I feel privileged to learn from you as well. Thanks for sharing what you have experienced and learned during your life.
I too felt as if I could not meet my mothers approval. It seemed as if she would find fault in anything I did and struggled to pay me a compliment.
My mother didn,t have high self esteem and probably didn't love herself. That's probably why she couldn't give love. It seemed as if my mom was looking for me to give her the love that she was missing inside. She wanted me to take care of her "needs."
It was opposite of what a so called normal mother child relationship should be. Of course I'm not sure what "normal" is.
There's what works and what doesn't work. It is my opinion that our relationship didn't work and created issues that I have struggled with my whole life.
I have forgiven my mom as she did the best she could with what she knew and understood. Her childhood was not a good experience for her and she was simply playing out what she had learned, or didn't learn as the case may be.
Fearing rejection has been a struggle for me as well. I want so much for people to like me, appereciate me and think good thoughts about me. My own feelings of being inadequit and not good enough has been a life long strugle to overcome.
It's something I continualy work at healing.
As I child, there were many times where my needs were not met. I was to young to take care of them myself and needed my parents to take care of them. Due to their own issues, they were not able to meet many of my needs.
From many experiences of asking my parents for something I needed and not having the need met, created many opportunities to learn rejection.
In time, you stop asking to have your needs met because you fear rejection. You don't develop "trust" of others when you can't count on your parents to meet your needs.
As an adult, I didn't trust others to meet my needs. I also didn't know how to ask for my needs to be met. I believed that I was responsible for getting my needs met, that it was not appropriate for me to ask others.
My wife and I are in marriage counseling. We have spent a fair amount of time talking about "needs" and how to have a healthy relationship with each other in asking for what we want.
I have struggled with getting to the point of what I want. I talk around it and am not direct. Our counselor is helping me to be more direct. To be more authentic.
It is a challenge breaking the pattern of my old habits and behaviors. But it is working and our relationship is growing.
Today's message from Hazelden speaks to "needs."
Today's thought from Hazelden is:
Expectations of Others
It is our job to identify our needs, and then determine a balanced way of getting those needs met. We ultimately expect our Higher Power and the Universe - not one particular person - to be our source.
It is unreasonable to expect anyone to be able or willing to meet our every request. We are responsible for asking for what we want and need. It's the other person's responsibility to freely choose whether or not to respond to our request. If we try to coerce or force another to be there for us, that's controlling. There's a difference between asking and demanding. We want love that is freely given. It is reasonable to have certain and well defined expectations of our spouse, children, and friends.
It is reasonable to sprinkle our wants and needs around and to be realistic about how much we ask or expect of any particular person. We can trust ourselves to know what's reasonable.
The issue of expectations goes back to knowing that we are responsible for identifying our needs, believing they deserve to get met, and discovering an appropriate, satisfactory way to do that in our life.
Today, I will strive for reasonable expectations about getting my needs met in relationships.
Today's message come from the book, The Language of Letting Go, by Melody Beattie.
It is my belief that MLC peolpe didn't get their needs met as a child and didn't learn how to ask for what they needed.
As an adult, they feel they have not gotten their needs met by their spouse, and eventually seek getting them met elsewhere.
The LBS is greatly shocked that their MLC spouse feels as if they were not there for them. In the LBS mind they were there for them, but they also had the responsibility of taking care of the children, the house, work and other peoples needs, they never realized their MLC spouse had needs that they were not meeting.
The MLC spouse did not know how to directly ask for what they needed. And from their past experiences with their parents, they didn't trust anyone, and felt even if they did ask to have their needs met, they would be rejected or be ridiculed for their request.
The MLC spouse has major trust issues from not having their needs met. To them, they feel the LBS knew what they needed and the LBS chose not to meet their needs or didn't care about them.
Being with LBS is not a safe place for the MLC spouse. They don't trust them as they didn't meet their inner most needs. They felt rejected, not good enough to have their needs met, as their feelings were not validated.
From a LBS perspective, the MLC spouse was not clear in what they needed or expected from the LBS. To the MLC spouse it was very clear to them in what they needed. And it is also very clear to the MLC spouse that the LBS did not meet those needs.
The MLC spouse eventually grows tired and gives up on trying to get their needs met by their LBS. For them, the answer is to leave the relationship and take control of getting their needs met by what ever works.
I'm sorry for the long post but it takes me awhile to get to the point. Just as it takes me a lot of words to ask for what I need from my wife.
