Needs are requirements for healthy development. We bring needs to our partner and he or she brings needs to us. Our central love-needs might be summarized as: attention, affection, appreciation, acceptance, allowing. These five A’s are the same needs we presented to our parents from our earliest days of life.

Showing these five A’s is true presence in a relationship. They also describe the essential components of love. When they happen between two people, they constitute intimacy. Let’s look at each in detail:

Attention: We ask for an engaged focus on our words, feelings, and experience. We also seek responsiveness to them. We want to be heard and seen for who we are. We want the other to show he gets us. We want ongoing dialogue. When the other person is too caught up in himself, he will not be able to focus on us. Only someone who can transcend his own ego can be attentive. This shows that letting go of ego, a spiritual goal, helps us love. We needed attention in order to survive when we were infants. We need it all through life to thrive.

Affection: The human brain develops in early life through frequent experiences of being held, cuddled, and played with. Our need for physical touch is therefore essential to our growth. We need physical holding........

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