize that what we are REALLY seeking and chasing is to meet the need to feel worthy and good enough. When we identify the real need, not the surface want (which is purely an indirect means to meet the need) then we can directly meet the need. This looks like a leader who no longer feels insecure in secret, while being on the cover of Success magazine. Instead, they feel a sense of peace and worthiness while tackling the next great challenge in their career or business. This is a healthier, happier way to achieve! If we do NOT find a way to do this, we may overwork and kill our marriage, or make excuses that having a partner would interfere witho our focus on work and achievement. This is a self imposed sentence of solitary confinement based on not understand what need we are REALLY trying to meet through all of the over-achieving. 

Meet the REAL need, be set free!

#3 Identify A Specific Action To Meet The Real Need

Once we’re aware of our real needs, it’s time to choose an action were willing to take to meet the need. To do this, however, can be hard for people. We must feel deserving, feel safe and have permission from ourself to take action! For some of my clients with young children, it can feel hard to justify taking the time and resources to meet a need for themself because their self-talk says that being selfish is bad and they must put their child’s need first. While this is true to an extent, there is also room for any Mother or Father to meet their needs. Their has to be, or gradual depletion leads to problems with their health, happiness, work performance, relationships, and so on. But, there are often limiting constraints, logistically, when it comes to taking action to meet our own needs.

Remember the example about taking a trip to Hawaii? This may not be practical for a new parent. But, when we identify the REAL need (WHAT I REALLY need) then the HOW can change! Once we realize that we do not need it to look like a trip to Hawaii, but we DO need abreak from responsibility, we can design a different action to meet that real need. Instead, we may just need an hour a day of alone time to unplug, or if that doesn’t work, you may do time every few days after arranging for other parents, paid help or family members to take turns coming over to one another’s homes to keep an eye on the kids. Now it’s, “I am not going to Hawaii, but I am going to take a long slow bubble bath with scented candles and the podcast I want to catch up on.”

#4 Communicate Your Need

This is the part that allows you to be happy, be your BEST you AND also have a healthy relationship! If you’ve fallen into the False Dichtomy trap (“I’m better off alone”) then you need this section! I once asked my Dad why he was never in another relationship after his divorce. He said, “It’s easier. I don’t have to ask anyone if I can do what I want.” He was lonely by the end of his life, but he never learned how to communicate his needs in a relationship, so simply avoided loving companionship completely for over fifty years. I don’t want that for you. So let’s teach you how to communicate your needs.

If you struggle with this in relationships, you may find yourself only getting your real needs met when your partner unintentionally creates the ability for it to happen. Like needing time alone, but never getting it, unless he just happens to go meet his friends to play hockey one morning (that’s my Canadian roots coming out). That’s a passive way to approach your needs. It sends yourself a signal: “I don’t matter unless he is gone”. Which yet again reinforces the beleif that your needs only get met WITHOUT a man around.

It’s critical to learn how to say, “Hey honey, I need a few hours each day where I can put myself first.” If you just recoiled at the thought of ever uttering anything remotely like that out loud to anyone, then I want to reassure you: Yes, this gonna be difficult to do at first, because the life you’re living today was designed through years and years and years of decisions made by the person you used to be - the person who put her needs LAST around other people. Look, it’s hard it’s hard to simply stop all of the obligations that you have committed yourself to, and start behaving differently than all the expectations you created in others around how they think you’re going to act. you taught them who you are. But, you CAN change and you can change how they see you. But it WILL be uncomfortable for you. 

You are WORTH it! Your needs matter because YOU matter. You deserve to be healthy, happy AND loved for it.

How To Apply These 4 Rules

Once you make a decision that your need matters, if you have conviction, patience and permission to say “I matter, so my need matters!” you can gradually create the space you need to meet your needs around others in your life. Like my powerful woman client who is a busy mother, and also a C-level executive, and engaged, this meant taking many months to train those around her at work, at home and romantically that her boundaries and time priorities were going to be a little different than they were used to from the past. That when she takes an hour to herself to decompress, it is sacred time and no one will interrupt it. this, of course, may not be immediately respected. It takes time and repetition to teach ourselves and others  that we are no longer who you taught them you were.

Boundaries are for you, not the other person. You don’t enforce them, you hold them. 

Make no mistake if you are important to you then your needs and boundaries must be important to you. This is going to take a dogged, determined, disciplined, committed shift in your attitude and behavior over time.

This applies even more so to people who are single and afraid to get back into a relationship.The best way to prove to yourself that you can get your needs met in a relationship is by being with someone while demonstrating to yourself and them that you’re meeting your needs. You cannot convince yourself that you can do something without actually doing it. 

The false dichotomy is only disproven by being in a real relationship as you keep meeting your needs!

So for the single ladies and guys, this means practicing. Small start by meeting your needs around friends and coworkers. Setting boundaries to protect what you need and stand by those boundaries. Then work your way up to the more challenging people in your life, like family members. Start with the ones that are most likely to be cooperative and work your way up as you gain more confidence in your ability to stand up for what you need. If you are consistent, you will eventually to trust yourself enough to start dating again or perhaps commit to a more serious relationship you’ve been avoiding. Like a client of mine who had been dating, but keeping men at arms-length for many years because, deep-down, she feared losing her independence. What she was actually saying, without knowing it, was ”I belief my needs won’t matter as soon as I’m in a relationship because I don’t trust myself to stick by meeting them”. If we feel that way, of course we don’t want to get too close to anyone! That’s why, for decades she hadn’t allowed herself to get close to anyone. But, once we helped her practice identifying her real needs, getting them met around other people, and communicating them during her dating, she became very willing to commit to marriage with a wonderful man. 

The more you trust yourself by meeting your own needs around others, the safer it becomes have close, connective, intimate relationships.

She let herself fall in love and let him into her heart and life! At each stage, dting - engagement - moving in together - marriage, her fear of losing herself in the relationship came up. But she learned how to answer them through healing tools. Some of this work was in identifying and healing wounds around the painful experiences that had taught her to abandon herself. She has learned to feel worthy of her needs, and safe to communicate and meet her needs while also being in a loving marriage with a man who treats her wonderfully.

To Sum Up

It is absolutely possible for you, and anyone, to be in a loving, healthy, intimate relationship while continuing to meet our needs and being our best! In fact, I’ve witnessed in my own life and others’ lives that we can often be even BETTER when we have a partner. I recall asking Sandra Yancey (founder of the eWomen network, with over a half-million women entrepreneur members) how her and her husband being together had either gotten in the way or helped her build eWomen. She’d shared how it had allowed her to feel even more emotionally supported during the difficult days of building that community. Given her the ability to climb those higher tree branches and take big risks, in part because she knew someone had her back if she fell. I have heard many different versions of this exact feeling from so many clients of mine, saying that with the right partner for the first time they felt like they could really go BIG and take bigger risks professionally. Or the client who, with their partner’s support, felt ready to go home to see their family for the first time in decades and heal some old family wounds.

These aren’t things that we 'have to have' or need -- we can be healthy and empowered and successful on our own without having the partner to depend on -- but the right partner in a healthy relationship, where you are still meeting your own needs while they are meeting their own needs,  can take you to the next level. That looks like an even healthier, happier more successful, and more loved self, sharing life with another person at their best! As teammates we challenge, support and raise one another, like Anna and I have done.

And each, and every one of us deserves to experience that!