My Needs Are Not That Important
What happens when I maintain the delusion that they are?
Dear lovely reader,
Today marks two months since I sat T. down in a park on a sunny afternoon and read him the riot act.
Half-kidding. Really I just told him that I had some needs (!!!) and that I would like him to care about them, though I stressed that it was his choice entirely if he wanted to or not. “This,” I began, “is how I currently feel the most loved.”
Over the next few weeks, I’d like to explore the idea of needs, namely the sensation of having them, identifying them, communicating them, and the normalization of using them as a framework in relationships.
We are hopelessly ourselves. I believe that we need each other and that we will always vacillate between sensations of having needs met and unmet. But lately I’ve noticed a fixation on the lack-and-surplus landscape of personal needs, both culturally and in my own relationship, and I would argue that using romantic partnerships as the primary setting for where needs are met is a relatively new expectation.
Where did this expectation come from? Given that our expectations, even those on a micro level, are often cultivated by systems outside of and much larger than ourselves, systems that are also mostly fucked, I wonder who benefits when we uphold them.
What does it mean to have needs, and is it possible to understand them without projecting them onto others? Is our over-identification with needs just another system of knowing that gives us more ways to measure, compare, or improve something in a performance-obsessed society?
I feel like many relationships end because of personal differences that result in one or both partners feeling like their needs aren’t being met. Often it feels like my own bouts of unhappiness or dissatisfaction in a relationship lead to inquiry that supports this theory. Friends will ask me, “Are your needs being met?”
In early October, I broke up with T. for two weeks because the only alternative — asking for what I need and hanging back with enough patience to let it happen, or letting go of certain needs altogether — seemed gross and uncomfortable.
First I simply avoided him. I consulted friends via voice-notes, I disappeared for two days in Big Sur with Maria, I got too high at home and listened to a slow song on repeat while laying on the floor next to my bed. I wrote a lot.
What stories come up when my needs don’t feel met? I’m not loved, I’m not seen, I’m not worthy of acknowledgment. My partner would rather stay the same than stretch to meet me.
This will not work.
