No one wishes this quote from the Beatles were true more than me: “All you need is love… love is all you need.” I want everyone to walk through their day completely adored for their most authentic self, full and energized from the passion they have with their partner.
But that’s not the reality, is it? Why not? Because it takes more than falling in love to create long-lasting love that grows stronger and more passionate each day.
Unfortunately, most of us grew up believing the relationship advice that things either work or they don’t. And when things cross a threshold in our relationships, we ask ourselves the hard question: “Was this just not meant to be?” This is when people give up.
What is love, then? Love is our spirit opening. It’s what connects us to other humans. We all crave to be loved, treasured, and cherished by an intimate partner who puts us before all else.
In an intimate relationship, you cannot have a magnificent love affair without passion. Passion is the life force of your relationship. It’s the energy within you. We all need passion or we feel numb inside.
Love is incredibly powerful. But it is not enough to sustain a magnificent relationship that lasts a lifetime.
Why not? Many people think that love should be enough, and that if the relationship is “meant to be,” then love is all you need. These false beliefs are one of the greatest tragedies facing relationships today.
They are responsible for more broken hearts and homes than anything else. It’s time to put an end to these two false beliefs that destroy so many lives. The false belief that love is enough. The false belief that if it’s meant to be, it will just work out.
Why do relationships end? While there are thousands of different symptoms, it comes down to just one fundamental cause. People start to “question” the relationship when their partner is not meeting their needs. They give up hope that things can be different.
What are these needs? According to human needs psychology, everyone has the same fundamental human needs. The need security, love, significance, variety, growth, and contribution. However, “the masculine” and “the feminine” have extremely different requirements for intimate relationships.
One of the key challenges people face today is that men and women lack an understanding and appreciation for the drastic differences between the masculine and the feminine. As a result, we give what we want to get, but that’s not what our partner needs.
As women, we interpret masculine actions, feelings, and thoughts through our “feminine” filter. We often react to our men as if they were “misbehaving” and should know better. While we’re attracted to their masculine “differences” (at times), this also frustrates us.
By the same token, men are interpreting our actions, feelings, and thoughts through their “masculine” filter. They feel completely confused because nothing in their masculine world can explain the feminine. While they feel attracted to the feminine, it also makes them crazy because they can’t understand it in their world. It’s a miracle we ever get together at all.
Just what is the miracle that draws us together and keeps us together? The miracle is love and passion. These give us the strength of spirit and the energy we require to give our relationships a go.
If we didn’t feel love’s pull, we wouldn’t care enough to go deep and be vulnerable with our lover. Without the passionate desire we feel for our partner, we would not have the energy to keep growing into the best version of ourselves, have heartfelt understanding for our partner, and create the love and life we want!
What does our partner need and how can we provide it? There are hundreds of strategies I could share with you to help you meet your partner’s needs and take your relationship to the next level. But there’s one fundamental strategy for the masculine and one for the feminine that will make the biggest impact in creating your magnificent love affair.
The feminine has a deep, fundamental need to be provided for and not abandoned. It’s not a want, it’s a need. And in today’s society, it’s getting unnecessarily complicated and ignored. Regardless of how “unpopular” this is, it’s the truth, and it’s time we come back to honor this truth.
Can a feminine woman provide for herself, her family, and her partner? Of course! This isn’t about what we can do. We can do anything a man can do. However, there is a huge difference between how the feminine and masculine experience providing.
The masculine is wired to provide and his worthiness is tied to his ability to provide. When he’s not doing it, he can feel completely worthless and the ramifications can be catastrophic.
A woman in her feminine does not have this same experience with providing. We can provide, but we don’t need to provide to feel worthy. A woman in her feminine will provide when she needs to, but eventually, she will feel depleted and resentful that someone is not providing for her. Or she will flip into her masculine energy and stay there so she can keep providing and feeling worthy from her ability to provide.
A man who is in his masculine would never imagine a woman has a fundamental need to be provided for. In fact, if you ask them, many men will respond to this with the shocked and confused response of “then why doesn’t she let me do stuff for her!?”
It’s an ironic energetic snag for us ladies. We want to someone to provide for us. But the energetic snag happens when we feel that allowing another human (who can’t do everything exactly the way we do it) to provide for us takes a level of vulnerability that we feel resistant to.
Which brings us to one of the most fundamental needs that a masculine man has. This need is so completely off most women’s radars that you may not even believe me. A (masculine) man needs to make a (feminine) woman happy.
He must be able to make her happy to have a thriving intimate relationship with her. A man will give up on an intimate relationship if he feels that he can’t make his woman happy. He will end that relationship when he gives up the hope that he can ever make her happy.
This is terribly unfortunate, because so many women today struggle with allowing themselves to be happy. We often make it so hard to win and really easy to fail. We make it very difficult for our men to experience the success of making us happy, especially if that man has disappointed us many times in the past!
As women, we also have a pattern of withholding our love as a means to correct “bad” behavior. So even when our partner does something good, we don’t “reward” it because the voice in our heads says something like, “What do you want, a medal?” or, “Please, the score is like a million to one mister, try and catch up!”
This unconscious pattern is killing our relationships and pushing our men away because we are blocking them from meeting one of their fundamental needs. The need to make us happy.
What’s the solution? Be a woman who can be made happy. Find your joy. Allow yourself to feel delighted. Even if he brings you a salad with everything you would never eat, delight over the salad he brought you. Instead of berating him for all the mistakes he made, adore him for his effort. Find something to be grateful for, even if it’s just that he’s still attempting to connect with you and serve you.
Originally written by Stacey Martino on YourTango
Feature Image by Joel Overbeck on Unsplash
