It would have been beneficial here to have opened up the word love as to what this person meant. Did they mean a kind of unconditional love which is what we are trying to go for, or is it a selfish kind of love in, "I want you, you want me, we are going to have fun together." The attachment part of this question relates to understanding that no relationship is permanent. As I mentioned just a moment ago we are going to die, our loved ones are going to die, no matter how strong the love is, there is going to be a separation some day.
As to attachment, letting go of the attachment for a loved one but still be loving, caring, compassionate, that can work if we use more Wisdom. If we reflect that everybody is the owner of their own Kamma, I am the owner of my Kamma, this helps us to understand we can't own somebody we love. A lot of love is a kind of ownership feeling, "That is my wife, that is my friend, that is my child" and so on. That sort of attachment can often cause a lot of grief and despair. Most of you here have the Twenty Suttas. If you don't have them yet send us an email we will send you the 20 Suttas as advertised on the bulletin board in the dining hall. One of those Suttas deals with attachment to loved ones, and as long as we are too attached, we want, we want, we want from the loved ones, then we are going to suffer. But if we can understand more with Wisdom that we will all die, we will all pass away one day, we often get separated even when we don't want to be separated and so on, this understanding allows us to have more equanimity in our relationships and means we won't have so much of a possessive love, but rather it will be a more caring love, knowing that in this moment we are together. In this moment can I be loving and kind to my loved one, understanding that I might not get another moment tomorrow or the next day and so on.
With Unconditional Love, it is not really about separating love from attachment as it won't actually need any big separation because it will already be there, it is a kind of love not so worried about attaching, worrying about me and mine. But if the love is still this kind of attached love, then we need more wisdom to understand, that we can't own the other person.
We have often thought of writing a relationships book based on Buddhist principals, husband and wife, man and woman, whatever type of relationship. One of the chapters we intend to title 5-10-20. This gets very much involved in attachment and wanting the other person to be as I want them to be. The 5-10-20 comes from the Satipattana Sutta when Rosemary talks about the Five Aggregates. Buddhism talks about the fact that we are made up of these 5 processes, we call "me, mine" and so on.
So when a man comes together with a woman, you think 5 aggregates come in and 5 other aggregates come in. Then 5 plus 5 equals 10. But in relationships, it normally doesn't work that way. Most often, the man brings his 5 aggregates, the woman brings her 5 aggregates. Then there are also the 5 aggregates she wishes he was, there are 5 more aggregates he wishes she was. There are 5 more aggregates she wishes she was in order to please him, there are five more he wishes he was in order to please her and you are up to 30 already! Two of our students figured out they had 50 in their relationship!
The more you want the other person to be something different, there is attachment, there is "me, mine, I want" and so on. In a relationship, we have to try to let go of these attachments so instead of there being 30 aggregates or more, it ends up just being 10. And when you are satisfied with the other person's 5 aggregates and they are satisfied with yours, you are going to have a very nice relationship.