Attachment Without Reciprocity: Why Humans Don't Need a Real "Other" to Form Connection

Humans have always attached to things that cannot attach back. This paper argues that mutuality, the definitional core of friendship, is a norm governing human-to-human relationships, not a prerequisite for connection as a cognitive phenomenon. Using an inductive chain of evidence across imaginary companions, object personification, sex dolls, parasocial bonds, and AI systems, we demonstrate that attachment is architecturally generated on the human side; driven by evolved agency detection, neurobiological social circuitry, and attachment style variance operating independently of whether a real "other" exists. AI is not a disruption of this pattern. It is its apex: a surface that eliminates the generative labor of projection while activating identical attachment circuitry. The policy vacuum surrounding that apex is the present danger.