Peace by Piece

I want you. But I do not need you.

I said this to Carter more times than I can count over the years. And every single time I said it, he heard it as a withdrawal of love. As a warning. As me holding something back from him that he deserved to have.

He was wrong. But I understand why he heard it that way. Because we live in a world that has romanticised need to the point where we have confused it with love. We celebrate the couple who cannot breathe without each other. We write songs about not being able to live without someone. We call it devotion. We call it passion. We call it the real thing.

I call it something else.

WHAT NEED ACTUALLY IS

Need is not love. Need is hunger. And like all hunger it is about the person who is hungry – not about the thing they are hungry for.

When you need someone you are not seeing them clearly. You are not loving who they actually are – the full picture, ugly and honest, good with the bad. You are loving what they give you. The comfort, the validation, the feeling of being chosen, the relief of not being alone. And need will blind you to the truth of your reality because what it is feeding on is not the person – it is the feeling the person produces in you. The moment that feeling is threatened the need panics. And a panicking need will rationalise almost anything to protect itself.

That is the difference. When you want someone – truly want them – you see them clearly. You know them fully. And you choose them anyway. Not because of what they give you. Because of who they are. Need cannot do that. Need is too busy protecting the supply to ever really see the person providing it.

Need also makes you vulnerable in a way that love does not. When you need someone you give them enormous power over your emotional state. Their mood becomes your mood. Their withdrawal becomes your crisis. Their absence becomes unbearable not because you miss them but because without them you do not know who you are.

I have watched need destroy people. I have watched women stay in situations that were killing them slowly because they could not imagine existing outside of them. Not because they loved too much. But because they had built their entire sense of self around another person and without that person they felt they would simply cease to exist.

That is not love. That is a disappearing act.

WHAT WANT ACTUALLY IS

Wanting someone is entirely different.

When you want someone you see them clearly – the good and the bad, the beautiful and the broken – and you choose them anyway. Not because you cannot survive without them. But because with them, something is better. Richer. More interesting. More alive.

Wanting someone means your love is a gift you give freely rather than a transaction you enter into out of desperation. It means you show up every day not because you are afraid of what happens if you do not but because you genuinely want to be there.

It also means that when things are hard – and they will be hard, they are always hard at some point – your love does not collapse. Because it was never built on need. It was built on choice. And choice is far more durable than hunger.

I chose Carter every single day for 24 years. Not because I could not have chosen differently. But because I looked at what we had, imperfect and complicated and painful as it often was, and I chose it. Consciously. With full knowledge of what I was choosing.

That is not weakness. That is one of the strongest things a person can do.

HOW NEED DISEMPOWERS YOU

Here is what I observed in myself during the moments I slipped from wanting into needing -and there were moments, I will not pretend there were not.

When I needed Carter’s approval my confidence lived and died by his mood. A good day from him meant I was okay. A distant day meant I had done something wrong. I spent enormous amounts of energy trying to read him, manage him, anticipate what he needed so that he would give me back the version of himself that made me feel safe.

That is exhausting. It is also completely unsustainable. And it hands your power to someone else on a silver platter.

When I needed him to come home I could not sleep. When I needed him to be sober I could not breathe. When I needed him to choose us I could not function. Every single one of those needs placed my emotional wellbeing entirely in his hands. And his hands, during those years, were not reliable.

Had I truly needed him in all the ways need demands – I would never have survived. Because he was not there. Not consistently. Not reliably. The school runs and the grocery shopping and the sleepless nights and the medical appointments and the weight of keeping everything together – I carried all of that alone. If I had been waiting to be rescued out of need I would still be waiting.

The moments I was most at peace were the moments I returned to wanting. When I could look at him and say – I love you, I choose you, and I am also completely okay without you. Those were the moments I had my power back. Those were the moments I was most fully myself.

HOW WANT EMPOWERS YOU

Wanting someone from a place of wholeness rather than hunger changes everything about how you move through a relationship.

It means you can set boundaries without fear. Because your survival is not dependent on the other person accepting those boundaries. You can say this is not okay without it feeling like the end of the world. Because you know – somewhere deep and steady in yourself – that you will be okay either way.

It means you can love generously. Ironically, the people who love from want rather than need are often the most giving lovers. Because they are not loving in order to get something back. They are loving because they have enough inside themselves to give freely.

It means you can leave when leaving is the right thing. One of the saddest things I have witnessed is someone who knows they need to go but cannot make themselves move because their need has paralysed them completely. When you love from want rather than need, the door is always visible. You may choose not to walk through it – I chose not to for a very long time – but you can always see it. And that visibility is everything.

It means your happiness is your own. It does not live in someone else’s hands. It does not fluctuate with someone else’s moods. It is yours, tended by you, sustained by you, returned to by you when life pulls you away from it.

WHAT I WANT YOU TO TAKE FROM THIS

If you are in a relationship with an addict – or have been – the concept of want versus need is not just philosophical. It is practical. It is survival.

Because here is the truth about loving an addict. They will not always show up. They cannot always show up. The nature of the illness means that there will be seasons where they are so consumed by their own internal battle that they have nothing left to give you. If you need them during those seasons you will be devastated every single time. If you want them – if your love is rooted in choice rather than dependency – you have a fighting chance of getting through those seasons with yourself intact.

This is not about loving less. I want to be very clear about that. Loving from want rather than need is not a smaller or colder or more guarded love. It is actually a bigger love. A braver love. Because it does not ask for anything in return in order to exist.

I loved Carter with everything I had. And I never needed him to survive.

Those two things can be true at the same time.

In fact I think they have to be.

A QUESTION FOR YOU

Sit with this for a moment and answer it honestly – just for yourself, not for anyone else.

Are you staying because you want to? Or because you are afraid of what happens if you go?

There is no wrong answer. But there is an honest one. And whatever that honest answer is – it is the beginning of something. Either the beginning of choosing more consciously. Or the beginning of finding your way back to yourself.

Both are worth beginning.

Love, Sloane