“You get attached way too quickly.”

“Slow down.”

“You catch feelings easily.”

 

            These are just a few things I consistently hear from people around me, and I get it. The people who have beaten this down into my head have really forced me to consider the validity of what they’ve said, just because of the sheer amount of people who have said it. I’ve tried to deny both of these things in the past for the longest, and I’ve consistently tried to explain to people the falseness of their statements, highlighting misconceptions more than AP students highlight their notes in a chemistry class.

            It got to a point where even my closest friends would say that I wear my feelings on my sleeve and that I mistakenly get attached to people, and at that point, I understood that I had to stop denying my nature to myself and objectively address whether or not they were right: It was time to stop denying my nature and time to ask myself the questions I was uncomfortable addressing.

            A few days ago, I took a step back and asked myself if I really do catch feelings quickly, and get attached to people. I won’t prolong the answer: Yes, and no, respectively.

            What the heck does that mean? Aren’t the two synonymous?

 

            Nope, these are two different things that too often get paired together. I catch feelings quickly, yeah. I’m shameless in saying that. To me, catching feelings for people means that I care about them massively. I genuinely don’t think there should be any time frame issue in caring about people.

            By the way, this isn’t something exclusive to people I’m romantically involved with. I scale up to a significantly higher degree of love and care for others than most people. I have more love for strangers than most have for acquaintances. I have more love for acquaintances than most have for their friends. I have more love for my “casual friends” than most people have for their partners. And I have more love for partners than most people have for their spouses.

            Seeing as how I scale in the grand scheme of caring for others, it becomes increasingly clear as to why I get confused for having romantic interests as often as I do. It’s because the majority of people aren’t used to receiving such a massive amount of attention and care, and they attribute that level of care as romantic interest. In the worst cases, it becomes obvious when people who I express so much love for ask me why I should care for someone like them.

            I feel absolutely terrible when I hear this. It makes me realize the amount of cynicism and distrust already present within such young individuals. Everyone has to have some sort of ulterior motive; there’s no benefit in genuinely caring for a person aside from getting them to sleep with you.

            I suppose to a sense I’m at fault as well, because my response to why I genuinely care about people could come off as douchy—sort of like someone saying that working hard is their weakness in an interview—so I don’t care to express it often. The truth is though that it makes me feel good when I care about people and they care back. I feel like I’m contributing in a positive way to their lives, and that maybe I can be the reason they grow into an extraordinary individual. It puts me in a state of elation; you have no idea the amount of joy I get when someone messages me and tells me that I helped them massively. I geek out; I’ve had to chill on the geeking out and now I just smile with a coolly look on my face and say, “That’s cool, I appreciate it.”

            I have a massive amount of compassion and empathy for others, because I’m wired to try to objectively understand the situations people experience, and I have tons of respect for their uniqueness and existence.

            So then, what about the latter?

            Attachment is what I vehemently disagree with on a lifestyle level. It is the root of all suffering. Yep, straight from the Second Noble Truth in Buddhist principles. What I mean by this is that we have a tendency to identify ourselves with things external to us, in this case, let’s say a partner, and once we receive a consistent flow of emotions from them, we gain an emotional attachment to them. This is what produces that disgusting trait of neediness that people attribute to “catching feelings.”

            This is caused by the misconception that external things determine our feelings, rather than us ultimately determining how we feel. If you remember what I said in You are NOT Your Beliefs, I said that we can mentally project our minds and objectively reason with it from there. This is the way to break the chains of attachment.

            We get attached to people because we identify them as a part of us. Our mind inherently knows that we determine our feelings, so when a person invokes our response, the mind makes a mistake and identifies the person as us.

            It astounds me how detached I am from people, despite loving them so fiercely. Way back when my grandmother passed away, everyone around me was bawling their eyes out, but at worst, I was like “Damn, that sucks.”

            You can argue that I was young and ignorant to death, but even last year, my aunt passed away, who I had known since I could barely walk, and yet I couldn’t get further than “Damn, that sucks.” This was a consistent reaction I had from friends, to close family. I began wondering if I was just insensitive, but the truth was I was detached from these individuals.

            Now granted, I haven’t lost anyone significant in my very small circle, and I’m not sure how I’d react to that, but reacting to so many deaths in the same way has brought me to understand that I don’t have an emotional attachment to these people. That sounds terrible, but I’d argue that it’s the greatest form of respect for people and the greatest way to express love for someone.

            You have enough respect to understand they are their own person, not someone who feeds your emotional desire, and you understand that your time with them is so overwhelmingly temporary that you pour out an insurmountable amount of love and compassion for them in that limited frame of time. This is why I have the audacity to say I pour more love into my friendships than most people do their relationships.

            I knew my problem wasn’t that I got attached to people; heck, I’ve hooked up with extraordinary individuals who I talk with often and maintain solid, vibing friendships with, all while well aware that they’re probably hooking up with other people. So I really had to sit down and ask myself what the deal was. The problem was that I was denying both catching feelings, and attachment. I have an enormous amount of love for the people I’ve hooked up with, and to deny that or the speed in which I grew to love them was just poisonous to me.

            What about you? Do you think attachment and catching feelings are synonymous? Have you felt like you poured a massive amount of love into people and grew attached to them? Do you think you can love someone without emotional attachment?

Much love

~Dylan