How To Tell When It’s Real Love Or An Activated Attachment System

All you can think about is the person you’ve been seeing for the last few weeks. You’ve gone on a few dates and their mysterious vibe keeps you on your toes.

You never know what they’ll say or do next and the excitement of it all fuels your attraction to them.

You want to be around them all the time, long to feel their arms around you again, and get butterflies in your stomach when you see a text from them pop up on your screen.

That’s what real love feels like, right?

Hollywood would tell you yes.

I would tell you, no. That’s what an activated attachment system feels like.

It’s not real love.

If you’re wondering what an activated attachment system is, let me break it down for you.

We as humans bond and connect in relationships through emotion. We call that attachment.

We connect through both positive and challenging emotions and our earliest bonding experiences with our caregivers can affect how we experience relationships.

Our early experiences shape us and dictate how we behave in our adult relationships. We call that our attachment system.

When our attachment system is “activated,” it means our system is sensing a threat, or a lack of safety and connection.

We can feel butterflies in our stomach, an anxiety that makes us think about this person constantly, long for them, and feel a rush of nerves when we hear their voice.

It can seem like that’s what love is supposed to feel like, but it’s actually our attachment system on high alert, letting us know this isn’t a safe person for us to attach to.

If all we want to do is think about our relationship, to the point where it’s distracting us from the rest of our lives, we can be sure our attachment system is activated.

Don’t ignore those warning signs- an activated attachment system means there’s not a secure base in the relationship, and that’s not the kind of partner who can make you truly happy.

Real love doesn’t take up so much of your psychic space. There’s room to thrive and grow in other areas of your life besides the relationship.

So how can you tell when it’s real love?

You can focus on leveling up all aspects of your life because you’re not preoccupied with the
relationship.

You know they’re not going anywhere- the opposite of feeling anxious (those butterflies) because you don’t know where you stand.

You both respect each other's quirks and differences and there’s a feeling like you just get each other.