This pattern is a tale as old as time. You want the relationship, you feel ready, and you finally meet someone… emotionally unavailable.
No worries. Try again.
And wait. Emotionally unavailable again. And again. And again.
Are you actually a magnet for emotionally unavailable partners?
The truth is, your nervous system isn’t wired for growth or finding the right one. It’s wired for safety.
And what feels safe? Doing the same thing over and over because you already know how it ends.
You put yourself out there. You start dating someone who seems like they could be the one. They talk about the future, make plans, and you finally let your guard down.
Then suddenly, walls go up, and out comes the “I’m not ready for something serious.”
Their actions start to shift, but because you’re committed to loving them, you decide to give them the space they need to figure it out.
And even as you try to give space, you can’t help but show how much you care. You send reassuring messages, offer words of affirmation, and remind them how good you are together.
But for my anxious attachment crew, this actually pushes the avoidant even further away. When you show love by showering them with affection, they start to feel suffocated. (Trust me, that one’s a lived experience.)
Here’s the hard truth. You can’t control someone else’s feelings, as frustrating as that is. But you can start to take responsibility for how you keep attracting emotionally unavailable relationships.
Your mind says you’re ready for love, but your body is still in protection mode.
You crave connection, yet choose partners who can’t fully meet you.
You crave love, but fear abandonment, so you overgive and overprove.
You crave safety, but mistake intensity for love because that’s what your nervous system recognizes as home.
You didn’t intend to keep attracting emotionally unavailable partners. Your body learned it. Through experience, through conditioning, through simply watching others.
Maybe your parents stayed together but all they did was fight, yell, and shut down. You learned that love didn’t have healthy communication.
Maybe you had a boyfriend in school who told you that you weren’t enough. So you’ve carried that “not enough” with you.
Maybe you watched TV shows where the main characters were madly, desperately in love, the kind of love that looked like obsession, and now your view of love is tied to intensity. You learned that love should feel dramatic, like something you have to fight for.
So even when you say you want something different, your subconscious keeps steering you back toward what feels familiar. It’s not because you’re broken or because you attract the wrong people. It’s because part of you still associates love with uncertainty, chasing, and proving your worth.
That’s the part that needs your attention.
That’s the shadow running the show.
The real work isn’t just spotting emotionally unavailable people faster. It’s about reprogramming your nervous system to feel safe in stability, consistency, and genuine love. It’s learning how to hold yourself when your body starts craving chaos.
Healing looks like learning to pause when you want to chase.
It looks like noticing your old triggers but choosing to stay present.
It looks like letting calm love feel safe instead of suspicious.
And once you start tending to that part of you, the one who equates love with longing, something beautiful begins to shift.
You won’t be as drawn to people who can’t meet you.
The spark you used to feel with the unavailable will fade.
Peace will start to feel exciting instead of boring.
That’s when you stop chasing emotional unavailability and start attracting emotional safety.
Because love doesn’t have to feel like anxiety.
It can feel calm.
And that calm begins with awareness, but awareness alone isn’t the end of the story.
What do you believe about love?
What has stopped you from shifting your view of it?
What patterns have you noticed in your previous relationships that aren’t about them, but about you?
How do you show up for your own desires and needs?
These questions open the door to change. But real transformation happens when you bring what’s unconscious into the body. That’s the work we do in Somatic Shadow Work. We explore how your body holds old stories, protection patterns, and emotional imprints, because you may know what needs to change, but your body is wired to keep you safe.
Through somatic healing and shadow work for relationships, you begin to create a new pattern – one where your nervous system feels safe in love, and you stop repeating the same cycles.
When you start to feel safety in your body instead of only thinking about it, love begins to feel different too. You stop overanalyzing and start trusting yourself. You stop chasing the unavailable and begin choosing the available, because now, you are available to yourself.
