It’s scary to start conversations about needs in a relationship. That’s why a relationship needs and wants worksheet will help guide your conversation to a meaningful place. You’re taking an important, meaningful step in your relationship.
Whether this is the first time you’ve talked about needs in your relationship or the hundredth, you’ll be surprised at what comes up. The worksheet includes 11 statements that will help you “unlock” the needs you may not have realized you had.
From there, you and your partner can read through what each of those statements means in terms of identifying your needs and wants. Enjoy the process and remember that you’re one step closer to an even healthier relationship.
This post is all about a relationship needs and wants worksheet.
RELATIONSHIP NEEDS AND WANTS WORKSHEET:
There’s no better place to start, when you’re looking to build a strong relationship, than a free worksheet. Below, we dive into the five main relationship “needs” and five main relationship “wants.”
We recommend that you complete the worksheet first, then refer back to this blog for guidance on how to initiate conversations based on your answer to the 11 statements listed on the worksheet.
To complete the relationship needs worksheet, create two copies of the worksheet, print or digital, and make it a date night with your partner. Some of these statements might bring up difficult subjects, so we recommend that you and your partner answer separately.
For each statement, you will bubble in “Yes,” “Maybe,” or “No,” which indicates the level to which you agree with each statement. Please note that this worksheet works best when you avoid answering “Maybe” as often as possible.
You may be tempted to answer maybe for one of two reasons: 1) you are afraid of hurting your partner’s feelings or 2) you don’t want your partner to develop a false sense of security or become complacent.
Either way, it’s a good idea to answer authentically and avoid “Maybe,” so that the conversations that come from this activity benefit and strengthen your relationship.
Once you answer each of the statements truthfully, you can flip over the sheet or scroll down to see how each of the statements aligns with a need.
From there, you can refer to this blog for more information about each need. Remember to enter this activity with an open mind and be ready to get vulnerable.
Download the worksheet by filling out the form below. Continue scrolling to learn more about the ten main wants and needs to discuss in a relationship.
What are emotional needs?
Emotional needs are any requirements you have that help you to feel safe and comfortable. These needs are often less tangible than physical needs or basic needs, like food and water, which is why they are referred to as emotional.
When you’re in a long-term relationship, it’s important to identify your emotional needs so that your partner can fulfill them. In unhealthy relationships, you will feel unhappy because your emotional needs are not met.
This can look like your partner failing to communicate with you, validate you, or support you. In healthy romantic relationships, your partner will practice effective communication by openly expressing their emotions or demonstrating that they are working towards that goal.
Through effective communication, you and your potential partner can create work to strengthen your relationship by talking about how to better meet both your own needs and your partner’s needs.
Identifying Your Relationship Needs
1. Emotional Support
Ask yourself if your partner listens to you, validates you, and encourages you. When you talk to them, look for signs that they are listening and show they care. Your partner should care about anything that you care enough about to share with them.
They should show it, too. This means they put away their phone, they turn toward you, and they respond to you. It’s okay for your partner to tell you that they can’t give you their full attention at the moment, as this is also a form of active listening.
Rather than letting you talk without paying attention, they value you enough to tell you that they need time before they can give you the attention you deserve.
If you notice your partner struggles with this, this is a good opportunity to figure out how you want them to better support you and what makes you feel supported by them.
2. Effective communication
Everyone values communication at a different level. Some people share every part of their lives with anyone who will listen and prefer people in their lives to do the same. Some people share absolutely no details because that’s what works for them.
The important step is to find a happy medium between you and your partner. You two need to compromise and communicate about the personal boundaries you want to create around communication.
It makes all the difference if you develop a better understanding that your partner is not sharing the mundane details about their day with you, not because they’re angry or punishing you, but because that’s not what they’re used to.
Talk to each other about both your met and unmet needs and what effective communication looks like to you.
3. Quality time
Define quality time for yourself and your partner. You and your partner may have completely different definitions and the only way to know that is by talking about it. You may feel unfulfilled by the time you spend together because it isn’t meaningful to you.
The worst part is that your partner may have no idea that this is going on. So, the best way to fix this is to talk about it and talk through your important needs around spending time together and what quality time looks like for each of you.
Ask each other how each of you feels most connected to the other person. For many relationship issues, open communication is the best way to create positive changes and promote relationship satisfaction.
4. Respect
Respect should exist in every relationship. If it doesn’t, that relationship is not healthy. Having said that, it’s one thing for respect to exist in a relationship and it’s another for everyone involved to feel that respect.
So, take this opportunity to identify what ways your partner has demonstrated they respect you and what new ways they can start. Consider what healthy boundaries you need to create in the relationship to promote respect.
Think of times when you haven’t felt respected in your relationship and ask yourself how that could be avoided in the future. It’s not your responsibility to “force” your partner to respect you because they are their own person and in charge of their own actions.
However, it is your responsibility to notice when a relationship is not healthy or contributing to a healthy life and to do your best to communicate with your partner when you are not feeling respected.
5. Trust
Trust is challenging sometimes. In some great relationships, it feels like it exists without any effort. In others, it feels like it will never really exist. No matter what, trust takes time and effort to build. It’s not impossible to rebuild when it’s broken.
But, it’s almost to be completely certain of anything in your life. You can trust your partner with every fiber of your being and they can still hurt you in ways that betray that trust. Unfortunately, there’s no real way to guarantee that.
That’s why trust is one of the most important aspects of intimate relationships. Trust is the piece of a relationship that shows you are willing to put faith in your partner not to hurt you.
Ask yourself what your partner can continue to do to build trust in your relationship and which behaviors do the exact opposite.
Expressing Your Relationship Wants
1. Common interests
Now, after discussing relationship needs, you get to talk about your partner as the person you share your life with. Most relationships can work if both people put the effort into them.
However, being in a healthy relationship does not guarantee that you will be happy and fulfilled in your relationship. This is the part of the relationship work where you get to make sure you like the person you love.
So, ask yourself what interests you want to share with your partner. Maybe you both like to cook, watch a certain type of show, share the same favorite books, or go skydiving together.
Maybe sharing activities doesn’t matter to you as much as it matters to your partner because you value your independence more than you value sharing lots of interests with your partner.
2. Future goals
Consider what your long-term goals are and how your partner fits into them. In every healthy relationship, your partner should add to your future and your life, in general, rather than take away from it.
Your goals can look like anything that promotes your personal growth and development. Maybe you want to start volunteering at the local animal shelter, so your partner needs to take on some more responsibilities at home.
Or you want to go back to school, so you need to re-negotiate your family roles within the home. Consider whether you’ve had conversations with your partner about the future and your future goals.
It may be scary to bring up the future when you’re not sure how long your relationship will last, especially in the beginning stages. But, if you’re filling out the relationship worksheet with them, you deserve to if you will be in each other’s lives for the long run.
3. Affection
In a lot of ways, affection can be an emotional need. However, we’ve placed it into the “wants” category because it can look like very different things depending on your childhood and past relationship experiences.
So, consider the ways the affection feels best to you, especially when you consider love language as a part of this. You can think of affection as physical touch, like hugging, kissing, cuddling, or having sex.
You can also think of affection as your partner verbally telling you they love you and anything else they can say to demonstrate affection. This is a great time for you to tell your partner how you like to receive affection and in what ways it means the most.
You two may have different ways that you like someone to show affection. So, talk to your partner about this to make sure you show each other affection in the way that means the most to each of you.
4. Independence
Independence is important to every relationship. When you lose your independence, you run the risk of becoming codependent. However, it’s possible to become so independent that you end up hurting your relationship.
In cases like avoidant attachment or love avoidance, your desire for independence comes from the fear of intimacy. So, you need to find the right balance for you and your relationship. Make sure you have the space to be your own person with your own life, achievements, and goals.
You also need to make sure that you have a deeper connection with your partner that allows you to share a life with them and create relationship goals with them.
Have an open conversation about how much each of you values independence. Talk about areas in which you’d prefer to have more autonomy and where you might want more support.
5. Surprises and gestures
Everyone has a different reaction to surprises. Furthermore, people often have different levels of surprises they can accept. Some people cannot handle any type of surprise at all.
They may not want to disappoint people with their reactions, deal with the pressure of a surprise, or be out of control in a situation. Whereas other people absolutely love surprises and all of the thought that goes into making a surprise happen for someone.
In your relationship, it’s important to figure out where both of you sit on that spectrum. It may be important to one or both of you to be surprised by your partner because it shows thoughtfulness.
This is a great way to talk about the types of thoughtful gestures that each of you appreciates, even if they aren’t related to surprises.
