Mariyam Akram

M.Phil
GC University, Lahore.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE

(Role of Attachment in Love)

Every popular song is about it, half our books and films obsess over it, and everybody wants it.
But when we come to ask what love is, we are overwhelmed by a myriad different ideas and
experiences.

On the one hand, love can lift us up; on the other, it can destroy us. The problem is further
compounded because we generally also feel tremendous love for our mothers, our children, our
friends - even chocolate. Scientists have been trying to define love according to their frame of
reference for a very long time. The pioneering sexologist Havelock Ellis provided a famous but
entirely incorrect mathematical formula: love = sex + friendship. Freud dismissed romantic love
as the sex urge, blocked. Social biologists have scanned our brains and identified three chemicals
- dopamine, phenyl ethylamine and oxytocin - which they claim attract us exclusively to our
mates for long enough, in their opinion, to conceive and give the offspring a secure start.
Different people list almost two dozen definitions - including affection, fondness, caring, liking,
concern, attraction, desire and infatuation. We all instinctively agree there is a huge difference
between liking and complete infatuation. What we need is a new lexicon, something to help us
negotiate and understand all the different types of love.

Psychologist Dorothy Tennov has already taken the first step towards this goal. She interviewed
500 people from different backgrounds and age groups, both gay and straight, about falling in
love, and found a startling similarity in how each respondent described their feelings. The basic
components were: intrusive thinking (you can't stop daydreaming about them); an aching in the
heart; an acute sensitivity to any act or thought which can be interpreted favorably; fear of
rejection and unsettling shyness in their presence; intensification through adversity (at least up to
a point) and a disregard for all other concerns. Tennov also discovered 'a remarkable ability to
emphasize what is truly admirable and avoid dwelling on the negative'. Love is, in other words,
blind, deaf and completely oblivious to foolishness.

While scientists have not researched precisely what it is that makes us choose one person over
another, they have looked at what makes a good long-term partnership. At this stage we pick
people who are like us, or who complement us in some hidden way. Often, we search for other
people with whom we can act out the issues we were unable to resolve as children. Our partners
have to speak the same language, or there is simply no connection. I call this kind of deep,
intertwined love 'loving attachment'. Unlike limerence it is based on rational 'eyes open' choices
about compatibility. Unlike limerence, loving attachment dies if it is not reciprocated, especially
sexually. Unlike limerence, loving attachment can last forever. To truly understand loving
attachment, it is necessary to clarify the difference between the love for our partner and that for
our children and our parents. Popular romance feeds us the idea of unconditional love, and
during the limerence something approaching this is often achieved. However, once a couple has
moved on to loving attachment, unconditional love becomes a distant memory. The confusion
between loving attachment and loving affection can cause just as much misery as the confusion
over limerence.

Love and Attachment

From time to time, our relationships are becoming difficult to understand. Part of this confusion
stems from the fact that our relationships are influenced by two powerful, yet separate, emotional
systems. Often these emotional systems work together to create satisfying outcomes. But, that is
not always the case. Sometimes these emotional systems compete with each other leading to
mixed feelings and confusion. The first emotional system entails love. And love, in and of itself,
is composed of a complex set of feelings. The second emotional system involves attachment.
Attachment is the feeling of security and comfort we get from being close to someone else. And,
like with love, there are individual differences in the experience of attachment. These two
emotional systems can work together to produce a healthy and satisfying relationship. However,
these basic emotional systems do not necessarily work in sync over the course of time. For
instance, it is possible to be attached to one romantic partner, and be in love with someone else.
Love and attachment seem pretty interconnected, but distinctly different. Love is a positive
feeling toward something or somebody, and attachment is an emotional need for something or
somebody. The major difference seems to be that love is other-directed, and attachment is self-
centered.

“If you find a good solution and become attached to it, the solution may become your next
problem”.
Robert Anthony
If there is a fear of attachment, then we should not love. If we love someone, we have to pay the
price. Surely, love includes attachment too, whether we deny it or try to cover it with, "No, I'm
not attached; I just love." People can tell us to minimize our attachment to give each other more
freedom and not to control each other, but just to love unconditionally and try to adjust to each
other. That is love with minimized attachment, but not without attachment. Everything has
attachment except when we love God. Then we love without attachment because there is nothing
to be attached to. We don't gain what we gain materially as in this world. We just gain bliss,
happiness and contentment. We cannot be attached to something when there is nothing there.
The more we love God, the more relaxed and non-attached we become. But still we can love
people in this world because our heart is large. A heart that is large can include anyone, even
enemies; otherwise, it is difficult to love our enemy.

Joseph Goldstein, in Seeking the Heart of Wisdom described that the near-enemy of love is
attachment. Attachment masquerades as love. It says, "I will love you if you will love me back."
It is a kind of "businessman's" love. So we think, "I will love this person as long as he doesn't
change. I will love that thing if it will be the way I want it." But this isn't love at all--it is
attachment. There is a big difference between love, which allows and honors and appreciates,
and attachment, which grasps and demands and aims to possess. When attachment becomes
confused with love, it actually separates us from another person. We feel we need this other
person in order to be happy. This quality of attachment also leads us to offer love only toward
certain people, excluding others.

Romantic attachments are designed to keep people together because over the course of human
evolution people, who stayed together, had an easier time raising offspring than people who only
came together for the purposes of sex.
While attachments help create stability, there is a downside. Attachments are less concerned that
you are happy with your partner and more concerned that you stay together. In fact, many people
form an attachment to someone who they do not like as a person. It is quite possible to form a
deep bond to someone who is less than an ideal romantic partner – this happens every day.

Not only that, but it can be difficult to end a relationship, even a bad relationship, because people
experience tremendous loss when attachments come to an end – including situations where
people are attached to someone they dislike. Loss is loss, even when it occurs in a problematic
relationship.

Going slow at the start of a relationship, especially when it comes to sex, is important. It is good
to learn as much as you can about another person before you become heavily involved. Many
relationship problems could be avoided, if people did not rush into forming an attachment with
someone. Not only are humans designed to form an attachment to a romantic partner, but there
are some important differences in the types of attachments people form and how people
experience love.

Different people have different view about love but there is no single universal definition about
love as it is different for everyone because of their individual differences in their perceptions,
thoughts and experiences. Some people describes attachment as the most important factor in
love, some says trust is the base of love, and there are many factors described by different people
which they describe as love.