Last Updated on February 14, 2024 by Lifevif Team and JC Franco
Let’s talk about love and just how much we want to feel it! Most of us have an innate desire to be loved, but we don’t really understand why. We seek out love, approval, and affection from our friends, our partner, and our family members. And when we don’t get the love we desire, we don’t feel very good, do we? No, we don’t! Why is that?
There are some tell-tale signs that we feel the need for love in our lives. Most often, we simply don’t understand the feelings or don’t know what to do with them, so we overlook and ignore them. If you find yourself feeling jealous of the close affections of your friends, if you long for a partner to show you love and affection, and if you wish to be the first and last thought on people’s minds…welcome to the club; you want/need to feel loved. And guess what? That is an absolutely normal and acceptable emotion!
This built-in desire to feel loved and wanted by others is a natural thing, and there are good explanations for it. As humans, we get a lot out of feeling loved.
Are you ready to discover a few of the reasons behind humans needing to feel loved? You’ve come to the right place! Below we delve into the 12 simple reasons why we have this built-in desire to feel loved throughout our lives. Don’t worry – your partner, friends, and family feel it too!
12 reasons why we all want and ‘need’ to feel loved. Feeling loved:
1. Provides a sense of importance/relevance.
You might be wondering what relevance and love have to do with each other. Are they really related at all? When someone doesn’t feel loved by anyone, it can lead to depression. It’s fundamentally important for a person to feel as if they are accepted and cared for by those they share their life with. This means that feeling loved by parents, siblings, partners, friends, can provide that feeling of self-importance that staves off feelings of depression and hopelessness.
2. Boosts self-esteem.
If you haven’t thought of it before, you might not piece self-esteem and love together, but they are actually important for one another. Let’s first define what self-esteem is.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “self-esteem” as
“confidence in one’s own worth or abilities; self-respect”.
Lexico – Powered by Oxford
If a person doesn’t feel loved, they will most likely have a dip in their confidence and a lack of belief in themselves. Self-esteem starts at home. Parents can instill self-esteem in growing children by making them feel loved and accepted. It works just the same in friendship circles and with partners.
3. Can increase self-motivation and morale.
Let’s talk about love’s impact on a person’s self-motivation and morale. When someone feels loved, they naturally feel more empowered and motivated in general for life. Want your partner to be more dedicated to the relationship? Go out of your way to make them feel loved. Want the kids to be more part of the team in the family? Show them just how loved they are and watch their sense of family morale increase.
4. Provides an overall sense of being whole.
You know the story that claims humans have a soul mate and spend their lives looking for “the one”? Well, there’s a certain element of truth to it. Whether you believe in soul mates or not, humans tend to enjoy life more when they have a permanent partner to share life’s ups and downs with.
One of the reasons why people have a desire to feel loved by a significant other is that we tend to go through life feeling incomplete. Not everyone feels this way, but most do. Most people seek out a specific partner to spend and share their lives with as it makes them feel “whole”.
5. Provides life purpose.
How much purpose do you feel that you have in life? Do you have a purpose? Do you get up and feel driven to work towards your purpose each day? Getting up in the morning and doing the day’s chores somewhat depends on how loved we feel. That might not seem like a legitimate reason, but if you had no one to love, no one to share things with, and no one in your life being appreciative of your efforts; would you feel as if you had real purpose in your life? Probably not!
6. Gives us validation.
A human who feels validated is a human that experiences more life enjoyment. Validation is important for someone psychologically. Validation is closely linked to communicating acceptance. When a person feels loved, they feel validated; and when someone feels validated, they feel as if they have a place in the world (and in their immediate surroundings).
7. Strengthens bonds and emotional ties.
We all want to have deep friendships and bonds with other people. How easy this is for us depends on how we feel about ourselves and others. Showing someone love is essentially showing them that you accept and care for them just the way they are. This motivates someone to put more time and effort into developing bonds and emotional ties with you and vice versa. This is the reason why a relationship starts to break down when one person or both stop showing affection.
8. Increases our desire to achieve/do more in our personal relationships.
How much effort and time are you willing to put into your relationship? When a person feels loved, desired, and accepted by their significant other, they naturally put more effort into the relationship. When friends make each other feel accepted and loved, friendships forge stronger, and people are there for each other. It’s the same in sibling and family relationships. Kids and parents build stronger relationships when they both feel loved and accepted.
9. Is good for our overall emotional and mental health.
When a person feels loved by friends, family, and a partner, they tend to experience a greater sense of satisfaction. A person that feels satisfied doesn’t spend a lifetime seeking out happiness as they already have what they need: love. This is good for mental and emotional health.
10. Puts jealousies and insecurities in their place.
If a person is unsure if they are loved, it leaves room for jealousy and insecurity to creep in. Imagine feel unsure of whether you are loved or not, and then watching your partner speak to a person of the opposite (or same) sex? That type of scenario is a recipe for insecurity and relationship distress. Feeling loved leaves us feeling less jealous and insecure.
11. Makes us feel appreciated.
There’s a saying that goes “someone who feels appreciated will always do more”. And that’s the underlying reason why we need to feel loved to feel appreciated. When we feel loved, we know that our efforts are appreciated and that makes us feel content and, by default, happy to do more.
12. Provides a good reason to love and give back.
This one isn’t very hard to understand. Naturally, if a person feels loved, they feel more inclined to love back. They are also more inclined to give more of themselves to the person that loves them. This is why we feel a need to feel loved in our personal relationships.
All in all
As it turns out, we need to feel loved, and in turn, we want to give love away too. What’s the reason behind it all? Well, there are 12 viable reasons listed above. If you wonder if it’s normal that you have a yearning to feel loved and appreciated; fear not! You are not alone. Apparently, it’s all part of our design and the “human condition”.
This article was co-authored by our team of in-house and freelance writers, and reviewed by our editors, who share their experiences and knowledge about the "Seven F's of Life".
JC Franco
JC Franco is a New York-based editor for Lifevif. He mainly focuses on content about faith, spirituality, personal growth, finance, and sports. He graduated from Mercyhurst University with a Bachelor’s degree in Business, majoring in Marketing. He is a certified tennis instructor who teaches in the New York City Metropolitan area. In terms of finance, he has passed the Level I exam of the CFA program.