Wanting Meaning

With men, it feels like the casting is always the same: too detached to care or too devoted to breathe around. The first kind loves the upper hand; the second wants a joint calendar and a baby name by week two. One leaves you guessing, the other leaves you gasping. Where is the man who simply arrives and stays without trying to either haunt you or house-train you?

Avoidant attachment is its own love language. We want to be understood from across the room, without eye contact. We want someone to care, but casually attentive enough to stay, but not so loving that we feel endangered. It’s not romance we fear, it’s being absorbed.

Some people say wanting something meaningful makes you needy. I think wanting nothing at all makes you numb. Maybe the problem isn’t that we want depth. Maybe it’s that we’ve only seen it delivered in extremes.