How Emotional Hunger Can Destroy Your Relationship or Marriage

Do you ever feel like you can never satisfy your emotional needs no matter how hard you try? You are probably emotionally hungry. Even though it can be fixed, many adults live with it for a long time before seeking help. Emotionally hungry adults live life feeling unfulfilled and unhappy. It may reflect in their relationships.

Emotional hunger can be caused by poor social skills, past rejection, or an inability to connect with others. However, it is such a constant feeling that it may be difficult to identify its exact cause. Here are a few ways that emotional hunger may be ruining your marriage or relationship.

• Love Addiction

Emotional hunger goes hand in hand with love addiction. Even though the addiction may apply to all types of relationships, it is especially common in romantic relationships. Most people develop love addiction to protect themselves from bad situations or painful feelings. Getting into a relationship while addicted is a recipe for disaster. Like with any other form of addiction, you have to seek treatment.

• It Can be Mistaken for Love

Emotional hunger looks a lot like love. Therefore, it can push you into getting into the wrong relationships or marriage. If you are emotionally hungry, your partner and relationship will suffer. Instead of nurturing them, you are likely to make them feel empty and drained.

While love has healthy boundaries, emotional hunger is insecure and overly dependent. It may create confusion, especially if you don’t understand how emotionally hunger is different from love. It may be challenging to know why being there for your partner and expressing your affection ultimately makes them feel exhausted.

You are likely to feel that nothing you do is right or enough to make your partner happy. If you keep putting in effort and getting nothing in return, you will eventually resent them. Your partner may be unable to put up you’re your behavior. It’ll come off as smothering, overbearing, and intrusive.

You may mistake emotional hunger and love for each other because they are intense and longing. With both of them, one may seem affectionate and attentive to their partner’s needs and the relationship’s success. The main difference, however, is in how it feels to the beloved. Love will make you feel nurtured, seen, and appreciated. Emotional hunger, however, will leave you feeling tired and overwhelmed. It may seem that your partner is doing too much to make you feel good. Such marriages and relationships are unlikely to last long. In the end, they stir up negative feelings in both parties.

• It Breeds Assumptions

Emotional hunger comes with insecurity and the assumption that you know what others think about you. It pushes you to seek the approval of others constantly. That means you are unlikely to let your true personality shine. You may spend too much time trying to please your partner and others around you.

Emotionally hungry people spend too much time trying to figure out what others think about them. They may change their character or habits to sustain certain connections. This trait is unattractive to most people.

• Using Sex to ‘Feel Something’

Even though sex is important, it shouldn’t be used as a tool to ‘feel alive.’ However, emotionally hungry people are constantly using it to get a sense of fulfillment. When in a marriage or relationship, emotional hunger may encourage infidelity. Casual sex tricks your mind into believing that your emotional needs have been met. It gives you instant validation, but you still have the same problems when you go back home to your marriage.

If you are going through problems in your relationship, sex may offer a temporary fix. However, this isn’t the best solution. You would be better off talking about it to trusted friends or a therapist.

• Risk of Losing Yourself

When you are emotionally hungry, you spend so much time trying to please others that you forget about yourself. When you aren’t taking care of yourself, nothing your partner does can make you happy. You are unlikely to feel fulfilled or content in the relationship.

Emotional hunger pushes you to over-give as a form of emotional insurance. You may feel the need to be constantly available in the hope that others will do the same. However, all this does is drain you. In the end, people will treat you how they want. Taking care of yourself is the first step towards taking care of your relationship.

Emotional hunger may be a horrible state to be in, but it doesn’t have to be permanent. Consider seeking professional help to protect your marriage and relationships.