The Best Mindset to Have Before the Relationship
3 benefits of detachment.
I’ve messed up many relationships in the most important phase: the beginning.
I’d overthink my text messages, experience gut-wrenching anxiety if I didn’t receive a response immediately, overcompensate to get the person to like me, and fear they’d leave me eventually.
Most of these feelings (claiming all would be a lie) and behaviors evaporated when I realized this one truth about relationships:
It Will End
By breakup, divorce, or death, the person you’re infatuated with or the person you’re in a relationship with, will no longer be yours sooner or later.
Sounds drab, I know. But it’s the truth.
Look at the relationships closest to you; how many of them have lasted forever?
Even the ones that did survive until the other dies, the facts of the matter remain: you’ll leave this world the same way you entered it — alone.
Detachment
The truth can either help or hurt you depending on your perspective.
Realizing “it will end” can be depressing at first. And I understand. The lies and fantasies we’ve been sold in the form of music, movies, books, and hopeless romantic content creators are difficult to release.
“What’s the point” of pursuing love or relationships you may ask.
Love and connection are beautiful human experiences. But we don’t have to be mentally, emotionally, and physically bound, controlled, and arrested by the pursuit of pleasures.
After the mourning phase of “it will end” has processed, peace in the form of detachment will replace the melancholy.
Detachment is the withdrawal of desire to achieve a desired outcome.
There is unhealthy detachment, relationally. And it occurs from a place of fear, not power. Avoiding interaction and intimacy would be unhealthy detachment behaviors.
3 Benefits of Detachment
Detachment has many benefits in all areas of life, but we’ll specifically look at its benefits before or during the searching phase of a relationship.
1.Neediness
Detachment gives you freedom from needing a person to make you happy. And neediness is the least attractive quality.
I used to believe I wasn’t needy. Validation seeking and chasing a person who isn’t interested in you are obvious behaviors of neediness. Pretending like you don’t want a person, playing hard to get, and overanalyzing conversations and messages (text, verbal, and non-verbal) are invisible signs of neediness. I used to perform the latter in almost every beginning phase of a relationship.
Humans want love and connection; there’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s a spectrum we have to be aware of. The far ends are both needy.
“I really want to be in love and be in a relationship” — Needy
“I don’t need love. It’s overrated” — Unhealthy detachment and invisible neediness
“I want love, but I don’t need it. It is what it is” — Perfect balance and in the middle of the spectrum.
It’s OK to want an outcome. But needing it places our centeredness in the palms of factors outside of ourselves.
2.Codependency
Codependency is the silent drug addicting you to unhealthy partners and relationship behaviors.
Codependency and neediness are similar. They both are dependent on others to make them happy. The behaviors of codependency look slightly different, though.
Caretaking, people-pleasing, and a lack of authentic boundaries are the main behaviors of codependency. I used to do all of them.
I’d find and attract partners that needed “fixing” or weren’t the healthiest, emotionally. I assumed if I helped them they would love me and wouldn’t leave me because they needed me.
I’d agree to comments, behaviors, and values that I didn’t believe in. I’d laugh and smile at jokes that weren’t funny. I’d engage and entertain conversations I didn’t want to partake in. I’d say “yes” when I felt “no”, and say no when I felt yes.
Detachment gifted me a quality I lost somewhere along the journey of life — authenticity.
I don’t feel the urge to force connections or control people or situations to get my “love” need met. I’m able to be intuitive and acknowledge when I’m right for someone, or, more importantly, when they’re right for me.
I walk away from conversations, remarks, and people that I don’t click with. I say yes or no without the fear of being disliked.
Lastly, I’ve noticed I’m connecting deeper with the people I’m meant to connect with because I’m being myself which grants them the opportunity to be themselves. Our hair is let down (as they say) and we can be goofy kids — laughing and smiling and giggling for no apparent reason other than being in each other’s company.
3.Stress & Anxiety
We experience the most stress or anxiety when we anticipate we're about to get something we desire or when we're about to lose something we placed on a pedestal.
I valued dating, relationships, and social skills so much that I flunked out of college.
Instead of studying during my freshman year, I read books, watched videos, and spent the weekends practicing everything I learned.
I don’t regret anything I did. I wouldn’t be writing this story, finishing school to become a Marriage and Family Therapist, or be the person I am today. But the journey could’ve been less stressful with fewer rides on the Rollercoaster of Emotions if I would’ve detached and healed wounds earlier.
I prioritized intimate relationships to the point they consumed my everyday thinking and actions. I’d notice a girl in class, at school, or at the gym, and fantasize what it would be like to be in a relationship with them.
I’d construct moments in my head about the first conversation, date, kiss, and meeting their parents. I’d replay these scenarios continually, which made twenty-four hours feel like twenty-four seconds.
And the Rollercoaster of Emotions began if I did get that girl's phone number.
“What should I text her first?”
It took hours to create that text and hours to build the courage to send it.
“She hasn’t responded. Why hasn’t she responded? Did I say something wrong? Damn, I knew that text was stupid.”
You’d think a response would alleviate the anxiety, but it didn’t. Interestingly, it increased it because the same doubts, questions, and worries recycled.
Eventually, the overwhelm and disappointment of the beginning phases of relationships caused me to withdrawal for many months at a time. I’d hop on the rollercoaster and strap in during the moments I felt the most lonely or craved intimacy.
It wasn’t until I realized how much time I wasted that I decided to let go and crawl myself out of the mud of despair, fear, worry, and anxiety.
After years of self-healing, dissecting beliefs, and reinventing myself, I understood love and relationships were the spice on the steak. Purpose, friends, laughter, breathe and life was the ribeye.
I still experience tension and anxiety in dating scenarios which I’ve come to realize is normal and don’t judge myself for. But I’m more able to bring myself back to center when I remember, if I form a relationship with this beautiful person, “it will end.”
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