Meet the Most Important Emotional Needs
Sue and Jon learned to overcome their instinct to hurt each other when they were upset. And they were upset quite a bit of the time, at least in the beginning of their recovery. If they had not made an effort to avoid blaming each other for the mess they were in, any hope for a successful recovery would have been blown away.
But Sue and Jon committed themselves to avoid selfish demands, disrespectful judgments, and angry outbursts, and they also followed the Policy of Radical Honesty and the Policy of Joint Agreement so that they would avoid making thoughtless decisions.
Most couples recovering from the ravages of an affair should first focus their attention on overcoming Love Busters. Their relationship is usually so fragile that they must be careful not to make matters worse by doing anything that might hurt each other.
But thoughtlessness wasn’t the primary factor that led Sue to have an affair. It was Jon’s failure to meet her most important emotional needs that had made her particularly vulnerable. So after they learned to eliminate Love Busters, they were ready to get at the core of their problem: their failure to meet each other’s basic needs.
Jon’s account in Sue’s Love Bank was already empty before she had her affair—she was no longer in love with him. But Jon was still in love with her because she had been meeting his emotional needs. After her affair was over, however, Sue’s account in Jon’s Love Bank was also in the red. She had not been meeting his emotional needs while they were separated, and the affair itself had caused gigantic Love Bank withdrawals from her account.
So their next goal in their road to recovery was to start making Love Bank deposits—as many and as quickly as possible. But before they could begin, they had to know where to put their effort. They had to identify their own most important emotional needs for each other.
Do you know yourself well enough to list your most important emotional needs? Most people haven’t given this much thought, and if forced to make up a list, they would not know where to begin. But it’s very important that you understand your emotional needs, not only for your own sake, but for the sake of your spouse. If he or she is going to put time and energy into becoming an expert at meeting those needs, you’d better be sure you’ve identified the right ones. And it’s also important for you to understand your spouse’s emotional needs so that you can put your effort in the right place.
When I first realized that the meeting of emotional needs created romantic love, I went to work trying to identify those needs that had the greatest effect. I asked each spouse I counseled to identify what his or her spouse could do to make them the happiest. Their answers helped me identify ten emotional needs so powerful that when certain ones are met by someone of the opposite sex, the feeling of love is created. I listed these ten emotional needs in chapter 3 but I’ll repeat the list again here. They are affection, sexual fulfillment, intimate conversation, recreational companionship, honesty and openness, physical attractiveness, financial support, domestic support, family commitment, and admiration. When these needs are met, people experience great pleasure, and when they are not met, they experience great frustration and disappointment.
While almost everyone has these ten needs to some extent, the importance of each need varies greatly from person to person. Some people feel a great deal of pleasure when the need for affection is met. Others don’t feel much at all. The same can be said for admiration: some need it greatly, while others don’t.
Which needs are the most important to you? Which are the most important to your spouse? If you and your spouse were to choose five out of the ten that you needed the most, it’s very likely that the ones you pick will not be exactly the same. They may even be entirely different.
As I said earlier, men and women tend to prioritize these ten needs very differently. Men tend to give highest priority to:
Women, on the other hand, tend to give the highest priority to:
Of course, not every man would pick the five needs I listed for men. Nor would every woman pick the five needs listed for women. Some men would include affection and conversation in their top five needs, and some women rank admiration and sexual fulfillment among their most important needs. But on average, I’ve found that men and women rank these needs the way I listed them.
Since the way men and women tend to prioritize their needs is so different, it’s no wonder they have difficulty adjusting in marriage! A man can set out to meet his wife’s needs, but he will fail miserably if he assumes that her needs are the same as his. A woman will also fail if she assumes her husband has the same needs as she has.
I have seen this simple error threaten many marriages. A husband and wife fail to meet each other’s needs—not because they’re selfish or uncaring but because they are ignorant of what those needs are.
She may think that showering him with love notes and affection will please him, because it pleases her. He thinks that he is doing her a big favor by inviting her to play golf, because he would be thrilled by the offer. Both partners think they are valiantly trying to meet each other’s needs, but they may be aiming at the wrong target.
So, where should you put your greatest effort so that you can deposit the most love units? Meet each other’s most important emotional needs.
As I’ve explained, you are the only one who can identify your most important emotional needs, and your spouse is the best expert on his or her needs. You must ask each other where to put your greatest effort to make each other the happiest.
The ten needs that I focus attention on do not exhaust the list of possible needs. Other needs could be included on your list if they are important to you. This will require you to identify them yourself, from your past experiences. Think about what makes you the happiest when you have it, and the most frustrated when you don’t. That will help you identify them. For most of us, though, the ten needs that I listed cover the bases.
List Your Most Important Emotional Needs
I have made it easy for you and your spouse to identify for each other your most important emotional needs. To help you understand your choices, I have described each of the ten most important emotional needs in appendix A. After you have read each description carefully, complete the Emotional Needs Questionnaire I have provided for you in appendix B. Make two enlarged copies of this questionnaire so both you and your spouse can complete one of them.
Remember how I described an emotional need in chapter 3? It is a craving that when satisfied leaves you feeling happy and content, and when unsatisfied leaves you unhappy and frustrated. The word craving is an important part of that definition. If you have a craving for any of the possible needs, it should be on your list of most important emotional needs.
When you come to the last page of the questionnaire, where you are asked to rank your needs according to their importance to you, consider the following—if you don’t choose sexual fulfillment as a most important need, imagine never having sex with your spouse. If you don’t choose affection, imagine your spouse never expressing his or her love for you—no hugs, no kisses, no love notes. If you don’t choose financial support, imagine your spouse not earning a dime throughout your life together.
To help you rank your needs, imagine your spouse meeting only one of the ten needs and failing to meet the other nine. Under that condition, which would give you the most satisfaction and the least frustration? Which would deposit the most love units? You should rank that need number 1. Continue this imagining process until you have identified the five emotional needs that mean the most to you.
Before you leave this assignment, give your list of five needs one last look and give special attention to those you didn’t include. If all five of the needs you’ve listed are met by your spouse, will you be happy? If your spouse fails to meet a need that is not included on your list, will it threaten to ruin your marriage? If there is a sixth need that you feel must be included to ensure the success of your marriage, add it to the list. But then let your spouse also add a sixth need to his or her list.
My experience with most couples shows that the higher the ranking, the more effort should be given to meeting that need. In some cases an outstanding job meeting the top two needs is all it takes to deposit enough love units to trigger the feeling of love. If a reasonably good effort is made to meet the other three, it just adds insurance to the Love Bank account. But couples who try to meet all ten needs try to do too much and usually do a poor or mediocre job on all of them. So recovery from an affair depends on each spouse being an expert at meeting the other’s top five needs—especially the top two.
Jon and Sue Rank Their Needs
I asked Jon and Sue to do what I just suggested you and your spouse do—identify the most important emotional needs. First, they became familiar with the ten emotional needs by reading a summary of each, and then they both completed the Emotional Needs Questionnaire.
Sue ranked her top five emotional needs as follows:
Sue’s list helped Jon see why his job had almost ruined their marriage. His financial support was important to her because it met one of her most important emotional needs. But in meeting that need for financial support, he had failed to meet three needs that were more important to her—intimate conversation, affection, and admiration. The time he had taken to earn more money prevented him from meeting those more important emotional needs.
Jon’s list of important emotional needs was very different than Sue’s. He ranked his needs this way:
Before Sue’s affair, Jon had no complaints when it came to his need for sexual fulfillment. Even after Sue began to feel less enthusiastic about making love to Jon, he didn’t know about her loss of passion, except for one evening on their eighth wedding anniversary. But after that, she never denied him sex and often approached him when she thought he would like it. Because it was his most important emotional need, in meeting that need Sue continued to deposit more than enough love units for him to be in love with her.
But she did even more for him. She was physically attractive to him, she did a great job managing the home and taking care of their children, and when he had a break in his work schedule, she often joined him in his favorite recreational activities. The only need she had failed to meet was his need for honesty and openness. And he didn’t know she was being dishonest until her affair had already begun. From Jon’s perspective, Sue had been the perfect wife.
But from Sue’s perspective, Jon had a lot to learn.
Become an Expert at Meeting Each Other’s Most Important Emotional Needs
Most of our happiness in life comes from our relationships with others. That’s because we can’t meet our most important emotional needs most effectively by ourselves—others must meet them for us. And we usually fall in love with and marry the person we think will do the very best job meeting them.
If you don’t agree with what I’ve just said—if you think that you can meet your own needs—consider again your top five emotional needs. How could you meet them effectively by yourself? Affection, sexual fulfillment, intimate conversation, recreational companionship, physical attractiveness, and so forth. Someone else must meet those very basic needs for you.
Granted, you won’t die if those needs go unmet. You’ll just be frustrated and lonely. And you’ll be missing out on life’s greatest pleasures.
Without a doubt, marriage offers happiness and fulfillment when spouses become experts at meeting each other’s emotional needs. Being experts simply means that they have made an effort to learn what to do to make each other happy and they do it very well. They do something that’s extremely important for each other that they can’t do for themselves.
People take courses regularly to become experts at all sorts of things—typing, computer programming, hairstyling, teaching. And at the beginning, learning any new skill may seem awkward and it usually requires some effort. Take typing, for example. At first it seems very unnatural. You search for every letter. But with practice typing becomes almost effortless and requires very little thought. You just know where the letters are because it has become a well-developed habit.
Habits that meet your spouse’s needs develop in the same way. At first they may seem uncomfortable to you, but with practice they become a habit, part of who you are. A good marriage becomes almost effortless when spouses develop habits that meet each other’s needs.
When Jon and Sue identified their five most important emotional needs, I asked them to make a trade. Jon would agree to become an expert in meeting Sue’s most important emotional needs, and in return Sue would become an expert in meeting Jon’s. But my problem with Sue and Jon was not in their learning how to meet each other’s needs, it was in their wanting to meet each other’s needs.
With Jon’s account so depleted in her Love Bank, Sue did not want to meet Jon’s need for sexual fulfillment. And Jon felt the same way about meeting Sue’s need for affection and intimate conversation. But if they didn’t meet each other’s emotional needs, the feeling of love they needed for their marriage would never materialize. Unless they met those needs for each other, there would not be enough love units deposited to trigger the feeling of love in either of them.
So I asked them to “prime the pump” to get love units flowing. Granted, it would have been almost effortless for them to meet each other’s important emotional needs if they had been in love. But if they had waited for love before trying to meet each other’s needs, they would still be waiting. My encouragement for both of them to make a trade and try to meet each other’s emotional needs right away helped them start depositing those love units that were essential to their marital recovery.
Quality and Quantity
Jon knew how to meet Sue’s emotional needs, but because he hadn’t been doing it, he was a little rusty. To correct his mistakes and improve his overall performance, he needed feedback from Sue as to how well he was doing. He needed feedback on two aspects of his skill—quality and quantity.
To determine the quality of the way Jon was meeting Sue’s needs, he was to ask, Are you satisfied with the way I am meeting this need?
If the answer was no, he would then ask, How would you like me to meet this need? Sue’s response was to be specific and offer a positive suggestion. She was to avoid only saying, I don’t like it when you do ____. Instead, she was to say, I’d love it if you would do____, or I’d prefer it if you would do____. A positive suggestion offers direction and encouragement.
To determine whether the quantity of need fulfillment was adequate, Jon was to ask Sue, Do I meet this need for you often enough?
If Sue’s answer was no, then he was to ask, How often would you like me to meet this need? If she wanted more time talking with him or if she wanted him to show admiration for her more often or if she wanted more affection, he would then try to accommodate her wishes.
When you learn to meet each other’s emotional needs, you will need to satisfy both the quality and quantity requirements to make your spouse happy. Quantity is fairly easy to understand, because your spouse will tell you how often and how much he or she wants the need met. But quality is more difficult to communicate. Sometimes even the one with the need doesn’t understand exactly what’s missing.
Not surprisingly Sue asked for more conversation, and that was very encouraging to Jon. It meant that she wanted him to deposit more love units, and the more he deposited, the closer he came to reaching her romantic love threshold. Sue didn’t love him yet, but her willingness to let him meet her emotional needs meant that it was only a matter of time before they would have a terrific marriage.
Meet Each Other’s Needs in Ways That Are Mutually Enjoyable
When you ask each other to improve skills in need fulfillment, remember the four steps for negotiation that I discussed in chapter 10. The most important step is the first one, where you guarantee each other a safe and pleasant negotiating environment. If one of you becomes negative or unpleasant during your discussion, take a break and get back to your negotiations at a time when you can guarantee that the guidelines will be followed.
You should also remember to follow the Policy of Joint Agreement as you develop your new skills. There will be many effective ways to meet each other’s emotional needs. Some methods will be enjoyable for you to follow, and others may be very unpleasant. Because you are trying very hard to move toward marital recovery, you may be tempted to meet each other’s needs at all costs. But I strongly advise you to avoid this.
You should have an understanding that you will meet each other’s needs only in ways that are enjoyable for both of you. Never expect the other person to suffer or sacrifice so that your need can be met. But since it is usually somewhat uncomfortable at first to form a new habit, don’t confuse the discomfort of learning something new with a behavior that will always be unpleasant to you. In other words, give a new habit a chance to become comfortable before you abandon it.
The topics of Sue and Jon’s conversation had to be interesting to both of them. The recreational activities they chose had to be mutually enjoyable. They were willing to experiment with conversation and recreation. They tried different topics of conversation for a while and engaged in various recreational activities to see how they would feel about them.
But in the area of sexual fulfillment, they had a special problem. Before their separation, Sue had been in the habit of making love to Jon out of duty. Now that they were together again, she was still uncomfortable making love. Besides, being out of love with Jon made lovemaking particularly unappealing to her.
I suggested that they experiment with sex the same way they experimented with conversation and recreation. They had to try to find a way to make love that would satisfy Jon, yet still be comfortable for Sue.
Granted, at first, it was not exactly what Jon had in mind. He knew how passionate Sue could be, and their lovemaking certainly lacked passion as far as he was concerned. But as Jon deposited more and more love units into Sue’s Love Bank, he came closer and closer to triggering her love for him. It was only a matter of time before her feeling of love would be restored and, along with it, all the passion he remembered.
You Can Be the Source of Your Spouse’s Greatest Happiness
You married each other because you were in love. And you were in love because you were meeting each other’s most important emotional needs—you were a source of each other’s greatest happiness.
Since you have been married, you may have squandered your opportunity to be each other’s source of greatest happiness. But it can be recovered by going back to what you did before you were married—making it your mission to meet each other’s most important emotional needs.
You can be each other’s greatest source of happiness. In fact this must be your goal if you want to have a successful marriage. You have given each other the opportunity to care in a way that no one else can care for you. And if you and your spouse don’t use that opportunity, you will both feel that something important is missing.
An important part of learning to be an expert in meeting each other’s important emotional needs is the respect you give to each other every step of the way.
First, you must identify each other’s needs, and when you discover them you must be respectful regarding the needs themselves. It’s tempting for all of us to be disrespectful of what we don’t need ourselves. When our spouse has needs that are different than ours, which is almost always the case, we may believe that the needs are unnecessary or even wrong. In fact, every emotional need I’ve listed can be treated disrespectfully by a spouse who doesn’t have as great a need. The need for affection can be viewed by those without that need as a sign of insecurity. A spouse with a need for sexual fulfillment can be criticized as being “oversexed.” Those who believe this try to convince a spouse that he or she should learn not to have that need, or at least not to indulge it. The outcome, of course, it that the need is not met, and the spouse’s opportunity to deposit love units is lost.
If you want to be the source of your spouse’s greatest happiness, you must begin by knowing what will create the greatest happiness for your spouse. Accept what you discover—an honest expression of your spouse’s needs. If you don’t, you will waste your time trying to meet needs that are of less importance to him or her.
After you identify each other’s emotional needs, you must be respectful in the way you teach each other to become experts in meeting them. Feedback from your spouse as to how you are doing at meeting his or her emotional needs is absolutely essential in your becoming an expert. But if you want your spouse to be willing to give you feedback, you must receive it respectfully. A response that is defensive and even angry will end your spouse’s willingness to help you become skilled. And respect is also necessary in the way feedback is expressed. Every time you discuss your skill development, Love Busters are in the wings ready to enter. And if you let them on stage, they will destroy the show. So remember to keep your conversation safe and pleasant whenever you discuss the way you meet each other’s needs.
Knowing how to meet each other’s emotional needs was not a problem for Jon and Sue. But I’ve counseled many spouses who have never learned those important marital skills. These spouses must train themselves to become experts in conversation or showing admiration or affection. If you have difficulty becoming experts in meeting each other’s most important emotional needs, I suggest that you both read my book, His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage. That book and its accompanying workbook, Five Steps to Romantic Love, will provide guidance that goes beyond what has been offered here.
Sue and Jon could remember what it had been like to be the source of each other’s greatest happiness before the tragedy of the affair. But they didn’t think they could completely recover from all of the resentment and hopelessness they were feeling. Deep down, they thought that their bad experiences would sentence them to a marriage that would never quite recover.
But they were wrong. They had new tools at their disposal that would not only help them recover the best feelings they ever had for each other, but move them beyond that point. Their skills in meeting each other’s needs would become unprecedented in their marriage. They still had a lot to learn but they were on their way toward creating a marriage that was more fulfilling than anything they could have ever imagined. They were on their way to becoming the source of each other’s greatest happiness.