{"id":3627,"date":"2013-02-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/what-do-you-need-from-your-spouse\/"},"modified":"2020-05-11T20:48:51","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T20:48:51","slug":"what-do-you-need-from-your-spouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/what-do-you-need-from-your-spouse\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do You Need From Your Spouse?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you really know what you need from your spouse?\u00a0 I think we all have an idea<\/em><\/strong> what we need, but most of us are woefully out of touch with what our essential needs really are. Period.<\/p>\n

Example: You know that when you walk in the door at the end of the day and your spouse greets you, you feel good.\u00a0 When no one greets you, you feel a sad.\u00a0 Having your spouse go to the effort of acknowledging your presence and being happy to see you is not really what you need.\u00a0 It is a clue to a much deeper need that you have that has nothing to do with your spouse!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The problem is that so many of us believe that our need is<\/em><\/strong> directly connected to our spouse! (If my spouse would just _(fill in the blank<\/span>_, then we’d get along fine!)\u00a0 When we try to force our spouse to meet the surface need, the deep underlying itch goes unscratched.\u00a0 We are frustrated and unsatisfied and we blame our spouse!\u00a0 The essential need in that example is something more like \u2018to feel like I matter\u2019, \u2018to feel important\u2019, \u2018to not feel alone in this world\u2019.\u00a0 And that need is connected to a need that didn\u2019t get met as a child.\u00a0 In that example, the person came home to an empty house every day after school and felt alone and insignificant.\u00a0 That is an essential need that she is going to have with or without her spouse!<\/p>\n

When we understand what our essential needs are, we can communicate those needs to our spouse and ask to get them met.\u00a0 While she still may ask her spouse to greet her at the door when she gets home from work, by knowing her true essential need, she has helped her spouse to understand<\/em><\/strong> her need and shown him a way to help<\/em><\/strong> meet it.\u00a0 It takes the pressure off and allows her partner to give<\/strong> <\/em>her what she needs rather than demanding it from him.\u00a0 She is also more understanding when he can\u2019t (or forgets to) do it.<\/p>\n

If we really want to get our needs met, we need to spend some time learning what our essential needs are.\u00a0 If we don\u2019t go through that process, our partner is 1) taking a blind stab at what our needs are; 2) they are following directions (greet me at the back door) and they aren\u2019t very motivated to do so because they don\u2019t understand; or 3) they are loving us mechanically (following instructions) and we can tell that their heart isn\u2019t in it (it doesn\u2019t feel<\/em><\/strong> the way we want it to).\u00a0 Look at the things you are asking of your spouse and try to understand where the deep, essential need beneath it comes from<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 A need for cleanliness may come from a chaotic childhood, a need for affection may stem from feeling lost and alone as a child or a need for the spouse not to solve the problem when you are talking may come from not feeling heard and understood as a child.<\/p>\n

Our needs are our<\/em><\/strong> responsibility.\u00a0 Our spouse is there to help<\/em><\/strong> meet our needs, but it is not solely their job!\u00a0 It is our<\/em><\/strong> job to learn what our essential needs are. It is also our<\/strong> <\/em>job to be able to meet many of those needs \u00a0ourselves.\u00a0 When we know what our needs are, we can meet some of those needs ourselves and we can give good guidance to our partner about how to help us meet them.\u00a0 Then our needs are truly getting met.\u00a0 If we don\u2019t understand our own needs and leave the job of meeting our needs to our spouse, there will be a lot of discord in your house!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you really know what you need from your spouse?\u00a0 I think we all have an idea what we need, but most of us are woefully out of touch with what our essential needs really are. Period. Example: You know that when you walk in the door at the end of the day and your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[859,728,447,860,861,862,863,864,865,774],"class_list":["post-3627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marriage","tag-getting-needs-met","tag-how-to-stop-fighting","tag-marriage-counseling","tag-needs","tag-perfect-spouse","tag-resolve-disputes-in-marriage","tag-satisfying-life","tag-satisfying-marriage","tag-satisfying-relationship","tag-why-am-i-unhappy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4254,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627\/revisions\/4254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}