There’s “who we are” and then there’s the relational skills we have. In intimate relationships especially, it can be easy for folks to confuse these two things as one in the same, but they’re not.

This is an important distinction to draw in couples specifically because it can be very helpful in combating the moments that “Can you do this thing differently?” gets met with “I’m not good enough for you!” or “I don’t know how to do that emotional skill yet” gets cut off by “You’ll never meet my emotional needs.”

As a relationships therapist, I see both of these toxic pairings pop up often in a variety of ways. Luckily, it can set partners on the right path to a new way of interacting simply by shifting their perspective around this emotional skills vs. emotional needs gridlock.

First, why is this gridlock so common? When we’re younger, we learn how to interact with our caregivers as a means of survival. As small little babyblobs in the big, big world, we are rendered fatally defenseless without another person’s caretaking. In this dynamic and throughout our childhoods, we learn how to cry, use anger, charm, get quiet, ask directly for, manipulate, and a variety of other traditionally healthy & unhealthy strategies to get our emotional and physical survival needs met.

This installs in us buttons activated by certain actions (when you yell, I withdraw; when you pull away from me, I get angry; etc.). This also maps out who we might gravitate towards in our adult relationships (read more about this relational concept in Attached by Amir Levine & Rachel S.F. Heller).

As adults, most of us are attracted to partners who link up with the relating style that we’ve been (usually unbeknownst to us) learning and practicing from our babyblob state all the way up until now...continue reading…