July 6, 2006
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Why does love become an attachment?
When I love something or someone, I tend to become attached to this something or someone. Why does love become an attachment? Am I confusing myself by associating love with attachment? Am I just using love to get something else that I wanted?
Unconsciously, I may have used love as a bait to catch an attachment fish. There is a subtle fear of freedom. Though attachment comes with bondage, pain, suffering, and other ugly things, it also comes with commitment, security, and other desirable traits including not being alone. While I talked about detachment and freedom, I don’t have the courage to really be detached and be freed because I don’t want to end up alone. When I am lonely nothing seems meaningful. I become bored with myself. At least with someone, I am occupied in creating artificial meanings around me. It gives me an illusion that I am a giving person: a devoted wife, mother, daughter, friends, and employee. It appears that I don’t live for myself, I am not selfish, and that I live for someone else.
But when I am alone, I long for attachment and when I am in attachment, I long for detachment. It is one of the paradoxes of the mind. If I struggle against attachment, then I also take the wrong turn. I have observed that people are also struggling against attachment. They feel caged and imprisoned while they are in relationships with families, friends, and others. They feel attached to their properties, wives, husbands, children, and other love ones. They escaped to other places to be either alone or with new partners and only to find out that they are once again attached to the new surroundings.
So attachment cannot be easily detached. Attachment will take many forms. The only way to understand attachment is to try to understand why it is there and know the deep cause. Why do I cling? Why do I tend to get attached to my love ones? I cling because I am afraid I will loose them. Somebody may steal them from me tomorrow. What available to me today may not be available to me tomorrow. I will be left empty again. I cling because I am not. Inside, my own self is empty and hollow. I have no root, no center. I try to cling to anything and to anyone in order to feel safe. When I am not rooted, I try to cling to the roots of others.
Why do you get attached to another: a person, a thing, a thought, a belief, a tradition, a memory, an expectation….? Why do you cling on to them?
Comments (15)
Unless… love becomes something you are and something you give. Love the verb vs love the manipulative tool. The more this can be done without expectations on anything in return, the better. I think expectations create suffering and pain.
The deep cause of attachment, I think, is pleasure. That all loving attachments end is inevitable, but to mindfully be in the moment and experience the pleasure, joy and emotion of the present bond is a good thing.
LOL! Right now i’m attahed to sleep! To tired to think stright! have a good evening girl!
I think it all boils down to one word – fear. It takes a certain bravery to truly let go.
desires, judgements and attatchments are the cause of all human suffering… it is only human nature to desire and become attatched, but this is also the cause of pain. the only problem that ever exists is not accepting things the way they are.
Pick up Chuang Tzu and read.
I’m reading this translation by Burton Watson called Chuang Tzu’s Basic Writings. Very interesting and enlightening.
Upon reading that, here’s my thought. Why do you need to understand it at all? If you know it is bad, let it go. If you search for a reason and can’t find one, you’ll get bitter, frustrated. And before you know it, you are attached to another thing: the search for the reason of the previous attachment.
Bravery. Or faith and trust.
Your post is very spiritual. Your question is not easy to answer in a few sentences. Iam not not the same level of your spiritual, I am lower:) so I do not know how to answer. I think, to certain level I am attached to my job because without it I will not get paid and will be hungry. However, I do not think I am attached to it enough not to go for another job if I will lose this one. I am attached to the current job because of all the conveniences it offers.
I love a few people. I am attached to them because they give me joy, comfort, love, happiness, etc. If I lose them to death or physical distance I will be sad because I will lose everything that their presence offers me. However, I am not attached to anyone, not enough not to let them go in their own choices even if the choice is to go away from me.
I love my life. I am attached to my life. Without my life, h’m, means without me. I do not want to let go of my life. I am holding it dearly. However, I know there will be a day I have to let go of my life.
Nice post, Chi. Thanks for sharing your thought.
Have a great Friday and a lovely weekend
When I was younger, I worried that marriage would be wrong for me, that I am too needy, too attached to the other, for it to be healthy. Monkdom isn’t good, though – we need babies. And I think God or the Universe or whatever is helping me to grow and become stronger in myself with my love’s help. Still I’m attached to my ex-boyfriend, who has a purer Christian love, one that is unattached and joyful and holy. It is inspiring. I don’t know if I made any sense or answered any questions or contributed, but your post helped me put this down. I feel more One, and my Self feels more centered. Blessings.
I wanted to thank you for recommending The Way to Love. It has really helped me a lot, especially with understanding and seeing attachments.
Hope you are enjoying your vacation. It was neat to see a picture of you, Ron and your daughter. What a beautiful family, of couse I have no idea what Ron looks like.
Lenn
Love becomes an attachment when you are really dependant on a person. Judi
I needed these words on attachment. I need to remember more things about attachment.
I became attached to my ex-boyfriend when he told me how much he loved me and wanted to marry me. I became anxious, depressed, and resentful when he left my bed to climb into another woman’s bed the next day.
It’s an attachment. He wasn’t mine to begin with. The “pleasure” I always felt with him wasn’t happiness. I always felt in the back of my mind that the bottom would always drop out of our relationship–because it always did.
I feel the most happy when I’m detached. I have to remember not to become attached to anything. I must enjoy each rose for what it is, but not attach myself to one particular rose. It’s much better for me to be alone than feel the excitement and subsequent anxiety of an attachment.
http://www.boundless.org an online advice column for singles. you’ll find alot of your answers there.
we become attached because of a hope. We hope that others, things will be as you say the root that will ground us and help us to grow. Its like the parable in the Bible about the 2 men . One builds his house on sand, the other on stone. Its where we build that is the key.
I’m not attach to anyone or anything ….but I like to attach to Fiona … hahaha