Resolving Differences in Relational Needs

Last time, Singletude concluded with some questions about how to deal with differences in relational needs:

So is there hope if you and a loved one have different relational needs or the same relational needs in different quantities? Is there any way to break out of the habit of judging others' relational needs by our own? And, more to the point, is it possible to meet someone else's needs and still get our own needs met when those needs are different?

When differences in relational needs are causing dissatisfaction in a relationship, many therapists and self-help gurus wave the time-worn banner of COMMUNICATION. The solution to mismatched needs, they say, is to communicate those needs to each other.

Talking can help diffuse feelings of resentment and further a compromise if your needs are not too far apart. It can also bring to light mistaken assumptions about your needs or your partner's. For instance, using the example of togetherness versus independence, it may turn out that your seemingly clingy girlfriend would prefer to spend more time apart but thought you wanted to be a malignant growth on her hip. Or, using the example of self-disclosure versus privacy, maybe that friend who's about as talkative as the Mona Lisa would like to open up if she knew you wanted her to.

Even if discussion reveals that your needs really are at opposite ends of the spectrum, communicating can help you rethink how you judge your partner's relational needs. If you recall the story of Evan and I, for example, I mistakenly assumed that he didn't call me as often as I would have liked because he didn't care enough about me. After we talked, I understood that he did care about me but had lower communicational needs than I did. Sometimes, just knowing that different needs are different, not bad, can be enough to help you coexist with the differences. Occasionally, you may even realize that your own relational needs aren't reasonable and that you need to revisit the origin of those needs and learn to satisfy them in a more realistic way.

On the other hand, in some cases, even if you understand and empathize with another's needs, that can't bridge the Grand Canyon sized gap between their needs and yours. For instance, even though I revised my understanding of the significance of Evan's relational needs, nothing changed the fact that I still wanted more frequent communication than he did. You can rehash your needs till the sun goes supernova, but if they're not the same, nothing is ever going to make them the same. You may understand you partner better, but you still need what you need, and trying to forgo your own needs or fulfill needs you're not equipped to meet will only engender bitterness and frustration.

If you're in an otherwise happy dating relationship, friendship, working partnership, etc. and are intent on saving it, be honest with yourself about whether you can live with the differences in your relational needs. Remember that some aspect of your relationship will always be conflicted because you're not getting your need met in that area. However, all relationships require compromise, and if you're willing to compromise your relational needs, you have to also be willing to consciously and repeatedly let go of the hurt, disappointment, resentment, and perhaps anger that the denial of your needs will continually provoke.

The alternative solution is to make a preemptive strike, if you will, and end the relationship as soon as you realize that your needs are incompatible. If you're paying attention, this will be early on, so neither of you should be devastated when it doesn't work out. However, be sure to discuss your incompatible needs first so that your partner isn't clueless as to why you're dissatisfied. Give him or her a chance to respond in case you're mistaken but also be wary of the wishful thinking that might drive him or her to deny your differences. One of the main reasons that so many relationships fail is that people gloss over these basic dissimilarities because they're so intent on being in a relationship.

It's tragic when an otherwise healthy relationship can't continue because of conflicting relational needs, especially when you've already developed strong feelings for the incompatible partner. So when you add someone's relational needs to your home decor, train your eye to identify which ones complement yours and which don't. It's easy to make a return during the trial period, but if you let incompatible needs settle into your living room and start collecting dust, they'll be so much a part of your life, it will break your heart when you finally have to redecorate your home.


When you and someone else have had conflicting relational needs, what have you done to resolve the differences? If you chose to continue the relationship, were you able to make it work despite the differences?


Fun Link of the Day

Quantifying Relational Needs

Ah, those relational needs. Pesky critters, aren't they?

You think you've found your partner in crime, that guy or gal who finishes your thoughts before you think them, who knows you better than you want to know yourself, who makes you feel like if you could never, ever listen to your iPod or buy new shoes or eat pizza again, it would be okay as long as you were with them. Bliss follows.

And then one day, you crack that trunk of musty old stuff from his or her childhood attic--otherwise known as baggage--and out pop the relational needs. At first you think they'll fit perfectly with yours because they're all, say, living room furnishings. So you take them back to your new place and set them up in the living room with your own relational needs. That's when, to your dismay, you discover that these relational needs clash with yours. They're not the same style, color, size...nothing. You try to dress them up in a fresh coat of paint, change the lighting to give them an air of grace, a certain shabby chic, if you will...but it's still painfully obvious that while all these furnishings belong in a living room, they don't belong in the same living room, together.

That is, you and another person might have certain relational needs in common (eg., a need for excitement and novelty or a need for intellectual conversation), but your slice of that need pie might be a lot bigger or smaller than theirs. To continue with the home decorating metaphor, our needs exist on a spectrum much like the spectrum of color swatches you see when you want to paint your walls. There's not just blue but robin's egg and sky and cobalt and turquoise and aquamarine and periwinkle. It's the same with relational needs. Maybe you and another person have the same need but to differing degrees.

That's why trying to match your needs with someone else's can be like trying to find a stranger whose DNA matches your own. If you can't match your genotype, it really doesn't matter how identical your phenotype appears. In the end, you're incompatible.

Quantitative (as opposed to qualitative) differences can show up with all kinds of needs, but they are, perhaps, most damaging when they involve communicational needs. Communicational needs, I've found, are among the most integral yet variable relational needs. While we can break most people into two qualitative groups of communicators--verbal and nonverbal--within those groups are endless variations in communicational patterns. Think of all those fractal designs a mathematical genius can derive from a single equation. Yeah. Like that.

The problem is that our individual relational needs (and, in this case, our communicational needs) inform our expectations for interaction with others. So when a loved one, even or especially one who has the same qualitative needs, doesn't meet our needs to the degree that we expect, confusion, heartache, and the demise of the relationship ensue.

As an example, some years ago, I dated two men in succession who were, ironically, at opposite ends of the verbal communication spectrum. (Yes, the swing from one end to the other was a wild ride!) While they were both, like me, verbal (as opposed to physical) communicators, the degree to which they desired communication was like night and day.

The first guy–we’ll call him David–wanted a lot of contact, right away. No sooner had we gone on our first date than he was calling me every night and every afternoon at lunch and IMing me whenever he saw me online, too. Well, this was overkill to me. In my mind, it was too early in the relationship for daily chit-chat, and even if our relationship had progressed, I wasn’t sure I’d ever want someone to habitually contact me whenever he had a spare moment. Soon, I was avoiding his calls or excusing myself after five minutes to, you know, take that meeting with Barbara Walters. Eventually, David confronted me, complaining that I didn't like him enough. In fact, I liked David quite a bit. But he and I weren't on the same frequency--literally--with our communicational needs. I just didn't require that much contact, so his need became a burden.

After David, I dated a man we’ll call Evan. Evan and I were together three times as long as I’d been with David and were in a committed relationship, whereas David and I had just been casually dating. Nevertheless, not only did Evan refrain from calling me twice a day, there were quite a few days that he never called at all. Up till that time, I'd never been with anyone who didn't call at least once a day, and his behavior threw me for a loop. I talked to him about it, telling him that I preferred some daily communication, and he nicely but firmly told me that although he loved me, that wasn't the way he operated. While he was happy to see me in person more often, he didn't like conversing on the phone or Internet and had no intention of doing it every day. I tried to content myself with this, but the fact remained that my need was greater than his, so I was dissatisfied right up until we ended our relationship.

Tragically, many otherwise healthy relationships, friendships, and working partnerships unravel due to differing degrees of communicational needs. This is not only because the need itself goes unfulfilled but because we approach our relationships with assumptions based on our needs. For instance, David's assumption was that if a girl liked him, she would want to talk to him two or three times a day like he wanted to talk to her. In contrast, Evan's assumption was that I should know he loved me, whether or not we talked every day, like he knew I loved him. We conduct our relationships based on these highly individualized needs, communicational and otherwise, and then are shocked and dismayed when other people don't share our needs to the same degree. What's worse, we interpret others' behavior in the context of our needs, not theirs. So, continuing with the example of communicational needs, that person who calls us more than we need to call them is deemed "desperate" or "insecure," while the one who doesn't call as much as we'd want is "cold" or "detached."

So is there hope if you and a loved one have different relational needs or the same relational needs in different quantities? Is there any way to break out of the habit of judging others' relational needs by our own? And, more to the point, is it possible to meet someone else's needs and still get our own needs met when those needs are different? Tune in next time to find out!


Have you ever had a relationship, romantic or otherwise, with someone who had similar relational needs but to a different degree than you? What problems did that cause for the two of you? Have you ever judged someone's actions based on your own relational needs and then realized you were wrong?


Fun Link of the Day

I've Got What You Need: Identifying Relational Needs

First off, a big thank you to Singletude readers for your patience during the hardware upgrade. The new computer is settling in and starting to look at home in its surroundings. :)

While searching for some data to support a Singletude post, I stumbled across this web site. Entitled Commitment: Get Married Soon, it’s obviously aimed at single women who are chomping at the bit to cross the marital finish line. Ignore the intended audience for a minute, though, and instead of that bit, chomp on the food for thought in “Lesson One.” The unnamed author’s advice is universal and applies to both sexes, in any kind of relationship–-romantic, platonic, familial, or otherwise.

In case you’re pressed for time, I’ll sum it up: Your love can go deeper than the Titanic, but your relationship isn’t going to be satisfying unless you meet each other’s needs. Yes, I know–cue the Marvin Gaye, massage oil, and a bottle of Chardonnay, right? Okay, we need to be on the same page with those needs, too, but this extends beyond the boudoir.

The article introduces the concept of inherent needs rooted in the variations of personality that make us so fascinating yet incomprehensible to each other. These relational needs, whether biologically based or socialized at an early age, are, nevertheless, undeniable. Examples include the dichotomous needs to be a caretaker or be taken care of, be a leader or be a follower, have a trophy or be a trophy, be distant or be close, and be verbal or be physical. I’m sure there are many more. Some of them are unusual, and many are politically incorrect, but humans didn’t evolve in a court of law.

Not surprisingly, the article contends that the relationships that work best are those in which both parties meet each other’s needs. According to the article, if a fundamental need is unmet for too long, the unfulfilled partner will grow restless and want out.

So, no problem. Just give the person a generous helping of what they need, fill them up on nurture or intellectual stimulation or intimacy and everything will be fine, right?

Of course it’s not that simple. The catch is that what the other person needs has to be something you can and want to give, and vice versa. Not only that, but you also must find the right proportional balance for those needs, which can be very tricky and is, in my opinion, why we so rarely find that perfect fit we call “the one.”

For instance, maybe you’re a woman dating a man with wanderlust. He needs someone who also has restless feet, who knows he’s literally going places and either wants to come along for the ride or is fine holding down the fort till he returns. If you can’t catch his travel bug, if you only tolerate but never really encourage his excursions to remote corners of the world with unpronounceable names, you’re going to run into problems because one of his primary needs in a partner isn’t being met.

Or maybe you’re a man dating a woman who’s organized and likes to plan. She feels more comfortable when she’s the one to arrange your parties, evenings out, and day trips. In this case, you have to be the kind of guy who isn’t interested in the particulars of your leisure time together and would rather someone else take that load off your shoulders. Again, if you secretly resent that she manages your social calendar, your ire is going to smolder till it consumes you both.

To varying degrees, the same bargain is also struck in non-romantic relationships. For example, most of us are familiar with that perennial Hollywood duo, the hero and his sidekick. But that dynamic isn’t confined to the silver screen. Go to any bar on a Saturday night, and you’ll see pairs of friends in which one is a talker, the other a listener; one is outgoing, the other reserved; one is a storyteller, the other cracks the punch lines. Or step into your office, and watch this same give-and-take play out between co-workers or employers and employees. Over here’s the curmudgeonly boss soothed by his sweet, compliant secretary. Over there, Jane and John are assigned to the same project because Jane is the creative visionary and John knows the devil is in the details. These dyads have become stereotypes because they’re based on real interpersonal patterns that arise from relational needs.

A primary reason why we often feel disconnected from each other is that it’s a near miracle to find that needle in a haystack who not only meets your kind of need but does so to the degree that you need it. Next time, Singletude will explore how this seemingly minor issue of degree can make or break a relationship, with special attention to communicational needs.

Do you know what your relational needs are? Have you ever had a relationship, romantic or otherwise, that either worked well or didn’t due to the compatibility of your relational needs? Tell us about it!


Fun Link of the Day