The difference between LOVE and ATTACHMENT in modern dating

Some relationships don’t fall apart all at once. They break slowly, quietly, in ways that are easy to explain away and hard to walk away from.

This story is about someone I know deeply. Someone who has loved, stayed, forgiven, and hoped for four long years. From the outside, it’s easy to ask, “Why doesn’t she just leave?” But when you’re inside it, leaving isn’t simple. After everything you’ve been through together, it becomes hard to tell what’s real and what you’re just holding onto. And fear disguises itself as love.

What starts as affection slowly turns into endurance. The hurt becomes familiar. The red flags become normal. And somewhere along the way, anxiety begins to feel like passion, and attachment starts wearing the face of love.

This isn’t a story about weakness. It’s a story about how easy it is to stay when you’re emotionally tied to who someone used to be, or who you hope they’ll become. It’s about the quiet struggle between choosing peace and clinging to what you already know.

If you’ve ever stayed longer than you should have, questioned your worth in someone else’s hands, or confused love with the fear of being alone—this story is for you.

Now let me put you on an interesting fact. I know this person who is in a 4-year relationship. In fact we’ve had a very close relationship since we were children. And I have her permission to share this. A 4-year relationship but she has barely any good to say about it. 

Every day it’s a different humiliating story. Cheating, verbal abuse, curses, he would bully her and compare her to other women. Sometimes beats her and sends her out of his house in the middle of the night. 

Or bring in another woman and deny ever knowing her in front of those women. 

He would travel outside the state without letting her know he would be out of town, and he would never call her or even try to maintain any contact. 

He wanted to pursue acting. Another sign of red flag that should have sent my dear friend packing. Can you imagine that? A grown man in his late 30s, pursuing acting. You will think I’m overreacting on the acting part until you know the reason why. 

This almost fool at 40 started auditioning for upcoming movies. Just so he gets to smooch girls and have his way with them. 

He would post thirst trap videos and pictures on social media with ridiculous captions like “single and ready to mingle”. And be defensive every time she tries to confront him. She gets notifications on her phone of her friends sending her, photos of her man kissing girls on his IG videos and he says it’s for the movie every time she complains about it. 

And even accuse her of dimming his light and slowing him down. Now you will think that with all these going on she will leave him for good. A four-year relationship isn’t a lot to endure all this. But she has already developed an attachment. 

I mean she has ended the relationship a few times and every time he has come begging and every time she takes him back. Because deep down she never really left. 

He has no plans involving her and every time it is talked about, he tells her he needs to build a house first before thinking about having a family or settling down. But we all know how these stories end. 

Each time I asked why she’s always in circles with him and never leaves him for good, the one thing she always says is how they have been together for 4 years, and leaving now wouldn’t make any sense. Besides she loves him. But can we really say that’s love or just attachment dressed up in emotions? 

She loves him and wants him to remain in her life. But he is never truly present. 

There’s a thin line between love and attachments. Both are things you feel in your emotions so it is not easy to differentiate which is which. Many people don’t realize which one they are experiencing until it starts hurting. And even sometimes you get numb to the pain that the hurt starts to feel like a form of love or Romance. You settle. 

Sometimes what we call love is really fear in disguise as affection. 

She loves him and she can’t live without him. She’s incomplete and can’t physically function or know her purpose in his absence 

While it is normal to be obsessed with your partner it is indeed not normal to make them the center of your world. When you love someone you choose them freely not because you are afraid of losing them or scared of being alone, but because you genuinely want them in your life. 

In the case of the story above. Deep down she wants more, more love, more care, more assurance, more respect, and affection. If she had a choice she would desert him. But the truth is she does have a choice. 

But her sense of attachment has caused her to settle and in her mind, she can’t find anyone else, she can’t even phantom it. She has started to believe him. All the mean things he said about her. 

Attachment can be caused by many things. It’s either your mind and feelings keep you there or your partner’s words and actions. Sometimes you feel you can’t get it better anywhere else. 

Sometimes it’s easier to stay and take all the crap than leave. Sometimes it’s a desperate need to be loved. Regardless of the kind of love you get. So long as sometimes on a good day you feel loved by the same person who makes you have all these unwanted feelings. 

Those who feel attachment always hold on to the little piece of happiness they once had or the 5 minutes of attention they get every day. It’s always the little things you cling to. 

He loved me once, he was good once, he once brought me flowers and wrote me a letter. He used to call me the most beautiful girl in the world. 

Holding onto past feelings and making them what comforts you in the present. When really you should be letting go. But sometimes it’s hard for you to let go because in most cases they do things for you that make you want them but never do the things you actually want. It’s enough to keep you but rarely enough to give you that sense of satisfaction 

He doesn’t treat me badly, he just never chooses me fully and somehow that hurts more. 

Attachment is driven by fear, fear of loneliness, fear of abandonment, fear of starting over. It clings, it overthinks, it confuses intensity with intimacy. 

Fear of not being enough. Insecurities can create a level of attachment where you begin to think and feel less of yourself without your partner. 

You need them to always be present, to be there. You need constant validation from them. And sometimes even when they are toxic and are taking away your happiness slowly, you never seem to care or notice, as long as they don’t leave, and you are not lonely. 

Attachment focuses on needing someone more than actually choosing them. It can feel like love, an intense feeling. But all that feeling is usually tied to insecurities or the fear of being alone rather than genuine connection and affection. 

Being attached creates emotional dependency quickly. And can easily be mistaken for love. But if the connection brings more anxiety than peace, more confusion than clarity, it’s often attachment disguised as love and romance.

In dating, attachment makes you want to stay longer than you should, ignoring red flags. 

Attachment isn’t about connecting. It’s about dependency 

WHY DO WE STAY ATTACHED? Because attachment feels familiar. Being chosen inconsistently can feel better than being alone. 

He wasn’t what you wanted but he was what you had. 

Attachment convinces you to settle not because the connection is right, but because starting over feels harder. 

while still having a connection without the fear of abandonment or outgrowing each other. 

Love is peace, love is certainty, love is patient and steady, even when there is a storm, it does not rely on control or any form of abuse. 

You know it is love when it is healthy, and you care deeply about someone, but your sense of self, peace, and worth does not disappear in their absence.

Love should give you strength and the ability to have individual lives while still keeping the bond in your relationship. Love does not take away, it gives.

HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE

Ask yourself one simple question, Do I feel more anxious or more secure in this connection? 

Love feels safe. Attachment feels like holding your breath. 

CHOOSE BETTER FOR YOURSELF

You don’t have to leave immediately, Awareness comes first. Only if you understand the differences then you stop romanticizing anxiety and start choosing peace.