Philosophy loves to enumerate. Abraham Maslow gave us the famous ladder: physiological needs at the bottom, then safety, then love and belonging, then esteem, and self actualization at the top, the idea being that the lower needs demand attention before the higher ones come into focus. Charles Whitfield, writing for people healing from difficult childhoods, made a longer and warmer list, adding things like touching, attention, listening, guidance, being taken seriously, the freedom to grieve, and unconditional love. Neither of them is wrong. But no numbering scheme survives contact with real life. There is always something to add, and always a circumstance that breaks the rules. These models are basic guidelines, and here is mine.
There are essential needs we share with every other creature: air, water, and food. For humans, add love, companionship, and protection from caretakers until we are capable of caring for ourselves. We need to be taught the valuable lessons of survival. And here is the big one, the one so often misworded or overlooked entirely: we come into the world unable to regulate our own nervous system. We can cry to release the energy of discomfort, but if no one answers the cry, the anxiety does not simply slip away. When our needs are met, when we are satiated in one way or another, the nervous system returns to a rested state. We need our caretakers to respond to us in a timely, gentle manner, and that is the first way they regulate our nervous system for us. They do this work for at least the first fifteen to twenty years of life, but most critically in the first five to seven foundational years, and that is how we learn to regulate it ourselves later on. The lessons get ingrained.
We also need caretakers and role models who mirror healthy lifestyle patterns. We are copycat creatures, creatures of habit, and it is an absolute disaster if we do not have healthy people around us during our formative years showing us how to live. This is especially true in how we conduct ourselves in relationships, first with siblings, then with extended family and community, and most relevant to this work, we need teachers we can mimic in the art of intimate relationships. If we have poor role models to mirror, we have far more work to do in our adult life to find our way there. This is one of the big issues: most of us were handed no instruction book on how to be in a relationship, or how to be comfortable in intimacy. Combine that with maladaptive relating behaviors, with addiction, with neurosis, and so on, and relationships become a daunting task at the very least.
We need our self esteem kept in balance. We need friendship, and most of us need romantic relationship, though some renounce it in favor of a spiritual or faith based practice. We need a sense of dignity within our community. People fixate on respect, but I suspect that need is not intrinsic to human nature. I think it surfaces where there is damage around it from our early childhood experiences. We need to connect with nature on some level. And in the context of romantic relationships, most of us need a sense of loyalty, commitment, and fidelity, though there are exceptions there too. Some people need less, and some agree to need none at all.
Separate from role models and intimacy, humans need a great deal of play time, exercise, freedom of movement, fresh air, and sunlight. If we are blind we adapt, though those of us with no light perception at all lose the daily signal that sets the body's internal clock, and our sleep and hormone rhythms can drift. In general, people need light, air, and movement. We need laughter. We need feelings of joy and pleasure, discovery, stimulation, and distraction from boredom. We absolutely need grown ups around us who teach us what is actually happening in reality. We need explanations, some working understanding of the world, because we cannot walk around believing the bogeyman is under the bed. Our needs also shift with time and with the society we are born into. A higher education, a nicer home, these are concepts passed down from generation to generation, not basic necessities, just needs we form because of our circumstances. And let's not forget we need places to go to the bathroom and places to secure our valuables. I say that lightheartedly, but notice how deeply true it is, and in modern times we have learned to need some luxuries too. We are definitely approval seeking creatures. You could make your own specialized list of what you believe your intrinsic needs to be. You should.
Which brings me to the point of all this for two grown people in love. Maslow put belonging in the middle of a ladder. Whitfield put it at the center of healing. I will put it plainly. In a relationship, some of your needs will be met and some will not. Your partner will find some of your needs difficult to meet, just as you will find some of theirs. Relationships are not perfect, they are compromises. We do our best to meet each other's most basic needs, and we forgive the rest.