There aren’t a lot of feelings that are worse than falling in love with someone who doesn’t have the emotional capacity to accept and reciprocate your emotions. Emotionally unavailable folks can participate in relationships up to a certain point but tend to tap out of the relationship when the bond gets too deep. When you get into a string of these emotionally unavailable partnerships, it can be deeply taxing on your mind, body and soul.
There is a subconscious part of you that believes if you can just be loving enough and empathic enough, you can get a person even someone who reminds you of a destructive parent or former partner to become open, loving, and available. Being a good, loving person is not going to all of a sudden motivate people into being better for you. The desire to heal has to come from within them, otherwise, you are fighting against the wind to your own detriment.
Living on the hope that you will find the one and suddenly feel you are a person deserving of love is selling yourself short. While it’s beautiful to have a love story with your partner, the greatest love story of your life will be with yourself. Trying to find a person to love and fill in the parts of you that feel unsafe or unworthy is a form of self-rejection. It’s a way of telling yourself that you are not okay as you are, and you won’t be until you can find someone who loves you.
Sometimes it’s not about the partners you pick, it’s about you. If you find yourself drawn to people who never want a relationship, it could be that you aren’t ready for the real thing yourself. By picking less-than-ideal people to date, you feel safe from these fears because you know you won’t end up in a committed relationship with them. If you met a caring and available person, there is a good possibility you wouldn’t be attracted to them due to your fears of engulfment and rejection.
