I was thinking about this tonight, as I drove into the driveway after dinner out with some old work friends. After five years together, I still feel so loved and so loving. The two go hand in hand. I'm so appreciative of the "little things" she does and gives me every day which all amount to support, validation, and kindness. Contrasted with my past marriage, which seemed to be all about changing me, "helping me" overcome my weaknesses, and expecting me to meet his needs as a prerequisite to meeting my own. I felt like shit all the time. I've never been younger, sexier, prettier, smarter, more important, and more worthy of respect and adoration. Imagine that. So, to feel loved I need to be truly...loved. For me, that means support, validation, and kindness. It's so easy for me to return in kind when I feel so good.

I had a terribly cynical post composed in my head, but I think I will go with this instead....

Acceptance.

There are just certain things I need accepted from the get-go and I feel loved and things go smoothly. They are, in no order of importance...

- Accept the fact that I am a nice guy. I am not going to treat you poorly. It's just not in me. If you are the kind of girl who is attracted to jerks, do us both a favor and move along.

- Accept that between early April and late October my attention is deeply divided between baseball and everything else in the universe.

- Accept that I am not that much a "do it yourself" guy anymore. I'm more a "hire someone and give me the bill" kind of guy. This comes with age.

- Accept that I have old-fashioned manners and they are automatic.

- Accept that I have worked hard to communicate with women in an open, honest and direct fashion. If you can't take the heat, don't step foot in my furnace room, doll.

- Accept that I work a lot. I mean, a lot. And if it's an election year, a nice vacation awaits for you the day after the first Tuesday in November. My treat.

- Accept that I like to give gifts, buy flowers and don't like any fuss whatsoever on my birthday.

- Accept that I sometimes like to wear my green sweatshirt with more holes than a sponge when I am lounging on the couch reading a sports magazine.

- Accept that I like time alone and I'm perfectly fine when you go out with the girls.

- Accept the fact that stress makes me horny and I have a very stressful job lately.

- Accept the fact, too, that if I come home from work and find you in one of my dress shirts and nothing else, it is game on.

I'm sure there's more...but I'm finding it to easy to drift to cynical lately. We all deserve love. And if everyone clearly stated their needs from the start, I think there'd be a whole hell of a lot less heartbreak.

Jake

I feel loved when

I can be exactly as I am

and that's not a problem.

Sappy, I know
 

but
Goof.

That's all I need to feel loved.

Wow, what a good question and I'm not sure I can answer it. I have been deeply, profoundly loved. But how did I "know" it?
Because I have had other people say they love me and I did not feel anything. It was just like something people say.
When I felt loved, I had the sense of being cherished. Infinitely adored.

Ask yourself this question: Is it more important to love, or be loved?

It is more important to me to love.
No judgement on those who answer otherwise.
But to me "to love" means the person is honest, ethical, beautiful, magickal, a warrior, true, endlessly fascinating, fantastic, deep, hilarious, brilliant, good-hearted, brave, ephemeral, smells good, worthy of respect, amazing, silly, adorable. Etc. They can have crappy qualities too but those are the good ones..
When you love someone that amazing they make you "feel loved" in thousands of wonderful ways that can't be listed. At least not by me!
Those that have loved me have gifted me in ways that can't be quantified and I am grateful. I am one lucky fucker.

yes, this.

Whew great answers so far! Thanks everyone. Great posts.

I know that for me I really suck at verbalizing what it is that I need. I like people to guess, which of course is a complete set up. One of the things that this thread has proven to me (again) is that we are all very different when it comes to love.

To ask or explain what we need makes me feel weak and puts me in a vulnerable position of needing anything. The alternative is to let them fumble along while I build resentment. I know this is nuts, hence the thread. lol. I like to say all kinds of things that I don't need - that when I'm saying it - I believe. Which depends, I've discovered, on my proximity to a relationship .

Things that I think in theory, like I don't like romance, start to matter more when it's suddenly not there....and then I'm like "HEY! Where's my romance?" lol. Maybe I'm less romantic and more greedy? Perhaps.

When you come from a dysfunctional place where what you needed never mattered - I think that it is very, very hard to (as an adult) believe that anyone could or even want to meet the needs that you have. Also, I've found that some needs are in direct conflict with other needs. To add confusion to an already confused situation. For instance, I need attention but call me all day and I'll get pissed.

To feel loved, I need to believe in you...know your authentic self...and be a priority. I need to have known your forgiveness and witnessed how you love others, like your Mom or sister or best friend. To feel love, to me, is to feel safe. Safe from lies, distrust, abuse, misuse, indifference, etc... The most perfect example, for me, is the love I share with my parents.

It is really amazing how differently we perceive feeling loved.

This is a very interesting thread!

It explains why several relationships I have had have not worked....it had nothing to do with either of us being bad people, we just had different styles of feeling loved. :)

I must say for me, past trust and respect, it really helps to have some things in common. I really would far rather discuss WWII or the Reformation than cleats. I will be in a way better mood if I don't have to attend endless depressing writer's nights or softball practices. Nothing against those things, I just don't care about them at all.

Cynthia (My G/F) would way rather discuss Erasmus than watch football....I am truly blessed! :awww:

Yes we do have some different interests, but don't have to spend every second together to feel loved. For example I love Glee and C loves Cage Fighting....thanks to the DVR, not a problem.

Really excellent thread. For me to feel loved I need to feel partnered. It is hard to explain. I have it now. I did not in the past. I felt alone. Now I feel partnered! Hand holding, decision making, emotional support. We like to do the same things. It's nice.

Short answer- the ability (and commitment) to build a history with someone. Mutual high regard & respect has to be part of the equation.

After a long hard day at work I wanna come home lay on the couch put my head in "her" lap and we just talk about our day...

And a whole lot of other things that will come to my mind... Other than what Ive already posted Im sure

Really being heard and valued for exactly who we are (yup, flaws and all) makes all the difference! And paying attention to those little things (I prefer Coke), are not all that little, really. When someone pays attention to these small things, I feel loved, too and truly cared about.... my idiosyncrasies have been noticed and are appreciated! Its fun to take notice of these kinds of things as a couple and give them to each other. I remember this!!!

Self-reliance and an independent nature does seem to be misinterpreted quite often when for me, it doesn't have a thing to do with the ability to inter-depend as well as be intra-dependent in healthy ways.

I agree its the little things... :) And feeling valued and cherished for WHO I am not what someone wants me to be..

Being heard, listened to and understood are very important to me too. Of course, I have to actually say something - which at work, on the street, in a room full of people I don't know - isn't a problem at all. In a relationship though, I don't know why, I think it's to avoid conflict or rejection, I tend not to say what I feel or what I need from the other person. But it's only when it comes to my needs. To win a stupid argument, I'll draw blood if I have to in order to win. I also don't want to hurt the other person's feelings or make them feel bad.

Of course, what ultimately happens is I get fed up and walk. Which has yet to make anyone feel good....

sap-moment*

when ez and i were first dating we'd gone to the dog park with all 4 of the dogs, his 3 mild-mannered and older, fairly well-behaved pack and my holy terror, insane, bark at your face till you play with me, pick fights with bigger dogs, jump up in the air 5 feet, eat-your-shoes, terrible, bad mannered baby boy, Chester (the frenchie that thinks he's pit and 12 feet tall)...

we had to be out of his house for 2 hours because his real estate agent was showing it most saturdays (he was selling) and had to take the dogs--we even went in separate cars to the dog park because the dogs didn't know each other well, yet...

so, we had a LOOONG walk and the park was filling up with all sorts of dogs (saturday morning) and we're about to leave and this crazy lady enters the small-dog area with her very fearful and barking tiny dogs, and chester takes off running towards them which would have been fine if their owner didn't start screaming and then the dogs start screaming and chester tries to attack and the lady won't unleash the dogs so (so they can actually greet each other) so they're getting all tied around her legs and she's screaming 'who's dog is this!!!!! this dog is attacking my dogs!!!!' and we were already running after him, about to leave anyway but she was cornered and cowering and screaming while chester was trying to sniff her dogs and bark back at them. the entire time she wouldn't shut the fuck up and i was thinking that ez probably hates my dog and is embarrassed to be out with a dog who has such FEW manners and instead he gathers all the dogs leashes and we're now actively leaving the enclosure, nearing the gate and she still is staring at us moaning and paralyzed in exaggerated fear and her dogs are still barking and wrapped around her lunging at chester and ez turns to the woman and yells at her, 'what are you looking at!?'

my heart melted a little cuz i knew ez would step up--he wasn't one of those guys that could talk big and no follow through (in fact, ez isn't much of a talker at all), and it really touched me how my dog is nearly the worst dog on earth (loves all people but can be dog phobic) and he still chose to stick up for him.

so, this is my tiny dog park story <3

(also, there's this time that ez sang chester to sleep in his lap, singing the baby beluga song -a favorite of mine- but i doubt that he wants me to tell how it was so sweet that i started crying.)