Emotional needs are something that many people ignore. The five love languages can be ways that we have our emotional needs met. There’s a concept that Gary Chapman refers to as a love tank. The idea is that we function better when our emotional needs are bring met and our love tanks are full. Chapman asserts that one of the main problems in relationships is that couples don’t do the necessary things to ensure that their partner’s love tank is full. That being said, many people live in the negative in this context. This means that they exist by living off bare minimums emotionally. So their love tank is never full. Instead it’s just a little above empty and stays that way. The almost empty tank becomes their baseline because they’ve had to adjust multiple times. They are literally living in the negative because the amount of emotional needs being met is incongruent with the amount of emotional needs that exist. And this is one of the reasons people can be in relationships and friendships without ever shaking the alone feeling.