I Want, I Need, I’ve Got To Have

12 years old and in the middle of a rant - my mother asked if I could form a sentence that did not include the following, “I want, I need, I’ve got to have”.

At 12 - I wanted Shawn Kroop to be my boyfriend, I needed a ride to the Sherman Oaks Galleria and like every other student in the 7th grade at Cal Prep, I had to own a pair of Guess jeans, which I had to pay for out of my allowance because of my parents reluctance to understand the cost of “cool” (which by the way was $100).

Last year, at 35 - I found myself head over heels in a new relationship where everything was on target. Good communication, thoughtful and insightful conversations, he was sensitive but not overly, my parents liked him, his parents liked me, we liked each other’s friends, things were good in and out of the bedroom, for all intents and purposes it was a healthy relationship.

In the beginning we saw each other a lot and usually spent most of the weekend together. Cut to two months later, we seemed to be spending less time together. Everything else in the relationship seemed to be as solid as it had always been, although our full weekends together had dwindled to Saturday nights and early Sunday mornings with maybe one other day during week. The emails and phone calls seemed to die down as well. Maybe that’s natural after the “honeymoon period”, but still… so suddenly?

Aside from this issue I felt happy and when we were together we always had a great time. No matter how many conversations we had about this subject, at the end of the day, he required less time and I required more. That’s just the way I am built.

In the throes of our breakup he said something about my stubbornness, my obstinance. It sounded familiar, maybe a little too familiar… like my mother’s refrain so long ago - I want, I need, I’ve got to have.