Chapter 1: What sparked the discussion about detachment in love?
Let's start this off with a little bit of a story. Okay, it's not a good story, but it's a necessary story for this episode. So about a month ago, maybe a little over a month ago, I was doing research for a podcast episode about modern toxic dating advice.
The concept was, I gather modern toxic dating advice and then give my thoughts on it here on this very podcast, Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain, the podcast that you're listening to right now. So I was on the internet doing a deep dive. I was reading articles about modern dating advice. I was going on TikTok, looking up dating advice.
And most importantly, for the sake of this story, I was on YouTube looking up modern dating advice. And a buzzword that kept coming up in my search was detachment. And... At first, I kind of ignored it because I was like, that's obviously going to be toxic. I'll go back to that later because that immediately to me sounds toxic. So I guess in my research or whatever, I just kind of wrote it off.
I was like, oh, I'll put a pin in that for now. I'm trying to find stuff that is maybe less obvious. Do you know what I mean? Because... Based on my understanding of the word detached, detachment, the concept of being detached in love, to me, out the gate, sounded like a bad idea. Sounded toxic, okay? Just based on my vague knowledge of what that word means.
So I put a pin in it, continued my research, found a bunch of modern toxic dating advice, and then I eventually went back to detachment. I was like, last but not least, what is this all about? And I clicked the first video I found about detachment and love. And I was shocked at what I heard. I was like, wait a minute. This is not toxic at all. That's it. It's just not toxic at all.
And so I was like, oh, okay. I guess I'm not adding that to my list of toxic dating advice.
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Chapter 2: Why did the host initially doubt the concept of detachment?
And then I let it go. Okay. And then my algorithm decided to almost exclusively feed me videos about detachment and love for the following week. And eventually I fell into it. And I kind of went down the detachment rabbit hole, specifically within the context of love. But I would say on a personal level, it extended beyond that for me. Like, yes, a lot of the content around it was about love.
dating, romance, relationships. But I would say as a consumer of content around this concept, I've sort of looked at it with an even broader lens. But for whatever reason, I've been fed a lot of content about detachment and love. And I'll be honest, the concept of it, the message around it has actually been incredibly helpful for me. And so that's what we're going to be digging into today.
Thank you so much.
Take the instant savings now or bank the savings as rewards for later. It's your call. Only at Hotels.com. Save Your Way is available to loyalty members in the US and UK on hotels with member prices. Other terms apply. See site for details. Now back to the episode. To start, I should explain why I initially doubted this concept so hard, why I judged it so hard.
Well, the technical definition of detachment is the state of being objective or aloof. Aloof meaning not friendly or forthcoming, cool and distant. Now that goes against my love romance dating philosophy. I'm all about wearing your heart on your sleeve, to be honest. I'm all about that. Because even though... That's something that's challenging for me.
I think dating and romance would be so much easier if we all just wore our heart on our sleeve. I mean, Captain Obvious over here, me, but don't you think like if we all just were completely honest, put it all out on the table at any given moment, how helpful would that be?
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Chapter 3: How is detachment defined in the context of relationships?
Immensely helpful. How often in love and romance do we read between the lines, drive ourselves nuts trying to figure out what the other person is thinking? How often do people that we date drive themselves up a wall trying to figure out what we're thinking? What a relief it would be if we all just wore our heart on our sleeve.
I don't like the idea of being aloof in love, especially in a long-term committed relationship. Absolutely not. Being cool and distant sounds like a shitty relationship. Sounds like a terrible vibe. If I'm in a relationship, I want to be cuddled vibes. I want to be complimented vibes.
I want a little bit of simp vibes, not like full-on simp vibes where it's like, ooh, we need to talk about something other than how awesome you think I am. You know, like that, not that that's really ever happened to me. I've never been simped on that hard, which is a good thing. That's fine with me. But in a long-term relationship, in love...
If you will, I don't love the idea of being objective or aloof. Like the whole point is that you're really stoked on someone and you might potentially want to build a life together. That's pretty serious in every capacity. So it seems to me kind of counterintuitive or it seemed to me kind of counterintuitive. based on the definition of detachment as its own sort of thing.
It sounded to me like not caring, being stoic. Being stoic means to endure pain or hardship without complaining, showing emotion, or displaying weakness. Like, again, all of this to me feels completely counterintuitive in love. Love should be, in my opinion, in my experience, what I crave in it is... Or not even love. I need to be careful with the word love because...
Like I should stick to the words romance and dating, but I'm throwing love in there because it just kind of comes out. But love is tricky because like loving somebody means to care about their well-being and their happiness more. in a very particular way. I don't know, like love is kind of complicated.
And I think a lot of times we date people and we think that we love them, but we actually don't.
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Chapter 4: What are the emotional benefits of practicing detachment?
So it's a very tricky thing. Like you can be dating somebody and not love them, and yet you're still dating. Okay, now my brain is starting to melt out of my ears. We need to reel it in, reel it in. Getting back on track, what I was saying was the whole point of dating and romance is that it's vulnerable. It's romantic, hence the word romance. It's deeply powerful.
You feel it in a really deep, profound way. it's exciting it's kind of drug-like like all of this is what makes it so awesome you know and so to me the idea of approaching all this stuff that's normally so emotive if you will so profound so powerful whatever to like approach it with a stoicism or detachment seems kind of unfortunate to me, you know? Like, to just not care.
It's like, but the whole point is that you care. The whole point, the reason why you're pursuing this person is because you care about them in a different, perhaps deeper way than you normally feel about most people. So it didn't make sense to me. But then, upon clicking on the YouTube video about detachment and love, I was like, oh, it's a little different.
Listen, I'm not going to take a place of authority here because we all know Emma doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about. I'm just... I'm a student of life just like the rest of y'all, okay? I don't know what's going on. And by the way, you probably don't either. But it does kind of seem to me that...
the technical definition of detachment is like not be, it's not being used properly in these conversations about dating today. Like people who are on the internet talking about being detached in love are, it's taking on a new life. It's a bit more nuanced in a love capacity, in a romance capacity. And that's a bit confusing, you know what I mean?
Because I don't feel like the definition of detachment in romance is the same as the actual definition of detachment. It seems like everybody's using a different sort of definition when it's in that context, which is confusing. So it makes sense that, you know, I kind of doubted this whole thing in the beginning.
But upon watching videos, I was shocked to hear the way people are using this word, okay? According to people on the internet, detachment in romance and in love
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Chapter 5: How can detachment help in reducing anxiety in relationships?
is as follows, okay? It's not about not caring about the person. It's not about being aloof, being coy. It's about being emotionally separated from the other person in a healthy way to help reduce love-induced anxiety and ensure that you maintain your own sense of self, okay? It's not about being detached fully. It seems to me, based on what I've gathered, that it's more about
Detaching yourself just enough that you can still maintain your own, like, you are still the center of your universe, you know? You are still your number one priority. It's kind of like taking care of yourself before taking care of others. It's like the airplane safety manual. You know, they say, like, if the oxygen masks come down, you put your mask on before you put anyone else's on.
In order to take care of others, you have to take care of yourself in a way. And maybe I'm reading this wrong and maybe this is just my own interpretation. And by the way, if that's the case, I'm not claiming to be sort of a source of information.
wisdom here I'm more just talking about what I've discovered and how it's impacted me in a way like that's what I'm here to do today I'm not here to necessarily educate you more just share like what I've gathered from all this and how it's benefited me and then you can do whatever the fuck you want with it but it seems to me that the concept is like about detaching yourself enough from a particular person that you love that you can take care of yourself before you take care of them
So that you're not being completely consumed by their life, their pain, their challenges, what they're thinking, what they're doing. You can maintain, honestly, a balanced nervous system at the end of the day that's rooted in you rather than anyone else. But it's not about not caring. It's basically a healthy boundary, really.
But I think there's something powerful about the word detach because at least for me, this is all stuff that I vaguely knew I believed in, right? Like I didn't necessarily learn anything completely new going down this detachment rabbit hole, but rather it like really painted a beautiful picture in my head that's been really helpful ever since.
And yeah, the word detach to me was really helpful in painting that picture in my head in a way that I've never seen it before, where it's like, you're not detaching all the way, right? Like you don't need to detach all the way because I think to detach all the way is to not care about somebody anymore, to like train yourself to not care about somebody anymore, right? In this context.
But it seems that the concept of detachment is about maintaining a sense of independence in relationships in order to have a healthier relationship. Because dependence breeds negative emotions on both sides, right? The person who's perhaps more dependent is like constantly stressed about this other person because that other person is like their source of everything in life.
You know, source of joy, source of fulfillment, source of comfort, right? The list goes on. If your source of those things is in somebody else, oof, you know, that is not a reliable source.
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Chapter 6: What metaphor does the host use to explain detachment?
Ideally, all those things come from as much as possible from within, right? In theory. And then for the other person, the other person who is being depended on perhaps more. They can feel suffocated. Like, oof. You know, I feel like I'm carrying this person around in a backpack in a way. Like, it's just this weight. Because this person is relying on me emotionally in such a significant way.
Like, I feel responsible in a way that is kind of dreadful and heavy.
Yeah.
It's about detaching enough to be independent still in a relationship or, you know, whatever. I guess, yes, in a relationship, any type though. I think this applies to any type. I think of it sort of like, again, the word detach really became a very strong, like it just painted such a good picture in my head.
Like when I was thinking about the concept of independence in relationships, again, this is something I already knew was valuable, but seeing it in my head solidified it in a brand new way. Like I was imagining it like, you know, like you and people that you love are connected by threads. Okay. This is probably a metaphor, an image that you have probably thought about in your head before too.
Like I don't, again, I don't think I'm like painting a brand new picture here. Okay. I'm not Edvard Munch painting the scream. Okay. This is not, I'm not, and I'm not claiming to do so. I'm not painting a new painting, right? It's like I'm fucking copying Van Gogh's self-portrait right now. And I know that, but I'm admitting to it. I'm giving idea creds.
I think of it as like you and people that you love are connected by threads, like sewn together, right? And to me, the idea of maintaining a level of detachment is to like, you kind of cut the threads and then you re-sew them more spread out so that you're further away from that person.
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Chapter 7: How does detachment apply to work-life balance?
You're still connected. You still have the threads connecting you, but instead of being so tightly sewn together that you can barely move, you can cut those threads and you can sew them a bit looser so that everybody can move freely, but that love is still there and there is still that connection.
And I think that visual to me, the comparison between being so tightly bound and sewn to somebody that you can barely move versus... being able to move completely freely and wonderfully, almost as if the threads aren't there, but the threads are there. You know what I mean? Like that visual to me was so valuable. And that came from this detachment rabbit hole.
I think another interesting thing that I discovered going down this rabbit hole is that it's about relinquishing control of others, letting them make mistakes, letting go of anxiety about what they're doing, relieving ourselves from the responsibility of others. accepting the fact that others' behaviors to an extent are out of our control.
And that is like one of the key pieces of advice that you receive if you're somebody with anxiety, you know, let go of things that you can't control. And this is going hand in hand with that, right? But I do think that at times we can forget how out of our control other people's actions are, you know? Like we can't control if somebody that we're dating cheats on us.
We can't control if they have fun without us. We can't control... If their feelings about us change, we can't control any of that. I think that we think that we can through our actions. Like we think like if we're the perfectest, most perfect person in a relationship that that would never happen. But is that true?
It's like, no, I actually sort of am starting to believe that there's no such thing as being like so perfect that somebody could never leave you. Like even that doesn't work. I think it's sort of a relief to believe that people are going to figure out who you are, whether you like it or not, and they're either going to like it or they're not. And that's it.
Like, you can put on a show all you want, but I don't think it works. I think eventually people will see through it. Eventually. You cannot keep up the charade for that long. And eventually they will see through it. And so, to me, that's kind of a relief, right?
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Chapter 8: What final thoughts does the host share about detachment?
And again, maybe that's not true. Maybe you can put on a charade your whole fucking life and, I mean... Sounds miserable, but, you know, you could do it. But it's sort of a relief to think that eventually you will be found out for who you are, regardless of what kind of charade you're trying to put on. And I don't think it changes the outcome of a relationship.
Like, I think a relationship is either going to work or it's not. And a charade that you're putting on is not going to change that. Because I think, again, this goes back, I promise that this goes back to what I was talking about. A part of detachment is relinquishing control of others, what they're doing, what they're thinking, what they're feeling. That's out of our control. We must let it go.
We must detach enough to let that go. And I think what's great about that is that that allows you to be yourself in a relationship. And that is so much better because, again, you're going to get found out anyway. So it's like just do it out the gate and save yourself the exhaustion in a way.
But also too, like, yeah, if you're like concerned about what somebody you're romantically interested in is doing, if you're concerned about it, like you feel like they go out without you too much, you feel like they have more fun without you, this and that, like that might still bother you even if you're detached. And that's then a sign that maybe you're not compatible.
You know, maybe it's not working. Like you could still discover that. I think it's... Just that if you're somebody who's particularly attached, you're going to get upset like every time they're not hanging out with you. Anytime they're having fun without you, that's going to freak you out, you know? And you're going to overthink it and you're going to spiral about it. And that's not necessary.
It's a waste of energy. If you're detached and then you're still concerned about what they're doing and stuff and you don't trust them, that's an issue. That's a valid issue. But I think we can oftentimes spiral about those things.
And then the final discovery going down the detachment rabbit hole, the last sort of detachment pillar, if you will, would be the concept of detaching from the outcome of the situation, okay? This was perhaps the most profound for me on a personal level, even though this is something... I already had somewhat of a grasp on.
I feel like, again, this really solidified something in my head in a way that I am so grateful for. Like it's been so helpful to have this be as solidified as it is in my brain now. Like it feels rock solid in a way where maybe before it was like the leaning tower of Pisa. Well, now it's like more not leaning. Like what's a building that's not leaning? Like the Louvre. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.
The Leaning Tarapiza, it looks great. It's been there a long time, but it is leaning. The Louvre, on the other hand, that thing is like symmetrical and perfect and like rock solid, you know? Although, did it get robbed? Because maybe that kind of fucks up my... Oh, yeah, it did. Forgot about that. And then I just remembered they stole jewels.
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