The 6 Human Needs - Part 4/6

Part 4 – The fourth of the 6 human needs – The need for Love & Connection

The need for connection means that we are continually striving to connect and build strong social bonds and relationships with other people.

This is the main reason why we get married, why we attend church gatherings, why we spend time in nature, why we gather at clubs, and why some people choose to join gangs. It’s all because of a need to feel connected to other people in some way.

Everybody strives for a level of connection and affiliation with people around them and wants to feel part of a larger community. We want to be loved and cared for and we want a feeling of closeness or union with like-minded people.

The need for love and connection is based on blending in and wanting to belong and be similar to others in the group. As much as we may like to argue otherwise, our main mission as human beings are to seek out love and connection. We are “pack animals” who thrive and measure ourselves by our connection with others.

Robert Waldinger is a psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School. He is also the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest ongoing study of adult life to date, having started in 1938 during the Great Depression. In the past 79 years, the researchers have tracked the lives of 724 men, following up with each one on an annual basis to ask about their work, home lives and health.

In 2017, Waldinger said:

“The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health. Taking care of your body is important but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation.”

In his viral 2015 TED Talk, Waldinger confirmed that “good relationships keep us happier and healthier.”

When we love, we feel alive. When we feel passionate about what it is we’re doing, and/or the people we’re doing it with, our energy and creativity knows no bounds. Our relationships with other people are what feed and replenish us.

We may go about it in different ways – some of us may seek to be around many people all the time where some of us may seek a few specific individuals and more personal setting – but we all seek this connection on one or other level. Love and connection are the same need, merely on two different levels.

Meeting this need is what creates the undercurrent within our teams at work and at home. If our communication is healthy and effective, it allows us to feel heard and accepted. It allows us to feel effective as individuals and not only helps to satisfy the previous three needs we’ve discussed but makes us feel connected to the group as a whole. If our communication is stunted in some way, it prevents us from satisfying this connection and that dissatisfaction pervades everything that we do.

Resourceful behaviours: Sharing and supporting others, connecting through nature, faith, self-love, self-worth, your truth, unconditional love, interdependent relationships. When our environments and relationships don’t fulfil this requirement or side-line us from meeting it by making other needs (like control) seem more important, we don’t just shut off our need for love and connection. When the people around us are taxed by their own situations and stresses and are less able to connect with us, we don’t suddenly become robotic. We seek other ways of satisfying our unmet need – a need which is possibly one of the most fundamental needs we have.

We meet this need by arranging groups of people with common interests – golf, books, baby groups, community service. We cultivate friendship groups and nurture those that have been with us for decades. We buy pets. We lean on our spiritual beliefs – perhaps one of the most fundamental ways that people feel connected, loved and ultimately part of a bigger picture.

There is a theory gaining momentum that the increasing number of people suffering from one form of addiction, or another do so because of a lack of connection. In many countries in the world, the focus on helping people with addictions has shifted from helping them stay clean and sober to ensuring they are reintegrated into society and feel they are connected and contributing – supported in their community.

When the circumstances of a person’s life – be it their relationships or their environment – mean that their ability to meet their need for love and connection is hampered, we can go downhill very rapidly.

This results in anything from creating problems in a need to be seen, to withdrawal and disengagement, to trying to meet those needs in unhealthy ways that result in our mental, physical, and emotional deterioration.

There is nothing more powerful than people who feel connected and loved. As a human race, we will pull together to help people we don’t even know when it’s called for. And yet, our connection to each other is one of the first things to break down when we’re under pressure.
In our search for significance, we explain to each other how bad our circumstances are and the weight and importance of what we’ve had to deal with today. We explain why we don’t have time to sit quietly and spend time with each other, why we must keep moving and busy. We seek control (certainty) in our forward movement when one of the most rewarding and calming things is passing us by right under our noses.

Unresourceful behaviours: Being needy, engaging in self harm, unhealthy relationships, connection through problems i.e., drug misuse, manipulation, “If you don’t love me, I will hurt myself.”

Note: in some ways we could say that connection/love is the opposite of significance. If we are 100% committed to the team, then we lose our sense of significance, or if we are the leader, then we may lose our sense of connection as we are required to differentiate ourselves and stand out as the leader of the pack.

If you are curious about the effect that the need to love can have on your happiness levels, why not play a "happiness prank" on someone? Consider leaving a box of chocolates outside your favourite (and unsuspecting) neighbours' door. Or pay for the person standing in line at the coffee shop.