5 Reasons You're Not Getting Your Needs Met (& What to Do About It)
In this episode, we're talking all about needs - specifically, looking at some common reasons why you're not getting your needs met in a relationship.
It's easy to feel defeated and hurt when our needs are going unmet, but oftentimes there's far more that's within our control than we might think.
WHAT WE COVER:
the importance of identifying your needs
how to communicate your needs to your partner
mindset blocks around receiving and how these stops you from getting what you need
what to do if your partner can't or won't meet you in your needs
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Sign up for my signature 8-week course Healing Anxious Attachment
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
You might also like…
Episode Transcript
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You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg and I'm really glad you're here. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment.
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Today's episode is all about needs, specifically five reasons that you're not getting your needs met and what to do about it or how to fix it. So we're going to be talking about some of the common blocks to getting our needs met, particularly in the context where we might be telling ourselves a story that our partner just doesn't care about us. They're not meeting our needs. Maybe we're incompatible. Maybe they're not interested in meeting our needs.
0:00:56.45 → 0:01:41.48
We can't ask them or there's no point. All of these stories that we can get really stuck in. And a lot of the time I find that those stories are happening behind the scenes and maybe we're not taking the steps we need to in our relationships in terms of putting ourselves out there, asking in a way that is supportive of us actually getting our needs met and conducive to us getting our needs met. So getting clear around what some of the blocks and the impediments to that might be. And I'm going to sort of step through them almost in like a ladder, so entry level, identifying your needs and then we'll kind of go from there and it almost becomes like a five step plan for getting those needs met as you go along in your relationship.
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So we'll be starting at the first and perhaps most obvious reason that you might not be getting your needs met, which is that you don't know what they are. And then we'll be going a little bit deeper and more nuanced from there. So I do want to say at the outset that for the people who are going to say, oh, you're blaming me that my needs aren't getting met when really it's my partner's fault, that's not my intention at all. I mean, today or ever in my work is to lay blame on anyone. But as you know, if you are familiar with my approach, I think that the most helpful thing we can do is look honestly at our contribution and try to take responsibility and really control what we can control.
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And when it comes to getting needs met, what we can control is knowing really well what our needs are, communicating them effectively, and all of the stuff that happens on our side. And it's really only once we've taken it as far as we can personally that we need to look at the other person's capacity, willingness, our compatibility, all of those things. So I think that the most supportive thing that you can do and the thing that really allows you to make peace with whatever is going on in your relationship, even if that ultimately means that there's an incompatibility or an unwillingness, it's much easier to make peace with that and let it go if that's what needs to happen. If you know that you really have done your best and taken it as far as you can. And so today we'll be focusing more on what you can do within yourself, the things that are within your control, and then going from there.
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We will touch on what to do if there is a fundamental incompatibility or your partner is not willing to meet you in your needs. But that really is at the very end of the line. We don't want to be putting that first because I think oftentimes we can fall into this pattern of shifting blame and responsibility away from ourselves when it comes to needs. And I think that that can be really fed into by a lot of the content that we all see on social media around. You have to find someone who meets your needs, meet your needs, or that person can't meet your needs.
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And I think it's important that we're talking about it, but we also want to be talking about it with a level of nuance. Because I think what can get forgotten in all of that poppy kind of discussion of this is that your partner has needs as well. And they are not a need meeting machine, nor are you. And there's much more negotiation that needs to happen there rather than just demanding that someone meet your needs. And if they can't, that means that they're bad and you need to leave them.
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I don't think that that's a very emotionally mature or effective way to be in relationship. So that was a very long introduction to say we're going to be covering all of those things and more in today's episode. Before we dive into that, a couple of quick announcements. I am very delighted to share that Doors opened yesterday for early bird registration for Healing Anxious Attachment. The first 24 hours since doors opened, we've had 135 people, I believe, sign up, which is absolutely incredible.
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I'm so excited for those people and I'm so excited to welcome more people over the next week or so while registrations open for this program, of which I'm so proud. So if you are someone who struggles with anxious attachment and you're wanting to do something about it and you're wanting some support in that process, I really, really encourage you to check out Healing Anxious Attachment. It's an eight week course. It's very comprehensive and really gives you everything that you need, distills down everything that I know and teach and have taken so many other people through and it really does work. So if you're interested, the link is in the show notes to check that out and sign up.
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I would love to see you in there. The second quick announcement is just to share the featured review, which is I feel like Stephanie somehow knows me better than I know myself. I'm amazed at how relatable everything she says is. I cannot get enough of this podcast. It's helping me navigate my relationships in ways I never thought to before, and it's helping me to understand myself better.
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I'm recommending this to everyone. Thank you so much for that beautiful review. I'm so glad to hear that. I think that when you have that response of feeling like I know you better than you know yourself, really, it's just because I've had really similar experiences and I've worked with so many other people who've had those experiences too. So I think it is a nice feeling of knowing that we're not alone in that, and that is a really powerful part of the healing process.
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So thank you for your review and your support. If that was your review, please send an email to podcast@stephanierigg.com and my team will set you up with free access to one of my master classes as a way to say thank you. Okay, so let's dive into this conversation around five reasons you're not getting your needs met and how to fix it. So the first reason is you don't know what your needs are. Now, I think that this is surprisingly common, or maybe not surprisingly common, but it is frighteningly common that we actually don't know what our needs are.
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I think this is particularly true for people who are more anxiously attached, perhaps also fearful avoidant. There's just such a pattern of suppressing ourselves. We're so outer focused, so other focused, that the extent of our self awareness around our needs tends to be, I need to be connected to my partner and I need to make sure that everything's okay, and then I will be fine. Beyond that, I don't really know because that takes up so much of my field of vision and so much of my mental and emotional energy tending to that, making sure the connection is okay. And in this state of hyper vigilance around it, that I don't have bandwidth to consider anything else.
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And I really do feel as though as long as we're okay, you're happy with me, we're spending time together, everything seems fine on that front. That's all I need, right? Unfortunately, that's not true. So as much as we might feel that way, that's actually not true. We do have needs beyond the need for connection.
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It's just that when we're feeling insecure, that need for connection is so paramount and all encompassing that it kind of drowns out everything else. And when we've lived in that state for a very long time, the drowning out of everything else can get to a point where we really are quite disconnected from our other needs. So whenever I'm teaching about needs, the first step is always, can I get some clarity around what my needs are? Particularly if you are someone who has tended towards chronic over giving, chronic self sacrifice, chronic people pleasing to very extreme degrees. That is going to be the start of your work.
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What are my needs? And you may have heard me talk about this before, a really nice neat shortcut to what are my needs? Is working back from what are the things that I complain about. So if I feel really triggered or agitated by you sitting on your phone while we're talking to each other, maybe I need and value presence, quality, time. If I feel resentful that I'm always doing things and I carry all of the mental load, maybe my need is around support and a sense of balance in the relationship.
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So you can see how when we look at those things we can work our way back from it. What I'd layer on to that is that if you are more anxiously attached, there's a good chance that all of the examples that are going to come up to you can kind of trace back to some form of connection need. And so while that's still useful information, useful feedback, we do want to step outside of that and make sure that we are fleshing ourselves out as a full person with needs beyond just the relationship and really trying to figure out what our needs are outside of just that connection need. So that might be a need for a sense of purpose or a need for novelty and excitement and adventure, a need for challenge, a need for personal growth, a need for independence. I think that's one that is a really powerful growth edge for anxiously attached people because it's really easy to think that we don't need independence and we don't need time and space to ourselves.
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But I think once you start to grow into that edge of spending more time figuring out who you are and doing that separate from a relationship, you come to realize that that is a need that you have. Maybe not to the degree of an avoidant person, but nevertheless we all have that need to have a carved out sense of self and it's incredibly nourishing to explore that space. So try to play around with that, sit with the question what are my needs? And can those needs not just be about getting some sort of reassurance or connection from a partner? Because when we distill all of our needs down to that, that's actually playing into the pattern rather than shifting away from it, right?
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If all of the needs are just about the other person and needing to control them so that we feel safe in the relationship, then that's a good sign that we're actually repeating the pattern rather than shifting it. So the next reason you might not be getting your needs met is you do know what they are, but you aren't actually voicing them. So maybe you've gotten past that first step of just being totally disconnected from your needs and you do have a sense of what your needs are, but you're suppressing them for whatever reason. Now again, this is pretty common among those with some level of anxiety in their attachment pattern. So both anxious attachment and fearful avoidant attachment.
0:11:15.83 → 0:12:13.29
There tends to be this feeling that it isn't safe to express needs, that it isn't safe to ask for things, that it isn't safe to take up that space. On the anxious side that tends to be fueled by a fear of abandonment, a fear of being too much, a deep belief that we aren't lovable or worthy at our core. And so we have to try and be easy and low maintenance in order to not push someone away. Because if we are anything other than easy, if we're difficult, if we ask for something, then that's going to tip the scales in favor of this isn't worth it for me, for the other person and we're going to lose them. So what we have to do is abandon our own needs and tend to theirs in order to maintain the balance of the relationship, in order to maintain the status quo, in order to maintain that connection.
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Now hopefully it is obvious to people listening that that's not a very sustainable strategy. I put out an instagram post a couple of days ago saying often it's our efforts at feigning low maintenance that ultimately drive us to behave in high maintenance ways. So the longer you try and suppress that and pretend not to have needs, then the more likely it is that those needs are going to climb up to the surface, scramble up to the surface and jump up and down and become very loud in a way that is not healthy. So that might come up as complaining, as accusing, as blaming, as nitpicking, as passive aggressiveness, all of these ways that the needs eventually spill out but they do so in really destructive and unhealthy ways that actually do push someone away. Thereby reinforcing the belief that it's not safe to have needs when really the problem was not that it wasn't safe to have needs, but that we tried so hard not to, that we actually self sabotage, so to speak, because the needs came out eventually but just in really unhealthy and shadowy ways.
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So the solution there is not get better at suppressing my needs. The solution is, can I communicate those needs proactively safely, reasonably, rather than trying not to have them and then having this pendulum swing to really aggressive, high maintenance, panicked behaviors once we're at such a state of insecurity and stress and distress in our relationship that we actually just can't hold it in any longer. Because I think we all know that's not a very good strategy. It doesn't work, it doesn't get your needs met and it doesn't help you to build a healthy relationship. Okay?
0:14:03.05 → 0:14:17.72
So the next reason that you might not be getting your needs met is perhaps you are voicing them. Which is great, right? I don't want to discount this. I don't want to suggest that everything you try is still not enough and imperfect, and that's why it's your fault. That's really not the sentiment behind this.
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As I said at the start, it's just trying to point out blind spots so that we don't become overwhelmed and exasperated and feel like the other person doesn't want to meet our needs. So sometimes, and I know I've been guilty of this and I see it all the time, we finally muster up the courage to voice a need, but we do it in quite a general way because that tends to be less vulnerable. So we might say something like, I want more quality time, or It's really important to me to feel connected to you, and I need you to prioritize that, or I need you to make me more of a priority. I need you to not work so much all of these things. And because we've had a lot of anxiety around voicing the need, we might not be articulating it in a way that makes it easy to receive for the other person and that actually provides the action or the solution that would help us to feel like the need was getting met.
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So we might present the need more as a problem, rather than offering up kind of the action item with a level of specificity that really spells out to the other person, here's what I need from you, or Here is my request. Would you be open to doing that? This is an area where nonviolent communication, if that's a framework that you're familiar with, great. Lean on that. If it's not, definitely look it up.
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There's a huge amount of online resources about it. But essentially here, rather than saying something like, I want you to put in more effort, which is totally valid, right? It's valid to desire that, but just don't assume that more effort means the same thing to you as it does to them, okay? Because oftentimes we have really, really different ideas of what that means. And again, it can feel like then we've asked for the need, and we've done this brave thing, and the other person isn't delivering on it.
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And so we go, oh, they don't care, or they're not listening, or they don't respect me, or they're not invested in this when really they're trying, but just their efforts being directed in the wrong place or the wrong kind of action because you maybe weren't specific enough around what in particular would help you to feel that effort. What does effort mean to you? So to take this out of the abstract and give you an example, which I think would be a pretty common one, is I want more quality time with my partner. And so I say, I want more quality time, but to me, quality time means phones away. We're really connected.
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We're paying attention to each other. We're talking in an engaged way, having meaningful conversation. It's not just boring, everyday, mundane, practical stuff. It feels really connective. That's what quality time means to me.
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Maybe for my partner, quality time just means we're in each other's company. And so when I say I need more quality time from you, he might go, what do you mean? We spend so much time together. We eat every meal together and we watch TV together after dinner. How do you possibly want more quality time?
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We spend so much time together. What are you talking about? Or even if we don't spend time together, he might go, oh, okay, she wants more quality time, and make an effort to spend more time in my company. But that to me might actually be more triggering because we're just sitting on the couch together on our phones. And that to me is reinforcing that we're not spending quality time together, whereas my partner thinks that that's exactly what we're doing.
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So that for me is amplifying my internal distress and all of my stories around my needs not getting met, when really my partner is trying to do what he thinks I need. So if I had have been clearer at the outset saying, I'd really love for us to spend more quality time together without our phones, maybe we could have one night a week where we play a board game instead of watching TV. Or maybe my idea of quality time is that we go for a hike on a weekend or do some sort of activity, whatever it is, but get specific and do not assume that your partner knows what that thing means to you. Because it's one of those things that two reasonable people might have very different understandings. And it's not that one person's right or wrong, it is just open to interpretation.
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And that means open to misunderstanding. So try and eliminate the likelihood of misunderstanding or at least reduce that likelihood by being very clear in your communication of what would help you to feel like that need was being met. Even though it might seem a little bit perfunctory or unromantic to have to spell out specifically, I would like it if you would organize for us to go out to dinner. That might be what effort looks like to you. That's the kind of thing that would make you feel like your partner is putting in effort that might not ever cross their mind.
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And that doesn't mean that they don't love you and that doesn't mean that they're wrong or bad. It just means you had different ideas of what a thing meant. So so spell it out. And again, that might require you to go back to step one and go, what does this actually mean for me? What does effort mean?
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What does connection mean? So getting really clear around that and then taking that additional brave step of articulating the request that goes alongside the need. Okay, so the next reason you might not be getting your needs met, and this is very much one for my anxious attaches, is you keep raising the bar and always feeling like it's not enough. So this is getting into some deeper emotional stuff. We've had some really beautiful conversations in my Homecoming Mastermind about this in the past few weeks is we can have this story that as much as we talk about wanting to get our needs met, there is often a part of us that doesn't feel like it counts or like it's enough if we've had to ask.
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So, for example, I might ask my partner for more affection and really desperately want that, and that feels so important to me in order to feel loved and chosen and wanted. And then my partner goes, okay, she wants more affection and so later that day gives me an unsolicited hug or a kiss, but my anxious brain might go, he's only doing that because you ask it's not because he wants to. So your need to feel chosen and wanted isn't actually getting met because that action, which on the surface seems to be responding to the request, actually originated with me asking for it rather than them offering it or wanting it. And therefore it doesn't count. So that's a really common thing that our brain will do.
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And it's amazing, right? And it's hard, right? Because on the one hand, I get it, I relate to it. We do want to feel chosen. We don't want to feel like our partner is duty bound to be loving towards us.
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That that's not coming from a spontaneous expression of love on their part. And at the same time, I think we have to get really honest with ourselves around how hard we are making it for someone to meet us in our needs and desires. And I think a big piece of this that sits on your side, if this is something you can relate to, is difficulty receiving. So we have this sense of I can only receive if it's unsolicited because then I feel worthy of it because you wanted to do it. It's for you.
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Right? I actually end up making the giving about you. If you've given me a gift or you've gone out of your way to do something for me and I didn't have to ask for it, then it feels valid. And I feel loved and chosen because I don't feel burdensome to you. Whereas as soon as I've asked for it, I feel like a burden, then I can't receive it and I push it away.
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So again, there's a lot to this and there's probably a longer episode just in this one point. But in summary, I think the thing to reflect on here is am I taking an action which is my partner doing the thing I've asked for because they want to meet my needs? Right? It is important to them to meet my needs. That is a gift that they are giving me because they want me to feel loved.
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And I'm somehow twisting that to mean it doesn't count. I am pushing away your loving act because I have decided it's invalid because I had to ask for it. Can you see how hard we're making it for ourselves and for our partners when we keep raising the bar like that and moving the goalposts? Not only does that not meet our own need and push away the thing that we're desiring, but it leaves our partner feeling confused and demoralized and like nothing they do is good enough and that is incredibly demotivating for them to continue trying. Right?
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So if that's something you relate to, really reflect on it. Can I spend some time looking at my relationship to receiving? Can I find a way to trust that my partner wants to meet my needs and that that is something that they desire and the fact that I've had to guide them and steer them towards what that looks like doesn't have to invalidate the act and the love behind the act. Okay, so the last reason that you might not be getting your needs met and as I said at the start, it's kind of a ladder. And this final rung that I've very deliberately left to last is maybe your partner is unwilling and or unable to meet your needs.
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Okay, so I've left this to last because we do want that to be the last resort. We do want to know that we've taken it as far as we can on our own and then it really is okay. Have I clearly identified the need? Have I expressed the need in a healthy, regulated way? Have I been specific about what that looks like and what would help me to feel like my need was met?
0:24:25.60 → 0:24:56.50
Have I done any work that I need to do? Mindset, emotional stuff around my ability to receive? And if I feel really comfortable with all of those things and my needs are still not getting met, then maybe there is something to look at in the other person's willingness or capacity. So that doesn't mean if you get to this point, it doesn't mean that you have to break up. As I said at the start, I think that we do tend to be a bit all or nothing and black and white about this stuff when the reality is your partner might not be able to meet all of your needs.
0:24:56.55 → 0:25:33.44
In fact, they won't be able to meet all of your needs and definitely not all the time. So it doesn't have to be a deal breaker. But if there is a need or a few needs that are core needs of yours that are non negotiable and that do sit inside the relationship arena and your partner has consistently shown disinterest or has kind of actively pushed back has said I'm not going to do that. Or you're asking too much, or you're needy, or whatever else, then that may be the point at which we go, okay, this isn't working. Right?
0:25:33.54 → 0:26:40.26
So we either need to make peace with not getting that need met in the relationship, depending on how important it is to you, or, as I said, if it's a non negotiable, if it's something that is really foundational to you feeling safe and secure in a relationship, and that's not a need that you can get met elsewhere, either by yourself or through other people, then that might be time to reflect on whether the relationship is going to work. So I hope that that's been helpful in fleshing out this conversation around needs, in pointing out some of our blind spots, some of the ways in which we might be contributing to our needs not being met. And hopefully given you some really clear steps both practically and from a more emotional mindset work kind of perspective on what you might be able to do, what steps you can take to get to know your needs better and really increase the chances of those being met in relationship. If you've enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful, as always, if you could leave a five star rating if you're on Spotify, a written review, if you're on
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Apple podcast, hugely helpful. And if you are interested in Healing Anxious Attachment, a reminder that the early bird enrollment is open for another couple of days and that allows you to save $100 on the sign up price.
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So definitely check that out in the show notes if you're interested. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you later in the week for our Q and A episode. Thanks so much, everybody. Take care.
0:27:03.11 → 0:27:25.64
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on @stephanierigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.