What Makes a Person Feel Loved?

Love is not a mystery. The thrust of my writings has been to demystify the process of love to the point where every human being can walk in love towards their neighbours and intimate lovers alike. In a world that is bombarded per second with a thousand definitions of love galvanized by both peers and the entertainment media, there is a need for the simplification of the love model. Why? People hate complexity. If a thing is too complex, many won’t even attempt it.

After several years of thinking, teaching, training and writing on this subject, I have come to the conclusion that what makes a person feel loved, is having their needs met by another. Love is what we feel when people diligently apply their lives and resources towards the meeting of crucial needs in our lives. On the contrary, nothing makes a lover’s love irrelevant like the failure to meet the needs of the one they claim to love.

This is why no matter what you claim to feel for another if you are not in a position to meet their needs, your love life might eventually run into trouble. Being in someone’s life is not a big deal, applying your presence in their life to pertinent issues is your core assignment as a lover. Here are a few questions every lover must endeavour to answer before attempting to settle for any lover.

Have I identified the top needs that this person represents?

Everyone you meet represents a seed as well as a need. To claim to love them without eliciting their needs is like signing the contract to execute a massive project without taking time to estimate the parameters of the work to be done. It will end in disaster.

Do I have the capacity to be the solution to most of the needs that this person represents?

If the answer to that question is a capital NO, you have no business getting involved with them, no matter how intense your feelings for them are. If you do go ahead with the relationship, you are most likely to be redundant and irrelevant in the person’s life. You also run a huge risk of losing them to someone with the capability to meet their inherent needs.

How long do you think you are willing to apply yourself to the needs of that person?

If your goal is a life-long loved one, then simply know that along with that goal must come the determination to meet their needs as long as you are with them. To stop meeting their needs halfway is to risk the stagnation of that love enterprise. Authentic love is a calling to the meeting of the legitimate needs of another.

Notice what I did not say. I did not say love is meeting the wants of another. I did not say love is fulfilling every desire of another. Neither did I say love is yielding to every request another makes. Most of all I did not say love is dancing to the whims and caprices of another. I said people naturally feel loved when their legitimate needs are consistently met by another. It is maturity to distinguish between the legitimate needs and illegitimate tantrums of a lover.

THE GREATEST IS LOVE