A podcast I listened to reminded me of the time that my marriage was crashing. My wife and I had grown apart. We needed a crash cart. We needed to be intubated with “Love”, injected with significance, and defibrillated or shocked with excitement. You might have experienced this or maybe you are going through it now. These are the same needs we discussed in Episode 102. At this time Evelyn and I were not talking or sharing with each other, we did not appreciate each other. Things looked better on the other side of the marriage vows. Both of us were looking to be validated by people outside our relationship.
We were not alone! Many people get sidetracked with work and parenting and forget to spend time on the marriage relationship. The shared time many couples have is just to go over the needs of the family. Talk about the things that need to be done, never getting into feelings, emotions, hopes, dreams, problems, or personal needs. Often one of the two will want to have sex and the other one doesn’t feel emotionally connected as there has been no communication or closeness so they do not want to have sex. I'm betting you have experienced some portion of this if you have been married over 1 yr.
Like I said earlier, when we were in this place we were not connecting very often. We did not feel validated by each other. But there were people at work or in chat rooms that would validate us, make us feel significance and connection. There was also excitement because of the new relationship. So it covered three of our needs. There was also the thrill of the chase and of being naughty, doing something that is against the norm. I hesitate to call it cheating because for most people that means a specific action. But relying on an individual outside your marriage relationship to fill personal emotional needs is cheating also. Now the needs were being met and in some positive ways but in some ways it was extremely negative and destructive. The bottom line was we needed to decide what it was we wanted.
Many people look at just the situations or actions, they blame the situation or action like; growing apart, or cheating for example. Cheating was not the problem, growing apart happens only to a field that is not tended. These are symptoms of a prior and deeper problem. People do not start looking for those needs to be met outside the relationship first. The first thing that happens is that the couple stops meeting the needs of each other. That is not usually the fault of one person. Our relationship was not fulfilling the needs we had, when we started meeting each other's needs, then there was no reason to look to others.
So Let’s go back over the list of needs. They are certainty, excitement, significance, connection or love. So; certainty, I was not certain that I was enough, I was questioning whether I was good enough. I questioned if our relationship could survive. Next I did not know that I was significant to my wife because I wasn’t hearing it from the ways she was telling me. I did not communicate to my wife in a way she could hear, that helped her understand her significance to me. We had to look at the communication style we had and match them up and learn to listen to the other and hear how we were significant.
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