Needing to Be Needed: Overcoming Your Addiction to Relationship Chaos

We need to admit that, on some deep unspoken level, we are drawn to chaotic romantic partners because in the drama and dysfunction that surrounds them, we feel enduringly needed. We don't have to interrogate too closely what messed-up psychological rationale might underlie this drive. Just pausing for a beat and acknowledging this seedy truth about ourselves is enough of a radical act of bravery and vulnerability for now.

If you're like me—an introspective sort at least attempting to stay honest with yourself—you've felt this troubling pull toward romantic chaos. It tugs at you whether you were raised in a stable environment or a dysfunctional one, whether you had a happy childhood or a traumatic one. There's something in our lizard brains that wants to partner with volcanoes rather than pools of calm water.

Of course, this might sound counterintuitive. After all, don't we claim to want supportive, stable partners? People who will be there for us and never let us down? Sure, ostensibly. But lining up our conscious desires with our unconscious drivers is often like herding schizophrenic cats. Because for some of us at least, there is a subtle (or not-so-subtle) appeal to the drama and high highs/low lows of being with a perpetually turbulent character. Even if we rail against it on the surface, deep down we get off on it.

Just think about your last few dysfunctional exes. If you're being radically honest, wasn't there a tiny frisson of excitement that accompanied their most erratic behaviors? An ember of feeling needed that you instinctively stoked through enabling and caretaking? For some, that feeling of being needed is the relationship crack they keep chasing, even after wising up enough to realize true intimacy requires both partners to be anchored in their own secure sense of self.

Not to get all boo-hoo about it, but our culture doesn't make it easy to opt out. Turn on any TV show or streaming series, and you'll see neediness and chaos codified as romance. The lovebirds perpetually break up and make up. They have screaming matches and hate-sex. Then they hit the reset button and do it all again next week. It becomes a vicarious thrill we mainline unconsciously. The message: this is passion; this is what love looks like. Boredom and health and stability, on the other hand, get equated with emasculation or dreariness.

Even if your childhood modeled a healthier vision, those corrosive cultural narratives sank their hooks in you too. So we find ourselves unable to resist the undertow. We keep going for emotional roller coasters because at least that way we feel needed and relevant and like there's dramatic stakes in our lives. The alternative—committing to an unglamorous nice person without outsized storms of passion—seems anticlimactic by comparison.

So what to do with this inglorious psychic truth about ourselves? Continue feigning ignorance, while sabotaging potential for stability and seeding chaos everywhere we go? Or get radically honest and make profound changes?

If you choose door number two—the path of greater integrity—it will take real grit. Because opting out of this drama addiction is like any other detox. Your addiction brain will fight you viciously, conjuring every excuse and craving and justification to pull you off course. You'll want to retreat to the relative safety and familiarity of dysfunction. Venturing into the unknown territory of unvarnished stability and health will feel perilous at first.

But stay the course. Find supports to lean on—friends or mentors or therapists or clergy who can model what healthy partnership looks like and remind you why you resolved to live without chaos. Give yourself credit for each craving you withstand. It may take months or years to fully kick the drama habit, but each day you stick to your resolve is a small victory.

Because once you habituate yourself to drama-free living, you'll wonder how you ever tolerated the pointless turmoil of always seeking relationships with the emotionally labile. Living stably and steadily will start to feel natural rather than anticlimactic. And when you do hit the occasional rough patch or dry spell? Instead of reflexively manufacturing crisis, your new emotional resiliency will allow you to ride things out with grace and self-possession.

Most importantly, as you evolve away from chaos junkiehood, you'll start modelling health and groundedness for others. Not in a preachy way, but simply through the integrity of how you move through the world. And even if it's not your exact intention, you'll prompt others to question whether they too might want to opt out of perpetual dramatics—spurring a positive chain reaction.

So reflect upon this rather shameful truth about many of us, but don't judge yourself too harshly. Simply use it as a mirror to peer into those darker, unacknowledged psychic spaces within. Then resolve to start living with radical honesty and commitment. You can train yourself out of being seduced by emotional volcanoes, and into stable peace. The rewards of that evolution may not seem dramatic at first, but the depth and meaning you'll derive will be anything but anticlimactic.