Chasing What We Think We Need

All of us try and get what we want, even in a relationship with someone we love. We suggest, imply, and hope that they will do what we like so we can feel good about being with them.

This is likely how you operate in your life outside of the relationship. Many of us do. We organize what we want and how to achieve it, and often time we have successes. So why not with our relationship?

Isn’t this the way we make it good? If we just listen to our head, we will know what we want and then all we have to do is go about getting it. Right?

Many of us got hurt during our childhood. And some of us were not able to talk about our pain to our parents or the people who cared for us. So when a young person gets hurt and there isn’t another person to help them, some of us turn toward our anger to get attention.

This is how I grew up. I got hurt, but didn’t have the skills to talk about what was bothering me, so I resorted to yelling at the person who hurt me. This is common when some of our needs are not met.

All of us in relationships will at one time or another hurt the ones we love. We probably don’t mean to do this, but it will happen. It happens because we are not in their heads, we are in our own, and we cannot ever really know how another person will take us until there is a reaction.

So, let’s say you get into a disagreement with the one you love and you say some things that are an exaggeration of what you really feel, but you are maybe so offended or mad that you just let the words and hurts fly.

This also happens in relationships. It also separates people into their own camps, away from each other, disconnected and both feeling terrible about what just happened.

When we are in relationship with someone we love, we often get our feelings hurt. This is very common with couples. We start out by believing that we are the same, that we just get each other and feel a sense of home with each other.

But the longer we stay in the relationship, the more we realize that there are differences between us and sometimes those differences lead to misunderstandings and hurts.

We all use labels to categorize things. This is very human. When we learn our language we start by putting words to name things so we remember how to describe what we see.

This also applies to how we treat the people we are in relationship with. If we love our partner then we probably see them in favorable terms like: sweetheart, dear, baby, etc.. The same type of labeling occurs however when we are upset with them.

Many of us in relationships get our feelings hurt. This is pretty normal and happens even when we love our partners. But some of us when we get our feelings hurt get really, really upset. I know I used to do that too.

When we get really upset, well we can’t think straight. Our minds narrow with maybe one thought. We got hurt and someone has to pay. This is common if we didn’t learn how to understand our hurt feelings.

I didn’t while growing up. There was a lot of yelling in my family and I grew up thinking that yelling was the way to solve things when upset. It works in a family of yellers, but most people don’t grow up this way.

Feeling closed off in a relationship might be more common than you think. We often feel disconnected from our partners. We all sometimes wonder why they don’t feel connected to us as well. It’s especially common among people who love each other.

I often hear from couples I work with that they feel disconnected from each other. This might just be one of our human conditions that everyone shares.

But here is the thing that I have been noticing about myself. When my heart is closed and I am feeling some type of way about my husband then there is separation and no connection.

All of us grew up thinking about how we were treated by our parents and the world. All of us at some point made some decisions about the best way to survive our upbringing. Some of us grew tough so no one could hurt us. Some of us grew self-critical, as if we were the cause if things didn’t turn out well.

All of us bring something of our youth with us as we age. Usually we develop strategies to help us overcome what was happening to us. In my case my mother was raising three little ones: 5, 3 and 1 all by herself and working full time as a teacher.

I couldn’t understand any of this when I was the 3-year-old. I just knew that my mother was often tired and unavailable and when she got overwhelmed, she yelled at us.

All of us in relationships come into our union with the skills we learned growing up. Many of us might have come from homes where the problems never got solved. Some of us might even be new to even thinking about saying, “I am sorry.”

That’s how I grew up. My family was full of love and deep connections, but the display of those emotions was buried under a lot of anger and disappointment. When someone drank the milk and another family member wanted some, that person would yell, “Who drank the milk?” If someone answered, then there would be an argument about why they drank all the milk.

When we live with another and in a close relationship it is very common to think we know exactly what our partner is thinking or what they are about to do. This just happens in many relationships. Sometimes we are absolutely right. But sometimes we are not.

And that is the point of this article. Often we can see that our mate should just do such and such, especially when we are having a disagreement. If they only said or did this then everything would be better.

I'm retired.

Communication Articles

Chasing What We Think We Need

When Our Anger Covers Our Pain

When We Hurt Our Mate

How Our Pain Makes Things Worse

When We Label Our Mates

When We Can’t Think Straight

Feeling Closed Off in a Relationship

Using Our Protection Against Our Mate

Do You Apologize When You Hurt Your Mate?

Do You Stay In Your Lane?