Getting The Love & Connection You Crave

Love and connection are universal psychological needs.

The ability to express emotions surrounding these needs is one of the most important ingredients in healthy intimate relationships.

We must remind each other in the midst of our incredibly busy lives, as well as remind ourselves, that we need the visceral experience of really feeling love and connection. We want to feel it fill us.

Since the needs for love and connection are universal, it can be difficult to understand why asking for love and connection may be met with signs of bewilderment by your partner. Does your partner stop and ask you, even more, do you stop and ask yourself what you need, specifically, to actually feel loved and connected. The request for love and connection is a broad request for two complex and overarching needs.

Trina: 'Why do you go out to dinner with your brother and his girlfriend whenever I am out of town but never want to get together with them when I can come along as well?"

Tom: "I go out with them when you are out of town because that is when I have time to see them."

Trina tears up.

Tom: "Why are you crying?"

Trina: "I want to feel loved."

Tom: 'You are loved. That is why I spend time with you when you are home and go out with my brother and his girlfriend when you are away."

Trina: "You don't get it."

Expressing a sense of not belonging as part of your partner's family, for instance, with, "I just want to feel loved," may illicit an equally general response that ignores the heart of your pain.  Here Trina's need for love and connection is more specifically the need to feel that she belongs in Tom's family. The need to belong is one specific element in the need to feel loved. If Trina were to describe her desire to be included in family dinners, Tom might gain an understanding of her experience.

The need for love and connection has at least four specific subsets of need within it:

the need for love and affection;

the need for belonging;

the need for acceptance;

and the need for support.

Within the universal need for love and connection, one particular subset of needs is the more specific need for affection, the need for intimacy, and the need for physical touch.

Wendy asks Marcus why he doesn't show her he loves her. Marcus is baffled.

Marcus knows that when he and Wendy are together they cuddle on the sofa and watch Netflix, they kiss each other good-bye every morning before going to work, they have at least 2 date nights a month followed by a romantic evening at home and more. How could Wendy not feel Marcus is showing his love?

Wendy feels like watching TV is a parallel activity, not something they are doing together. They are not even really aware of each other while they are each engrossed in whatever they are watching.

Once she realized the specific need she was feeling, she bought a delicious massage oil and suggested a couple's massage night. Guy happily accepted.

Jillian is an only child with little family of her own and no family in Chicago, where she and Guy live. They moved to Chicago last year, in part for Guy's new job and in part to be closer to his family. Jillian works from home in her online business so the move did not impact her career. However, she is now farther from many of the friends she hung out with in Kansas City, where they used to live.

Since moving to Chicago, Guy goes out with his friends rather than arranging couple's nights where Jillian can meet the wives of Guy's friends. Jillian suspects that this is because Guy is embarrassed by the fact that she isn't college educated like Guy and the husbands and wives with whom he is friends. She asks him, "Are you sure you really love me?"

Jillian does not feel accepted for who she is, someone who formed and developed several online retail outlets. Her need to feel accepted for who she is was not part of her conversation with Guy. To get to the heart of what she is experiencing, Jillian must share how she feels when Guy declines to introduce her to the wives of his friends.

Unbeknownst to Jillian, Guy admires her entrepreneurial abilities and her business acumen. He loves the fact that she is courageous enough to be her own boss and creative enough to create products that sell like hotcakes. He was and is drawn to their differences in careers and interests.

The possibilities for connection open up when Jillian is able to share the specific ways she feels unloved, not belonging and not being accepted.

I recommend using this formula, or something similar, to ask for what you need and give your relationship a strong chance of being grounded in understanding.