We All Need Love Pt. 2

Hi, I'm Doctor Leslie, relationship expert located in the St. Louis, Missouri area. And I'm back with the second part of talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And today I want to dig a little deeper into the need for love and belonging. So, again, love and belonging is right there in that middle of the pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Why is it in the middle? You know, if you stop and think about that, it's a basic need, right? We need love and belonging. But when we don't have that middle piece, what happens?

It's kind of like Njinga, right? It might fall apart. So that love and belonging comes through romantic or intimate relationships and our friendships, and it requires the involvement of someone else. But what happens when we don't have that other person? Or if the person that we are connecting to is not healthy for us, right. We might experience a lot of pain. We might experience loneliness and detachment, and it's hard to find that again. And so it takes time to navigate that world of love and relationships.

And so sometimes we have to be bold about that, be bold about what we need. It's hard to connect with people when they don't know what we need. So there are basic needs that we all have as humans. But when it comes to love, the need of how we need to be loved, it's hard to communicate that if we've never experienced love. So consider, have you struggled in your love life? Have you struggled with intimate relationships with friends and with a loving partner? And have you ever discussed with them what you need?

Do you tell them, I need to be loved in this way? I experience love when you do this. And so if you've never experienced love, that might be hard for you to communicate. So think of ways where you can look for ways that you are being loved or look for ways that you are loving others. Let me know how that works for.