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Attention Isn't Love...

My friend posted this meme that basically ruined my life.  It is this whole list of things that we mistake for one thing but are really not even really close to thing we think it is.  And, myself, like many people get it wrong...repeatedly.


I have been turning it over in my mind for days now...each line, destroying me and calling me to action.  I am not going to lie, each phrase has fucked me up in a variety of different ways.


So I decided to write about them all.  One at a time and attempt to decipher that which terrifies me...


Attention isn’t love.


I mean, I know that.  I pay attention to a lot of things that I do not love.  But attention is a key ingredient to loving.  We take care of and pay attention to the people, beings and things we love.  Attention is an essential ingredient in loving.  Without attention, love will not grow.  And all my years in divorce, I will tell you lack of attention is one of the main ingredients when love begins to die.  We shift our attention to other things and allow this other person, this person we loved and cared for enough to marry, to become something outside our attention.


I mean, you can feel when someone’s attention shifts.  There are signs, sometimes small at first, followed up always by a wholesale feeling of abandonment.  Sometimes it is like someone just turns down the heat incrementally, and other times it is like they just came over and switched it completely off.  Regardless, when you lose someone’s attention, it is palpable.


So attention is part of loving, but it isn’t love.  And I think we all get this a little wrong from time to time.  Someone comes along and pays attention to you and we mistake that for love’s kindling.  Attention isn’t love, but loving is attention.


To me attention or the lack thereof might be better poised as an indicator to loving.  If we all were able to better assess the kind of attention someone pays us or the amount, or the frequency...we might be better able to enter into loving relationships, instead of the fuckton of situationships we all seem to be mired in.


You know it when someone slow rolls their text response.  You know when someone has the opportunity to make plans and chooses not to.  You know when the fire that appeared to be started in someone else for you, begins to flicker and fade. You know it because attention is the first thing to go.


We tell ourselves all kinds of other things.  We tell ourselves they are busy, or we are busy.  We tell ourselves that we are just taking our time, or they theirs.  We believe in all kinds of absurd ideas when in reality, if someone isn’t giving us their time and attention, there is no potential for anything, mostly importantly love.  Love requires a lot.  And attention, while not being love, is a key component of any loving relationship.  Whether it be a friendship, a parent/child relationship or a lover.


Attention will never be love.  And I would do well to spend a little time reflecting on how much, sometimes, I mistake someone’s initial interest and attention for something greater than it is.  I am not saying that I think everyone who pays me any attention is falling in love, but I think I do have to own that perhaps I might place a little too much importance on the fact that attention is always an early indicator of interest, but only time will tell if that other person, and yourself, can do the work to sustain it.


Humans tend to take the things they value for granted.  We can’t seem to help it.  We are generally collectors...and seem to always be seeking a new supply.  Today’s world feels filled with people just seeking for someone, several someones, to validate their existence by showing them some attention.  And from my own experience, it is one of those things that the more you acquire the less you actually have.  We become dependent on this external validation and seek it more and more.  And the more we get, the less we have.


The only thing that ever really works, for me, is to give myself the attention I seek from others.  To validate myself for the person I am, the person I am working on becoming and the person who still needs a great deal of care, concern and attention.  I cannot give away that which I haven’t got.  I must pay attention to myself if I love myself.  And sometimes it just feels so much easier to work to get that from someone else.  Have them pay attention and love me and then I can feel good about myself.


But that isn’t how it works, at least not for me.  The more I seek from you, the less I have for myself.  Attention will never be love, but without attention, love will absolutely die on the vine.  It makes me sad...often.  But I also know that if I want something different, I have to be able to expand and reach and grow beyond my own fears, limitations and excuses.  I have to care enough about myself to show up fully in my own life so that when and if someone worthwhile comes along, I know that the attention I pay to them absolutely paves the way for a deeper and evolving intimacy.


Hard lesson to be sure.


But living and loving will always provide more and more opportunities to learn this painful truth:  the amount of attention paid is a direct correlation to how many fucks someone gives...about anything.


Always.




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