Hi Brooke,

I’ve been listening to your podcasts about relationships and I understand what you have said about how the idea of expecting your partner meet your needs is like bondage and that the point of being in a relationship is to love the person for myself.

What I wonder is, how do we consider compatibility with unconditional love when looking for a partner or even just being in a relationship? I understand that I can love someone and not want to be with them, but then does compatibility come down to simply wanting to be with someone? I find myself in a cycle with my relationships in which I resist the person(s) and have discovered that I’m afraid of being consumed by the person. So that tells me it may be a boundaries issue and usually what ends up happening is I end up feeling taken advantage of because I don’t set those boundaries and I make myself confused about whether I even want to be with the person at all. So if being with someone is not about having our needs met because I am the only person who is able to do that, what exactly is compatibility?