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for pleasure that don’t depend on anyone except ourselves. Beginning early in life, most people masturbate for pleasure. We may fantasize others while we do so, but the pleasure does not depend on them. We also get pleasure from hurting people—putting them down is a frequent way we do so—which may satisfy our need for power even though it frustrates our need for love and belonging in the process. We can satisfy our survival genes by engaging in nonloving sex, just using another person’s body for pleasure. We can fool our brains with addictive drugs that provide feelings that are similar to how we feel when any need is satisfied.
    Our society functions as well as it does because most of us never give up the search for happiness, never give up on the idea that even though people may not be easy to get along with, we need them. We struggle together to survive. It is easier, more efficient,and usually feels better than if we struggle by ourselves. Of course, we need others to satisfy our need for love and belonging. We discover that it feels good to use some of our power to help others and that we may gain more power in the process. When we seek freedom, we do so with the hope that someone will always welcome us back when we want to come back. We prefer learning and having fun with others. This is the ideal way to satisfy our basic needs—trying to get close and stay close to each other.
    People who have no close relationships are almost always lonely and feel bad. They have no confidence that they will feel good tomorrow because tomorrow will be as lonely as today. Unlike happy people, they concentrate on short-term pleasure. The alcoholic lives for the immediate feeling provided by alcohol; that he may wrap his car around a tree does not cross his mind. Where pleasure is concerned, unhappy people may be totally irrational when they are seeking instant gratification.
    Although the actual feelings that accompany pleasure without relationships may be similar to how we feel when we are enjoying relationships, the activities that lead to these similar feelings are different. Beware of getting involved with people who seem to be able to feel good but have no close friends. They may be witty and fun to be around, but their humor is all put-downs and hostility. If you marry such a person, you will soon be the recipient of that hostile humor and may regret it for the rest of your marriage. Look for someone who has good friends whom he or she treats well and whom you enjoy being with, too. Someone who does not have good friends does not know how to love.
    Assuming that we feel good much of the time and keep close to others who feel the same,
how
we feel tells us with great accuracy how well we are satisfying our need for love and belonging (and how well the other needs are satisfied if we satisfy them with people we care about). Each of us has a unique level of need satisfaction that tells us that this or that need is satisfied and additional effort is not worthwhile. I explain this idea further in chapter 5 when I discuss the strength of individual needs.
    If you get up in the morning and feel miserable, you can besure that one or more of the five basic needs is not satisfied to the extent you would like to satisfy that need or needs. For example, if you wake up with the flu, the
pain
tells you that your need to
survive
is being threatened by an infection. If you awaken
lonely
because your last child has just left for college, your need for
love and belonging
is acutely unsatisfied. If you are up for a promotion at work and you will get the news today, your edginess is your way of dealing with this possible
loss of power.
If you get the promotion, you will feel good; if not, you will feel worse than you feel right now. If you have been counting on being
free
to go on a family vacation and discover that the dog is missing, you are angry because you are not at liberty to leave until you find him. If you are scheduled to