Relationships, Attachment & the Denial of Death

What if relational safety is found in the last place you'd ever think to look for it?

Everyone says they want to find love.

But what most people really want is someone who’s just as scared of being abandoned as they are.

Attachment styles are en vogue right now and most people will tell you that secure attachment is the holy relationship grail they are after. But can you really handle secure attachment?

You want to feel safe in your relationship, yes. But for many of us, this means we are looking for and actively creating fearful attachment.

You want to know your partner is scared of losing you. Ideally, as afraid or even more afraid than you are of losing them.

This is why most people aren’t just jealous themselves, they want jealousy from their partner as well. They downright crave it and would panic if their partner didn’t display signs of jealousy (ask me how I know).

This is the shape many relationships take. It’s a pact of mutual fear:

“If you’re this scared of losing me, that means you won’t leave me.”

It may feel like intimacy at times, but it’s more like an emotional hostage situation.

Layers of Fear

At the bottom of all this is a fear of being left, broken up with, divorced, abandoned…

There’s the personal fears we have around this: if you leave me, it means I’m not lovable.

It means I’m not good enough.

It means I’m too much.

And there’s a metric ton of social conditioning added on top of these personal fears:

A relationship that ends is a failure.

A marriage that ends? Mega failure.

What will people think? What will they say behind your back? How could you disappoint your parents like this?

Etc.

So we cling. We white knuckle our way through toxic relationships, desperately trying to make them work.

And even if the relationship is going well, we’re ever vigilant, ever fearful. Every conflict is a threat, every moment of friction must be controlled, denied or therapized away.

The Cost of Fearful Attachment

So, you’ve managed to enter an agreement of mutual fear with someone, congratulations!

Only there’s a looming problem: you are creating fearful attachment because you desire safety. And you desire safety because you want to feel good and be at peace.

But unfortunately, fearful attachment doesn’t come with a whole lot of peace.

Constant anxiety and ruminating, feeling under pressure because you or your parter (or both of you) are so possessive, over-interpreting and overthinking every text message you receive (or god forbid, the absence of a text message!!), self abandonment, codependence…

None of this feels good. None of it feels particularly safe, even.

It seems that the strategy backfires.

Safety on the Other Side of Fear

A wise man once gave me this advice:

“Respond to heartbreak with more heart.”

I’ve tried to live by this ever since. And it has made a world of difference.

I have learned to meet people with a wide open heart. I love fully, without holding back.

I open myself up to people knowing that I might get hurt. I’m willing to open my heart wide and risk experiencing the corresponding amount of heartbreak.

My past is riddled with relationships where I was holding back. I was so afraid of being hurt and so afraid of hurting the other that I never let them get too close.

I regret that. Looking back, I always wish I had allowed myself to love more fully, while it lasted.

My last relationship was the opposite. I opened up all the way. I loved more fully and more deeply than ever before. Dozens of times, I felt this impulse to turtle up - to withdraw, to keep her at an arm’s length, to close myself off - and I chose not to.

The relationship ended.

It was painful. The most heart-rending breakup I’ve ever experienced.

I don’t think I ever cried so much at any other time in my life.

And yet, I allowed myself to feel this fully as well.

I was all in on the love and I was all in on the pain.

I have zero regrets about this relationship. Zero.

And I now have a newfound sense of safety and peace, which comes from willingness. I’m willing to love, I’m willing to lose. I’m willing to feel connection and I’m willing to feel pain.

Love Like You’re Going to Die

There is no safety in denial. There’s no peace in fearful attachment. There’s nothing to gain from closing your heart.

There is only numbness, control-freakiness and a retreat from truly feeling alive.

When you accept that death is part of life, when you really let that sink in and understand that everything will end, something opens.

Even the best relationship, the greatest love, will end. It may end for one of the millions of reasons why relationships end. It may end because one of you dies. It may end because the old version of the relationship needs to die for the new version to emerge.

“Most people are going to have two or three marriages or committed relationships in their adult life. Some of us will have them with the same person.”

- Esther Perel

You’re going to die. What do you do in response?

Do you cower in fear? Live in denial?

Or do you embrace the fact that everything is finite, every moment is unique and embrace all of life fully?

Your relationship is going to end.

What do you do in response..?