How To Not Get Emotionally Attached To A Guy Too Soon

Love can make you a little bit crazy – or feeling like you’re in love, that is. The promise of a new romance makes you feel like you’re on cloud nine, wrapped up in a haze of excitement and possibility and infatuation. You don’t listen to your friend’s concerns that things are moving quickly, because it all just feels so right.

And then, it fizzles out, some way or another. Maybe he just gets bored and starts taking hours to reply to you, or he says he needs some space, or he flat out ghosts you. However it happens, you’re left absolutely heartbroken. You followed your heart because you were so sure it was the right thing to do, and you ended up getting burned. Your level of emotional attachment didn’t match the relationship’s level of commitment.

Emotional Attachment and Risk

Emotional attachment is a term that refers to the closeness, intimacy, affection, and depth of connection found in a relationship. “When we are close to other people, a natural and important emotional response arises in us,” according to Adi Avivi, PsyD, who works as a psychologist at Columbia University Medical Center.

But sadly, even though emotional attachment is totally natural, it’s all too common to experience heartbreak when listening to your heart and allowing yourself to become emotionally attached to a new guy who didn’t turn out to be the one. So if romantic emotional attachment has only ever brought you pain, why bother with it at all?

The challenging thing about falling in love is that it does require some amount of listening to your heart – that is, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, open, and trusting. Without these things, a deep, lasting, healthy relationship can’t be cultivated. Romance simply requires that we let our walls down; remaining closed-off and guarded will be the death of it.

So becoming emotionally attached to someone, as risky as it may feel, isn’t something you should avoid at all costs. Instead, it’s something that will come with time – and it’s in your best interest to learn to control it in order to protect yourself from unnecessary heartbreak. Here are our seven best tips for not getting emotionally attached too quickly, without totally closing yourself off to love.

Believe His Actions, Not Your Desires

Every single person alive has an endless stream of desires, especially when it comes to romance. Some of them are temporary, like wanting to find a date for a wedding next month, and others are more overarching, like yearning for someone to build and share a life with.

And because, more often than not, our larger romantic desires run deeply, we’re prone to pay more attention to our desires than the person in front of us. We tell ourselves that he’s the man we’ve been waiting for because that’s what we really want to be true – but we don’t look to his actions to tell us whether or not that’s true, leading us to emotionally invest in a relationship that, had we paid attention, we would’ve known wasn’t going to last.

Choose to believe his actions rather than your desires. How does he treat you? Does he show you care and affection? Has he given you any reason to believe he’s the guy for you? Has he said he’s looking for a long-term relationship?

Let Things Progress Slowly

At the beginning of a new relationship, we’re absolutely crazy about him. We want to catch up on all the years we spent without him, set the relationship’s timer at 2x speed, and fast forward to the part where we’re totally, completely, and blissfully in love. But it’s this line of thinking that creates an unhealthy emotional attachment to someone who hasn’t been in our life for all that long.

Rather than attempting to rush things along, allow things to progress slowly, approaching the relationship with a healthy optimism. Enjoy the newness of the relationship instead of trying to skip a few chapters ahead. Have fun with this ultimately fleeting season of the relationship – one day, you’ll miss the butterflies you’d get during the “will we, won’t we” dance.

See Your Emotional Attachment As Something To Be Earned

When we haven’t received much male attention in the past, it’s easy to feel like any attention we get from a guy is something we should be thankful for, something we have to perform for to keep on receiving it. We don’t see ourselves as desirable, worthy, or special, so we offer up our emotional investment for his attention.

But your love shouldn’t be given away for nothing – you’re worth far more than that. Your emotional attachment, investment, affection, and vulnerability should be earned, offered to a man who has shown himself to be good, trustworthy, committed to you only, and husband material.

When in Doubt, Don’t Add Meaning

We’ve all received a text from a guy that we immediately screenshotted and sent to our best friend, saying, “What do you think he means by this?” Guys can be a bit on the cryptic side sometimes (at least by our standards), and it’s really tempting to read into the few words he uses. Maybe him saying that he had a great time means he can’t wait to do it again? Does that emoji mean he’s totally smitten? He did reply within two minutes…surely that means he’s head over heels, right? He used an exclamation point and everything.

This is especially tough, but when there’s even a shadow of a doubt as to what he’s really trying to say or what his intentions are, it’s best not to add meaning. Making assumptions about what his texts really mean will only lead you to project what you want to be true about a situation rather than paying attention to the evidence you have in front of you – and in turn, get emotionally attached to the version of the relationship you’ve created in your head instead of the one that actually exists.

Approach the Relationship with Open Hands and Managed Expectations

There are few things as painful as trying to force a relationship that’s obviously not right to work. When we’ve allowed ourselves to become deeply emotionally invested in a relationship, it’s not uncommon to grit our teeth and white-knuckle it. We’d rather continue to “manifest” the relationship’s success than admit that it’s not going well.

But we’ve all seen (or maybe even experienced firsthand) the kind of heartbreak that attitude can lead to. Save yourself from that and approach new relationships with a “maybe” attitude, with open hands and managed expectations – maybe it will work out, and maybe it won’t. 

This kind of approach is incredibly freeing because it enables you to let things that aren’t within your control roll off your back. If the relationship doesn’t progress, you don’t take it on as a personal failure or fall apart; you just move on without emotional scars.

Ask a Friend for Reality Checks

You know that friend who expressed concern about how quickly the relationship was moving? The one that you assured she was wrong and secretly assumed she was just jealous? Well, she might have had a point.

As much as we don’t want to admit it, when we’re in the midst of the early days of a new romance, we’re not as likely to see things objectively. This doesn’t mean we can’t ever trust our instincts, but if we’re lucky enough to have a good friend who loves us and wants our best, it’s wise to take her concerns seriously.

If you’re worried about getting too emotionally invested, tell a trusted friend and ask her to give you a reality check or two. She might be able to pick up on red flags that you don’t see, or offer you advice based on her own experiences.

Invest in Your Life outside Him

Falling in love can make us wonder what we were even doing with our life before this man came along because he’s become our everything. He’s our only friend, the only person we care to see or talk to, the only source of happiness in our life. Without him, we feel like we’d have nothing.

But it’s this kind of dynamic that creates codependency and leads to a deeply unhealthy relationship. To avoid this, begin to see your life as something that can be full with or without him. Cultivate deep friendships, find a career that feels meaningful to you, and have fun with hobbies. Invest in creating a full life for yourself that the right guy can fit into instead of making him your entire life.

Closing Thoughts

Emotional attachment is absolutely necessary for a relationship to thrive, but it’s important that we don’t give our emotional investment to the first guy that comes along. 

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