You know the emoji you use when your mind is blown? 🤯 Yeah, that one. One day I said to someone that this emoji looks like a plate fell on some guy’s head. So now it is forever known as the “plate emoji”. Anyway, I feel like that right now.
I came to a realization tonight. In the never ending failure that is my love life, I think I finally figured it out: it’s not that my taste in men is bad, it’s that my taste seems to perpetually be for those boys (that’s what I call all males) that are unavailable.
Why would you choose unavailable people Christine? What the fuck is wrong with you? Don’t get me started. Okay, well I’m writing this so I’m obviously started.
Do you do this too? If you really think about it, maybe you do. Maybe that’s why, if you’re like me, relationships seem to NEVER work out.
So my problem (sorry, positive thinking: I shouldn’t say “my problem”, I should say, “what has been delaying my progress”) isn’t in necessarily picking “bad” people, it’s that even the good ones I choose to let in were never available in the first place.
So why does this seem to keep happening over and over and over (I could type the word “over” ten more times just for historical accuracy, but I”ll stop at three).
It’s my own damn fault, that’s why.
Right now you’re saying what makes these guys so unavailable? And, why is it your fault Christine?
Let’s start with the first question: Why so unavailable? What, they have a girlfriend? Married? Live in another state? Country? Reside in a cute hut on the water in Bora Bora?
Or maybe they’re in jail? Rehab? Locked in carbon freeze? Well…yes. All are legitimate reasons, maybe not carbon freeze, not in this galaxy. Maybe one far far away.
Let’s start with the obvious. I’m sure sometime in your life you’ve had feelings for someone who is already in a relationship. Been there a few times. Guess what, no matter what they say, they’re not available.
Don’t let them fool you. How naive you are young Skywalker.
However, and this is a big however, I have seen the exception to this rule. Seen it in real life, that true love conquered all and said people did one day both magically become available and everyone lived happily ever after or at least mediocrely ever after (wow that’s a sad word mediocre).
But at least in the beginning one of the two wasn’t available, seemingly attached to concrete. Hard to move with your feet stuck in cement. Fucking timing.
Maybe it’s another reason for unavailability: geography. Again, can be overcome. Not only seen it, lived it. Hell, I moved from Colorado back to PA for it. Don’t ever regret it. Ever. Did I say ever cause I meant ever.
Yet even with all my “evers”, it still didn’t work out. By not work out I mean he died. Blunt yeah. Truth yeah. Life is blunt sometimes. Like a 2×4 to the head blunt. Always out of nowhere. Sometimes even on a holiday. Anyway…
Other unavailability: jail. Eh, they’ll get released eventually…maybe…right? Hope that parole hearing goes okay.
Rehab? Maybe 5th times the charm? 🤞Hey if you’re willing to wait for them, more power to ya. Been there too. Don’t ever regret that one either.
So there are attachments that make people unavailable: previously cemented significant others, geography, jail, rehab, carbon freeze. All can be overcome. Hey, Han eventually got unfrozen people!
But there is one kind of unavailability which is the Mount Rushmore of them all–emotional unavailability. You can’t unfreeze that. That one is a real bitch.
Oh hey new guy I just met, “heyyyyy, you’re sooooo great”. You’re so so great that hey, let’s start a relationship and delude each other into thinking this is the best thing that ever happened! Hey new guy, let’s also do all the things people in love do like call ourselves boyfriend/girlfriend, spend all our time together, move in together, and get a plant and a fish or hamster or monkey or whatever pet it is people in love get together.
So hey new guy (now while holding our succulent and pet hamster), why don’t I just open up my heart to you and spill my guts out to you with my most deepest, innermost thoughts and feelings? That will be so great!
Screeeeeeech!!!!
Wait a second here!
New guy (by now not-so-new guy) seems to have lost the power of speech! What is happening here?
“You’re my person new/not-so-new guy and we have this aloe vera plant together now and everything. Why can’t you speak?”
Weird, he was able to talk before all this. He was so “I want to get to know the real you’” and “here’s the real me”.
Well guess fucking what, you never saw the real him because no one does. It’s a fucking trap. Might as well have got a venus fly trap instead of that succulent. Damn.
I got got. Good one new/not-so-new guy. I didn’t see that one coming. Like a hole in the ground covered in leaves. I fell right through and landed on my heart. Didn’t see it coming at all. No one does.
New guy set a trap. Not on purpose, he’s a nice guy after all. May even be the love of your life. But he’s Atari Pitfall guy. I could never get past a certain level in that game. Still bugs me.
And you won’t ever get past a certain level with this person either. They’ll make you think you can while you’re swinging from a vine trying to avoid the *ahem pitfalls. They’ll breadcrumb you as the kids today say.
But in reality, you’re always gonna be at arms length with them. This person is NOT emotionally available. It’s the kiss of death. Literally was in my case. Sorry, words do this to me, even make me sound morbid but that’s the term that came to my mind just then. I’m so fucking god damn witty. *sigh
Anyway, Pitfall guy sucks you in then bam! he’s a fraud. He actually doesn’t talk about his feelings and also doesn’t appropriately acknowledge yours. Maybe he did at first but that was all a show.
The ol’ bait and switch.
His true inner self is really like an unopened clam that’s been cooking in that chowder for way too long. Yikes, this clam should have opened by now right? I don’t think it’s good.
You’re right, it’s a bad clam.
I don’t mean bad like they’re a bad person, I just mean the clam is what it is–unopened and never gonna open no matter how long you cook it, no matter how much you try.
How did this clam come to be this way?
Nature vs. nurture? Who knows? (Nature vs. nurture–Psych 101. GTS)
Doesn’t matter why, just matters that he’s a closed clam now and time isn’t going to open him up. Every try to open one of those closed clams? Pretty fucking hard. Exhausting even. Newsflash: this clam is unavailable.
I’m sure you’ve known a clam or two like this in your day. Maybe your attached to one right now. Sorry. You knew they were clammy. So much knowing. So much we don’t do about it.
And that’s the bitch of it. I knew all the kinds of unavailableness that were in front of me. I always seem to find one or the other:
You’re emotionally available, yet you live in bora bora. But you’re great.
You’re geographically available, probably even live in my neighborhood, yet you’re already in a relationship. But you’re great.
You’re emotionally and geographically available and even single, great great great! Buuuuuut you have a drug problem.
Or, you’re geographically and relationship-wise available and you don’t have a drug problem and you *bonus* have a car, but you’re the worst of all unavailability, emotionally unavailable. You’re incapable of sharing your own emotions and have no room to receive same from others.
As emotive as a fucking succulent. But you’re great.
I’ve been through all these scenarios. When does it end?
So there ya go. Like I said, all these people I’ve “chosen”, really the Universe or whatever has kinda chosen for me are truly wonderful people, yet they all in their own way were unavailable to me.
Then I thought, like attracts like.
The problem isn’t just their unavailability, it’s mine.
I AM THE EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE ONE! 🤯
I subconsciously choose what I know, what is oddly comfortable, then I wonder why it doesn’t work out, DUH. I wonder why the few (and they are few) times I felt like I did open up that it still didn’t work out.
Because deep deep down, I’m not available. Those damn walls.
But hey, when you do slowly open the creaky door to your heart just to let a little light in and get blindsided by a chilling gust of wind, you shiver and slam the door shut again. Hey, you peeked out, you tried. At least you felt like you tried.
Maybe you didn’t try hard enough. Damn.
Like attracts like. Have you noticed patterns like this? Have you thought about why? What is your role in all this?
Bad taste in men? Bullshit.
Common denominatorness is why.
It all makes sense now. Until I become available I won’t find that person who is in all the ways that it takes to make a relationship work.
How to fix this lifelong pattern of self-sabotage? Duh, become available. Easier said than done.
Why do I seem to only open up to people who I know I can’t have?
Walls.
Walls trick you into letting them down. Maybe you took a couple bricks out but did you really try to dismantle that fortress? You weren’t really gonna let them in anyway, at least all the way. You let them get to the front door, wipe their feet on the welcome mat, said “take your coat off, stay a while”.
Then you panicked, said “hold up, wait a minute, just kidding!” and pushed them right back out.
Or maybe it’s the opposite and you’re the one who wanted to get in but got pushed out so fast that your head spun. Your fingers fumbling trying to button up your coat while looking for your keys and dropping your purse spilling out everything including that embarrassing tampon at the same time your phone in your other hand falls to the ground.
All just as you were about to hit “confirm ride” for that Uber home.
That’s just it. We emotionally unavailable people run away or we let others just visit, peek in, but we don’t let them stay.
I knew you didn’t have a change of clothes anyway new/not-so-new guy. I always pick the boys who forgot to bring a change of clothes and a toothbrush.
Oh darn, no toothbrush? No overnight bag? Guess you’ll have to be leaving now.
See, I knew I couldn’t trust you to stay.
All the while though wishing they had remembered to pack those things because deep down you want them to get in and stay for a while, maybe even longer than a while. But the hurt just pushes them away.
Until one day they don’t bang on the door anymore.
So sad, so true.
Who can get past the welcome mat with a toothbrush and stay? Who would I feel comfortable enough with to let do that?
That person would 🤯
❤️
CM
9/23/22
Yeah, I’m posting this on 11/24/22. Procrastination alive and strong!
