"I feel trapped when I feel needed"

Stan (a client of mine), has been separated from his wife for quite a while.  He has recently started a new relationship.  This is the first relationship he’s even thought about getting into since his separation from his wife.  He is trying to figure out what a healthy relationship would be about, having realized the relationships he gets into don’t work.  The below dialog is a part of uncovering a central “limiting decision*” that is holding the dysfunctional pattern in place.  (The next stage in the work is to do an NLP TimeLine Process to clear the limiting decision.)

Stan:  This new relationship is making clear to me that I really don’t like to be needed, because I then start restricting myself based on the other person’s needs.

Jane: There is a difference between someone who is needy and trying to use you to make up for a lack in themselves — and someone who is coming from wholeness and love, and from really enjoying you.  When a person is needy, they don’t have the channels open to receive what it is they need.  You then become a symbol to them of what they need, rather than who you really are. This is the kind of relationship you’ve generally had in the past.

Stan: While I’m involved with this new woman, my wife’s crazy dynamics don’t get to me the way they were getting to me before, and I don’t feel a victim of her needs.

Jane: When you weren’t involved with someone else, you were leaning on your wife as your life.  But when you’ve got your own life, then it doesn’t matter to you what she does, because your life isn’t dependent upon her.

Sometimes in relationships the new relationship sort of counterbalances the old one.  Whatever dysfunctional dynamics in the old relationship that felt crippling to you, because you were leaning on them, are now offset by leaning on the new relationship.  And since you don’t yet have much investment in the new person, whatever happens in the relationship doesn’t matter so much to you, until you become invested in it — which is actually beginning to happen.  And then you’re right back in the dynamics you were trying to escape from in the first place, where you now feel victim of her needs.

It’s your neediness that is really what is trapping you.  You tend to make the woman the key focus of your life.  So you’re leaning on her for all of your needs, rather than being fully engaged in life itself.  Being fully engaged in life is a challenge for most people, because engaging with the larger reality as your focus, rather than a particular person, feels much more risky and difficult.  But if you don’t base your life on a larger reality, you end up losing your self, and therefore have nothing to base a real relationship on.

Limiting Decisions*: Unconscious decisions made in early childhood, such as “I am stupid,” “I am bad,” “People can’t be trusted.”