Everyone wants to find that special someone with who they can build a future. But finding love and maintaining a healthy attachment is quite a difficult task. Most people can’t differentiate between lust and love, so they jump into a relationship solely based on attraction. But love is not all about looks or about material conditions. To find love, you need to open up your heart and learn to become emotionally attached to your partner.
Attachment is quite a tricky subject. It is a crucial ingredient for a strong relationship. But if you do it wrong, it can become toxic. Most people tend to fall into unhealthy attachment patterns in their relationships. But you can avoid making that mistake if you make it your mission to learn how to use healthy attachment patterns. And, you will find that healthy attachment can help you find and nurture a loving relationship.
What Is Healthy Attachment?
When you get close to a person and begin building trust and connecting with someone, you become attached. People are attached to their families, friends, and romantic interests. Sometimes, you might even find yourself attached to a random person on the street, just out of sheer empathy. But attachment is also a patterned behavior learned throughout one’s life.
As a child, you have some role models you can look up to, like your family. You see how they interact, and you try to emulate that. If your parents are distant and cold, chances are you will develop an insecure attachment style.
If you develop toxic attachment patterns, your love life will always be lacking. You risk seeing yourself in a bad light, which in turn makes you have low self-worth. Because of this, you might cling to any person that shows you even the tiniest drop of attention. You are much more vulnerable and risk becoming a victim of abuse. If you believe you aren’t worthy of love, you will settle for any situation, no matter how bad.
Most people make the mistake of thinking that love and attachment are synonyms. But there are two different concepts. To have a strong relationship, you need an attachment, but attachment alone doesn’t equal love. So, be careful not to get the two confused. If you get attached to someone, that doesn’t mean you are in love with them. If you base your relationship on attachment alone, you might fall into co-dependent behaviors.
7 Ways That Healthy Attachment Helps Form Long-lasting Love
If you want to avoid any toxicity in your relationships, you need to learn how to do attachment in a healthy way. You need to trust people, open up to them, set boundaries, and allow yourself to develop feelings. What you need to avoid is desperately clinging to someone who mistreats you. When you learn to get attached healthily, you will find that your relationships will become much more stable. And, you can even find and nurture true love.
1. Healthy Attachment Builds Trust
When you become attached to a person, you start feeling a sense of safety when you’re with them. If your attachment style is healthy, it will allow you to have faith in your partner.
When you are close to someone, and you aren’t attached to them out of fear, you will allow them to earn your trust. They will be able to show you through actions that they will never betray or hurt you. Trust is at the core of every loving relationship. The stronger your trust is, the stronger your bond will be. The people you can trust are those you will love in your life. And that love can only get stronger in time.
2. Allows You To Open Up
Of course, physical attraction is essential in any romantic relationship. But that’s not enough to form love. You need to connect to your partner emotionally; if you want to create a deep bond, you need to open up.
As you become attached to someone and you start trusting them, you feel more comfortable opening up to them. You will feel like they offer you a safe space to talk about your feelings. That not only promotes communication, but it lets the other know what your needs are.
Through the process of communication, you can start understanding each other better. You will get to know all aspects of your partner, and they will get to know you. When you start learning each other on a deeper level, that’s when love starts creeping into your life.
3. Healthy Attachment Promotes Intimacy
Closeness is not enough if you want to have a truly intimate relationship. You can be close with many people, but that doesn’t mean you’d be comfortable being intimate with them. But when you are attached to someone, and you feel safe with them, that’s when you’ll feel safe to be close.
Attachment means that you know the other person will accept you for who you are. You understand and feel that they won’t rush you into doing anything you don’t want to do. You know they’d never hurt you. On the contrary, they’d go out of their way to take care of you. Additionally, being attached to someone means always putting them first.
When you and your partner are attached, you will never forget important things like date nights and other couple’s activities. You will want to spend quality time, just the two of you. And this intimacy is precisely what’s needed in a relationship to keep that spark alive. There’s nothing better for nurturing love than a bit of intimacy.
4. Promotes Mutual Understanding
When you love someone, your relationship is driven by passion. But, as time passes and that initial lust starts fading, you need to lean on other things. Mutual understanding is one of the essential pillars in a romantic relationship, especially long-term.
When you are emotionally attached to someone, you are ready to make sacrifices for each other. You are prepared to listen to each other, even if you are fighting. Healthy attachment promotes a sense of understanding between people. You feel like you can talk and be listened to, and the other feels the same. And it’s not just about being heard.
It’s much deeper than that. It’s about being heard and understood. That means when you fight, you are more likely to be open to trying to settle. This mutual understanding is essential for promoting real, true love.
5. You Are Still Independent
One of the biggest dangers of unhealthy attachment is falling into co-dependent behaviors. You might find yourself obsessed with your partner and need to cling to them for dear life. But that’s not the case if you learn to attach yourself to others in a healthy way.
A healthy attachment system will allow you to stay independent even in relationships. You will understand that having your own life is essential if you want to be the best partner you could be. And your partner will also have their own life. That doesn’t mean you won’t do anything together.
On the contrary, the attachment will mean that you will want to share as many experiences as possible. But you won’t feel pressured to give up everything just for the sake of your partner. You will have a healthy bond, but you will also give each other the space you need.
6. Healthy Attachment Promotes Respect
If you are looking for love, you need to find someone who will respect you. And, it would be best if you also appreciated them. Attachment is one of the ways through which this mutual respect can be reached. When you connect with someone, you start understanding who they are and why they act the way they do.
As you get closer to them and start bonding, you start seeing the world through their eyes. That encourages you to start respecting who they are and all they do for you. When you respect your significant other, you honor their needs and wishes. But you also learn to respect your own needs. This will create a necessary balance for every loving relationship to last.
7. Makes You Happy
Unfortunately, some people end up in relationships where they have to settle for feeling less than content. Because they have unhealthy attachment styles, they risk being manipulated, mistreated, and even abused. And, in those cases, they can’t even get out of that situation.
If you want to be truly happy in your relationship, you need to make sure that you don’t attach yourself blindly to people. Make sure that you are satisfied with yourself and ready to add a relationship to your life. If you feel like you are desperate for a relationship or you are obsessed with your partner, chances are the relationship won’t bring you love.
But, if your attachment comes from a genuine interest in another person, then it’s healthy. And that kind of connection will make you feel complete. When you think that happiness from attachment, you will be the best version of yourself. And that’s the path you have to take if you want to find true love.
Final Thoughts On How Healthy Attachment Helps Form Long-lasting Love
Attachment is one of the trickiest things to get right in any relationship. And, because today’s society hasn’t gotten used to the fact that they have to teach kids how to have a healthy relationship. Because of this, kids grow up seeing some patterns in their parents and trying to emulate them. As a result, a lot of those kids develop toxic attachment styles. They might become obsessed with their partners, or they might settle for whatever they can get.
But everyone can learn to have a healthy attachment style. As long as you work on being happy when alone, you won’t develop toxic relationship behaviors. And a healthy attachment style will help you and your partner bond, communicate, and respect each other. It’s the fundamental way you will open up to someone and develop intimacy. If you want to find and nurture true love, the best way to do it is by allowing yourself to get attached.
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