Your Needs Matter

Your needs matter. You may read this statement and say “of course they do.” But how many times do you put everyone else’s needs before your own?

Maybe you are exhausted and don’t fee like going out but when your best friend calls and asks you to help her pick out a dress, you go rather than saying you don’t feel up to it. Maybe your boyfriend asks you to come over because he is tired and doesn’t feel up to driving, so you go there even though you yourself are feeling tired and know you need to go to sleep early so you can get up for work early the next morning. Or you and your partner go out to a party and you worry about whether he is having a good time instead of focusing on whether you are having a good time.

When your needs don’t matter to you, they are not going to matter to others. It all starts with you. One of the biggest ways you can show yourself love is to honor your needs. When you put everyone’s needs above your own, you are not loving yourself and you are telling the universe loud and clear that your needs are not important.

Maybe at some point in your life you were taught to deny your needs. Maybe as a child or in a prior relationship you did not feel heard and at some point decided your needs were not worth honoring. Or growing up you were always told it was selfish to not put everyone else’s needs above your own.

Well, I’m here to tell you that your needs are important. This is a huge part of self love. Loving yourself enough to know that your needs matter.

And when you can’t take care of you and love yourself in this way, you are not bringing your best self to a relationship. You are not being your authentic self. You are being the person you feel others want you to be and this is never going to be the way to having a happy healthy relationship.

When you don’t honor your needs in a relationship, your partner will not either. The worldmirrors back our energy. Once you start to respect your own needs, he will too.

What does this look like? It can mean speaking up when something does not feel good to you. For example, if consistent communication is important to you in a relationship, this can mean sharing this and sharing how you feel when you don’t hear from him. It can mean speaking up when something is important to you such as the need to be heard…letting him know it would feel good for him to just listen when you want to share something.

You cannot make someone else do something, but you can be true to yourself and speak up, not from the energy of controlling but from the energy of sharing yourself and what feels good to you. And you can let a man know how good you do feel when he does pay attention to your needs.