False Agency, Real Agency

False Agency, Real Agency

Learning from What Almost Worked

One of the most confusing parts of leaving an unhealthy attachment is this:

It didn’t feel fake.
It didn’t feel imagined.
It felt real.

That matters.

If we dismiss the experience as delusion, we lose the most important information it contains.

The state was real — the source was not sustainable

In my own experience, a relationship produced something I had been missing:
a sense of calm confidence, motivation, and agency.

At the same time, it involved self-erasure and dependence.

That paradox is the clue.

The state itself was real — chemically, emotionally, somatically.
But it was externally scaffolded.

I did not possess it.
I was borrowing it.

Why externally scaffolded agency never lasts

When agency is supplied by another person:

  • it is fragile,
  • it is conditional,
  • it requires constant maintenance.

The nervous system learns:

“This state only exists if this relationship holds.”

That creates:

  • hyper-vigilance,
  • fear of rupture,
  • walking on eggshells.

Not because love is fragile —
but because freedom is absent.

Why loss feels annihilating

When such a relationship ends, the pain is not only grief.

What collapses is:

  • access to calm,
  • access to motivation,
  • access to agency itself.

That is why separation can feel existential rather than emotional.

It is not just losing a person.
It is losing a nervous-system function that was never internalised.

The mistake to avoid

The lesson is not:

“That was fake.”

And it is not:

“I need that person back.”

The lesson is:

“That experience revealed a real capacity — but it was sourced wrongly.”

That distinction changes everything.

Using the experience as a benchmark, not a blueprint

I now treat that state as informational.

It tells me:

  • what agency feels like,
  • what calm confidence feels like,
  • what action without fear feels like.

But not how to obtain it.

The work now is to rebuild that capacity internally, through:

  • limbic retraining,
  • action without dependence,
  • responsibility without collapse.

Real agency feels quieter

False agency is intense.
It feels urgent.
It needs validation.

Real agency is steadier.
It persists without applause.
It survives disagreement and loss.

It does not require another person to exist.

Love after bypass

When limbic functions are internalised:

  • closeness no longer replaces agency,
  • attachment no longer substitutes for safety,
  • relationships stop carrying salvific weight.

Love becomes a choice, not a solution.

That is not less profound.
It is finally free.

The line I hold onto

When I’m tempted to romanticise what was, I return to this:

The state was real.
The scaffolding was not.
The task now is to build what I once borrowed.

That is not rejection of the past.

It is learning from it.

​

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