as NYS put it, as simply NOT coupling your emotions/reactions/actions to someone else's. Nothing more, nothing less.
I don't recall putting it quite that way, T.
I have felt detached and at the same time, more loving towards my wife than ever... if we can be lovingly detached, we can be there for our W's in a way we probably never were before. We can tend to their emotional needs (or someone we meet later in life) because we are not pulled down by them.
Yes! It puts you in a place of your own, a center, from which you can be a rock, from which you can draw your own happiness. The freedom that it enables you to experience is tremendous, and the effect of that freedom in how you now relate to another person, in effect, giving them that freedom to be themselves, is frickin' phenomenal. Truly, less is more. Wonderful things happen when you let the bird fly that otherwise would not have when your hands are so tightly gripped around it.
