I thought I’d get married, have a best friend and share my deepest needs…but he can’t meet my needs!
Join Leah with Guest Speaker Faigy Pollack, as they discuss how to move past the pain and be okay with a husband who can’t fulfil all our needs. Ladies, it’s time to surrender, learn how to be okay with unfulfilled needs and have a fulfilled marriage instead!
What happens when a wife is vulnerable and shares her needs and they’re not met?
- Step 1: Acknowledge the disappointment of living a life we thought would be different and accept this.
- Step 2: Challenge what we think our needs are.
- Step 3: Share this with our husband.
- Sharing our needs with a sense of urgency is disempowering and causes a shut-down.
- Rather, we should share our needs but give over the message that we’ll be okay if they’re not met.
Chani: When my husband shares his needs, it comes across as whiney and I find him needy and quite annoying. Am I the problem, or is he?
- Regardless of whose problem it is, when a husband expresses certain needs, it’s a wife’s job to thank him for sharing and see which needs she can meet.
- Us women silently punish our husbands when he has a need, as it makes us feel insufficient. We need to honestly look at the needs and look past the way he’s sharing the needs.
- The biggest gift we can give our husbands is a happy wife so even if we can’t fulfil all his needs, we need to embrace and love ourselves regardless.
Brochie: I try to share in a vulnerable way with my husband but he’s very logical and matter of fact and doesn’t empathize. I tell him I don’t want solutions. He says I should just find a therapist to vent to. I feel so rejected when he says that. What should I do?
- Any time our husband says something critical, try to take a deep breath and extract a kernel of truth.
- Is it true and maybe you can find a girlfriend to share and be vulnerable with so that your husband is off the hook?
- Often instead of communicating with our heart (our feminine side,) we try to communicate from the head and explain why we need what we need. He will battle this.
- Speak from the heart: “It would mean so much to me if…”
Ita: My husband has let me down so much in the past that I don’t bother sharing my needs anymore. It’s easier to keep the wall up that I’ve built than risk him hurting me again and again.
- Try to operate from the future, not the past. Coming from this place, after acknowledging the pain, we can try to expand ourselves.
- Trying to see which needs he is meeting and where is supporting you, can help to be vulnerable again.
- Some needs won’t be met, try to hug that and live with it.
Ruchama: To be honest when I feel hurt by my husband it’s very hard to see his point of view. Do you have a small step I can take to help in this area?
- When you’re stuck in the pain, put conversations on hold. Take a step back, allow yourself to feel the pain.
- Emotions are cycles, we can’t just stop them, we need to allow the cycle to flow.
- We need to cry if we need to, take deep breaths, and take space. Then the pain will become less intense, and we can come back to da’as and try to see our husband’s perspective.
One quick tip to improve your marriage is to daven (pray) for your marriage.
