How to Overcome Neediness and Save Your Relationship

Neediness can quietly sabotage your relationship—often without you even realizing it. The good news? You can replace those subtle, damaging habits with secure and loving behaviors that make your marriage stronger than ever.

Neediness isn’t always obvious—it often shows up in subtle ways that slowly erode your connection. Do you recognize any of these characteristics in yourself or your relationship?

• Corrective and critical
• Reactive and defensive
• Controlling and discouraging
• Doubting and mistrusting
• Weak and passive

These behaviors can make you feel unpleasant to be around, a lot of work to satisfy, or easy to disrespect.

How fear makes you act needy (and how it backfires)

Neediness is a social response to fear—fear of being alone, fear of being abandoned, and fear of rejection. They’re all pretty much the same thing.

Fear makes us alert to danger, and that’s usually a good thing. If you’re worried about going bankrupt, you’ll be more careful with your spending. If you’re afraid of getting unhealthy, you’ll be more likely to eat nutritious food. A lack of fear can make us careless and lead to bad long-term outcomes.

But not everyone knows how to handle their fear in a healthy way. Some people might think they’re managing their money well but actually end up creating financial problems. Others might believe they’re eating healthily when they’re not. In both cases, fear drives actions that make things worse without them even realizing it.

The same thing happens in relationships. Sometimes people act out of fear to protect their relationship but end up damaging it instead. Take the spouse who tries to keep their partner from socializing because they’re afraid it could lead to an affair. Sure, it might reduce opportunities for cheating, but it also builds resentment and makes loving feelings fade. Even spending too much time together can cause a similar pushback.

Needy behaviors in relationships, like all fear-based behaviors, end up causing the very thing they’re trying to prevent. A good way to think of needy behavior is this: It’s what we do to try to make our relationships better, but it actually makes them worse.

Some common needy behaviors are:

• arguing
• criticizing
• complaining
• demanding
• defending
• over-explaining
• initiating talk about relationship problems
• nagging
• repeatedly apologizing
• making promises to change
• interrogating
• being too open with negative feelings

If you never do any of these things, you are probably not a human being.

Most people do a couple of these things occasionally. An otherwise good relationship can take that. But, some people do many of these things often and end up putting their relationships into a downward spiral. If that is you, the good news is that you can completely stop any needy behavior you have and substitute relationship building behaviors instead.

Until we stop to look at the results of what we are doing, we often continue to do them, even when they are doing harm.

One reason we don’t recognize these behaviors in ourselves is that we are defining them differently. These definitions make us buy into the use of these behaviors. In the age of misinformation, the most trustworthy guide you have is your experience.

If you think something is a good thing to do, but you get bad results when you do it, it is time to change your beliefs. We all have some beliefs like that. I have weeded a lot of them out of my life that I learned in school, from my family, and by professionals who believed what they were saying, but who were wrong nevertheless. Only the Bible hasn’t steered me wrong.

Here are some…

Examples of how we redefine needy behaviors as good rather than bad:

• arguing–helping my spouse to see where she is wrong so she will change her thinking (sounds good, but don’t expect your spouse to think it’s helpful)
• interrogating–protecting my relationship by making sure my spouse is being faithful (sounds good, but will make your spouse feel distrusted)
• being defensive–helping my spouse to understand I am not at fault (sounds good, but invalidates your spouse)
• criticizing–telling my spouse what I don’t like so he won’t continue to do it (sounds good, but actually results in your spouse feeling not good enough for you)
• bringing up relationship problems–so we can come up with solutions and make our relationship better (sounds good, but results in conflict more often than other methods)
• over-explaining–making sure my spouse understands my motivations and how I am actually a very good person (sounds good, but actually makes you less enjoyable to talk with)
• nagging–reminding my spouse of things she needs to do (sounds good, but actually makes you come across as controlling)
• too open and honest–sharing my negative thoughts and feelings so we can be closer (sounds good, but makes your spouse feel criticized)
• not using boundaries–not upsetting my spouse so he will like me more (sounds good, but builds your resentment and decreases your love for your spouse)

If these behaviors actually did what we intend them to do, they wouldn’t be needy. All you have to do is to look at the results of these behaviors in your experience–whether it is you who are doing them or your spouse. Are they really accomplishing those good things? Or are they actually causing more distance in your relationship?

People do what works in the short term, even when it is destructive in the long term. This works out well for short term relationships and explains why some people are good at dating, but are lousy at relationships.

All of these needy behaviors can produce short term results. Nagging can get people to do what they are not, though the more you do it, the more they will become resentful. The same goes for criticizing, arguing, and the rest. And, yes, letting your spouse do harmful things with no boundaries will help you to get along better in this moment–even if what your spouse is doing eventually ends your relationship.

The winning combination for long term relationships is:

1. Being desirable,
2. connecting well, and
3. being secure.

The better you do these three things, the more valuable you will be for your spouse and the more you will enjoy your relationship.

My book, Overcome Neediness and Get the Love You Want is the most popular book that I have written. I get many comments that this book markedly improved peoples relationships. If there was one thing that I could send into my past, it would be this book. I had to learn to overcome these behaviors the hard way with lost relationships.

I want to spare you that.

Wait a minute Coach Jack, you didn’t say why seeking reassurance is a bad thing.

Seeking reassurance sounds nice enough. But how about if we express it as it really is–expressing doubt. If you repeatedly seek reassurance about your spouse’s love, your spouse will feel ineffective and distrusted in the way he or she shows love. If you repeatedly seek reassurance about other things, you are making yourself out to have low self-esteem, and putting a demand on your spouse to take care of you. It becomes part of your spouse’s job to reassure you.

Anything you make your spouse feel like he or she has to do to keep you from being upset is harmful for your relationship.

But, I feel better when I’m open and honest with my feelings

How do you feel after your spouse defends, argues, or distances after you have shared your negative feelings? What do you suppose would happen if you did the same thing with your friends or coworkers? It might make you feel good, too, until they stopped talking to you.

You can’t damage your way to a better relationship.

If it feels good do it, is a formula for being selfish at other people’s expense and does not lead to success. It is counter to the biblical mandate to love our neighbor and to do good to those who hurt us. We can do things that feel good, but we need to consider whether God says it’s a good thing or not, it’s impact on others, and whether it helps us to reach our goals or not.

So, …

How can we stop doing needy behaviors?

The keys to ending needy behaviors are:

1. Recognizing them,
2. Learning substitute behaviors,
3. Putting the substitute behaviors into practice,
4. Continue out of discipline until good results provide motivation.

The first step of any good change requires discipline. We develop discipline by doing hard, but good things. If it’s hard to do, do it, will bring you much more success than if it feels good, do it.

Each of the needy behaviors I listed earlier has positive substitutes. When I help my coaching clients to overcome neediness, mainly I am helping them to learn the substitute behaviors well enough to produce good results. For example, the substitute behavior for arguing is sincere agreement. The substitutes for criticism are making positive requests and using boundaries. Each of these are learnable skills.

Needy behaviors create emotional distance without improving relationships. Their positive substitutes create emotional closeness and improve relationships.

Can you imagine how much a person’s relationship would improve just by learning to find truth in what the other person is saying and agree with it rather than arguing? This one change alone can drastically improve relationships and was the reason I wrote my book, Connecting through Yes!

You might feel like saying to me right now…

My spouse has more needy behaviors than me!

I would be very surprised if your spouse didn’t have at least some needy behaviors. Secure people don’t tend to marry needy people. So, needy people date and marry needy people. They validate each other’s needy behaviors, which seem normal to both of them.

Imagine if your spouse stopped doing needy behaviors with you. What do you think would happen? For example, let’s say your spouse stopped arguing with you, and instead started to agree with the truth about what you were saying–without becoming defensive. What would you do? I think at first you would be very surprised. Then, you would expect him to go back to his previous behavior. And, if he didn’t, it would really cut down on your arguing with him.

You see, the people in our lives have learned how to do a kind of relationship dance with us. If either of us changes the dance, the other can’t continue to dance with us the same way. If you switch from nagging and complaining to using boundaries, your spouse will try to get you to go back to nagging and complaining rather than using boundaries. That’s because your boundaries will actually stop your spouse’s bad behavior from working.

One common thing that I teach people is how to respond when their spouse is criticizing, complaining, arguing, seeking reassurance, and so forth. I do that because if they change the way they respond to these behaviors, their spouse will stop doing them. Much of relationship improvement works this way.

Directly trying to change your spouse works very poorly compared to changing the way you interact with your spouse. The first way leads to resistance and distance, the second gives your spouse no choice but to change. The more you keep it up, the more he will and before long the two of you will be doing a much happier relationship dance.

Here’s something you might not know…

Relationship skills are universal

A lot of people think that there are two sets of rules for how to behave in relationships–one set of rules for spouses and another set of rules for everyone else. People who believe that either have good relationships with everyone except their spouse or good relationships with their spouse, but not with everyone else.

People are people and they don’t stop being people just because they get married to you or are related to you. We are all made in God’s image. As a result of that, we are more similar than different. The relationship skills that work with someone on the other side of the world are going to be the same relationship skills that work with your spouse in the other room.

One of the core relationship principles is to treat your spouse the same way you do a same gender friend. If your spouse thinks you treat him or her just like you do your best friend, it will be a good thing. If your spouse wishes that you treated him or her like your best friend, that is not a good thing.

Never make your spouse wish that you treated him or her like someone else.

The difference between how we interact with our spouses and others has only to do with the degree of intimacy. Intimacy means sharing with someone what we don’t share with others, whether verbal or physical. We share more verbally and physically with our spouses, but we don’t share more negatively–we share more positive things, more privately.

If you do okay with your spouse, but have a hard time making friends, try treating others more like you do your spouse. When you learn what works, you have learned what works with everyone.

Are you ready to…

Stop your neediness and start saving your relationship today

The sooner you become less needy–recognize your ineffective behaviors and substitute effective ones–the faster you will turn your relationship in a good direction. If you would like to work with me to get your relationship moving in the right direction, you can see my secure partner coaching package on my website. As the Bible says, we reap what we sow, so start sowing good relationship behaviors today.

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