The Beauty of Need

“Couples therapist and author Marion Solomon writes about “positive dependency.” Dependency gets a bad rap, like it’s a derogatory word, but dependency can be generative, connective, and healthy. It’s important that we learn to meet our own needs, of course, but we also need to receive support from others and offer to meet their needs, as well. Doing so makes relationships valuable and rewarding.”

― Diane Poole Heller, 

The Power of Attachment: How to Create Deep and Lasting Intimate Relationships

The Beauty of Need

[video transcript]

I want to say a little about what I am calling ‘the beauty of need’. I use that language in part to support us detoxify any aversion we have to need. Because it seems that a lot of adults have been raised to believe that adulthood is about autonomy, independence and transcending our ‘pathetic’ or ‘needy’ nature.

The Fantasy of Eradicating Need

We are now understanding much more fully (through neuroscience, attachment theory etc) that mutuality of need is the essential glue that keeps mammals in healthy natural relationship to one another. Need is not our enemy. But many of us have a very conflicted relationship to need and some kind of inner fantasy of eradicating it, as if we would then be more dignified or mature. 

Generosity and Humility

It’s much healthier to sense into learning to skilfully collaborate with each other, given our needs of each other. So when we look at this area of relationship, I want us to lean into being more generously attentive to what our needs and the needs of others might be. We can also be more humble and realistic about how much we continue to need one another if we are to thrive.

Melting Hostility

We can survive on very little relationally as adults, but if we are going to flourish and be happy and fulfil ourselves in various ways, we need quite a lot of human support and engagement with others in a wide range of ways. So I want to encourage us to melt any inner hostility we may feel toward our needs of one another and to invite a warmer recognition of the basic goodness and naturalness of need.