Sitting at work in my cubicle doing some coding when I started thinking about Maslow. Maslow was the guy who came up with this hierarchy of needs. According to the theory, the needs of people can be represented by a pyramid and individuals would constantly seek to satisfy successively higher needs in this hierarchy.
I thought of Maslow because I vaguely remembered that in this hierarchy of his, love/belonging is a need that is below esteem. You can refer to the wikipedia entry on the actual definitions of these needs.
I thought about these two needs because I slowly realised that while this may possibly be the hierarchy of needs that people seek for, the success of finding love and maintaining it in a relationship is actually dependent on esteem which is higher up this hierarchy.
To be more specific, I believe that generally if a person does not find satisfaction at work, his esteem with regards to confidence, competence and achievement will be affected and that will put a strain on the bonds of his or her relationship with the spouse/other half no matter how much the two people love each other. I also believe any relationship has a higher chance of survival if the two people in the relationship could live without it in the sense that they do not need the relationship to fulfill the esteem need but instead that need has been met already and the relationship is for another higher purpose.
So with respect to Maslow, while his hierarchy may indeed be the way we instinctively pursue our needs, a better strategy would be to find esteem first (the higher order one which is not dependent on other people) then find love.
If you cannot love yourself, how could you possibly know how to love another and without self-esteem, you cannot possibly know how to love yourself.
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