What if I Don’t Need a Romantic Relationship?
Can I be happy and get my needs met if I’m not in a romantic relationship?
Dear Julia,
I have been reading your blog and have noticed that you truly believe in healthy romantic relationships. You write often about how connection and intimacy are required and how they help us get our attachment needs met. But what happens when a person doesn’t believe that they need a romantic relationship? What if they decide that they don’t want one, or that they are too difficult to bother with? What if I don’t need a relationship? Is it still possible to be happy and get your needs met?
You are correct, I do believe in healthy romantic relationships. Not just because this is what the research tells us that I use to answer reader questions, but because human beings are social creatures that need good quality connections for our health and survival. There is a reason why solitary confinement in prison is the worst possible sentence. The lack of human interaction literally drives us mad.
Our nervous systems are built to coregulate, meaning that being in the presence of another trusted other when we are upset can help us calm down. Babies who are not touched, played with, or spoken to have been known to die, even when they have their needs for food and shelter met. Also, we are happier, with less anxiety, and depression, and better physical health when we are a part of a healthy romantic relationship.
Thus, our behavior and biology back up our needs for connection and intimacy in a variety of ways.
While romantic relationships are a vehicle that, when healthy and fulfilling, meet most of our needs for attachment and bonding, we can extend our view of relationships beyond romantic ones. For example, children get their intimacy needs met by their parents. We can feel fulfilled and loved after spending a day with our friends. We can experience companionship, love, and resilience when we love ourselves.
Thus, we can use a variety of relationships to meet our needs, and I would recommend that we get our needs met by a variety of people, rather than expecting our romantic partner to meet them all.
However, to answer your questions, I am curious to know more about where your question comes from.
I wonder about your previous experiences in relationships
I wonder what your parents/caregivers modeled for you?
I wonder who is in your social circle?
I wonder about your previous experiences in relationships
If you were to tell me that you haven’t yet found a simple healthy relationship, because you have stayed with people who aren’t a good enough match, or because you’re not meeting the right people, or because you aren’t willing to try dating, I would wonder if these experiences needed to be explored and processed for you to be more open to the idea of love.
It could make sense for a person who was in an abusive relationship to perhaps conclude that they are better off single. A person who has an overbearing parent may decide that they want to spend their life alone. Someone who is spinning their wheels with unsuccessful online dating may conclude that love isn’t going to happen for them and thus they no longer want a relationship.
These are reasonable conclusions, but they are likely being drawn to protect that person from pain, rather than being based on what they truly want and need. If left unchecked, these experiences and beliefs could lead a person to think that they do not need or want a relationship.
I wonder about what your parents or caregivers model for you?
I’m curious to know what your parents’ or main caregivers’ relationship was like. Was it loving or healthy? Distant or absent? What did you learn about relationships from your parents/caregivers or other prominent people (i.e. grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.) in your life? Did they believe in love, did they go through difficult divorces, did they feel alone in their marriages? If their relationships were unhealthy, could this be where you learned that relationships are too difficult to bother with?
Think about the relationships that surrounded you while you were growing up and what they were like. Does your current question stem from it? If so, could you be making decisions from the unprocessed pain of others (i.e. a parent who didn’t believe in love after a bitter divorce) rather than forging your own path through life?
Who is in your social circle?
Who do you spend time with? Are your friends and colleagues mostly single or divorced, or are they in simple, healthy relationships? Neuroscience research has found that we often become like the people we spend the most time with. I make sense of this in the following way: if your friend group is full of single people who are afraid of being hurt, and thus stay away from dating and relationships, you’re likely to take on these views too. Your conversations about dating and relationships may consist of worries about being able to trust people, about how things always go wrong in relationships, or how relationships are always doomed to fail. Of course, this could dissuade most people from pursuing healthy love.
Conversely, if you are surrounded by people in healthy, fun, enjoyable partnerships, then you’re more likely to be open to experiences that lead you in this direction as well. The conversations had by these people may be around having compassion for our partner’s shortcomings, the ways that two people support one another, and the futures that are being planned, together.
What influence are you getting from your friends, colleagues, and loved ones?
I suggest you spend some time reflecting on your position, to understand why you are where you are. It very well may be that you’re perfectly happy and fulfilled with connections that are not romantic. This is a perfectly healthy and acceptable way of being.
However, if you’re trying to protect yourself in some way by avoiding love, if you’re making decisions based on negative beliefs or experiences, or if you’re surrounded by people who do not believe in romance or relationships, then I highly encourage you to stop and ask yourself what you would want if you removed these influences. You may still decide that a romantic relationship isn’t for you, but then at least you’re deciding for yourself.
You may also find this related posts helpful in deciding what do to:
I wish you all the best with your reflections and resulting conclusions. If you would like to comment on how helpful this answer was, or if a reader would like to ask a new question, head over the my contact page.
Warmly,
Julia
P.S. Did you enjoy this blog? Would you like to have more Simple, Healthy Love in your life? I post new answers to reader questions every Saturday at Noon EST AND have a list of all the books I recommend as a trauma therapist and relationship blogger HERE.