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Feeling Wanted
Do you feel wanted? Are there people who desire your presence and engagement? Are you the willing focus of another’s caring or affection?
Well, if so, count yourself among the fortunate, because feeling unwanted can prove as painful as a physical wound, or worse. It cuts at the heart and soul of a person, placing their well-being in jeopardy. Research shows that having people truly desire your company, whether as friends, family or romantically, can have a positive impact on self-esteem, emotional balance and even physical health. Inversely, feeling unwanted can lead to despair, violence and self-destruction. Its absence can be as powerful as its presence. One need only read the grim statistics about the mental maladies suffered by children who feel unwanted by their parents to recognize the damage done.
Of course, there’s no benefit in being wanted by persons we prefer would look elsewhere. The benefit only accrues when we are receptive. Also, there is always danger in being wanted for who one is not; for a polished-for-the-public persona rather than one’s true self. When this occurs, we feel an implied rejection of the self, both from others and from within ourselves. So, for the experience of being wanted to bring real benefit, it must be directed at one’s authentic self and emanating from persons one feels positive toward.
Precious Persons
So, who are the people in your life who want you in some genuine and loving sense—emotionally, intellectually, physically, spiritually or in every respect? I’ll bet they’re the most precious persons in your world. Reciprocal attraction, be it platonic or romantic, is a force of nature, one that can generate powerful emotions and deeply felt shared experiences. This fundamental need to be wanted emerges before birth when we enter a primal state of relationship with our biological mothers. Some suggest that, even in the womb, we sense, in a primordial way, the wanting or not-wanting from our birth mother.
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Among the many benefits of feeling wanted is its capacity to shape our personhood, transforming us from me-myself-and-I individuals into friends, family and lovers who are capable of compassion and trust. Positive social affiliation increases one’s emotional intelligence, which is crucial in forming heartfelt bonds. There are exceptions, of course, as in narcissists who bask in being wanted but remain bereft of empathy for others.
Sociologists tell us that the longing to be wanted is as close as we get to a primal need in human development. Sure, there are a few who entirely spurn their fellow homo sapiens, but they are dwarfed by the multitudes longing for social affiliation as surely as they do sustenance and shelter. The downside, of course, is that both wanting and feeling wanted carry some risk. Losing that person or, subsequently, being rejected by them is one of life’s crueler cuts. When people generate an interpersonal space between each other that is alive with meaning and shared reality, its loss is a death in its own right.
Why we are wanted by particular individuals and not others remains one of those complicated mysteries of human nature. Theories abound, from the reductionistic (brain wired to favor certain attributes) to the spiritual (prior relationships from “past lives”). Attraction has been associated with such diverse subconscious influences as scent, subtle visual cues, vocal characteristics, psychological projection and social hierarchies (dominance, submission, power, etc.). Some even apply the so-called “law of attraction,” believing we are drawn to others by unconscious agendas, that something inside of us recognizes another person as someone we need to engage with in service of our inner work or spiritual development.
All these theories may have some truth to them. However, I also believe we long to be wanted to assuage our existential loneliness. In a sense, each of us is trapped in our individual body and idiosyncratic existence. Escaping from that prison of sorts, even if just for interludes, increases our sense of connection and rapport. Most of us simply need someone to tell it to and to feel and face it with, together rather than alone.
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