Limerence Comes Easy, But It Hurts While True Love Is Hard But Heals

The author A Gentle Reminder, Bianca Sparacino, explains the difference between possessive attachment/limerence and genuine love.

When you are attached to someone, it is always rooted in this concept of being made whole by them, of needing them in your life because they are the source of your happiness or fulfillment.

They make you feel good, and instead of understanding that you will be completely fine if this relationship leaves your life, or if you just can’t make it work, attachment grips. It clings from a place of neediness.

You feel distraught, you feel anxious, you feel overwhelmed and almost manic at times because you are always worried that you are going to lose someone. You hold on so tightly, and that is overwhelming, and exhausting, and it burrows into the heart of you and can make you feel distress, because you cannot possibly love someone you are constantly worried you are going to lose.

That takes you out of your presence completely. And you can’t love someone when you have convinced yourself that that love is the only reason why you are happy — when you use it in that way, you will do anything to keep it around, and that isn’t healthy.

There are no boundaries there. It becomes a toxic attachment for self-preservation, rather than choosing someone from a compassionate, and balanced, place. From a place of knowing that you get to appreciate and care for them as they are, for as long as life affords you the beautiful opportunity, and you won’t be destroyed without them, but rather, you’ll be thankful for what they taught you.

If things get hard, not in the sense that you should run away when life gets tough, but if you genuinely cannot make up the miles, or if you genuinely cannot make the dynamic work any longer, you let go. You love from a distance, you lay that hope down. You appreciate what it was without needing to ask it to be more than what it can be.

There is acceptance. There is flow. There is calm.

And that is what love is. Love is ease. Love is calm.

Genuine lovers choose each other each moment. Again and again, each day that they’re together, they wake up and choose each other. There are no hooks into the future of what will be and for how long, and there are no promises or guarantees.

There is just calm. And acceptance. And gratitude. And appreciation.

And there is no fear of loss, because you know that you will never lose something you have felt so deeply. You will carry it within you forever.

This love does not make you grip. You hold it gently. You are at peace within it.

Genuine love is detached love in the sense that it embraces uncertainty. It embraces the fact that the only thing we know for sure is that everything is going to change. It embraces this and still chooses to be open and vulnerable and, in this way, detached love is the most courageous act.

It is beautiful and selfless and full of gratitude and appreciation.