B by Della Chen. Manka's, Inverness, CA.
If you always find yourself attracted to unavailable people, perhaps you need to explore whether YOU are the one who is unavailable. Here are three ideas to chew on.
JUDITH ORLOFF "The Power to Surrender"
One of the barriers that keeps us from love is being attracted to unavailable people. A confusing aspect of being attracted to unavailable, commitment-phobic people is that the emotional or sexual chemistry can feel so strong, leading you to accept behavior you’d never tolerate in friends.
The electricity can feel so incredible and rare, you mistake intensity for intimacy. You make compromises you wouldn’t typically consider in order to give the relationship a chance. Still, connection or not, you must take a sober look to determine if someone is truly available for intimacy. Know this: Not everyone you feel a connection with, no matter how mind-blowing, is your soul mate. You can fall for someone who is totally wrong for you, as unfair and confounding as that reality can be.
If someone's unavailable, it's not a healthy relationship.
Look for the signs of unavailable people, such as being in a relationship with someone else, not introducing you to their friends or family, or only being there intermittently for you.
Often people want to find a partner who is unavailable so they can reform them and subconsciously heal the patterns with their parents. But it almost never works, you can't reform an unavailable person. And it won't heal your primary relationship with your parents.
Maybe finding a surrogate parent would. An older woman, for example, who is maternal and able to accept you unconditionally could provide you with a different kind of maternal nurturing than you got. The more you build healthy, safe relationships with people like this, the more open you will be to finding a romantic partner who's capable of loving you.
KATHERINE WOODWARD THOMAS "Calling in the One"
Learn how to ask the right questions.
What's right about bringing in people who are unavailable? How is that keeping me safe?
What am I getting out of being single?
What part of me doesn't want to be in a relationship?
How am I pushing love away?
What's actually more true about this situation than what I'm admitting to myself right now?
What needs to develop in me in order to be ready for a relationship?
Maybe you're not yet the person you need to be in order to manifest and sustain the kind of loving relationship you really desire.
MARGARET PAUL, "Inner Bonding"
Perhaps this is a 'safe' relationship for you, in that you don't have to face your deeper fears. Perhaps you have a fear of engulfment – of losing yourself in a relationship – and attaching to a person who doesn't want you sexually is a way of protecting against this fear. Perhaps you have a fear of rejection and you would rather deal with a rejection you know rather than risk a rejection that isn't predictable. By being 'in love' with someone who is emotionally unavailable and already rejecting you, you don't need to deal with the uncertainty that you might fear. Perhaps the pain you know is preferable to you than the pain you fear.