“For example, with my sister, I respond much more quickly, and my partner, I know he takes longer to respond and I will take longer to respond, and that’s fine, because there are different expectations. And he works really hard all day. He’s on Zoom calls.
“Once you have a sense of what people need, then you find a way to satisfy that baseline, and they’ll leave you alone. It’s going to really save you all those long conversations. They’re just not going to happen. That’s the beauty of secure attachment: No heartfelt conversation about ‘what’s the state of the relationship.’ It just happens on its own.”
Connect your social life with your overall health
“Simone Weil says that ‘attention is the rarest, purest form of generosity,’ and that speaks to me so much.I think it’s really important for people to understand that. If you think about it as a form of generosity, that you’re actually being generous with the world by just even giving a tiny little response, the available part of you is making an internal decision that you’ll be there for the people in your life, that you have this responsibility for their well-being, and it goes back-and-forth. You’re also taking care of your wellbeing, too.
“Then it’s not like, ‘Oh, I have to reply to them. Oh, I have to keep up. Oh, I don’t have time for this.’ It [becomes] a wellness opportunity: To write [back] for longevity, for all those things, both for yourself and others. That really helped me. I’m taking time because I’m taking care of myself and the people around me.”
Match the effort you get from friends
“I have one friend… whenever I try to reach out, I get rebuffed. To tell the truth, he have two very challenging kids, and it’s hard for him. I think that’s why I came up with this whole idea of “wall tennis with love.” The idea is that you’re the wall. And whenever [someone] dishes to the wall, you’re [giving] back the same amount, but just a little bit less. Initially, I thought it was a way to let relationships sit into the background, but actually now, I’ve discovered that it’s not exactly like that. It’s actually even better than that.
“Sometimes when I call, it’s not always a good time. And then, sometimes he forgets to call back, and then also, he’s a little bit avoidant. I can show you our texts. It’s crazy. He texts me hi. I text hi right back, because it’s all tennis with love.
“Then, a week goes by, and then again, he texts hi, I text hi. Two days go by. Then he calls me out of the blue, and I really try to make an effort to answer right away, because again, it’s all tennis with love. And I talk and I enjoy talking to him. Then I get off the phone, and then I’m not calling him unless I feel that he wants me to call. But, usually, I don’t feel that, because wall tennis with love is not about teaching them a lesson. It’s about keeping the attachment baseline. And actually, the relationship has been so much better. I don’t really get preoccupied with calling, and then get upset. Because that preoccupation is such an energy suck from the brain. When you get upset with these people, it’s the disruption of the attachment homeostasis. It hugely affects us, negatively. I don’t really share as much. It actually strengthened the friendship. And then, when I feel I need to call someone, I call someone that I know is going to answer.”
Source:
www.gq.com
