"Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." — Mark Twain
With all due respect to Mr. Clemens, I'm not sure I agree. To me, love—romantic love, that is—is the irresistible desire to be appreciated, to be valued, to be regarded as important by someone else. Desire is an important part of the picture, of course, especially in the beginning. But I don't want to argue semantics--"desire" is nearly as good as "appreciation" for my purposes today. Rather, I want to talk about the relationship of either concept to selfishness.
Here's my question: Is it selfish to want to matter to someone?
To a certain extent, it is selfish by definition: you want something for yourself. You're making a claim on someone's attention and regard (and in a particularly strong way). You don't want merely to mean something to this person—you want to be everything to him or her. You want to be the first person he or she thinks to share and celebrate the good times with, and also the first person he or she go to for comfort when the bad times hit. You want to be the focus of this person's personal life, not in the sense of dominating it, but of providing a ground, a center—a home. ("You feel like home to me" has got to be one of the greatest things one person can say to another.)
But is it unreasonably selfish, in that you are wrongfully or unfairly taking something from somebody else? Assuming you have not misled this person in any way, and you have been as open and honest as can be expected (depending on the nature and stage of the relationship), then it is hard to see how you have "taken" anything. And if taking is not the issue, then the wrongfulness or unfair nature of it is—and that's a more involved issue.
While anybody can feel this way at times, the problem is more pronounced in the self-loathing, whose feelings of inadequacy prevent them from seeing what they bring to their relationships: the love, concern, and appreciation they give to their partners. Instead, they focus on the negatives, whether real or imagined. For instance, they may fear that claiming someone's attention will make it less likely that that person will be able to find someone better. They may also feel selfish because they don't think they've earned the attention of the other person.
But is it important that you "earn" it? Should you have to? No, romantic attention is to be given freely, in the sense both of being voluntary as well as without expectation of receiving anything in return. Perhaps "earn" is the wrong word, then—how about "deserve"? Not much improvement: that merely switches the emphasis from the economic (to earn implies some sort of transaction) to the ethical (to deserve implies a right or claim). But both words suggest there is some sort of merit involved, that you have to be "good enough" in some measurable way to earn or deserve regard from another person.
But attention, care, and love are not things that should have to be earned—as we said above, they have the greatest value when they are freely given (in both senses). By the same token, they are not to be deserved in the sense of a reward—but they can be deserved because the other person deems you worthy of them. (This, of course, is exactly what the self-loathing have trouble believing.) Put another way, your beloved does not give you attention because you deserve it—rather, you know you deserve it from the fact that it is given (and given freely).
In the end, it's not selfish to want another person to appreciate, value, or desire you (no matter how you might feel about yourself). In a certain sense, desires themselves are never selfish—but how we act on them can be. As long as you're honest and kind—and be yourself—than you "deserve" all the attention people are willing to offer you.
And if someone does offer it to you, don't question it. Embrace it--for it is too valuable a gift to let go to waste.
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For a select list of my previous Psychology Today posts on self-loathing, relationships, and other topics, see here.
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