Man is a social creature who finds it difficult to exist without being surrounded by his own kind. The relationships between people are heterogeneous: some communicate closely, others communicate from time to time and at a distance. Living together leads to the formation of attachment.
Formation of attachments
Psychology interprets the concept of attachment to a person as a feeling of spiritual closeness, affection, goodwill, desire to be close, sympathy and fidelity.
Why do people get attached?
The emergence of a feeling of closeness to someone is a normal process in a person’s life. It is on its basis that relationships between people in society are built. Mutual benefit can also be the reason for close relationships, but such connections are very fickle and are interrupted as soon as the mutual resource is exhausted.
Bonds based on mutual affection are very strong, lasting for years or even decades (for example, the bond between parents and children lasts a lifetime). They give a person a feeling of self-confidence, provide support and psychological comfort.
Attachment happens:
- healthy (an unburdensome emotional connection that can easily end if it is not needed);
- unhealthy (toxic relationships that negatively affect a person’s mental state).
Important! Most often, people deny the negative impact of unhealthy attachment and do not try to get rid of it.
Healthy attachment
What are the features of this emotional state?
Many women associate dependence in a relationship with submission to a man, “serving” his interests and the loss of their own personality. Without a doubt this is true. However, these conditions are only a small part of the overall picture. A woman can be completely dependent, but at the same time not submit, but dominate.
Psychologists identify the following roles that a woman dependent on them can play in a relationship:
- savior;
- pursuer, huntress;
- victim.
There are three main types called the Karpman triangle. Such socio-psychological roles are characteristic of any relationship between people, but with addiction they take on exaggerated forms.
Accordingly, how to get rid of psychological dependence on a man should begin with awareness of the problem and with defining your type and role.
How to learn to avoid attachment to each other
Usually affection has a beneficial effect on a person. Sometimes this feeling causes significant harm if you inadvertently build relationships with unsuitable people. Then the breakup causes deep emotional wounds that do not allow for a long time to establish a full life. In some cases, unhealthy sympathy interferes not only with its bearer, but also with the object: persecution begins, inadequate demands for constant presence, threats and other attempts to tie the desired object to oneself. Then there is a need to learn how not to become attached to people.
Red color in psychology - what does it mean for women and men
To avoid problems with the development and rupture of attachments, you should:
- Analyze your partner’s words and actions at the very beginning of the relationship. Phrases like “I can’t live without you!” - a sign that a person is beginning to become attached in an unhealthy way, such a connection should be interrupted immediately and very decisively.
- Try to negotiate with your boyfriend or girlfriend about the degree of affection and personal freedom.
- Build relationships based on mutual benefit.
- Learn to enjoy freedom and solitude.
Important! It is impossible to completely avoid the occurrence of attachments, but you must try to make them healthy.
What is the point of keeping a diary?
This question arises for most Russian women. Women in the West are accustomed to keeping a diary; it is an integral part of their childhood and youth. In Russia there is no such mass tradition.
Meanwhile, keeping a diary is extremely useful. Describing events, thoughts, and sensations that have occurred, a person experiences them again, but this time meaningfully. That is, a woman, taking notes, is aware of her feelings and reactions. In addition, the diary allows you to compare emotions in relationships at different time periods.
If you quickly get used to a person
Some people tend to quickly develop emotional sympathies for unfamiliar people. As a rule, this happens if the attachment between the baby and mother was disrupted in early childhood (stay in an orphanage, illness or parental indifference). A person who has experienced such mental trauma perceives any manifestation of interest on the part of new acquaintances as the emergence of a psychological connection, thereby inflicting another wound on himself when the invented feelings are not brought to life.
Yellow color in psychology - what it means for a woman, man, child
How to stop getting attached to people you barely know:
- Try to become a self-sufficient person with strong interests and life principles.
- Teach yourself not only to give your love and trust, but also to accept the feelings of other people.
- Develop the ability to abstract yourself and let go of the situation, stop trying to control everyone and everything.
- Start enjoying the current moment, rather than endlessly analyzing the past and inventing the future.
Important! It is necessary to distinguish plans from fantasies: a plan provides for specific steps towards a goal, fantasies are something unrealistic and unattainable.
- Learn to love yourself and gradually adapt to the world around you, without infringing on your interests to please other people.
Find interesting activities for yourself
Women often object: “Just talk about how to stop running after a man. But what should you do if you get carried away and are already compulsively drawn to frequent contacts? And it’s impossible to stop and control yourself?” There is a universal answer to these questions: you need to mind your own business, have interests and hobbies that ignite your soul and give pleasure.
Ladies should periodically monitor whether they have abandoned their hobbies, whether they have become inclined to put their “wants” in the back drawer, or whether they have forgotten about significant goals. You can even put your desires and hobbies in the form of a list and hang it in a visible place. Then, feeling the melancholy of waiting and the urge to “throw yourself on the neck” of your partner in order to fill the void, it will be enough to look at your notes, choose an exciting activity and immerse yourself in it.
By the way, with this approach, when the man appears again, he will find the lady not exhausted and desperate, but with fire in her eyes, filled with new information and emotions. And this always makes the fair sex especially attractive. It is very good if these activities involve contacts with other people. A woman who is in demand, surrounded by friends and acquaintances, will be even more desirable to her partner.
A busy life, full of events, hobbies, goals, is the best cure for any addiction, including destructive, uncontrollable cravings for a member of the opposite sex. There is no healthier way to stop imposing on a man than to focus on yourself, your interests, goals, and pleasures as much as possible.
The impact of excessive attachment on life
Why does a person need communication - what does it give and why is it important to people?
From the moment of birth, a person is emotionally free, but every day he becomes dependent on other people physically and psychologically. As the child grows up, he masters self-care skills and a profession, that is, he gains physical independence. Psychological dependencies and attachments persist for many years and can be the cause of many failures in life and mental discomfort.
The earliest and strongest connection between child and parent should weaken over time and thus contribute to the formation and development of other attachments. Not all parents easily stop controlling their child and allow him to exist independently. Excessive parental love provokes the growth of infantile children who are absolutely not adapted to independent life. The other side of a toxic relationship between generations is when parents constantly force adult children to solve many parental problems to the detriment of their interests.
Jealousy is also a way of becoming toxically attached to someone, which can bore not only the bearer of this feeling, but also many people around.
Jealousy is a manifestation of sick attachment
Any excessive attachment negatively affects a person’s quality of life. Experts advise stopping such connections decisively and immediately.
What is the most common role?
As a rule, female “victims” turn to psychologists for help. They often do this under the influence of public opinion. “Chasers”, as a rule, do not notice any special problems, and other people usually envy them. If these are financially secure, socially independent women, then throughout their lives they do not realize that they are dependent.
“Savior” is the most common socio-psychological role. Women “love” losers, guys “with a sea of melancholy in their eyes”, suffering from alcoholism or drug addiction, terminally ill people, “unrecognized geniuses” and everyone else who needs help, pity, care, guardianship. This type of dependence grows out of maternal instinct, and it is very terrible for the female psyche.
A woman with such dependence completely devotes herself to caring for a man, to the point of forgetting about her own appearance, not to mention hobbies, interests, hobbies, and tastes. At the same time, the whole family is “subordinate” to the man; if a woman has children, they are in second place, and she also requires them to take care of the man.
The woman herself is absolutely convinced that “without her, her beloved will be lost.” She needs to constantly “save” the man, protect, protect, “stand guard over his interests.” Such women are convinced that only they “understand” their chosen one.
This form of addiction is scary not only for women. It cripples the psyche of children and completely destroys the already weak personality of a man. A self-sufficient, accomplished, successful husband does not need saving; accordingly, insecure individuals become partners of such women. Over the years, from such a “clogged life” a real tyrant, a domestic despot, grows. This happens because the man is trying to psychologically resist the “savior.”
Positive and negative aspects of this trait
Like any other processes in a person’s life, attachment has its positive and negative sides.
Pros:
- confidence in your need and usefulness;
- feeling of support in difficult life situations;
- the opportunity to show concern for someone;
- psychological comfort;
- stable personal and intellectual growth;
- emotional stability;
- increasing self-esteem.
Minuses:
- dependence on another person;
- fear of losing the object of affection and being left without male (or female) support;
- constant need to control the object of sympathy;
- unhealthy connections make people unhappy: they make them suffer, lead to depression and neuroses, and can awaken suicidal thoughts;
- attachments and habits do not allow an individual to make fundamental changes in life.
Attachment limits personal freedom
Advice from psychologists
No one is immune from the formation of toxic attachment. To avoid traumatic consequences, according to the recommendations of psychologists, people take the following steps:
- They identify their attachments and analyze their impact on their mental state. This is facilitated by mentally answering the questions:
- Is it comfortable to communicate with a person?
- Do you want to control it all the time?
- Do you often have to infringe on your interests for the sake of another person?
- Is there jealousy in relationships?
- Avoid sick methods of tying oneself to others. The leisurely and gradual formation of new connections and life principles helps in this.
- They learn to solve some problems caused by strong attachments and interfering with a person’s self-development. For this:
- reconsider some beliefs and convictions if they begin to burden or cause negative emotions;
- get rid of communication with indifferent, angry and pessimistic people;
- they find ways not to become attached to a man, the psychology of relationships with whom not all women understand;
- do not allow things (especially old ones) to determine the existence of an individual, but get rid of them in order to find a place for new phenomena in the living space;
- they try not to lose themselves after experiencing personal tragedies and losses, not to cling to the past; on the contrary, they help others cope with similar situations.
- They get rid of the fear of losing vital support points (work, property, specific people or any beliefs).
- They accept every moment of life as it is and be content with what they have.
Important! Some people take this point literally and do not take any measures to improve their quality of life, but humbly await their fate.
- They treat themselves with love and respect, and do not sacrifice their personal space.
- They remain open to meeting and communicating with new people, but carefully analyze their relationships with them before letting just acquaintances into their close social circle.
- They don't live by illusions. Dreams of a wonderful future will remain dreams if they are based on fictitious assumed feelings and actions of other people. The future is built based on the real state of things at the moment and specific personal capabilities.
- Freed from attachment to feelings that can control a person and negatively affect the quality of life. Psychologists advise throwing out your emotions rather than storing them up (singing songs, writing poetry, keeping a diary or blog, talking with an imaginary interlocutor, and so on).
Attachment that limits human development
- They tell other people about their positive experience of getting rid of unhealthy attachments, communicate with like-minded people.
- They understand that any events in a person’s life begin and end; there is nothing infinite in the world.
Thus, attachments can be both healthy and toxic. Living without attachments is much easier, since it does not allow the individual to receive psychological trauma. Psychologists recommend breaking off unhealthy attachments immediately. There are many ways to break such ties in the least painful way on the Internet. Despite its simplicity and non-traumatic nature, life without any attachments is unusual for humans.
Don't ignore red flags
Try not to justify his shortcomings, but to boldly look at them and decide whether you could put up with them or not. There are many signs that will tell you that you should not fall in love with this guy, and you can notice them already on the first date.
The very fact that you see flaws in a person indicates that you are able to maintain sober thinking. Think about them whenever you are tempted to fantasize about your future together.
