I feel like I want more connection with people than I should in some ways and in other ways I want nothing. Sometimes when I meet someone, I want to be immediate best friends and I tend to attach really quickly and then usually find myself disillusioned. In reality, I have a high standard for friendship and very few people meet it.
What should I do?
I think it’s important to take a step back and see what’s really going on here. You say you overattach to everyone you meet. Which must mean that, in a way, you’re seeing the best in people. That can be a very good thing. It sounds like you imagine that everybody you meet is amazing and wonderful and you see them all as people you want to be friends with. Maybe you imagine that everybody also wants to be friends with you.
In and of itself, that is not a bad thing. A good dose of hopefulness and optimism is always good.
So what is the problem? Well, the problem is the undiscerning attaching. This will lead you to attach to the wrong people.
I’m guessing that what you’re calling attachment is actually you trying to fill some kind of gap in your life or your self. While seeing everyone as wonderful and amazing isn’t necessarily a problem, the question is why you’re wanting to pull them closer. Being as honest as you can possibly be with yourself, consider why you’re pulling them closer or trying to attach quickly. Does it have anything to do with proving that you’re alright? Or you trying to meet a deep need of yours? I suspect that it does.
If you find that you’re trying to fill some sort of gap in yourself, the fallacy is that you need other people to do this.
I hate to burst your bubble, but other people are not gap-fillers. Why? Because other people have their own gaps that they are also, whether they know it or not, trying to fill. And these people might even seem to fill the gap in you for a bit, but then their own gaps appear (that they – surprise, surprise – were trying to get filled by you) and you’re left with sometimes an even bigger gap.
Thus, the disillusionment.
So, take a moment and try to get in touch with this gap, this void, in yourself. Maybe you’ve been trying to blindly fill this gap without really knowing what it even is or even that it exists. So spend some time trying to identify it, understand it, feel it. What is that gap?
We all have gaps that we are trying to fill – that part is not bad or shameful. Resist the urge to tell yourself the story that it makes you defective. It doesn’t. Some people hide their gaps better than others, but we all have them. And there will always be more. In fact, I hate to say it, but the minute you fill in one gap, another will likely open up, somewhat like Whack-a-Mole. The key is to figure out what gap you are currently dealing with. What is your particular shade of gap at the moment?
Another way to think about it is to ask yourself the question: what do you hope this person that you’ve just met will bring to your life? For instance, if you see them as exciting, maybe excitement is missing. If you see them as stable, maybe you’re missing inner stability. If you want to know that you’re likable, then perhaps you need to start liking yourself.
Other people are unreliable gap-fillers.
I know it sounds surprising and possibly even annoying and trite, but your gaps are fillable with something that already lives inside of you.
You already have what it takes to fill the gap. It’s more about rearranging.
Because I strongly resisted accepting this for many years, I get it if you just want to push that idea aside. After all, that might sound not only unrealistic, but boring too.
But imagine that you are one big jigsaw puzzle. (Yes, that would likely be way more than 1000 pieces!) But no matter how many pieces, when you were born, you came as a complete set. Let’s also imagine that you are unable to lose your pieces. They are always there, but they are jumbled up, waiting to be assembled over the course of your life.
Now imagine that this is true for each and every one of us.
If you recognize that your puzzle isn’t fully assembled, but you don’t realize that you have all the pieces already inside you, you might start looking to other people to help you complete what you sense is incomplete inside yourself. You might think you need others to give you some of their pieces.
But have you ever tried substituting even one piece in a jigsaw puzzle with a piece from another puzzle?
It doesn’t work.
The pieces might appear to fit at first – they might even look like they do fit for a while. (Read: you believe you’ve found your soul mate, your best friend!) But over time you find that now the rest of your pieces just don’t seem to fit quite right. You can’t make everything work together anymore.
Or maybe you’ve tried to give away some of your pieces to somebody else who was trying desperately to complete their own puzzles. So now you might be even (temporarily) missing some pieces. But you can get those back – remember that, in the end, we are always in control of all of our puzzle pieces.
If you instead believe that you were born already in possession of all the pieces to your puzzle, and trust that this is true, then you’ll stop looking to others to give you their pieces.
You’ll know that you can complete your own puzzle.
Recognizing this will free you up to simply enjoy other people for who they are, knowing that they are also whole and complete on their own, knowing that you don’t need them in order to become a whole person.
So the next time you feel that pull to connect with somebody quickly and completely, step back and try to see whether you are truly enjoying the other person for who they are (as a complete and whole puzzle) or instead trying to find something in them to complete yourself.
You don’t need them to complete your puzzle. And they don’t need you to complete theirs.
Maybe you’re assuming that everybody else is whole and complete so they can help you feel that way also. But the truth is that if someone eagerly jumps in to offer you pieces of their puzzle to complete yours, they haven’t figured out that they are whole and complete yet either. So this quick connection cycle is set up to crumble.
When two people come together to connect, as two separate and whole and complete people, they can enjoy each other’s company without the sense of desperation or need.
So, in a nutshell, you are able to be whole and complete on your own. If you want to complete more of your puzzle, look inside yourself for that.
Connect with people knowing your life doesn’t depend on it.
Connect with people knowing that you each have the responsibility and ability to complete your own puzzles.
You were born complete, just a little (or a lot) disorganized.
All the pieces are there.
Once you realize this, you will realize that you don’t need others. Only then will you be free to truly enjoy them.
