Conflicting Needs in Relationships

A lot might be underlying fighting that happens in relationships. Something that happens commonly is two people in a relationship (romantic partnership, friendship, family) have the misfortune of discovering that their needs are mutually exclusive: “if you get what you need, I won’t get what I need.” This is an exceptionally difficult circumstance to be in, especially with someone we love.

Because it’s something we need, we might feel great desperation or intensity about having it met. Before we get clarity on this kind of situation, we might disregard that the other’s needs are as important as ours. We might think that what they need is “unreasonable” or somehow invalid. While in theory we want our loved one or partner to have what they need, in this case we hope that they can just go without.

On the other hand, we might be the person being told that our need is not as important as the other’s. We might get confused about or start to question whether or not we are, in fact, reasonable. We might be left fighting feelings of shame, doubt, mistrust, or resentment.

Without being able to think about what is happening in situations like this, we might resort to dominating the other person and feeling guilty or submitting to the other person and feeling resentful. Neither of these is a good option for two people trying to stay lovingly connected.

There are two main challenges when a situation like this arises. The first is to get to the place where there’s mutual recognition and respect of the conflicting needs. This requires us and our loved one to have knowledge of ourselves and what we need. The second is to figure out what the heck to do then. We start off with two options: “I get what I need or you get what you need,” and we have to find our way to some to-be-determined third option.