Emotionally Unavailable

Being emotionally unavailable has been a theme in my life perhaps for longer than I care to acknowledge. I don’t know when it began to be honest or if it stems truly from my attachment stuff or fears of abandonment, but it is a prevalent problem, and I am not sure how to rectify it. Being emotionally unavailable means that I have systematically put tremendous barriers around myself to avoid emotional connection with another person. Getting into a relationship has never been an issue for me per say, I mean as I have gotten older and been able to assess my relationships, they all were developed from a “desperate” place. A place where being alone was scarier than taking time for myself to really identify what I was seeking in my partnerships. Fear of abandonment was always at the forefront of my decisions.

I realized this morning as I am reflecting on this very real affliction that I suffer from, that while my trauma has been significant and my ability to process emotions with my primary care givers was perhaps dependent on the content I offered and whether or not it was in line with their belief systems the biggest predictor of my emotional availability has been that I have gotten into relationships with people who have themselves been emotionally unavailable or who in reality didn’t even know who they were in terms of their sexuality. We were meantime partners, who each had one foot in and one foot out because in reality neither of us really knew who we were in those relationships. They were experimental in nature, a means to decide if it was what we wanted and realizing it wasn’t quite right. My breakups were all trauma filled and they all resulted in two people cohabitating with one another for a period until we would move on respectively to the next partnership. I thought that I had broken the pattern when I got married. I had approached this relationship paradigm very differently and I thought that I had mastered this very chronic problem.

I’ve never been alone long enough to discover myself, to address the maladaptive behaviors that I have spent a lifetime perfecting. So, what do you do when you are faced with acknowledging your own emotional unavailability? I have been sitting with that for some time. It has been a hot button issue that has caused a lot of conflict and for the life of me rather than do something with the information, I have chosen to be perpetually triggered and to deflect onto anyone who will sit long enough to take the brunt of frustrations. My therapist does a good job of redirecting me when I get into spirals of anger and when rather than self-reflect, I find a reason to blame the other person. I mean I think I will do anything to remain out of accountability. And that is no longer suiting me. I feel like I am “owed” healthy love because the people who should have willingly offered it didn’t and now somehow that is the responsibility of everyone else to make up for their misses. No one owes me anything. In fact, it is I that owes me everything. I am capable of breaking these patterns. Then why the fuck don’t I? The answer to this question doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I take the information and do something to change.

So, what does change look like for me. First, I must remain in committed acknowledgement that I am emotionally unavailable. I am not at present able to give someone the emotional connection that they would need. And it doesn’t matter how much I yell and scream that I can, it has been something that I have not been capable of doing. I must be kind and patient with myself. Even in my fear, I must be able to have self-compassion and self-love, only those components will open up the vulnerability and transparency needed to strengthen the muscle needed for emotionally availability to begin. I have to quit walling off my inner self. If I am to engage in healthy relationships, I need to give access to the people looking to connect with me. No matter how overwhelming this becomes, I must be willing to let myself feel my feelings. I will want to lash out, take out my fears and frustrations on the people that I love. I will want to sabotage things further, run, and most of all avoid the potential to get hurt that comes with vulnerability. But if I am willing to stay, then perhaps I will begin to feel safe.

I keep projecting onto others that they don’t stay. That when things get difficult, they leave. As I am writing this, I am realizing it is me who leaves when things get tough. I don’t stay. I take the route that closes me off, protects my heart, and disconnects me from my emotions. I busy myself, distract myself from anything real because it is so much easier to numb then to have the potential for my heart to get smashed. What people aren’t seeing is what happens behind closed doors, when I am emotionally exhausted, when I am alone with myself. I sit in my despair, my pain, my anguish, and I sit with it long enough to feel how excruciating it is, and I tuck it away. I bury it deep, and I compose myself and I never share that with those that it matters too. Sometimes those feelings become too overwhelming, and they surface long enough for people to see that I do care, that I have the capacity to express emotions outside of anger and contempt but then as fast as they came, they are gone, and I am back to offering up unfulfilled needs and empty promises.

I have spent a lifetime self-preserving, numbing, and being angry. I have blamed all my negative experiences. I have lived a lifetime of dissatisfaction and when I thought that I had finally cracked the code, I was quickly reminded that I hadn’t. My entire belief systems about myself came crashing down when I realized I was unable to maintain a healthy emotional connection when it mattered most. I am not perfect, like I thought I was. I began self-preserving as a means to avoid dealing with this feeling. Turning away from any connectivity because no one would understand what I was going through. If they really knew what I was thinking they would surely leave me. If they knew the horror of my thoughts, they would leave. In reality it is me who leaves. I am the one that connects in a moment but as soon as it gets emotional or where someone presents me their needs, I run away.

The most common reason people keep making mistakes, is rooted in their ego preventing them from acknowledging their own bullshit. People choose not to acknowledge their own toxic traits, their own fallibility. We are all quick to judge others, to offer advice that corrects others behavior but when it comes to our own, we don’t give it the time and attention that it deserves so we spend a lifetime blaming everyone else for our own unhappiness. We lack the accountability needed to truly see ourselves. So today I must make a choice. I must make a conscious decision to reflect on myself. To really listen to the person when they tell me I am emotionally available, that I am not meeting their needs, and I need to find out why and then when I sort that out, I must decide on how, I am going to begin to break that cycle. If I am really looking to seek healthy, equitable relationships, then I need to make a drastic change now. Fear has no room in my world right now. I said it the other day and I have to remind myself of that daily. Fear is suffocating me. It is taking any potential joy away from me. It truly, is the biggest issue I struggle with. It is what drives me away from love rather than driving me towards it.

Each of us has an innate need to feel safely attached to another person who will be there in our times of physical or emotional need. When we enter a committed relationship, this need intensifies due to the hope that this one special person will consistently be there for us. If you think about emotional intimacy as the foundation of any relationship, it really becomes a no-brainer to invest your resources into building it and continuing to foster it.