the way out

The number one reason that we don’t get our needs met, we don’t express them. We express judgments. If we do express needs, the number two reasons we don’t get our needs met, we don’t make clear requests.

~Marshall Rosenberg

Question:

You told me to tell my partner what I need but she knows full well what is going on in my life though even there she has had to be reminded over and over.  Her needs eclipse mine.  She overwhelms me with her needs so much that I sometimes feel compelled to lie to avoid setting her off yet again.  I need to be with someone I can be honest with and not feel scared that my honesty will cause a war.  I need to be in a partnership with someone who can accept that I have needs too and that that is okay.  I have told her this but she still ignores my needs.  I don’t think she cares about me.

Answer:

Lots of strong feelings, frustration, upset... it sounds very painful for you and I feel sorry for your suffering and confusion.  I see that you are trying to get your partner to recognize your needs, trying very hard indeed, but, in order for that to happen and for your needs to be met, by her or anyone, they have to be specified more concretely.  This means translating "I need to be in a partnership with someone who can accept that I have needs" into what you want here and now from her.  Think: behaviours, i.e. "I want you to DO x, y, z for me" even if you want her to do nothing at all, i.e. be quiet, listen and say nothing for a while.  This is the only way you’ll ever have a chance of getting the love you want one day.  Even a woman who loves you to the ends of the earth cannot read you mind.  You need to show her the way.

point of no return

I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:
How are you?
~ Rumi

I once met a person recovering from a cocaine addiction.  He’d come to a place where he said he just knew he had to stop.  He said that, if he had passed that point, he might never have been able to get his life back. 

I asked him why he thought that was.  Why would it have been so difficult to stop beyond that point?

He said that it was like drinking.  That your system could only absorb so much until you started to puke.  He wasn’t talking about the illegal substance; he was talking about the lies that were poisoning his life.  

He explained how it began with one small lie to his wife, saying he’d lent five hundred bucks to a friend when he’d actually blown it on a fix.  The next time he lied to her, he said, it was easier, and the time after that even easier than the time before.  It got to the point where he knew that his whole life was about to get sucked into a vortex of deceit and that, beyond that point, he’d have lost himself.

Lots of things are like that, I thought.  Lies, yelling, theft, abuse, murder.   Hurting others and losing yourself.  You cross the line once, twice...  But once you pass that point of no return, it’s too hard to take it in and, instead, it starts to take you in.  You either keep the blinders on and keep going.   Or take them off and puke.