On getting what you want

When you're losing hope in your relationships

Here’s a very common problem I see among marriages and really, any relationship: You want something from the other person, but they don’t want to give it to you.

Examples:

• They don’t want to hear or understand you in some important ways.

• They don’t follow through on their promises.

• They don’t want to open up the marriage the way you want.

• They don’t want to spend time with you the way you want.

• They don’t want to have sex with you.

It is very easy to take these things personally. The thought we usually entertain is, “Do they even love me if they can’t give me these very basic things? How many times do I have to communicate this to them?”

This is never about you or your deficiency.

It is always about their sense of sufficiency. Meaning, they cannot give anything when they feel like their needs are not being met.

For example, one universal need we have is to be seen and heard in some way. I had a date the other day where, 20 minutes into the conversation, he said he wanted to have sex with me. During the 20 minutes, there was maybe a couple questions around what I was really interested in and how I spent my time. It felt like he was checking off a list of things to ask before he could get to what he wanted.

I did not feel seen or heard, so of course there was no way I wanted to give him what he wanted.

(I want to be clear: there is nothing wrong with wanting sex. We’re human, and we are interdependent beings that connect over things like sex. Any kind of value judgment around what humans want is not interesting to me because what we want is what we want.)

Now, had my date been very curious about who I really was, and I felt like he wanted to connect with me at the human level, our conversation would have probably had a different outcome.

We will pour for others when we have a full cup.

Humans are simple and complicated at the same time. Sometimes the filling of the cup may take longer and more work depending on what we are looking for, but this basic principle applies almost everywhere.

So if you are looking for something that the other person can give you, the first step is to ask the following questions:

• Is their cup full?

• How can I support filling their cup?

• Am I willing to do the work of supporting them?

That’s it.

When Dan and I decided to open up our marriage, I got a chance to see just how many of Dan’s needs were not being met. So it took more than one sitting to address them all, and of course the work is ongoing because we are human beings with endless parts of us to explore.

Sometimes there were needs that even he was not aware of. Sometimes those needs showed up out of left field. It was messy, but my focus was on ensuring I held space for those needs to see how I could support them. Some examples:

• He felt like he needed more support in house care, so we created a system where we divided up our labor more equitably.

• He felt like he needed me to apologize, not for doing anything wrong, but for making decisions that affected him deeply. He needed me to acknowledge his experiences by way of an apology.

• He felt like he needed me to slow down, so I did.

Often times, we can feel exhausted trying to meet all of their needs because it may feel like we are foregoing our own needs to meet theirs first. That may feel unfair.

That does not mean that we need to suppress our emotions and keep silent until all of their needs are met. That is not how a sustainable relationship works. A sustainable relationship is built on honoring our truths.

So when I noticed my resentment come up, I honored it by communicating that with Dan. When there were moments of rupture on his part, I first asked myself if I had the capacity to hold space for him or if I needed to hold myself first.

When I felt like I needed to hold space for my resentment first and foremost, that is what I told him. Something along these lines: “I can see that you are elevated right now, and it looks like you want to be heard, and I want to at some point. But I don’t have the capacity to hold space for you right now because the way you are communicating to me is activating my sense of resentment.”

(Note: This is not a script. It is simply how I communicate based on what I know about Dan and what I know to be true about me.)

When we honor the truth of where we are, sometimes it delays getting what we want. But often times, delay is an indication that something more sustainable is being built.

And typically when I honor my truth and stand up for myself without shaming the other person, it also offers space for the other person to do the same. They stop requiring themselves to show up in a particular way, which gives them space to hold their own, too.

Like anything meaningful and wonderful, embodying the practice of honoring your truth takes time. Especially when we’ve been conditioned to ignore our truth our whole lives and over generations before us. It will be messy and ugly and unexpected in a lot of ways.

That is why the question almost every step of the way is, “Am I willing to feel like shit as I sharpen the practice of honoring my own emotions?”

Sometimes the answer is no, and we have to hide in a corner and doom scroll through Instagram to avoid it all and numb ourselves. That is part of the process, too.

While we do all that, there are certain things that we really want but cannot get from the other person. Sometimes we really want to be seen and validated in a particular way by our partners, but somehow they just are not able to. And when we come to this particular crossroads, we start thinking about the “right” ways to get all our needs met.

We’re like, “Okay, what is the *best* and *most productive* way to have all my needs met? Maybe I can go to a pottery class because that sounds cool to other people. Maybe I can go to therapy because that’s what people do.”

We often ignore what we actually want because we operate from the default assumption that there is a right and wrong way to get what we want.

So here is the question I invite you to ask: If it was impossible to feel shame for wanting what I want, where would I go?

For example, one thing I was looking for was New Relationship Energy (NRE). It’s those butterflies you get when you start a new and exciting relationship. For me at least, that is impossible to get with the person you’ve been married to for years.

So if I am not able to get it from my husband, the question is, where can I get this resource?

I mean, other men.

And I’ve been conditioned to believe that pursuing men outside my marriage is somehow a terrible and shameful thing. If I ask myself if it is impossible to feel shame around this, where would I go?

I would go looking for NRE from other men.

As I like to say, shame is an excellent indicator that we are subscribed to rules that were never ours to begin with.

So then we come back to the table and discuss the parameters of our marriage so that we can both get what we want. It is an ongoing cycle around constantly checking how we can support one another and have both of our cups filled.

Which is why polyamory has worked for us so well. It allowed both of us to listen to what we really want rather than we ought to do in our lives.

Here is the conclusion I keep coming back to over and over again: When we become skilled at knowing what we want and filling our own cups by unshaming what we want, we become very skilled at knowing what others want and filling their cups.

So it is a continual filling of cups, which is a beautiful thing.

That is why I advocate for selfishness every step of the way. The more selfish you are, the more you get your cup filled. The more you get to offer others. This is just a factual statement, y’all.

If you were to be selfish as fuck around what you really want, where would you go today?

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I covered a lot of ground here, which means there are a lot of gaps, too. If you have specific questions that apply directly to your own relationships, you can learn how to work with me here: angela-han.com.