the detachment rabbit hole

0:00Emma Chamberlain: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.

0:41Emma Chamberlain: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 like obviously going to be toxic. You know, like, 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.

1:22Emma Chamberlain: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. 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.

2:09Emma Chamberlain: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 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.

2:54Emma Chamberlain:I briefly interrupt this episode to let you know that this episode of Anything Goes is presented by Hotels.com. Save Your Way is a new feature on Hotels.com and it's as simple as it sounds. When you book a trip as a Hotels.com member, you decide how to use your savings. 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.

3:33Emma Chamberlain: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?

4:13Emma Chamberlain:Immensely helpful. How often in love and romance do we read between the lines, drive ourself 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.

4:50Emma Chamberlain: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 the art, 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.

5:36Emma Chamberlain: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 in a very particular way.

6:19Emma Chamberlain: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. 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 of this stuff that's normally so emotive if you will so profound, so powerful, whatever.

7:12Emma Chamberlain: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. I briefly interrupt this episode to let you know that this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Insurance may all seem the same on the surface, but having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm.

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8:42Emma Chamberlain:It'll make you laugh, cry, and then remind you why hope still exists. Reminders of Him rated PG-13 only in theaters March 13th. 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, it's taking on a new life.

9:26Emma Chamberlain: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, 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 is as follows, okay?

10:05Emma Chamberlain: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.

10:58Emma Chamberlain: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 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.

11:35Emma Chamberlain: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. you 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.

12:19Emma Chamberlain: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 ways 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, the list goes on.

13:07Emma Chamberlain:If your source of those things is in somebody else, oof, you know, that is not a reliable source. 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. It's about detaching enough to be independent still in a relationship or, you know, whatever.

13:53Emma Chamberlain: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.

14:26Emma Chamberlain: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, 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.

15:02Emma Chamberlain: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.

15:35Emma Chamberlain: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, like 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.

16:19Emma Chamberlain: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.

16:54Emma Chamberlain:And they're either going to like it or they're not. And that's it. Like you can, 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? 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.

17:26Emma Chamberlain: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 gonna 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.

18:03Emma Chamberlain: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, 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 gonna get upset like every time they're not hanging out with you.

18:40Emma Chamberlain:Anytime they're having fun without you, that's gonna freak you out, you know? And you're gonna overthink it and you're gonna 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 like, that's an issue. That's a valid issue. But I think we can oftentimes spiral about those things. This episode is brought to you by Viore. It's the new year. We're all feeling motivated. We wanna do it all. We wanna work out. We wanna hang out. We wanna chill out. We wanna lock in. We're feeling inspired.

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20:49Emma Chamberlain: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 Tower of Pisa, it looks great. It's been there a long time, but it is leaning.

21:29Emma Chamberlain: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. Okay. Maybe the Louvre wasn't the right idea because it clearly it's not as structurally sound as I'm trying to like, I need something in this metaphor that's like really structurally sound. But I mean, the Louvre is still structurally sound, even though it did get robbed, but that was more of like, not about the structure. Let's stick to architecture here.

22:02Emma Chamberlain:Architecturally, the Louvre is very solid, I would say, probably. Anywho, I've had an understanding of the importance of not expecting an exact outcome. I've even talked about that on this podcast. Like, I have had an understanding of that for a long time. You know, the importance of keeping your goals sort of broad enough that life can sort of unfold as it may, and you're not locked into one sort of outcome, right? Like things can unfold naturally and you can be a bit more intuitive in your life if you don't have this exact specific idea about what your life is going to be. I've had that going on in the brain, leaning tower of Pisa style.

22:42Emma Chamberlain:But going down the detachment rabbit hole and kind of grasping this concept of like detaching from the outcome. I don't know. It's like it doesn't sound that different from what I already held as a belief, you know, but it's there's something about the word detached that ended up being really powerful for me. And I feel like I've truly grasped it in a way that I maybe didn't before. Or like, no, I wouldn't say that actually. I would say it just feels clearer in my brain than ever. It feels sharp and refined in a way that has really been helpful for me in my life recently. It's about releasing expectations about the future so that one can enjoy the moment and analyze one's actions rationally as they occur and make smart decisions about the next move in the relationship.

23:32Emma Chamberlain:You know what I mean? If you're all like, you know, if you've decided that this is the person you're going to marry on like the fifth date or even a year in and you've decided that perhaps too soon, depending on your life and circumstances, doesn't leave any room to potentially be wrong. And sometimes you're wrong about those things, especially in dating, where like at first you're like, oh my God, this is the love of my life. And then you get to know each other a little better. And you're like, you know what? We're actually not that compatible. And see, I've been the type in the past to like make up my mind really quickly.

24:05Emma Chamberlain:Like, oh, I'm going to marry this person. Yep. This is the person I'm going to marry. And then it doesn't work out. We're not actually that compatible. We should not get married. We are not good for each other. And I will stay in relationships longer than I should because I kind of made that decision, right? And I think that those experiences that I've had in the past have forced me to work on releasing expectations because I think the fall is much harder when you're wrong than if you just didn't know, if you just accept that you didn't know what was going to happen and you left it open-ended.

24:39Emma Chamberlain:But see, I'm not somebody who likes to leave things open-ended. I love having a plan, but I think in certain things in life, having a super buttoned up plan, it can backfire, you know? And I think the concept of detachment in romance is like, detach yourself from the outcome. I would argue almost completely. Now, this is perhaps up for debate. Again, I'm not an authority on this topic, but the way that I internalized it was detaching from the outcome completely, especially in dating. Listen, you want to have goals right in your life. You want to have dreams, etc. But I think on a micro scale, like say when you're dating somebody and, you know, I will say obviously this rabbit hole that I went down was mainly about dating and love and relationships.

25:28Emma Chamberlain:So that was why I internalized it in this way. Like in dating, I think it's not a bad idea to detach from the outcome completely until, you know, there's a conversation had between you and your partner that's super serious about what the future is. But I think a lot of times we jump to conclusions really early on. And I think detaching from the outcome can be incredibly helpful in dating. It's like, okay, third date, this is going really well, but I don't know what's going to happen. And that's okay. I'm going to let it happen to me and let the answers become clear to me. I'm not going to jump to conclusions about the answers.

26:07Emma Chamberlain:That's not to say that you won't know that somebody's like your soulmate on your first date. It's definitely probably possible. Definitely probably possible. But I think the detachment from the outcome not only relieves a lot of anxiety because then you're not like trying to make sure it's perfect. Everything's unfolding perfectly. But also too, you approach judging this person more rationally. This episode is brought to you by eBay. We all have that one piece. You know the one, the thing that's so you, you've basically become known for it. And if you don't have yours yet, you'll find it on eBay.

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