A Sobering Truth: Intimacy Might Be The Problem
Choosing Unavailable Partners Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg
A few years back, had you have told me what my problem was in dating and relationships, I’d say that it was my choice of unavailable partners…
How I’d find myself fawning after people who couldn’t commit.
How I’d get caught in cycles of rumination and overthinking wondering what I could do to turn the tides and win their affection.
Whilst this was part of the problem, it was only when I stopped entertaining these connections and started focusing on secure connections did the real underlying issue show up…
I was afraid of intimacy. Even when I chose people who wanted me, I’d suddenly find myself resistant to a deeper connection, feeling more and more uncomfortable as the relationship became more secure.
This, I believe is a core reason why we entertain unavailable dynamics.
They’re distractions. Here, we don’t have to reveal our authentic selves, wounds and all. These dynamics never get that far, keeping us safe from the intimacy that we ultimately fear.
The Irony of Wanting but Fearing Connection
It’s ironic that many of us say we want a secure and loving connection, but feel resistance to one when we have it.
As I said, it’s almost as if the unavailable dynamics we’d usually entertain serve as an unconscious distraction for us to not have to be intimate with somebody.
How can we be intimate when someone isn’t choosing us? How can we be ourselves and speak our truth, if we’re being someone else to try and win someone over? How can we be loved when we don’t love ourselves?
In this scenario, it’s easier for us to say that someone else is mistreating us: that it’s just our ill-fate in getting stuck with the wrong partners time after time.
That must be the problem.
I’ve found that when we begin removing bad habits, like choosing unavailable partners, beneath them we find what is really the core issue:
Our fear of intimacy.
We may never been intimate with anyone before, or maybe we once were, before being rejected or hurt. Our emotional walls thereafter went up and so we became a match of sorts for unavailable dynamics.
On some level, we are also unavailable.
It was a sobering moment for me when I realised that choosing unavailable partners was only part of my relationship problems.
The tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
I always thought the moment I began choosing the right people, everything would fall into place.
“I just need to find the person I like who wants me, then I’ll have a secure and stable relationship”, or so I thought.
Little did I know I’d be faced with a whole new range of challenges.
Intimacy Reveals Core Wounds
I really struggled with intimacy in my last relationship.
I remember a eye-opening moment when my ex surprised me one night: telling my flatmate that he was travelling over to see me, a day earlier than we’d planned.
I wish I could say I was happy when he showed up, but my instant reaction was fear. I was stunned — and not in a “Oh, you’re here!” sort of way but a, “Oh god, you’re here?”.
At this stage of the relationship I was really finding the level of intimacy we were creating uncomfortable.
I’d have to mentally prepare myself to see him. In the build-up I was being inundated with anxious thoughts that without prior taming, would leave me walled up and cold, unable to fully present. Of course I wanted to see him, but my body would say otherwise.
Despite how much we can consciously want something, our nervous system remembers. A childhood that has taught us to fear intimacy is remembered in a body that now goes into fight/flight/freeze when intimacy is present.
Without awareness as to what is happening, we can be blindsided by these conditioned responses, which has obvious implications on the relationship.
This is to say, a new challenge had reared its head. Importantly though, this was a challenge I never would have experienced when I was choosing unavailable partners because there was no intimacy to be found there.
These people didn’t want to commit to me, and I guess a part of me didn’t want them too, either.
This rings more true to me when I remember the times people would end up choosing me, and I’d recoil with resistance. The question; the chase, always seemed better than the outcome. I was living through desire and hope, which shrouded my underlying trauma.
In my room when he surprised me, I was now in the face of someone who knew me and loved me.
And my instant response was to be frightened by it.
Emotional Trauma Trumps Rational Thinking
When trauma is experienced early on, it impacts development. Like a tree in poisoned soil, we don’t grow as strong as we would in healthier environments which brings with it unique challenges in adulthood – like a fear of intimacy and unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as choosing unavailable partners.
Bessel van der Kolk, psychologist and PTSD researcher, notes that because our emotional brain – where our fear responses arise – forms before our logical brain – fully developed at around 25 -, trauma experienced during early development can become stuck in our emotional brain, bypassing rational and logic. This means we can cognitively recognise a need for a secure relationship whilst experiencing a trauma-reaction that tells us otherwise.
This may be why I found it difficult to overpower my emotional reaction when my ex surprised me. He caught me off guard, and clearly saw the shock (and fear) on my face. In that moment I was transported back to young Joe, deeply afraid of intimacy and what it might mean for his survival.
This is all to say, we may want a secure relationship where we’re loved by someone else but when fear is involved, our immediate reaction will be to recoil and push away.
Moreover, unavailable dynamics might be serving a role in keeping you safe. Of course, unavailable dynamics also bring their own pain, but as so often is the case, adaptive strategies learnt in childhood soon become maladaptive in adulthood, when we are no longer in the settings they were born from.
I say all of this with caution so that you aren’t surprised when challenges arise in your intimate relationships.
Just because you say you want a secure relationship, doesn’t mean it’ll come easy.
Saying this, this is the only space we can truly heal.
Removing your habit of choosing unavailable people is only half the problem.
When that’s done, the real work will commence.
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