well let's explore the idea that attachment is what makes (any) relationship what it is. or at least, what makes it... special.
let's think of attachment as a bond, a connection, a channel—through which the attached one can transfer emotional nourishment to the attaching one. if it's mutual, then it can go both ways. but one-way nourishment can happen too.
and let's also think of attachment to lie in a continuum: it's not a binary attach vs. not attached, but we have different degrees of attachment with every different person in our life. the stronger the attachment, the more amplified the emotional nourishment that can be transferred through it.
so my weak attachment with my classmates provide fleeting, rather superficial emotional satisfaction during my time interacting with them. my stronger attachment with my close friends, for example, provide a more lasting, deeper emotional contentment both during my time with them and when we're away from each other.
what makes relationships to be of various kinds—platonic friendships, romantic relationships, professional partnerships, etc.—is perhaps, for example, due to their different nature of purposes.
but these unique purposes are only shaping the relationship; the core of what makes relationship a relationship is—that is, the life of a relationship stems in—the attachment that is formed in it.
this implies that while the specific purposes of a relationship can be negotiated and agreed upon intellectually (and indeed they also are the medium through which attachment can be strengthened), it feels like there needs to be some base—critical, i'd even say—level of mutual attachment, derived mostly from unexplainable emotional motivations, for a relationship to flourish in a deep way. below this critical level, the strengthening capabilities of the purposes of the relationship seems to be significantly dampened.
what, then, are the determinants of this base level of attachment? it could be things like visual attraction, emotional validation, genuine attention, or the fulfillment of any of the other purposes of the relationship. most likely, the more there is in the mix, the stronger the attachment simply is—thus helping it reach that critical level.
an equally important question is, if attachment can be strengthened, can it be weakened? it only feels natural to be so. what are the determinants? it's probably simply the negation, opposites, or disillusionment of the determinants of attachment strength.
an implication from all this is that, now, when we wonder, for example, what becomes of a friendship in which interactions cease (e.g., due to busyness of each own's lives)? is it still as strong or is it decaying?
a helpful question is to simply ask ourselves: what about the attachment? do we feel as strong or weaker of attachment? that is, do we still feel as emotionally nourished or is it having less impact in our life?
here's where it can be a bit nuanced; some relationships like low-maintenance friendships might take the form where the emotional nourishment is just as strong during the time of rare interaction (and possibly also during that of no interaction, hence "low maintenance"). another way to see this kind of relationship is that perhaps the attachment level is decreasing, but at a much slower rate or simply the base attachment level is so high the decrease has no noticeable impact.
but then there are those friendships where separation noticeably weakens the emotional satisfaction we get down the road—those might be rather weak in its base attachment level (or the rate of decrease is rather significant).
alright. but we might wonder, how exactly do we feel the changes in the level of our emotional nourishment (which manifests in the level of attachment)?
i ask that because, while it might be relatively easy to notice how much we're nourished by someone's presence, it's much trickier with someone's absence.
when we're reminded less and less of someone, does that mean our emotional nourishment from them is weaning? or might it actually be strengthening (that is, the nourishment is lasting longer, so we crave less of the interaction and thus are reminded less of the person over time)? or is it a completely different thing?
or when we keep missing someone, does that mean our emotional nourishment from them is strengthening (as in we're craving more of them—though, again, the use of the word craving itself is quite alarming and begs some analysis)? or is it actually weakening because the nourishment lasts shorter and we get, say, lonely quicker and thus missing them more?
whatever the answer is, the ambiguity of this part of the exploration seems to be a sign that we're still a bit tangled up in our theories.
let's think of another fundamental possibility, then: what if, instead of describing how much emotional nourishment we actually get, attachment is instead only describing our expectation of how much nourishment we'll get from a relationship? and that the actual nourishment we get is a bit more independent?
a reason to believe this might be that, i feel like we can feel it when our emotional satisfaction from an interaction is "natural" or kinda "forced". when a satisfaction feels natural, it might mean that our expectation of the satisfaction and and the actual satisfaction we get is matched. but when a satisfaction feels forced, there's a gap between that expectation and reality—or, more accurately, our denial of that very gap is what makes the satisfaction rather forced, rather... fake.
an implication from this is that missing someone might be a natural mechanism by which we're trying to close the gap between our expectation and the reality of our emotional nourishment. missing someone prompts us to interact more with the person, in a hope that it will provide more nourishment so as to fulfill the unfulfilled expectation.
on the other hand, when we stop missing someone, it's a sign that our expectation is fulfilled and thus need no more chasing. this could obviously mean two things: either the nourishment is meeting a high expectation (as in intense relationship), or our expectation is simply (too) low (as in that of ours towards people we don't really care).
another way to put it: either we have a strong attachment and that gets adequately reciprocated, or we just don't have that much attachment in the first place.
and voila! we get quite a diagnostic tool: by defining attachment as our expectation of emotional nourishment, we can diagnose the state of our relationship: for intense, deep relationships, a healthy amount of missing is a reminder for quality time, while an excess amount of missing is an alarming sign that perhaps reciprocation is decaying. for a more fleeting, superficial relationships, the lack of missing is simply signifying that we are indeed lacking attachment towards that person.
a fear remains: how do we grief over decaying reciprocation? can we live—thrive, flourish—without attachment? (a hard-Buddhist probably can, but can we?)
and those are questions for another day.
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