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Two Perspectives on Why We Chase Unavailable People

Jason Henry
4 min readOct 5, 2021

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Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

There is an ecosystem of people who are afraid of dating because they are afraid that committing to someone might ruin the rest of their lives. In all honesty, it’s a fair concern.

If you witnessed your parents play out this dynamic with each other or you were subjected to parenting where your needs were not attended to enough or were inconsistently attended to, you are probably a member of this ecosystem.

This is the dance of the anxious-attached and the avoidant-attached but the fearful-attached can also be present.

The anxious person is hyper-aroused for connection because that was the only way to get comfort as a child, while the avoidant person learnt that trying to get comfort doesn’t work and therefore shut themselves off from connecting. The fearful person had no coping mechanism to rely on and therefore exhibited attempts at connecting, disconnecting and freezing.

This is the background explanation as to why some of us chase unavailable people and why some of us are the unavailable people. As clear cut as attachment styles can be, sometimes our current lives are a bit more convoluted.

With that said, here are two perspectives that illustrate our pursuit for unavailable people today.

1. We recreate what we know

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Jason Henry
Jason Henry

Written by Jason Henry

Counselling Psychologist | Current Writer | Constant Learner | “By your stumbling the world is perfected.”

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