Men are social beings. This separates them from animals and other microscopic entities. Men feels. Thus, although he is living towards personal success and individual enrichment, he will be able to realize at some point in his life that he can’t make it through life alone. He will find himself in a society and amongst a sea of hundreds of other people. This becomes his motivation to give some of himself and get some of others in order to make his life more meaningful and his journey towards self actualization more complete.

This is the reason why Herbert Maslow included in his hierarchy of needs the need of man for love, affection and belongingness. He called these as social needs which are based mainly on man’s emotions and psychological faculties, which one can not get from looking inward, but through reaching out and interacting with other people. These, therefore, are things he gets from relationships he is able to build with a person or group of persons. This combats man’s natural fear of loneliness and alienation.

The most basic institution from which a man can get the feeling of being loved, and where he is simultaneously given the opportunity of giving love away, is the family. This is where he learns first-hand that life is not a one-man army. It is supposedly shared with other people. However, feeling love and belongingness inside the home is a given. This is a fact made obvious by nature. A man is hence given a harder time of finding a source of love and belongingness outside the home. In this case, men ought to find a clique of niche where he will find friends who will share life’s hurlies with him. Also, as man travels through life, he will be able to find somebody to whom he will build a more romantic relationship. It is from this person from whom he will get a different kind of love, which is love with intimacy. It is from this kind of relationship man will be able to satisfy his sexual necessities, which is also part of the social needs of men.

At first, Maslow thinks that these needs are not as important as the first two. However, he later argues that whenever these needs are not met, men become susceptible to loneliness, anxiety and depression. Which tend to cancel the satisfaction he was able to get from achieving physiological and security needs. In short, what a man feels inside would definitely radiate outside, and can destroy what he has already achieved for himself. Also, stable emotion is a good foundation and motivation to face greater challenges as he continues his journey up the hierarchy.