Chasing Unavailable Partners

Why do we chase men and women who are emotionally unavailable? Most people think they are specially equipped with radar to detect the right person -- if not at first sight, at least by the second date.

But a common bind for many is that we're only attracted to unavailable partners. Our radar hones in on those who are destined to leave us in the end, and we get caught up in cycles of abandonment.

If this describes your love life, it may be that while you believe you're looking for a relationship, you're in fact seeking infatuation. When someone comes along who wants to be with you, he or she is too "easy" to get to arouse those yearning, craving sensations. So, you think you aren't "in love" and you keep pursuing partners who offer an emotional challenge in order to stay infatuated.

What Is the Chase All About?
Many people are afraid of commitment. They fear both abandonment and engulfment and pursue unavailable partners to avoid risking a real relationship.

One cause lies buried in your early relationship with your parents. Maybe you felt rejected or dismissed, or struggled to win their approval or recognition. Now, as an adult, you're easily hooked when someone pushes those old insecurity buttons.

Another cause is low self-esteem: You wouldn't want anyone who would want you. You place yourself in a one-down position to others, making yourself more easily dismissed. You may stay in the drama of pursuing hard-to-get lovers in order to distract yourself from an old wound.

Breaking the Cycle
Step One: The first step is to recognize whether you have this problem. Question your motives: Are you looking for the emotional high of infatuation or are you seeking a trusting, loving, mutual relationship? In other words, are you seeking romance instead of relationship?

Step Two: Re-examine your values about who is a good catch. False notions about love, about what a relationship is supposed to be, and about what kind of partner to choose may be keeping you outside of love. Revamp your old values left over from high school -- the ones based on looks, money, status, and the size of a person's ego, rather than on his or capacity for love and connection.

Step Three: Recognize that these patterns don't go away just because you've become aware of them. You have to change behavior. Open yourself to new truths, new values, new experiences, and new people. Make breaking this pattern a primary goal of self-improvement and therapy. As you aim toward your higher self, you become capable of mutual relationship.

Step Four: Be suspicious of your gut -- it's what most likely got you into this pattern in the first place. When you feel attracted to someone, it may be because he or she is emotionally unavailable. As you change your values, you'll learn to distinguish this old feeling from being interested in a truly emotionally reliable partner.

Step Five: Be suspicious of your notion that you "just haven't met the right person." Maybe the right person came by and was too available and it turned you off.

Step Six: Ask your prospective lovers how they ended their past relationships. Reading between the lines, you may be able to spot an abandoner -- someone who can't commit and who blames it on their former partners' supposed inadequacies and faults in order to justify breaking up with them.

Step Seven: Learn to tolerate being loved. The feelings of trust, mutuality, and security are different from the intense emotional high of insecurity. After pursuing unavailable partners, being loved takes some getting used to.

Step Eight: When you find someone who is worthy of trust and commitment, rather than expect love to be an infatuated feeling that washes over you, think of love as an action verb that involves conscious choice and caring actions.

It takes courage to admit you're caught in a pattern of pursuing hard-to-get lovers. Give yourself credit for lifting the veil of self-deceit and for learning to resist the emotional highs of being in conquest mode. Denial is a dense fog that keeps the rest of the world too confused to recognize the obstacles blocking it from finding love. For you the fog is lifting. Your task is to stay grounded and focus, not on hard-to-get lovers, but on mutuality and trust.

Susan Anderson is the author of The Journey from Abandonment to Healing (Berkley, 2000) and owner of AbandonmentRecovery.com.