One of the biggest misconceptions I see in the self-help field is that if you just ‘loved yourself’ more, then you wouldn’t be attracting emotionally unavailable partners.
People who say that and subscribe to that doctrine, in my opinion, don’t really know what else to tell you in order to stop attracting emotionally unavailable partners.
Stop Attracting Emotionally Unavailable Partners: Is Self-Love Essential?
Now, I’m not knocking self-love. It is essential. And when I work with clients, we do shore that up.
But it alone won’t keep you from dating emotionally unavailable people, nor will it facilitate you standing up for yourself and making painful self-honoring choices that will get you out of the situation when you know it isn’t what you want.
How do I know?
Because I loved myself back in the day when I was dating nothing but emotionally unavailable guys.
I thought I was a catch. I believed I deserved more. I had a lot to offer someone.
I did all the self-care things.
I had great self-esteem at that point in my life.
Yet every. single. relationship. turned out to be with someone who was emotionally unavailable!
And it ALWAYS took me way longer than it should have to end the relationship.
Stop Attracting Emotionally Unavailable Partners: My REAL Problem
Want to know what actually WAS keeping me in pattern?
My belief that nobody would be able to truly love and cherish me.
That it would mean eventual betrayal.
So my availability level matched that belief.
I was only willing to go to a certain level of intimacy with someone.
I also would start out the relationship with walls around my heart, only to lower them later, when I felt I could trust the other person.
Problem was, he didn’t really lower his!
That hidden belief and those protective walls around my heart formed a broadcast signal of energy that screamed ‘she wants love, but doesn’t want to go deep’.
And therefore I was attracted to others with a similar energy broadcast.
Meaning, I was just as attracted to emotionally unavailable guys as they were to me!
It wasn’t just a coincidence.
It wasn’t because I didn’t think I deserved more.
It wasn’t because I didn’t love myself.
Breaking Your Pattern
It WAS because of the beliefs that I had formed as a child that were meant to protect me but now as an adult, were actually hurting me.
So if you want to break your dating patterns, it is imperative that you root out these old protections and work on believing new thoughts that will support healthy relationships.
You can do this by:
- Starting a mindfulness practice and learning how to become the witness to your thoughts and actions
- Questioning the beliefs you have about relationships and intimacy
- Asking yourself if the relationship dynamics between you and your parents is similar to your current romantic relationship dynamics
- Replacing outdated relationship beliefs with new ones (and actually believing the new ones)
If you find yourself in a similar pattern, where partner after partner turns out to be some shade of emotionally unavailable, and you are tired of being told to ‘just love yourself more’, know that there are people who understand what is truly going on and can help you sort it out.
Doing the things above (and more) is exactly the high level process I take my clients through to help them break their current relationship patterns.
