3 Steps to Resilient, Enduring and Fulfilling Love

Our respect and admiration for others blossoms in a heartbeat the instant we become aware of their praiseworthy accomplishments; this can occur even for people we've never met. Across a broad swath of worthy endeavors, we laud, revere, and even love achievers, successful people who make significant contributions. For instance, when I learned of Nobel Prize winners Kariko and Weissman's research on unlocking mRNA to deliver a safe, effective vaccine for the COVID-19 virus, I felt immediate admiration for them. Their years of pioneering work saved millions of lives.

In a humbler yet personally invaluable way—far short of gargantuan accomplishments—there are decisive steps we can take that can grow love for ourselves and the love of those we value, especially our intimate partners. But can we reasonably expect any more love or respect from others, in particular our intimate others, than we provide ourselves? Perhaps, if those others are saints.

A 3-Step Recipe for Generating Self and Other Love

Step 1: Need Identification. Research confirms that the mere act of identifying our personal needs helps construct a positive, respectful sense of ourselves, just as optimal parents help build their child's self-esteem by singling out and validating their child's needs. Similarly, keeping our needs well-delineated—especially when among those we're closest to—is a self-constructing/self-maintaining exercise that ratchets up our self-appraisal and, simultaneously, makes us more knowable, trustable, respectable and thus love-worthy.

Granted, identifying particular needs in some interpersonal contexts may be more difficult than others. For most, the intimate relationship can be especially rigorous, posing formidable challenges to the maintenance of a well-constructed self.

Surely, to further cooperativeness, preserve harmony and avert conflict, there are occasions when our compliance or willingness to conform must take center stage. However, prolonged, injudicious over-compliance puts us at risk for self-deconstruction, where we become less "there," which, again, underscores the importance of keeping ourselves "well-assembled," by our ongoing efforts to identify our needs.

To underscore this point, imagine trying to love and respect someone who's physically there but non-self-revealing, someone whose needs remain opaque, undisclosed and thus left to conjecture. Not easy. Now, by contrast, picture someone who, after appropriately "reading the room," opens themself, becoming discerningly transparent, knowable, and thus worthy of trust and primed for loving.

Step 2: Personal Needs are Fundamentally Legitimate. Here, the operative assumption is all of our needs are legitimate at their fundamental or most irreducible level and are so from the moment of conception. For example, sensitive, respectful, understanding of our needs is fundamentally valid with a deep tap root that stretches into our past and remains valid to the present.

This supportable premise is boldly trumpeted by a burgeoning body of literature on self-compassion that has notably affirmed an increase in self-love among those who are magnanimous toward themselves. Clearly, a fundamental approbation of our most basic needs forms a template, a fertile substrate for positive, respectful self-relations.

Hense, "crowning" our basic needs with legitimacy becomes a personal investment with a return payoff in self-love and respect. Moreover, legitimized needs become easier and more likely to be actively represented.

On the couch: In couple's therapy, partners, at times, painfully acknowledge that they teeter on a precipice of separation, imbalanced by bristling, affection-eroding conflict. Very sad, but would such impassioned conflict be possible were it not for the fact that each partner brings to the other a valid need(s)? Do partners fight over illegitimate, invalid personal needs? It's highly unlikely, so what "fuels" these conflicts with their usual dreaded accomplice, the loss of self and partner respect?

The answer to this question lies in the mismanagement of the couple's individual needs rather than in the underlying validity of the needs themselves. As treatment progresses, partners learn to accept the fundamental legitimacy of each other's needs. Now, an atmosphere of mutual acceptance and respect replaces their previous milieu of contentiousness. Freed of their constrictive, over-heated acrimony, partners become more flexible, more capable of resolving their differences.

Relationships Essential Reads

How Childhood Experiences Impact Our Choice of Partner

Emotional Rituals During Sickness or Injury

Step 3: Personal Need Representation. After identifying and legitimizing our needs, we are now prepped to proactively represent them in the following turnkey sequence: a) Balance self and other respect, b) Expression of the need and its related feelings, c) Prioritization of the management of the need over its gratification. These sub-steps are a bit abstract, so let's translate them into a concrete example:

Vignette: Lisa and Matt have been married for six years. Of late, Lisa complains that Matt is emotionally withdrawn, unreachable and preoccupied with his laptop with which he is accused of having a "romantic relationship." Notwithstanding, Lisa's need for an emotional connection with Matt is indisputably valid, so it's incumbent upon her to manage her need in a way that draws Matt's uttermost attention to its legitimacy.

To begin, Lisa makes an essential, first-step investment of respect in Matt, e.g., "Do you have a moment to talk?" Note, to be fully respectful of Matt, Lisa must furnish a "Yes or No" option with her request (Balance of self and other respect). Next, Lisa expresses her need and the deepest feelings orbiting it, e.g., "Lately, I haven't felt as close to you as I would like, and I've missed you." Note too, Lisa will be no closer to Matt than she is close to herself through ferreting out and expressing her deepest, most vulnerable emotions (expression of needs/feelings).

Lastly, throughout this process, Lisa prioritizes the effective representation of her need over its gratification which of necessity, deliberately excludes pressuring Matt in any way (prioritization of need management over personal need gratification).

In distillate form, Lisa's efforts to apply the orthodoxy of effective need management reduces the probability of deploying Matt's defenses, thus elevating the likelihood of drawing his attention to the validity of her needs. Paradoxically, by simply bringing Matt's attention to her needs, Lisa achieves an important measure of emotional connection with Matt that can leave her feeling understood, even respected. In the process, Lisa can grow her self-respect.

The "magic" here is two-fold: Effective need managers grow the love they have for themselves, and the love others have for them.