We tend to recreate issues from our past in our current relationships. We hold our past experiences subconsciously as beliefs and expectations, and the metaphysical power of our thoughts results in our repeating the past. This also has a nearly physical aspect where we are attracted to people who fit our past issues because they are familiar and also because we are trying to understand our past. We recreate our parents, for example, in an effort to understand them. We also sometimes work to avoid our past wounds and this can take us into new problems.
Attracting or being attracted to unavailable people is a common and compelling pattern. Reasons people may be unavailable: they are in other relationships; they are emotionally withdrawn or unavailable; they live a live a long distance from us; or they are are workaholics or addicts. How are these recreations of our past?
I find they usually originate from our family conditioning or patterns, and even our prenatal experience or our own birth. Being in relationship with an unavailable person usually at least partly stems from an unavailable father or mother. If a parent didn’t want us or would have preferred that we were a different gender, or was just plain emotionally unavailable, it creates wounds that are receptive to any form of loss or mistreatment.
Understanding the feelings we may have had at our birth and pre-natal experience can also help us see our issues more deeply. It can add a more powerful view of our feelings about love and belonging. Did we feel unwanted? Like a burden? Did we feel not good enough? It also helps our understanding if we incorporate an awareness of how the physical act of childbirth can contribute to relationship patterns. I have had clients who felt mistreated or molested at birth. Being separated from our mother after birth can be the most universal beginning of feeling abandoned. Whether at our birth or later in life, if our parents were not physically or emotionally present, or if they had doubts or ambivalence about having us, then we will recreate this by attracting or being attracted to unavailable people.
Another lens I use to address these principles or Laws of Attraction is based on a Psychology of Selves. Here, our psyche’s desire for wholeness or balance results in our being attracted to energies we lack. In this case, we would be attracted to emotionally withdrawn or distant people because we perceive them to be strong or independent and their strength is something we lack, or subconsciously feel we need to compensate for our feeling vulnerable. So, if a person feels vulnerable they will be attracted to people they perceive to be strong, powerful or independent. This is an example of opposites attracting. We may have been attracted to unavailable people because we feel too indentified with vulnerability or caution and we lacked these more powerful or independent traits of the unavailable person. We crave what we don’t have. (The example I most often use in my book to illustrate how opposites attract is similar — that if we feel burdened by responsibility, we will attract or be attracted to free spirits.)
You may have also picked an emotionally or physically unavailable person because you were recovering from chaos or abuse and their distance helped you feel that they were not going to abuse you. If you fear abuse you will be more attracted to distance. When we need safety and security we often throw away aliveness, spontaneity, and even sexuality, because those energies can make us afraid of loosing control. If our past was chaotic we might become afraid of aliveness, spontaneity or sexuality, and subconsciously favor suppression and unavailable people as a result.
I also wish to note that these models explain how chasing an unavailable person has a component of excitement. If someone isn’t really present then our yearnings are more apt to come out because there is room for us to be in the role of chasing. I think this is a deeper explanation of what is often said about it being safer to be with an unavailable person because there is less intimacy.
How to resolve family patterns, birth scripts, and attraction patterns is complex. It involves anything that helps you articulate and feel the issues, so becoming conscious of the issues is a first step, but it takes more than awareness to resolve a pattern or make new choices. It requires energetic shifts that make new patterns and the freedom to move in new directions. I often say that my job is to help people “kick it around,” meaning that the more aspects we can see, feel and express the more likely we are to heal and resolve it. This begins to describe why all counseling or therapy is valuable, the more experiential the better. We all need support in going beyond just a cognitive understanding.
Within the psychology of selves model, our task is to become everything and feel okay about both sides of an issue or both sides of our personality. Our task is to embrace and resolve our past enough so we are comfortable with all sides or aspects of ourselves. When we are in touch with our own power and independence, we will not be as attracted to chasing the unavailable person. When we are in touch with our need to retreat to safety, we will not be as subconsciously drawn to the peace and quiet of the unavailable person. It is easier to create or attract intimacy when we are in touch with both the relational side of ourselves (including fear, vulnerability, and even neediness) as well as our independent and powerful side. This is one way to summarize or describe nearly all personal-growth work.
Meanwhile, it is valuable to get clear on your needs and goals and choose available, generous, and nurturing people. It is valuable to say no to unavailable people. This does help create the emotional resolution and the space to manifest your stated desires.
Developing a greater ability to self-soothe is also a key and a key description of this process. If we can comfort ourselves through loss or our fear of loss, we can become more comfortable in relationships, and more comfortable with desire and intimacy. It takes inner “strength to want” because we are only going to feel safe enough to desire something that we can survive loosing. This is also an aspect of inner strength that will help us attract our true hearts desire. When we are what we truly desire on the inside, the mirror of life will bring it to us.
To Sacredness and Power,
Peter
PS. The issues in this article (and much more) are addressed more deeply in my book. Chapters 8–27 look at the Laws of Attraction and Principles of Desire and chapter 28 on Birth Scripts will help you see your core issue(s).
PSS: I am in the process of changing the title of my book to “Keeping it Alive.” It will be nearly the same book — a pro-monogamy context addressing how to keep life and relationships alive!
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