"I NEED YOUR LOVE".....

“I Need Your Love” is the well-worn theme of many a hit love song. But how does it feel – that “neediness”? Don't you feel an emptiness that you want this person to fill? Don't you feel some trepidation in case you don't get it? Don't you become some kind of slave for their approval? Do you start refacing, discarding and shrinking bits of your behaviour, re-ordering some of your value priorities, and changing some of your attitudes because you can't bear the thought that they might disapprove of you? Do you try to figure out how they would like you to be, and then try to become that, like an actor?

When you do any of that, you never really get their love. You turn into someone you aren't, and then when they say "I love you," you can't believe it, because you know they're loving a façade. They're loving someone who doesn't even exist, the person you're pretending to be. There's no juice in that for you; it will eventually destroy your partnership. Have you never heard the phrase “He's not the man I married!?”

And consider this. Inherent in what you're doing is the thought “See how much I'm giving up for you?" Who in their right mind is going to want to have to carry that responsibility for the rest of their lives?

Yet it's almost a world-wide obsession to hunt down connection in this way, instead of just letting it come to you. And it spawns a toxic brew of Pretence and Deceit. 

In seeking to snare support and affection, you lose what is genuine, authentic and real. For both of you. Singles bars and speed dating are the best demonstrations I know of the kind of desperate pretending, and the lifelong prison of Loneliness we create for ourselves as we're out there searching for what we already have.

Wouldn't you really rather someone loved you for all that you are?

[All the Things You Are – Peter Sellers – 2:10]