Need Fulfillment

I will strive to meet your needs, both those on the surface and those more core to who you are and who you are becoming.

Our family has always loved hiking and nature, particularly my son. One summer, we spent some time hiking in the incredible Incan territories of Peru. The natural beauty of that space is awe inspiring with green lush mountains taking you to views of these incredible ancient civilizations. What we prepared for, but didn’t truly understand until we were there, was that because of the altitude, the views are not only breath-taking metaphorically, but also literally. On our first day in Ollantaytambo, we climbed The Granaries. With each step up, the view became more and more incredible, but at one point I looked to my son who was sitting in the middle of the trail struggling to breath. As the air became thinner with the altitude, he was short on oxygen, and I became concerned about getting him back down to an oxygen rich space. 

My colleague, Eli Finkle, argues the same happens in our relationships. As our expectations for the types of needs our partners should fulfill have changed over the course of US history (Finkle et al., 2014), our expectations for relationships have also been climbing a metaphoric mountain that psychologists refer to as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1943).  In this chapter we will briefly describe the shift that relationship researchers have seen in expectations for marriages and then discuss the implications of those changes and why they make the information in this book more important than it was in previous generations. 

Institutional Marriages

According to Finkle, the 1800’s were marked by long-term committed partnerships in which partners complimented each other’s skill sets. Given traditional gender roles at the time, that often meant that one partner worked the fields while the other cooked and cleaned. These types of relationships, which Finkel refers to as institutional relationships, allowed us to meet our basic survival needs, like food, shelter, economic safety, and clothing. These physiological and safety needs are the lowest level of Maslow's mountain. Although Finkle argued there was a shift that occurred, I would argue we see this complementarian view of relationships as late as into the “Golden families” of the 1950’s, where housewives expended exorbitant amounts of energy keeping the affairs of the house in order while the husband was working. For context, here is an excerpt from a list of “What Makes a Good Wife" that appeared in Common Housewife: 

“Have dinner ready”

“Prepare yourself,” 

“Take 15 minutes to rest, so you will be refreshed when he arrives”

“Be a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a life and it's one of your duties to provide it”

“Prepare the children”

“Make the evening his… never complain…”

“Make him comfortable”

The list continues, but needless to say this type of need fulfillment was burdensome on women, and that burden took a toll on both relational and mental health. In fact, during the 1950s it was common for women to take antidepressants to cope with the mental toll this role required. Women who didn’t fit this housewife mold were deemed “crazy” (Metzl, 2003). Men also were not particularly satisfied with this arrangement; many felt the pressure to provide financially was crippling. Men also often felt excluded from the private sphere of family (Haggett, 2015, ch.4).

Indeed, many long-term partnerships, even today, are functioning like these institutional relationships. People are partners in a business sense, providing for their family. They are committed to doing this work together, but their relationship is marked by a lack of emotional intimacy (Finkle et al., 2014). In conservative evangelical circles, I have seen this problem exacerbated by reinforcing gender roles similar to those of the 1950s, resulting in a division of labor that is often burdensome for women. Ultimately this leads to the same paradox we saw in the “golden family” era – lower levels of relationship satisfaction and mental health for women and less contribution from men in the intimate circles of family life (Wright & Busby, 1997).

Companionate Marriages

As these lower level needs started to feel more secure, we see a historical shift that ushered in new expectations for romantic partners. Yes, we still had to find a way to coordinate basic needs being met, but now there was also an expectation for companionship (a step higher up on Maslow’s mountain). In this era, we wanted partners that we loved and who loved us. People were forming long-term commitments with their best friends–someone they could share their deepest thoughts, ambitions, fears, and dreams. These relationships offered a higher level of relationship satisfaction than those before them, but they also required more of couples (Regan, 2009). In addition to performing the roles that promoted their survival, there were now new need-fulfillment expectations around the emotional intimacy component of relationships (Maslow, 1943). 

Self-Expressive Marriages

Finkle argues we have now entered a new era, where in addition to meeting survival needs and companionate needs, our relationships are expected to facilitate self-actualization. We want our partners to help us be the very best us that we can be. We become our best selves through a process of discovering our purpose, pursuing meaningful goals, and continuing to grow—and our romantic partners can play an important role in facilitating that process. A good partner can comfort us when we are struggling as well as encourage us to take on challenges, pursue opportunities, discover new parts of ourselves, and move toward the person we want to become.

Research suggests this is what we want from our relationships. When contemporary college students were asked what makes someone a valuable romantic partner, one of the most common themes was the extent to which that person helps improve your life or helps you become a better version of yourself (Eastwick & Hunt, 2014). In other words, we aren't simply looking for someone who makes life pleasant. We are increasingly looking for someone who helps us grow.

Having this type of a self-expressive relationship takes us up to the highest point on Maslow's mountain. In many ways, these relationships offer a deeper and more meaningful type of need-fulfillment than previous iterations of relationship expectations; there is a reason that self-actualization is highest on the top of Maslow’s mountain. Relationships that can meet these expectations are likely healthier and more fulfilling than those we could have ever dreamed of having in previous iterations of relationships. Relationships that help us pursue meaning, growth, purpose, and our fullest potential have the capacity to give us something deeply meaningful. 

But here is the catch…

 “The higher we climb Mount Maslow, the more oxygen we need.”

You can meet someone's basic needs without knowing that person particularly well–coordinating finances and daily tasks is no doubt work, but it doesn’t require a profound understanding of each other’s inner worlds. But helping someone feel deeply loved, valued, understood, and capable of becoming the person they want to be requires something different. Higher-altitude need fulfillment requires a deep knowledge of your partner.

In short, we are asking more of our relationships than we ever have in the past. Although the views from the tops of the mountain are breath-taking, this is also the space where it is hardest to breathe. This underscores an important paradox about contemporary marriage: we may have more potential for marital fulfillment than ever before, but we also have more opportunities for our marriages to fall short.

Some have argued that we are simply asking too much from the institution of marriage. They suggest that it may not be realistic to expect one person to be our partner, best friend, source of emotional support, companion, cheerleader, and collaborator in personal growth. Indeed, it is a big ask of a single person. Some even see this as unhealthy dependency or codependency (excessive reliance on another person). To be clear, this book does not aim for total, wholesale reliance on one person to meet every need. Rather, by better understanding the expectations and needs of modern marriage, we aim ourselves toward a healthy interdependence in which we can make the conscious choice to share our needs with the person we trust most on our journey.

As people who strongly support the institution of marriage, we view this shift in expectations as a net positive. The type of need fulfillment now being asked for in close relationships has the potential to be extraordinarily beautiful. But it also necessitates that we do what is required to live rightly at these high-altitude spaces.

We must intentionally reoxygenate our relationships. That means recognizing that the modern marriage cannot simply be placed on autopilot. The very things that make contemporary marriage potentially extraordinary—mutual sacrifice, deep understanding, healthy conflict, gratitude, commitment, secure attachment, effective support, self-expansion, and a joint pursuit of meaning—also make it more dependent on our intentional investment. 

The good news is that much of the rest of this book is about exactly how to do that. We will talk about, among other things, how to make your partner feel understood and cared for, how relationships can help us grow, and how sharing our good news can make our partner's victories more meaningful. Each of these practices helps us put oxygen back into the relationship. So let’s take a breath and begin together.