The Importance of Expressing Our Needs

It is tear-inducing just how much can go wrong in love because we have failed to master a basic-sounding yet hugely important skill – one that would probably have been in place if our childhoods had given us the right experience: the art of saying how we feel, relatively close to when we actually feel it, in a way that can be heard, with gentleness and self-possession, before our affections are irreparably affected. This, in essence, is how to express your needs in a relationship: not with drama or accusation, but with sincerity and care.

The Risks of Being Too Accommodating

Imagine that we have been single for a long time. There have been many months, perhaps years, in which we wondered whether we deserved to be with someone, doubted our qualities and feared that love might never return.

Then, unexpectedly, someone comes into our lives who seems a delightful prospect. They look nice, they can talk properly, they are interested in us, and we had tender chats.

Then slowly, they begin to mention that they love sailing and that they share a small boat with friends out on the lake. Their excitement at being on the water is palpable. They are so keen for us to join them and enjoy their hobby. They mention an ex who wasn’t so enthusiastic – and what a pity that had been for them as a couple. The stakes feel high. So we go – of course we do – and we try very hard to be a good sailor. We compliment them on the (surprisingly tiny) boat, we admire the views, we help with the sails, we do our best with the stove. And then, after the third sleepless night, uncomfortable and exhausted, we can’t take it any longer. There’s a side of us that wants to scream at them for not noticing how ill at ease we feel, that hates them for their self-centred hobby and wants to swim to shore and never contact them again.

There are identical versions of this moment in other domains: the other loves long country walks. Or playing the guitar. Or talking about Hindu poetry. They garden constantly. Or they have a particular thing they like to do in bed which is painful and frightening.

Learning the Language of Our Needs

In a better-arranged world, we would have been trained for such moments from an early age. Alongside lessons in physics and geography, we would have learnt – in our Emotional Communication classes – how to speak about our most intimate needs without causing upset.

The teacher would have told us to begin with a fundamental conviction: our needs are legitimate. There isn’t anything wrong with us for not liking sailing or not wanting to go on exhausting country walks or not being thrilled by horses or being scared of old churches. These aren’t problematic positions – they are just us.

At the same time, it isn’t fair or kind to say nothing at all and then, when we are at the end of our tether, to start shouting our needs, acting out our rage and blaming them for not being able to read our mind, when we have never taken care to open up to them.

It is incumbent on them to listen, of course, but it is equally incumbent on us to speak. We have to find our way to a poised manner of imparting difficult messages. In this ideal school, there would be competitions testing us playfully on how to handle the most difficult messages in the most effective ways. There would be prizes for the victors and a marshalling of the best competitive spirit.

Example questions might include:

– You are frightened by their religious convictions. What do you say?

– You are uncomfortable with how close they are to their sister. What do you say?

– They think you adore their cooking, and you don’t really. What do you say?

To prepare, there would be modules on the constituents of successfully phrased complaints:

1. Start with reassurance: ‘I love you a lot, there’s just this thing…’ ‘Please know that I’m only speaking because of how much I care about you, and about us…’ ‘My respect for you is boundless. I wouldn’t be here otherwise, it’s just there is this thing…’
2. State your position with a calm conviction in your right to speak: ‘There’s an issue I have about sleep…’ ‘For me, poetry has always been a matter of…’ ‘I know most people don’t see eye to eye with me on this, but…’
3. Give them room to disagree. They don’t have to adopt your position – only acknowledge the differences with grace. You aren’t looking for perfect alignment, just a good enough understanding. ‘It’s fine that we might not be on the same page…’ ‘I know you can’t agree with me on this, but hopefully…’
4. And if, even after this, things don’t go well – if they become furious or start to blame you – then you have done yourself an enormous favour. You’ve caught the problem early, and now – with sadness, but also haste – you must remove yourself from the situation and look elsewhere. Someone who has no space for your politely worded complaints cannot, whatever other qualities they may have, be a person for you. How to Express Your Needs in a Relationship‘It’s been a pleasure getting to know you to this point, but I don’t think we’d be doing either of us a favour if…’

How to Express Your Needs in a Relationship

Ideally, we would have learnt all this at school. But it would, of course, be even better if the groundwork had been laid down at home. If, when our needs emerged, a parent was on hand to model for us how to say how we felt without causing discord on the one hand or abandoning ourselves on the other. It would help immensely if a parent had said, the first time we needed to go to the bathroom but felt an inhibition about asking: ‘You must always simply tell Mrs Jenson that you want to go. Put your hand up politely and they will understand.’ Or: ‘Just tell Sophie’s mother that you don’t like chocolate cake and you’ll be happy enough with something simple like bread and butter.’ And if this parent could also have lent us the sense that if someone has no room for our politely phrased complaint, then we have every right not to blame ourselves: ‘Well, that teacher doesn’t sound very kind, it’s not decent to behave like that…’

This matters because too many relationships falter on the basis that someone has lost their tongue. There is a limit to how long we can suffer in silence before love goes cold. We can’t keep having sex that makes us uncomfortable before we go off it entirely. We can’t keep sailing until we despise them for making us tired and sunburnt. We need to catch the problems while there is still goodwill.

It can seem that the enemy of love is being ‘difficult’. That, in order to be a good partner, we shouldn’t introduce too many discordant needs. But with time, we come to realise that the real enemy is not knowing how to express your needs in a relationship. We are allowed to be as complicated as we are – so long as we can explain how the world looks through our eyes. We don’t have to have ‘normal’ sleeping patterns, or ‘normal’ tastes in sex, or ‘normal’ views about animals. What we need is the skill of taking another person into our world so they can understand that we are at once good people and different people. We need a profound conviction that it is entirely possible to be ourselves and to be loved, so long as we have spoken gently. And that we won’t accept anything less – from them, or from ourselves.