One Key to Love — Differentiating Needs, Wants, and Desire
Words to help you know how you really feel.
An eloquence of the heart can change a man’s life. Words help define and clarify his feelings. They direct his thought. They open him to emotional experiences that were unavailable without them.
I learned this through the journey of my own life in which a kind of emotional eloquence helped me break out of the cages of inarticulateness. Inside those cages, I did not know what I was feeling. I was crude. “I’m angry!” I might shout. Or, “I love you!” I might whisper. As if life were made of those two cages only.
Love and anger, however, have a multitude of flavors or shades. Not all love is the same, and not all anger is the same. I also realized that other large categories of feeling have similar differentiations — grief, for example, or shame, or even joy. Dreams, poetry, mythology, and art began to provide the language needed. That language enriched my life and helped me to feel and experience life more deeply, and with grace and strength.
At present, I am writing a series of essays on the flavors of love. I have completed those on captivation, endearment, infatuation, and sacred love. Differentiating these experiences help men know themselves better, and will help them avoid mistaking one kind of…
