Let me start by saying I once created a personality around not being needy. I looked disdainfully down my nose at needy people and vowed never to be one.
That worked out well for me considering how much internalized shame I carried around having needs of my own. No wonder I judged others for having them.
I got the message early on in life that my needs were burdensome, dramatic, and undesirable so I learned to keep them hidden, tend to them myself or neglect them entirely.
It’s taken many years of relational healing work to identify my own needs, claim them as valid and deserving of attention, tend to them sincerely, and communicate about them to other people.
We humans are a needy bunch, and sometimes it’s very inconvenient.
I have often wished I needed less.
Had I needed less maybe I could have made it work with the guy who lived in his dilapidated camper van.
If I needed less maybe I could have been happy with the guy who was completely lost, but had such a good heart.
If I needed less perhaps the rich hot dad with the emotional IQ of a teenager could have been a fit.
Or the one where everything seemed right except our sex life, which just didn’t work.
But alas, I am who I am. I need what I need.
Now, I’ve tried to need less. I’ve experimented. A lot in fact.
I’ve gotten curious about whether my needs were really just preferences—an easy confusion to make.
You know how you find out?
You pay attention to whether letting go of the need leaves you feeling FREE (omg I am actually FINE without that thing I thought I had to have!), or malnourished and a little desperate.
And before you conclude a partner just cannot meet your needs, I suggest you take an honest look at whether you are meeting your own needs first. I see my clients engaging in a lot of self-neglect and self-denial and expecting their partners to show up for them in a way they aren’t willing to show up for themselves.
To say nothing of the fact that we often don’t even have the capacity to receive what it is we say we want when it does come our way, if it isn’t something we give to ourselves.
Look you’re gonna have to grieve the things you don’t get in any partnership you choose into. And there will be things.
But, if the grieving outweighs the gratitude for what you are receiving, that’s a sign you may be in denial about what you really need.
And if I needed less, maybe I’d be married with two kids by now. Happy to mostly ignore the deeper yearnings of my heart.
Or maybe I’d be divorced. Or maybe I’d be feeling trapped in a marriage that felt too overwhelming to get out of. Or maybe…
You see, it’s a useless rabbit hole to go down.
I don’t think acting like or wishing we needed less ever works out.
I think embracing our neediness does.
Love,
Caite
P.S. Realizing you could use some support in identifying, validating, tending to, or communicating your own needs in relationship? I invite you to peek at my women’s program Becoming the Muse.
About Me
I’m Dr. Caite Gordon: intimacy, sex, and relationship coaching, Doctor of Chinese Medicine, and feminine embodiment teacher.
For more than a decade, I’ve guided women and couples through the landscapes of healing, intimacy, and eros. My work draws from eastern medicine, functional medicine, somatic healing, spirituality, and years spent sitting with thousands of people in life’s most vulnerable and sacred moments.
I’m fascinated by what allows us to become more fully ourselves: to unwind old survival strategies, trust our bodies, create nourishing relationships, and build lives infused with vitality, meaning, and pleasure.
This Substack is an extension of that exploration—a place for conversations about embodiment, intimacy, spirituality, women’s health, and the art of being human.
If these words resonate, I’m glad you’re here.
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