Expressing Needs - Our Superpower in Relationships

Have you heard the sentence “For a relationship to work, you have to be able to express your needs”?

Nowadays it is a pretty common piece of advice when it comes to love and relationships.

And I feel, rightfully so...

Expressing needs takes the edge off conflicts, it keeps things fresh and it is an essential ingredient of constantly deepening intimacy.

When it comes to creating a vibrant relationship, expressing needs is THE skill to have. 

So I am happy to see it repeated again and again.

However I also notice that, while “you should express your needs” is often listed as a bullet point in any relationship-related advice, there isn’t much support given about how to do it. 

I’ve spent many years understanding this part of love relationships, experimenting, sometimes succeeding, other times failing…

I’ve managed to get quite a good grip of it and today I use it fluidly (well, almost :)) in my relationships. I also support my clients do the same for their relationships.

There’s a lot to say on the topic, but here is my best attempt at putting the essence of it in a blog post: a couple of points on understanding what it takes to express our needs.

Plus a tool on how to nourish this ability, skill, quality, however you’d like to call it. I definitely call it a “superpower” :). 

Ready to dive in? Here we go...

1) We are already expressing our needs
 

We really cannot be in a relationships (or engage in dating) and not express needs. 

However, much of the time, we don’t do it directly and we are not even aware that we are asking our partner or date for something. 

For example, I used to suggest my boyfriends to go to vulnerability courses, because I couldn’t imagine myself telling them directly that I needed more connection.

I also remember a few times when I called a certain man in my life “insensitive”, when what I was really trying to say was that I needed understanding for a certain difficult situation I was in. 

A client of mine became cold with her boyfriend, in an attempt to actually communicate that she needed a different kind of love-making.

And there are many other ways we are expressing needs…

Think of the last time you raised your voice at your date or partner. Wasn’t it that you were really trying to say “I need to be accepted as I am” or “I need support” or “I need to be heard”…?

And it is also what we are trying to say when we close ourselves off.

Or when we give advice we were not even asked for.

Or when we do, do, do and give, give, give for the other, hoping that they will understand that we also want some love in return. Or acceptance, support, presence. 

So before learning how to express our needs, we first need to look at how we already do it, in indirect ways. 

And that is because, if we are honest with ourselves, we can see how these ways are not really helpful. They create resentment, mistrust, power games, sometimes revenge. Sooner or later the distance or the conflict creep in. 
 

2) Why so difficult expressing directly what we need?
 

The question arises, no? 

If indirectly doesn’t help us, then why stick to it?

I know this might sounds radical (maybe even harsh), but my answer is this: we don’t know what we need.

It is no criticism (remember how long it took me to figure it out? and still working on it….), only the recognition of a fact which is helpful for us to be aware of: some of our needs have been wounded a long time ago and, because of that, in the present time they are hard to recognise.

Let me explain...

I, as a child, have always been encouraged by my parents in my school endeavours. I was validated in that and so today it is pretty easy for me to recognise and express my need for encouragement in my work.

On the other hand, I have not been given a lot of space (we lived in a small apartment and there was almost always somebody with me in the room). So it took me quite some time to even start recognising my need for space, let alone to actually ask for it. 

And this (validation or invalidation) goes for all our needs. 

I have clients who find it hard to recognise the need for being heard because they were the ones always expected to listen... or the need to be allowed to feel the other because they grew up with pretty closed off parents. 

Many times, our nowadays partners would be happy to give us what we need, but we can’t say it, because that was never our “normal” as we grew up. 

In the journey of learning to express our needs, we need a lot of patience and a lot of compassion for the little child we once were, to start recognising our needs. 

For me, this is at the core of the ability to express our needs and this is what the last point is about.

3) A tool to nourish the skill of expressing needs

As you might have gotten it from the previous two points, expressing needs is not something that comes naturally to us. It is something we cultivate, almost like training a muscle.

I’d like to share with you a tool anyone can use to nourish this ability and actually start deepening the connection in their relationship today. Or, if you experience trouble, this is a good way to start turning things around. 

To make it more tangible, I will use the real-life example of a client of mine, Cristina.

She is in a new relationship with a man she likes a lot and we work on making things go differently than in her previous relationships. She shares about a particular situation when she is in the car, her boyfriend driving on the highroad at high speed, much higher than she would like. 

She’s terrified but she keeps her mouth shut. The whole trip is hell for her and when they arrive at the destination, she notices she’s grumpy, constantly picking at him and really conflicted inside – because she loves him but in the moment she finds no openness inside towards him. 

When I ask her what was it she would have needed in the moment, she cannot find anything. She utters “He should drive slower, I don’t know why he drives so fast?!”

We spent some time with this and she told me that in the past she tried to talk to people who scared her with their driving, using these exact words. That didn’t go well. They became defensive and accused her of trying to cramp their style. 

So nowadays she decided to not say anything, but that doesn’t work either.

I ask Cristina to close her eyes and take a moment to feel how it was for her in that situation and then let me know if that reminds her of something. 

After a while she shares that she felt terrified like that when she was with her father (a good-hearted but otherwise stoic man) doing something for the first time – like skiing or swimming. Although she was scared, her fear had no place there, her father wouldn’t accept it, even make fun of her, and would push her into the scary situation saying “it is the only way to learn”. 

Asking her what would she have needed back then, she was able to say “I would have needed it to be ok to be afraid and I would have needed to feel safe”. 

We spent a little bit more time with the situation of the past, and with the sadness for not having been understood at that time… 

Often it is hard for us to realise how some of our needs were not seen, understood or validated as children. It is good to take time to grieve for that situation before we are able to move on. 

And then we slowly moved back to the present. 

Cristina was able to see that, if the situation repeats, she can actually speak about what she needs (without sounding demanding or blaming as she did in the past). 

What she came up with was something like “When you drive this fast, I feel incredibly scared. I can see you enjoy it and I’d love to give you the space to do it, but for me it is difficult to sit in this chair. I need to feel safe and for that, I need that we travel at a much slower speed. Can you do that for me?”.

Isn’t that something easier to hear and easier to respond to in a loving way than charged silence or charged words?…

But for that to happen, it was important for her to connect with her need for safety which was not seen a long time ago.

To recap, here are the steps you can use for yourself, whenever you feel you get triggered (and this is what I also use in my own life so many times):

1. When you notice yourself getting activated (irritated, withdrawn, cut off) ask yourself: “what am I needing here?”. 

2. If nothing comes, then ask yourself “Does this situation reminds me of anything from my childhood?”. If we close our eyes, and take a little time to feel, we usually find it. 

3. Then ask yourself: “What would I have needed back then to feel loved?”

4. Usually the thing we would have needed back then is what we also need to the present. So come back to the present with what you found and see if you can find a more skilful way to express what you need.
 

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As we come to an end, I would like to acknowledge that there is more to expressing needs than this – maybe more appropriate for a course.

However, this is a strong first step and, especially if you experience trouble in your relationship, I encourage you to use it. 

And if you have questions, don’t hesitate to write to me, I will happily answer you the best I can. 

Love, 

Radha

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