Love and Attachment: Do you know the difference?

I found this article fascinating and wanted to share.
Once we begin to understand this issue (the difference between love and attachment), we can begin helping those hurt by emotional abuse in relationships.


The Details:


Are you in love with your significant other, or attached?  Romantic novels and soap operas have convinced us that love is a relationship made up of a combination of adolescent whims and cheap sentimentalism, a particular type of dramatic relationship in which each one of the protagonists tires to satisfy specific egotistic needs.  This is not love, but merely attachment.  Attachment and love are at the same time; similar, and yet very different.  Some might say that they are both attacks, as well as in love.  After studying the two; maybe then you can decide where you stand.  Most people completely confuse attachment with love.


Love:


In contrast, love is the freedom of giving and sharing, without hoping for anything in exchange, because love is its only reward.  Love is generosity and is patient.  Love utterly lacks any ego.  Love is kind and it does not boast or envy.  It's a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.  A feeling of warm personal attachment, (with love) or deep affection.  Love does not dishonor others and is not self-seeking.  It's a waterfall that pours from the heart and is not proud.


Attachment:


Attachment (without love) is a kind of emotional disease; it is an obsessive emotional state, a type of addiction in which our peace and happiness depends on the closeness or distance from an object or person to whom we are attached.  Attachment is egoism.  The ego lacks love.  Attachment attributes an exaggerated and illusory value to objects, situations, or people; it totally disconnects us from reality.  Any attachment  is not part of reality, but an illusion whose existence is merely psychological.  Attachment is the desire to receive not give.


The Bottom Line:


Attachment turns us into tyrants who wish to control everything, for which even people are objects to be possessed. Like dictators thirsty for control and domination, we are impelled to elevate ourselves over others.  Attachment fragments the peace of its victims, leading to complete emotional disorder and chaos.  Love seeks to eliminate all the differences and limits between people.  Love is a profound longing to eradicate borders. 


Published in Talk of Your Towne April 2011