What to Do When Your Partner Isn’t Meeting Your Needs
Most of us will encounter seasons in our relationships where our needs aren’t being met. We might feel unfulfilled, disconnected, or quietly questioning whether the relationship is still right for us. But for those with anxious attachment, this terrain can feel especially fraught. Not only do needs feel tender and vulnerable to express, but the fear of being “too much” or “not enough” often colours the whole experience.
In this post, I want to explore what to do when you’ve communicated your needs — clearly, kindly, and more than once — and you’re still not feeling met. My hope is to offer some clarity and compassion for anyone sitting in that uncomfortable impasse, unsure what comes next.
Why needs feel so challenging for anxious attachers
If you live with anxious attachment, you may relate to the experience of not always trusting your own needs. You might have a sense of what you want — more closeness, more consistency, more emotional availability — but second-guess whether you’re being unreasonable. Without a steady internal foundation, it’s easy to question yourself, doubt your instincts, or collapse the moment you encounter resistance.
For many people, the pattern looks like this: you finally work up the courage to express a need, your partner pushes back in some way, and you instantly shrink. You might think, Maybe they’re right. Maybe I am asking too much. But while the conversation might stop there, the need doesn’t disappear. It simply goes underground, where it festers into resentment, self-doubt, or quiet disconnection.
On the other end of the spectrum, some people swing in the opposite direction. After years of suppressing their needs, they discover the language of needs and become forceful or even demanding. Because something is labelled a “need,” it can begin to carry the energy of you must do this. And while the need itself may be perfectly valid, the delivery can create defensiveness or shutdown in the partnership.
Both expressions — collapsing or demanding — stem from the same wound: a deep uncertainty around whether our needs are allowed, and whether they will be honoured without us losing connection in the process.
Holding two truths at once
One of the hardest — and most liberating — shifts in this work is learning to hold two truths at the same time:
Your needs are valid.
They matter. They’re real. They deserve to be acknowledged.You cannot demand that someone meet them.
Even the most reasonable need may not be something your partner can (or will) meet.
Most anxiously attached people struggle here, because the mind wants certainty and simplicity. It wants one person to be right and the other wrong. But relationships live in the grey. Two things can be true at once: your needs can be completely valid, and your partner can still be unable or unwilling to meet them.
Sitting with that reality is uncomfortable — but it’s also where clarity begins.
Get clear on the core need (not just the expression of it)
One of the most powerful steps you can take is separating the underlying need from the specific strategy you’ve attached to it. For example:
“I need you to text me throughout the day”
might actually be
“I need to feel connected, considered, and important to you.”
Feeling connected is a valid relational need. Mandating all-day texting as the only way that need can be met is where things often break down.
When we become overly rigid or prescriptive about how a partner meets our needs, it can feel controlling or overwhelming to them — even if the underlying need is understandable. Opening up some flexibility creates space for collaboration rather than compliance. It invites your partner into the solution instead of dictating it.
Try asking yourself:
What feeling am I hoping to experience?
What is the real need beneath the request?
Are there multiple ways this need could be met?
This shift alone can create a lot more goodwill and engagement.
When your partner truly can’t (or won’t) meet your needs
Of course, there are times — and this is the part none of us want to face — when a partner is simply unable or unwilling to meet the needs that are fundamental to your wellbeing in a relationship.
This doesn’t automatically make them a bad partner or a bad person. But it does mean the relationship may not be the right fit for you.
The key questions to sit with are:
Is this need genuinely essential for me to feel safe, connected, and well in a relationship?
Is this a need that only a partner can meet (rather than something I can meet within myself or through other forms of support)?
Have I communicated it clearly, more than once, over a period of time?
Has my partner clearly shown that they cannot or will not meet me there?
If the answer to all of those is yes, then you may be asking the right thing of the wrong person — and that’s heartbreaking, but also profoundly clarifying.
Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for ourselves (and the other person) is acknowledge that our needs and their capacity are simply mismatched.
Moving forward with clarity and self-trust
Not getting your needs met can be deeply painful. It can activate every old wound around worthiness, safety, and belonging. But it can also be an invitation into deeper self-trust: into validating your own inner world, honouring your emotional truth, and standing lovingly but firmly in what you know you need to thrive.
As with so much of this work, the real transformation comes from strengthening your internal foundation — the part of you that says, My needs matter, my feelings make sense, and I am allowed to choose relationships where I feel supported and seen.
When you learn to navigate these moments from a grounded, secure place, you're no longer negotiating your needs from fear — you’re honouring them from a place of self-respect.