We all Crave Connection
It is seen most clearly in infants, toddlers, and young children. The desire for physical closeness with the parent. They might wander away for a while, but will invariably return to that closeness.
It is seen in adolescence. The inevitable CRUSH. The goofy behavior. The irrational fixation. The overwhelming focus. It is also seen in “Besties” and “BFFs”. To have someone at our side.
It is seen in adults. The plethora of dating sites can attest to the need to connect. Profiles, and questionnaires, bars and pickup joints, blind dates and “arranged” encounters. Like adolescence and infant-hood, adults still desire physical closeness, goofy attraction, and the “high” of the CRUSH or the chase. Yet, they also understand that connection can be with family, children, parents, dear friends; but also groups, and even entire communities.
It is normal to crave connection.
It is normal to loose your mind from time to time in overwhelming attraction to someone, something, or even some group.
It is also normal to have that infatuation mature into a connection with the real (or more real) object of that infatuation rather than the image build up of that object.
We find in relationships that there is a point where the actual person becomes more interesting, more worthy of our focus, time, and resources than the emotional and mental image we have built up from the first, with limited real knowledge of the other person. The same holds true for family, friends, groups and communities. At some point, it is normal, and healthy, to connect with REAL people.
It is normal to go from loving an ideal to loving a real; and that’s actually a better deal. To connect with a picture of a person is so less satisfying and mutually enriching and healthy than to connect with the actual person.
What is not normal.
If we are denied (or feel like we are denied) real connections, then we accept and even try to force the connections to the images, the fantasies, the imagined persons, groups or communities.
From this comes obsessive behaviors such as stalking, obsessive compulsions, and even criminal behavior. Not one case of stalking includes a person with a rational, knowledgable, long term experience with a person or group. They are all stalking unreal imaginings of the focus of their pursuits.
If we are denied (or feel like we are denied) asserting our own identity and being able to differentiate ourselves from those things to which and to whom we connect, then the connection shapes how we will act in order to assure the connection continues.
This is seen in a person totally changing their character to protect a relationship; in becoming smaller to fit into another’s world rather than being one’s self.
This is also seen in changing one’s beliefs, actions and even thoughts to save the connection to a group or community. For example, in Churches where members never question things, and cults where even thoughts have been subjugated to the group; all actions controlled are not normal connections.
What is great about real connections.
Is it any wonder that the highest job satisfaction is correlated with the number of healthy connections a worker has to their job workplace. Is it any wonder that life satisfaction is directly related to the quality of connections in one’s life.
One of the greatest motivators for human behavior is the the need for connections. Give someone who has had few the opportunity (within limits) of having and experiencing healthy connections with a person, group or community and you will have an ardent supporter, a dynamic member, a loyal friend.
This is life and the living of it.
