If you have been in love, you may have already experienced feelings of withdrawal. The loved one is absent, goes away, or worse, leaves you and your heart squeezes, your blood freezes, a world collapses. Does that speak to you?
The mere idea that it could happen one day can generate a constant state of anxiety, panic attacks or jealousy, or conversely a fear of commitment and difficulties in bonding.
If a little frustration can sometimes spice up the romantic relationship (band of rascals), the lack of it can become chronic suffering, a sign of emotional dependence. Let’s do a check in.
What is Desire and what is Need?
To better understand what lack is, we can start by seeing what differentiates a desire from a need.
A Need is what must be filled in us for our survival or our psychic balance. Eating, drinking, sleeping are physiological needs that cannot be overlooked. You agree ?
Belonging, love, sharing are universal psychological needs, necessary for our development. To learn more, you can consult this list of human feelings and needs.
A desire, is an impulse towards an action, turned towards the outside of ourselves. It is a strategy to satisfy a need. Going to the movies, making love, eating strawberries, are all strategies to meet needs: sharing, physical contact, for example. And most often to experience pleasure when all needs are met. Undeniable need, revocable desire
The need is inside us and cannot be changed, it is imposed on us via our emotions. The stronger the need, the more intense the emotion. Denying our emotions and our needs can have negative consequences for our well-being and our health.
So what is Lack?
The Lack is when we let our brains confuse a desire with a need.
The “need” is not universal: not everyone needs this “you” and it is located outside of me. this “you” is a strategy that serves one or more of my needs.
The lack resulting from this confusion can have very varied effects. It can simply translate into unspoken expectations of the other and unacknowledged, stifled emotions. When the emotions are light, the discomfort is bearable. However, repetition can cause these emotions to manifest with increasing intensity until they completely overwhelm the person. Disproportionate emotions and extreme behaviors can then appear: fits of anger, fits of jealousy, perpetual mistrust which leads to watch over the other, etc.
What do people think about Love ?
Many people are convinced that you cannot love if you do not at least feel this lack. For them, it is unthinkable to dissociate this notion of lack of the sentiment of love, it is even often a sign which indicates to them that they love. Unfortunately, it is more often a signal of emotional dependence than love.
Love is to “give without expecting anything in return“.
It’s an unconditional gift.
Love can exist even outside of any couple relationship.
Love exists wherever you are ready to see it, nature is love for example.
To love is first to know how to fulfill yourself before you can fulfill the other.
When in a relationship there are unconscious expectations, love is subject to conditions: you are worthy of my love only if you fulfill my needs. Otherwise, I cannot, or can no longer love you, at the risk of denying myself and suffering from it, because I am not able to meet my needs myself.
In the first case, when the relationship does not go as planned and you separate, temporarily or permanently, you will miss your former partner, without a doubt. After all, you have built a stable and healthy life and relationship together. But despite all your efforts, everything did not go as planned. Now you are sad and alone with your memories and thoughts.
In another case, your love story is in seventh heaven. You love yourself and are happy together. however, life sometimes separates you (be it for a trip, work or something else). The lack is, therefore here, temporary. You can even almost be happy to feel it because it means that you love yourself!