The quality of every relationship depends on how well emotional needs are met. That said, most people would be hard pressed to be able to say what those needs are, whether they're your own or someone else's - friend, partner, child, grandchild, employer or employee.

It may sound like a huge undertaking to figure out what they are, but guess what! Others' emotional needs are the same basic ones as yours. Is there a simple way of thinking about and attending to each others' emotional needs?

The answer turns out to be affirmative, because those needs are the same as the ones everyone grew through in their childhood. Instead of outgrowing them when we reach adulthood, they become the basis for emotional life in adulthood.

Here is a brief summary of the six essential ones:

1. Each relationship is based on connection through recognition of and sharing of basic feelings such as anger, fear, sadness, joy, etc. Bottom line, healthy relationships are based a stable emotional 'home base' where each party's feelings and needs are confirmed.

2. Everybody needs to keep that 'home base' while recognizing that there is a larger world beyond the relationship. Keeping that 'home base' intact provides the safety and security necessary for exploring that world - finding out what's out there. If the base is threatened, the choice becomes either to give up the base and sever the connection, or keep the connection and give up finding out what's out there. Healthy relationships allow for a continuation of that stable 'home base' while the partners explore in a way that adds to their mutual security.

3. Togetherness is great, but eventually the need to be independent emerges. People need to create, establish and maintain healthy boundaries with each other. They need to establish 'this is mine and that is yours', and 'this far and no farther.' Healthy relationships have boundaries that allow each person to be themselves while respecting the separateness of the other person.

4. It would be great if other people would be who WE need or want them to be, but that's just not the way healthy relationships work. Each person needs to explore who they are - their likes, dislikes, talents, abilities, proclivities, and interests. Healthy relationships maintain connection and mutual support while allowing each party to develop their own identity.

5. While healthy relationships often share the same or similar values, It's rare that each party in a relationship has all the same values as the other. Witness the relationships of introverts with extroverts, of children and parents, of man with woman, of stay-at-home parent with working parent. Varying values and priorities are inevitable. Unhealthy relationships handle them with ultimatums (my way or the highway!). Healthy ones allow for differing values between the parties with common ground negotiated.

6. If each party in a relationship has reached adulthood, then each has formed all the parts of themselves to form a complete personality. Being in relationship with another does not mean being that other person. It also does not mean that one party absorbs the other. Healthy relationships allow for and even celebrate the other as a complete person.

If you'd like to know more about the fundamental emotional makeup every person shares with every other, go here for a free eBook about that very subject:
Your Emotional Self: Five Secrets for a Successful Emotional Life

Pamela Levin is an R.N. and a Teaching & Supervising Transactional Analyst. In private practice 42 years, she has 500 + hours in clinical nutrition, herbology and applied kinesiology. She editor of a free bi-weekly online newsletter devoted to better health and greater wellbeing of body, mind, spirit, emotions and relationships.

Pamela Levin, R.N., T.S.T.A.
August 26, 2013

Source: http://www.betterhealthbytes.com

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