Externalizing Our Value
Many couples who enter therapy with me feel stuck and dissatisfied in their relationship. Often, they point to unresolved pain. At times, in an effort to find relief from that pain, one will launch criticism toward another: “They’re selfish!” or “they’re too consumed to pay attention to me! I’m all alone!” Or they’ll use absolute terms like, "they never show up for me when it matters.” When I hear these statements, I’m led to become curious if there are unmet needs and internalized expectations. Emotionally, I tap into the pain and disconnection underlying the criticism.
What Causes This Conflict?
This kind of conflict is not uncommon, and it’s also not so personal. This culture is riddled with misconceptions of what’s required of partners to be in a committed relationship. Further, it has placed enormously high expectations on the role of the “romantic” partner. Combine that with core wounds developed in childhood around unmet needs, and the daunting and relatively new task to negotiate and renegotiate relational scripts in each new relationship, and it’s as if modern couples in the US are set up for failure. Lacking proper models, many are longing for a place to feel seen, heard, and reflected in their most intimate dynamic tensions.
These statements may point to one specific dynamic tension – among many – that play out in intimate relationships. When attempting to heal from unmet needs in childhood, many enter a stage of believing the solution is to find a partner that meets every need so they will never have to feel the pain again of what they received, or didn’t receive, in childhood. At this stage, this pattern of looking for somebody else to fill a lack based in the past can lead to a sense of entitlement to a partner’s time, attention, emotional and financial energy. And this is nobody’s fault, simply a result of faulty cultural and familial scripts.
Finding Your Innate Value
In truth, we are entitled to set standards for what we want and need in a relationship. In fact, it’s an important part of relational growth to identify and claim those wants and needs. However, we are not entitled to have our partners consistently meet them at an expense to themselves and who they naturally are. When we fall into those beliefs – that the only way to feel validated of our relational worth is for our partners prove it to us by meeting all our wants and needs – we externalize a sense of our own value. And when we do that, we run the risk of bestowing a responsibility onto our partner, who cannot singlehandedly heal our childhood wounds and simultaneously buffer the slings of our everyday stressful lives, and who will – if placed in this position - undoubtedly and repeatedly come up short.
There is nothing wrong with an interdependent relationship – in fact, that’s what relationships are all about after the new relationship energy fades: coming to honor and celebrate differences to create something much greater than any one person can do alone. However, when a partnership becomes solely about how to get one’s needs and expectations met, relationships risk losing the intimacy that makes them so worthwhile.
The work of couples’ therapy then becomes about helping each partner to develop access to their sense of innate value, to nurture one’s wounds and become accountable to them, and to communicate with each other from that space. This practice encourages honesty, trust, and closeness, and begins to unravel outdated and faulty scripts, providing the foundation for real relational growth and emotional intimacy.
If you’re interested in learning more about how couples therapy could help you and your relationship, please reach out.
