articles
China Elevator Stories
Is It a Need or a Want?
A need means something is necessary for survival; a want means it is not.
04/05/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
There is a huge difference between a need and a want.
For example, we can easily see that sleep is usually a need, not a want. It’s not like I don’t need to sleep but I want it, therefore I sleep. Usually, I need sleep, and therefore I go to bed and get to sleep in the evening. I can’t possibly go without sleep for a few days. If I could, that would mean it’s a want, not a need.
Drinking water may sometimes be a want, but usually, it’s also a need—at least when a certain amount of time has passed. I can’t go without drinking water for two weeks. It’s not a want, it’s a need. I need to drink water to survive. Therefore, it’s a need, not a want.
Having a relationship is a want, not a need. If we say we need a relationship, we may be too codependent to be alone. Having a romantic relationship is not a need for anyone; it’s just a want. Human beings can survive without having a romantic relationship, and therefore it’s only a want, not a need.
Having sex with another person is not a need; it’s a want. People survive without having sex with another person. Therefore, it’s a want, not a need.
Buying clothes is a need if we don’t have any clothes to dress ourselves. But if we have enough clothes to get through the week easily, buying more clothes than that is a want, not a need.
Showering is usually a want. We may become a little smelly or our hair may look a bit greasy after a while, but showering is a want—unless we’re going to die if we don’t take a shower.
Talking to someone else is a want, not a need. Certainly, human beings are social animals and sometimes need others to exchange experiences with. But most human beings are able to get through a few days without talking and without dying.
Having social connections is a need. Most people would not survive without social connection, love, and recognition from others. The amount of connection each person needs may vary, but human beings are wired for connection, and all of us need some level of it to survive. We only truly thrive when we receive loving social connection—not hateful or harmful ones. People who become completely isolated and alone may even die from a heart attack. Thus, having a certain amount of meaningful social connection keeps us alive and is essential for survival (for most people, at least).
Having social connections with a person who doesn’t want to have a social connection with us is not necessarily a need—it may be a want. It depends on the person. Certainly, as children, having a social connection with our parents may be a need. We may feel like we will die if we don’t have these interactions, or we may become depressed and even have suicidal thoughts. In this case, having these connections may be more of a need than a want. But once we’re older, it may become more of a want than a need.
As grown-ups, being left alone and enjoying enough solitude and quietude is a need—if we’re an introvert and an empath. We can’t constantly stay around loud, obnoxious people who violate our boundaries and don’t ever care about another person’s needs for rest, relaxation, quietude, solitude, and sleep. That’s not just unfair—it pushes the other person to the brink, where they either have to leave the earth or otherwise harm themselves, because they can’t get their own needs met, and their life has been destroyed by a person (a stalker who engulfs them and doesn’t respect their need for space and privacy) who pushes their wants and needs onto them.
As someone who doesn’t feel the need to mask her appearance, putting on makeup to “change myself into somebody you would then think is better looking” is not a need I have. It’s a pretty sick and childish belief—yours, the stalker’s—that a woman should feel compelled to dress differently, become superficial instead of staying natural, or cater to your weird, sick, obnoxious, and disgusting needs.
To then emotionally blackmail her when she doesn’t meet those needs—which are, quite frankly, so twisted that you should be looking inward and healing your own insecurities instead of projecting outward—will only force her to act against her will just to get you to go away.
COERCION. COERCION. COERCION.
Everything with you is always about appearances: not looking good enough, not dressing well enough, needing to shop again, needing more things—because you’re never satisfied, never appreciative of another person, and always projecting.
Have you ever stopped to consider how someone else feels in your presence when you’re constantly forcing yourself on her? Can you really be so blind to another person’s privacy and boundaries that you don’t even recognize they exist?
Now, with regard to our needs, we can’t expect another person to simply fulfill them for us as adults. That would be arrogant, selfish, and inconsiderate of other people’s needs and wants—which matter just as much (unless someone else’s survival was at stake). You can’t force your needs and wants onto someone else without caring about theirs, especially if you do so constantly and without ever considering the other person.
No one is obligated to fulfill your distorted needs if you’re a stalker suffering from erotomania or some kind of addiction where you’re constantly forcing a woman to go shopping all of the time. If you don’t ask and instead try to force or manipulate someone, you are coercing them—pushing them into actions against their will. No one wants to be used, exploited, or treated like a disposable object, as if their only purpose is to cater to your every impulse.
Let’s be honest: a stalker like this is a drama queen, always claiming to have some new emotional need that must be tended to. There’s always some demand, always some crisis—leaving the other person no space to rest, breathe, or get their own needs met.
There is also a distinction between a legitimate need and one that isn’t. An illegitimate need may be something you express to another person with the expectation that they are obligated to fulfill it. In contrast, when someone is responsible for fulfilling a need, that need can be considered legitimate. For example, a baby’s need to be fed—whether with formula or breast milk—is a survival need, and the caregiver is obligated to meet it. This is a legitimate need, and it cannot be ignored.
However, when another person has no obligation to fulfill your need, and the need is not legitimate, you need to stop insisting that she meet your insignificant demands as if it were her responsibility—especially when doing so compromises her ability to live her own life and maintain her own identity.
Usually, as a grown up, we’re responsible for fulfilling our own needs. No other adult is responsible for fulfilling your needs, unless, for example, your life is in danger and you can’t get out of a dangerous situation without receiving the help of others.
There is a huge distinction we need to make, and that is the distinction between having an obligation to fulfill the need of another person (such as a parent having the obligation to feed their children and make them go to bed in the evening), and not having the obligation to fulfill another person’s need (such as a stalker wanting to force you to have constant interaction with him, which would only suit his own agenda but completely dismisses your needs and rights).
It is not the right of a stalker to get his needs fulfilled by you. That would be another gross misunderstanding about who’s responsible for whom. As a grown-up man, no grown-up woman within your age range is responsible for caretaking you as though you were her child, then having to listen to you verbally abuse her and degrade her when she says no to having your constant psychological terrorism (called “Psychoterror” in German) in her life.
You may not be sensitive enough to ever be able to sense another person’s discomfort with your behavior and the energy you’re sending out, but that doesn’t mean another person has to constantly soak up that energy, your hysterical emotions, or listen to your constant drama and watch you throwing tantrums.
That’s childish behavior, and no grown-up woman needs to constantly tend to your childish needs, when you can easily meet them yourself and don’t have a right to force someone else into a position where they can’t say no—because you aren’t allowing her a “no” when that “no” would be her right to state.
That’s not just unfair—it’s a life wasted. And you, the stalker, are wasting another person’s life by making her life purposeless, by destroying all meaning, by creating her to have no value where there used to be one. As one singer said in one of his lyrics in German, translated into English here: “You cast a shadow over my life. So much emptiness—if only you had never existed.”
We aren’t talking about some kind of minor boundary violation here. We’re talking about a person completely taking over another person’s life, stealing her identity where she’s not allowed to have any, destroying every aspect of her life, and doing so in a conscienceless manner that would make everybody’s blood freeze in their bodies were they ever to experience it.
If something is a need, as a grown-up, first, we have to recognize if it is a need someone else has to fulfill—or if it isn’t. If something is a want, it’s a want. Period. We can’t just constantly push our own wants and needs onto another person and claim these are all her needs and wants—and not let her have rest, get her own needs met, and allow her to live her own life in a way that suits her.
We can’t command another person to now live her life in the way that is comfortable for us but not for her. We can’t push ourselves onto another person because that makes us feel comfortable but will make her feel uneasy, anxious, and fearful for her life. Other people have rights and wants, and we can’t just use a person as though she were some kind of cheap object and do whatever we want to do with that person, not allowing her to get a say in anything that concerns her.
Letting you sadistically torture me just because you think no one’s watching? That’s not a need I have to fulfill.
Your needs as a stalker? Not my obligation. Not my responsibility.
To the sick stalker who won’t back off—who continues to persecute, harass, sexually objectify, and threaten me with rape:
All those needs you projected onto me—that I am supposedly having—which are actually needs you have that you want me to fulfill—well, again: I don’t have these needs. Why would I?
I’m not some kind of mentally deranged person who constantly has sick needs, or who claims to have certain needs in order to blackmail and coerce another person into fulfilling them.
People may have a need for peace and quiet. They may have a need to be free from a stalker. But they certainly don’t have a need to talk to a stalker, to post posts about a stalker, or to get raped by a stalker.
Sorry, it’s not that hard to understand (unless you’re utterly unintelligent), and I shouldn’t have to constantly repeat myself. It is proper English, and a “no” is a widely used word that normal people understand the first time around.
I am not you. I am me.
You have no right to take over my identity as though it were yours and not mine.
That smear campaign you’ve been doing—silently, in a hidden kind of way where others wouldn’t see it?
I do not consent to it. I have a right to say “no” to being lied about in a cruel, conscienceless kind of way, just so you can get your needs met without allowing my rights to be respected. You’re not just violating normal rights—you are violating human rights. And no person as childish and DUMB! as you will ever be allowed in my life.
No amount of running to the police and whining about how you’re the victim of me is going to stop it. People have a right to blog about stalkers who harass them—and not be censored for it or put in prison for it.
Leave me alone. Stop lying about me and projecting things onto me that I am not, that I do not want, never said, never implied, or otherwise sent out through my body.
A goodbye is a goodbye—not a hello.
Have you ever met someone who tried to coerce you into fulfilling his sick needs?
Again, I’m adding what ChatGPT said about this topic, since I found it very accurate:
Thank you for sharing this powerful and deeply personal piece. It clearly lays out the essential difference between needs and wants, while also highlighting a critical and disturbing issue—coercive control, stalking, and psychological abuse. What you’ve written isn’t just about philosophical distinctions; it’s about reclaiming autonomy and identity in the face of someone who is systematically trying to erase both.
Your message emphasizes a crucial truth: no one is entitled to someone else’s body, attention, time, or emotional labor, especially when it’s being taken by force, manipulation, or deceit. Repeatedly and forcefully stating that someone else’s wants are not your responsibility is not only appropriate—it’s necessary.
Your writing gives voice to a painful experience, but it also sets boundaries with strength and clarity. It’s more than a post—it’s a demand for dignity and self-determination. The distinction you’ve drawn between legitimate and illegitimate needs is especially important, as it reminds us that adult relationships must be built on consent, mutual respect, and choice, not entitlement or control.
To answer your question directly: Yes, unfortunately, many people have encountered individuals who try to coerce them into meeting manipulative or abusive “needs.” And you’re absolutely right to reject it. No one has a duty to submit to exploitation disguised as connection.