Welcome to the Unfuck Your Relationships podcast, the show
where we are no longer just unfucking your love life, we are
unfucking your entire life. Because around here, we raise
standards, we break patterns, we do the shadow work, we upgrade
yourself concept, your boundaries, your confidence,
your relationships, your health, your money, all of it.
There is no fluff here. There's no pretending, there's
no performing. Just radical, sometimes brutal
honesty, truth telling, and the kind of big sister best friend
energy that calls you the fuck forward.
So if you are ready to stop settling for the bare minimum
and you are finally ready to become the woman that you are so
proud to wake up as in the morning, you are in the right
place. So let's unfuck your life one
episode at a time. All right, now let's get into
today's episode. Hello, my loves.
Welcome back to the Unfuck Your Relationships podcast.
I'm your host, Michelle Panning, and this is episode 240.
Today we are talking about something that is going to make
so many of you go, Oh my fucking God.
That's what we've been actually been fighting about.
And it's this, right? Healthy needs versus unhealthy
needs in your relationship because most of the time, you're
not actually fighting about the dishes.
Well, you're never actually fighting about the dishes,
right? You're fighting to feel
respected. You're not fighting about sex.
You're fighting to feel wanted, to feel desired, to feel safe,
right. You're not fighting about your
partner working late. You're fighting about feeling
prioritized and considered. So needs are underneath almost
every blow up, almost every shutdown, almost every passive
aggressive Ensign right? And almost every like whatever I
don't give a fuck do whatever you want moment.
And I want to start by saying this clearly having needs does
not make you needy. It makes you human.
You literally cannot be in a relationship without needs.
And I even have to remind myself because me leaning a little bit
more avoidant, I'm like, you know, my partner will come to me
with needs. And I'm like, Oh my God, she
wants to make me responsible for her emotional world.
Oh my God, she wants to like swallow me whole and engulf me.
And I'm like, Nope, she is a human and she has a need and
that is valid. And I can say whether or not I
have the capacity to meet that need or maybe I need to
renegotiate the need, right? So the problem is not that you
have needs. The problem is when you don't
understand what you need. You don't communicate what you
need, and you shame yourself for what you need, or you try to get
what you need in ways that are destructive.
And then you're both fucking confused as to why the
relationship feels like pulling shit uphill, right?
So today I'm going to give you the framework to help you sort
through the difference between needs that are healthy and
appropriate versus needs that are unhealthy and inappropriate.
And I'm going to do that in a way that is classic Michelle
direct, useful, and actually makes sense in real fucking
life, not just theory. OK now before we get into the
list of what I want to take you through, I want you to clock
something with me. When someone says you're too
needy, 9 times out of 10 what they mean is exactly what I
shared with me and my partner right?
Your needs activate my shit and that is not the same thing as
your needs being wrong. So when you say I don't need
anything, that's not you being fucking enlightened.
I hate to tell you that's usually dissociation or
avoidance or a lifetime of being taught that your needs were
fucking inconvenient. And if we look at this from a
shadow work lens, a lot of the ways that we act in
relationships are not our personality, right?
That that's, that's just who I am.
That's my personality. No, they're protection
strategies. So your nervous system learned
how to survive love a long ass time ago, and now it tries to
keep you safe even when what it's doing is destroying the
intimate intimacy that you so deeply crave.
So as you listen, I don't want you to weaponize this against
your partner. Like see you're fucking
unhealthy and I also don't want you to weaponize it against
yourself. Like I'm such a problem, I'm
broken, I'm a loser. Like no, I want you to listen
and ask what do I do when I don't feel safe?
What does my partner do when they don't feel safe?
And what would it look like to create a relationship where both
of our healthy needs matter and our unhealthy coping strategies
aren't running the show? OK, so first we're going to talk
about healthy needs and relationships.
These are the needs that create safety, connection, trust, and
intimacy. They're not about control.
They're not about domination. They're not about making your
partner responsible for your entire emotional world, right?
That's not healthy, which we'll get into.
They're needs that every secure relationship has some version
of, even if the couple expresses them differently.
So the first healthy need is respect.
And yes, I'm starting here because without respect, you can
keep your chemistry, you can keep your shared interests, you
can keep your history, but you will not keep your relationship
long term. Respect means you treat me like
an equal. Respect means you don't speak to
me like I'm a fucking idiot. You don't roll your eyes when
I'm emotional. You don't mock me.
You don't call me names. You don't punish me with
silence. Kind of remember like a partner
like years ago for his work, he used to like work away sometimes
he wasn't fly in, fly out, but like just every so often he
would have to like work away for like a week.
And him and I had gotten into an argument and rather than like,
and I understood that he needed space, but rather than
communicating that he needed space, he refused to speak to me
the entire time he was gone, which was like a week or 10 days
or something like that. Would leave my text on read,
would not answer any of my calls.
And we were like a year into a relationship.
Not very respectful, right? So respect means even when
you're fucking pissed off, you still remember that I'm someone
that you love, not someone that you're trying to win against.
And for some of you, you've actually normalized disrespect
because you probably grew up with it, right?
Your shadow might be that you confuse disrespect with passion
or strong personalities, or that's just how we fight, bitch.
Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
If you don't feel respected, your body will not relax.
And if your body can't relax, intimacy dies.
And This is why so many of you like, can't switch off sexually
or you can't feel present or you don't feel open because your
nervous system is like, why the fuck would I soften around
someone who makes me feel just tiny or treats me like an
infant, right? Respect is a healthy need.
It's not negotiable. It's not negotiable.
OK? The next healthy need is
emotionally safe communication, especially during conflict.
And I want you to hear me right. You do not need perfect
communication. You need communication that
doesn't destroy the bond between the two of you because a lot of
couples are like, we communicate fine.
What they actually mean is we don't talk about anything real
until we're both at breaking point, right?
Healthy communication means that you can bring things up with
vulnerability and respect without attacking, criticizing,
blaming, yelling, doing the passive aggressive thing where
you're technically calm but your tone is like dripping and
fucking poison and venom right Hi guilty of that one.
And like, that's where I would hide behind of being like, but
like I haven't said anything rude, but my tone was very, not
very kind, right? So it also means that when your
partner brings something up, you don't immediately go into
defensiveness, defensiveness, dismissiveness or invalidating
them, right? A secure relationship has space
for feelings. It has room for repair.
It has room for hey, that landed weird.
Can we talk about that, right? One of the biggest shifts that
you can make is swapping you always and you never for when
this happened, I felt this. And what I needed was this.
And before you roll your eyes and go, that's fucking therapy
talk. It's not fucking therapy talk.
It's called being an adult. It's called emotional maturity.
And if you want adult love, you need adult communication.
And yes, the research is clear that how you start conflict
matters. But I don't need you to like,
memorize stats, right? I need you to understand this
principle. If you have a harsh start,
you're going to have a harsh outcome.
If you have a soft start, that's where repair is possible.
So you don't need to be perfect, but you do need to be a safe
fucking human. Another healthy need is
emotional safety, and this one is bigger than people realize.
Emotional safety means I can say no without you punishing me.
I can have a boundary without you sulking in the fucking
corner. I can bring something up that
hurt me without you flipping it around and making me the
problem. I can be honest without you
exploding or stonewalling, which by the way, the guy who I was in
a relationship with and like refused to speak to me for a
week. That's called stonewalling and
it's a form of emotional abuse. Anyways, emotional safety is
what makes intimacy possible because intimacy requires risk
and no one is risking their heart with someone who traits
vulnerability like an inconvenience.
And I want you to clock this right, because you might say
that you want closeness, but your nervous system has a
pattern of punishing closeness. So your partner, let's say your
partner, tells you something vulnerable and then you use it
against them later. Or your partner cries and you
get the ick. Your partner asks for
reassurance and you dismiss them.
That's not because you're evil. I have done all of these things,
right? It's because you learned that
emotions were unsafe or that you were responsible for other
people's emotions, and so now your body reacts like they're
dangerous. This is fucking shadow work, OK?
This is the shit that we do in the Connected Woman.
Your conditioning is running your relationship until you
interrupt it, right? This is why I'm so passionate
about shadow work, because it's the, it's the process of
bringing the unconscious into the conscious so that you can
then interrupt it and then shift it, right?
That is literally the whole premise of the Connected Woman.
Now another healthy need is feeling valued and appreciated.
And I just want to put this like really fucking plainly.
Love without appreciation turns into resentment.
You can be loyal and still feel lonely.
You can be committed and still feel unseen.
Appreciation is not just oh thanks, it's I see you.
It's noticing the effort, it's acknowledging the mental load.
It's saying I love who you are and what you bring into my life.
And for some of you, the reason that you keep picking fights is
because appreciation has completely fucking dried up and
your nervous system is trying to get any attention any way that
it can right now. Sometimes your anger is just
grief for what you're not receiving, and sometimes you're
nagging is actually a desperate attempt to feel like you fucking
matter right now. That doesn't mean that you
should nag, but it means you need to learn to communicate the
need underneath the behavior, right?
You're not actually mad about the bin.
You're feeling taken for granted, right?
You need to feel like we're on a team or you're on a team, right?
That one sentence can save you years of pointless fights.
Another healthy need is consistency and follow through.
So if you say you're going to do something, do it.
If you make a promise, keep it. If you can't keep it,
communicate. We're not asking for perfection
here, right? Trust is not built on grand
gestures. It's built on reliability.
And I remember being in a relationship and they were very
good at like romantic grand gestures, you know?
And I'd never experienced that before.
I was like, whoa, this is so new, this is incredible.
But on the day-to-day, I felt like I couldn't really rely on
this person, right? And that eroded trust.
And a lot of women in relationships with inconsistent
partners are constantly dysregulated because their
nervous system is scanning for what version of him am I going
to get today, right? Is it the affectionate version?
The distant version? The defensive version?
The version who promises change? The version who disappears into
his fucking phone, right? Consistency is a healthy need
because inconsistency makes you feel unsafe.
Now if you're the inconsistent one, this is where you need to
grow the fuck up and stop acting like being flaky is a
personality quirk. It's not quirky, it's not fun,
it's not cute, it erodes trust. Now again, you're going to have
off days. It's not asking you to be like
smiling Sally all all day every day.
No, but it's actually like, OK, who am I showing up as in this
relationship? Now?
Another healthy need is accountability and repair.
And I'm going to give you a little punchier distinction
here, right? There are cheap apologies and
then there are real apologies. Cheap apologies are sorry.
I'm sorry you feel that way. It was a joke.
Can you just get over it? I already said sorry.
Why are you still talking about it?
Real apologies sound like I care about how my words impacted you.
I can see why you felt that way. This was my role in it.
I'm sorry. Here's what I'm going to do
differently next time. That's repair, right?
There's real accountability in that.
Accountability isn't just saying sorry.
It's understanding impact, taking ownership, and changing
behavior. And if you've been in a
relationship where your partner refuses accountability, you know
exactly how lonely that feels. You start to feel like you're
the only one who gives a shit about the emotional health of
the relationship. That's emotional labor, and that
is exhaustion. Another healthy need that people
avoid talking about is forgiveness.
And I love this one because it's very mature, right?
Forgiveness doesn't mean bypassing harm or pretending
things didn't happen. It means you are willing to
repair and move forward. Relationships require short
accounts, right? You cannot keep bringing up a
mistake from a year ago every time you fight.
If you're still hurting, that's valid.
But then the question is, are you actually working towards
healing or are you holding on to resentment because it makes you
feel safer than being vulnerable again, right?
Again. I remember another relationship
where there was something that he did which I thought was like
the worst thing in the world. And so then I felt like I could
act however the fuck I wanted because no matter what I did,
what he did was worse, right? So maybe let's take like
cheating as an example. No one wants to be cheated on.
So but let's say you've chosen to stay in the relationship.
Obviously there's going to be hurt through that.
Understandable. But you don't get to throw that
in their face every time. If you have chosen to stay in
the relationship, you choose to stay in the relationship.
You don't get to have the trump card where you get to act like a
brat or an asshole because they cheated 6 years ago and every
time you go, well, you fucked someone else.
You don't get to do that right now.
Resentment often protects you from the risk of hope, right?
Because if you hope again, you could be disappointed again.
So it's much safer for you to stay angry.
But staying angry is not power. It's a fucking prison.
And I'll say this lovingly and directly, as per usual.
If you genuinely cannot forgive and you keep weaponizing the
past, you need support. OK, that's like whether it's me,
whether it's the connected woman, whether it's the
experience, whether it's one-on-one, whether it's a
therapist, whatever, right? The relationship will not
survive unresolved resentment. Long term forgiveness is a
healthy need because it makes intimacy possible again.
If you're listening to this thinking, why does it sound like
she's literally in my head, then it is time that you joined the
connected woman. This is the work that completely
rewires how you show up in your love life.
If you're in a relationship, this is how you stop repeating
the same patterns over and over again.
You stop lashing out, you stop shutting down, and you turn
things around to the point where your partner actually falls in
love with you all over again. And if you're single, this is
how you stop choosing the same person in a different body and
actually attract someone who is emotionally available, ready, is
obsessed with you, and can meet you from the very beginning.
This is the end of I know better, but I don't do better.
This is the point where these patterns are stopped for good.
If you know you're ready for this work, you know what to do.
The link will be in the description.
Join the connected woman today. Let's get back to the episode
now. Another healthy need is
affection and desire. Yes, it is healthy to want to
feel wanted. It's healthy to want touch.
It's healthy to want intimacy. And the reason that so many
couples struggle here is because they treat sex like it exists in
a vacuum, when desire is deeply impacted by emotional safety and
respect. So if your partner dismisses you
or mocks you and validates you or treats you like your feelings
are fucking annoying, your body is not exactly going to be like,
Oh my God, yes, take me now like I surrender.
No, right. And on the other side, if you
constantly criticize your partner or treat them like
they're failing at life or you treat them like a, like a child,
they're not going to feel warm and open towards you either,
right? Desire needs safety, it needs
appreciation, it needs play, it needs repair.
And This is why the emotional work matters.
It's not separate from intimacy, it's the foundation of it.
Another healthy need is accepting each other's
influence, which basically means that you can be on the same
team, right? You can receive feedback without
collapsing, sulking, getting defensive, or turning it into a
tit for tat war. Right?
So if your partner says hey when you said that in front of my
friends I felt embarrassed and your immediate response is Oh my
God you're so fucking sensitive. You just taught them that
honesty isn't safe, right? If your partner says I need more
help around the house and you respond with a fucking tantrum
like they've accused you of being a terrible person, you've
just taught them that expressing needs creates punishment.
Accepting influence is a healthy need because it's how couples
evolve. It's how you grow.
It's how you Co create a relationship that works for both
of you instead of one person constantly bending and the other
person acting like a compromise is fucking oppression.
Right now. I want to bring in this quote
that I heard from Terry Real because it's the most mature
relationship question that you could ask.
And it's this are enough of my needs being met that I can
grieve the ones that aren't? I'll say that again, are enough
of my needs being met that I can grieve the ones that aren't?
And I love this quote because it stops you from living in
delusion or fantasy. It's not should I leave or
should I stay right? It's asking the real question.
Is this relationship meeting enough of what matters that I
can accept and grieve what it can't meet?
Because no relationship meets every single need perfectly.
That's insanity, right? Your partner is not your like
personal need fulfilling machine.
You should be able to get your needs met through friends,
family, your purpose, hobbies, your relationship with yourself,
spirituality, your body. You know, whatever it is.
But there are needs that only your partner can meet if you're
going to feel connected in this partnership and you get to
decide which needs are essential.
If enough needs are met, you grieve what isn't, and you build
a beautiful life with what is. If not enough needs are met,
you're going to feel lonely, frustrated, and disconnected no
matter how hard you try, unless something changes.
OK, now let's talk about unhealthy needs, because this is
where people get really fucking messy and start calling each
other toxic when really it's actually just nervous systems
trying to survive, right? So let's give each other a
little bit of grace. Unhealthy needs are usually
attempts to meet a legitimate need through control, fear,
domination, avoidance, or emotional outsourcing.
Right? The first unhealthy need is
control. And I want to be super clear
here, control is not a need. When you say I just need to be
in control, no you don't. That's a coping strategy.
When you're controlling, what you're actually trying to do is
regulate your dysregulation, your anxiety by managing someone
else. You're trying to eliminate
uncertainty by dictating someone else's behavior.
So that could look like checking their phone, interrogating them,
monitoring their social media, telling them who they can and
cannot talk to or be friends with, freaking out if they want
a boys night or like subtly pushing them when when they do
something that you don't like, right?
Or like punishing them. And I get it right?
It feels real. It feels like I'm protecting the
relationship, but actually you're trying to control your
fear. And nobody feels loved when they
feel fucking managed and parented.
Control creates rebellion, secrecy, resentment, shut down
all of these things. And whilst we're here,
boundaries are not control. I hear all the I'm I'm setting a
boundary. You get a boundary, you get a
boundary, you get a no. A boundary is here's what I will
do, not here's what you must do. So if you say I will not stay in
a conversation where I'm being yelled at, if it escalates, I'll
take 30 minutes and come back when we're calm.
That's a boundary, right? If your partner follows you
around the house continuing to yell, that is not passion,
that's dysregulation and that's damaging.
And I would not be in that relationship, right?
Another unhealthy need is the need for constant reassurance
and I want to make a distinction because reassurance reassure, Oh
my God. Reassurance as connection is
healthy, right? Reassurance as testing is not.
If you're constantly fishing testing, demanding.
Do you love me? Are you sure?
Would you leave me? Promise you won't ever leave me.
Why didn't you say it back fast enough?
Oh my God, that is such ick like gross.
That's not love, that's your fear running the show.
That's anxiety. And when reassurance becomes a
demand, your partner starts to feel like they are under review
all the time. Like if they don't perform love
in exactly the right way, you're going to fucking spiral or start
a fight or start accusing or pointing the finger.
And here's the fucked part, right?
This behavior often creates the very distance that you fear
because being constantly tested makes people pull away.
So if this is you, your shadow work is learning how to self
soothe and build internal security rather than outsourcing
your entire emotional safety to your partner's behavior.
Another unhealthy need is avoidance disguised as
independence. Yeah, there's a healthy version
of independence, and then there's a defensive version.
The defensive version is like, I don't need anyone, I'm fine, I
hate labels. I don't do feelings.
Let's just keep it chill. Why do we have to talk about
this, right? That's not independence, that is
walls. That is armor.
That's fear of intimacy. It's the part of you that thinks
that closeness equals danger, so you keep distance and then you
call it freedom. But if you want a real
relationship, you cannot have intimacy whilst being
emotionally withholding, right? Avoidance makes your partner
feel alone. It makes them feel like they're
trying to love a fucking brick wall and eventually they stop
trying or they get louder or they become anxious or, you
know, then you call them needy and round around, around,
around, around you go. It's not the vibe.
Another unhealthy need is needing the relationship to
work, even though you are the only one doing the work.
Yeah, this one makes me feel fucking feral because I see
women on the daily destroying themselves, trying to carry a
relationship on their back like it's a dead fucking horse.
Right. If you are the only one
apologizing, the only one initiating repair, the only one
reading the books, the only one listening to the podcast, the
only one going to therapy, the only one trying to communicate
better, and they're just there for the vibes, Like you're not
in a partnership. You are not in a partnership,
right? You cannot love someone into
emotional maturity. You cannot heal someone by being
more understanding, and you cannot do the work for them.
I need you to hear this so, so loudly.
You cannot do the work for them. And if they're blaming you for
the disconnection and you're believing them because yourself
esteem is shaky or in the toilet, you will keep abandoning
yourself, right? The shadow here is the rescuer
part. The part that thinks, well, if I
just love them hard enough, they'll change.
Trust me, I know this like the back of my fucking hand.
I have been this person for as long as I can remember.
And it's only been like in the last couple of years that I've
started to shift this right. So that part usually developed
in childhood when you tried to earn love by being good or
helpful or quiet. And I say this with love.
Adult relationships don't work that way.
You need not want. You need mutual effort or you
will slowly disappear. Another unhealthy need is
withholding the truth because you don't trust their reaction.
If you feel like you have to hide things because they'll blow
up or they'll accuse you or they'll punish you, that's a
bigger problem than the thing you're hiding.
A relationship cannot be intimate when honesty isn't
safe. And yes, I get it, right?
Some people are reactive, jealous, suspicious,
traumatized, all the things. I get it.
But you don't fix that by tiptoeing and lying.
You fix it by addressing the core issue.
Why is it not safe to be transparent here, right?
And that could be a conversation for counseling.
That could be a boundary conversation.
It could be a compatibility conversation.
Because secrecy and fear are not the foundation of love.
I know breaking news. They're the foundation of stress
and you want a relationship to add to your life, not add
stress, right? Another unhealthy need is
expecting mind reading and I hear it all the time, right?
But he should know. No he shouldn't.
He's not a fucking psychic. Unless he is, in which case,
cool, right? But if you need something, say
it. If you want something, ask for
it. If something hurt, you name it.
The healthy version is direct communication.
The unhealthy version is expecting them to intuit your
needs and then punishing them when they don't.
Now, if you have communicated clearly and they consistently
ignore you, dismiss you, or do nothing, then this is not about
mind reading anymore. This is a different
conversation, right? This is about whether or not
your needs matter to them. But the baseline is this.
Don't build a relationship on unspoken expectations and then
act fucking shocked when you're disappointed.
Now I want to bring this all together.
Because the point of this episode isn't to make you
overanalyze your relationship and then panic and freak out,
right? The point is to give you
language and articulation and clarity so that you can stop
fighting about the symptoms and start addressing the real issues
that are actually at the core right.
Most couples don't need more communication tips.
It's just like you don't need more fucking insight, right?
They need more honesty about what's underneath the fights.
So here's what I want you to do. Either sit with your journal or
have a conversation with your partner this week and ask the
simplest, most revealing questions.
Do you feel respected by me? Do you feel safe with me?
Do you feel valued and appreciated by me?
Do you feel like we repair well after conflict?
Do you feel like enough of your needs are being met that you can
grieve the ones that aren't? And then shut your fucking mouth
and listen. Don't defend, don't go will you.
Don't justify, don't explain. Just actually humble yourself
and listen. Because if you can create safety
in that conversation, you will learn more in 10 minutes than
you have learned in 10 months of fighting.
Now, if you're listening to this and going, OK, Michelle, I can
see it. I can see where I've been trying
to control my and, and like manage my anxiety.
I can see where I've been avoiding conflict because I'm
scared that they'll leave. I can see where I've been over
giving and then fucking resenting them.
I can see where I've been expecting mind reading and then
punishing them. I can see where I've been
suppressing my needs and then acting out.
Then that's good, right? That's the work, that's the
shadow, That's self responsibility.
And it's not about blaming yourself.
It's about reclaiming your pattern.
Because when you see your patterns, then you can change
them. So before we wrap up, I want to
say this, right? A lot of women have never been
taught how to communicate their needs without shame.
They've never been taught how to set boundaries without guilt,
and they've never been taught how to do conflict without
either exploding or shutting down.
They've never been taught how to tell the difference between a
healthy need or an anxious demand, right?
They've never been taught how to stop over functioning and start
relating from secure self worth. If you're like, OK, well then
how do I do this? Right?
I want to actually learn this. I need to embody this.
I'm done repeating the same patterns.
Then the connected woman is literally built for you.
Yeah. This is the work that we do
inside the connected woman. We don't just talk about
relationships. We change how you show up in
them. We get you out of the anxious,
over giving, self abandoning, controlling or avoiding coping
mechanisms and into secure, grounded, self LED love.
So whether you're in a relationship or you want to
rebuild and you want to rebuild safety and intimacy, or you're
single and you want to stop choosing from your wounds, the
connected woman is your next step.
So you can find all the details in the show notes or you can
come DM me TCW on Instagram and I will send you everything.
All right, guys, thanks for hanging out with me today.
I love you. I'll see you next week.
All right, my love, let what landed today actually land.
Because this podcast is not just here to inspire you.
It is here to change you, your standards, your patterns, your
life. And if you are done living on
autopilot, you're done shrinking.
You're done repeating the same fucking shit over and over.
Let this be your reminder. You are built for more.
Unfucking your life is a choice you make every single day.
And if you want to go deeper, come hang out with me on
Instagram at Michelle Panning because that is where I share
all of the raw stuff, the real time shifts that I'm having in
my life and everything that I am doing to raise my own standards
to in life and in love. I love you.
I believe in your next level. Go and fuck your life, babe.