For all of our flaws, there is one thing that I absolutely loathe about my generation — we’ve internalized the avoidant attachment style. Avoidant attachment is a subconscious emotional process in which individuals avoid intimacy in favor of isolation while simultaneously yearning for the former.
I find this often manifests as a prioritization of the self in relationships that masquerades as care for other people. It is the art of keeping people in your orbit while discreetly minimizing your responsibility to them out of fear of vulnerability.
Frankly, I think it is a disgusting habit many of us have acquired, and it all started with concision.
As we have embraced technology and acquired new ways to communicate, our language has adapted. We’ve become more blunt, brief and concise. It’s made for quick and efficient communication; that much is for certain.
It’s also certainly begun to rewrite vulnerability and accountability in human expression.
Think back to the last time someone told you that they love you — your mom or dad, brother, sister or friend. They told you, “I love you,” and you most likely felt it deeply enough to respond in kind.
Now, I want you to think back to the last time a friend casually dropped “love you” or “miss you” on the way out. It probably didn’t feel quite the same as hearing, “I love you” or “I miss you,” did it?
It may seem trivial — after all, it is certainly more efficient to remove the “I,” certainly quicker, and perhaps it even rolls off the tongue a little more easily. It not only physically takes less energy, but emotionally as well.
To make these “I” statements implies a devotion of self to another person, an accountability and responsibility to that relationship that is innately uncomfortable. These statements literally require you to give yourself away to other people, and in including “I” in them, we give them meaning.
Unfortunately, it has become easy to remove the responsibility from these expressions in today’s world. We want everyone to perceive us as being truly invested in them, but we don’t want to do any of the work in actually investing ourselves in relationships — and so we remove the “I.”
Why tie yourself to someone in that way when you could take a shortcut to having a seemingly shiny and tended-to relationship? This is not to say that all “love yous” and “miss yous” are inherently devoid of meaning, but they are often gateway remarks that lead to underdeveloped communication in relationships.
There is an emptiness that lies within these one-off statements. They’ve come to fall in the same vein of social nicety that “How are you” belongs to; that is, they have lost their meaning beyond being said for personal gratification, that we’ve committed enough to our relationships.
We so casually throw these sayings out on a whim without really desiring serious answers or actually meaning what we say.
It’s so easy to fall into this habit of vapid communication, to speak without thought or genuine care, but it is a nasty habit. With the loss of the “I,” with the loss of intentionality in our language, we are losing the vulnerability of worthwhile human expression — and ultimately each other.
Riley Sanders is a 19-year-old biology major from Denham Springs, La.
