Why Even Good Relationships Can Leave You Feeling Unmet: The Real Practice of Secure Attachment No One Talks About

At the center of so many relational struggles lies a discomfort we rarely name. It looks like conflict. Sounds like unmet needs. But underneath…it’s our own disowned longing.

 

A longing that can feel totally intolerable. 

In fact, it is one of the most difficult feelings for a human being to tolerate, and one we most seek to avoid.

And it’s also a feeling that when we meet it in ourselves and befriend it, can be life-changing.

This longing is ancient. It’s the unresolvable existential ache of being human. 

It can show up as the longing to be fully known, fully seen, fully loved. 

Or as the longing to have our desires — emotional, spiritual, sexual — fulfilled. 

To feel union and belonging.

To feel complete security, certainty, peace, in a life that can't give us such things.

These longings are innate, natural.

But our capacity to feel them without reacting, collapsing, outsourcing, or panicking — that is what gets hijacked by our attachment wounds, and how we were or were not mirrored as a child.

We perhaps even learned this longing meant danger as children. So now here we are, trying to hold ancient heavy longings with young, scared, unequipped hands. 

So instead of recognizing longing as something natural to feel, even if uncomfortable, we come to believe it’s a sign that something is very wrong: with us, with the other, with the relationship.

And we have many ways of trying to get that intolerable longing to go away fast:

 We withdraw, pursue, collapse, rage, beg. We try to manage situations, conversations, outcomes. We try to change or fix other people. 

We unknowingly try to get our partners, lovers, even friends or family to soothe that ache for us, and make the discomfort stop.

But when they can’t make it go away (because no one can), we tend to turn on them, or on ourselves.

Sometimes we even call this getting our needs met, or setting boundaries (which can be helpful when self-owned but can perpetuate our intolerance of this longing if not)

But often what we’re really doing is asking: “Can you stop this intolerable longing?”

No matter how perfect our communication is or how calmly we ask…the urgency behind it is felt, even unconsciously, by the other person.

What if nothing is wrong? 

What if this ache is simply part of being human?

What if the longing doesn’t need to be resolved, fixed, or healed in the way we’ve been taught? What if we more simply and bravely need to learn how to companion it... by our own selves? To grow our muscles and capacity to stay present with the ache?

That is secure attachment. 

Not because we feel totally fulfilled, but because we learn to stay with ourselves — even in the uncomfortable unfulfillment of being human.

This is why love-bombing is so intoxicating - it can dull this ache:

A main reason love-bombing (or any kind of intense pursuit) can be so intoxicating is because it can seem to make that longing vanish…at first. It can feel so intoxicating to have someone come along and give us the illusion that we will never feel that ache or unfulfilled longing again. All our needs met. Totally seen. Complete. 

It’s why infatuation can also feel so profound and enlivening…that ache feels temporarily soothed and before we know someone deeply, we can imagine they are fulfilling and completing us.

The beautiful tender truth, No One Is Coming to Save You From The Ache…

There’s something huge (and often full of grief) that happens when you realize: No one is coming to save you from the ache. And no one can.

But you can show up for yourself in it. And that really is everything.

Not finally getting all your needs met — But growing the capacity to hold longing, unmet desire, and uncertainty… Without self-abandoning, or blaming.

The thing is, desire without control of the outcome is so very vulnerable. And most people, when faced with that kind of vulnerability, understandably either reach for control or for escape. But the space between this longing and our reflexive reaction is where some of our deepest growth lies. 

 Something different becomes possible when you ask:

 Can I want more, want different or want so desperately, Know I can’t make them give it… And still stay soft, connected, and present with myself?

Say you share something vulnerable. They don’t respond the way you hoped. The ache comes. Do you scramble to fix it? Or can you stay with it?

When you can hold the gap between what you’d like and what is, without collapsing or over-functioning, that’s what keeps you intimate with reality as it is (not hope, fantasy or projection), and with your own self (not lost in them), and with your own power. And from there you can move with agency and truly move towards another person in honest, alive, intimate ways.

That is a paradigm shift.

Because the paradox is: When we stop trying to make the ache go away, When we stay with it, befriend it, We become more whole. More sovereign. More able to love, and be loved.

That’s not codependence or rugged individualism. That’s not bypassing. 

It’s adult attachment, and emotional agency and opens to doorway to real interdependence.

It’s Not About forcing yourself to accept what you don’t want:

When we stay with ourselves, it also allows us to see reality and what we want more clearly, and make choices from that place. 

It isn’t about staying in situations that you truly do not want to be in anymore.

It’s staying with yourself, so you can be clear about what you actually want from your secure center. Not because the other is bad or wrong. Not from fear. Not because an idea of compatibility says so…but because it’s what YOU want or don’t want.

And it isn’t never sharing what you like or want or requesting things or seeking a relationship that feels warm and resonant and nourishing is important. But it’s about doing it from a place of emotional sovereignty, knowing you can tolerate whatever the outcome and be able to make choices from there… instead of reacting from the young part that outsources our longing.

This is the work beneath all the other work.

• To U-turn that reach or reaction towards the other to fix the thing, to communicate it better, to empathize more, to analyze them or you more….and reach back into yourself. 

• To gently befriend the parts that protect the ache, that want a certain outcome, that get angry or shut down - all to protect that tender longing. 

• To slowly befriend the part underneath, that aches.

  
  

Then, from that centered place, You can choose clearly what to do next.

And over time, you begin to be able to say:

I am still okay. Even with longing. Even with unmet desire.

Even in uncertainty. Even when I want more. Even when someone is different than I want them to be.

Longing is aliveness in pursuit of a particular outcome. Self is aliveness in presence with what really is.

And the more we learn to differentiate the two, the more we can let longing inform us of ourselves and help build our self muscles, (instead of telling us a story about someone else) so we can live and choose from that present. centered self.

There is no simple quick comfort here, but a deep dignity: you can grow these muscles. You can become someone you can rely on.