Hi friend,
Do you believe your partner should be able to meet all of your needs, 100% of the time?
It sounds ideal.
But this expectation is one of the main sources of discontentment and dissatisfaction in relationships.
Nothing kills attraction and creates more conflict than bringing the energy of expectation and demand to our partner.
If we feel they are responsible for our every need, they’re going to disappoint us.
No one person can meet all of our needs all of the time. It’s simply not possible.
When we see our partner as someone we're choosing to share our life with, rather than someone who's there to meet our every emotional and physical need, we experience less conflict and more attraction.
Love flows more freely from a heart-centered place instead of a place of expectation and demand.
This kind of relationship doesn't happen overnight. It develops over time through deepening in maturity together.
Deepening in maturity means:
Honouring and validating one another in your differences
Knowing when it’s time to compromise
Finding other ways to get your needs met (through friends, family, hobbies, self soothing)
Knowing when it’s time to simply let go and focus on play and laughter together
Not taking everything so seriously
In relationships we can become too serious and look for problems where they don’t exist.
We can let our moods pull us into a downward trajectory, and act out our fears and anxieties in the relationship until there really is a problem.
Your partner won’t be perfect, and neither will you.
Every time you don’t get your way, you both have a choice… you can have a fit about it, or you can laugh together and even find comedy in how wound up we get about little things in relationship.
Not every little thing needs to become a big thing.
A partnership that gives both partners the freedom to be imperfect is a mature partnership.
Inside Today’s Newsletter:
🌕 New Moon in Cancer Report: Return to What Nourishes You
🕊️ From Instagram: A world where regulation and healthy self-esteem are the baseline.
✨ A Practice + Journaling Prompts: To widen where you look for support and notice where you've been asking one person to meet all of your needs.
🌙 Check out our recent astrology report:
🕊️ The Latest Rising Woman Post:
🌿 This Weeks Reflection
Your partner is one source of love in your life, not the source. There's freedom in remembering that.
✨ Practice for the Week: Widening Where You Look
No one person can meet all of your needs. This practice helps you feel that in your body as relief instead of loss, and helps you remember the other places your needs can be met.
When we hand every need to our partner, the relationship starts to carry more weight than it was built for. A lot of us do this without noticing. We reach for one person to be our comfort, our fun, our reassurance, our sounding board, all at once. This practice is a way to see where you've been reaching, and to feel into the wider web of support that's already around you.
Set aside about ten minutes and find a space where you won't be interrupted.
Step 1: Settle. Find a comfortable seat or lie down somewhere you feel at ease. Take a few slow breaths, letting each exhale be a little longer than the inhale.
Step 2: Arrive. Let your body come to rest. Feel the surface underneath you holding your weight. Let your shoulders drop and your jaw loosen.
Step 3: Name the need. Bring to mind a need you've been placing mostly on your partner lately. Maybe it's reassurance, maybe it's fun, maybe it's someone to talk everything through with. Let one need come forward.
Step 4: Feel the weight. Notice what it feels like in your body to expect that one person to meet this need completely. Maybe there's a tightening, a leaning forward, a low-level pressure. This is the weight the relationship has been carrying. Keep it company for a few breaths.
Step 5: Look around. Still holding that need in mind, let other faces and places come to you. A friend who's good at listening. A family member. A hobby that fills you up. The way you can settle yourself when you're alone. Let the field widen beyond one person.
Step 6: Feel the shift. As you picture your need being met in more than one place, notice what happens in your body. Often there's a loosening, a bit more room in the chest, a breath that comes easier. Let yourself feel the relief of the weight being shared.
Step 7: Return to your partner. Now picture your partner again, with this wider web around you both. Notice how it feels to come to them as one of many sources of support rather than the only one. See if there's more ease in that.
Step 8: Notice. Take a moment to notice how you feel now compared to when you began.
You don't have to reorganize your whole life after this. Simply seeing where you've been reaching is enough for now, and the more you practice widening the field, the more natural it becomes. Be patient with yourself.
This is a practice you can return to again and again.
Journal Prompts
Where in my relationship do I notice myself expecting my partner to meet a need that I could also meet through friends, family, hobbies, or self-soothing? What would it feel like to widen where I look for support?
Think of a recent moment when I felt let down. Underneath the disappointment, what was I actually longing for?
What does "deepening in maturity" bring up in my body when I read those words? Where do I feel resistance, and where do I feel a yes?
When I don't get my way, what is my first instinct? Notice it without judgment. What would it look like to meet that same moment with more play or lightness instead?
Where am I still asking my partner to be perfect? And where am I asking that of myself?
Your partner will be imperfect. So will you. There's freedom in letting that be okay.
See if you can hold things a little more lightly this week. Not every moment needs to be figured out.
Love,
Shay 💕
P.S. If you're ready to move beyond old relationship patterns and create a stronger, more connected partnership, The Path of Conscious Love will show you how. Learn more here.