AN OPEN LETTER TO MY FELLOW EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE PEOPLE

Hello ZOnZerZ

So I found myself in a bit of a pickle. I couldn’t write anything or rather finish writing anything for quite a while. It terrified me, and I felt utterly ashamed because, to be very raw and honest, the waves that were rocking my emotional boat, aka my not so rosie dating life, have drained me. I was (and still am) baffled at how much my late twenties are starting to seem like a long episode of sex and the city, deciphering in tragic details with my friends the many tales of my poor mismatches (and me writing a whole article on dating on my blog IS indeed very "Carrie Bradshow" behavior … but I digress). It’s a paradoxical space to hang out in, because, if in the grand scheme of things, ruminating on why Chad from Hinge has ghosted you won’t solve the complex challenges of Climate Change, one cannot deny that through our “meat and bone vessel” all societal constructs, systems, problems, boil down to how we relate to one another. We are, after all, tribe animals and the quality of our relationships is (if I don’t butcher this stat), the greatest predictor of our overall health. I guess this intro is an attempt to justify my obsessive consumption of content on the subject of human connection over the past few years : my quasi religious devotion to the Mark Groves Podcast, my extensive review of the Gottmans’ work, reading Brené Brown’s books, heck, I even dabbled into Jordan Peterson’s philosophy on living a good life. I have tired to understand and fix what I consider to be a real problem - my fearful avoidant attachment style and chronic emotional unavailability *self aware gasp*. It taught me a thing or two, sure, but it mostly left me feeling stuck lately. This article thus aims at laying my thoughts and spilling even more ink on that subject that Hollywood, Taylor Swift and all 20 and 30 somethings have been so obsessed with for decades.

So close and yet still so far

Since relating is by definition subjective, I’ll build my reasoning from my own experience (white, cis, straight woman) and will do a disservice to everyone’s widely different life, but heck - I’m going there, maybe one person on the other side of the screen could relate and that’d be enough. I’ll start with a piece of advice: check on your friends approaching 30 who seem to have been forever single, check on your friends who are always so entertaining with their many exciting/ hilarious dating stories. We are kind of not having fun dating anymore and, yes, it sometimes sucks.

First, dating is WILDLY different from what it was 20-30 years ago and partnership can now (thank god) be approached as a “Nice to have” and not a survival tool for the cohort of educated, relatively wealthy privileged women I am a part of. If the narrative has changed and being a single woman reaps amazing benefits, romantically connecting has never been more challenging.

"If the narrative has changed and being a single woman reaps amazing benefits, romantically connecting has never been more challenging"

To me, dating is not about accessing status and relevance via marriage. I don’t date because I feel pressure to have children, I don’t want to find a partner to support myself financially, I even feel like the social credit being in a relationship gave you a few years ago (“oh poor thing, you are STILL single, I’m sure it is going to happen for you”) is not quite relevant anymore. I might be wearing rose colored glasses but experiencing life as a single woman has never been unfavorable so far. If anything, the “mid-twenties mid-thirties and single” female lifestyle has countless advantages. Amongst them copious amounts of freedom, comfort to sleep alone in a double bed, not compromising with anyone on career/ country of residence, and time and space to cultivate solid fulfilling friendships. I have to say I don’t even feel self conscious saying no when a well intentioned relative asks me if there is “someone special” I want to introduce, and surprisingly I enjoy valentine’s day and seeing people around me being in love without feeling inadequate or threatened.

"If anything, the “mid-twenties mid-thirties and single” female lifestyle has countless advantages"

Hand in hand with this though, the idea of what your partner should bring to your life has evolved too. I plead guilty in having what I think are completely unrealistic expectations of what a potential mate shall be. After years of being wilfully indoctrinated by Hollywood and the music industry I’m on the lookout for a best friend that’d see me better than anyone else, a person that I’d be constantly inspired by and that I can easily admire, a strong career advisor, an emotionally mature genius and a passionate lover of course. Needless to say everyone falls short of those expectations 1 - because they set an unattainable standard to any human being, 2 - because the 2000s have bred a generation of emotionally unavailable millennials.

"I plead guilty in having what I think are completely unrealistic expectations of what a potential mate shall be"

Taking the contract/ practical element out of partnership has to my mind two major effects (1) it drives you to search for a “self actualizing” match (2) it positions romantic partnership as the prime space to satisfy a large grocery list of emotional needs that have no business being fulfilled by only one person (see Esther Perel’s work). Moreover if we chase after deep and complete intimacy, a lot of us (myself included) aren’t quite caught up and haven't developed the skills necessary to foster that kind of relationship. We are never really taught that intimacy cannot be built when we are completely unavailable ourselves, quite the opposite. After all, a lot of the messaging around romantic partnership revolves around the “magical” nature of connections, how “when you know you know”, how it should come naturally for everyone. It is quite recent that people are more vocal on how looking at your own psychology impacts how you’ll relate to others and select a partner.

If you have ever felt a slight tendency to perfectionism or have been tying your value to your achievements (hello ALL corporate ambitious people), being in the catch 22 situation that involves craving intimacy and failing to get what you desire usually feels 2 ways:

(1) You blame everyone but yourself : all my exes are crazy, dating apps have ruined dating, dating in my city is impossible, this generation of men is trash etc

(2) You take it as a personal failure because this is one thing you cannot seem to have control over.

Connecting is crucial and it sucks to crave that seemingly unattainable closeness while being chronically incapable to show the level of vulnerability that requires that.

What you are is what you get, over and over again

I will qualify by saying that I know life is long and drawing any conclusion in your 20s is failing to see decades of learning and growth ahead of you. However, I think I won’t talk only for myself when I say I’ve circled the pond a few times already and I came to recognize a few unpleasant patterns in myself and others. Avoidant people usually have a bad rap in the woke/ relationship aware guru trope of the internet (and in films too). Distant, aloof, not caring, but also too confident to care, too independent to be affected. These critiques fail to recognize that the root of an avoidant attachment style usually lies in fear of abandonment and rejection. When you are part of this club and you add the “fearful” label on top of everything you get the perfect cocktail to keep you in the delicious infinite loop of hurt and frustration created by dating solely people who echoe exactly what you are (hi all of you that I’ve casually dated, yes we are most likely the same).

"You get the perfect cocktail to keep you in the delicious infinite loop of hurt and frustration created by dating solely people who echoe exactly what you are"

The way your subconscious mind keeps you safe is by making you go for people who have already rejected you - and if you are like me and looooove to be right, your ego gets a boost by realizing the self-fulfilling prophecy over and over again. The story goes something like this “I like them, they lean in, I feel suffocated and run away - I like them I half lean in, they feel suffocated and run away”. Not to mention we now have all the tools to make things worse for ourselves: social media is great to stay hung up on ex lovers and to prevent us from ever being open to novelty and dating apps are a dream for quick fixes, glimpses of shallow intimacy that don’t require building any emotional connection.

Dating fatigue

Now, my point isn’t to re-hash attachment theory that definitely has been described extensively by people with way better credential than mine (see Attached), but to get the point across that modern dating is hard, not because “all men are dogs”, “Social media ruins everything”, “hookup culture is toxic” or whatever cultural message we are comfortably repeating to let ourselves of the hook. No, dating is hard because the kind of intimacy we are chasing with the faulted set of relationship skills we have developed in childhood constantly replays your own BS. The new freedom of choice in being celibate or coupled up comes with the added bonus of seeing your toxic traits and unresolved issues being thrown at you regularly. I’m not one to complain or be soft (talking about something I should work on), but I’d lie if I said that perceived rejection and multiple disappointments didn’t sometimes feel soul crushing and isolating.

"Dating is hard because the kind of intimacy we are chasing with the faulted set of relationship skills we have developed in childhood constantly replays your own BS"

Don’t get me wrong “the work” is worth it. Everything we do falls into “the business of people”. Thinking you can siloe how you behave with your friends, your relationship with your family from how you show up at work is delusional. It does not mean you have to absolutely have heart to hearts on your dating tribulations with your manager but looking at who and how you date gives you a magnifying mirror for how you show up in other areas of your life. It greatly informs how you deal with feedback you receive in a corporate context, how you’ll choose projects or jobs, if and how you enforce healthy boundaries and the list goes on. Plus, chaos in your personal life inevitably translates into your work (procrastination, workaholism, perfectionism, …). Choosing to see it and working on yourself is thus key to navigating life in a more aligned fulfilling manner. But man, nobody ever tells you how impossible it feels sometimes. Worst, the availability of resources and de-stigmatization of therapy - if it does help tremendously to to articulate the problem (see my beautiful demonstration above) - sometimes doesn’t help solving it. That particular frustration of knowing and still feeling stuck is at best humbling, at worst discouraging.

"Nobody ever tells you how impossible it feels sometimes"

So here is my “message”. To my fellow avoidant peeps - I feel you, this stuff is hard. I know we are usually the ones that try our hardest to show that connection or lack-thereof doesn’t impact us. I myself adopted all the coping mechanisms to make me care the least. The on-the-go life you live, giving people around you (and yourself) a lower chance of getting attached to anything, the suspiciously large amount of daily alone time you claim you need to function, the hobbies you developed and performed alone, the battery of skills that make sure you won’t ever have to rely on anyone, the chronic incapacity to ask for help/ let other see you in states of distress/ hurt or other uncomfortable human feelings. I know how you have mastered maxing out your calendar and staying busy to ensure nobody has time to get too close and hurt you in the end. Lastly, I know what it feels like to be terrified when you are infatuated - how you cannot have the conversations you want to have, how easy it is to jump to conclusions and leave a potential relationship when you feel threatened by intimacy, how comfortable it is to indulge in the uncontrolled aggressive/ mean/ sarcastic behavior that pushes away those who you want close. Most importantly I also know how it feels to be aware of all this but not managing to change because meeting new people feels like you are blindly stepping on a field full of landmines. I experience first hand how tiring it is to see things blowing up in your face for the exact same reasons your however many past dates/ relationships didn’t work out.

"Most importantly I also know how it feels to be aware of all this but not managing to change"

I don’t know what to tell you except that I too am tired and confused. I guess I have faith in the fact that doing the work would eventually pay off but the lead time to collecting even the slightest low hanging fruit sometimes feels like hell. I have no advice, no quick fixes, not even a lesson learnt I could share. If anything I’d like this to offer anyone the relief of feeling less alone in the strange limbo of wanting closeness and doing everything to get away from it. I know we are worth the shot, haven’t figured out how to show it to someone just yet.

Mad love