The girl who doesn't need anyone

What to Expect When You Fall for the Girl Who's Used to Never Needing Anyone

By Anna Bashedly

This one is going to be different. I can promise you that. But I can also promise that you won’t ever be uninspired or bored - this is the girl who will change you, she won’t ever take your shit, and you’ll be a better man because of it.

She comes across as a paradoxical mix of outgoing but introverted, very social but seldomly out. When you’re so used to not needing anyone, you know exactly who you are, and she’ll never fake anything because of it. This makes maintaining relationships a constant struggle for her. She’ll connect with many, and they’ll quickly feel comfortable with her, but it takes her a while to feel fully comfortable, so she can only take being around others incrementally.


This might frustrate you. There seem to be so many walls to break down. Just when you start to feel like you’re figuring her out - you find another piece to the puzzle that throws everything off. Be patient. She’s this tough because she had to be. Something happened that taught her to never need anyone. Someone she needed left before she was done needing them. But none of this will spill out easily. She’s extremely uncomfortable with other people seeing her vulnerable or in pain. Her emotions and pain are hers, and this is what she’s used to.

She’ll tell herself she doesn’t need you. She’ll make situations worse by trying to suppress her feelings about them. When you fall for the girl who’s used to not needing anyone, believe that she has more feelings and layers than she knows what to do with. Her instinct will be to try to compose herself. When she does open up to you, it’s everything. Being emotionally naked with someone is how she expresses her love.


She’ll know exactly who she is and what she wants. When you’re used to not needing anyone, you do what you want, when you want, and without asking permission or informing anyone. She loves this part of her identity, but she secretly wants you to confront her. She’s hoping that sometimes, you’ll put your foot down, and challenge her stubborn ways.

She’s strong, maybe even too strong for you at first. Don’t let this fool you. This is her outer shell. Her armor. She is so used to taking care of herself that it's going to be hard for her to let someone else in. It took a lot of work to get to where she is: Independent, taking no shit and being happy on her own. She's afraid to let you in because she's afraid of what will happen if you might leave.


I can promise you it won’t be easy, she’ll hang on to her walls for as long as she can. She will be enigmatic. She will always want things her way, and she’ll fight you when she doesn’t get it.

She’ll even try to push you away. This is how she protects herself.

But when you really get to know her, she’ll be the girl who will change your life. Don’t always give in to her, but be patient with her. She’s strong, but she’s also scared - scared of love, scared of needing someone, and definitely scared of you.

Because even if she says she doesn’t need you, at her core she is just a girl who has more love than she knows what to do with.

Smartphones are the death of communication

The way we communicate has changed significantly over the past few decades. As someone born in the 70s, I grew up with the options of face-to-face, telephone (attached to the wall) or the written word.  Period.

Now, many kids never learn cursive writing and most homes don’t have a landline telephone at all.  A lot of communication, even face-to-face, is virtual.

As a therapist who practices relationship counseling, I find that the explosion of communication devices may have its advantages, but the misuse, or overuse, of those devices can be very destructive for couples.

Unfortunately, with the popularity of online dating sites, many couples ‘meet’ each other through text messages on their Smartphones, and texting becomes their default means of communication.

Here are a few ways in which our phones are often used inappropriately in relationships:

Engaging in high conflict discourse via text 

Texting is not an appropriate means of communication when dealing with sensitive issues.  It lacks context and is vulnerable to misinterpretation. You can’t hear someone’s tone, see their facial expression, their lilt or emphasis on certain words. And then there are the frequent errors thanks to overzealous auto-correct programs that can lead to either hilarity or crisis. Texting should be used for simple messages such as, “I will be 5 minutes late” or “Could you please pick up some milk?” If there is something important you need to resolve, wait until, ideally, you can discuss it in person.  If you worry you will get too emotional to talk, write down what you want to say and read it, or if you have to, give it to your partner to read.

Engaging with others via smartphone while with your partner

All too often, one member of a couple complains that the other is always on his/her phone, even when they are spending time together.  This partner feels devalued, ignored and rejected.  The accused often suffers from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), or work-related pressure to be connected and responsive at all times.  When you’re spending time together, your partner has to be your priority.  If you can’t turn off your phone and spend time alone with your partner, you have to ask yourself why? Work responsibilities can often seem overwhelming, but no one, short of the President of the United States, should have to be accessible 24/7. It also isn’t healthy for anyone to deprive themselves of physical and mental breaks from their work. Having to be on one’s phone constantly during waking hours suggests to me that one’s life is dangerously out of balance.

Spending more time playing games on your phone

 
Doing this during leisure time than spending time with your partner?  It is shocking how much time many people spend playing video games or engaging in betting and sports pools at the expense of their partner.  It is only natural that someone in a high-stress job involving a lot of interaction wants to disengage at night to unwind, but this doesn’t have to be done alone in front of a screen.  Creating intimacy with your partner doesn’t have to involve deep conversation.  Snuggle up in front of a movie, listen to music and/or read together, or do yoga or meditation.

We are all social beings that need connection.  While the explosion of communication technologies can help connect you to others who are far away, they can also easily disconnect you from the person you are closest to.  Prioritize your partner and your relationship. Set limits on how, and how much you use your Smartphone.

Erica Berman

Destructive communication

By George Shoenewolf

Couples communicate in different ways.  However, often they communicate in ways that are destructive to their relationship rather than constructive. Below are four of the most common ways that couples communicate in destructive ways.

1. Trying to win

Perhaps the most usual type of bad communication is when couples are trying to win. The goal in this form of communication is not to resolve conflicts in a mutually respectful and accepting discussion of the issues.  Instead one member of the couple (or both members) regard the discussion as a battle and therefore engage in tactics that are designed to win the battle.  

Strategies used to win the battle include:

• Guilt-tripping (“Oh, my God, I don’t know how I put up with this!”)
• Intimidation (“Will you just shut up and listen to me for once?)
• Constant complaining in order to wear the other person down (“How many times have I told you to empty the garbage?  

Part of trying to win is about devaluing your spouse. You see your spouse as stubborn, hateful, selfish, egotistical, stupid or childish. Your goal in communication is to make your spouse see the light and submit to your superior knowledge and understanding. But in fact you never really win by using this kind of communication; you may make your spouse submit to a certain extent, but there will be a high price for that submission. There will be no real love in your relationship.  It will be a loveless, dominant-submissive relationship.

2. Trying to be right  

Another common kind of destructive communication comes out of the human tendency to want to be right. To some extent or another, we all want to be right.  Hence, couples will often have the same argument over and over and nothing will ever be resolved.  “You’re wrong!” one member will say.  “You just don’t get it!”  The other member will say, “No, you’re wrong.  I’m the one who does everything and all you do is talk about how wrong I am.”  The first member will retort, “I talk about how wrong you are because you are wrong.  And you just don’t see it!”

Couples who need to be right never get to the stage of being able to resolve conflicts because they can’t give up their need to be right.  In order to give up that need, one has to be willing and able to look at oneself objectively.  Few can do that.  

Confucius said, “I have traveled far and wide and have yet to meet a man who could bring the judgment to himself.”  The first step toward ending the right-wrong stalemate is to be willing to admit you may be wrong about something.  Indeed you may be wrong about the things you are most adamant about.  

3. Not communicating

Sometimes couples simply stop communicating. They hold everything inside and their feelings get acted out instead of expressed verbally. People stop communicating for various reasons:

• They are afraid they won’t be listened to;
• They don’t want to make themselves vulnerable;
• Suppressing their anger because the other person isn’t worthy of it;
• They assume talking will lead to an argument. So each person lives independently and doesn’t talk about anything to the other person that is important to them.  They talk to their friends, but not to each other.

When couples stop communicating, their marriage becomes empty. They may go through the motions for years, maybe even until the very end. Their feelings, as I said, will be acted out in various ways. They are acted out by not talking to each other, by talking to other people about each other, by an absence of emotion or physical affection, by cheating on each other, and a multitude of other ways. As long as they remain like this, they are in marriage purgatory.

4. Pretending to communicate

There are times when a couple pretends to communicate. One member wants to talk and the other listens and nods as if understanding completely. Both are pretending. The member who wants to talk doesn’t really want to talk, but rather wants to lecture or pontificate and needs the other person to listen and say the right thing. The member who listens doesn’t really listen but only pretends to listen in order to appease. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” one member says.  “Yes, I understand completely.”  They go through this ritual now and again, but nothing is really resolved.

For a time, after these pretended talks, things seem to go better.  They pretend to be a happy couple.  They go to parties and hold hands and everybody remarks on how happy they are.  But their happiness is for appearances only. Eventually, the couple falls into the same rut, and there is a need to have another pretended conversation. However, neither partner wants to go deeper into the land of honesty.  Pretending is less threatening.  And so they live a superficial life.

5. Trying to hurt

In some cases couples can become downright vicious. It is not about being right or winning; it is about inflicting damage on one another. These couples may have initially fallen in love, but down the road they fell in hate. Very often couples who have an alcoholic problem will engage in these kinds of wars, in which they will spend night after night putting each other down, at times in the most vulgar manner.  “I don’t know why I married a foul-mouthed jerk like you!” one will say, and the other will reply, “You married me because nobody else would take a stupid moron like you.”

Obviously, in such marriages communication is at the lowest point. People who argue by putting others down suffer from low self-esteem and are deluded into thinking that by demeaning someone they can be superior in some way. They’re on a merry-go-round of discord to distract themselves from the true emptiness of their lives.

Dissolve Barriers to Love

Dissolve Barriers to Love

LaShelle Lowe-Charde

The ability to receive can often be taken for granted, but if this title caught your attention, you know that it's not always so straightforward.  Receiving love can be especially fraught with confusion and reactivity.  To dissolve barriers to love it's important to do at least two things:

• Become subtly aware of your habits of turning away from love.

• Engage in practices that help you strengthen your skills in receiving.

Self study and reflection is an essential part of the transformation process.  You can't change habits that you don't know are there.  It's not enough to simply notice that you dismissed a compliment.  Each time someone offers love, challenge yourself to get very specific in your reflection.  Here are some questions you could ask yourself:

• What observable barriers were present?  That is, what could anyone next to you observe?  For example, in creating a barrier, did you break eye contact, physically turn away or step back, did you make a joke to distract, or begin to criticize yourself or the other person?

• What happened on the inside?  What happened in your body?  What did you tell yourself?  What unconscious beliefs were operating in the background?  Are there any associated images or memories that come up with that person's offering of love?

• What were the conditions of the interaction?  Where are you?  What were you doing just before?  Who else is present?

• Repeat these same questions for the moments you were able to receive.

As you gather information by reflecting on these questions, you will be able to design and engage in practices that help to dissolve barriers to love.  Here are two basic guidelines in designing your own practices:

1. The practice you design is mutually exclusive to the habits that don't serve you.  That is, you couldn't engage the old habit in the same moment you are engaging in this practice.

2. The practice is easy to remember and simple to do.  If this is true, you will have a sense of lightness and confidence about your practice.

For example, let's say that in your reflections you notice that you most often have barriers to love when in a public setting.   In these conditions you often avoid eye contact and make jokes to distract from someone's offering of love, even if, it is a simple kind word or gesture.  With this information you might set up a practice like this:  

For the next week when you are at home you will make and maintain eye contact any time someone offers love.  You will notice the impulse to make a joke and simply say thank you.  Choosing to practice in a private setting will give you confidence and strengthen your ability to receive.

The practices above rely on a very critical piece that may need your attention before anything else.  If you know you have difficulty receiving love, then there is likely a barrier to recognizing love when it's present.  You may misinterpret loving words, receive a hug as "neediness", receive a gift as obligation, or simply fail to look up and notice a loving smile.  Changing this kind of barrier is helped most by feedback from others.  Ask your closest friend, your partner, or your therapist to point out any time they see love coming your way.  For example, as you tell your partner that your co-worker agreed to stay late so you could leave for vacation, your partner might suggest that that sounds like a gesture of love.

The unfortunate thing about barriers around any need is that as one becomes depleted regarding a particular need, an internal set of standards about the way the need must be met is put into place.  These standards may become more narrow and rigid over time, thus creating a vicious cycle of disappointment and depletion.  

Perhaps the simplest practice in dissolving barriers to love is to invite love to flow through you.  Without pushing or convincing yourself, invite yourself to frame love as something that simply is, rather than, something you get and give.  Concrete practices that open the door to this experience include:

• Breath through your heart.
• Gently focus on an innocent animal enjoying life.
• Smile as you sit quietly and listen to sounds of nature.
• Look at images that evoke love.
• Everyday set your intention to live as the embodiment of love.

Practice

Take a moment now to choose one specific way you will turn towards love today.

When Compassionate Communication ISN’T Compassionate

LaShelle Lowe Charde

Most things that you want to learn fully require transformation on multiple levels.  Knowledge and understanding the concepts is not enough for true mastery.  The same is true of Compassionate Communication (NVC).  It can easily be misused by those with only a superficial understanding.   Over the years I have read or heard people talk about how NVC is actually violent, manipulative, or otherwise flawed.  Unfortunately what's usually happening there, is someone has simply learned enough to do what they have always done, but just with a new vocabulary.  This is painful and confusing for everyone involved.  You hear someone trying something new, but it isn't creating connection.

The purpose of NVC is to create a quality of connection which naturally inspires compassion.  Everything about NVC exists only for this purpose.  The hard work of NVC practice is noticing connection at ever more subtle levels.  This means noticing what supports connection, what gets in the way, and what is exactly enough connection for a given relationship or context.  This practice requires self-awareness and other awareness - mindfulness.

Unfortunately in a moment of pain, your reactive habit shows up quickly and wants you to attack, defend, or do whatever you have typically done to protect yourself.  So you grab the vocabulary or structure of NVC, but not the awareness or valuing of connection.  Here's a few ways that might look:

• Sharing a list of four or more unmet needs with someone while looking at them with dagger eyes and refusing to make a request.
• Sharing an experience using the NVC structure while demanding a certain response back from the other person.
• Sharing a list of four or more feelings and refusing to hear the other person's feelings.
• Negotiating needs and requests with reference to a relationship scorecard (tit for tat instead what truly meets needs).
• Offering empathy guesses, but refusing to share from an equally vulnerable place.
• Sharing using the NVC vocabulary and structure, but not valuing how your sharing lands for the other person, or sharing whether there is connection or not and whether the other person has agreed to the conversation or not.
• Slipping interpretations into your speech without owning them as such.
• Listening resentfully while attempting to offer empathy guesses.

In situations like those listed above, the most unfortunate thing that happens, is the person receiving reacts back.  This counter reaction often involves correction, "You're not doing NVC right!"  Sometimes the person comes away with a generalized judgment about how awful NVC is or how awful "NVC'ers" are.  The only thing that NVC is really interested in is whether or not the experience supported a quality of connection that naturally inspires compassion.

Rather than offering correction or judgment, the hope is that you could say, "Wait, I am not connecting right now and I want to connect.  Can we….?"  Requests that support connection include:

• Can we pause here so I can see if I am hearing you right? (say back what you've heard).
• Can we just stick to this one event, even though there are other similar instances?
• Would you be willing to tell me what you're wanting out of this conversation?
• Can we pause, take a deep breath, and ask ourselves if we really want to connect right now?
• I didn't connect to what you were saying.  Would you be willing to say that again another way?
• I notice I have the impulse to defend and justify.  Can we come back to this after lunch when I have calmed down?
• It sounds to me like you are wanting to prove how wrong and terrible I was and hearing you that way I am shutting down.  Can you express a guess at any good intentions you think I might have had?

The common element of all these requests is that they prioritize connection.  This means making connection more important than being heard first, problem solving, clarifying the details of the situation, figuring out who's right, who's to blame, or why they behaved in a certain way.  While you want your airplane pilot to be focused more on the details of the situation than connection, most of the time prioritizing a particular quality of connection will contribute deeply to a compassionate, authentic, and fulfilling life.

Practice

For the coming week, once a day reflect on one interaction that was satisfying, that had just enough connection.  Notice what you both did that supported that connection.

Making someone jealous

LaShelle Lowe Charde

Jealousy in an intimate relationship is a painful thing to feel.  It arises from a sense of threat and insecurity.  But from the perspective of your partner, jealousy may be interpreted as a sign that you are invested in the relationship, that you care. Because of this your partner may feel a sense of reassurance by seeing you get jealous. They may even attempt to trigger jealousy to meet a need for reassurance.  You might call this a tragic strategy for reassurance because the need for reassurance is met at the cost of your need for security.

The most helpful thing is asking for and offering this reassurance directly. This is hard because it requires vulnerability and you have likely experienced some shame around vulnerability.  Beyond that you have also likely encountered some pressure to be tough, calm, and confident. The difficulty of asking for reassurance becomes compounded when your partner attempts to give you reassurance in a way that doesn't really meet the need. When this happens and you go to ask for reassurance your partner is likely to react with exasperation and impatience thinking they have already offered it and what more could they possibly do.

The reality is that as human beings we are hardwired to create a secure bond with each other and to maintain that bond through verbal and non-verbal forms of reassurance. It's up to you to let your partner know exactly what that looks like for you; how you most easily have a sense of security and bonding. When your partner shares this with you as well, they will no longer need to engage tragic strategies like "making you jealous" in order to have a sense of reassurance.

The important thing is to make space for differences. What offers you the most reassurance may be very different from what offers your partner the most reassurance.  Take a look at this list of common forms of reassurance and notice what resonates the most for you and make a guess at what resonates the most for your partner.

• Eye contact
• Smiling
• Physical affection
• Verbal expressions of love and appreciation
• Sharing intimately about your experience
• Collaboration on a shared project or vision
• Public signs of partnership
• Sex
• Gifts
• Showing up 4 significant events in each other's lives
• Expressing delight and celebration about the unique qualities of your partner
• Anticipating and considering your partner's needs when they are not present to speak for them
• Offering and receiving empathy

With consistency around reassurance, care, and consideration both of you may feel more secure over time.   As this security grows, behaviors and words that promote a secure bond become more, not less frequent. With a greater sense of security comes a greater ease in giving and receiving love and care.

Practice

Take a moment to reflect on how your partner might most easily receive reassurance and offer that today.

 

Slippery Conversations

LaShelle Charde

Have you ever been doing your best to be heard, repeating and clarifying and still the conversation slips away from you and you don't feel heard?

Often what is missing is simple turn taking.  Let's take an example with Jonah and Alexis.  Alexis expresses clearly her observation, feeling, need, and then asks Jonah to say back what he heard.  Jonah really wants to meet Alexis' need to be heard, but is feeling vulnerable and needing understanding so he mixes what he heard with what he wants to say.

For example, Alexis offers this neutral observation along with her feelings and needs: "When you left around 7 that evening and didn't return until after 1am, I felt . . . ."  Instead of giving back the neutral observation, Jonah says, "When I left that evening to comfort my friend  whose mother had died".  He begins to tell his story here without first hearing his partner.  He goes on and little bits of his story appear in the midst of otherwise clear reflection of what Alexis said.  She feels confused with this.  She wants to honor that he did get much of what she said and at the same time has a sense that he didn't.  Mixing his story with her experience doesn't make space for her experience to stand alone and be valid.

There are several ways to avoid this trap.

1.  Ask to be heard and then reassure your partner that you want to hear their experience too.

2.  Start with the clarity that you want your experience to be heard rather than argue a memory of what really happened.

3.  Own the fact that all experience is subjective by using phrases like:  "As I remember it",  "It seemed to me",  "My perception was".  "I told myself the story that", "My interpretation was" , etc.

4.  Set up regular and intentional conversations in which you take turns giving and receiving empathy.

5.  Use a talking stick to remind each other who the speaker is.  The person without the talking stick can offer empathy and ask clarifying questions, but doesn't express any of their experience until holding the stick.

This week practice reflecting back someone's experience to them and notice if you start to tell your own story before checking to see if they feel heard.