You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Deciphering wants vs needs is much more difficult than it might sound.

I’ve been working on understanding what I need from relationships and other people. When you come from a relational trauma background, it can be difficult to understand what needs you have and how to articulate them. You’re often used to placating, not having your needs met, or just shoving your own needs so far below the surface that you aren’t even conscious of the fact that you have needs in the first place.

For me, I tend to assume that other people won’t meet my needs. I often spend too much time and energy figuring out what their needs are so that I can mold myself to meet them, to avoid rejection. It’s only once I feel a sense of security in the relationship do my own needs come online. This is exactly what happened when I was developing a relationship with my husband; it was like a tidal wave of neediness came over me and I all of a sudden had to flood him with what I needed in order to make our marriage work. Luckily, I’m with someone who is very understanding and willing to attune to me and that understands C-PTSD and trauma. In the past, I’ve been with many men who didn’t or couldn’t show up for the relationship, who reinforced my story that other people won’t meet my needs.

There is an old saying (I think it might come from Brené Brown?) that we are wounded by others and must also heal with others. In other words, healing doesn’t happen in isolation. That’s why even the most self-aware person can still benefit from therapy, as the feelings that are shared and emotional experience that arises between the therapist and patient are what allows the healing process to take place. This doesn’t just happen in therapy, though, and is why we might find ourselves commiserating with friends, joining support groups, or even partaking in a group fitness class. There is something powerful that happens when we are vulnerable and share an experience with others that you can’t totally re-create in thinking, reflecting, or writing alone. It’s why the pandemic was so painful as a collective, as we were in pain, alone, disconnected from others. There’s so much research documenting the detrimental effects of loneliness, as experiences of social isolation have been linked to everything from heart disease to depression and anxiety.

And yet…this is something I still struggle with. I find myself often avoiding connecting with others, because I am subconsciously prepared for them to tell me in so many words that they can’t meet my needs. Or, I show up for them and they fail to show up for me. They make excuses or determine I’m asking for too much. Whatever form it may come in, I fear it showing up so much that I often lead with a brick wall, hoping that someone will be brave enough to scale it.

I’ve learned the hard way that most people, when presented with a brick wall, will simply run in the other direction from it. They won’t even so much as question why it’s there, before they decide it’s not worth their time or energy to decipher. I take that on as rejection and the cycle continues. If what I want is a scaler, I will most often be left disappointed. 

In times where I’ve chosen to take the wall down, I’ve mostly been met with disappointment. This makes it even harder to navigate when I should be porous and when I should be hard. What is it that I actually need in order to be in relation vs what I want and idealize the relationship to look and feel like. I’ve been learning this past year that if we aren’t clear on where the line between want and need are, we will often confuse the two and then judge our experiences through a completely smeared lens. It’s important to want, just as it’s vital to need. But as another old adage goes (courtesy of the Rolling Stones), we can’t always get what we want, but if you try sometimes, you might find what you need. 

I don’t have some grand takeaway or profound prolific statement to make today, about how to move through this. It’s not easy and it requires a lot of reflection, processing, and vulnerability. But, it’s vital for the health and wellbeing of both ourselves and our relationships that we understanding both what we want and what we need. We will not always get exactly what we want and that’s okay. Life isn’t perfect and neither are the people in it. If we are willing to put in the effort, though, to ask others to show up for us, to put ourselves out there, be honest and direct, and be willing to show them how they can do this, we might just get what it is that we need.