The Problem Isn’t Your Needs. It’s Where You Place Them.

In response to my recent article The Tension Between Wanting More and Accepting What Is in Non-Monogamy, someone left a comment that stayed with me:

“I’m not going to be in a relationship with someone who cannot fulfill my needs.”

And honestly… it makes sense. If you’ve ever been with someone where you felt under-met, misled, or slowly depleted over time, that statement can feel like a self-respecting boundary.

Talia Levitt, I’m, 2024

But there’s something inside that declaration that’s worth slowing down and looking at more closely. Because if you take it literally, it leads to a conclusion that doesn’t quite hold inside non-monogamy: That one person should be able to fulfill all of your needs.

And if they can’t, the relationship isn’t worth being in. But the entire premise of non-monogamy gently disrupts that idea. When we move toward a relational ecosystem—where needs are met across multiple connections—we need a different way to evaluate whether a relationship is actually working.

This is where the conversation gets more nuanced.

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