Ok, this one is harder than yesterday’s topic. I need some definition:
Attachment - affection, fondness, or sympathy for someone or something.
Connection - a relationship in which a person is linked or associated with someone else.
Ok, I am not sure that helps...
I guess the difference is that you can be attached to something or someone you are not really connected to...connection seems to insist on a more intimate relationship. Attachment is done by one person to the other and the other may or may not be actually involved...well, at least know of their involvement. And connection means there is already an established relationship where two individuals are linked.
And looking at the dating world, there are all kinds of attachments going on...but connection is something that seems a bit loftier, harder and more out of reach.
Perhaps we, as a society, have so confused the two that we can no longer discern one from the other. Perhaps we all think we are establishing connections, but really only attachments. We attach to them or they attach to us and that is where it all goes south.
What I believe we are really seeking is connection. That implies, at least to me, more of a circle...man likes woman, woman likes same man, they spend time together a bond is formed there is a mutual exchange between the two.
Attachment is man likes woman, woman has no idea, or woman tolerates man because she has nothing else better to do. Or woman likes man but man isn’t real, because woman has not really done any of the work to get to know man, so she isn’t really forming a connection with him, just attaching herself to this idea of who she thinks or wants him to be. (You can reverse the gender roles to suit your fancy...).
Attachment is one way. Connection is mutual.
I have fucked that up a lot.
I am convinced if you are dating over 50, hell maybe even over 40, all the secure attachment people have left the dating pool a long time ago. So now it is just us anxious and avoidant types chasing each other around. We attached and reattach and it becomes this toxic cycle of cat and mouse. I know that I feel this deeply. I am an avoidant attacher generally. But when presented with someone who is more avoidant than me, I become anxious. It is fucked really. And I am not sure if you have ever tried, but changing your attachment style is hard, with a great deal of professional help. Without it, I would say impossible and improbable.
I feel like there needs to be some clinic or potion or something that we could all take to allow for something other than what we are doing to be done. Some temporary suspension of what we believe or need or think about or want. Some habit interrupter. But since I do not believe there is any such thing, I think we are all just doomed to deal with the attachment cards we have been dealt.
I am not saying I don’t believe those styles of attachment can't be changed. I am just saying it is fucking hard. But I do not believe we can connect if our attachment style is fucked up. Or it makes us connect with people we would be better off avoiding all together. It is really hard to learn to want something that everything in your being tells you is terrifying, scary and likely to be your undoing. And it is also hard to have everything in you tell you that you must have this one thing, and without it you are going to die. Welcome to my experiences with avoidant and anxious attachment.
Neither belief is actually true...but that is the emotional reality roiling beneath the calm or crazy surface.
I used to have a sponsor who would tell me that I kept getting avoidant people because I was avoidant. I felt, at the time, this was an unfair assessment. But upon further reflection, I found out she was right. I am avoidant most of the time. I do not share what I am thinking and feeling. I tend to go dark for hours and long periods of time. The last thing I want to do is talk about how I feel about things. And so like attracts like...
It has been awhile since I have accepted this about myself. And I have been doing a lot of work, but it is very hard to change this default setting that the best way to get a connection is to ignore them. I have had to address this somewhat fundamental belief that the best way to show someone you are interested in them is to leave them the fuck alone. To not call, or text or really let them know you are thinking about them at all. And as I just wrote this, I am smacked hard that this is ludicrous. But it is how I behave. If I like you, I will avoid talking to you for as long as possible in some sort of offering to God. “See, I am not reaching out or doing anything or being needy, my reward for this will be for them to want me and pursue me.” D U M B!
But it is how I have always operated. The best way to tell if I like someone is to see how not often I am reaching out to them. If we are at a gathering, just look at who I am NOT talking to! Yep, the one I like will be the person I am avoiding like they have the plague. I know, I know, fucked up. I don’t WANT to be this way, somehow I just am. And I am working on it...every single fucking day.
I think there is such vulnerability in being emotionally available. Such vulnerability. And that is super hard for me. I like it light and breezy. I like it shallow and unassuming. I mean, that isn’t what I really want but I seem to only feel safe when I attempting to connect with someone with whom I can already see the ending. Someone who is available and all systems go, scares the fuck out of me.
In today’s world, I do better withstanding my own anxiety about remaining when I want to bolt. I do better. But I also still need a great deal of work. And let me tell you, dating provides you endless opportunities to see news ways you are fucked up and attempt to address them. If you want to see how you really are emotionally, go on a date. It will unleash all the unhealthy, crazy and fucked up shit you have been doing a great job ignoring or pretending isn’t you anymore. And if you are really fucking nuts, write about it every day and then put it out onto the internet. Then you can see in real time just how much progress you have not made...
I guess you also can see how much progress you have made too. And while I still tend to pick emotionally unavailable because it is safer, I like seeing the ending in the beginning. I am working towards NOT being this way. It is not easy and I will claim only marginal progress. I guess the best I can claim today is that when it does end, I am not all broken up about it. I see that I was the architect of my own demise. Again, still.
Perhaps the best way to forge connections is to really pay attention to what you are becoming attached to and why. Why are you attaching to that person? Why are you interested? Is it a trauma bond? Is it an old pattern? And perhaps if we all inventoried this earlier on, perhaps we might be able to make some changes before we follow the pattern to its inevitable fucked up end. I don’t fucking know...just look at my dating history and you will see that I have gotten it wrong, repeatedly.
And I would be lying if I didn’t say there was some pride in my trajectory of failure. I have to own there is a part of me that just loves the quest. And the questing is what I really seek. If I ever really find, then I will have to stop questing. And what happens to me then?? I will have what I want and then what? I mean, I think the goal is to come to know yourself and this other person better...I am pretty sure that is what connection and relationships are supposed to bring...I am just never sure if that is what I want. I know it is what I am supposed to want. I know it is what most people say they want. But I am not sure it is actually what I really want. Perhaps I just want to do the same thing over and over and over again. Perhaps the futile dating strategies I employ are deigned to let me advance this safety from intimacy.
Fuck I really don’t know. I just know that there is a fundamental and important difference between attaching and connecting. And I think, if I am being really honest, I like the attaching part better than the connecting part. God knows I am way fucking better at the attachment part than the connecting part. And while I work daily to change this about myself, I will claim only marginal, sporadic and tenuous advancements in this area.
However, this terrifying sentence, “attachment isn’t connection,” is helpful to me. Perhaps it can be a mantra for me as I move forward.
ATTACHMENT ISN'T CONNECTION!
ATTACHMENT ISN’T CONNECTION!
ATTACHMENT ISN’T CONNECTION!
And maybe, if I say it to myself often enough, loud enough for even my inner most stubborn idiot self to hear, perhaps I can make more positive strides toward connecting over just attaching and unattaching until I am dead.
I don’t fucking know...I am going to have to let this one percolate for awhile. I am working on it. Even though it may not look like it. It may look like I am just over here attaching and detaching repeatedly. But I swear to all that is holy, there is a desire to connect. I just want to feel safe doing it. And so far, I have not figured out how to have those two things be present at the same time. I can be alone and safe or connected and in peril. That is just how it feels to me.
But I will keep working on it. I will keep endeavoring to withstand the limitations and confines of myself. I will keep addressing my shit because what else is there to do in this life? Live as if your issues are static and unchanging. That you are just the past’s bitch and there is nothing to be done. Poppycock! I know, there is another way, because I have changed so many other fundamental things about myself. So many fucking things. And if I can do those, I can do this too. Or die trying which still feels like a valuable use of a life.
Again...still.
Always.
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