“Never gonna let you down. Never gonna run around and desert you.” Lyrics forever etched into our brains thanks to well, the catchiness of Rick Astley’s writing and the ever prevalent world of memes. But did he hold up his end of the bargain? Did he ever say goodbye? These are the burning questions that frame this piece! No really, why is it that it seems so often in our modern culture that promises like these are made and then broken? Extreme cases like violence and abuse, sure, I understand giving up on a relationship, hell the cops need to be called in that circumstance! What I’m referring to is our normal, every day relationships (romantic or platonic) that just eventually end. And I know that I’ve hinted on this being a burning question of mine before but now I’ve put some research behind it!
You meet someone, take the time to get to know them, and I’m talking a REAL investment of time, you hang out, you laugh, you cry, they essentially become a part of the family, and then BOOM it’s over. I’ve personally had this experience both romantically and platonically, I’ve also been guilty of dropping the ball on the relationship and who’s to say that it wasn’t a two sided ball dropping?! It could be that life evolved beyond one side of the relationship and that side just didn’t fit into the blueprint of the other’s anymore. I call bullshit on that excuse though. “I just got sooo busy.” Or “well you know, I’ve got kids and a spouse and it’s just really hard to find any time anymore.” No, that just don’t fly! If you love someone, you find the time! So let’s turn to some experts and find out what they have to say on the matter shall we?
In her article on Psychology Today, Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT talks about cycles of abandonment. She begins with emotional abandonment which can occur when our needs in a relationship aren’t being met. Often times the relationship can replicate a childhood experience wherein the child did not receive validation from the parents in the form of empathy and respect for the child’s personality, feelings, and needs. As the child aged this then turned into a cycle of seeking validation from whatever relationship they found themself in. How very Freudian of her! But in this case it does have merit, not all of Freud’s theories were disproven! We are in fact the product of our life’s experiences wherein our adult lives are shaped from the very moment of birth. From the scents that we just can’t stand or the foods we find disgusting and can’t really give a great reason why to that feeling of utter loneliness that we get after the day’s work is done and we find ourselves out of a social atmosphere and in the quiet of our own homes. If we were to really dig into the farthest recesses of our minds, we would be able to find an answer for just about anything that we feel and it can all be traced back to some formative point in our lives.
But if we don’t understand our own emotional needs, then how can we truly understand what is missing in our relationships? Darlene goes on to give us a few examples of emotional needs as listed below:
For affection
For love
For companionship
To be listened to and understood
To be nurtured
To be appreciated
To be valued
To have these met, we not only need to understand what we personally are looking for, but we “must value them and often actually ask for them to be met.” So this addresses the core of our emotional needs stemming from childhood wherein we were preprogrammed through the replication of childhood experiences from one or both parents. Parents need to show empathy for their child’s personality, feelings, and needs - not just love them because they’re your child. In other words, this is the formative stage of development for a person and those differences, unique personality traits, hopes, and fears are what make up that individual and the parents raising that child need to be able to embrace them on a deeper level in order to fully accept and nurture their child. This stage of life is what will set a person up for their future relationships. Whether they cognitively realize what their needs are or if it is more of a subconscious realization that they can’t yet put a finger on, these become our needs in every adult relationship.
Ok! So you’re ready to get out there and start meeting people! You know what you want out of this relationship right?! You’ve defined your needs within yourself? Good! Now let’s get out there and meet some people! So we’ve just put ourselves out there and we’ve already hit our first roadblock, the ever prevalent world of social media! What was once created as a means to connect people is now used as a means of convenience to observe people from the comfort of our own homes. When you find yourself scrolling through your Facebook or Instagram feeds do you ever get that feeling of longing to be sharing the experiences you’re witnessing through a phone screen as they happened in real life?! Of course you are! Those are your basic emotional needs screaming to be let out! After all how can you expect to find that companionship, that love and affection, that appreciation if you are just seeing life through a screen? Not only are we using social media to keep an eye on our “friends” but we’re using it to compare ourselves to what everyone else is doing and in the process we’re damaging our ego and we’re not having our needs met! Don’t get me wrong, social media is an extremely powerful tool that does “connect” people and it’s wonderful if you have an online business but for our immediate social circles it is extremely damaging. Why do you think that suicide is now one of the leading causes of death in persons 10-24? It is because of that ever growing need to compare oneself to what is seen on social media and when one feels less than ie, their emotional needs aren’t being met, they often times fall victim.
Dr. Jamie Zelazny, PhD, RN, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, ran an ongoing study assessing the needs of social media monitoring. The results of the study showed “67% of participants reported feeling worse about their own lives because of social media. Further, 73% felt pressured to post content that boosted their appearance to others, 60% felt pressured to tailor content for popularity and likes and 80% reported being affected by social media drama.” Now not all the results of the study were as daunting, 73% did say that they felt supported on social media through challenges or tough times. There’s always a light to the dark! But this is just one example of many studies done that shows that there are inherent risks to living one’s life through social media, a major result being that the emotional needs of users aren’t being met. They tend to feel more empty or even isolated after a social media session. So what does that mean for the purposes of this piece? Well, simply said, we need to move beyond social media and actually reconnect in a physical sense!
We’ve discussed our primary emotional needs stemming from childhood, and we’ve discussed the rise of social media and it’s connection to our needs but we have yet to touch on the elephant in the room, why do relationships end? That’s not so simple of an answer, yet it is a combination of both of the above two concepts. As I said earlier, this piece was partially research based but I feel that at this point, I need to go off of my own findings. So why do we stop being friends? And why does love have to end? Well, I think that it is a combination of two psychological concepts that work hand in hand. One being the topic of emotional needs discussed above and the second being a self-awareness. By that I mean that we 1), and I’m saying this generally speaking, are not self-aware enough to understand what our emotional needs are or 2) have had so many negative experiences that we’ve hardened or buried our needs so deep down they’re too difficult or are perceived as too difficult to be reached. So what does that mean?
Well let’s say that you’ve gone for far too long feeling that you aren’t understood. Relationship after relationship there’s just something missing, that sense of deep companionship isn’t being met and you try to explain it but the words just come out wrong, you try to make the best of things but something deep down just doesn’t feel right so eventually you just stop. Sound familiar? We’ve all been there. In fact this piece has me thinking back to past relationships and friendships and realizing which of my needs weren’t being met. Back then subconsciously I knew something wasn’t feeling right but now I understand that those feelings were my emotional needs speaking up. So what can we do to work on this going forward? I can only speak for everyone in a general sense as everyone’s emotional needs are going to be different, but for me over the past year I’ve worked on my self-awareness. That’s a great place to start! Getting very comfortable in your moments of solitude and begin to learn what truly makes you tick! In this process of reflection you can think back to the past and analyze situations from an almost 3rd person point of view, pretty soon you’ll begin to see things more clearly. Maybe some patterns will form and from those patterns you can extrapolate what your emotional needs are. From there we can then institute a system for ourselves to either re-connect with lost friends or begin new relationships, and knowing ourselves a little better, we can express what we need out of those relationships. Maybe we begin on social media but set a point to where we need to bring that relationship out from behind a screen. While we’re using social media, we can set limits for how long we can use it and then allot ourselves time to get into the real world.
I know that Covid hasn’t helped our chances of really forming connections and I know that it has broken apart some seemingly very strong connections. But as our world eases into whatever is considered “normal,” we can now go into it armed with the knowledge of what we need to make our relationships succeed. Don’t be afraid to get in touch with yourself, realize that we all have emotional needs, and those needs must be met on some level in order for a relationship to succeed. So talk about those needs! And then one day we can confidently sing; “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you!”
As Always,
Takk for at du leste,
Eric
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