There are many couples that are taking the courageous undertaking of working on their relationship. There are also numerous individuals who are unhappy in their relationships but do not know where or how to start working on them. Individuals might place the problem in their partner or blame themselves. In fact, relationship problems usually lie in the dynamics that occur between partners. More specifically, how each partner is demonstrating love, accessibility, and responsiveness in regards to addressing their partner’s needs.

For the individual who is unhappy in their relationship, a good place to generally start is to recognize your own needs. Needs do not refer to material or superficial needs, but rather the deep seeded attachment needs (which will be discussed). If you were raised in a home where your needs were chronically unmet or invalidated, this can often be a daunting task. Thus, here are some starting points in terms of questions to ask yourself.

What hurts the most?

The idea of doing an inventory of your historical and recent pain may seem like a difficult undertaking. However, it is essential in determining your relational needs because in order to know what you need, you need to follow your feelings. Perhaps you’re the type of person that is use to suppressing, minimizing or invalidating their feelings based on how you were brought up. It’s time to develop a new habit. Your feelings are crucial information and whatever you feel strongest about is usual what matters most.

Why does it hurt?

Dig into the sources of your pain. Does the hurt lie in feelings rejection, abandonment, or distrust? Perhaps you feel like you cannot truly count on your partner, or that you’re not valued or loved by them. Maybe you feel like you are going to be hurt again and again.

The last one is crucial because fear of future hurts intensify present pain and degrades our ability to trust. Although you might become more guarded because of this, it does not mean that your needs have changed. It just means that over time we’ve learned to pretend that we don’t have needs. Or we tell ourselves that what we need is not important and we should feel or want something else instead. However, in reality our needs are deeply ingrained within us and include things such as the need to be loved, valued, supported, protected, cherished, and the ability to trust and be trusted.

3) Which of those needs are going unmet?

This will tie back into the first question. You hurt because your needs aren’t being met, and you have a right to fulfillment in your relationship. You also have the right to speak up and have an open, accessible, and honest conversation with your partner about your needs, their needs, and ways in which they both can get met.

If you feel like you’ve already done everything to save your marriage, you may start considering to accept that it’s time to move on. If that’s the case, start searching for a reliable divorce lawyer that can guide and help you about divorce and other legal options. You may discover more here about the process and legal actions.