You Needed Me
Pondering the lure of needing to feel important
Somehow, you needed me…
What’s your personal catnip? What draws you in to a friendship, a love relationship, a community, a life?
One result of the trauma of childhood abandonment is the fear that you will always be, in the end. “surplus to requirements”, as the harsh saying goes. A nice optional extra, perhaps, but actually, your presence is a matter of indifference.
It’s better to feel pain, than nothing at all
The opposite of love’s indifference
So pay attention now, I’m standing on your porch screaming out
And I won’t leave until you come downstairs
The opposite of love’s indifference.
That’s how it lands, when the abandoned child doesn’t feel necessary. It feels like not being loved, which feels like rejection, which signals to the nervous system, “Stop caring, you don’t care, you need to leave first, then you won’t be rejected.” So it begins the process of unattaching and running.
This PT article, Being Needed vs Being Loved, outlines some of the problems with this particular strategem of self-protection the false self creates.
I must prove I am ‘a worthy resource’.
‘This can be riddled with anxiety as we worry if we have all the right stuff, and it can be exhausting.’
I remember very distinctly deciding as I went into my first marriage at the tender age of 21 that I had to make myself utterly indispensable. The subtext shouted its agenda to anyone paying attention: if I did not do a good job of this, I was going to be rejected, divorced. You’d better believe I was riddled with anxiety at every contemptuous glance, every interaction that felt like indifference or rejection!
By contrast, when I am loved, I ‘should not need to demonstrate that (I) have the right stuff. Instead, there should be a feeling of acceptance and a warm regard with nothing to prove.’
One of the most delightful and relaxing experiences of this year was when I was about to apologize unnecessarily for something, and was forbidden, on the pain of the other going into detail about everything they had done wrong in that context! It sounds a little strange, perhaps, that it landed as such a huge relief. I hope so, because that probably means you don’t have this wound.
I collude with my partner’s dependency instead of supporting their inner guidance:
I remember how deeply moved I was as a child watching this scene from the 1968 musical Oliver! It came out when I was 3. I didn’t understand then that Nancy was a sex worker, or that she was in a tragically co-dependent relationship. I did see that the man she was in love with, Bill (hmm, same name as my first husband), was a violent and selfish man who ended up alienating or killing those around him. Even his dog rejected him in the end. I wanted to cry as I heard Nancy singing this song, I think because instinctively my heart agreed with her fatal tendency, even as I knew her commitment would end in her destruction and death. “As long as he needs me…’’
By contrast, when I am loved, I don’t tend to invest as much in the significant other’s disempowerment so I can step in as the hero. The quiet strength of their inner guidance means a deeper love for me and a more genuine emotional intimacy.
I delude myself I can save them.
This pattern has been operative not only in my first relationship, but also in a disturbingly high number of my friendships and acquaintanceships. There is a thrill for the abandoned child to ascend from the depths of being forsaken to being a kind of superhero in the life of someone else, swooping in and rescuing them from what ails them.
By contrast, when I am loved, it’s less easy for me to be tricked into imagining I can save anyone. My emotional intelligence develops and shows me the only one I can ‘save’ is myself.
I feel that my support, compassion, and attention are a one-way street, and become resentful.
It’s not true, of course. Any relationship that is enticing has some aspects of mutuality. But over time, I come to feel in my co-dependent friendships and relationships that too much was coming from me, and that my needs were not being met.
But when I am loved, it is clear that the relationship is more balanced. Both of us give and receive. We offer gladly and also our needs are met, and we both find growth and renewal.
In counter-dependence, I need to feel depended on more and more. I feel like I can control keeping them connected to me.
In my rear-view mirror, I see how unhealthy the counter-dependent need has been in my life to feel that others depend on me, how intrinsically tied it is to my sense of control and empowerment.
But when I am loved, I come to understand more clearly that no one can or love me with the constancy and dedication with which I love myself or how I am loved by God. I am deeply grateful for the love I receive from those dear to me while knowing I can neither control that I continue to be loved, nor keep someone in this world to love me.
I identify with being a delivery system for love, not a whole person. Others can forget who I am and I feel less and less known for myself.
One of the vulnerabilities of the Myers Briggs personality type ENFJ is our tendency to hold back from disclosing the depths of who we are in favour of listening really well to who others are, and drawing them out. This can also leave others feeling exposed and resentful that we are not being as open as they are, and be an impediment to true relationship.
But when I am loved, I can fully and confidently express who I am, and live in the complexities of my various longings, enthusiasms, griefs, and unique gifts. I can delight that I am known in and of myself, not just for what I do or perform.
I like thinking I don’t have needs but can meet others’ needs. This creates a distance from my human needs, and can lead to me feeling empty. even cynical.
Did I say that I need you?
Did I say that I want you?
Oh, if I didn’t I’m a fool you see
No one knows this more than me…
But when I am loved, I can relax into letting myself have needs, particularly my emotional needs. I do need to be seen and heard. I need encouragement and love. I need to feel chosen, remembered, and cherished.
I cannot have the true intimacy I crave when I refuse mutuality, and feel the lack of it. This lack can lead to emotional infidelity.
I have at a number of points in past relationships reached a place of aridity in terms of emotional intimacy, for different reasons. The result has tended to be the same, though. The inner neediness leads me away in my heart and mind from the one I am with, to someone else who seems to offer more of what I want. There was no longer emotional constancy but my thoughts are feelings were divided.
A therapist pointed out decades ago that those qualities I felt I could not live without were qualities I possessed but failed to recognize.
But when I am loved, my emotional needs as well as my love’s are being met on a regular basis. We are truthful with each other in a spirit of compassion, and this leads to an ever-deepening emotional intimacy. There is nothing drawing me away from constancy.
From I Corinthians 13:
4 Ἡ ἀγάπη μακροθυμεῖ, χρηστεύεται ἡ ἀγάπη, οὐ ζηλοῖ, [ἡ ἀγάπη] οὐ περπερεύεται, οὐ φυσιοῦται,5 οὐκ ἀσχημονεῖ, οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ ἑαυτῆς, οὐ παροξύνεται, οὐ λογίζεται τὸ κακόν,6 οὐ χαίρει ἐπὶ τῇ ἀδικίᾳ, συγχαίρει δὲ τῇ ἀληθείᾳ·7 πάντα στέγει, πάντα πιστεύει, πάντα ἐλπίζει, πάντα ὑπομένει.8 Ἡ ἀγάπη οὐδέποτε πίπτει…·10 ὅταν δὲ ἔλθῃ τὸ τέλειον, τὸ ἐκ μέρους καταργηθήσεται.11 ὅτε ἤμην νήπιος, ἐλάλουν ὡς νήπιος, ἐφρόνουν ὡς νήπιος, ἐλογιζόμην ὡς νήπιος· ὅτε γέγονα ἀνήρ, κατήργηκα τὰ τοῦ νηπίου.12 βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι, τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον· ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους, τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην.13 νυνὶ δὲ μένει πίστις, ἐλπίς, ἀγάπη, τὰ τρία ταῦτα· μείζων δὲ τούτων ἡ ἀγάπη.
Face to face, knowing fully as I am fully known. And Loved.
That is something to aspire to, is it not, in this Advent time of turning toward a greater sense of Presence?