SEX AND OUR PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS
Posted on August 23, 2018 by Sydney Ceruto, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
How men and women differ in their sexual needs and desires.
There’s a fundamental assumption a lot of us make about sex that often causes a lot of skewed perceptions about why we’re not getting the sex/love we want.
Men have a tendency to make the assumption that sex itself is a need, regardless of who (or what) it comes from. Women have a tendency to assume that sex can only be a form of intimacy/love. Both of these are wrong, and they both get a lot of people into trouble in their relationships.
But to explain why, I need to explain psychological needs.
All humans possess fundamental psychological needs. If we do not meet our psychological needs, we suffer, sometimes severely. Just like we need food, shelter, and sleep to survive, we also need to fulfill our psychological needs to remain mentally healthy and stable.
I have studied a number of psychological needs, but I can with certainty narrow them down to four fundamental needs: security, self-esteem, autonomy, and connection To be happy, stable people, we need to meet all four of these needs consistently. If we are not meeting these needs, our minds will actually begin to rationalize ways to get them met, even at the expense of our physical or mental health. If one is never able to meet their need for esteem, they will become chronically depressed and sometimes commit suicide. If one never meets their need for autonomy, they will fall into a state of codependence or learned helplessness.
Much of the mismatched understanding between men and women and sex comes from the fact that men and women usually use sex to satisfy different needs. Traditionally, a woman’s best route to a secure future and healthy children was through marrying a successful man. In the past, women mainly sought sex out as a form of security. Even today, there’s still a lot of appeal in a man who can provide a secure, stable environment for a woman.
Women have also suffered a history of having their sexuality shamed and suppressed by society. Therefore, many of them have come to feel an inverse relationship between sex and their need for esteem. Instead, they’re far more likely to use sex to seek out their need for connection, since they’ve been conditioned to feel bad about themselves for having sex for other reasons.
Men, on the other hand, have traditionally used their sex lives as a status symbol with other men. If you’re a man who sleeps with a lot of women, you’re usually seen as a more successful man. Therefore, men have largely been conditioned to seek sex to fulfill their need for self-esteem.
Because men and women have traditionally pursued sex to fill different psychological needs, they fail to understand each other and criticize each other for not meeting the need they want met. Men think women are being clingy and manipulative, whereas women think men are being insecure and desperate.
In my upcoming book on dating for men, a core point I make is that men need to develop themselves independently of women to get their needs met on their own as much as possible. I would argue the same goes for women. Pursuing sex to compensate for your neediness in self-esteem or because you feel a lack of connection in your life will only cause you to behave in unattractive ways. End of story.
