Why We Look for Completion in Relationships—and How Couples Therapy Helps

The yogic traditions teach that the fundamental driver of human behavior is a mistaken sense of lack, born from forgetting our true nature and believing ourselves to be separate from the whole. In this illusion of separateness, we search for completion in external things: jobs, beauty, cars, success, praise, and—often most powerfully—in relationships with others.

It’s common for a part of us, whether consciously or unconsciously, to look to our romantic partners to provide that sense of wholeness. If we’re single, we may carry a story like, “Once I find a relationship, everything will fall into place.”

This innocent hope is rooted in a longing for something real (connection, safety, and love), but it’s tangled up with the misunderstanding that someone else can complete us. When we believe this, our emotional state hinges on our partner’s actions. If they do what I want, I feel secure. If they don’t, I feel rejected, unsafe, or unloved.

This is the dynamic I often see in relational therapy. A partner might say:

“If they just had more time off, we’d be okay.”

“If they were better with money, I’d feel secure.”

“If they’d just go to therapy, then I’d feel seen and understood.”

For those of us with unmet childhood needs—especially from trauma, neglect, or emotional deprivation—this longing can feel even more urgent. When we didn’t receive unconditional love or attuned care as children, we may project that unmet need for love and validation onto our romantic partners and expect them to provide what we missed.

But rather than fulfilling us, intimate relationships often hold up a mirror. They reflect back the very parts of ourselves we’ve exiled or hidden—the parts we struggle to accept. Suddenly, the person we longed to be loved by the most seems to echo back our deepest fears about ourselves.

When two people both bring these unspoken hopes for completion into a relationship, distress patterns often emerge. We might move into protective strategies—criticizing, demanding, shutting down, overworking, numbing, or withdrawing—as we try to either control our partner into validating us or avoid the pain altogether.

In Intimacy from the Inside Out (IFIO) partner therapy, we learn to do something radically transformative: the U-Turn. Rather than projecting outward and trying to get our needs met through changing our partner, we learn to turn inward. We bring curiosity and compassion to the parts of us that are longing for completion, and we begin to meet those parts ourselves.

We stop asking our partner to be the parent we never had and instead begin to reparent ourselves. In doing so, we move toward the kind of inner fulfillment the yogic traditions speak of. We discover that the sense of lack we’ve been trying to fill through another person is arising from within, and it can be healed from within, too.

This isn’t a path of isolation or self-sufficiency—quite the opposite. As we develop more capacity to turn inward, to be with our sensations and emotions, and to tend to our inner system with care, we become more available for true connection. Our relationships become grounded not in need or fear but in mutual love, authenticity, and spaciousness.

Love begins to flow from this place, not because we need someone to complete us, but because we are already becoming whole.

Sam, RCC is a relationship therapist providing trauma-informed couples therapy in Vancouver, BC.