You Want A Relationship, But Are You Emotionally Unavailable?

By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
March 28, 2016

Do you keep attracting emotionally unavailable people or are you stuck in a relationship with an emotionally unavailable person?

Do you believe that you are fully available for a relationship and that you have just not met the right person? Or, do you find yourself in love with someone who is emotionally unavailable or isn’t in love with you, and you’re convinced you are available for the relationship?

Yvette, who is in that situation, wrote the following to me:

“I am in love with a man, who is my friend, and who is not attracted to me in a sexual way. His rejection in this respect causes me great pain and sadness. It is very difficult for me to let go of the expectations and hopes that he might love me and want me in this particular way. I am afraid that these expectations and my pain might ruin this friendship. I would like to get rid of the expectations that he might fall in love with me, but I don’t know how. I would like to accept this situation as it is. I am also horribly jealous if he shows interest in other girls.”

While I’m certain that Yvette believes she is available for a relationship, it’s very likely that she is emotionally unavailable. If she were emotionally available, she wouldn’t continue to hold the expectation that an emotionally unavailable man will fall in love with her. As long as he is unavailable, it’s easy for her to believe she is in love with him. But it’s highly likely that if he were available, she would not be ‘in love’ with him. The fact that she is ‘horribly jealous if he shows interest in other girls’” indicates that it is her wounded self who believes she is in love, and the wounded self is incapable of love. Jealousy isn’t a part of love, because when we love someone, we want them to be happy – even if it means with someone else.

When you are truly available, you don’t continue a relationship with someone who is emotionally unavailable. However, if you have fears of commitment and intimacy, then, to protect yourself from your fears, you might attach to someone who is emotionally unavailable. If you find yourself, over and over, attracting unavailable people, then you might want to question your own availability. You might want to deeply explore your fears of intimacy and commitment.

As painful as it is to Yvette to want someone who doesn’t want her, this is a ‘safe’ relationship, in that she doesn’t have to face her deeper fears. Perhaps she has a fear of engulfment – of losing herself in a relationship – and attaching to a man who doesn’t want her sexually is a way of protecting against this fear. Perhaps she has a fear of rejection and she would rather deal with a rejection she knows rather than risk a rejection that isn’t predictable. By being ‘in love’ with someone who is emotionally unavailable and already rejecting her, she doesn’t need to deal with the uncertainty that she might fear. Perhaps the pain she knows is preferable to her than the pain she fears, should she be rejected by an available man.

If you believe that you have just not met the right person, perhaps you need to explore whether YOU are the right person! I’ve seen over and over that when a person does their Inner Bonding work to develop their loving adult self and heal their fears of rejection and engulfment, they begin to attract more available people.

As the Law of Attraction states, “Like attracts like,” so when you are available, you are far more likely to attract available people, and you become uninterested in unavailable people. As I stated above, an available person does not hang around, waiting for an unavailable person to become available.

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