What is a need and what is a want?

There's so much talk about  needs and wants.  Yet when people try to define the difference, it seems difficult to do like trying to catch the smoke off a campfire.  


I cannot define it for anyone else.  I do know that time, astrological events, age, and hormones can change needs and wants.  


The Uranus opposition seems to be a time when people feel insecure and need extra reassurance that they are not old, that they are still desirable, that they are still amazing (like they felt when they were younger).  Yet that need dissipates as the opposition ends.  So is it really a need or a temporary want? 


Very hard to say for sure.


The Chiron return (often coupled with the hormonal surges of menopause for women) is also a time of deep insecurity.  The women I have spoken to who (like myself ) are past that,   all say they went through a lot of insecurity then.  Just when their hormones are really high (and their libido is high to match) they are looking older and no longer able to get the male attention they so want.  Chiron also digs up lots of issues which can cause added insecurity until these issues are dealt with.  A lot of women who relied on their physical looks suddenly feel the loss as age creeps up on them and unless they developed their inner selves somewhere along the way, they feel a crisis of confidence and think they need someone (or several  someones) to pay more attention to them.  Many of these women had affairs with younger men or added men to their lives even though their partners were not happy about it.  Several of them, as the hormones died down and the Chiron return ended, wondered why they had done these actions and felt like they messed up the good thing they had.  Was theirs a need or a want if it was temporary and based on hormones and Chiron returning? 


Isn't it hard to know the answer to that?  It IS  hard and no one  can define it but the people going through it. Yet it is as they are going through it that they are least able to be objective about it.


All I know is, sometimes we confuse needs and wants to the point that we hurt ourselves and others.  That is when knowing the difference between these and the astrological (and hormonal) events can help.  Having someone past that time also helps; they can help us see that there is a time limit to the feelings ans that the feelings will be a lot less intense as time goes on.


If you know that feeling of insecurity is temporary (as it often is during the Uranus opposition and the Chiron return and menopause) then it would make sense to be cautious and not do drastic things which could harm yourself or another.  


A woman I knew turned 40 and left her family, took her young child with her, and went out of the country to a foreign one to have a mad affair with a married man.  It destroyed the whole family and burning her bridges like that made coming back home (when the boyfriend sent her away) so much harder.  What she felt was a need was fleeting;  after the Uranus opposition settled down, the intense desire (what she thought was a need) left her;  she realized the fall-out and has lived with deep regrets and the loss of relationships with two of her adult children.  

So it pays to think really hard about needs and wants during certain times of our lives.  The Saturn return (around ages 27-30), the Uranus opposition (around ages 38-42) and the Chiron return (around ages 50-51) all cause some feelings of change and insecurity (the latter two especially).  Menopause does as well for women.  It is wise to be very careful at those times and ask ourselves, "If this feeling passes, will I still want what I think I need?  Why do I think I need this at this time?"  If it is at any of those pivotal times, it would be best to proceed with caution.  Get opinions from people who are a few years older; they are not in the middle of the feelings and as such are a lot more objective.  

Changing

I am changing.  This past year has been amazing.  I met a wonderful friend who taught me things I wouldn't have known otherwise.  Though she is more than ten years younger than I, I learned so much from her.  As  result of her and other people as well as inner changes that are coming (Chiron Return, soon) I have made a lot of changes in my life.

The first change was in how I spend my time.  Last year, I would get up, do my class work and if I had time, I would teach my son or help my daughters with school.  Meals were not cooked, life was hectic, the kids suffered and I felt totally out of control and inadequate.  My friend's life of just being a wife and stay-at-home mom seemed out of reach but oh so attractive to me.  This year, I changed my schedule.  Now I do my classwork in the early mornings (after taking some time for myself) and then spend my time with my son when he awakens.  I spend time with my daughters during the day and get dinner on time.  I spend evenings with my husband too.  What changed?  I spend a lot less time doing my school work.  I no longer care if I get "A's" in those classes because doing that took away from the people I love the most and caused me awful angst and tension.  As long as I pass each class, that's good enough.

The second thing I did was I started a diet that is controversial but tweaked it to be healthy and work for me.  I began deliberately losing weight for the first time.  I have lost 110 lbs since May 14th and I feel so much better. I still have 100 lbs to lose yet  I feel sexier, my husband and I fit better in bed,  and the sex has gotten hotter and deeper than ever.  I feel my feelings now too and they are overwhelming me sometimes.  Food used to squelch my feelings;  now I eat so little of it that I feel everything.  Going through menopause and feeling everything makes me weepy.  I am also feeling the return of my old sexual self with this weight loss; this makes me nervous sometimes.  I feel a sense of self too;  for so long I was this non-self and now my kids are going crazy because suddenly Mom is acting like an emotional, energetic, assertive, but rational teenager.

Another change I have been making is that I am trying to understand my feelings; about myself, my husband, my kids, and those people in my life who I think of as friends.  There are people I have emotional connections with and I am trying to honestly explore those connections.  I no longer hide what I feel about them; I have told them.  Some have let me know that they feel the same about me but some elude me and I have to think that they either don't feel the same about me or they do but are not willing (or able) to deal with that right now.  I am less afraid of rejection;  perhaps having some new, close  friends has helped me with that.  In my openness, I have also been honest about my feelings to my husband.  To my surprise, he was not upset about these.  He holds my vulnerable heart gently and with wise caring.  I have always felt very deep feelings for him and, unlike so many people, he is able to handle these.  In fact, I have found that I am a very intense, passionate person; many people are just not able to handle that and I have been bereft of friendships for a long time because I seem so different to people who haven't that intensity or depth. 

One of the hardest changes I have made is about my sexuality.  I have finally been able to again ask for what I want with my husband in a vulnerable but not demanding way.  I used to be very assertive about sex but after marrying my husband, I found him saying no to my requests so much that I felt rejected and stopped initiating  at all.   When we talked about it, he said he felt pressured to perform.  I wondered why every man I have a long-term relationship with always liked sex a lot less than I did.  I felt like it was something  in me they were rejecting, or that I was somehow abnormal in my desire for sex.  I felt hurt and angry.  

Much later, we found out that he has had low testosterone for years.  After getting treatment for it,  things got a little better but it wasn't until I had my son that things really changed;  now I suddenly felt a huge drop in desire and it didn't come back even after a few years had gone by.   I began eating more, we both got fat and we stopped having sex at all.  Finally, my husband sensed the huge change in me and he realized what he was missing.  Finally he started wanting me but it was a bit too late;  I was not feeling desire at all.  Instead I felt humiliated, demoralized and angry.  I began picking on him regularly and he felt angry then, too. 

One day, I was wondering if my teen daughters had ADD; I began reading the symptoms and I realized that my husband had almost all of them.  Suddenly I wasn't so angry anymore.  It explained so much.  I began talking to him about it and he decided to seek a diagnosis and maybe treatment for it.  I stopped picking on him.  He and I were in the nurse's office one day when she told him that he is hurting me because he keeps allowing me to carry too much of the thinking and remembering in the relationship.  I was amazed that she could see that and I began to cry before I could stop it.  He was totally surprised;  even though I had told him I felt  that way, he hadn't seen it until someone else said she saw it too.  She said he needed to take more responsibility for his actions toward me and that doing that would help me feel less pain and anger.  It was like he realized just how much he had been hurting me,  even if unintentionally.  We left that office and both of us changed.  Now we are closer than ever and feeling much better about ourselves and our relationship. 

Both my husband and I also began reading a book given to me which was about the Law of Attraction.  As a realist, I don't fully believe in that in the way it is being taught. The universe Source may be able to give you whatever you want but sometimes it is better for you when it doesn't and you experience misfortune, it is not because you were not clear enough or open enough (which is blaming the victim of that misfortune and thus marginalizing them); it is because you need to have challenges or you don't grow.  We did believe in the positive thinking part so we made an effort to be more positive in our lives and it has helped both of us be more relaxed and open to change.  We have made a five year plan and a ten year plan and we have chosen to make real changes in areas that we need to make changes.  We both feel like gratitude is very important in how we see our lives; living in a state of gratitude means not always seeing only the negative. 

So many changes in just one year.  There are still more to come and I look forward to them all.