For some time I’ve been pondering how to approach this goal – both how to think about it and how to write about it. Sometimes something will happen to make me think “oh, my ideal partner would be this, do this, understand this” and I consider posting it here; but that’s not figuring out what I need, it’s listing what I want. I might do that too, at a later stage, but for now I’m supposed to be deciding the basics, the sine qua non of my future relationships.
There’s also the rather unsettling fact that every time I think I’ve come across a genuine need, something I simply couldn’t be happy without, it usually turns out to be based on some issue or insecurity or fear of mine, something that a prospective partner would have every right to expect me to be working on rather than expecting him to work around it. See, if I were to list the things I think I need, a lot of them would probably just be coping mechanisms for those insecurities and fears. But the last thing I want is to choose a partner who makes it easy for me to live with my issues, because he doesn’t expect me to do anything about them, or because he has issues of his own that fit neatly in with mine. Sure it would be comfortable for a while, but I don’t want to not deal with these things, and the relationship wouldn’t last long as one or both of us grew and changed.
That has also had me wondering: to what extent is it appropriate or healthy to try to change yourself in order to become a ‘well-adjusted’ partner? There are all these ideals about awareness and emotional health which are supposed to be the keystones of a successful relationship and towards which we’re supposed to strive, but how do you know when you’ve done enough and can expect your partner to accept you? How do I tell the difference between a genuine personality trait and an un-dealt-with issue masquerading as one? I suppose that’s the “what I need from myself” part of this goal: to identify which aspects of my approach to a relationship are the ‘real me’ and which are things I need to work on.
Ideally, I guess, I’d find a partner who would understand what I need to be working on and would be able to gently help me along that path, still accepting me as I am right now but not letting me cop out of my responsibility to keep trying and working and growing. But now it’s starting to sound like I’m talking about a life coach instead of a boyfriend.
Maybe that’s ok, though. After all, that’s part of what I bring to a relationship – helping, counselling, nurturing, encouraging. And I know that that at least is based in my real personality (however much it might be inflated by my need to be needed). I want to be able to get inside my partner’s head, to truly see things from his point of view, to understand the way he thinks and feels, and be able to give him the benefit of my outside perspective. And in order for that to be healthy, I need him to be able to do the same for me, otherwise it becomes a very unequal relationship which really does resemble counsellor/patient rather than boyfriend/girlfriend. I’ve done that before and I know it doesn’t work.
Sometimes I worry that it’s not healthy to crave so deep a connection. I know perfectly well that a relationship is supposed to be two whole people, not two incomplete people looking for their “other half”. I honestly feel, though, that without that deep connection I will be incomplete – or maybe unfulfilled is a better word. I would be ok on my own, I could even be happy on my own, but I will never be able to fully express who I am on my own, because so much of who I am is to love and be loved, to know and be known. That, too, is something I’m certain is based in my true self.
Perhaps a good way to approach this would be to approach each entry from both ends: this is where I am and the direction I need to be moving, this is where I’d like my partner to be, this is where we will, hopefully, meet in the middle. It’ll be an interesting process. I expect I’ll find out a lot about myself as I go along, because you can’t really know what you need until you know what you’ve got, if you know what I mean. I’m looking forward to it, in a terrified sort of way.
