We fell in love in a hopeless place, — Rihanna
Once upon a time I had a blog called Relationships. It was 2013 back when open relationships were taboo, tinder was founded a year earlier, and women were still embarrassed about getting periods. Jesus. Needless to say, we have come a long, long way. Anyway, this blog was after realizing the man I was in a relationship with, was definitely not my Prince Charming. In fact, he was your typical twenty-something man with no idea what he wants, just bouncing from happy hour to happy hour looking for the next fun thing. The relationship was a disaster in the making and I was watching from the front row with popcorn and a strong pour of wine.
Upon realizing the relationship was basically a reenactment of the Titanic, I saw a silver lining revealed. I decided, in my true Virgo fashion, to learn something from the relationship that I inevitably knew would come to an end. I wanted to push the relationship to it’s limits and see where (and how) it would break.
You name it, we tried it.
In that disaster of a relationship, we tried a lot of things, mostly with the intention of pushing the limits. We tried dating sites, threesomes, cheating, forgiving, flirting, fighting (obviously), and researching relational dichotomies on Google endlessly. The experience of this scandalous relationship led me to breaking that man’s heart. While the end was ugly, the middle, helped us both learn what we did and didn’t want. I am forever grateful for the amount I discovered in that relationship. From speaking out on major boundary violations to level-setting expectations, and defining cheating, there were a lot of fights, but also plenty of lessons. At the end of it all, he was codependent and I was resentful, but now he is happily married, so you’re welcome random girl. I got you!
During the short uphill journey to breaking up, I did breakthrough on a HUGE discovery or what seemed like one. We can only love to the extent of our position on Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. A big part of how we show up in love is dictated by how far up or low down we are on the hierarchy. Think about it, when we don’t know where our next meal will come from, it’s really hard to worry about what color shoes your partner is wearing to dinner. We isolate our needs based on our experiences and to the extent, we give love it spreads, but only to the extent that we can give. I won’t be the first to tell you that relationships are mirrors, and I won’t pretend it to be a new discovery. The real truth beneath all of it is that we need to love someone that sees where we are in the hierarchy and meets us there in our mess and helps us elevate, as a collective.
The fatal flaw of the disastership was that we didn’t know what we really want, but we always knew what we need. Communication is hard and too many choices can drive us into a state of cognitive exhaustion. Fundamental human needs are on a hierarchy and we don’t vary as much from person-to-person as we think, we all sip water, despise or adore avocado toast, and need a good night sleep to not be shitty human beings. The elements of surviving and thriving as living organisms is pretty straight-forward despite human nature’s inherent desire to complicate it. The ability to communicate where we are, what we need, and how we desire to receive it is where the challenges arise. We all know we want to feel attractive, loved, accepted, and appreciated. We all communicate those needs very differently and express them in a way that may have us crossing different telephone lines. Finding a unified relational language is nuanced, but necessary as butter is on warm sourdough bread.
I found myself running a relationship into the ground:
If you love someone and expect them to love you, make sure you are on the same level of the hierarchy. Or at least be aware of the space between you both in the initial honeymoon phases. Pay attention to the subtle signs that may clue you in on their lack of belonging or decreasing esteem. If you realize the person you love is not on the same level as you, that is actually not a bad thing so long as you are willing to make a plan to get there together. To self-actualize I learned, you must first be paying bills, eating, sleeping, belonging to social circles, and building esteem independent of your partner. Stability in the baseline of essential needs matters. The needs we have are contextual to the place we exist from.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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