How Your Early Unmet Emotional Needs Might Be Affecting Your Relationship

Many adults who grew up with emotional neglect or abuse are unaware that they're expecting their partner to fulfill those needs (see my article: What is Childhood Emotional Neglect?).

Unmet Childhood Needs and Adult Relationships

They're unaware of it because these expectations are often unconscious and, therefore, outside of their awareness.

What Can You Reasonably Expect From Your Partner?

So let's look at what's reasonable to expect from a partner.

Your partner can fulfill many emotional needs including:

• Being trustworthy
• Fostering emotional safety
• Being supportive, loving and empathetic
• Being attuned and validating
• Showing appreciation

However, your partner can't make up for early unmet emotional needs from your childhood because those needs stem from early attachment wounds. 

Why Your Partner Can't Make Up For Your Unmet Childhood Needs

Here are some of the reasons why your partner can't make up for your early unmet emotional needs:

• Unmet Childhood Needs Stem From Early Attachment Trauma: Early abuse, emotional neglect or inconsistent care creates early attachment wounds. These conditions can also create insecure attachment and a need for constant reassurance or, conversely, an avoidance of emotional intimacy.

• A Child-Parent Dynamic in Your Adult Relationship: Without realizing it, adults who were emotionally neglected and/or abused can create a child-parent dynamic in their relationship where they expect their partner to provide them with the good parenting they didn't get as a child. This can create emotional and sexual problems in the relationship.

Unmet Childhood Needs and Adult Relationships

• Communication Problems: Many people whose emotional needs weren't met in childhood also learned as children not to ask for what they needed. This inability to ask for what they needed carries over into adulthood. It's not unusual for adults, who didn't get what they needed in childhood, to have childlike expectations that their partner will know what they need without telling their partner. This creates confusion, communication problems and resentment (see my article: Are You Expecting Your Partner to Be a Mind Reader?).

• Confusing Love and Codependency: When adults didn't get what they needed as children, they can confuse love and codependency rather than creating a relationship with healthy interdependency (see my article: What is the Difference Between Codependency and Interdependency?).

How to Cope With Unmet Childhood Needs as an Adult

• Recognize Your Misplaced Expectations: Accept that your partner can't provide you with the nurturance you didn't get as a child and that your partner can never make up for what you didn't get. What you didn't get is a loss and needs to be grieved so you can heal.

Unmet Childhood Needs and Adult Relationships

• Learn to Communicate Clearly: Be aware that if you have an unconscious expectation that your partner should know what you want before you ask, you are acting from a very young part of yourself. This is unrealistic and it's your responsibility to learn to communicate what you want in a clear, tactful way (see my article: Improving Communication in Your Relationship By Avoiding the "4 Horsement of the Apocalypse").

Unmet Childhood Needs and Adult Relationships

• Focus on Healing Yourself: Recognize and accept that your partner isn't your parent and that you need to focus on healing yourself or get help in trauma therapy so you can heal (see below).

• Get Help in Trauma Therapy: A licensed mental health professional who is trained as a trauma therapist can help you to heal from the unresolved trauma, including early unmet emotional needs. There are different types of trauma therapy:

• EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

• Parts Work Therapy: IFS (Internal Family Systems and Ego States Therapy)

• AEDP  (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)

• Somatic Experiencing
  

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

If you're struggling with unresolved trauma, you're not alone.

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Rather than struggling alone, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who has an expertise in helping clients overcome trauma so you can live a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, Parts Work Therapist (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing, EFT (for couples) and a Certified Sex Therapist.

As a trauma therapist, I have over 25 years of experience helping individual adults and couples to overcome trauma.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.