[MBTI General] Love doesn't equal attachment?

[substitute]

The "one" in question ...If that isn't love then I'll hang up my heart and never use it again.

My feelings for her still haunt me. And I think about her fondly often. But I've probably only said four words to her since she left.

yeah, that's love alright

are you like me in the respect of not being able to do the "let's stay friends" thing when you break up with someone? wondering if this actually is connected in any way to the topic and if so how? Hmm...

whether you're religious or spritual or not, I think the way St Paul put it sums up what for me is the measure of love:

Love is patient,
love is kind;
love is not jealous or boastful;
it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.

Although that last part, about enduring all things and never ending - I have difficulty with that part. I mean, does it mean you put up with everything someone does to you if you love them? Or does it mean you just keep loving them through it, though you speak your mind as to what you think of their behaviour? I guess that would be how you show your love for some people (me included) - that you don't let them become or remain as big a brat as that, and help them with some home truths even though you know you'll get no thanks for it?

What if they walk away from you and refuse to speak to you for a long period? Does it mean you're supposed to go after them and try to make peace, even when you know it'll mean you'll get abuse and bile for your efforts? or does it mean you let them go, but still love them, and be willing to forgive and "reinstate" them if they came back and asked for it? "Hoping" for that to happen?

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

It depends on a number of things, the most important of these being, the depth and intensity of the relationship. If I was truly in love with the girl in question, I would most likely never be able to be friends after we had broken up. Being around someone I feel that strongly for is an all or nothing proposition. I would probably try to not torture myself by staying in contact with what might have been. I've known what it is to be close to someone you want (need) that badly and not be able to do anything about it. Given the opportunity, I will try to avoid this situation in the future.

On the other hand, if it was a more casual relationship, the prospect of staying friends would not bother me nearly as much.

Concerning your second point, I am religious and concur entirely with St. Paul and his musings on love. Love gave me the wings to escape the flaws of my character. It gave me the strength, bravery, and audacity to care about someone else more than I care about myself. In this act, I found true happiness for the first time.

I'm going think on the last portion of your post for a little while longer before I respond to it.

 

[substitute]

oh, by that I don't mean that if you love someone you behave like a saint towards them all the time. it's more that I believe that actions that are done purely through or for love are recognizable by those symptoms, sorta thing. But a lot of the time we don't act out of love, even when it's towards people we do love. Fear, pride, arrogance, defiance, laziness, whatever, but there are lots of different motives we can have besides love when we choose the way we act, though it's obviously not always conscious and intentional.

I wonder though, because when they say you can recognize love by these ways, when you see it, I don't think everybody can. Cos I can think of times when I know FULLY well that I've searched myself and chosen and determinedly pursued a course of action that came from really pure love, and yet it's been thrown back in my face, twisting it and calling it all sorts of other terrible things.

I guess again though, that's insecurity talking.

It's feeling to me like the biggest bar to actual love is insecurity. Isn't that ironic? A condition that's ostensibly about a person desperately needing to be loved and feeling like they're not, which actually produces symptoms of behaviour that makes it quite unlikely that anyone's going to even like them enough to hang around them enough to be able to grow to love them. And yet it demands attachment?!

Could it be that such a person actually is somewhat blind to the fact that they actually need love, and what love is? Thinking that attachment is love, with the insecurity fooling them into thinking they need attachment to satisfy the craving for love? Could the horrible circle be broken by them finally realizing the distinction between attachment and love?

What can you do if you love someone who's not capable of recognizing love? If they require attachment as evidence of love, yet you're unable to give that to them?

 

[SerengetiBetty]

Do you find that you need to like them to spend time with them, but can still love them without liking them enough yet to spend as much time with them as they might want to?

yes. this is very true for me for some of my family members. I love them but I don't particularly like them

IOW, have you ever felt like a person was pressuring you to spend more time with them than you really felt comfortable with or wanted to, at that stage of your acquaintance? And/or subsequently been accused of being a fake and not really liking them, because you've not given into the pressure?

This is very true of many of my romantic relationships. I'm generally OK with being close as long as I have enough time and space to do my own stuff from time to time without having a guilt trip laid on me. I simply don't understand how after a certain point it's generally assumed that you do practically everything and go almost everywhere with your SO. Sometimes people don't understand that it's not a matter of actively not wanting to do something with them, but more a matter of wanting to do it by yourself. As long as that's not more than 35-40% of the relationship I don't see what the big deal is. For instance now my bf is upset at me for going to see a movie by himself - a movie he wouldn't have gone to seen anyway - but he sees me not asking him to go as a potential larger problem of me not wanting to spend any time with him.

I wonder actually if requiring attachment from a loved one as evidence of their love might not be the product of insecurity? I don't mean that in a derogatory way, as I'm insecure myself in some ways, I admit to it and I think everyone is in some way or another. But perhaps there's a particular kind of insecurity that makes you unable to believe someone actually does love you or like you or whatever, so you're always looking for "proof" of it to reassure yourself. And since there's no way to get tangible proof of abstract emotions that happen inside another person's head, I suppose they latch on instead to evidence of attachment: how often do they visit? how often do they call? how much do they NEED my presence?

I think this may be true. At times I've yielded and tried to become what a partner wanted. I've been given permission by a few ex's to be as smothering as I wish. But since their idea of smothering would practically require me to not work so I can be available for phone calls, IM messages, emails AND personal time together I always disappoint them. It's frustrating to me because it seems the more I give, the more they want .AAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH

I wish I feel more attached than I do. To me it seems like I am below the minimum.

but who's to say what the minimum is?

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

but who's to say what the minimum is?

I say. I am below my own minimum.

 

[sade]

So need for attachment = insecurity.

How this goes back to attachment styles in infants...

I was just thinking about that.

The OP was pretty much my type of love/attachment. I don't really miss people, at all. But I know that I'm more or less avoidant.

 

[substitute]

I was just thinking about that.

The OP was pretty much my type of love/attachment. I don't really miss people, at all. But I know that I'm more or less avoidant.

I've read that link and it's fascinating. The anxious-preoccupied sort is the one I've encountered most in the people who've become attached to me. I don't know what I do to attract such people, but they seem to come to me like a magnet!

Not really sure where I'd be placed on the scale. I know in the past I'd have been smack in the middle of the dismissive/avoidant bit, but in time that's become less and less the case. i'd say these days I'm about three-quarters of the way along the line between that and the secure kind.

 

[Totenkindly]

Just to toss in my bone here, to meet the OP:

I'm scared sometimes at how much intensity in love and commitment I can feel to someone in my life, my commitment is never in question... and yet feel like if they disappeared tomorrow or if they're gone, I'm totally fine and would be fine and would just move on.

I don't get it, it seems sort of contradictory to me.
Phobic/counterphobic, maybe, even, too.

 

[tinkerbell]

Hi Sub


There was a thread on relationship bit last week looking at attachment theory - was a yale lecture... basically it breaks down what attachement it...

 

[substitute]

Just to toss in my bone here, to meet the OP:

I'm scared sometimes at how much intensity in love and commitment I can feel to someone in my life, my commitment is never in question... and yet feel like if they disappeared tomorrow or if they're gone, I'm totally fine and would be fine and would just move on.

I don't get it, it seems sort of contradictory to me.
Phobic/counterphobic, maybe, even, too.

yes, I relate to that very much too. this is the bizarre thing to me - the other person often is looking for evidence of attachment as evidence of commitment, but for me the two are not on the same axis at all.

Yes, intense, utter and total commitment and loyalty - without apparent attachment. That's "all" I can offer, and it's just not enough sometimes.

 

[Saslou]

Hmmm. It is what it is. My car is my freedom, my house is the place to lie my head at night, my children are my life. If i lose my car or house, oh well. It can be replaced.

I can be away from my children and just get on with my life. Although i am happy to see them again.

I view the title and i think to myself, am i taking it all for granted?

I lost something important to me and only realised later just how important it was in the first place.

Maybe love should equal attachment.

I knew an NT who would totally agree with your line of thought though.

 

[substitute]

yeah... but I was once told by a counsellor that it's not good to "should" people about emotions. If you get persuaded that you "should" feel certain things to qualify for those things that make one a good person - capacity to love, to care, for compassion, that sorta thing - then if you find you can't and just don't feel those things, you'll feel guilty, and what's to be gained by that? low self-esteem, that's what. and a lot of people might resort to FAKING them so they can be seen as good, even though they actually are good anyway!

If a person does love someone, yet is not attached to them, not because they choose not to be any more than you would "choose" any emotion, they're not things you choose are they? But if that's the way someone feels, then that's the deal and it should be accepted. I don't think it's right to make a person feel that their love or whatever is less valid or valuable just because it doesn't come with other things that it "should" do in any one person's opinion.

 

[Saslou]

yeah... but I was once told by a counsellor that it's not good to "should" people about emotions. If you get persuaded that you "should" feel certain things to qualify for those things that make one a good person - capacity to love, to care, for compassion, that sorta thing - then if you find you can't and just don't feel those things, you'll feel guilty, and what's to be gained by that? low self-esteem, that's what. and a lot of people might resort to FAKING them so they can be seen as good, even though they actually are good anyway!

If a person does love someone, yet is not attached to them, not because they choose not to be any more than you would "choose" any emotion, they're not things you choose are they? But if that's the way someone feels, then that's the deal and it should be accepted. I don't think it's right to make a person feel that their love or whatever is less valid or valuable just because it doesn't come with other things that it "should" do in any one person's opinion.

Very good point and also noted.

 

[EcK]

Nah it doesn't. 'true love' (whatever that means) is to be able to be detached for the good and freedom of another agent.

 

[substitute]

Nah it doesn't. 'true love' (whatever that means) is to be able to be detached for the good and freedom of another agent.

I'd further specify that it's not deliberately and consciously detaching for their benefit, but rather just finding oneself in that state naturally, without even noticing the existence of other options, simply because that's your Tao, as 'twere lol and that simply benefits all concerned as a natural by-product of it.

Like the Tao says innit - don't try to DO good; simply be yourself, and let it BE good. And love is good, innit.

 

[FemMecha]

I think attachment might be connected to the idea of loss. The person who feels attached to a country or home feels loss if they don't continue to create memories or experiences in that place. Another person feels loss if their children grow up and they didn't witness their first steps or first day of school. Those specific events are "lost".

I can see a more abstract way of relating to the world might place less significance on concrete events, experiences, and memories. I am curious though, if people who can separate love and attachment also separate out a sense of loss. If not, how would loss be experienced?

 

[substitute]

good point Toonia. I can't say I really experience loss, or have yet, at least as I hear other people talking about it... I mean I have lost things, of course, but it doesn't seem to have affected me in the way people seemed to expect it to or assume it would, or in the ways I've seen it affect many others.

except for things that like, never could have been, like a childhood in my correct gender, but that's less a sentimental/emotional feeling of loss than a literal one, because evidence of it surfaces periodically in my day to day life, when I realize that I'm all at sea in a situation where others are at ease, it being conspicuous to me that the reason for that is that they've shared certain life experiences that they take for granted, which I have not and never could have, but which everyone generally assumes I did. So the loss is more felt from the point of view that not having had those things makes human relations for me difficult in ways that others neither understand nor, in many cases, even believe, but certainly never assume or bear in mind when dealing with me. It causes me real life difficulties, that's all, that I wish I didn't have to contend with. I feel very little sense of attachment to the idea of having those things for emotional reasons.

when it comes to losing friends or loved ones, I don't think I really feel loss as such... when my dad died, it sorta didn't make much difference to me, cos I could still do "with" him the things I always had, the ones I valued most anyway. Which were to have him crop up in my thoughts and make me smile or remember things... the knowledge of his existence and continued process of figuring him out and understanding him, etc...

I guess when you're focused mainly on the abstract aspects of life generally, it would follow that those abstract things would be what you'd value most in a relationship of any kind. I suppose that'd be why, perhaps, the "loss" of the physical, practical things such as personal presence etc, might not be felt so keenly, or as in my case usually, not at all, because the abstract aspects can still be enjoyed whether the person or relationship is lost in the physical sense or not.

 

[neptunesnet]

Just to toss in my bone here, to meet the OP:

I'm scared sometimes at how much intensity in love and commitment I can feel to someone in my life, my commitment is never in question... and yet feel like if they disappeared tomorrow or if they're gone, I'm totally fine and would be fine and would just move on.

I don't get it, it seems sort of contradictory to me.
Phobic/counterphobic, maybe, even, too.

+1

Honestly, my first instinct was to reject this idea, but when I started to re-evaluate my own thoughts and feelings on love I would wholeheartedly agree with you. I too am afraid that I love too deeply and with too much intensity sometimes yet if I lost that loved one I could find the strength to move on. It's not that I'm heartless. I'm far from it. I just don't see real love on those terms.

A while ago a friend of mine asked me if I were married would I prefer to die before my husband or prefer my husband to die before me. I told her I'd prefer my husband to die first, and my answer just floored her. She couldn't believe that I'd want that. I've always felt that I'm able to handle the loss of a loved one better than other people are. The way I see it is I'd rather I felt the pain of losing my husband than he would for losing me. I don't see anything wrong with that.

I'm slowly warming up fully to the idea of love doesn't have to mean attachment. It's difficult for me sometimes because I have my own insecurities and feel like I need some sort of tangible indication that I'm liked by that person :rolli:, but I'm getting better at suppressing those feelings.

Btw, this thread is great!

 

[substitute]

+1

Honestly, my first instinct was to reject this idea

So is a lot of people's... at least you actually gave it a fair hearing and an open mind, which is more than soooo many other people manage!

It's difficult for me sometimes because I have my own insecurities and feel like I need some sort of tangible indication that I'm liked by that person :rolli:, but I'm getting better at suppressing those feelings.

Well, I dunno about whether you should suppress them, but I think it's a good idea to draw a distinction between your own feelings or needs that spring from your own insecurities, and what you oblige the other person to do (directly or indirectly), and how you evaluate what they actually do give you.

I say that, cos the same counsellor that told me about not "shoulding" people also told me that you're not supposed to enable insecurity by validating their fears. They said if someone says they want you to call every week cos otherwise they start thinking you don't care, even if you do call every week, before long it'll be "why don't you call me twice a week?" and if you do that, it'll be "well why do you only call me the minimum times I asked you to? don't you ever WANT to call me at other times?" and that's a whole slippery slope.

Or if they want you to say nice things to them and compliment them, even if you do it, before long they'll start questioning why you're saying it and whether you mean it, and taking your compliments the wrong way so they make out you were actually insulting them, then you find you're in the dock and having to always explain yourself even though you've done nothing wrong, they'll say you used the wrong tone of voice or that they don't like that particular way of wording things, so now you've got to change the way you talk and remember to come out with compliments all the time when you wouldn't naturally do it, and call twice a week at least and other times in between, and... and... and...

...and you'll find yourself swamped with this ever lengthening list of demands on your behaviour and time that are all just aimed at appeasing the insecurity based fear monster inside them by "proving" that you care. They think, and they might convince you too, that if you acquiesce to the demands, you'll help them and make them feel more secure, but it don't work like that. It's just feeding the troll inside them lol

It's THEY who need to change their behaviour and way of thinking, not everyone else.

That's why I just said, not really aiming at you, but just generally anyone else who's reading that it might benefit, it's really important to recognize when you're insecure that it's your problem, and not to start projecting all the fears and stuff it conjures up in you onto other people and expecting them to fulfill its needs on pain of being thought not to care.

And I say that cos I know when you're insecure you really need people who care about you, you need their love, but that sorta behaviour will push a lot of people away who really did want to care about you, and you'll find a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy going on there... In the end, they shoulda just let you call when you felt like it, when you genuinely wanted to, and dealt with their nagging doubts and fears by talking to friends or seeing a counsellor or whatever, rather than seek to blame others for bad feelings that comes from inside them.

 

[substitute]

...all of which is a long winded way of saying that if you don't badger people about doing this or that outward token or sign to show they care, according to your criteria, then you leave them free to show they care in the way they naturally do, then you get to learn about different ways that people show they care, you learn to recognize more of them, and then end up less reliant on those stereotypical things that you've previously been fixed on. Ergo, their absence won't make you feel necessarily that this is proof they don't care, and hence you don't need to feel so insecure, and your loved ones are free to be themselves.