Could Seeking Love and Wanting Our Needs Met Actually Hurt Your Chances of Finding It: How our needs effect our relationship

“Our task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” –Rumi 

We all want love. We all want to feel peace and joy. Trouble is we often don’t understand how to go about experiencing these elements. Until we understand what it means to love, to be at peace or feel joy we look for these needs to be fulfilled by others.

Our relationships with others can offer insight into where we are stuck or put barriers up against love, but our partner cannot make us feel loved if we do not believe we are lovable.

We Fear We Are Unlovable-

Most people deep down fear that they are not lovable. The belief that, “I am unlovable” results in a quest to elevate this fear through validation from others.  One way our relationship highlights our fear is when we perceive our needs are not being met.

Think about what your perceived needs are in your relationship.  Do you believe you have the need for your mate to tell you they love you, to talk with you, to have sex with you, to appreciate you, to give you gifts?  All of the above can play a role in highlighting an underlying fear that many people have.

Getting Our Perceived Needs Met Provides Only a Temporary Emotional Band Aide and Can Keep Us From Finding Real Love

Internally, people seeking to have their needs met by their partners say, “I don’t feel lovable.  You need to take this fear away by giving me something. If you give me something I can temporarily forget that I don’t feel lovable.  Validate my need to feel desirable and worthy of love by telling me you love me, making me feel pretty or taking time to talk to me or have sex with me or give me something”.

Needs highlight where our fears lie.  When our partner fulfills a perceived need of ours it offers a band-aid for our fear but it does not heal it. Over time when the fear is triggered again we will ask for another band-aid.  We go through our lives looking for emotional band-aids that will mollify the pain but never heal the fear.

When the fear is not healed we go through life looking for something to take way the discomfort we feel.

Our partner can only offer temporary support but they cannot take away our fear. Your partner is not the source of your fear either. Fear and hurt is something we try to pass blame on.

It’s Our Own Beliefs That We Fear Not Our Partner’s Rejection

No one can make you feel or believe anything you don’t already think about yourself.  For example, your partner could say you are a purple unicorn but just because they say it does not mean that it is true or that you believe it yourself. Must of us know we are not purple unicorns so comments like this carry very little weight in hurting our feelings.

But what if your partner called you a name- bitch, jerk, bastard, selfish, stupid, worthless and so on. Its likely these names would hurt you more than being called a purple unicorn, but why?

Most of the names people are called are arbitrary and there is no way of measuring that quality but we take it personally. We can only take name calling personally if we believe that it’s true.

Additionally, if we believe something about ourselves we tend to look for evidence of it in our environment and relationships to support that belief.  Our partner may have no animosity toward us at all but me might look for evidence to support our own beliefs.

This can cause us to pick fights with our spouses, turn their words around, and even focus on the negative.

Your Emotional Needs Not Being Met Is a Gift- The Lack You Think You Are Experiencing Can Show You the Way to Love, Peace and Joy

When you think an emotional need of yours is not being met it can actually be a wonderful gift that can show you where you are getting stuck, where the fear lies, and the barriers you are putting up that keep you from feeling love.

Your natural state is love, peace and joy. We get a glimpse of this state when we can quiet our minds and feel our own presence.  Fear and the thoughts that come from fear block our ability to experience our natural state of being.

Since our partner meeting our emotional needs temporarily pacifies our fear we may never get that push we need to grow. If our needs our constantly being met we may never get to a point where we feel to uncomfortable enough to get in touch with our true love, peace and joy.

We don’t have to do anything to experience love; its more a matter of not doing. We have to stop seeking love in others. They cannot make us feel lasting love and contentment. Getting in touch with our fears and destructive thoughts and recognizing them for what they are will bring you closer to experiencing love than anyone else could ever bring you.

When we experience true love in ourselves and uncover the barriers that we put up to block it, we will then begin to see love reflected back to us in our relationship with others.

You are the light, so to speak, and others your mirror. What you put out into the world is what you see reflecting back.  To see the good in others is to see the goodness that’s in you. To see the faults in others is to see the fear that’s in you.