- Remember that feeling when you're on your honeymoon?
Not that feeling, but the feeling
of just being super in love
and happy and just like best friends.
Yeah, it's not easy to keep that going.
- You gotta work.
- Yeah. - It's a lot of work.
♪ I like the way you work it, bomb diggity ♪
- But there is a way to keep that alive
and meet one another's emotional needs.
- Mm - Actually, there are several.
Why are you sighing?
(laughter)
Why are sighing at me?
- So much work.
- Mended light
(upbeat music)
- The cliche is to say that people think
it's just gonna happen organically.
I think we're in a different
- It doesn't
- It doesn't, but I also think we're kind of
in a different era.
I think most people at this point
know that relationships take work.
At least most people watching this channel
understand that relationships take work.
What people lack is the how yeah.
- Yeah.
- How do I meet my partner's emotional needs?
What do you think are some obstacles for that sort of thing?
- Well, I think there's a couple things that come into play.
I think we all have the behavior habits,
you know from nature or nurture.
- Yeah.
- That we come to our relationship with. Right?
And so maybe overcoming those habits
that aren't the healthiest, right?
- Yeah.
- Like a challenge for me in my life and still is
but I've gotten way, way better is just honestly
expressing my needs and what I'm feeling.
- Yeah.
- Like in a healthy way. Cause,
(laughter)
- Cause I,
- We can all get to a place where we express our needs
in an unhealthy way.
- Yeah. Cause it's either like shut down,
don't talk about it, or explode, right?
- Yeah.
- That's super not healthy.
And so I think that's one aspect of it
but then also we love the things we love
about our partner usually
because they have such great strengths
that are different and opposite of our own.
- Yeah.
- Right.
And so, along with their strengths
is also the weaknesses that come along with those strengths.
- Yeah.
- They're weak where we're strong,
so it gets frustrating and annoying
cause it's like why can't you just do this this way
or be this way or yeah.
- So, you have a saying, that's so very true.
So often we show love in the way we want to be loved.
- Yes.
- Without the awareness of how does our partner
or our child or significant other.
- Case in point, words of affirmation is huge for me.
And so throughout our entire marriage,
I've been great at giving Alicia
words of affirmation.
Telling her how wonderful she is,
telling her how much I appreciate her.
So on and so forth.
Issue is you don't really need that.
- No.
- I mean, once in a while you appreciate it.
But if the core needs aren't being met,
then it doesn't really matter. Right?
And your greatest need is reliability
and getting stuff done.
- Yeah.
- Whereas if you
- Acts of service and physical touch, you know
cause usually people have two.
- Right, right.
But I would love acts of service
and reliability with acts of service. Right?
And so if I'm saying I love you through words,
she's like extreme, not the word extreme,
like the band Extreme.
♪ More than words ♪
you remember that song?
- I don't know the next part. What's the next part?
♪ Is all you have to do to make it real. ♪
- That's beautiful.
- Thank you.
But you're like that, talk is cheap.
- Yeah.
- Whereas to me, if I'm not hearing the words
it really doesn't matter what else is happening.
I don't feel loved.
So when it comes to meeting emotional needs
and we've talked a little bit about in our relationship,
but with the person that you're with
and this is in romantic relationships, but just really any.
- It's true for children. It's true for friends.
- It's true for friendships, family business relationships.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, so I think the first thing is
to have the conversations and to have them regularly.
Especially because you may have them early on
and then think I've got this person figured out.
And that was something that
that was a mistake that I made,
is I had a lot of conversations with you
while we were dating about who you were
and what you were about.
- Yeah.
- And then I just kind of settled into
this groove of thinking that I had you figured out.
And one, some of the things that you told me
while we were dating,
we regress toward the mean,
like I did them for a while,
and then I regress more towards
just what comes naturally to me.
And then there's also just the fact
that people evolve and our emotional needs evolve
over time and who we are and what we want
from our partner.
And being in, especially, a committed
romantic relationship requires growing
and evolving together because who you
and I were when we were dating is not who you
and I were either as a couple or as individuals now.
- Right. Well, and I think of that as like
are all of us the exact same person that we were yesterday?
- Yeah.
- You know, we're not.
Because it's changed and then that's just compounded daily.
And so it takes that consistent getting to know you
- Yeah.
- effort.
- Well, and you know, it goes into our personality,
we talk about personality types in one
of our online courses.
And we won't go in deep into detail here
but there are thinkers, healers, closers, and dreamers
and each personality type has different needs.
But then what your dominant personality type is can evolve
over time.
Or as circumstances like I was not a closer at all.
So closer is get things done.
Right. Not in me at all.
I'm much more so that now.
- Well but that hasn't changed
your dominant personality type.
You've just had to grow as maturity.
- Yeah. But I have closer needs now.
- Yeah.
- Which isn't an issue for you
because you could show up like that all day, every day.
- Right.
- But when other people don't, I get annoyed.
Whereas 10 years ago, I would've been like, it's fine.
You know, we all just do our best
and now I'm like, no, I needed that done.
It was your problem.
(laughter)
- I think you also need a guideline.
We have our personality course that we'd love
to have you take, but whether you use that or Myers-Briggs
or the Enneagram, have some base foundation
of this is who I am, this is what I identify.
- Yeah.
- You know, as my needs, you know
how I show up in the world and what's important
to me because here's the thing in relationships.
And I remember becoming acutely aware.
I think I had three children
and my oldest son is very much like me.
So we got along great.
But my second child, our first together,
our daughter is basically a mini version of you almost.
- Yes.
- And I didn't know how to relate to her at all.
Not even a little.
And so I delved into this world
of understanding personality types
and innate needs and stuff like that.
And then the awareness of there's five of us
in this household.
There's gonna be more someday.
How do you balance the needs
of seven drastically different people,
all of which, who are pretty opinionated.
And I don't know whether that comes from nature or nurture
but here we are, it's challenging and it was overwhelming.
But you don't need to hit that finish line today.
Like it's not gonna come in one day.
- Yup.
- But have some sort of guideline,
that's a base foundation for
how you can communicate your needs
because it can be so abstract that it can be challenging.
- Yeah.
- When you are doing it at first
- Well, and people lack self-awareness
of exactly who they are and exactly what they want.
And I can't tell you how many times I've said in therapy
to somebody, you know, what do you want?
And someone says, I don't know.
And then I say, well,
if you don't know, how can your partner know?
- Yeah.
- You know, they're trying to hit a moving target.
And so, I think the best place when it comes
to meeting your partner's emotional needs
and having them meet yours
is to start by understanding yourself.
You know, taking an online personality test
or just journaling and thinking and writing it out.
Like, who am I, what do I want out of life?
What do I want out of a partnership?
What, when this is done, I feel loved and respected.
And when this is not done, I don't feel loved and respected
because how can your partner or your friend
or your family member meet that need,
if they don't know what it is,
if it's not clearly expressed.
- Well and communicating that as love and respect
it is a great way to explain it.
But also what makes me feel seen what makes me feel heard
and what makes me feel understood.
- Yeah.
- Because that's the part that's so often missing
and you talk about in therapy
how often you've had people sit in your office
and say I don't know what I want
because so often were pulled by cultural norms.
- This is what I should want
- Expectations from family, right?
- Yeah.
- This is who I should be.
This is how I should show up.
Stop shoulding on yourself, you know.
- Shoulding all over the place.
- And, and so it does, it takes that time
and that energy and that effort to discover who you are.
So find some sort of guidelines
that help you communicate that.
- Yeah.
- Love Languages is also an amazing tool
which is, so, the Personalities
the Love Languages, Fight Less Connect More,
these are all courses that we have
as part of what we call Relationship Foundations
because we feel like these five courses are a part,
make up our foundations of what we need
to understand who we are,
understand the people in our lives
and can connect in a meaningful way.
- Well, and we created those,
like what would I need to have the foundation
of a healthy relationship?
And we put them all in those courses,
which you can take accompanied by a therapist,
clicking on the link below.
If you enjoyed this peppy little video,
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what to do if your husband's addicted to porn.
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- Thank you, everyone,
porn is for everyone.
That's not what I meant.
Anyways, but the video is here for you to check out.
So check it out because we want to help.
Let us help.
How do you meet your partner's needs
and how do you get your needs met?
What are your emotional needs?
Have you identified them?
Let us know in the comments below.
What would you like us to address
in our next Married to a Therapist segment?
Let us know in the comments below.
- This is how it's done.
And remember to keep shining, we need your light.
- I don't know, I liked it better as a song.
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- Check out the video.
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