084: When The Chore Chart Works But Your Heart Does Not

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Welcome to episode 84 of the Healing Relationships from the Inside Out podcast.
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I'm Dr.
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Dar Hawks, your host and relationship and communication healer.
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Today we're going to talk about emotional needs.
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Have you ever had everything you were supposed to want in a relationship and still felt alone in a way you couldn't explain to anyone?
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If that resonated or touched something in you, stay with me.
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This topic is for you.
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I want to talk to you today if you have a relationship that looks fine from the outside, but you still feel alone inside it.
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Maybe you would not even say anything is wrong.
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He's a good man, he shows up, he does his part, he's not unkind.
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If someone asked, you would tell them things are fine.
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And then when no one is asking, there's this feeling you do not quite have the words for.
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You love him.
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You are just so tired.
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Here's what I hear from women all the time almost the same words every time.
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I don't even know what I need anymore.
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Am I asking for too much?
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And underneath both of those this one.
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I got better at communicating, so why do I still feel small?
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What you are running into is the difference between the practical things being handled and the emotional things being felt.
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Those are not the same, and almost no one ever explains the difference to us.
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So when closeness thins out, but the logistics of the day to day keep running just fine, you assume the problem must be you.
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You decide you're being ungrateful.
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You might tell yourself to be reasonable.
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And the real thing, the thing that you actually need, the closeness, the sense of being truly seen by him, you set it aside and stop mentioning it.
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Oftentimes for years.
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So today I want to say that thing out loud with you.
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What your emotional needs actually are, why they go unanswered, even in a good relationship, and why wanting them met does not make you too much.
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Because once you can see this clearly, you can stop putting yourself on trial for feeling something that was real and true for you the whole time.
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Let me start with the difference itself, because it is the whole key.
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First, one thing worth clearing up, because I do talk about both.
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You will hear me say relationship needs, and you will also hear me say emotional needs, but they're not quite the same thing.
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Relationship needs is the whole picture, everything you need from your relationship, including the practical side, the time, the help, the being able to count on each other.
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Emotional needs are the deeper layer inside that.
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They are the things you need to feel, not the things you need done.
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So your emotional needs live inside your relationship needs, underneath the practical ones.
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Today we're going down into that deeper layer.
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Your practical needs are the things that need doing, the bills, the schedule, the help around the house, for example.
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Your emotional needs are the things you need to feel, to feel seen, to feel chosen, to feel free to be yourself, to feel like your yes and your no both matter, and to feel safe enough to say the true thing without the whole night going sideways.
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You can have every practical need handled and still be starving and craving for the second kind.
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That's exactly why you can look at a relationship that works and wonder what is wrong for you for feeling lonely inside it.
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Nothing is wrong with you.
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You are just feeling the gap between what is getting done and what you need to feel.
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And that gap is real, even if no one has ever put words to it before.
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So let me walk you through the five emotional needs I see underneath almost every story I hear.
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As I do, just notice which ones make something in your chest go still.
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The first is love and belonging, the need to feel chosen and close, just not tolerated, not just part of the furniture of his life.
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The second is freedom, the need to still be your own person, to have room to think and grow and want things without making yourself smaller or making yourself disappear.
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The third is fun, the lightness and play a tired relationship tends to let go of first, and how much you miss it once it's gone.
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The fourth is inner power, the need to feel like your yes and no both count.
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That you still have a real say in your own life and your relationship.
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The fifth is safety and survival, the need to feel secure enough to be honest without the ground shifting under you every time.
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These are the five sovereign relationship needs.
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You have all five.
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What is different for you is which one is most starved right now, and which one you stopped letting yourself want, usually because you reached for it once and it didn't go well.
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Also, you'll notice parallels with the five sovereign relationship needs and how they are tied directly to the emotional needs.
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They're the same words: love and belonging, freedom, fun, inner power, and safety and survival.
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One is about the logistics, and the other one is about the feelings.
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Let's now talk about why these emotional needs go unanswered, even when there is real love in the relationship.
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Most of the time it's not because anyone set out to hurt you.
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The closeness just wears thin and eventually disappears.
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Life gets full.
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The conversations turn into logistics.
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Who is picking up what and when?
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The reaching toward each other gets crowded out by everything that has to get done.
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And neither of you notices it slipping until one day you become aware of how far you feel from him.
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And there's another reason, one that's harder to see.
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A lot of us learned early that our own needs were the ones that could wait, that keeping the peace mattered more than having our needs met.
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So you led with everyone else's needs and put your own last.
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Over and over, until the people around you, including the man you love, simply came to expect the version of you who doesn't ask for anything.
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Here's what opens up when you can see all of this clearly.
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The loneliness stops being proof that you are broken and becomes information instead.
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It is pointing at a real need that has not been met.
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And a need you can name is a need you can eventually speak and ask for.
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You stop arguing with yourself about whether you are even allowed to want closeness.
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And from a place like that, something real becomes possible.
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I want to be honest about what this first step actually asks of you, because I know your mind is probably three steps ahead, waiting for the hard part.
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It doesn't ask you to have some big conversation tonight.
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It doesn't ask you to fix anything.
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It asks for one thing.
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And that is that you stop pretending you do not feel what you feel.
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That is the whole beginning.
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The one belief I most want to take out of your hands today is the one that says having emotional needs makes you needy.
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That wanting to feel close makes you a lot to deal with.
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That the size of what you long for is somehow a measure of what's wrong with you.
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So let me say this as plainly as I know how.
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Needing to feel seen, be heard, and be known is not too much.
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Wanting to feel close to your own husband and partner is not asking for the world.
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Having a lot of emotional needs does not make you difficult.
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It makes you someone who wants a real relationship, and the depth of what you need usually matches the depth of how you love and how you give in all your relationships.
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These are not flaws to fix, they are parts of you that are still hoping, still reaching for the relationship you actually want, instead of the one you have talked yourself into being fine with.
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The ache you feel is proof that the love in you is still there.
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A woman who had truly given up would not ache at all.
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You are not too much.
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You never were.
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You have just had real needs that went unanswered for a long time, and you've been calling that loneliness a personal failing when it was never that at all.
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Also, you didn't come up with any of those thoughts or beliefs by yourself.
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It's all been taught by the social, cultural, and religious environments that we have been part of.
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Now here is what I want to leave you with.
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Do not rush to answer it, just let it sit with you for a few days.
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Ask yourself this.
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Which of my emotional needs have I been treating as if it does not matter or does not count?
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The need to feel seen, the need to feel free, the need to laugh and have fun together, the need to have my voice matter, the need to feel safe enough to be honest.
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Which one have you decided somewhere along the way that you are just not allowed to want?
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You do not have to do anything about it yet, you do not have to bring it to him, you don't even have to be ready.
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All I'm asking is that you let yourself notice the need is real and that it was always allowed to be.
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That noticing, that one small moment of letting your need be true is where everything begins.
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Nothing can be met while it stays a secret you keep even from yourself.
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If you heard yourself in any of this, there is one small thing you can do today.
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Take the free relationship needs quiz.
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In a few minutes, it will help you name the need underneath all of this, the thing you've been really longing to feel.
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It's free and you can find it at needs.com.
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You don't have to figure this out alone.
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And if you have already taken the quiz, or you know you want more than a quiz, you can talk with me one-on-one.
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It's a real conversation, just you and me, about what has been happening in your relationship and what you actually need.
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Nothing is wrong with you, and there is nothing to fix.
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We just look at where things are and find one small next step together.
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You can set that up at session.doctordarhawks.com.
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In the meantime, please take such good, gentle care of yourself.