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I don’t seem to be able to stop myself being attracted to emotionally unavailable people. It’s starting to feel like a pattern. The thing is: I don’t know they’re emotionally unavailable from the outset – if I did, I would avoid, avoid, avoid! So I don’t understand how I keep choosing the wrong people… or the same kinds of people.
This is what usually happens: I meet someone, we connect and there’s chemistry – so much so that it seems like we’re made for each other. They seem really keen (at first) and we speak every day. The physical connection is great; we spend loads of time together and even start talking about the future… then BAM: three months in, they disappear. They start messaging less and making less effort; they stop planning dates and a week can go by without me hearing from them. Eventually, I stop messaging too to protect myself and it just fizzles out.
It’s really depressing – and disheartening. But I can’t help but notice the common denominator: me. So why – and how – do I keep doing this? And (more importantly): how do I stop?
Despairing at Myself
Dear Despairing,
It sounds like you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself – which might entirely be the problem. When we first meet someone, it’s almost impossible to be ‘neutral’. We go in to every new date with a whole load of baggage, fears and expectation. The older we get, the more this grows – and so do our ideas about who we are and what we are looking for.
The trouble is, we can fool ourselves half the time as much as we can fool other people.
And when we are consistently attracted to people who can’t meet our needs, the call is often coming from inside the house. We are drawn to emotionally unavailable peoplebecause we ourselves are emotionally unavailable.
We might be hiding it – doing a good job of skirting around it; a well-practised Lady Macbeth act of protesting too much, telling our friends we want a relationship, that we’re ready for one, that we’re sick to death of being ghosted or mucked around
The truth? We don’t. Not really. Because – deep down – we are frightened.
After all, what happens if we meet someone who is truly emotionally available? Then, you see, we’d have to let ourselves go: be real, be vulnerable, be committed; show the messy-ugly-selfish-cruel-dependent parts of ourselves that we prefer to keep hidden and confined. Yet we are all these things.
We are also (most of us) kind and light and fun and silly and ambitious and generous and warm and independent. We just spend an awful lot of time pretending to be exclusively the latter. The risk of finding a real relationship with someone who’s willing to see it through is that we have to offer up the full, glorious, chaotic versions of ourselves to be loved. And we are terrifed that when someone sees us – all of us – they’ll run a mile.
So, we flirt and date and select mates who are devilishly attractive and deeply inconsistent and who – crucially – simply can’t give us what we want and need, for their own complicated reasons. That’s why so many of us pick people who present ‘a challenge’: those who are cold or inconsistent, married or partnered or happily single (and looking to stay that way).
And until we acknowledge that inconsistency within ourselves (and cut the smoke and mirrors), nothing will change. If you can face yourself – fully – and see that you’re frightened, but do it anyway, then you can break the pattern. That will require you to not just see the red flags of avoidance and emotional unavailability in another person, but to act on them when you see them – and to stay well away.
The signs are usually there, we just choose not to look at them. Love bombing (when someone is over the top about how they feel about us much too early on) is one way to tell. What you describe about chemistry and speaking every day – plus talking about the future – within the first three months might be one sign of love bombing. And it’s something more avoidant people do at first before they reach their limit (often around three months) and start pulling away. A more natural pace for a relationship is often a slower build.
If we put ourselves in the position of continually having to chase someone else’s affection, rather than accepting that they simply don’t want to be caught, then we’re really only running away from one thing: ourselves.
So, ask yourself this: what is it that’s drawing you to these people? Are they all adventurous, breathtakingly hard to pin down… are they older, carefree – perhaps they have never committed before? Yep, not for you. Not if you want a real relationship. But you need to have a bit of a reckoning with yourself to find out if you do…
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