August 2008
Does getting my needs met make me a selfish person?
Do you enjoy baking? Then you might appreciate my boarding school disaster. Being a boarder, I got to go home every couple weeks for a weekend with the family. One of the important tasks for me over a weekend was to bake. To bake lots of cookies to take back to boarding school for those afternoons when I needed to snack.
One such weekend, I put a lot of effort into one big batch of cookies, but unknowingly added too much baking soda. This gives rise to an awful taste when the wrong amount is used. It can and DID ruin the entire batch. It’s a tricky business though, because if you use too little the batch won’t rise. Um...maybe I failed to listen to one of the first rules of thumb when it comes to baking - don’t double or triple the recipe, rather make each batch on it’s own. So much for being overzealous.
Baking soda is to baking - what having “a self” is to being in a relationship. Ever been crazy in love and want to dress like your partner, adopt each others mannerisms and do everything together? This lasts for a short time, if at all. Then begins the struggle for independence and conflict can be a natural byproduct. Too much 'self' results in self-sufficiency and selfishness. Yet to the other extreme, too little self results in over-dependence and unhealthy martyrdom.
What’s tricky is when we pair up with someone on the opposite side of the “selfhood continuum”. Someone who is used to doing just as they please partners with someone who willingly gives up their needs, preferences and “self”. Finding health and balance in these relationships takes time and takes work.
Ask yourself whether you are getting your needs met in your current relationships. We were all created with needs and desires - this is nothing to be ashamed of. Healthy relationships that are good for us will help us to be all that we can be, including supplying us with different ways to get our needs met. In the same way, giving to our loved ones to meet their needs grows us so that we do not become overly self-focussed. This results in a healthy give and take, a balanced relationship.
Happy relating!
Kathryn