What Exactly Are Our Emotional Needs?

We all have emotional needs. We seek out “emotional nourishment” the same way we seek nourishment from food and water.

How we get these needs met may change, especially as we get older, but their roots stay the same. If you

• don’t know what your emotional needs are,
• are not able to fulfil them on a regular basis,
• don’t know how to express them, and
• expect them to be met by your prominent partner,

you are most likely to attract emotionally unavailable, immature, or detached partners.

As you avoid meeting your emotional needs, it will be challenging to share your deep feelings, wants and desires with your beloved one and create a lasting love relationship.

And it will lead you to be disconnected from your Divine Feminine Source.

What exactly are our emotional needs?

1. A sense of emotional safety and security.

We need to feel like it is safe for us to be ourselves with, at least, one or two people in our lives. This allows us to develop to our full potential.

2. Volition

We need to feel like we have the power to choose how we exist. We strive to drive our own lives and live autonomously.

Often we don’t give ourselves volition because we get caught under people-pleasing by trying to earn love, approval or validation from our parents or partners. That’s why we don’t make decisions that aren’t necessarily true to who we are.

Meeting this emotional need requires setting crystal clear boundaries, especially with our loved ones.

3. Attention

Giving and receiving quality contact with others, as well as with ourselves, is core to feeling valued. Because we need genuine, authentic human connection. We need to feel that our existence counts to others and our loved ones.

4. Emotional intimacy

Emotional intimacy is a deep closeness we feel secure, accepted and loved for who we are in which trust and compassionate communication exists.

Emotional disconnection from our feelings, wants and desires increases loneliness, isolation, and dissociation.

Having an emotionally attuned connection with ourselves and our loved ones allows us to know not only that we are not alone, but that we are desired.

5. Community connection

It is about feeling a sense of belonging somewhere, or something. It may be a community organization, a cause of some sort of lifestyle or a passion.

We need to feel connected to something greater than ourselves. This basic need allows us to give way to something other than our own personal desires, growing the experience of satisfied intention.

6. Privacy

We require enough time and space to live a balanced lifestyle. We require solitude to reflect on and learn from our experiences.

If you are particularly an introvert, empath, and individual sensitive to overstimulation like me, you may need to have quiet alone time to be with yourself more than others.

7. Sense of self

It is about knowing who you are, what is important to you, and what you value. We can have a really strong sense of self if we know how we show up and how we interact with the world.

It is founded on how we feel about ourselves, our relationship with ourselves, and the strength and security of that relationship.

8. Sense of achievement

We have the ability to identify, analyze, problem-solve, imagine, create, and strive. When we believe we are not achieving a goal, we begin to criticize ourselves. As a result, we may lose motivation and become lazy as we begin to believe that we are not capable of accomplishment.

It’s not just about achieving whatever, it’s about achieving things that are important to you. It can go both ways: past and future. You remember things that you have achieved and there are things that are important to you, that you’re working towards.

9. Sense of meaning

We need to have a coherent set of beliefs about life and what it’s all for. Basically, we need to feel like we have an answer to the question of “why we’re here.”

We have to have a core set of values, at least one of which guides us to a sense of purposeful belonging.

Unless you are consciously, continuously and consistently meeting your emotional needs, you may find yourself dating aimlessly and be dependent on a future partner.

What is your self-assessment of meeting your emotional needs on a scale of 0 to 10? In which domain do you need to work more to be vulnerable when dating?

Share your thoughts and questions below in the comments section. I respond to every comment.

I’m more than happy to help you build a deeper intimacy with your emotional self so that you can build deeper emotional intimacy for a long-lasting and sustainable relationship with your prominent partner.

Committed to your success in l❤️ve,

©Sumru İnal