Is it possible to have a romantic relationship without attachment? Is it possible to have a romantic relationship without attachment? Just based on pure love and with equanimity?
Is it possible to have a romantic relationship without attachment? Just based on pure love and with equanimity?


I won't say that all relationships must end; but if a relationship doesn't end, one of the partners will die.

When we knew that my partner was dying, I think then we both/each experienced more love and less attachment than we had previously.


Perhaps that is inevitable, the only sane response to dying.
Or perhaps we were fortunate, we allowed each other that experience towards the end.
Perhaps we were unfortunate, we didn't allow each other that experience when we were younger (and instead had less love and more attachment during our earlier life together)


Sankha might be right: we might have been better to have been friends than to have "loved" each other.

I'm not sure about Rabbit's answer; that answer says, "our natural state is non-discriminative love", but a typical, old-fashioned "romantic" relationship is perhaps discriminative and exclusive: it says, "I will love you and no-one else" (or, "I love you in a way that I don't love anyone else").

A famous saying about love is, "love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own." I suspect that love can cause attachment, which makes happiness more difficult, and makes your happiness less under your own control. You give your partner control over whether you feel happy: you allow them them to hurt you (and they feel hurt by you).

Whether it's "possible" to have a "romantic relationship, without attachment, just based on pure love and with equanimity" presumably varies from person to person. Maybe it becomes easier as you get older and if you become wiser.

Now after my friend died I still remember her. Perhaps I remember her without "attachment", i.e. without hurting myself by wishing that things are other than as they are. When I (still) dream about her, which I did last night, I feel less conflict between the dream (of her being present) and reality (her having died).

I suppose the above doesn't seem like a strong recommendation.

I suppose that on the plus side, if you are able to eventually (and it might take years or decades, if you're ever able to at all) overcome your many faults, it gives you an opportunity to help two people (you and your partner) to experience that love.

It might matter, whether you and your partner have the same "values": whether you value the same thing. For example, do you both value "relationship without attachment" and "love with equanimity"? Buddhism? If so perhaps that's a friendship, a community. If not, an unequal or one-sided relationship.