People Who Need To Be Loved Rarely Find What They’re Looking For

Few things are as exhausting as the need and need to be loved, the obsessive hope of always getting something in return, even if it’s leftovers… People who need to be loved above all, or who are willing to sacrifice everything, too they are the ones who will always settle for less than they deserve, who will look for affection in the wrong places.

It’s the same story as always, we already know it. Maybe we’ve been through it ourselves, gotten over it and left it behind. This lack is evident in the phrases we hear in our daily lives, whether at a dinner with friends, at a consultation with a psychologist or in the subway car at 8 am, like the classic “… but I just want to be loved!”

We can say that it’s no use contesting and arguing that: “You can always have someone who loves you: that someone is yourself”, because it doesn’t work. When a person does not know how to love himself, the emptiness is so great and the need is urgent, blind and desperate. The need weighs more than the patience to sit with that person reflected in the mirror, talk to them and convince them that nothing makes sense if there is no self-love.

This is, without a doubt, one of our biggest issues in the psychological and affective aspect, making many people see, especially our teenagers, that love cannot exist without need. “I love you because I need you” has its roots in fear, and it’s not legitimate or healthy. Healthy love is the very expression of freedom, personal fulfillment and well-being.

We all want to be loved, but the people who need to be loved lose their freedom

We know the theory, but in our daily lives we get distracted. We know that the need to be loved vetoes our personal growth, makes us captives of the wrong people, those to whom we cling, hoping that they will be our salvation, that they make sense of every one of the gaps in our heart and our senses.

However… why do these behaviors become chronic? Why, even though you are aware of the error, are there those who continue to feed your need to be loved? These would be some of the reasons.

• People who need to be loved obsessively do not generally have a frame of reference to build on. It is common that the family dynamic where the person grew up was based on a mistaken attachment style. She was brought up in a kind of love that, far from nurturing her needs and self-esteem, caused serious deficiencies.
• People who need to be loved are content with very little. This makes them accept anything that comes to them, without evaluating, without putting filters. They’ll try to fit into this relationship by force, like a square puzzle piece that we’re trying to fit into a triangular hole. They will do anything to be worthy, to receive affection, attention and consideration… their emptiness only gets bigger and their need to be loved will intensify.

• They live in continual contradiction. This fact is, without a doubt, very curious and destructive for the person. The obsessive and constant need to be loved and recognized is not healthy. However, some people cannot help it: they are heartbroken and have lost their dignity. So they try a new relationship that is just as toxic as the old one, because it’s the only one they know, because they keep feeling the need to receive what they’re missing from the outside, instead of loving themselves.

The importance of “stop needing”

We all have important “needs” or aspirations: a good job, a bigger house and even a little more luck in this life… However, they are light or even funny “needs”, which rarely generate dependency or acquire depth. We are aware that our daily lives would be a little better if we managed to achieve these aspirations, but they do not become an obsession: we understand them more as desires than as needs.

Words must be corrected and lived by them with more integrity. Instead of needing to be loved, let us want to be loved. We are going to conjugate other verbs and other approaches. Also, let’s change the obsession related to “finding” love, letting love find us.

Allow fate, chance or life itself to bring us closer to that special someone while we tend to our inner garden. Seek or find a certain pleasure in this solitude, without clinging to an impossible ideal, without placing in front of others an empty bowl waiting to be nourished with what they can offer us.

So let’s take care of our self-love by nurturing ourselves with recognition and affection. Our self-love prevents us from mistreating ourselves or letting others mistreat us, from giving up our dignity to feel loved.

Images courtesy of Amanda Cass.