Who's feeding You?

In psychology, metaphors and symbolism are used to facilitate processing of emotions and situations. To me it seems that customs are the strongest symbols, especially because they are intertwined with your past, your family, an entire nation and culture.

🍰That’s why I want to start with a story about a custom, I perhaps only now truly understand. At the end of every wedding, they bring the wedding cake. By tradition, the bride and groom each take a little piece of the first slice and feed each other a bite.

I admit, it always seemed like a cliché and pointless to me.

But it did have a point. 

Because at the core of this custom there is a strong, but quiet promise: That she will “feed” his needs, and he will “feed” her needs. And so alternately...

❤️I love you. I want you. I want you to love me.

❤️I want you to love me, but the way I want you to love me.

❤️But how do you want to be loved?

I hope with the previous exercise you answered at least this question because it will help you in the next, even higher goal:

• 👉 improving communication with your partner and

• 👉 enhancing the level of your relationship.

  
  

🤷‍♂️ You might say — What does any of this have to do with work and business?!

Well...a lot!

When you love deeply and someone loves you equally deeply, you not only feel better — you become better. And with that — you contribute to everything around you becoming better. Or to put it differently, as Red Hot Chili Peppers said — “The love I made is the shape of my space.”

When a romantic relationship is based on trust, mutual respect, and care, it unlocks an incredible level of inner stability. From that space:

✅you lead with more clarity,

✅act with greater confidence, and

✅pursue your goals with a calm, grounded focus.

💡Love at its highest level isn’t a distraction from success — it’s a powerful engine behind it!

Once you truly understand your own needs — and learn how to communicate them clearly and openly with your partner — a healthy shift begins to happen. When those core emotional needs like safety, connection, belonging, and significance are met at home, your relationship becomes your foundation. Your anchor.

📉From there, work no longer serves as a substitute for emotional fulfilment. You don’t chase validation, worth, or recognition through your job — because you already feel seen, valued, and supported where it matters most.

📈Your career becomes the place where you expand rather than compensate.

📈You show up not from pressure, but from purpose.

📈You create not to prove, but to contribute.

You grow professionally and give back to the world — not because you need to feel enough, but because you already are.

🪜Levels of Relationship

Often in its development a relationship goes through all three levels, but the most important thing is where it mostly lingers and gravitates.

🥉Level I – Egocentric Relationship: Control and Proving 

🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️In this initial phase of the relationship, each partner is mainly focused on themselves and their own needs — emotional, physical, or mental. Essentially, this is the phase of building an impression and positioning: who has more power, who will set the “rules of the game,” and who will control the course of the relationship.

Each tries in some way to influence or change the other, mostly to ensure their own security, value, or dominance. Frequent power struggles and open attempts at control arise.

In this phase, intimacy is frequent but shallow. It is more a means of self-proving or getting something (confirmation, attention, control). Vulnerability and openness are skillfully avoided.

🥈Level II – Conditional Exchange Relationship: Parallel Lives 

⚖️At this level, the relationship is based on conditionality: “I’ll give you only if you give me.” The relationship functions as a kind of emotional and logistical exchange, where love, attention, and care are mere “transactions.”

Partners no longer try so much to control each other, mostly because each withdraws into their own world — without active interest in the other. The relationship becomes mechanical, with limited dialogue, minimal closeness, and more often: each builds a parallel life (with friends, hobbies, sometimes emotional/intimate alternatives outside the relationship).

This is the phase where many marriages or long-term relationships “get stuck,” thinking that peace and distance are signs of maturity or stability. But essentially, this is a state of emotional indifference. Intimacy is reduced to obligation or formality, and true connection almost doesn’t exist.

🥇Level III – Relationship of Unconditional Commitment and Maturity 

🌱The highest form of partnership relationship is characterized by conscious, voluntary, and unconditional commitment. Each partner is oriented toward understanding and fulfilling the other's needs, without calculations or conditions.

Control returns — this time not as a tool for domination, but as responsibility toward the partner and relationship. This does not mean self-neglect, but mature and active participation in building mutual wellbeing, through understanding, acceptance, and care.

In this phase, partners are emotionally open, vulnerable, and authentic. Intimacy becomes deep, playful, free of inhibitions and fear, and is an expression of complete connection — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

🙏And now I honestly beg you – please don’t jump to conclusions about your personal relationships. This is a rather general theory, but still a good start to reflect on:

• 🔍where you are

• 🔍where you want to be

• 🔍which definitions and rules you haven’t clearly vocalized or listened to

📝Exercise for this Week (or better yet, for the WEEKEND 😉)

💑This is an exercise for romantic partners. There is no business version because deep emotions are still reserved for home.

✍️Each partner takes several sheets of paper or a notebook and writes by hand. The order is as follows:

1. Personal Definitions

• 🖊️Each independently writes and ranks their own needs by importance

• 🔍For the top two highest-ranked needs, describe the means you use to meet those needs

• 📊Rate your partner (1-5) on how successful they are in meeting these needs

2. Perception of the partner

• 🖊️Each writes and ranks the partner’s needs according to their perception and feelings

• 🔍For the top two highest-ranked needs of the partner, describe the means they most want to be met by

• 📊Rate yourself (1-5) on how successfully you fulfill these needs for your partner, again according to your perception and feelings

3. Comparison

• 🔁Exchange the sheets/notebooks and compare the information

• ❗️If there is a difference in ratings, especially a big difference, that is a starting point for conversation

• 📌For better visual insight into the differences in perception of each other and communication obstacles, you can write the results (especially the differences) on a board or other visual aid.

✴️Finally, an important reminder: 

• For this exercise to be successful, partners must approach from a position of respect, complete trust, and emotional vulnerability.

• Partners are not opponents in a battle or competition but allies for improving their shared life.

• The exercise also assumes that both you and your partner have already read and understood the 6 human needs. If not, feel free to revisit the issue “CHECK WITH YOURSELF FIRST”