“We know deep down, and have always known, that “need fulfillment” and good parenting mean the five A’s: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing. As children, we noticed how our parents did and did not fit the bill. We then looked for someone who could fit the bill better or more consistently.
Our self-esteem emerges from contact with others who provide us with the five A’s. The five A’s are not extras. They are the components of the healthy, individualized ego: Attention from others leads to self-respect. Acceptance engenders a sense of being inherently a good person. Appreciation generates a sense of self-worth. Affection makes us feel loveable. Allowing gives us the freedom to pursue our own deepest needs, values, and wishes.
When the five A’s were not forthcoming we might have felt we were to blame. That may leave us with a gnawing need to make reparation all our lives.
(Reparation is to seek help or payment from someone for the damage, loss, or suffering that they have caused you.)
Such reparation is futile and misleading, since the true task is a journey out into the world to find some of what was missing … and then to discover it in ourselves, too.
As adults, we look for the partner who will be just right. At first, that means a replica of our parents with some of the better — or missing — features added. So we find the man who controls but is also loyal.
As we mature we no longer seek the negative traits, only the positive ones. So we no longer look for controlling men but for loyal men who let us be ourselves.
In full maturity, we do not demand perfection at all, only notice reality. We access our resources within. A partner who cooperates in that is a gift but no longer a necessity.
The five A’s begin as needs to be fulfilled by our parents, then become needs to be fulfilled by our partners, and someday become gifts we give to others and to the world.”
How To Be An Adult In Relationships – The Five Keys To Mindful Loving, David Richo, pgs. 26-27.
