From Where I Sit

Pete came to counselling hoping to understand why the relationships he formed never lasted very long. He would meet someone he found attractive; embark on a relationship only to find that it would end after a few months. This had happened often enough for him to consider it a worrying pattern. He was at a loss to understand what was going wrong. He had a healthy circle of friends so he assumed he was not suffering any serious personality flaws that would drive partners away. He was able to attract initial interest so he figured he must be reasonably good looking, but inevitably things broke down and he was back where he started and none the wiser.

In talking with Pete about what being in a relationship meant to him, he spoke about how different life would look and feel as a partnered man. He saw his whole identity change as a result of being partnered. In some ways Pete saw being partnered as evidence that he was a worthwhile, valuable, desirable person. If someone wanted to be with him in a relationship then he must be OK as a person. Pete was investing an enormous amount of personal identity in his status as a partnered person. He wasn’t just considering life to be enhanced if he were partnered, he was imagining being partnered made him a more valuable person! He was using relationships to feel better about himself. He needed a relationship to convince himself that he was OK as a person. Was this the reason Pete’s relationships were short-lived?

The connection between needing to be partnered and feeling good about himself was not obvious to Pete as he had not been considering relationships and partners in this way. From where he sat he was just a person who really really wanted to be in a relationship and felt much happier when he was partnered than when he was single. However, Pete came to see just how much emphasis he was placing on being partnered as a reflection of who he was. Pete came to recognise just how heavily his ‘need’ for a relationship was influencing his initial choice of partner as well as how he behaved in the relationship. What Pete had initially considered was strong desire toward his new love, was in the end more about a need to have a partner (any partner). Some people might have said that Pete was more in love with the idea of love than he was with his partner.

This is not to say that Pete didn’t have feelings for his partners, but a relationship based on need is very different from a relationship based on love and desire. Relationships driven by one or both partners need to be partnered operate in different ways and provide different experiences for both parties. For instance, to be the partner of someone needing to be in a relationship can leave the partner feeling that they are not so important, and it is only their presence that is needed. Listening to Pete speak about what relationships represented to him, his need was palpable and my guess was that his partners picked up on this need and didn’t hang around because they didn’t feel valued for who they were.

How does one go about reducing ‘need’ for a relationship and allow desire to be the stronger force, well that will be for another post.

Permalink