Meeting Your Spouse's Emotional Needs

Marriages are made in heaven they say, but eventually, every
marriage has to come down to earth. The honeymoon "orbits"
gradually decrease in passion and intensity, due to other
priorities that demand our attention. More so, when the bundle of
joy arrives!

Loving glances are gradually replaced by frowns, the stars in
your eyes do not shine so brightly anymore, and your attempts at
intimate conversation is punctuated by wails from the little
intruder. You discover, as almost every married couple before you
have discovered, that the feeling called "romantic love" has to
be nurtured by a continuous process of meeting each other's
emotional needs.

What is an emotional need? It is a deep desire within you that,
when satisfied, gives you a feeling of extreme happiness and
contentment. If this desire is unsatisfied, it leaves you with a
feeling of unhappiness and frustration. It follows, therefore,
that when a husband and wife meet each other's most important
emotional needs, they will be so happy and contented with each
other that, they will experience passionate love, and stay in
love as long as these emotional needs are met.

But, each of us have different emotional needs, and even if both
spouses have the same emotional needs, their priorities for each
emotional need may be different. For instance, love and romance
for most men are sex and recreation; for most women its affection
and intimate conversation. Now, if such a husband and wife pair
would spend a recreational evening together, show intense
affection, with deep, intimate conversation, it would naturally
lead to sexual fulfillment. The result? Passionate love, since
the most important emotional needs of both are fully met!

You, and your spouse, fell in love with each other because you
both met some of each other's most important emotional needs, and
the only way to stay in love, long after the honeymoon is over,
is to keep meeting these emotional needs.

So, the first step for you, and your spouse, is to identify what
are your most important emotional needs - those that will make
you the happiest and most contented. The easiest way is to sit
down, take a sheet of paper, and jot down what you would like
your spouse to do/not do, that would give you the greatest
happiness. A list, of at least five of your most important
emotional needs, in order of priority, would be adequate for a
start. When you both are ready with it, exchange the sheets of
paper.

Now, that you, and your spouse, know what you can do for each
other that, will make you both the happiest and contented married
couple, it only remains to learn how to become experts at meeting
these emotional needs. The degree of expertise you both acquire
at meeting each other's most important emotional needs will be
measured by the intensity of the fire of love and passion in your
marriage.
 

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