Neediness

Neediness is sad and pathetic. Harsh, but true.

Are you always the first to message her? Do you rearrange your plans the second she’s free?

Or worse, is she the only thing you have going on in your life?

When you’re desperate for someone’s approval you’re telling them two things.

• You don’t think you’re enough on your own.

• You’ve got nothing better going on.

Neither is attractive. Neediness is one of the quickest ways to kill attraction, and I know because I was the needy one.

That’s where this starts. I was about as low as I’ve been, and desperate for somebody to tell me I was alright.

Then I met someone who seemed to make everything better.

Beautiful, kind, funny, smart. We had great conversations and spent hours together. I latched onto that feeling far too quickly and before long I was emotionally dependent on a girl I’d known a few weeks.

I replied too fast. I was too eager. I read far more into her messages than was there.

When I made a move, she pulled away. I was left feeling rejected and confused, and I didn’t understand why.

Looking back, the attraction might have been there at the start. I smothered it. When you’re desperate for someone’s attention you see what you want to see, not what’s actually in front of you.

And the honest bit: it wasn’t a one-off.

I used to be needy as f*ck.

As soon as I started talking to a girl I had a crush on, I’d prioritise her over everything. Cancel plans with the lads. Stop whatever I was doing to message her back right away. Try to meet up as often as I could because I was desperate to see her.

Cute, right? No.

I lost a few good girls by being a needy loser, and I don’t blame them.

Think about what they were looking at. A bloke with no plans of his own, available at any hour, whose mood rose and fell with the speed of her replies. That isn’t a man with a life she could join. It’s a job.

When you’re needy you put her on a pedestal. That isn’t a relationship. It’s a hostage situation, and she’s the one being held.

And the more you cling, the more she wants to get away. It’s human nature to want space, and you’re taking all of hers.

I soon realised I needed more interesting things in my life than girls.

That sounds obvious. It took me years.

I started reading properly. I took up kickboxing. I learned how to code, write, design and build sh*t. My own projects became my priorities instead of women.

That single shift fixed the neediness, and I haven’t had it since.

Nothing about her changed. The size of her slice did.

Now my life revolves around me: my goals, my hobbies, the things I’m building. If and when a girl comes into it, she gets to be part of that, not redefine it.

I’m not telling you to care less about women. I’m telling you she can’t be the only slice, because then every message she doesn’t send takes the whole ring with it.

Neediness comes from low self-worth. When you don’t feel good enough, you look for someone else to fill the gap, and nobody can. Not her, not the next one.

Underneath it is fear. Fear of rejection, fear of being alone, and the belief that this girl is your one shot at being happy, so you’d better not let go of her.

Amir Levine and Rachel Heller call this pattern anxious attachment in Attached, their 2010 book on attachment styles: the partner who needs constant reassurance that he’s wanted, and reads every bit of distance as the beginning of the end. If that sounds like you, it’s worth reading. I recognised myself on most pages.

The scarcity is the lie at the centre of it. There isn’t one girl. There are plenty. You only believe otherwise when she’s the only thing in the ring.

Put the phone down.

If she doesn’t reply straight away, that’s fine. A few minutes, a few hours, it doesn’t matter. Obsessing over how fast she replies only feeds the insecurity, and it makes you feel worse when the answer isn’t the one you were hoping for.

Give her room to miss you. Let her message first sometimes. When you’re always available you stop being a mystery, and mystery is attractive.

Keep it light. Neediness often comes from taking things too seriously too soon. Tease her, make jokes, flirt. A playful bloke looks like a bloke who isn’t depending on her reaction, because he isn’t.

If you catch yourself getting too needy, disappear for a bit. Not to play games. To reset. Go and do the things in the other slices and come back when you’ve got something to talk about.

The fantasy

When you’re needy you’ll build a whole story out of small things she said or did. Ask yourself honestly whether you’re projecting what you want onto her.

Sometimes what you think are romantic signals is just someone enjoying casual company. I covered the extreme version of this in Limerence, and the needy version is the same thing with the volume turned down.

Let it unfold at its own pace. Don’t force a romantic connection because you’re eager to feel wanted. If you’re serious about her there’s no rush, and if she’s serious about you she won’t need you to rush.

I don’t know whether the girl from 2023 would have stayed if I’d played it cooler. Probably not. The problem wasn’t how I was playing it. It was that she was the only thing I had.

Drop the neediness and start valuing yourself, and other people will too. Not because you’ve learned a trick, but because there’s finally something there to value.

Get something going that isn’t her. That’s all.