Why Being Noticed Isn’t the Same as Being Known
Wishing to belong is a basic human desire. We want to be part of a group, to be known and accepted into a fellowship. This takes many forms: a family, a sports team, a civic organization, a culture, a political party, a religious community, and so forth. Psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary, in an influential 1995 review, argued that the need to belong is a fundamental human motivation. They concluded that inadequate or disrupted social bonds are associated with broad costs to emotional well-being, adjustment, and health.
But belonging to a group is seldom sufficient to fully satisfy this desire. We want to be appreciated for what we, as individuals, bring to that group.
One particularly compelling way to be appreciated is to be desired. An employer desires your technical skills and demonstrates this by providing a raise. A school desires your academic abilities and expresses this by offering you a scholarship. A friend desires your companionship, and this is expressed by invitations to dinner.
Being desired and belonging are not the same thing, but they very often go together.
Being desired when one is deeply known, strengths and flaws laid bare, is the pinnacle of belonging. This is often thought of in terms of romantic relationships, but that is far too limited a context. Parents intimately know their children, good friends have intimate platonic knowledge of each other, and within psychotherapy, patients often feel deeply known, understood, and accepted by their therapist.
Healthy intimacy combines a sense of belonging with a sense of being deeply appreciated, valued, and welcomed.
Because healthy intimacy involves being prized despite your flaws and shortcomings, this depth of belonging is rare. It requires building a sturdy foundation of trust, a prerequisite for genuine self-disclosure. That process is risky and, consequently, time-consuming. Just how time-consuming? Communication researcher Jeffrey Hall found that moving toward a good or best friendship often requires roughly 200 or more hours of shared time, though the amount varies across relationships and the quality of that time matters as well. There is no substitute for repeated, meaningful shared time.
The Shortcuts That Backfire
Many people nonetheless try to take shortcuts. They substitute attention and superficial approval for deeply genuine appreciation. These shortcuts can include emphasizing one’s sex appeal, endless boasting about accomplishments, pretentious displays of intellectual prowess or physical strength, flaunting wealth or status, and so forth.
The attention garnered through these methods can become only a chimera of the deep appreciation that attaches to genuine acceptance and intimacy. The momentary attention may be rewarding, but it is not necessarily substantive. Like most quick fixes, it can rapidly fade.
What is worse, these efforts may result in the person being valued chiefly for the very attribute they most emphasized. Someone who relies on sex appeal to win approval may end up being lusted after rather than deeply known and appreciated. Their sexuality, misused as a means of securing validation, may become an obstacle to attaining the very thing they were seeking.
Men can fall into the same trap. A man who leads with his income, his title, or his physique may find that he is valued for what he provides or how he looks, not for who he is. Lose the job, or the edge, and the attention may go with it. That can confirm his fear that he was never really wanted in the first place.
Barriers to Genuine Connection
Today’s social-media world encourages connection without commitment. It is easy to accumulate hundreds of online “friends,” very few of whom you would ever confide in. Settling for the superficial appreciation available through social media can be seductive. Why work on developing real friendships, which require sacrificing time and energy, when you can collect dozens of likes by posting a snarky political comment or a heartwarming photo of a kitten?
The evidence suggests that this trade can be a poor one. In a 2018 randomized experiment involving University of Pennsylvania undergraduates, Melissa Hunt and colleagues found that participants assigned to limit Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat to 10 minutes each per day—about 30 minutes total—for three weeks reported greater reductions in loneliness and depressive symptoms than those who used the platforms as usual.
Layered on top of this is a broader culture that rewards display over depth. The implicit message th is that to belong, you must perform: be sexier, louder, more successful, more outrageous. Performance can win an audience. It rarely wins a friend.
Building the Real Thing
The solution for those seeking genuine connection and intimacy is to be intentional about building relationships. Be selective about whom you pour your time and energy into.
That is not to say you should be stingy with your goodwill and grace. But do consciously direct your interpersonal energy toward building relationships with people whom you admire and trust, and who have shown at least an initial appreciation for who you are and what you offer.
Research there are several things you can do to develop a healthier sense of intimacy. These include:
One: Disclose gradually, and reciprocally. Social psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor described relationship development as a gradual process in which self-disclosure often moves from relatively surface-level material toward more personal material over time.
Two: Pay attention to whether reciprocity is taking place. When one person’s openness is met with appropriate openness from the other, further closeness becomes more likely. The take away lesson is that you should gradually share a little more than you normally would, and then see whether the other person responds in kind.
If they do, take another step. If they do not, you have learned something useful at little cost.
Three: Be responsive to the disclosures you receive. According to research by Harry Reis and Phillip Shaver, a growing sense of intimacy depends not only on self-disclosure, but clearly showing appreciation for the disclosure that the other person offers.
In other words, if someone shares something personal, respond in a way that shows you understand and value what they have been vulnerable enough to disclose.
That response is what makes the next disclosure feel safe.
Four: Protect your time. Closeness requires shared time, so schedule time to be with those you wish to become closer to. That may be a standing coffee date, a weekly walk, or a regular phone. All of these mean much more than the occasional grand gestures.
Why It Matters
In my clinical work, many depressed patients—including some who are married, have children, and regularly meet with friends—describe a painful lack of at least one relationship in which they feel deeply known, valued, and safe. Often, the missing piece in their lives is a sense of intimacy with someone who appreciates them deeply, where that appreciation is expressed as genuine delight in their company.
This sort of relationship takes a great deal of work, and risk, to develop. Initial attempts often fail, and there is a temptation to give up and retreat to the comfort of more superficial relationships.
What you will find, if you persist, is that you become better at building these relationships over time. Not every attempt will succeed, but each one brings you closer to your goal. And because the desire for this kind of relationship is so universal, you are likely, eventually, to find others with whom you connect deeply and share a profound sense of belonging.
Dr. Forrest Talley is a clinical psychologist in Folsom, California, with more than 30 years of experience. He is the founder of Invictus Psychological Services. For more on overcoming, not just coping, visit forresttalley.com or the Invictus Psych channel on YouTube (@invictuspsych).
References
Altman, I., & Taylor, D. A. (1973). Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
Hall, J. A. (2019). How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(4), 1278–1296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407518761225
Hunt, M. G., Marx, R., Lipson, C., & Young, J. (2018). No more FOMO: Limiting social media decreases loneliness and depression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 37(10), 751–768. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10.751
Office of the Surgeon General. (2023). Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the healing effects of social connection and community. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
Reis, H. T., & Shaver, P. (1988). Intimacy as an interpersonal process. In S. Duck, D. F. Hay, S. E. Hobfoll, W. Ickes, & B. M. Montgomery (Eds.), Handbook of personal relationships: Theory, research and interventions (pp. 367–389). John Wiley & Sons.
