The One Who Pulls Away Is Pursued: Excessive Attachment and Balance in Relationships

21 May 2021

Why does loving someone deeply sometimes make our relationship with that person more difficult?

Question: When does love cease to be attachment and turn into dependence?

Valuing someone and wanting to share a life with them is natural. But when we tie all our peace to a single person’s behavior, our balance changes.

Sometimes we begin following their every word and movement. When they do not call one day, we feel worthless.

While wanting our love to be reciprocated, we may unknowingly put pressure on the other person.

How Does Thought Become Habit?

Let us remember the first day we learned a new task.

When driving, we pay separate attention to the clutch, brake, and mirror. We perform every movement thoughtfully.

As we do the same task repeatedly, we gain experience and begin to perform many movements more easily.

In relationships too, the thoughts and behaviors we repeat may become habits.

Constantly thinking about a person and making every decision in our lives around them can create a strong habit over time.

The important question here is this: Does this habit make us more peaceful and balanced, or does it narrow our lives?

A behavior becoming a habit does not show that it is right.

While becoming skilled in our profession through repetition, we can also reinforce a wrong behavior through repetition.

That is why we should look not only at what we do frequently, but also at what we do and why.

The Line Between Love and Excess

A spouse, child, or someone we love may have an important place in our lives.

But making them the sole determining factor in our lives is something else.

Question: Do we truly see the person we love, or are we seeking the feeling we expect from them?

Wanting all of the other person’s time, controlling their every decision, and tying our own peace to them in the name of love can tire the relationship.

A similar imbalance may occur in our relationship with a child.

While wanting to protect them, we may never allow them to make their own decisions. Thus, excessive interference may develop alongside our love.

Balance does not mean reducing love.

Balance means being able to show our love without narrowing the other person’s life.

Sometimes people follow their feelings; sometimes they evaluate with reason.

If every decision rests solely on momentary pleasure, we may disregard harmful long-term consequences.

Recognizing Where the Wrong Begins

A wrong that seems small at the beginning of a relationship may grow over time.

An intimacy initially formed merely for amusement may become a habit difficult to control as it is repeated.

This matters particularly in behaviors that undermine trust in marriage.

At first, people may think, “I will do it once, then stop.”

Yet what we repeat affects what we come to regard as normal over time.

Question: Which behavior we consider insignificant today may become a larger problem tomorrow?

Incorrect information may mislead us in the same way.

If we act solely on our emotions without learning the facts about a matter, we may fail to see what a behavior that seems justified to us does to someone else.

For this, we need to think, learn, and stop when necessary.

Becoming Skilled in Relationships

People give years to learning their work. But how much effort do they give to understanding their spouse?

Becoming skilled in a subject does not mean claiming that we know it in every aspect.

It means noticing our mistakes and continuing to improve ourselves.

When a situation in the family troubles us, we can try to understand it before looking for someone to blame.

Do we truly listen to one another? Can we talk about our boundaries and expectations?

Are we speaking to be proven right in an argument, or to solve the problem?

These questions can determine our direction in a relationship.

It is not right to attribute every difficulty in relationships to a single cause. But failing to see our own part is not a solution either.

Love matures when we learn to preserve balance, not when we lose it.

Are we truly doing good to the person in our lives, or trying to change them according to our own expectations?