The Need for Love, Belonging and Friendship

Love and belonging.  Once our physiological needs and our need for safety are being satisfied on a regular basis in such a way that we become confident we can continue to implement its happening in the foreseeable future, we become aware of our need for love, belonging, affiliation and inclusion. What children desperately need to do is to learn how to obtain this love from others by being lovable and learn how to give this love to others. Parents are of course in the unfortunate position being expected to give this love unconditionally to their children so that their children can learn about it by imitating these parental role models.

Defining the need.

This need is a lot of things. The term love can be used to describe all these things. We belong in a family group where we are loved or should be. This means both affiliation and inclusion. Any group we become part of serves a similar function differing only in degree. Similarly friendship is a lesser form of love.  

Giving and receiving. This need for love is itself actually two very different things:

1. The giving of love
2. The receiving of love

The giving of love (genetic). Is there a need to give love and its diminutive liking to others? It seems there must be or why else do we do it? It might well be that such a need as the need to give love is what enables all the other needs able to work. When a baby is born, especially a human baby, the baby is really not able to satisfy any of its own needs, except maybe the need for air. If it does not have a parent to help it in its early years it will die. We can speculate that what happens is the following. When a baby is born it seems likely that a genetic trigger is activated in the parents especially the mother causing them to love the baby. For the baby that cannot satisfy its own needs this love from the parent is or should be translated into the parent helping the baby satisfy its own needs.

Through this need in parents to give love the parents become sensitive to their child's needs, and begin to respond to those needs, as they would to their own needs. The need to give love thus would transform into the need to help a baby obtain water and food. It would be transformed into the need to help baby keep warm and and find shelter. It would be transformed into the need to help a baby make itself safe and secure. 

As each child grows and gradually becomes able to satisfy its own needs, a parent should provide less and less help and only provide help as is needed. A parent should begin to take delight in their baby's ability to satisfy its own needs. In the case of the needs for love and belonging parents need to be aware that they will have to share the child's love with others outside the family. The parent should take joy in their child satisfying its own needs, and those needs will involve the child loving others (having friends) outside the family, it will involve the child becoming part of other groups outside the family. Ideally parents should take joy in their children doing these things. Parents should feel almost as if they had satisfied his or her own needs when a child makes a friend or joins some outside group. This, however, is the ideal situation, and it can easily go wrong as when a parent keeps providing unasked for, excessive demonstrations of love, that are not only unnecessary, but can become suffocating. It can be difficult for parents to understand that their children no longer need the same amount of love and that the family unit is no longer enough, but it is essential for parents to be able to let go. If they do not this can have the effect of even blocking the child's ability to develop and to provide for their own needs. Thus a child may remain totally dependent on parents to provide love and belonging.

The giving of love (chosen). The need to give love of course is not just for babies. We give love to our friends and we expect to pick a sexual partner in life who we will give even more love than to a baby. But there is no genetic trigger for the giving of love to these people. They must earn this love. They do this by being friendly and being known. As children come in contact with people some will be friendly to them and some will not. If they are friendly the children will welcome their company and get to know them better. As children get to know these others they first begin to like them and then this liking grows into love. Groups form out of these social connections and with the formation of such groups comes the feelings of acceptance and belonging. Acceptance and belonging then can be seen to be part of what it is to be loved. 

So there seems to be a need to give love and its diminutive friendship. It is given in the form of helping others to satisfy their own needs and making them feel accepted and that they belong.

Any giver of love or friendship can become, like a parent, a helper with the others unsatisfied needs. An older brother or sister may take on a parental type role. Sometimes relations between friends can be uneven. Even the relation between husband and wife may be motherly or fatherly. Ideally this unevenness should fade as the giver of love encourages the other in satisfying their own needs and takes pleasure in their need satisfaction accomplishment. 

However it is often hard for the giver of love in these relationships to let go and clearly children must assert themselves sometimes so the parent realizes the child does not need their help or too much love any longer. Friendships and life partners have a better chance if the other has all their deficiency needs satisfied when the giver of love begins giving that love. Then, for the most part, what is actually given is not physiological needs or safety but simply love itself and not constant demonstrations of it. In turn what is experienced back is the delight in the love spread through many other's and the feeling of acceptance and of belonging that comes from being part of many groups.

How love is given by parents allows their children to learn how to give love in return. Parents are the first role models of this activity. With both love and esteem parents have an early monopoly on whether love and esteem are withheld or not depending on some condition. Although this can be an easy way of making children behave. But children who behave to get tokens of love do not feel loved Indeed they are not loved as love has no conditions. Also this is a two way street as parents will find that their children in turn will also withhold their love on conditions making the parents feel unloved back. This is hugely important as learning to give unconditional love insure that the next generation will in fact receive unconditional love.

Types of love that satisfy the need.

The receiving of love. When we have been able to satisfy our need for safety and security on a regular basis so that we become confident in our ability to satisfy it, this need diminishes in intensity and the need for love belonging and acceptance become the most active of our needs. For most of us this need is routinely satisfied by our parents. When we are very young the love of our parents is enough, but as we grow older the love of our parents is not enough. We gradually feel the need for friends and to belong to groups outside the family. 

The problem in satisfying our need for love is that it absolutely relies on other human beings to supply it. Parents of course naturally automatically feel love toward their new born offspring but when we have to get love or friendship or even fellowship from others things become difficult.

We must learn skills that make us lovable or make others want to love us. This is something of a catch 22 as our society generally frowns on us trying to make ourselves lovable in overt ways. Further our society, for the most part, does not accept that we should love people for what they do, rather we are expected to love others for what they are. This is a nonsense of course but it can lead to some very bad mistakes in trying to make ourselves lovable. Clearly we most easily make ourselves lovable by giving love. But we must be very clear about how this works as we cannot expect someone to love us just because we are giving them love. If we do this we are trying to make a transaction out of love and this can never work. What I mean here is that people who give love to a lot of other people by doing this make themselves attractive to others generally, including many to whom they are not giving love. That we come to give love to people who love us back is just the inevitable outcome of giving love to many.

Two ways of receiving love. Maslow and many other writers on love talk about two different kinds of love. A love born of desperation and a love born of fulfillment. Maslow calls these D love and B love (that is deficiency love and being love). What he is referring to is not two types of love given but two types of love received.

1. D Love. D love is the love we experience when our need for love is not satisfied on a regular basis or that we feel not confident in our ability to satisfy it. This we experience as a kind of relief.
2. B Love. B love is the love we experience when our need for love is being satisfied on a regular basis and we are very confident in our ability to satisfy it. This love is experienced as a delight.

It could be suggested that maybe we can only learn to really enjoy something after the real need for it has abated, it has been satisfied regularly and we are confident in satisfying it. Another example? What about air? We are normally not aware of enjoying air but we can be sure the person who is drowning who suddenly gets a lung full of air does not enjoy it for sure. All he feels is a massive relief. But through awareness we know we can come to enjoy breathing as part of meditation as do the sufis. What about sex? When our need for sex is in a state of deprivation we may get some pleasure out of sex but what we feel mostly is a sense of relief. On the other hand people who have had their need for sex satisfied on a regular basis may be able to reach a profound level of sexual enjoyment. Maslow was greatly concerned about the fact almost all theories of motivation rested on the conception that the primary aim of an organism was to get rid of the annoying motivator. That drives pressed toward reduction and their own elimination.

Maslow Says:

"Even with these deficiencies, however, the case is very badly overdrawn: one can accept and enjoy one's needs and welcome them to consciousness if (a) past experience with them has been rewarding, and (b) if present and future gratification can be counted on. For example, if one has in general enjoyed food and good food is now available, the emergence of appetite into consciousness is welcomed instead of dreaded."

D Love. Well of course there is deficiency love but surely there is also deficiency hunger, deficiency thirst, deficiency breathing deficiency sex and deficiency security. Even esteem may be felt differently as a deficiency than when it is felt by one regularly well satisfied and confident in their ability to satisfy their needs. When we are deficient in love we experience it combined with the fear of loosing it. We experience it with jealousy to the giver and hostility to any seaming threat to its continuance. Most importantly we experience it as relief from tension and not as an intrinsic pleasure. Deficiency esteem is likewise experienced as a relief from the tension in our fear of being unable to perform actions that would be seen as having worth.

B Love. There is being love, being eating, being drinking, being breathing, being sex and being security. They are all experienced as an intrinsic pleasure quite unlike how they are experienced when we are deprived of them. Just because we do not need them does not mean we do not want or like them. Quite the opposite is true. Only when we do not need them do we truly come to enjoy them. There is no physical mechanism of reduction involved with love. When we experience B love we are not jealous nor are we hostile for we do not fear its loss. We simply bask in the enjoyment of it while it lasts. Similarly with B esteem we enjoy the honor others do us as an intrinsic pleasure and we do not see it as diminished if we have to share it with others.

Unlovable. One of the most tragic and common of the pathologies that can happen to the need for love is a false logic that can create a circularly determined syndrome which in turn can stall our growth at the love need level. This can be explained by the story of a young woman. She was upset because her boyfriend was not speaking to her. When asked why this was she explained that she had just done something horrible to him. Upon further inquiry she related she had not done this in retaliation for something he had done. She explained that she had not been sure of his love and felt the need to test his love. If he truly loved her, she explained, he would forgive her and she would be sure of his love. When further prompted she revealed she had done this kind of thing to him before. It seems obvious that this behavior would eventually drive him away. She of course believed that if it drove him away it would mean that he had never loved her. This is self defeating behavior that eventually makes the person unlovable.

Loss of self. Another type of pathology usually associated with the need for love and friendship is another circularly determined syndrome called a loss of self. This is quite common and devastating in its outcome. This comes about through those giving the love or friendship making it conditional.

In Toward a psychology of being Maslow has this to say:

"Since others are so important and vital for the helpless baby and child, fear of loosing them (as providers of safety, food, love, respect, etc.) is a primal terrifying danger. Therefore the child faced with with a difficult choice between his own delight experiences and the experience of approval from others, must generally choose approval from others, and then handle his delight by repression or letting it die, or not noticing it or controlling it by will power. in general, along with this will develop a disapproval of the delight experience, or shame and embarrassment and secretiveness about it, with finally, the inability even to experience it."

The problem of conditional love.

Love held to ransom. Parents especially but any care givers can have absolute power over the children in their care and can and do hold many of their needs to ransom. But the one parents most often hold to ransom is love. Parents do this because it is the easiest and most efficient way of getting kids to do what parents want. This usually means obedience and compliance on the part of the children.

     

Getting stuck. Of course parents have to shape their children into acceptable patterns of social behavior. However, there are many reasons why such practices are wrong and dangerous for child development. Not the least danger to the child is how it will impact the child's progression up the hierarchy of needs. Conditional love is given in dribs and drabs in response to certain requirements being fulfilled.

Unloved. This has the effect of making the child feel unloved because the love is withdrawn almost as soon as it is given. Unless the child can find love with other care givers he/she is likely to be stuck at the love level of the hierarchy. But this is not the end of the difficulties it can create for the child.

Conditional spouse. This conditional behavior also becomes a role model for all of the child's future relationships. Thus their future love life will likely be conditional with love only given on certain conditions. This model behavior infect every aspect of belonging and acceptance tainting them with contracts, conditions, barter and tit for tat.

Conditional friend. It is also likely that the child's friendships will similarly follow also become conditional. Everything is likely to become based on the behavior model set by parents.

Hard to love. But there are other reasons also why parent should not make their love conditional. It is hard to love someone who gives love only conditionally.

 

Conditional reciprocation. This means the parent will likely not be loved back by the child or the child will love back conditionally him/herself. This practice in the end deprive both the child and the parent of a normal source of love. The love of cats is of this conditional sort.

Prevents self-determination. Also this conditional arrangement prevents the child from making choices for her or himself. When a child cannot do this, even though the choices will probably be ones their parents will disapprove of, the child is deprived of learning the most important lessons life can devise. The lessons of how to live freely making good choices and decisions. In order to learn this children need to practice making choices and decisions early in life. These early iterations of choice and decision making can lead to skilled decision making abilities which can stand them in good stead in life. Parent conditional love forces compliance  preventing the formation of child volition and the feelings of self-determination that follow from it.

Parental dependence. Parents who do this to their children do irreparable harm paralyzing the child's growth and making a pseudo child self which is not the true child self but simply a reflection of their own wants and ideas of what a child should be. This lack of self-determination leads to a dependence on the parents throughout life and results in children going through life seeking the conditional love of their parents by performing for them and winning that love over and over again but never truly satisfying the real need for love. An unhealthy mutual dependence arises between the parent and child.

      

Climbing the hierarchy. Maslow was of the opinion that satisfaction of needs led to their becoming less dominant immediately causing the next level of needs to become dominant. He also felt that if needs were satisfied on a regular basis they would become weaker as the other needs became stronger. Surely this is not quite correct and for two reasons.

1 Mutual support. Firstly, he did not emphasize enough that needs often do not conflict and actually support one another. Safety for instance may help us win love, and the gaining of esteem from others may help us win love.

2 Confidence. Secondly it seems that Maslow missed an important intervening idea or condition for the weakening of a need, that being the confidence of the person or organism in its ability to satisfy that need. No matter how many friends we have no matter how well liked or loved we are if we do not feel confident in making friends and winning love we will likely find ourselves stuck trying to make friends and win love over and over.

Two types of confidence. The above is true however only for a very unique kind of confidence. Carol Dweck and her colleagues have pointed out that the confidence people have in their competence and especially their competence at being loved is not sufficient in itself to enable true movement from one need level to another. That, what is needed, is in fact, a more solid kind of confidence. That what is needed is a confidence in gaining the love of others that is not about needing little effort and persistence, but rather a confidence that embraces effort and persistence as being the very activities through which competence in making ourselves lovable can be increased, and through which all being loved, belonging and friendship are possible.

THE ROLE OF PARENTS AND SOCIETY AS REGARDS LOVE AND BELONGING NEEDS.

Parents, society, and the institutions of society have a distinct and similar role to play in the satisfaction of people's love and belonging needs. The role of parents is to be a good parent and all that entails for the satisfaction of their children's love and belonging needs. A good parent firstly satisfies directly the love and belonging needs of those in their care while they are babies and unable to satisfy their own love and belonging needs.

Unconditional love. Clearly the most important thing parents can do in providing love to their children is to make sure they do not make it conditional. If they make their love conditional they will find that their children will always be dependent on them for that love. It leads to a depletion of intrinsic motivation and a dependence on extrinsic motivation for accomplishment. Such people are always performing for others in order to gain love or whatever else is on offer. They are never acting in order to grow and become better, more competent and better able to understand and to be loved. The mental state caused to develop this conditional love is what Carol Dweck would call a fixed mindset.

Letting go. But secondly, and nearly as importantly, their role is to act as facilitators in enabling those in their care to learn the skills that are needed to satisfy their own love and belonging needs. Not only that but a good parent is able to perceive when the child needs to try to do it by himself, when only advice is needed and when the child no longer needs any help at all. The good parent should want to satisfy his child's love and belonging needs when the child cannot satisfy his own needs but the good parent should also want more for the child to learn how to satisfy his own love and belonging needs. A good parent should be willing to share their child's love and need to be love with others as the child grows older. A good parent should take pride in the child being able to win the love of others and give love to others. Also a good parent has to realize that his or her children know far better when love and belonging needs need to be satisfied.

The role of society. If this is true for the good parent surely it should also be true for society and the institutions of society. Society and its institutions should supply our love and belonging needs when we are helpless to supply them ourselves but more importantly they should strive to enable us to learn the skills we need to satisfy our own love and belonging needs. Also they should be aware that we always know best when love and belonging needs are currently dominating our motivation and thus when these needs are to be satisfied. With regard to our needs for love it is clear in the early stages of life that the child must be loved. Having been loved the child will find its own way to give love. Later in life training in the use of social dialogue such as active listening may be of help in overcoming early damage. Ultimately the person needs to be aware of the fact that reception of love largely depends on each persons ability to be friendly and give love. It may be possible to teach non loving people to act as if they are loving so they may receive love. There are inherent dangers in this however as people who seem to be loving when they are actually not could cause profound social confusion as people become uncertain as to how to detect love when there is a lot of fake love around. Also remember the most important thing about love is that it must be unconditional.