Loving…Without Attachment: A Prescription for Hurting Hearts?
Laughing.
Making love.
Holding.
Pillow talking…
No, I’m not fantasizing about falling in love again. I’m imagining what it would be like to experience a weekend of ‘love without attachment.’ And I wonder: Might they be a wonderful prescription for our restless/ hurting hearts after divorce?
Remember when you were in that really bad emotional place? Or maybe you’re there now. The confusion, the aching, the overwhelm… Don’t you yearn to turn it off for awhile? To recharge? Some part of you aches to find solace in the body and heart of another person. You long for a FEELING: Of peace. Of being 100% authentic, 100% you, wherever you are right now. No games. No conditions or future promises. Just you and this other person, with whom you could laugh, pillow talk with, and love…
“But Delaine,” you might protest, “If I shared that kind of connection with someone, I wouldn’t want it to end after a weekend.” But what if you simply ‘knew’ this relationship could never be more? What if you knew you weren’t ready for more? Would you be brave enough to actually ‘love’ another – passionately, openly, purely – knowing it wouldn’t mean forever?
I imagine what it would be like in the aftermath of such a weekend… I think there might there be a twinge of sadness. For human nature is to grasp tightly to another. We are afraid. We are needy. We LONG…
But if we could look beyond our neediness, FEEL beyond that, I think such weekends could lovingly propel our lives forward. For we’d have been heard. We’d have been seen and touched on the heart and soul level. And we would emerge back into the real world freer. Lighter. Stronger. And hopeful of what might lie ahead.
5 comments
Delaine, I lay in bed last night wishing for exactly what you have written about.
Life hasn’t been easy for me lately and what I wouldn’t give to be heard, to have my heart touched.
I don’t like being afraid or feeling needy and I find it hard to admit either. Over the last few days that is where I am though and oh how great it would be to lock myself away with someone who could restore my spirit with no expectations other than loving and respecting each other.
A male friend of mine, whom I never met in person, was the one who introduced me to the idea of love without attachment. At the time I was heavy in depair, only a few months into my divorce. He and a female friend had had one of these weekends together soon after they both ended their marriages. He told me how freeing it was, how soothing it was to be touched both physically and spiritually; there was love…yet there was no happily forever after. It was what they both needed – pure, unconditional love on all levels, to uplift their souls.
We all need to be needed…and touched…and listened to. Sometimes I feel otherwise and sometimes I have to CONVINCE myself otherwise. But truly, authentically, that need undulates beneath the surface of our skins. I don’t think of it as a bad thing. I think it makes me open to different ways of ‘loving’; there is an entire spectrum of ways it can be experienced. I’m not sure why how we love is so confined in our society…
And on that note, I’m sending you some soul-sister love from here Cathy. Cycperspace love knows no time or space either.
Delaine
I have had this… shortly after the breakup of my last relationship. It felt so wonderful and healing. And honest.
Thank you for sharing these thoughts, Delaine.
And Happy Mother’s Day to you.
I have this now, a lover I’m with for about 8 hours a week, on the weekend, when my children are with their father. We both are unsure we will ever remarry, but we are enjoying our sexual and emotional connection. It gives us something to look forward to, we miss each other during the week, but we both have full and busy lives when we are not together. We certainly are not in love with each other but it is satisfying and quite pleasant and yes, healing.
I tried this. It was supposed to be just a weekend or two. Then he kept calling, saying he really loved me, and he got me to fall in love with him too. Then a few months later he cooled off and I was left heartbroken.