“She Was Emotionally Unavailable!”

When I met the woman who I would go on to spend a number of months with in 2013, I remember seeing her from a certain angle and thinking about how much she looked like my mother. It wouldn’t be accurate for me to say that this was something that I consciously thought about, though, as this was something that I only just picked up on.
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If I had been completely caught up in the moment, I wouldn’t have even noticed this. But while I was able to step back and to see this, this wasn’t something that had much of an effect as time went by.

Pulled In

After I had met her for the first time, I was keen to see her again. So, even though I didn’t know a great deal about her, I felt extremely attracted to her.

What helped was that she also wanted to get together again, and this meant that we got together a number of days later. When I first met her I wasn’t looking for anything serious, but this soon changed.

The Previous Year

Before we got together, I had read a number of books on child abuse, one about emotionally absent mothers, and I had done a fair amount of healing work, so it wasn’t as though my head was completely in the clouds. In many ways, I felt as though I was ready to have a relationship with a woman.

I didn’t know anything about her history, but this all changed when she started to speak about her ex. From what I can remember, this was a guy who had a child and he lived over a hundred miles away.

A Red Flag

And after she told me some of the things that he had said, it sounded as though he was verbally abusive. I thought it was strange that she was still talking about this guy, but I think that I soon put this to one side.

However, after a little while I started to think about how I was with a woman who was emotionally unavailable. Along with what she had said about her ex, there was also a moment when she said about how she would like to settle down.

I Felt Invisible

She had found someone who was different, but it wasn’t possible for her to embrace the person who was in front of her. Her ex was then someone who treated her badly, yet she was still attached to him.

Interestingly, I was reading a book called Betrayal Bond by Patrick Carnes at the time, and this books looks into how we can be attracted to people as a result of the trauma that we are carrying. This book caught her eye when she got out of my car one morning, and she said that it might be a good idea for her to read it.

The End

When we got together to talk about what was going on between us, she sad that she wasn’t ready to settle down and that she wanted to get to know herself, or something similar. She also questioned if we he had anything in common.

I soon came to the conclusion that I was with someone who hadn’t got over their ex, which was partly why she wasn’t unavailable. In a way, my purpose was simply to take her mind off him and to make her feel better.

It Was Destined To Happen

I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what was going on for her, though; I was more interested in what was going on for me. Ultimately, I had attracted a woman into my life who was emotionally unavailable.

I was brought up by a mother who was also emotionally unavailable, so it was to be expected that I would have been drawn to this woman. Consciously, I wanted to find a woman who was available, but at a deeper level, this was what felt comfortable.

A Mirror

If I had focused on what was going on for her and ignored the part that I had played, it would have caused me to see myself as a victim. In reality, this was someone who was mirroing back what was going on within me.

The time had come for me to face what was taking place within me and to heal my emotional wounds. I came to see that the women I had been with in the past were also emotionally unavailable.