Last update: February 07, 2016
On many occasions we cling to someone we love, with the illusion that he will not stop loving us, that he will always remain by our side, without realizing that it is necessary to allow freedom to build a healthy and balanced love.
If someone doesn't love us, our ego suffers, but it is important to learn to manage our emotions and to love ourselves before loving another person.
Affective attachment
Affective attachment is one of the factors that make it difficult for us to let someone go and respect their freedom.
Affective attachment is a mental and emotional bond usually obsessive towards certain people, originating from the irrational belief that such a bond will cause pleasure, security and self-realization.Consequently, the attacked person will feel that without the other he will not be happy, will not be able to achieve their goals, nor have a normal life.
The first thing we need to do to overcome actual attachment is to see if we actually depend on someone or if we are experiencing any of the following attachment symptoms:
- Need to be close to your loved one.
- Anxiety and malaise if you are not with your loved one.
- High level of obsession and manic control over the other person.
- Prioritize your loved one over activities we enjoy doing or other people we enjoy being with.
If you analyze your situation and see that the symptoms described exist, you may find yourself in a state of affective attachment.
How can you overcome emotional attachment and get rid of it?
1.- Be realistic
The most powerful tool against attachment is to be realistic. Seeing things as they are towards love, without anesthesia, without deceit. Love is always a risk, but it is necessary to see reality.
- If he doesn't admire you, he doesn't love you.
- If he doesn't respect you, he doesn't love you.
- If you are with someone who doesn't make you feel good, it means that they don't love you.
- If you are with someone who compromises your values, they don't love you.
Love your freedom, love your solitude. Love to be free, enjoy your freedom. Make peace with yourself. Stay with your loneliness, learn from it, experience it, love it and love yourself.
"Love does not claim possession, but freedom."
– Rabindranath Tagore –
3.- Seek silence
Turn off the television, computer, mobile phone and enjoy the silence, the absence of communication. Your brain will relax.
Through silence, moreover, it is possible to find oneself with oneself.
4.- Learn to differentiate between falling in love and love
On many occasions we confuse falling in love and love, but they are not the same thing. Falling in love lasts a fixed time, it is attraction, it invades the body and mind, does not let you think clearly, does not see the defects of the loved one.
Falling in love presents a series of features easy to identify:
- Idealization of the other person. We do not see the defects of the other and we tend to think of this person as a perfect being.
- Exclusivity and possession. I want it to be just mine or mine.
- Dependence on the other. We feel attachment and sexual desire for each other.
- Idea of permanence. We are convinced that this feeling is unique, unrepeatable, eternal, that it is an exception.
- Obsessive thoughts. We want to control the other person and don't stop thinking about them.
- Falling in love is truly an uncontrolled obsession.
Love, on the other hand, is a much more complex thing; is a set of elements that must always be given jointly: desire, sex, attraction (Eros), friendship, sharing (Philia), tenderness and sweetness (Ágape).
Leave who you love
Sometimes we have to let go of those we love; exactly for this reason, because we love her, we will let her free.
We must learn to give up a relationship in three cases:
- When they don't love you anymore.
- When your fulfillment as a person is compromised.
- When your principles start to be vulnerable
Don't let the pain overwhelm you: cry, talk, scream, don't hide it, don't hide it, live it. There is a phase of the duel that you will have to go through, and even if it never seems to end, after some time, you will wonder why you were so bad for a person who was not worth it for.
You have to let certain people out of your life so that others can enter. There is no cure for the pain of a breakup, you have to endure and resist.
