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What do we mean when we talk about needs within a relationship?

I think that it’s very possible that the use of the word "needs" drives certain entitlements in people’s thinking.

For example, humans need food. If a person is starving, most people are rather understanding of them choosing to steal food for themselves and their children rather than die.

So what happens in our thinking when we apply that same word to things with different significance? Do we end up using the same rationale as above, hence the "unmet needs" rationale for adultery?

Sex is such an interesting example to me. It’s commonly referred to as a need. It does clearly have a biological drive component to it. And no one is going to die from sex depravation.

It seems to me like the use of the word "Needs" for things that we want from our relationship partner creates all kinds of opportunities for thought distortions and resentment and entitlement. Even if we simply called them "desires" or "wants", it would sound very different for someone to justify cheating, or even their own unhappiness, because of "unsatisfied desires".

So what do we really mean with this word "needs" when we are talking about relationships?

**Just want to be super clear, this is not intended as a shot at MB coming out of another thread, just a continuation of an idea sparked from that discussion.

Thanks for starting a thread on this. Love philosophizing the hell out of everything

A relationship itself is not a need it’s a want. I think of needs as non-negotiable items and this varies from individual to individual. And changes over time too.

Most people in relationships need monogamy, not all do. I need honesty to stay in a relationship. It’s not negotiable.

I need physical intimacy in a relationship. It probably my top thing for connection. And that changes, when I was in child rearing years, I needed more acts of service. I realize there may come a time where actual sex may fade out. We are getting older. But I probably will always enjoy being held, preferably skin to skin, kissed, hugged, my hand held. I don’t imagine that need is going to go away, so I chose someone in my second marriage that was compatible with that. My first just wasn’t and we were too young for me to face a lifetime of that struggle. Too lonely, I chose to be alone in the end than face that constant rejection.

So, if this relationship was no longer I am not going to seek to be in a relationship with an asexual. But an asexual person may find it better to look for someone who has physical connection low on their list or not at all on their relationship need list.

Some needs you can get from other relationships. My husband isn’t a big analyzer unless it involves his hobbies or business, so this is where I rely on girlfriends more. But he knows that sometimes I need to sit down and look at myself or our relationship and he abides, but that is not a need for him.

So to me marriage is about balancing needs so that I can be a happy well adjusted human and so can he.

Our needs are our responsibility to identify and seek out. To negotiate them is sometimes possible. As I pointed out I think sex is a difficult one to balance for most relationships. You are always going to have a higher need person, and if not you found something pretty rare. In our marriage that person has admittedly been mostly him, but we have had periods where it was me. We are in such a period now. So we work at it a little. Sometimes we have physical intimacy without sex and that is new for us. But it helps us stay connected and I find ways to um, supplement. But regardless of drive we can have regular intimacy.

I think entitlement is probably more of a toxic word. I am not entitled to his body. I am not entitled for certain acts to be performed that are outside his comfort zone. I am not entitled to cheat if he does not want to share his body. But without working together to balance this in some way likely resentment or loneliness can ensue because we are human. Certainly he has expressed needing more from me in that department over the years and we work on it.

I think when you have two people with a similar vision of how they want the relationship to look it really is much easier to balance. And marriage is long so none of this is going to be perfect, and things will change, but I think marriage is continuing to pursue a a relationship that works for both people and however you want to name it- needs, requirements, etc, these are the benchmarks of compatibility.

If compatibility wanes and you don’t work through it, then of course resentments come up. And eventually it could lead to ending a relationship. But having needs is not a bad thing, it’s a normal human thing. It’s only bad when it’s treated in a toxic nature.

[This message edited by hikingout at 11:23 PM, Wednesday, October 30th]

I guess the classic theory on human needs is Maslow’s hierarchy. Coincidentally, I was thinking about old Maslow a couple of days ago. I jokingly thought to myself that my wife would have invented a new layer to the pyramid called the need to not feel guilty. That led me to Google Maslow’s hierarchy since it was 55 years since I studied it. The first layer is physiological needs. I think we all agree that food, water, and shelter are needs. The second is safety and security. Again, no argument there. But the third is tougher, love and belonging. Are these needs or just strong desires? Personally, I don’t think you can be a fully self actualized human without experiencing love and feeling belonging. The fourth level is Self Esteem and this is where I think my wife’s need to not feel guilt actually fits. The highest level is Self Actualization and includes morality and creativity. Most people never reach total self actualization, so one might wonder how it can be a need. I think that the need is in the goal to pursue self actualization. You can exist as a malignant narcissist, even thrive in a material sense, but a fully functioning human being needs to feel love, belonging, and the need to lead a moral life.

As I read and re-read the article on Maslow, I came to think that my WW stalled out at the self esteem step as evidenced by the way she presented herself in such a subservient obsequious way to keep the ego kibbles coming from her old "friend." But she chose to give herself a passing grade nevertheless. And now she wants to keep that grade so she just refuses to feel guilt. I think we all do that to some extent, but you really can’t reach the highest level of self actualization by lying to yourself. That is, you cannot be a moral person, ie: one who refrains from doing to others that which would be repugnant to oneself, without owning your shortcomings and attempting to fix them. See the Golden Rule.

I think when a person decides to betray a spouse in order to "meet an unmet need", they may be looking at level 3, love and belonging, in isolation, conveniently overlooking the need to be a moral person. Without Golden Rule compliance, those aren’t needs. They are wants.

Thanks for the discussion. Going back to the A timeline I can pinpoint where our M started heading south. I tried everything to make / keep her happy. She was all about taking and not giving, as her cup emptied, I filled it, until the point I was empty. I was making myself crazy trying to please her and always came up short. I would do something special for her and she would criticize a small detail I might have missed.

On Dday she pointed out that our M had become stale and I had become distant. I did not know about SI but I knew that I given everything to put us back on track, I also knew the distance was caused by her leaning on other men rather than leaning on me. I would not accept any responsibility for her "unmet needs" she was out trying to get them met.

If you continue to whip a dog, you can't wonder why the dog won't come to you.

For me, emotional needs are always unique to the individual and if one or more are not being met it’s up to that individual to communicate what they need to their partner. But, a spouse’s inability or refusal to provide those needs is not any more of a justification to cheat than a homeless person squatting in your home because they need a bed. Pick a partner who satisfies your needs or leave. Period.

I love when I wrote paragraphs and someone comes along and says it better in one paragraph (thanks other side of hell!!!)

[This message edited by hikingout at 11:21 PM, Wednesday, October 30th]

I think most of the things we think we need from a relationship, we should be getting internally. There shouldn’t be holes we are trying to fill.

Easier said then done, of course.

I'm an engineer of sorts...

"Needs" are "requirements". Within a relationship, for it to be an acceptable product, it must meet my requirements of a relationship. They are not physical needs. They are self-determined needs that if you don't get you decide the relationship is unacceptable, and (may) end that relationship.

I spelled these out as "needs" to my wife in a letter I gave her after I asked for a divorce in writing in order to attempt R. This exercise of writing out needs was very helpful.

I also wrote out "wants". In engineering space these are not "requirements" we sometimes refer to them as "desirements" or "nice-to-haves". Of course, our analogy is forced to break down a little bit because nice-to-haves in engineering are something that would be cool if you got out of just meeting the requirements.

We can use sex as an example. I might "require" a regular and satisfying amount of sex (say averaging every other week of some more difficult to define adequate quality). I would desire significantly more and better, but strictly speaking I wouldn't end my relationship unless it fell below my "required" level of physical intimacy. If I have clearly communicated this to my wife, and we are having consistent intimacy issues, it would trigger a revisit to whether or not the relationship is meeting requirements and whether or not it ought to continue.

Compatibility is when your needs and your partner's needs generally match. You do have to make up the gap. If one of you is making up more gap than the other, that's going to cause some long term consternation too. So in those areas where your needs are not aligned, there needs to be some level of balance.

That said. while I used to very thoroughly think "If I'm not happy, and my needs aren't being met, I won't cheat, I'll just let you know." But that isn't the thought process of someone that is going to cheat anyway. If unmet needs are used, it's usually more of a back rationalization than something that could be called a true motivation to cheat. As others have often pointed out, as the A develops the WS almost has to paint the BS as deficient or else they would have to admit to themselves that they are behaving like a selfish piece of shit.

Even if it is a factor that played into the decision to cheat, they almost certainly are still being wildly dysfunctional in their behavior because sexual exclusivity is another "need". You can't reasonably get your needs met elsewhere by taking needs away from your partner, especially if you are notionally carrying the same need as them.

I also don't expect my relationship with my wife to meet all of my emotional needs. That would be ridiculous. My friends, family, others can meet some of those needs without our sexual and romantic exclusivity being threatened.

Love philosophizing the hell out of everything

Thanks for enabling me

A relationship itself is not a need it’s a want. I think of needs as non-negotiable items and this varies from individual to individual. And changes over time too.

AND

Some needs you can get from other relationships.

From This0Is0Fine, whose engineering language spoke well to me.

"Needs" are "requirements". Within a relationship, for it to be an acceptable product, it must meet my requirements of a relationship.

AND

I also don't expect my relationship with my wife to meet all of my emotional needs.

This is definitely one of those topics that I do not feel like I have a good handle on, but I do think I see some inconsistencies. I'm just going to call it how I see it, I hope you both will give me some word vomitting latitude.

So my perception in this is that both of you, hikingout and TIF, did the same linguistic shift that has me wondering what we even mean with this phrase. I can see it most clearly with Fine's. First, I found it very helpful to equate "needs" with "requirements", that made an immediate helpful connection. Like, alright, now I'm saying that "needs" are the things that must be present for me to be in the relationship. Like I "need" to have a well place cup holder that accepts my enormous coffee mug for me to buy the car. Got it. But then you went and used the word in a different way by saying you could get your "emotional needs" met elsewhere. Now that is like talking about what you are looking for in your next motorcycle purchase. Why even bring it up? That use of the word "needs" implies something more than just an external requirement on the relationship, now it's branched over to talking about an internal hunger. It's easy to see this again with sex. If I say that I have sexual needs, I think many people would interpret that to mean that I have a sex drive. But it could also mean that I have a minimum amount of frequency and quality of sex that I would accept in a relationship. Same phrase, two completely different meanings.

Is that making sense to anyone else?

[This message edited by InkHulk at 1:01 AM, Thursday, October 31st]

I guess the classic theory on human needs is Maslow’s hierarchy.

I thought of Maslow when I wrote this, he clearly made the choice to lump all of these things into the category of "needs". Maybe going deeper into content in that field would yield some useful distinctions.

I like what you are saying thisisfine. I never thought about minimum requirements. I am tucking that one away because I never thought about it in those terms.

But I do think I do it in practice. Like an alarm dings in my head sort of thing.

House of plane- I have thought about that a lot. I do think we need to fill our own cup, and be okay with the idea of being alone, but there are things that if you are in a relationship you need from them. Relationship needs are things like communication, intimacy, honesty, emotional safety, fidelity, etc.

For a long time I was not in touch with my needs. Self awareness is something that I think most ws lack. I just kind of went through whatever list I had for that day and then disassociated for whatever time I had left before falling asleep. I didn’t take time for reflection, hobbies or interests, and outside of showing up to girl dinners I did nothing to deepen or enrich those relationships.

What I have learned- I used to try and minimize my needs a lot because I didn’t want any to be burdensome. I wanted to be an easy, fun wife. I thought he wanted someone who was receptive to whatever he decided to provide. But I learned that knowing all my needs and expressing them didn’t make our relationship harder, it made it easier and better and more satisfying. And I learned respect is not just tip-toeing around someone so they never have a negative feeling about you.

And the more curious I was about me the more curious I was about him. The more I respected and honored myself by tending to my needs the more I understood how important understanding his were instead of just assuming I knew.

I think people who are not in touch with their needs are the ones that may never feel satiated. Because of these two things combined: they don’t fill their own cup and they expect you to pour stuff in it. You want them to guess what you want to drink, yet put no thought into that for yourself. They don’t think about minimum requirements so they are always looking for that extra pour.

I was doing the same in reverse- I was pouring and just guessing what he wanted.

Probably not all ws, but certainly true for me.

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:47 AM, Thursday, October 31st]

On Dday she pointed out that our M had become stale and I had become distant. I did not know about SI but I knew that I given everything to put us back on track, I also knew the distance was caused by her leaning on other men rather than leaning on me. I would not accept any responsibility for her "unmet needs" she was out trying to get them met.

Tanner, I think your post is using "needs" in the sense of her internal hungers (which I think is a very valid use, I'm just trying to do some accounting in my mind as this discussion goes forward).

It may be true that Unmet Needs is nothing more than a backfilling excuse for the inexcusable. But I think it's entirely possible that in real time the human brain tells itself that there is a NEED, and if there is a NEED then, like food for a starving man, all ethics are suspended and the pursuit might even be delusionally noble.

Pick a partner who satisfies your needs or leave. Period.

This idea was utterly foreign to me three years ago. Not everyone would have my religious reasons for staying in a marriage (but I'd guess some do). But I think we'd all pretty well agree that it's a really big deal to leave a marriage. And you can't predict how you or your partner will change over time, so you could pick your perfect person and then find yourself facing an incredibly difficult situation 10 years down the road.

Again, I like this idea of minimum requirements, but you'd have to really know what those are to walk away from a marriage with kids and mixed families and all the rest.

But then you went and used the word in a different way by saying you could get your "emotional needs" met elsewhere.

Now that is like talking about what you are looking for in your next motorcycle purchase. Why even bring it up? That use of the word "needs" implies something more than just an external requirement on the relationship, now it's branched over to talking about an internal hunger.

Well, our internal hunger for things are what dictate what we require.

I think what both myself and this is fine were reminding everyone that you can not get all your needs met with one person. Focusing on the more romantic needs in a relationship, and maybe adding in some of the practical things we need from our partnership, that is plenty to try and expect from one relationship. It wasn’t a separate thought, just more think through your needs and place them in the best bucket. Your spouse bucket has items in it you can’t get anywhere else but there are plenty of things that are acceptable to rely on other people to provide.

And as I have thought about it- maybe that’s a need- to have some independence from the relationship- to be self reliant and inventive in making your life work well with and without your spouse.

I think this is fine and I likely have read some of the same books or listened to similiar podcasts.

I have a need to talk about the topics discussed here. I get my needs met from all of you because it honestly would be a drain on my husband if I was this analytical all the time. It would make his head hurt to quote WBFA.

It's easy to see this again with sex. If I say that I have sexual needs, I think many people would interpret that to mean that. I have a sex drive. But it could also mean that I have a minimum amount of frequency and quality of sex that I would accept in a relationship. Same phrase, two completely different meanings.

not separate- you have an internal hunger for sex and that dictates what you require.

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:49 AM, Thursday, October 31st]

(Sorry if I am chiming in too much I love these kinds of posts)

Again, I like this idea of minimum requirements, but you'd have to really know what those are to walk away from a marriage with kids and mixed families and all the rest.

Sometimes our obligations at certain points in life trump the ideals we would like to have. There are times of sacrifice in every marriage. What keeps things together during that time can be a lot of things you mention. Sometimes you just get past that point for those reasons and things resume and get better.

I don’t think any of us can have crystal ball to know the future, but the keys to it are always in the present moment. If we are aware, and we marry someone who is aware, the work is just to keep pursuing that balance and hopefully grow together because you are communicating all along. It’s absolutely a glue to do that but it used to feel like to me something that would distance us.

I just kept thinking I don’t want to put that pressure on him, let’s just have a good day. Or I would be too accepting and say this is fine. But truth is he likes knowing what I need, it gives him confidence. It makes the roadmap readable. I sort of wonder how that never occurred to me until so much later in our marriage.

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:55 AM, Thursday, October 31st]

Personally, I see some of the things you define as needs as desires; no matter how strong. If my spouse was incapacitated to the point that sex was no longer an option, I wouldn't say that she needs to be able to fulfill my need for said sex. Not optimal for my desires by any means, but something I would find a way to accommodate. No one is perfect. No one is capable of meeting each and every need of their partner. They should want to meet as many as possible, but as a former boss stated, no person on this earth is as perfect as Jesus. IOW, we don't live in a perfect world, so we shouldn't expect perfection from anyone in our lives. We just need those closest to us to add more than they subtract, and that amount be enough to keep us satisfied more than not.

[This message edited by grubs at 3:01 AM, Thursday, October 31st]

"emotional needs" and "relationship needs" overlap. I do not expect one relationship, no matter how good/important to give me all the things on the higher end of Maslow's hierarchy.

So say "care, compassion, encouragement, a sense of belonging" are thing I expect from my wife and my friends. Sexual intimacy only from my wife. Enjoying videogames/sports/commraderie only from my friends.

(Sorry if I am chiming in too much I love these kinds of posts)

I think this could easily turn into you and me going into a level of pedantory that has everyone else rolling their eyes. And I'm ok with that

Well, our internal hunger for things are what dictate what we require.

No doubt, this is absolutely true. But they are still separate ideas, the hunger and the the thing that satisfies the hunger. But here we are calling them both "needs" and being really vague about which one we mean at any given time. This creates confusion for me and I think has real life implications.

Imagine that I like coffee (and I do!). I could say within how we are talking about this that I "need" coffee. And then I might start being more quantitative and say that I "need" 24 oz of medium to high quality coffee each day, preferably before noon. And THEN, if I've allowed my thinking to get really sloppy about these ideas, I might convince myself that I "need" that coffee in the same way that Jean Valjean from les miserables "needed" bread to feed starving children, and now I've got the basis of justifying and even glorifying terrible behavior.

"emotional needs" and "relationship needs" overlap

Do they? In more mathematical/engineering terms, are we talking about a Venn Diagram here, or are we talking about a requirements hierarchy? I'd kill to be talking over a whiteboard right now. Your minimum requirements language (which I still really like) would point towards the latter. Now undoubtedly we would still say that no one relationship can be expected to fully satisfy all my hungers. But then for a primary relationship it would then follow that (House of Plane may disagree) we've identified some subset of those hungers that we expect to get satisfied in a primary relationship, and that would be our "needs" for that relationship.

I am fully aware that most probably find this exercise the worst kind of semantics. But there is something here that I really want to tease out, a disorder in my own thinking that I think is hiding in plain sight. This is already helping, me at least

Personally, I see some of the things you define as needs as desires; no matter how strong.

I think this is another important part of the discussion. To frame something as a "need" instead of a desire carries some kind of weight to it, a sense of entitlement. If it's something I need and I don't have it, then I can convince myself that it is unjust that I don't have it. If I tell myself that it is something that I desire and I don't have it, well, that is just an inconvenience. Tough titties, as they say.

Got it. But then you went and used the word in a different way by saying you could get your "emotional needs" met elsewhere. Now that is like talking about what you are looking for in your next motorcycle purchase. Why even bring it up? That use of the word "needs" implies something more than just an external requirement on the relationship, now it's branched over to talking about an internal hunger.

Needs are personal and subjective. They're within us, and we carry them into the relationship. My primary need is for respect. Lack of respect is a dealbreaker for me in any kind of relationship, but based on others' posts over the years, respect is not necessarily a primary requirement for some people. Some will tolerate lack of respect in exchange for financial security in their primary relationship, being allowed to remain in their friend group, or avoiding conflict with a neighbor. Subjective. Personal. Individual.

If our needs aren't met within our primary relationship, the relationship may survive and could even be quite comfortable and happy, but it won't thrive.

Many WSs cheat because their need for sex isn't being met, but they're often c*ckblocking themselves by behaving poorly outside of the bedroom and harming the emotionally intimacy that their partner needs in order to be receptive to them. If the need for sex isn't met, and if the tools to communicate and work it out aren't yet in the tool belt, bad things are likely to happen. Multiply by 10 if you married young. That's essentially the story of my marriage.

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 3:55 PM, Thursday, October 31st]