Who Holds The Key… To YOUR Love?

by Rick Wilkes

What is it that opens your heart to that yummy, warm, essential feeling of being loved?

This past week I’ve struggled more than usual.

It has seemed that some essential emotional nutrient was… missing.

We all know that without the right dose of chemical nutrients like Vitamin C, calcium, and iron, our body suffers. We absolutely must consume these nutrients in the proper balance in order for our body to work optimally. When we’re deficient, we start craving.

Cravings get a bad rap. They are blamed for overeating. They are blamed for addictions and destructive behaviors. Yet, the pain we feel when our foot is falling asleep is useful, right? It lets us know: It’s time to move! Cravings do the same. They let us know that something essential is missing. It’s time to “do something” to get it! The pregnant woman who craves dill pickles with ice cream is a perfect example. There’s something in that combination that her body and baby need, so what was previously “gross” is now “gotta have it.”

I watched a documentary about a man that survived weeks in a raft. Luckily, he had a way to catch fish. At first, the fish’s flesh was what he ate… filet of grouper. That’s what (meat-eating) humans do, right? We eat the flesh and toss out the organs, skin, and skeleton. What was interesting is that after a short time, he was attracted not to the flesh but to eating the eyes (for their water content), liver for nutrients, the skin, the bones! Indeed, he went from eating the filet ONLY… to tossing the filet and eating almost everything else!

In the absence of essential nutrients, our body rewires itself for survival. In this stress-induced mode, we set aside what is optimal (or even acceptable) and switch ON a sense of URGENCY to get what we NEED… what we NEED NOW. Our behaviors change in response.

And you cannot tap away or talk away a craving when it is based on the lack of an essential chemical nutrient. Period.

This applies to essential EMOTIONAL nutrients, too… emotions like acceptance, deserving, worthiness, affirmation, appreciation, gratitude, hope.. and LOVE.

We as human beings all need to feel LOVE to thrive. Period. You cannot tap away or talk away a craving for love. Indeed, our NEED for love ranks right up there with our need for oxygen and water. Humans can go up to 40 days without food. Yet, after a short time without love (hours? days?) we become emotionally more and more fragile, irritated, and “not ourselves.”

And this is where our cravings get chaotic and confusing. I believe it is because we’re born with a craving for external love akin to our craving for external milk. External love with our parents creates bonds that will get us all the other things we need… like food, protection, and affection.

Our primitive craving for love thus shapes our behavior. If we’re getting love unconditionally, just for existing, we accept ourselves just the way we are. If we are NOT getting all the love we need to thrive, we start scrambling. We will try being loud and demanding… or submissive and quiet. We will shut down aspects of ourselves… and emphasize other aspects just to please THEM. We as children will do whatever it takes because “external love” is essential to our very survival.

We surrender the keys to our emotional health and well-being into the hands of others.

That makes sense when you are a child, doesn’t it? Babies cannot survive on their own. But it hurts (and rightfully so I believe) when you are of age to survive on your own (teens and beyond) to hand over the keys to your emotional well-being to someone else… no matter how wonderful and amazing they are.

Which brings me back to my struggle over the past week. Over a period years, my body-mind had gotten acclimated to a particular external activation of love feelings. This source (my romantic lover) had always been consistent, available, and abundant in her loving expressions. Her voice on the phone each night before bed, her text messages, happy smiles, and warm cuddles had become reliable EXTERNAL keys that activated certain powerful feelings within me… feelings that had become core to my daily experience of an Abundant Love Life. She’s always made feeling like a Great Lover so easy! I deeply appreciate her for that.

But because of a new job and travel and other life changes, those external activations were reduced over the past seven weeks, and they were not available at all the past days. Cravings!

I consider myself very emotionally resilient. Yet, this evoked far more distress than made sense! I’m surrounded by loving people… my partner Cathy in Thriving Now, my beautiful friends, my kids, my Guides and Teachers, my amazingly open clients and team members… WTF was going on?!?!?

And this morning at 3am, my clarity finally arrived.

Years of consistent EXTERNAL validation had lead me to forget where I put my OWN set of keys to feeling like a Great Lover of Life. To me being such a great lover is about appreciating, savoring, and expressing Great Love. Sure, there are actions that flow from feelings of Great Love, but it is the VIBRATION that matters. It is the feeling within me that matters! All my loving actions spring forth from those internal feelings.

While it is wonderful to have a person or people in our lives who have an EXTRA set of keys to activate those feelings… our emotional stability, strength, and resiliency comes from knowing how to use our OWN INTERNAL KEYS to activate GREAT LOVE.

It was fascinating to me that as soon as I realized I was waiting for “external validation” and did some permission tapping, my own sense of Great Love shined once again. I see myself jingling a shiny set of keys to my heart… MY set of keys. I see my loved ones having extra keys, and that feels a lot sweeter than waiting on just one specific person to turn me on.

Now let’s do some EFT Tapping:

Published Apr 2012 · Updated Aug 2026