How Neediness Destroys Love and How to Get It Back Again
Love is something that almost everyone wants and yet few of us get in the measure that we expect and hope for. This is largely due to the incredibly vague nature of love added to the fact that most of us make it a need, fulfillable not by ourselves but only by the acts of another person. This is a combination that makes love elusive and easily quashed.
Love is a mysterious thing mostly because few people ever make the effort to properly define what love means, what it encompasses and how it can be fulfilled. For those few people willing to make that effort they generally find that not a single person on the planet has the same interpretation and definition of love and all of its nuances. When you don’t, or can’t define what you desire properly then the chances of fulfilling those desires are significantly reduced. Add into the mix the fact that many people have ‘a need to be loved’ which means that only through another person’s actions can they feel fulfilled in love, then the odds of finding and sustaining the happy, cheerful, trusting and supportive love that most of us desire drop off close to zero.
With such vagueness and obscurity built into the whole process plus the choice that ‘to feel loved’ depends upon the actions of other people it is no wonder that so many people feel unloved.
To turn this around you have to reclaim control. You need to sit down and think about what love really means to you and why it’s important and what makes up love. This is difficult because love can be an action, a feeling, and a description. We also have different kinds of love; the love for parents is different to that for friends or a lover or siblings. It is a complicated issue made worse by using a very vague concept to describe a whole set of intricate desires and processes.
On top of this you next have to consider whether your concepts and desires for love are actually possible and likely. There’s a great deal of idealization involved in romantic love that creates not only high expectations but that can often cause us to expect the impossible (or highly unfeasible) to happen. The fantasies created in poems, songs, plays, books, and films can generate wonderful and touching emotions but, and somewhat sadly, it is important to retain a realistic perspective on things. As much as I would like those things to come true, reality and fantasy are very different beasts and the reality is that if you set your heart’s desire upon achieving the impossible or near impossible then you will end up feeling disappointed and possibly miserable for a lot of the time.
How Neediness Kills the Passion
If you are a needy person in a relationship then that probably occurs because you transfer responsibility for feeling good to your partner. If they come through for you then you feel good and if they don’t then you feel bad. When you feel bad you then start to look for ways to get the other person to fulfill your desires for you. Whatever you do is a form of manipulation. It might be done in a negative way with disapproval, anger, resentment, bitterness or it might be done in a helpless way by getting sad, depressed and desperate.
The great problem with this kind of behavior is that it never solves the real problem, which is that you have created a need that can only be satisfied by someone else. Instead it creates a lot obligation for the other person and when you create an obligation for someone else you end up creating a need for that person by return. In this case the other person now has a need to ‘keep you happy’ which creates a desire for which the outcome is controlled by you. Even strong and independent persons can be dragged down into dependency and neurotic and immobilizing behavior if they have a partner who is needy and hence imposes obligations (and often impossible expectations) upon the other person. In the end the open, free and happy love that you started off with is killed by needs and obligations. It’s happened repeatedly in my love life and I see it often in the love lives of good friends.
As always, the people with fewest rules are happiest. The more rules you apply for what is acceptable behavior and what is not then the more constraints you apply. If you do too much of this then you bind the other person so that they no longer have freedom to move. You cage and stunt that person. That person might care about you very much but the impossibility of fulfilling all needs and all rules all of the time creates a lot of negative emotion and this kills that cheerful loving that we all want and that we all start out with but that often peters away.
Reclaiming Love in Your Life
When you feel disappointed that someone didn’t do something for you in the way that you would have liked then stop and think about that. Here are the questions that you need to consider in order to analyze the problem and then come up with alternative approaches.
- What desire did I have that I wanted the other person to fulfill and that didn’t happen?
- Why is that desire important to me? What fulfillment do I get from it?
- Is that desire possible to fulfill?
- Can I achieve that fulfillment in other ways that I can control by my own actions?
- What specifically would I need to do to create that fulfillment by myself?
- What process would I have to go through to create that fulfillment?
- What are the most difficult things that I have to do to create that fulfillment?
- Am I willing to do those things? (If the answer is no then give up the desire or accept that fulfillment will only come on rare occasions when someone else is willing to do that for you)
- What is my new desire?
Admittedly, this is a somewhat tedious process to go through each and every time that you feel disappointed or somehow unloved but it is definitely worth doing for a few times because of the following reasons:
A. You will probably surprise yourself about your desires and that awareness can really make you sit up and think, “My word, I really have some nonsensical desires.”
B. You will probably find that a lot of your desires are impossible or almost impossible for someone else to fulfill. This will make you more realistic about your expectations and make you a lot more sympathetic towards those who you seek love from.
C. You can start to understand what kind of fulfillment you are really seeking rather than the instant gratification of a quick fix loving action from someone else.
D. You will begin to care less about how other people behave towards you and will instead think much more about how you behave towards other people.
The final point is one of the principle benefits of taking a while to stop and think about issues of love and neediness. Instead of attempting to slowly unravel and resolve the whole tricky problem it soon becomes apparent that a much easier, better and robust approach is to junk the whole complicated mess and instead simplify your rules for love and reduce as much as possible the dependency upon other people to fulfill them.
This turns things around. It puts you in control, it makes love possible, it makes love realistic. Idealized love is a beautiful concept but on a regular basis it doesn’t stand up to the rigors of pragmatic living.
An Alternative Approach to Loving
Once you think in-depth about love and what it means for you and what is possible then you will probably find yourself feeling a certain measure of relief. The reason for this is that it’s really not much fun waiting for other people to fulfill your desires for love in your life. Although it’s nice to feel loved it’s also nice to give love and to do loving things for other people. This is something that you can control and if you do it right then you can feel good just from doing loving things for other people. The best way to carry this out is to do it because it pleases you to do it and not because you want something in return. If you want something in return then you introduce obligation and you will end up feeling disappointed and later resentful.
When you remove the fog of love and when you remove the dependency and neediness that afflicts so many of us in our love relationships then after a while you will receive many benefits. You will give and help generously to other people simply because it fulfills you do so regardless of the reaction from other people. Not everyone is capable of receiving loving actions and support often because they think that it demands reciprocation that they don’t want to give and obligation that they don’t want to fulfill. On the reverse, some people will simply take, take and take (please read this related article). So you do need to exercise some discretion over who you are generous with in order not to end up obligated into giving, which subsequently kills free love. After a while though you will come across people who are on the same wavelength as you and who tend to reciprocate kind and loving actions back to you without obligation. Those are the people to hang out with.
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[Photo by duchessa]
#1 - Permalink AnnMarie Peterlin April 21st, 2008 at 1:24 pmNick,
What can I say but ‘brilliant’!
Thanks, AnnMarie
#2 - Permalink admin April 21st, 2008 at 2:12 pmWhat a lovely thing to say. Thank you AnnMarie!
#3 - Permalink Danijel Gajan April 22nd, 2008 at 8:21 amTruly a great post Nick. I have been struggling with this issue for some time, and it has come to threaten both my relationships and my health. By constantly letting myself build up fantasies and unrealistic expectations from others I have blinded myself for real value in people. It led me to a state of confusion and depression so I could no longer tell if someone is on my wavelength or not. It’s a long way back from that path and I am taking baby steps, but I hope I have been able to turn my back on that unhappy place for good.
#4 - Permalink admin April 22nd, 2008 at 12:51 pmI also hope that you can turn your back on that unhappy place for good.
The more you become strong within yourself and the more you can rely upon yourself due to the capabilities that you build within yourself then the less dependent you become upon other people and the easier it becomes for you.
When you don’t have a desperate need for other people to make you feel good then you can become a lot more relaxed in your interactions with people and you can take time to know them better based upon their actions rather than their words or whatever fantasies you might initially project onto them.
It’s good that you now have awareness of the problem and possible solutions. I hope that the road ahead is easier for you now.
#5 - Permalink Anne May 2nd, 2008 at 7:17 amI have struggled with this issue for a time, but it’s hard to change these patterns. Your article is very positive and encouraging and it makes 100% sense. I have saved the 9 points listed and will try them for sure
#6 - Permalink admin May 2nd, 2008 at 8:06 amWonderful! I hope that by going through the analysis process you will come to a much better understanding of these things and hence get better results. Change becomes easier once you have a very good understanding of cause and effect and how to change either one for your own benefit.
#7 - Permalink Chris May 21st, 2008 at 9:52 amThis is a well written summary for anyone suspecting their own or their partner’s happiness might be unwittingly limited by self-imposed and unrealistic expectations.
Intelligent, thoughtful insights, and good constructive ideas for a more positive perspective.
#8 - Permalink Nick Pagan May 21st, 2008 at 10:36 amHi Chris,
I’m very glad to read that you appreciate the ideas presented here
#9 - Permalink angelbaby June 7th, 2008 at 10:32 pmi read your article and i have been wondering for a long time what i have been doing wrong. i have been wondering why i can love so beautifully but not get the same love in return. it is because i am in need for someone to be head over heels in love with me. but because i need it so much. i think i push things to hard. so i thnk i will try to concentrate on me and my girls for a while and work on me so i can be a better person for them. thankyou so much for your words of wisdom
#10 - Permalink admin June 8th, 2008 at 1:45 amI’m very happy to know that this article has given you new insights. Through eliminating neediness and obligation, you give love the opportunity to thrive.
Best of luck to you.
#11 - Permalink Jules January 22nd, 2009 at 8:15 amHello. Does me wanting more attention from someone mean that I’m needy? Can you really change those deep cemented needs?
#12 - Permalink admin January 22nd, 2009 at 11:17 amHi Jules,
If you can only feel good through getting the attention of someone else and if a lack of attention from that person makes you feel bad then you have a need and your efforts to make that person give you attention make you needy.
Can you change? Yes, you can.
You have some kind of emotional desire that is fulfilled when others give you attention. By thinking about what it is that gives you pleasure when you get attention, you can get to the root cause of the problem. You then can experiment with other ways to get that feeling without depending upon other people.
For example, if you seek attention in order to get proof that you are good at something, then you can think about what other things prove that other than someone else commenting. You can then create ways to prove to yourself that you are good at something without needing validation from someone else.
By doing this, you become stronger as a person, because you know yourself and you can control yourself and your emotions. This has two benefits: you will become more attractive to other people and if things go wrong, you will have a strong inner core that can deal with this kind of thing without falling apart.
#13 - Permalink Hlayi February 12th, 2009 at 10:16 amThats some powerful stuff right there!!!
#14 - Permalink Striving to Be Less Needy July 16th, 2009 at 11:45 pmhi Nick,
I think that the pleasure I receive from attention from others is a feeling of being special and being noticed since I was ignored a lot as a child. I tend to mix up a man’s attention towards me in dating with how well I actually like him. And that can cause me to behave in ways to encourage that attention without having a good handle on whether I really want to get closer to him.
I know the solution is to love myself from within, but I don’t know how to do that exactly. Feeling appreciated by someone is so seductive, how do I actually know, at that moment of getting that special email, whether I am responding to the attention like a drug, or whether my enjoyment of the attention is under control?
#15 - Permalink admin July 21st, 2009 at 5:00 amSomeone said to me recently that most of us have an invisible umbilical cord handing out of our belly and that we’re constantly looking for somewhere to plug it in. That’s natural, because we grow up as creatures totally dependent upon our parents and society, but you never really grow up until you become independent. That means deciding for yourself what constitutes good behavior so that you set your own personal standards. It also means developing the capability to look after yourself and to exert a large amount of control over getting what you want in life (including how you feel).
It’s lovely to get compliments - to get the applause - but it’s better when those things come as a true result of living well. If you know that the compliment is justified because you can back it up in reality then you can enjoy it. If a compliment comes and you know that it’s not really justified, i.e. someone is being very nice either to flatter you or to give you a bit of a boost, then trying to get more of that kind of attention is really like trying to get the applause when your ability doesn’t deserve it. That’s going to lead to difficulty. Chasing after emotional highs on their own is never a good policy. Those highs come naturally after doing good deeds - achieving something difficult, or developing your practical abilities to new levels. Do those things well and you will deserve the applause.
#16 - Permalink john October 15th, 2009 at 10:24 pmdear Nick,
a very well written article that expresses what is a painful truth for many of us. so much of our search for love is a search for real identity, that identity that society either crushes or falsely reinforces through advertising and the like. when we do find identity through love ( or at least THINK we find it) it eventually becomes undermined by that terrible fear of loss of love , which for many of us equals loss of identity