It feels better to be needed or to be wanted?
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The Adaptive Human | Dan Ackers | Substack
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I’ve always found it easier to understand why someone needs me than why they simply want me around.
There was a period in my life when I often declined invitations from friends.
They kept asking anyway.
I didn’t really think about it at the time.
I love the feeling of being needed.
It feels reassuring. Safe.
Someone asks for advice, or a problem appears, or someone is struggling. And then I can help out.
Those moments give me a clear role to play. I know why I’m there. But I’m usually not that good at noticing when someone needs help unless they specifically ask for it.
Being needed is a form of closeness.
And sometimes being trusted with a problem is its own kind of intimacy.
Someone has decided that I’m the person they can call.
And in those moments, there’s visible evidence that my presence mattered. I helped, and someone else was grateful.
I helped. Therefore, I mattered here.
Being useful is one genuine way people care for each other. It’s probably the way I like to show care for other people most.
The role I play explains why I’m there.
Recently, I’ve started wondering if perhaps that clarity of my role is part of why feeling needed is so reassuring.
But in personal relationships, these roles usually aren’t as clear as practical problems are.
Someone can enjoy spending time with me without being able to explain why. They might invite me somewhere even when I don’t have any role in how the evening plays out.
Sometimes someone can also just check in with me for no other reason than they want to hear how I’m doing.
There’s no clear result in those moments. Nothing was fixed, or burden reduced.
The other person simply wanted me there.
And that should probably be easier to trust.
But I’m not sure it always is.
Being needed gives me evidence I know how to recognize.
Being wanted usually comes more quietly, and not as directly.
Like another message after I didn’t answer the previous one.
Or an invitation even though I’ve done very little to maintain the friendship.
During that period, I kept less contact with friends, and I didn’t initiate anything.
My friends still invited me, and I often declined or let the invitations pass without thinking much about them.
At the time, they were just messages asking if I wanted to join.
Now I can see something I didn’t notice then.
I was doing less and less to maintain those friendships, and they hadn’t stopped making room for me.
They didn’t need me, and I hadn’t been a particularly good friend, but they kept asking me anyway.
Perhaps that’s where being wanted becomes more difficult than being needed.
When someone needs me, I know what to do.
My attention has somewhere to go.
But when someone simply wants me there, the role and task are less obvious.
All I had to do was show up. I still don’t quite understand why that was the hard part.
Note from H. Tayrone:
I got invited by friends a few times in the past. Invitations to which I always said no. I believe though it was more because I just didn't want to leave my home.
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