Communicating your needs in a Long-Term Relationship
When it comes to relationships, the concept of “listening to yourself” can be a challenge.
Not only are we often taught to prioritize the needs and desires of others, we’re often not taught how to identify our own needs or desires, both independently and within a relationship. When you don’t know what your needs are, you can’t communicate them, and when your needs aren’t communicated there’s a much greater chance that they will go unmet. In a long-term relationship, this can lead to a build-up of resentments which can threaten the foundation of the relationship.
By taking the time to understand and listen to ourselves, and to understand what we need from the relationship, we can create a stronger and more fulfilling connection with the person.So, how do you begin to listen to yourself and your body in a long-term relationship?
Here are 3 tips to get started:
Listen to your body:
In long term relationships we can fall into patterns with our behaviors, without taking stock of their impact on our emotional and physical well being. While our bodies provide valuable clues about these needs, we often ignore or push through uncomfortable physical sensations until we reach our limits. But pushing through and ignoring what our bodies are trying to tell us can undermine our long term relationships by letting emotions and unmet needs build up until they become unwieldy and challenging to address.
Physical sensation is the language that bodies use to communicate needs, limits, and desires.
Our bodies will always attempt to communicate with us and when we choose to ignore their message, they will keep escalating their communication until we have no choice but to pay attention,
For example, while I might ignore chronic fatigue and headaches, it is less likely that I will ignore a multiple day migraine or fainting on my way to the subway. This messaging may or may not be specific to your romantic relationship(s), however your awareness of the underlying feelings and issues at play are essential to the health and well being of your relationships.
Anxiety can manifest as indigestion, chest pains, and even headaches. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD, which results from repeated trauma exposure, can cause chronic body pain. People with experiences of intimate partner violence are more likely to experience irritable bowel syndrome. There are so many ways that our bodies communicate with us and it is up to us to listen and try to understand.
Below are some reflection questions to help jumpstart the process of understanding your needs through your body:
Do you experience indigestion? How long have you been experiencing indigestion? When did it start? What does it feel like?
Do you experience any chronic pains such as headaches, stomach aches, muscle spasms, menstrual cramps, or back pain? When do you experience flare ups of this pain? What patterns have you noticed around this pain?
What are your energy levels like throughout the day, week, month, and year? Why?
Have you received any medical diagnosis in the past? How does it impact your life?
These are just a few questions, however, simply approaching your bodily sensations with curiosity and compassion can uncover so much about your physical and emotional needs.
Notice and name your feelings:
Our emotions often get lost in the bustle of daily life or oversimplified because we do not have the language for our complex emotions. This is especially true in long term relationships in which we may feel we already know your romantic partner(s) and even ourselves despite the constant change and evolution each person undergoes day to day.
We need to build our emotional vocabulary and cultivate a daily practice of using this language to name our feelings. Within long term relationships we begin to create emotional narratives about the relationship, ourselves, and our partner(s) that often obscure more complex or unwanted emotions. However, these feelings can help demystify our needs in a relationship in which our needs may have never been articulated or have changed over time.
A feelings wheel can help you expand your emotional vocabulary by using commonly named feelings such as happiness, sadness, and anger as starting points for deeper emotional exploration. Consider setting a reminder on your phone to look at a feelings wheel and identify any emotions present in that moment. Give yourself permission to identify the feeling without having to hold onto it or respond to it so you can strengthen your ability to name your emotions.
Communicate your needs and boundaries:
Once we have a better understanding of your emotions, the next step is communicating those needs they revealed with our partner(s). These can be difficult conversations, but they are important ones to create strong and fulfilling relationships. When you practice this, be honest and direct with your partner(s), and don't be afraid to ask for what you need. Whether it's more time alone, more time together, or simply more affection, it's important to let our partner(s) know what we need to feel happy and fulfilled in the relationship.
The trust and understanding built throughout a longer term relationship may allow us to have more space to express our needs however, it may also make the conversation more difficult because we may fear the change that these conversations can ignite. Before entering into a conversation about your needs, explore your feelings about your feelings. In exploring how you feel about your needs and about potentially sharing them with a long term partner, you can enter the conversation with more honesty and grounding for when it gets tough.
Listening to yourself and your body is an important aspect of maintaining a strong and fulfilling relationship. By taking the time to assess your feelings, bring awareness to your physical experience, and communicate your needs and boundaries, you can create relationships that are built on mutual respect, trust, and love.
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