Honoring All Needs in Relationship

This is part of a 7-week series exploring the seven core emotional attributes that drive human interaction, as presented by the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. These attributes are collectively called Sephirot. Each individually is a sephirah.

*This week we are exploring the seven aspects of the sphere of Yesod.

The first two aspects of Yesod are Chesed of Yesod and Gevurah of Yesod.

Chesed of Yesod: Address What Lies Beneath the Surface

your needs meet my needs
merging to become our needs
in relationship

Arguments about something are almost never about the “thing.”

An argument about dishes in the sink is not about dishes in the sink.

An argument about who is doing the laundry it’s not really about the laundry.

The dishes, the laundry — they are proxies. Stand ins for a deeper issue, an issue that lies beneath the surface.

It’s visible, but hiding. You know it’s there, but you don’t want to speak to it.

So instead, you have this argument about who is responsible for cleaning the kitchen or whose turn it is to pick up the kids or who dropped the ball in the communication.

Even as you know it’s not really about that. You are treading water: addressing symptoms rather than looking at the causes of the disease. Meanwhile the disease keeps growing.

This is often what happens in relationships of all kinds, whether intimate or professional.

It is easier to address was on the surface than to speak about the deeper and often more difficult issues.

One reason for this is that these conversations feel risky. We crave connection; we fear what might happen if we asserted our needs with more boldness and conviction, if we dared to challenge the current status quo in our relationships.

Chesed of Yesod invites us to have these deeper conversations. It invites us to open with love and the kindness and care to what lies beneath the surface. To bring it forward so that it can be revealed and thereby healed.

To do this we must first fully-acknowledge to ourselves our needs, and how the relationship may not be meeting them. We must be open to listening to the other person to hear and understand their needs and consider that their needs also may not be met.

These conversations invite us to examine our beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and expectations of our partner.

• Where are we being unrealistic or unfair?
• Where are we expecting too much or too little?
• Where are we holding the other person to a standard that is too high or too low?
• Where are we overcompensating for what we perceive to be someone else’s deficiency, thereby overgiving at our expense and also prevent

Gevurah of Yesod: Give Soace

constant connection
can drain vital energy
respect others’ space

Gevurah, which literally translates to strength, speaks to the strength of restraint. Gevurah always holds back. It is the quality of discretion.

Gevurah of Yesod is about resisting the urge to render judgment on our relationship at the wrong time.

Your partner might not be acting in their fullest capacity. They might be living with a hijacked nervous system that’s in constant fight-or-flight mode, which causes them to be forgetful or less attentive to your needs. In this state, they might be unable to hear or appreciate your concerns.

Knowing when to initiate a conversation is crucial. If we initiate at the wrong time, we risk further resistance and rejection.

Gevurah of Yesod reminds us to respect the other person’s space and not force conversations before their time.