How to Get Your Needs Met in a Relationship

How to Get Your Needs Met in a Relationship

The Love, Happiness & Success Podcast with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby

LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH, ACTUALLY

How do you get your needs met in a relationship? You can have an overall great relationship with someone you love very much, and still feel like you’re not really getting what you need in order to feel truly connected and cared for. This can lead to frustrations, especially if your efforts to ask (or hint, or nag, or beg, or control, or get angry repeatedly — no judgment) never lead to real and lasting change in your relationship.

Help is here. On this episode of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast I’m speaking to a true expert on this subject: Dr. Robert Navarra.

Dr. Navarra has decades of experience as a marriage counselor, couples therapist, and addictions counselor. He trains other therapists on The Gottman Method of couples therapy— the gold standard in evidence-based couples counseling. Dr. Navarra has also pioneered a new research-based method for helping couples reconnect in the aftermath of addiction.

He’s here to share his insight and relationship advice with you, so that you can finally get your needs met in your relationship. Here’s a peek into our conversation:

Advice For How to Get Your Needs Met in a Relationship

1) Build On Your Relationship’s Strengths: Did you know that it’s easier to get your partner to honor your wishes when they feel close and connected to you? That sounds true and simple but sometimes couples let the sticking points eclipse the positive parts of their relationship. Learn how to start being friends again first in order to increase the likelihood of getting your needs met.

2) Improve Your Communication: The way you say things really matters. Dr. Navarra explains the specific ways of communicating that are likely to get you shut-down, ignored, blown up at, or invalidated — and what to do instead. He’s sharing his tips for how to turn conflict into connection and get your message across in a way your partner will be able to hear.

3) Avoid The Three Behaviors That Will Sabotage Your Relationship: In addition to providing you with great skills and strategies to help you communicate, Dr. Navarra explains the behaviors to avoid at all costs. We all know how easy it is to react without thinking when we’re upset. However, by avoiding the pitfalls and mindfully cultivating the pro-marriage / pro-relationship behaviors that Dr. Navarra advises, you can greatly increase the odds that your partner will respond to you positively.

4) What to Do When Your Partner Has A Serious Problem: Dr. Navarra is a Master Addictions Counselor among other things, so I sprung a listener question on him — What to do if your partner has a problem with alcohol, marijuana, or other destructive behaviors? He explains strategies to help your partner (and yourself) stop the madness and grow back together again.

We hope these tips and strategies help you have productive conversations with your partner and strengthen your relationship, so that you can both get on the same page and so YOU can get your needs met in your relationship!

Sincerely,

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby and Dr. Robert Navarra

PS: Dr. Navarra and I discuss a number of resources and websites. Here’s that link to the “How Healthy is Your Relationship Quiz.”

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How to Get Your Needs Met in a Relationship

The Love, Happiness & Success Podcast with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby

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10 Comments

  1. This and nearly every other podcast of yours have pretty much hit all the nails on the head ( if it was ‘my head’ – they might have knocked some sense into me in time, had I listened before) .
    As an aside from this , because -that relationship is now well and truly over…. I have a BIG family issue .
    Listened to ‘ Trust & Attachment’ but with ‘family’ in mind , rather than a couple . Does that work? It was spot on as a big part of the problem . Am considering booking an appointment , but a little afraid that the person I speak to might not be as well versed in this subject.
    Anyway – thank you . I find the talks very reassuring , comforting , meaty and therefore stimulating and hopeful in that the sense of ‘relief’ seems within reach for each of them. (Whatever that is ie/’relief’)

  2. This and nearly every other podcast of yours have pretty much hit all the nails on the head ( if it was ‘my head’ – they might have knocked some sense into me in time, had I listened before) .
    As an aside from this , because -that relationship is now well and truly over…. I have a BIG family issue .
    Listened to ‘ Trust & Attachment’ but with ‘family’ in mind , rather than a couple . Does that work? It was spot on as a big part of the problem . Am considering booking an appointment , but a little afraid that the person I speak to might not be as well versed in this subject.
    Anyway – thank you . I find the talks very reassuring , comforting , meaty and therefore stimulating and hopeful in that the sense of ‘relief’ seems within reach for each of them. (Whatever that is ie/’relief’)

  3. Sarah, thank you for the kind words, and yes, are family relationships are basically ground-zero for “trust and attachment” work. I’m glad you’re thinking of doing some work around this with the support of a professional. I can assure you that we are extremely cautious about the marriage and family therapists what we invite to join this practice, and they are all very competent in helping with exactly these situations. I would refer my friends and family to any of them. In the meantime I am glad you are enjoying the podcast! More for you soon! xoxo

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