Alignment over attachment

(By Hella Ahmed) In recent pieces I have explored the modern difficulty of reconciling our deep need for meaningful connection—purposeful dating, for instance—with the overwhelming reach of the digital world, which so often blurs the distinction between what is real and what is constructed, what is genuinely attainable and what is not. I reflected on solitude and on the metamorphosis of human relationships: a change that disorients us, yet at the same time quietly returns us to something more core, more organic. There’s still more I want to say about all this—so I’m going to keep going and share some extra thoughts. 

This digital openness has given rise to a new category of helpers: online coaches who operate as legitimate businesses. Some are qualified therapists or psychologists; others are simply ordinary people who have become influencers and now act as counsellors of sorts (see “The search for love in a digital age”, 21 September 2025). They share their human experience transparently — the wisdom and secrets they were fortunate enough to grasp early, or, more often, the lessons painfully acquired through suffering and healing. Freedom of speech opens the door equally for trained entrepreneurs and self-made ones to speak, share, and be heard.

At the same time, the visibility of less constructive voices has amplified. Certain outspoken masculinists deliver speeches that are openly demeaning—particularly toward young women who don’t idealize becoming stay home moms or housewives and toward older women whom they declare to have “lost their glow”. These men, according to the same rhetoric cloaked in the language of biological destiny and male entitlement, do not need to suffer being involved with women their age now judged unattractive and no longer fertile.

Singlehood is on the rise. We tend to blame dating apps and Instagram: they make it harder to find a good match because almost no one wants to sacrifice their chances of great pleasure and success by settling too soon — or settling at all — since the supply of available people is always open, always just one scroll away. But what about the people who are barely) on social media, who have no interest in forming romantic connections through those modern channels? Why are they staying celibate? What are their challenges?

A growing number of women — many of whom pour themselves into long written diaries or video confessions on social media, especially TikTok — no longer look to romantic relationships for their sense of achievement or fulfillment. They’re chasing their own things instead: looking after themselves (health, beauty), building their own business, traveling, and simply enjoying life to the fullest. Entrepreneurship is now widely seen as the truly liberating path — nobody dreams of being locked in a corporate gulag just to generate profit for some billionaire or multi-millionaire, or of grinding away at cheap labor so the state can waste tax money.

A man can cheat on you, walk away, or simply never show up in your life at all — and then what are you left with if you never learned how to build a life without him or without the expectation of him coming to lift you up? 

Sure, you can meet someone new after a divorce or a separation, but it’s rarely simple once you’ve already created a home, raised children, and ended up having to renegotiate a connection that’s very much transformed. Of course people do it every day, so a real new beginning is possible — and another way of seeing and investing in life is possible too. But what if that second chance never arrives? 

And what if you never met the right person, never had children, and now the men your age whom you may find attractive look at you and decide you’re too old to be a serious love interest? Are you going to spend the rest of your life despising them, carrying resentment toward the entire gender? Or are you going to close the book for good, heart broken, hoping that one day you’ll manage to recover from all the ambitions that never happened? 

There’s an old saying: ‘when you stop searching, what you were looking for finds you.’ It carries a certain poetic appeal. In practice, though, good things in relationships, like in most worthwhile pursuits, tend to arrive only after we’ve created the conditions for them to appear. That’s not even “law of attraction” mysticism — it’s basic logic. If you want to become your own boss, you have to build the business and run it. No company is going to magically manifest, knock on your door and offer you the dream job.

I’m not talking about religious people who believe in sacred religious marriage and strict everlasting exclusivity. But it seems that nowadays mature women have to accept a clear reality: if a relationship doesn’t become a soulful commitment fairly quickly, it’s exactly what it is—an adventure, perhaps a very good one… until he gets distracted by someone else’s attention and starts pulling away or dismissing you

When you know the terms from the start, you don’t get hurt (or not as much because attachment can be sneaky). And why should it be any different for women? It goes both ways, as an independent woman, you can get fed up, lose interest, and simply leave. But the point remains (and global statistics confirm it): men are far more likely to cheat on or leave their spouse/partner for a significantly younger woman.

Nowadays you don’t need to be a celebrity to get plastic surgery and suddenly look 20–30 years younger — plenty of regular women are doing it. Saying it’s “because of men” would be inaccurate. This is the era of rejuvenated youth: science and technology have made it possible, so why not take advantage of it if you want it and can afford it? Alignment means choosing your own path. If someone doesn’t like your new look — whether because of their personal beliefs, their insecurities, or plain jealousy — too bad for them. It’s really nothing worth worrying about or even thinking about for long.

Some women waste their youth being loyal to a man who will eventually start a whole new life with a young, inexperienced woman. At the same time, women are now openly dating younger men too — they just tend to keep the age gap more reasonable. Double standards don’t hold up anymore in an era where you can stay fit, look youthful, and feel vibrant if you choose to invest in yourself. Also, aging gracefully has nothing to do with plastic surgery: nature has its way. To want to embrace it is a perfectly aligned choice.

Am I undermining men or generalizing? Absolutely not. There are charming, intelligent, and respectful men out there — men who are genuinely happy to build a real relationship with a woman close to their own age, even after youth has naturally faded. They exist. It’s not the age gap, in fact — it’s the lack of discernment, selfishness, and deceit.

I myself have been the center of attention for men who were incredibly obsessed with what I create — men who used (and still use) my creativity as a life support system. They revel in the company of much younger women, not because those women’s bodies are dramatically “better” than mine, but because these men crave the flattery and wide-eyed admiration, the feeling of being worshipped by impressed, less experienced females. They can’t hold their own with mature women who operate at a higher intellectual and spiritual level. The kind of admiration I wouldn’t give someone incapable of real collaboration, who fakes competence at my expense, or who pretends to be respectful when his actions prove otherwise.

When it comes to romance, a spark and a truly interesting connection are possible through resonance and signaling — as I explained in a previous piece (see “Going back to the source in the new dawn — How resonance and modern distance shape real connections”), 31/12/2025.

However, investing too much emotion or expectation without organically building that connection face to face, and without spending meaningful quality time together within a reasonable period, can easily lead to deception. This happens when two people’s expectations are not aligned closely enough, or when those expectations arise from a core that is not sufficiently coherent or intertwined — something that can only truly take shape through physical presence, where the senses commune and shared human experiences either give form to a real relationship or reveal it as unrealistic and ultimately uncalled for, in the name of truth and happiness.

A great many people are quietly battling solitude. They feel profoundly unconnected, and for all sorts of reasons.

Sometimes it comes from a separation — one that reshaped your entire life and quietly rewrote your expectations. Sometimes it’s illness — a change that redirected your path and redefined what you now need, and what you now want, from life. Sometimes it’s mental or emotional struggles — the kind that pull you deeper into isolation even more with technology and make real connection feel distant or impossible, or the kind that end up leading you to stop settling for less and start moving toward healing by embracing solitude as a first step to reconcile with yourself. 

But it can also be something else entirely. It can simply be the day everything shifts and you reclaim yourself — when you see clearly that this environment, this role, or this way of living no longer deserves your energy or your gifts. So you choose to leave. You move toward a place where you can finally have the freedom to pursue what matters to you, live more fully, and meet people who recognize and match your values and your energy. 

Hella Ahmed 2026 © All rights reserved – Find my books on Amazon