The Nature of Love, & Attachment

The goal of this document is to go over the Nature of Love. However, that in itself is misleading. This document is meant to more be about, what love is not, as well as, what doesn't feel like love, but what is. There's quite a rich philosophic, and now psychological tradition of examining love, one which this document will use to provide a foundation for the following discussion. This document will go into learning / trauma → attachment styles → loneliness → isolation → god → understanding / letting go / attachment → love 慈 = learning / a process / authenticity

In the Symposium, Plato presents multiple views of love through different speakers. Aristophanes talks about humans as split beings seeking their other half. Socrates/Diotima talks about love as the desire for immortality through creation...

understanding enables love while ignorance breeds fear.

Why is the goal of talking to somebody attractive getting their phone number?

Why is the goal of going out downtown with your friends looking for somebody to hook up with?

I see it every single day in the interactions that I have at the grocery store. People don't want to talk, people don't want to exchange information. There is this fear amongst opening up, because if I don't succeed, if he doesn't like me, if they say no, then it's so over for me.

Why are our priorities fixated on getting things that will make us feel our worth to other people, when instead we should focus on what we need?

We need intimacy, we all desire to be seen, to be understood, to be undefined.

We have lost the spirit of intimacy amongst people.

For a lot of us, we hold an incredibly materialistic understanding of intimacy. A girlfriend, a boyfriend, a partner, for them, intimacy means romance and the things which follow. However, none of us are construed only of these moments. If that's your only perspective, the only relationship you've actually done any work to build, to figure out who the other person is, you've built only a dependence.

Are you aware of what you have and where you're at? What are you defined by? Who are you? What was your most memorable birthday? Your most tragic experience? Your favourite view? I mean like, what's your favourite produce?

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If, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but "A's part in C," while C loses not only A but "A's part in B." In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, "Here comes one who will augment our loves." For in this love "to divide is not to take away." C. S. Lewis

What can we do to love better?

The first virtue is consistency, when the behavior deviates significantly from the established baseline, affection and commitment depreciates. The first signals sent in any relationship establish the baseline social contract.¹ As Thomas Sowell outlines in Basic Economics, value is determined by utility and scarcity; when the utility of the man's affirming actions decreases, so does his perceived value in that specific domain.

The second virtue is integrity, a capital of trust which underpins all transactions—time, money, emotional vulnerability, sacrifice—within the relationship. A significant breach of integrity (subverting emotional or physical intimacy) reveals the entire enterprise was built on a fraudulent premise. ² Maintaining integrity in the face of temptation is therefore the ultimate signal of commitment, demonstrating a conscious choice to forgo short-term gains for the long-term health of the relationship.

The third is wise intentionality, you must know who you are, what you want, what your boundaries are, else your expectations are unfounded. Unwin's historical analysis found a direct correlation between a society's "cultural energy" (its capacity to expand, build, and innovate) and its degree of "sexual continence,"³ specifically the institutional channeling of male sexual energy into monogamous, lifelong pair-bonds. Invest one's most valuable assets (time, commitment, vulnerability) where they are most likely to yield a return.

Attachement Styles

"No one wants to understand, they just want to blame"

"Thinking is difficult - thats why most people judge. It's easier label, to listen half-heartedly, to assume than to truly understand. Judging is hast, thinking takes courage. And most would rather feel tight than be honest." Carl Jung

"What is a promise if not your hand in mine?"

Alice Walker, from A Poem Traveled Down My Arm

"Let this be your honour: always to love more than you are loved and never to be second in this." Friedrich Nietzsche

"One day, you'll look around and realise everybody loves you... but nobody likes you. And that is the loneliest feeling in the world" - Bojack

Should also cover limerence

"we all love in the same way, the only way we were taught how" pshycologist quote on generational trauma (note epigenetics as well)

roles of definitions / labels / identity (connection to representation)

• What stories make you? The Nature of Ego & Identity
• connection between addiction, loneliness, and community
• What are you running from? - procrastination is a protective strategy for mitigating conflicting motivations
• Self Worth Theory of Achievement Motivation - Primary psychological need is to be seen by self and others as competent and able.
  • $\text{Ability} \times \text{Effort} \Rightarrow \text{Performance Level} \Rightarrow \text{Sense of Worth}$
  • Implies when success and failure are in contention it can result in stagnation until the humiliation / fear of non-completion > fear of failure

Should cover diametric learning as a child, ie when children learn we perceive things as very binary. If you say do x and get y, it also implies the opposite. These series of priors build upon each other, and if not actively examined, lead to repeated generational patterns of trauma.

There's a large degree of faith involved with teaching children. In that as a parent, the more similar the child's path is to your own, the more familiar it is, the more you feel you can correct the mistakes you might've made in your past. This desire for the child to have a "better" life, to become a better version of yourself, denies them the chance to be the best version of themself.

"I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God". Rumi

unconditional Self love (CBT) vs deserved love (MET?)

For many, the rhetoric of self-love feels discordant with their internal reality. Guilt is an emotion to motivate "moral" behaviour. Thus the therapeutic injunction to love an untransformed self extinguishes the fire that motivates transformation. To tell such a person “you are enough as you are” is, in effect, to deny the legitimacy of their own value system.

When one joins the military, one encounters drill sergeants who repeatedly assert that one will fail, that one is pathetic, that one will never make it. Yet, strikingly, they do not expel the recruit. They say, “You’re going to fail today, tomorrow, the next day,” but are still there every morning. The implicit message becomes clear: failure does not lead to exclusion; quitting does. “Until you quit, I will continue to be here for you.” The control shifts entirely to the self: the recruit can leave at any time, but as long as they remain, the system remains with them; beneath the ridicule lies genuine commitment, it affirms that they see your flaws yet remain beside you. It becomes a mode of solidarity: you are flawed, but not forsaken.

(Angela Duckworth 2007 study on grit)

search for everything, except love and death. they find you when the time comes.

God loves the other person too.