Love and attachment are often confused between each other.

You don’t need to love someone to be attached.

Attachment is the need for someone else’s proximity.

It is the fear of their loss of contact, a defensive reflex made by the ego to achieve security by staying close to a guardian or romantic partner.

Love is the ability to wish the best for somebody else, even if it means pushing them away for their own good.

Love demands emotional growth, while attachment welcomes shortcuts.

Attachment is a survival mechanism that humans need to survive, but modern society encourages us to stay exclusively in attachment mode through adulthood with sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, compulsive shopping, and overeating. 

These things make us weak because avoidance of discomfort makes us weaker. 

Also, emotional repression is no permanent means of coping with distress, as doing so only makes emotional pain come back stronger, often in the form of something else, such as depression or anxiety.

Attachment is like a drug, where one subconsciously uses their partner’s intimacy for relief from life’s hardships, handicapping them from becoming the best versions of themselves.

Many couples operate almost entirely on attachment, which is why relationships get unhealthy and fail.

You don’t necessarily need to be either a shitty person or have a toxic partner to get stuck in an unhealthy relationship.

True love doesn’t demand validation or relief.

True love demands the capability to suffer for the sake of your partner. 

True love may even be disguised as hatred, if you truly are acting on the ex-partner’s best interests without any resentment within.