Finding love begins with self-love: How one woman changed her destructive pattern of attracting emotionally unavailable men.
By definition, an emotionally unavailable partner is an individual who is detached from the depth of a romantic relationship due to various complexities tied to fear of intimacy and even rejection. They find it difficult to become aware of their patterns and to identify their true emotions underneath the mask they wear in their relationships.
This behavior is draining and confusing to the partners of these people. It usually leads to painful separations, emotional scarring, and the self-esteem of the partners who invest all their energy in making the relationship work.
Asking yourself why you attract these types of people is difficult because the answers that come up are usually filled with self-loathing and deprivation. The ugly truth is, however, that the reason why we attract these partners is that there is a part in us that is just as emotionally unavailable as the partner we end up with.
A woman came to us with this exact issue which she became aware of herself after repeated negative experiences with different partners. She initially admitted that after many years of failed relationships, she had the unhelpful belief (that she kept reinforcing by choosing the wrong partner) that ‘men just didn’t stick around’.
While undergoing timeline therapy and working out the root cause of this false belief, she realized that it traced back to when she was in utero and not from her past relationships as she had thought.
It transpired that her mother caught her father cheating while she was five months pregnant and the feeling of utter betrayal led her to believe that she would always be alone and never truly loved by any man. Naturally, these emotions were transferred to the fetus (the young woman), she subconsciously took it upon herself to carry the emotional baggage that her mom had and therefore attracted emotionally unavailable partners like her dad.
As this realization came to the surface, the woman felt a weight lifted off her shoulders as she finally recognized that these belief and emotions were never hers, to begin with, but they have always belonged to somebody else, her mother. The next phase of the therapy was working on the forgiveness of both parents so she can move on with no grudges or hate in her heart.
She acknowledged that they both did their best and loved her the way they knew how to, she built a new belief in self-love and how she deserves to be loved unconditionally by her future partner.
Every type of person you attract in your life reflects a part of you, whether it’s positive or negative, whether you are aware of it or not, remember that is always there and at any given time you can change the type of people you want to attract.
It all starts with you.
