Comments on: Couples Therapy: Making room for conflicting needs- Goldstein Therapy- Clifton, NJ https://goldsteintherapy.com/couples-therapy-making-room-conflicting-needs/ Psychotherapy in NY and NJ Tue, 22 Jul 2025 04:57:16 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.11 By: mirel https://goldsteintherapy.com/couples-therapy-making-room-conflicting-needs/#comment-3096 Wed, 30 Nov 2022 04:04:57 +0000 http://goldsteintherapy.com/?p=376#comment-3096 In reply to Sölvina.

That seems really hard and that it feels like it’s either/or, one or the other of you has to give up what you need, and there doesn’t seem to be a good solution for having both of you feel like your needs are being met enough of the time or that there’s a way to meet in the middle. I’m not really sure what to recommend except that maybe you can work on increasing your window of tolerance for stimulation and he can work on increasing his ability to find ways of being responsible for his own stimulation without relying on you for that…but perhaps that’s too simplistic and you’ve already tried that. Sometimes letting go of expectations and grieving can help…and yes that may mean making peace with unhappiness if you both have other reasons why you want to stay together. Perhaps being happy is not the only factor here…

]]> By: Sölvina https://goldsteintherapy.com/couples-therapy-making-room-conflicting-needs/#comment-3093 Sun, 27 Nov 2022 15:44:53 +0000 http://goldsteintherapy.com/?p=376#comment-3093 In situations like the example presented here, it seems like finding a compromise that makes both people happy was fairly simple after getting to the root. My question, though, is what if the needs really cannot be reconciled that way? For example, when one needs alone time and some simple pleasures like a movie or game to feel relaxed and to recuperate from a long week, but the other requires intellectual stimulation and social interaction? I run low on spoons fairly quickly and need the comfort of something I enjoy, typically whatever I’m hyperfixating on at the time (I have ADHD and autism) and my husband needs to feel intellectually stimulated by conversation and feels more anxious when he’s alone, even if he’s in the same room as me but I cannot socialize so he still feels alone. I know he comes from a background of trauma related to being alone, being ignored, and feeling like someone is compromising simply to appease him. He knows I have trauma related to being overwhelmed, forced to compromise, and feeling like I’m not enough. We still often end up at a bit of an impasse with our needs because I can’t give him the stimulation he needs, and he can’t get that stimulation on his own, as well as being afraid to go out and do things alone. We’ve presented these issues in therapy before, both couples’ and in our individual therapy, but still often end up in a conflict like this when our needs don’t match up and we cannot seem to find a compromise. What more can we do at this point? Are we just always going to have one of us unhappy in some way in order to give the other what they need?

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