Belonging: Why We Need Other People to Become Ourselves

In the previous article, we explored what it might mean to live towards wholeness, to become more fully ourselves rather than simply becoming better at playing the roles that life has given us.

But there is a question waiting underneath that idea.

Can we really become ourselves alone?

We often imagine psychological growth as an inward journey. We look within to discover who we are, what we value and what kind of life feels meaningful. We learn to listen to ourselves rather than automatically adapting to the expectations of others.

This movement towards greater self-understanding matters.

But there is another truth that is easy to overlook: we do not develop a sense of self in isolation.

From the beginning of life, we exist in relationship. We are cared for, responded to, held, looked at, spoken to and interpreted by other people. Long before we can ask, Who am I?, we are experiencing something of what it means to be with another person.

Our sense of ourselves develops within this relational world.

This does not mean that we are simply products of our relationships, or that our childhood determines who we become. Human beings remain capable of change, reflection and choice throughout life.

But it does suggest that wholeness may involve something more than becoming independent.

Perhaps becoming more fully ourselves means learning how to belong without losing ourselves.

We become ourselves in relationship

Attachment theory, originating in the work of John Bowlby and subsequently developed through decades of research, offers one important way of understanding this.

At its simplest, attachment theory proposes that human beings are profoundly shaped by their early relationships with caregivers. These relationships help provide a context in which children learn about safety, trust, dependence, exploration and connection.

Contemporary attachment research has developed considerably beyond the early mother–infant formulations. Research now considers attachment across the lifespan and examines how relationships interact with individual development, culture and context. A recent systematic review of research published between 2014 and 2024 found substantial evidence for relationships between relational quality and developmental outcomes across different stages of life, while also emphasising the complexity and cultural sensitivity of these relationships.

The important point is not that our childhood experiences permanently define us.

It is that relationships help create the psychological environment in which our sense of self develops.

A child who repeatedly experiences their feelings being noticed may gradually develop a different expectation of relationship from a child who learns that emotional needs are ignored or unpredictable.

A child who is encouraged to explore while knowing that someone safe is available to return to may gradually discover something important:

I can go out into the world, and I can come back.

This is one of the beautiful ideas contained within attachment theory: relationship can provide a secure base from which exploration becomes possible.

Connection and autonomy, in this sense, are not opposites. They can support one another.

The paradox of becoming yourself

This creates an interesting psychological paradox. We need other people in order to become ourselves.

And yet, part of becoming ourselves involves developing the ability to stand apart from other people. We need connection, but we also need differentiation.

We need to feel that we belong, but we also need to discover where we end and another person begins. We need to be known, but we also need an inner life that is not completely dependent upon being seen. This tension appears throughout human development.

A young child gradually discovers that their parent has thoughts and feelings of their own. An adolescent begins to question the values and assumptions inherited from family and culture. An adult may discover that being loved does not necessarily mean agreeing with everything another person wants.

At each stage, there is a movement between belonging and becoming. We are asking:

Can I remain connected to you and still be myself?

This is one reason psychological development cannot simply be reduced to independence.

Complete independence is not the same as maturity. Nor is complete dependence.

A more mature form of relating involves the capacity to remain connected while retaining a sense of oneself.

In family and couple psychotherapy, this tension is sometimes described through the idea of differentiation: the capacity to maintain a sense of self while remaining emotionally connected to others. Contemporary discussions of attachment and differentiation similarly recognise the central developmental tension between individuality and connection.

The task is not to choose one over the other. It is to learn how to hold both.

Belonging is not the same as fitting in

This distinction matters because our longing for belonging can sometimes lead us away from ourselves. Most of us have experienced moments when we changed something about ourselves in order to be accepted.

Perhaps we learned not to express certain opinions. Perhaps we became the person our family needed us to be. Perhaps we became exceptionally capable, agreeable, entertaining, successful or undemanding. Perhaps we learned to anticipate what other people wanted before asking ourselves what we wanted.

These adaptations are not necessarily pathological. In many circumstances, they are intelligent responses to the environments in which we find ourselves.

A child may learn, quite understandably, that being quiet brings less conflict. A teenager may discover that adopting the values of a peer group brings acceptance. An adult may suppress disagreement in a relationship because conflict once felt dangerous.

Human beings are extraordinarily adaptable.

But an adaptation that once helped us belong can eventually become a way of disappearing.

This is where the distinction between belonging and fitting in becomes important.

Fitting in asks:

What do I need to become in order to be accepted here?

Belonging asks something different:

Can I be myself here, and still have a place?

The difference may sound subtle. Psychologically, it can be profound.

When belonging requires self-abandonment

There are relationships in which belonging comes at a price. You can stay but only if you do not challenge. You can be loved but only if you remain the version of yourself that someone else prefers. You can be part of the group but only if you share its assumptions. You can maintain the relationship but only if you suppress your needs.

Over time, this can create a peculiar form of loneliness. You may be surrounded by people and still feel unknown. You may have a partner and still feel alone. You may have a family and still experience yourself as an outsider. You may even become highly skilled at relationships while remaining uncertain about what you actually feel.

This is one of the themes that run through the earlier articles in this series. If we have spent much of our lives adapting ourselves to relationships, then the question Who am I? becomes complicated.

And the question What do I want? can become surprisingly difficult.

This does not mean that every difficulty in relationships originates in childhood, nor that every feeling of disconnection has a hidden psychological cause. Loneliness can arise from bereavement, migration, illness, social exclusion, geographical separation, cultural change or simply the ordinary transitions of life.

It is also possible to be psychologically well and still experience loneliness. The human need for connection is not evidence that something is wrong with us. Sometimes loneliness is simply a painful reminder that relationship matters.

The importance of being alone

Paradoxically, belonging also requires the capacity to be alone. This may sound contradictory. If we are relational beings, why would psychological growth require solitude?

The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott explored precisely this paradox in his influential essay The Capacity to Be Alone. He suggested that the ability to be alone develops within the experience of reliable relationship, that a person can gradually become comfortable with their own company because they have first experienced being safely accompanied.

His idea was not simply that healthy people enjoy solitude. It was more subtle.

The capacity to be alone can represent an internal sense that I can exist as myself, even when another person is not immediately present. This is very different from isolation.

Isolation says:

I have no one.

The capacity to be alone says:

I can be with myself.

And there is another possibility:

I can be with myself and remain connected to others.

This may be one of the quiet signs of psychological maturity. We do not need constant reassurance that we exist. We do not need to disappear into other people. We can enjoy solitude without experiencing it as abandonment. We can enjoy connection without experiencing it as engulfment. We can move between the two.

The fear of losing ourselves

For some people, intimacy can feel threatening precisely because closeness raises the possibility of losing oneself. If your sense of safety has historically depended upon adapting to another person's needs, closeness may unconsciously mean compliance.

If you have learned that needing other people is dangerous or disappointing, independence may feel safer than vulnerability.

Attachment research has explored these different patterns extensively. Contemporary research on adult attachment recognises both continuity and change across relationships and throughout adulthood, rather than treating attachment as a fixed personality label.

This is important. Attachment patterns are not diagnoses. They are not explanations for everything. And they should not become another set of labels through which we judge ourselves or other people.

Instead, they can offer a language for curiosity.

What happens inside me when someone comes close?

What happens when they move away?

Do I find it easy to ask for what I need?

Do I fear disappointing people?

Do I feel safer when I need nobody?

Can I allow another person to know me without feeling that I have surrendered something essential?

These questions can sometimes reveal patterns that have been operating outside our awareness.

What psychotherapy has to do with belonging

This brings us to an important dimension of psychotherapy. Therapy is often described as a place where we talk about our problems. But psychotherapy can also become a particular kind of relationship.

The therapeutic relationship is not friendship, family or ordinary intimacy. It has its own boundaries, responsibilities and limitations. Yet within those boundaries, something significant can happen.

A person can speak about experiences they have never found words for. They can discover what happens when they disagree. They can notice their impulse to withdraw.

They can experience being listened to without immediately having to take care of the other person. They can begin to recognise needs that they have previously dismissed. They can discover that being known does not necessarily result in rejection.

Attachment-informed approaches to psychotherapy have explored the therapeutic relationship in precisely these terms, including the possibility that therapy can provide a relational context in which difficult emotions can be explored and new ways of relating can develop.

But the purpose of therapy is not to become dependent upon the therapist. Ideally, the relationship becomes a place in which a person can develop greater freedom to participate in relationships beyond the therapy room.

The aim is not:

I need someone to make me whole.

It is closer to:

Through relationship, I may become more able to inhabit myself and therefore more able to meet others freely.

Being known

There is something deeply human about the experience of being known.

Not admired. Not approved of. Not simply useful. Known.

To be known means that another person has encountered something real about us.

They know some of our contradictions. They have seen our vulnerability.

They know that we are sometimes generous and sometimes selfish, confident and frightened, open and defensive. And somehow, the relationship survives complexity.

Perhaps this is one reason genuine intimacy can be so healing. It gives us an experience of something that perfection cannot provide: I do not have to be perfect to remain connected.

This does not mean accepting harmful behaviour or remaining in relationships that are unsafe. Healthy belonging requires boundaries as well as openness.

Sometimes the most authentic act of self-respect is to leave a relationship in which belonging requires self-erasure. Sometimes connection means staying. Sometimes it means speaking.

Sometimes it means saying no. Sometimes it means allowing another person to be disappointed. And sometimes it means discovering that a relationship can survive our honesty.

Belonging without disappearing

The movement towards wholeness therefore involves a delicate balance. We need other people. But we cannot ask other people to tell us who we are. We need intimacy. But intimacy cannot require the surrender of individuality. We need belonging. But belonging cannot depend upon self-abandonment. We need solitude. But solitude need not become isolation. Perhaps psychological wholeness is found somewhere within this tension. It is not the fantasy of becoming completely self-sufficient. Nor is it the fantasy of finally finding another person who will complete us.

Instead, it may involve becoming sufficiently grounded in ourselves that we can enter relationship without disappearing.

We can say:

This is what I feel.

This is what matters to me.

This is what I need.

And also:

I want to understand what matters to you.

That is a different kind of relationship from either submission or control. It allows for two people to exist.

A wider meaning of wholeness

This brings us back to the larger question of meaning.

If we think of wholeness only as something that happens inside the individual, we may imagine psychological growth as an increasingly refined form of self-knowledge.

But perhaps wholeness is also relational. We become ourselves with and among other people.

Our identities are shaped by families, friendships, communities, cultures and the places we inhabit. We inherit stories, but we also encounter people who challenge those stories. We discover ourselves partly through solitude, but also through being witnessed by others.

This does not mean that our lives have no inner centre. Quite the opposite.

The more secure that centre becomes, the more freely we may be able to enter relationship.

We do not have to choose between me and us. We can begin to discover a more spacious possibility: me and you.

Two people, each with their own interior world. Connected, but not merged. Separate, but not isolated. Able to influence one another without possessing one another. Able to belong without disappearing.

Perhaps we do not become ourselves alone

The journey towards wholeness, then, may not be a journey away from dependence towards complete independence. It may be a movement towards interdependence. There is a difference.

Dependence says:

I cannot be myself without you.

Isolation says:

I do not need anyone.

Interdependence says:

I can be myself, and I can need you.

That may be closer to the reality of human life. We need one another, not because we are incomplete failures as individuals, but because relationship is part of what it means to be human. We need people who can know us. People who can challenge us. People who can comfort us. People who can see something in us that we cannot yet see ourselves.

And we need the freedom to become people who can offer the same to others. Perhaps, then, the question is not simply:

Who am I?

Nor even:

How can I become more fully myself?

Perhaps the next question is:

Who can I become in relationship with others, and what kind of relationships allow us both to become more fully ourselves?

That question takes us beyond the idea of wholeness as a private psychological achievement.

It brings us into the wider human world of love, friendship, community, responsibility and belonging. And perhaps that is where the search for meaning becomes larger still.

Because a meaningful life may not only be about discovering who we are.

It may also be about discovering how we belong and what we have to give.