How Over-Reliance, Excessive Attention Seeking Destroy Relationships

It is dangerous to have an exaggerated desire to be needed by someone. In this case, your partner’s reliance on you becomes disproportionate to your reliance on him or her. In some unhealthy manner, this act of selflessness does not lead to a reciprocated attention to you, but rather to the ultimate loss of yourself. Surprisingly, the dwindling of desire in a relationship can result from a disconnect from ourselves and heightened embrace of selflessness. Such persons do not have a need for adventure and excitement. They are reluctant about expanding their own identities.This scenario is mostly seen in women.

Limiting one’s numerous potentials and existence around a relationship could be very detrimental to an individual’s wellbeing. Some people hang on to relationships that emotionally suffocate them even as they feel confined in a cage, unable to freely express themselves, and live their authentic lives. They condone all types of domestic violence and abuse, meted out to them by either crying, making excuses or blaming themselves.

I have seen where a woman’s unhealthy desire to be needed led to a horrifying and violent end in which her husband beat her to death. She was overly dependent on the man she didn’t know very well. She knew he was not to be trusted. She had a realistic mental profile of him as an angry and controlling man who only “loved” her for what he could get from her. Yet she was addicted to taking care of him. Her dependency overrode her lack of trust and clarity of judgment. There are cases also where some men have died, trying to hang on to a nagging and emotionally bankrupt woman just because cutting ties would lead to loss of assets. This happens mostly among Nigerian families overseas, particularly the United States.

Both the man and woman depicted here typifies how emotionally and physically unsafe a relationship becomes when there are extreme imbalances between the extent of reliance and the amount of trust that a partner has. This also exemplifies how an addiction to loving compromises logic to maintain the intensity of feeling needed. The desire to be needed at all cost could also lead to a situation where a partner becomes repulsive because he or she wants everything the partner does to focus on him or her as a reassurance that the partner desires him or her.

Solutions:

It is important for a man or woman to first and foremost find a freely-given love and then go into a relationship with a clear career path and life goals in mind. This way, while nurturing the relationship with constant & honest communication and emotional support, he or she can also pursue their passions and make them priority. It also ensures that you are not placing heavy emotional burden on yourself or someone else by indirectly making them responsible for your mental wellbeing. It’s vital that you are fully available for yourself, which is critical for desire to flourish.

You can balance your interests/passions with being in a relationship without neglecting or losing yourself in the process. You should unapologetically be yourself always because life is far too short to pretend to be someone you’re not. Avoid living life through the eyes of other people because in the end, you’ll only regret the time wasted trying to pretend you were someone else. Living with someone you don’t love is a huge mental torture to yourself and to your partner. It is an honorable thing to have a conversation with your partner on how you feel towards them to ensure you are not deceiving yourself and wasting somebody else’s time and life.

– ChiNna Okoroafor, a Licensed Psychotherapist and Certified Clinical Telemental Health Provider, writes from Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S.A

Disclaimer: This article is entirely the opinion of the writer and does not represent the views of The Whistler.