Wanting and Needing
August Lioness writes beautifully on her blog about wanting vs. needing, and sharing, and poignantly asks:
Our heart's deepest longing is to be known, understood, and accepted as we are. This is unconditional love and it's pretty rare. Your desire to have someone there to listen, someone to share your stories with is pretty natural and there's nothing wrong with it.
Personally, I would like a woman who *wants* me but doesn't *need* me -- or so I say. Let's face it, if an SO doesn't need you it's hard for most people to feel confident enough in themselves to think that he/she won't leave.
If you are an honest person, you can't make a man feel you need him if you actually don't. So the question really becomes, how can you be an independent, complete person and still need a man? I think the answer is that you can be complete in your self and independent, yet that is not sufficient. John Donne said, "no man is an island." Part of what it is to be a man (a human being) is to be in relation, in community -- and that being in relation starts with husband and wife (a family) and extends from there to all of society. We aren't meant to be individuals all holding each other at arm's length, proudly proclaiming our independence.
Another way of looking at this is to say that a person on a desert island can educate himself to the best of his ability, learning from books and studying. Still, while he is complete of himself he doesn't really know what it's like to be fulfilled so long as he is closed in on himself. There are things he's lacking that he can't do by himself, experiences he can never have without being in relation with others.
The search for autonomy can be a good one, and it's important, I think, to be self-sufficient and able to take care of ourselves and to find happiness within ourselves, not expecting or needing it to be infused in us by others. That doesn't mean that being in a love relationship is not something we need to help us grow, and to fulfill our potential.
How am I ever going to make a man feel like he's needed if I am not looking for someone because I need him, but because I want to share my life with someone?
Our heart's deepest longing is to be known, understood, and accepted as we are. This is unconditional love and it's pretty rare. Your desire to have someone there to listen, someone to share your stories with is pretty natural and there's nothing wrong with it.
Personally, I would like a woman who *wants* me but doesn't *need* me -- or so I say. Let's face it, if an SO doesn't need you it's hard for most people to feel confident enough in themselves to think that he/she won't leave.
If you are an honest person, you can't make a man feel you need him if you actually don't. So the question really becomes, how can you be an independent, complete person and still need a man? I think the answer is that you can be complete in your self and independent, yet that is not sufficient. John Donne said, "no man is an island." Part of what it is to be a man (a human being) is to be in relation, in community -- and that being in relation starts with husband and wife (a family) and extends from there to all of society. We aren't meant to be individuals all holding each other at arm's length, proudly proclaiming our independence.
Another way of looking at this is to say that a person on a desert island can educate himself to the best of his ability, learning from books and studying. Still, while he is complete of himself he doesn't really know what it's like to be fulfilled so long as he is closed in on himself. There are things he's lacking that he can't do by himself, experiences he can never have without being in relation with others.
The search for autonomy can be a good one, and it's important, I think, to be self-sufficient and able to take care of ourselves and to find happiness within ourselves, not expecting or needing it to be infused in us by others. That doesn't mean that being in a love relationship is not something we need to help us grow, and to fulfill our potential.
1 Comments:
nice post. i agree with you, in the sense that far too often I look for someone else to complete my happiness, rather than being secure enough to be able to be happy on my own.
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