Why do I keep falling for unavailable men?

The answer may be staring you in the face

Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash

I can’t remember the exact moment when the penny dropped but I remember it landing with a thud.

Or maybe a succession of thuds because it was less of a Aha moment and more of a gradual awakening.

I’d been racking my brains for years, trying to figure out why none of my romantic relationships had worked out, trying to understand why I kept falling for the unavailable guys - the commitment-phobes, the alcoholics, workaholics or men who lived a million miles away - and why I ran for the hills at the first sign a nice bloke was into me.

I just couldn’t fathom it.

I was a catch, right? I had a good heart and a good job. I had lovely friends, a busy social life and a home of my own. I was healthy and fit. I was smart and I laughed a lot.

Single at 40

So why was I single at 40 when I wanted to be in a relationship? (Being single at 40 is wonderful if it’s your choice. By this stage, I was ready to find a life partner and tired of being on my own.)

The answer came after years of self-discovery, growth and healing, after delving deep into childhood development when studying counselling and psychotherapy and after many years in psychotherapy myself.

And the answer, dear Reader, was staring me in the face.

I was afraid of commitment myself and therefore kept falling for men who couldn’t commit.

From denial to acceptance

At first, I couldn’t believe it.

How could I possibly be scared of commitment?

I’d been in and out of relationships and dating on and off for years, perpetually seeking a partner.

Even during my long stretches of singleness, I’d be dreaming about the man who would be mine, hoping to sit next to him on an airplane or bump into him in the supermarket queue.

I’d been doing this since my school days in Liverpool when I became so obsessed with boys that I’d follow them around town, hiding in the doorway of Marks and Spencer’s to avoid being labelled a stalker, or I’d track them down to a distant pub and drag my friends there on a Saturday night.

All the evidence pointed to me wanting to be in a relationship, so how could I be the commitment-phobe?

It didn’t make sense.

On further examination, it did.

It made perfect sense.

I was afraid of commitment because my early life experiences of commitment - of close, intimate relationships - had caused me pain and hurt.

I’m talking about my relationship with my parents, my first caregivers, the first people I loved and who loved me, whose job it was to take care of me and to keep me safe.

From struggling to connect emotionally with both my parents, to feeling suffocated and trapped by one parent’s unhappiness, to the pain of their separation and subsequent divorce, to the picture of marriage they painted for me (not a happy one), to a series of other experiences, my recollections of those early encounters with love were painful and they left deep wounds.

So why would I want to put myself through that again?

According to my equation, according to the template that had been imprinted on my developing brain, love equalled loss; love equalled entrapment; love equalled pain; marriage equalled divorce followed, for the female in the partnership, by poverty, misery, a total loss of freedom and weighty, unwanted responsibilities.

My young and impressionable psyche registered all of the above and decided that the path of true love was to be avoided at all costs.

Why I kept trying to find love

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

So why did I keep looking for love? Why did I keep trying to make a relationship work?

The answer is I craved it.

I had missed out on the kind of love that I’d wanted and needed as a young girl and I was still seeking it as an adult, hoping to get what I hadn’t got, hoping to heal that early life wound.

I longed for love. I yearned for it. I was desperate for it. (Dating with desperation isn’t a good look - I know this from experience).

Only I was scared of love.

I wanted it but I feared it.

I want you but I don’t want you.

Can you see how my push-pull dating and relationship patterns developed?

I’ll pull you in then push you away, push you away then pull you in.

I dated to this rhythm.

I danced to this tune, much to the confusion of my dance partner who hadn’t a clue how to interpret my crazy moves.

Looking for love in all the wrong places

My yearning for love, coupled with my fear of it, led me to fall at the feet of unavailable men.

By that I mean men who were in relationships with someone else, tied up with an ex, addicted to alcohol, drugs, work or something else, or so detached from their own emotions that there was no hope of them connecting to mine.

[I talk about men because this is my area of expertise - pleases replace men with women or people depending on your gender and sexuality].

I could get close to these unavailable guys, fan the flames of my desire, warm the cockles of my broken heart, but I couldn’t become emotionally intimate with them (physically yes, that was easy enough, but not emotionally) because their emotions weren’t available, and nor were mine.

My subconscious picked out these emotionally unavailable types, honing in on them with laser-guided precision, in bars, parties or on dating sites, tracking them down like a jaguar stalks its prey.

‘Ah, there you are. Someone I can get close to but not too close. Someone I can have a relationship with without the prospect of true intimacy, without having to risk my tender heart.’

And they were so attractive to me, irresistibly so, because they offered me the enticing opportunity to rewrite my childhood story and engineer a different outcome. That is, the chance to find the emotionally unavailable man (who reminded me of my distant dad) and turn him, with my incredible charms, into an available man, thereby creating a happy ending for my wounded inner child.

Only this strategy never worked. He never changed, no matter how hard I tried, and dating became like rubbing salt into an old wound.

Or on the rare occasion he did show signs of changing, I’d label him a pushover, dismiss him as ‘weak’, and run a mile.

Enough is enough

Eventually, I’d had enough.

I’d had enough of the pain, hurt and heartache that came from dating emotionally unavailable men.

There are only so many times you can bang your head against the same brick wall.

But how was I going to change the habit of a lifetime?

How was I going to change my attraction to the unavailable guys and become drawn to the available ones, who’d always seemed so … what’s the word … dull?

The good news is I got my answer to that question too.

And that answer transformed my romantic life.

I did change my self-sabotaging ways.

I did open my heart to true love.

I did find an emotionally available partner to share my present and future with.

And I’ll share how I did this in my next post.

I hope you’ll stay tuned.

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