The attachement vs love: the difference

What’s the difference between the attachment and love? Most of the people don’t know it’s not the same. Why? Is it due to our era which has created egotism as a personal trademark? I’m sure you know some people who live a genuine love and some others who live in the attachment. What did you notice between these two kinds of relationships? What are the feelings, the lives of these people? In which of these relationships people are they happy?

Today, I’d like to talk about this topic because we all are concerned with love: the love of oneself, the love for others, so love in a romantic relationship, or with kids, family, friends. What does make love so complicated and difficult to live?

You can love your pet, your car, your clothes, but you can also love your mother, your children, your husband (wife). Love seems to be all around you, isn’t it? But it’s not always love, actually. How to know when you love and when you’re in the attachment? Remember that the two things are incompatible: either you love, or you’re in the attachment.

The problem isn’t to be happy in life, but how to be happy. We often look for it outside our mind, instead of inside. That’s the real problem. So it’s the basic mistake because we won’t be able to satisfy this desire to be happy. Our biggest desires in life are A/ to be happy and B/free from any suffering: we want to be happy and to suffer as less as possible. For example: you don’t want to feel lonely, so you call a friend to spend a moment with. It’s natural to pursue happiness, to try to reach a deep and genuine happiness, but looking for it outside oneself is bound to fail. This is an endless and unsuccessful quest.

The attachment is due to that impossible quest by looking for happiness outside than rather inside our mind. When you ask someone to make you happy, you’re in the attachment: your happiness depends on someone else than yourself. So what does happen when this person leaves you? You’re lost and unhappy, so in a big distress: you ache a lot.

We have to understand that the attachment creates a jail and too much suffering, because the desire of happiness is egocentric: we want someone to make us happy. We want to reach our own happiness, but we don’t care about the happiness of the other one. As we don’t know how to get happiness by ourselves, we just ask another person to do it. It’s not going to work out, because the more you want something from the other, the biggest the suffering is when this person gets out of your life.

So at the beginning of a romance, all the projections of ideals, desires and romantic fantasies must be fulfilled by the other. As it’s not, we understand that they’re not Prince Charming or Cinderella. We turn disappointed, sad or in anger. But this person is just an ordinary person, who’s also struggling. So unless you’re able to be kind and compassionate, this relationship is going to be a difficult one.

For most of the people holding on to someone shows how much they love them. In fact, they cling to them because they’re afraid to lose the source of their own happiness: the other one. They’re afraid to be hurt. So in that relationship, asking someone to fulfill us leads to manipulate and to lie to them just to get our own desire satisfied. That’s not love.

Love is different. Love says: “I love you, therefore I want you to be happy, with or without me”. Love means to hold softly, to allow things to go easy. So to reach that genuine love, we need to be already fulfilled within ourselves. So we’re able to appreciate this person as they are, with no other expectation than their happiness. This is a true and an unconditional love. As you know how to be happy by yourself, you generally find the same person to love and be loved by. This is an an easy going and a very beautiful relationship.

So the attachment isn’t love. It’s prevents from growth, as love releases and creates happiness. Holding gently on the other one, ok, but not to fill in any of our own deficiences. We all have to work on the idea of happiness inside us, not outside. This is just a matter of choice in life. Once again.

Love,

Jane

Here’s a link or two on YouTube to know more about (I thank them a lot!):