The difference between wanting and wanting is something that is often overlooked when talking about both love relationships and sources of motivation.
Distinguishing between these two psychology-related concepts can help us organize our lives in a way that makes sense. Not being able to understand the nuances and differences between emotions can lead us to make completely avoidable mistakes.
No, wanting and wanting are not the same, although many people believe they have the same meaning. Let’s see how we can distinguish them on a daily basis in a simple way to understand.
1. Desire arises from loss
When we desire something, we do so from a tension or discomfort that arises from the fact that there is something missing in our lives (or that at least we perceive as absent even though it should be part of our daily lives).
An easy way to understand this difference between wanting and desiring can be to compare it to grief, in which we feel sadness and anxiety in the face of loss of something that was meaningful to us.
Of course, grief is something very intense that we unequivocally associate with discomfort, not like desire; But in both psychological phenomena the notion appears that something should be there and yet it is not.
On the other hand, when we want something this characteristic is not present; It’s very common wanting something that we had never imagined would interest us.
2. Wanting responds to a simple strategy, desire to a complex one
When we want something, we usually develop relatively structured and complex strategies to reach that goal, since we understand that to achieve that we need to invest in it. a significant amount of time, effort and resources.
On the other hand, when we want something, the most common thing is that we think of a simple way to get there, for example, it is typical to consider investing money in acquiring a material good that is in itself what interests us, without the need for us to attribute anything to it. other property beyond those he objectively possesses.
3. Desire is autobiographical
Given that buying and selling is the classic process by which we obtain concrete goods and services that are relatively easy to describe and understand, many times when we want something we automatically think of a way to get there in a single step: the economic transaction in the market.
At the same time, in the market the vast majority of products are mass produced, to cover an objective need that is shared by many people.
If what we wanted was actually an object of desire, It would be much more difficult to find it the way we need it since we must fill a void whose reason for being is what we have gone through throughout our lives.
Desire is something much more unique, belonging to each individual, while wanting is not so unique, and that is why a simple advertising advertisement can awaken the same interest in thousands of people from very different socioeconomic contexts.
The implications on love life
As we have seen, desire leads us to look for something that fits with the autobiographical story that we have created through the process by which we interpret everything that has happened to us throughout our lives, while the action of wanting responds to a much more spontaneous feeling which leads us to direct our attention to simple needs that are easy to understand by anyone else.
Therefore, in love, the ideal is to find a balance between wanting and desiring. If we only want, we run the risk of imposing on the other person a story about who they are, one that fits only our vision of them, whereas if we only want the relationship they can give us, the bond will be superficial and easy to destabilize.
Its implications in marketing
In the world of marketing and advertising it is also important to know the differences between wanting and desiring, because in In the vast majority of cases, an attempt is made to satisfy a need through wanting.
However, in certain cases, you can try to appeal to desire by suggesting abstract qualities that fill a common void in a certain segment of the audience, potential buyers. Of course, it will never fit exactly with the void of a specific person, but it will make it easier for the imagination of the people for whom these campaigns are designed to do the rest.
