Wants vs Needs

Many people do not make a distinction between their wants and their needs. Patients often ask me: How am I supposed to know what I need?

A “need” is basic to your survival and a “want” may provide enjoyment but you can live without it.

If you need something, your needs don’t go away. Whereas if you want something, and you don’t get it, you can still feel quite fulfilled once a need is met.

An authentic need can be satisfied such as the need for love, the need to use your physical self, a need for community, a need to be visible.


A want is something you may feel that you need but you can live without it.

When you confuse your wants and needs, you may never experience satisfaction. The feeling of insatiability creates barriers between parts of yourself as well as between yourself and others.

The turning point between knowing what you need (which creates a boundary) and not knowing what you need (which creates a barrier) is one more step towards finding happiness.

A good way to determine what you need and following this to distinguish between your needs and wants, is to commence writing. After a few days of journaling, start to question yourself and begin to concretize what you truly need versus what you want. If you see that there is a repetitive topic, it may indicate that the underlying theme represents something that you need.

However, if there is an obsessive element to the repeated “needs” that can’t be satisfied, you may be confusing your wants and needs. Remember: an authentic need can be satisfied; a compulsive wanting can’t be.

For example, in your journal if you’ve been writing for days about a watch that you have to have, ask yourself, once you have it will you be satisfied? If the answer is “Yes!” and you can afford it, test yourself, buy it and see what happens. How long does it make happy you? If it creates a strong feeling of satisfaction over a long period of time, it’s possible this object really was something you need or had a symbolic meaning for you and fulfilled something else. If you didn’t feel satisfied then you know you were dealing with a want and not a need.

Confusing wants and needs creates a barrier. Knowing the difference creates a boundary. Wanting your partner to give you something, but not telling him that you want it, creates a barrier. For example wanting your partner to give you a massage, a cup of tea, a birthday party, but feeling he should know by now that I would want that, is a barrier.

Some of us do not even know that we need a massage from our partner, or the gesture of bringing us a cup of tea, or the grand sign of making us a party-- something that tells the world that we are important to him. Then we resent that he never thinks of these things on his own. We build a giant size brick wall between ourselves and our partner that he cannot scale—mainly because he does not have the ability to read our mind.

THE RULE IN THE TURNING POINT BETWEEN WANTS AND NEEDS IS TO DISCOVER WHAT YOU NEED, AND INFORM THE OTHER PERSON. EVEN IF HE IS NOT FORTHCOMING YOU HAVE SATISFIED YOUR OWN ABILITY TO KNOW WHAT YOU NEED AND TO PUT IT INTO WORDS.

Like the Beatles song, “we don’t always get what we want”. But the need to take care of ourselves well enough to inform ourselves of our own thoughts and feeling is a large leap forward.

Once we know what we need then the next challenge is to distinguish between our wants and our needs. Suppose our partner does not give us the massage, or the tea, or the birthday party—we can then have the choice of whether we want to think of something that he already gives us that satisfies our need. For example, perhaps he takes care of the bills, or he works on the garden, or he shows up every evening, and we can choose to realize that his behavior also helps to fulfill our need for recognition, companionship, or nurturing.

Becoming aware that we are the choices we make gives us an increasing freedom over our lives and access to living a life filled with happiness.