The Need State: Longing, Projection, and the Ache for Home

At the core of being human is need. We need air, water, food, warmth, touch, and shelter. But our needs extend far beyond survival, they reach into the deepest caverns of our psyche, our soma, and our soul. There is a fundamental yearningembedded in the human condition, a longing for something beyond the immediate and tangible. Some experience it as a desire for love, others as a hunger for belonging, for unity, for peace, for the embrace of something greater . . . God, nature, the Mother, home.

This need state is not a flaw or a pathology; it is the essence of our existence. Yet, when we don’t recognize it for what it is, we project it outward, seeking its resolution in relationships, especially intimate ones. We turn to our partners, lovers, and friends as if they might silence the ache, close the gap of separation, and return us to a state of wholeness. And when they inevitably cannot—because no human being can—we fall into cycles of resentment, anxiety, and fear.

The Codependent Contract: “You Complete Me”

Codependence is, at its root, a misunderstanding of the need state. It is the unconscious agreement that I will manage your need state if you manage mine. It is the whispered promise that we will shield each other from the unbearable longing, from the pain of feeling separate from the Divine, from Self (capital S), from Home.

This unspoken contract forms the foundation of many relationships:

• “If I take care of your emotions, will you promise never to leave?”

• “If I make sure you’re happy, will you make sure I don’t have to feel this emptiness?”

• “If I mold myself into who you want me to be, will you stay and keep me from feeling alone?”

  
  

But the need state cannot be resolved in this way. No person can complete another, because what we are truly searching for isn’t our partner’s love; it is our own connection to ourselves, to life itself, to the ever-present wholeness that we have forgotten.

The Collapse into Need: When Projection Leads to Dependency

When we are disconnected from this truth, the need state becomes unbearable, and we look for relief wherever we can find it. This is where codependence takes hold. The weight of our own unacknowledged longing gets placed on the partner, leading to patterns of enmeshment, control, or anxious attachment.

Some collapse into the need, becoming overly dependent, afraid to exist without the relationship. Others respond by denying their own need state altogether, avoiding intimacy to escape the terror of its pull. Both responses are attempts to manage the unbearable ache.

But need is not something to be managed, fixed, or avoided. It is something to be felt, honored, and integrated.

Reclaiming the Need State: The Path to Fluid Intimacy

Healing from codependence doesn’t mean rejecting need . . . it means transforming our relationship to it. It requires learning to sit with the ache without demanding that another person make it go away. It means turning inward and remembering that the separation we fear is an illusion.

This is the foundation of Fluid Intimacy™ . . . a relational dynamic in which both partners take 100% Responsibility™for their own need state. Rather than using each other as shields against existential longing, they become mirrors, walking alongside each other in mutual self-awareness.

Here’s what this shift looks like in practice:

• Recognizing the need state for what it is: Instead of expecting a partner to “fix” feelings of emptiness, we acknowledge that this longing is part of the human experience.

• Taking responsibility for self-connection: Rather than using the relationship to escape the ache, we turn inward, reconnecting with the Self, nature, spirit, and the body.

• Allowing relationships to enhance, not replace, connection: A partner is not a stand-in for our own inner work. Love flourishes when two whole beings come together, rather than when two fractured ones attempt to fill each other’s voids.

  
  

The Freedom in Facing the Ache

Ironically, when we stop using relationships as a way to escape the need state, true intimacy becomes possible. When we are no longer trying to make another person responsible for our deepest yearning, we can actually see them, love them, and be with them as they are . . . not as we need them to be.

The need state isn’t something to solve. It is a doorway. When we stop resisting it, we discover what has been true all along: there is no separation. There never was.

We are already home.