Is Love All We Need?
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
-Lennon/McCartney
Is it true that love is all we need? If so, how do we even go about finding it? Quite frankly, as much as I adore the Beatles, love is not all we need, nor do the lyrics of one of their most popular songs provide much guidance with regard to how to obtain love.
In this article, I'll be reviewing some of the other needs that we have that are just as important, if not more important, than love. In addition, I'll be discussing the journey one must take in order to find love.
According to the American psychologist Abraham Maslow, creator of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we have many additional requirements in order to be fully operational human beings. In studying Maslow's hierarchy of needs, another American psychologist, Scott Barry Kaufman, broke down the hierarchy of needs into two different categories: security and growth.
Security needs include self-esteem, connection, and safety.
Let's expand on these a little further by starting with safety. While, to many, reasonably self-explanatory, the definition of safety usually is thought of as being safe from physical harm. This means having food, shelter, clothes, money (to afford food, shelter, and clothes), water, sexual intercourse, and other physiological needs met.
When expanding on this definition, though, we should include psychological safety. This includes having a secure attachment with a caregiver or at least the ability to identify those with secure attachments so you can learn from them. Another factor in psychological safety is having a supportive environment (people, places, resources) that allows you the ability to choose and work toward your goals.
Connection is the exact opposite of loneliness. Even if you have fewer friends, having high-quality connections and a sense of belonging is vital to your well-being. Being close with others creates a sense of intimacy that helps us in terms of feeling seen.
Lastly, as a part of our security needs, we have self-esteem. Healthy self-esteem, as opposed to its ugly cousin and polar opposite narcissism, includes two major factors: self-worth and mastery.
Self-worth involves examining one's self and coming to the conclusion that, overall, you're a good person. You recognize that you've made mistakes, but, at the end of the day, who hasn't?
Having a healthy sense of mastery means recognizing your efficacy in accomplishing your goals and reflecting on these achievements positively.
The second category of needs is our growth needs, including exploration, love, and purpose.
Exploration is related to a Big Five Personality Trait called openness to experience. When we are higher in openness to experience, we are willing to enter new social settings, try new activities, engage in exciting new intellectual pursuits, and indulge our creativity.
With love, Maslow distinguished two different types of love. He states that there is needing, D-love (deficiency love), and unneeding, B-love ("love for the being of another person"). In this sense, love can be both active and passive. Later in the article, we will return to this need (and unneed).
Lastly, in our discussion of growth needs, we have the concept of purpose. In many senses, purpose can actively answer the question of "why" we get up in the morning. Purpose propels us into the future and provides meaning to our experience.
So, as you can see, as far as our needs are concerned, love is a need, in a sea of other needs, that can help in adding value to our life. But, let us return to love, as this is being published on Valentine's Day, and while love is not all we need, it's pretty damn important.
Prior, I vaguely discussed the difference between D-love (needing) and B-love (unneeding), and expanding on these concepts is further needed if we are to learn how to love.
D-love comes from a place of inadequacy, meaning that it can only be fulfilled if we recognize and feel it coming from another party. The problem with D-love is that while we certainly need to feel loved by someone else, it can be largely unhealthy because it is so ambiguously subjective. Take, for example, someone who was severely abused by their parent in early childhood. In many cases, this person will not have a frame of reference for what love truly looks like and will then search for love they can't clearly identify, ultimately leading to an endless and unfulfilling quest. While D-love is something we all seek (and is not solely the experience of the severely abused), it is perhaps a bottomless pit with no clear solution to be redeemed.
On the other hand, B-love is considered to be superbly more healthy. B-love is admiring and a gift that is given freely. It is active instead of passive.
German social psychologist Erich Fromm notes that the principle of "I am loved because I love" is a mature type of love that follows Maslow's distinguishment of B-love. In many ways, this may appear to the reader as paradoxical in the sense that love should involve some type of reciprocity. Think of B-love this way: the more you learn how to love, the more you will recognize the love you receive from others.
Scott Barry Kaufman provides some insight with regard to how to become a more B-loving person.
First, "the greatest character strengths of B-loving people are kindness, love, zest for life, gratitude, perspective, forgiveness, social intelligence, appreciation, teamwork, hope, fairness, curiosity, judgment, humility, love of learning, humor, and spirituality."
In addition, they are high in rational compassion, allowing them to see multiple sides of an issue and tell when someone is unhappy, guilty, ashamed, or disappointed. Rational compassion, compared to empathy, is considered to be more psychologically healthy in the long run as it prevents you from taking on others' emotional burdens.
They also feel concerned for marginalized people, desire to console others, and feel frightened and a heightened sense of justice if they see someone being threatened.
Lastly, they take time to take care of themselves. B-love people have healthy self-love by implementing boundaries, self-care routines, advocating for themselves, and striving for healthy authenticity (including better self-awareness, self-honesty, integrity, and increasing and fostering authentic relationships). They are high in self-compassion and try to take a balanced view of a difficult situation and be patient toward aspects of their personality or behavior that are not ideal.
What about sex? B-loving people can also be great romantic and sexual lovers.
According to social psychologist Justin Lehmiller, healthy sexual partners don't panic when considering whether or not their sex life is "normal" (i.e., frequency, duration, performance, etc.), are able to confront (as opposed to run away) from their sexual fantasies, focus on being the right person instead of searching for the right person, and understand that the concept of "the one" is a reverie and that there is no one way to have a healthy relationship.
In conclusion, don't worry so much if you don't have enough love in your life and concern yourself more with increasing your capacity to be a B-loving person. Love is indeed a vital need that can be nurtured; it is not the sole need that we ought to focus on, though.
References
Barry Kaufman, S. (2020). Love. In Transcend: the new science of self-actualization (pp. 118–148). TarcherPerigee.
Lehmiller, J. (2018). The path to healthier sex and relationships. In Tell me what you want: The science of sexual desire and how it can help you improve your sex life (pp. 211–234). De Capo Press.