There is a question I sat with for a long time.
Not an abstract, philosophical question — a personal one. A vulnerable one.
Why did I stay? And why did I keep trying?
In this episode, I want to take you somewhere deeper than we have gone before. We explored in Episode 25 what we didn’t receive in childhood — the wound of absence, the needs that were never met.
Today we go further. We go into what those unmet needs actually do to us — how they quietly, invisibly, with devastating precision, drive every single decision we make in love.
I take you through what the show Euphoria reveals about how unmet needs play out in real relationships.
And I introduce the core dilemma that every child faces in early development:
Can I fully be myself and still be loved — or do I have to give a part of myself to survive?
Disclaimer: This episode will really challenge you
And it will also free you.
Why Did I Stay with a Narcissist? The Promise of Love
It’s a Sunday evening. I am sitting on my couch; I just had a hot shower. I am feeling the freshness of that moment, the clean clothes, the cool air on my skin.
I notice my blood pressure dropped for a little bit, so I am gently resting — and as I look through these large windows of my living room and into the horizon, this thought solidifies in my mind.
It was the promise of love that drove my decisions.
The excitement that finally, this will be it. That my needs would be met — unconsciously of course.
Because before my internal growth, my inner work, I never thought deeply about what it meant for my needs to be met. “What needs?” I also didn’t understand the true deep meaning behind values versus our actions.
The promise of love makes us accept very poor conditions just to get a little bit of love. And when we don’t get it, we hope we can change that person into giving us what we need. Unconsciously, of course — we are still in the process of resolving our original wound. Which is the promise of love unmet and unfulfilled by our parents.
So, we try harder. We change. We give up things for the promise of love. Every lover we meet, we ask this of them silently. They don’t know. And we don’t know that we are asking them to meet the love that was never given to us by our father or our mother. The same hope we had as children — we carry it forward. And we try and try and try.
We give up our identity, our friends, our culture, for a few drops of love. And in the end, we realize just how lost we are in the search for this love, this person, this dream.
What “Euphoria” Teaches Us About Unmet Needs
I recently stumbled upon the show called Euphoria — and it really depicts how our unmet needs drive our decisions in ways that most of us will recognize immediately.
There is a girl, Rue — played by Zendaya. She is a drug addict. Her dad died when she was young and she never recovered. She misses her dad. And that unfulfilled love has left a hole that nothing else seems to fill quite as well as the drugs she takes.
The substance becomes the substitute for the love that was taken away too soon. It numbs the ache of his absence without ever healing it.
Then there is Cassie — played by Sydney Sweeney. A sweet, sensitive, beautiful girl who pours herself completely into love.
She is finally drawn into the chaos by Nate — a tall, charming, magnetic, a narcissistic psychopath who slowly turns Cassie into this obedient, self-erasing version of herself who would do anything, give up anything, become anyone, just to keep him. And she does it all for love.
She also uses her body. She uses her appearance. She performs beauty and availability the way a child performs goodness hoping a parent will finally notice — hoping that if she is just enough of what he wants, he will finally see her. And he never does.
And here is what is perhaps most disturbing, and most important: even Nate needs love. Even the narcissist. He performs sensitivity, he lavishes attention, he mirrors back exactly what his partner most needs to feel. But when the mask finally drops, there is nothing there.
Not because he chose to withhold it — but because he was genuinely incapable of producing it. He needs love and cannot generate it. So, he performs the role of someone who loves in order to receive it.
Three people. Three gaping holes where love should have been. Three completely different coping strategies — all of them unconscious. All of them desperate.
This is what unmet needs look like when they are running the show.
The Core Dilemma Every Child Faces
In the process of early development, every child meets with this core dilemma: Can I fully be myself and still be loved or do I have to give up parts of myself to survive?
This is not a dramatic question. It is not philosophical. It is biological. It is the question the nervous system of every child on this planet is trying to answer in real time, through thousands of daily interactions with the people they depend on for survival.
For the sensitive soul — the child who feels everything more acutely, you, who attunes deeply, who needs real emotional presence to feel safe — when that presence is absent or conditional, the wound goes deep. Not because you’re fragile. But because you are wired for depth, and the environment could not meet you there.
For the narcissist, the wound was so severe. The performance is not a choice — it is survival. The true self went underground so completely that even he cannot find it anymore.
And for you, the sensitive soul who loved him — you too gave parts of yourself as a child. You learned the same coping mechanism: become what is needed, suppress what is not welcomed, earn love through doing rather than simply being.
And for any sensitive soul who enters a narcissistic relationship, she reaches for the same tool she has always had.
Same wound. Different costume. Same question: can I be myself and still be loved?
And almost always — in a narcissistic relationship — the answer she receives is no.
The Mirror—You are Still Protesting for the Same Needs
Here is something I want you to really take in.
For this experiment, I want you to take the observer position so that this doesn’t feel personal. You are watching a version of you.
Imagine watching the child version of you.
Imagine you are experiencing distress. You communicate that distress— in whatever way you know how. You protest. And when that protest does not get the attention your distress requires, you escalate. Protest becomes anger. Anger that goes unattended becomes rage. But rage — in a child — threatens the very attachment relationship they cannot afford to lose.
Imagine watching the adult version of you, again take the observer position at the balcony.
Now watch what happens in the adult relationship with the narcissist.
When you experience distress, you communicate it — in whatever way you know how. The difference now is that you are an adult. You have been exposed to the world — to social media, to Netflix, to magazines that have taught you tactics. So, you use them. You make him jealous. You post something. You go quiet for three days. You block him. You burn his clothes. You rage. You beg.
Different tools. Same need. Same protest.
And as you are watching, notice what you see … an adult standing in a burning room, screaming the same thing they screamed at five years old — please see me, please come, please don’t leave, please love me — and calling it a relationship crisis.
How do you see yourself in this picture?
As an adult when you are raging inside, very upset, who inside you is upset?
This is one of the most important recognitions you can have about yourself.
Because the moment you see it clearly — the moment you understand that you are not reacting to this person in front of you but rather you are reacting to an original wound that this person activated — everything changes.
Almost 99% of the population does not know that this is what they are doing at every single moment. Because our needs have always been unconscious — until the day they are made conscious to us.
Our needs for love, connection, attunement, attention, understanding, acceptance. These needs are as real and as biological as hunger. These needs do not disappear when they go unmet. They simply go underground — and from there, they drive every decision we make.
Tied by Hope—The Fantasy We call Love
I want to talk about something that almost nobody names directly. And it is this: Hope is what keeps us in the wrong places.
Hope is what keeps us in the wrong places
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Not love. Not attachment. Hope.
As long as hope is alive — as long as there is a chance, however small, however irrational — we stay.
We stay in relationships that are slowly eroding us. We stay in dynamics that we know, somewhere beneath the surface, are not good for us. We stay even when there is violence. Even when there is cruelty. Even when everyone around us can see what we cannot.
Because hope says: “maybe this time. Maybe if I try differently. Maybe if I love better. Maybe if I love deeper. Maybe if I submit more. Maybe if I make myself into what he really wants me to be. Maybe God will change him or her or them. Maybe they will finally see me“
Sadly, they never do.
Hope is not always the enemy. But hope directed at the wrong person — hope used as a substitute for clear seeing — becomes the thing that holds us hostage.
Research on trauma bonding consistently shows that the longer the childhood abuse or neglect, the longer a person tends to remain in a harmful adult relationship. This is not weakness. This is the mathematics of attachment.
The child who waited the longest for a parent to show up has the most practice waiting. The hope that was formed in that early waiting does not simply dissolve in adulthood — it transfers. It attaches itself to the next unavailable person and waits again.
And underneath the hope is always the same childhood fantasy: that one day, they will finally see me. That one day, I will do or be or say the right thing, and the love I have always needed will finally arrive.
We need to get out of the childhood fantasy.
Not because hope is wrong. But because the hope belongs to you — not to them. The love you are hoping they will one day give you is the love you have not yet given yourself.
And no amount of waiting, of trying, of performing, of shrinking — will make another person capable of giving you what they do not have.
Notice when you use hope on another person instead of using it to see clearly. Notice when hope becomes the reason you stay rather than the reason you grow.
The Real Question — Can you Love and Accept Yourself?
Narcissus really teaches us something extraordinary.
Even when people pour their love and adoration onto him — even when he is worshipped, desired, pursued, even when he receives the whole Charlie Sheen experience — it slides off of him like snow melting in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
Nothing external quite does the trick. Because the wound is not outside. The wound is inside. And no amount of external love can reach an internal wound.
This is the truth that sets you free — and it applies to you as much as it applies to him.
So, the question is not: can you find someone who will finally love you?
The question is: can you love and accept yourself — exactly as you are, right now, in this moment?
Can you find connection within yourself?
Can you be attuned to your own needs, moods, and behaviors — the way you have always attuned to everyone else’s?
Can you pay attention to yourself?
Can you understand yourself?
Can you accept yourself — not because you have achieved something, not because you live somewhere impressive or drive something expensive or carry a title that impresses people — but simply because you exist, and your existence has value?
The narcissist did not take your values away. They revealed the misalignment. They showed you where you had been betting against yourself in exchange for the promise of love.
The narcissist did not take your values away, they revealed the misalignment.
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And in doing so — in their terrible, unconscious, devastating way — they handed you the most important invitation of your life.
To stop looking for love in the place it was never going to come from. And to start turning —fully, finally, completely — toward yourself.
Because here is what I know with everything I am:
If you choose to complete this mission — if you do the work of making your unconscious needs conscious, of healing the original wound, of integrating the parts of yourself you gave away — you will never again give up any part of yourself to be with another human being.
You will understand your values not as something you aspire to but as something you return to. You always had these values. You compromised them to survive. And when you wake up from survival, you can never bet against them again.
You matter. Not you matter because of something. Not you matter because you have something. But that you matter. You are important. Not because you live in a McMansion or drive a BMW or carry a big job title — all external things.
Whether you are living in a tiny house in Wisconsin, or on a farm in Texas, or by the beach in Tulum or Zanzibar — location and things don’t matter. Things that can btw be destroyed in a hurricane, a fire, earthquake, tornado, you name it. But you matter.
Because you are here. Because you feel deeply. Because the very sensitivity that made you vulnerable is also the thing that makes you capable of the kind of love, wisdom, and empowerment that most people only dream of.
The absence of love taught you the most important lesson of all: that the love you have been searching for has always lived inside you.
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It’s the act of removing the burden of fulfilment from another person that truly sets you free.
Not “why won’t you accept me” — but “I am sorry to hear that I am not enough for you. But your inability to accept me does not change my acceptance of me.”
That sentence — say it slowly — is not arrogance. It is not coldness. It is the sound of someone who has finally come home to themselves.
And that is what this work is for.
If something in today’s episode stirred something in you — if you found yourself nodding, or pausing, or sitting with something you have never quite had words for before — I want you to know that there is a next step.
A structured way to rebuild, with someone who actually understands what you are carrying. My door is always open for you. Come find me.
In our next episode we delve into “suffering”. Why does the narcissistic abuse hurt so much? Why does it hurt so much?
We will connect the dots.
Until next time — stay empowered and true to yourself.
— Mariam