“I fall for the uninterested guys and I’m not interested in the nice ones…”
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A few weeks ago we heard from Anna, who talked about having overwhelming feelings when she is with a man she likes. Now Anna writes: “Thank you for the useful insight. But it’s only a part of my relationship problem. The men who I fall in love with, actually seem to be wrong for me, they are not even interested in me seriously.
“I don’t know if you have time to see what other parts are involved in me choosing wrong people, or getting scared and even repulsed by ‘respectful, nice, good-looking men’ who sincerely seem to be interested in me. My close girlfriend has exactly the same story – she rejects perfectly normal and smart men, and falls for also ‘cool and good-looking,’ but who are only interested in flirting.
“As an example, when this guy asked me out, and we were on a date, his niceness was scaring me. He gave me flowers, was opening doors for me, was very respectful, but inside I got a familiar uneasy feeling I have gotten before. One part is afraid that now I can’t be myself and have to act nicely, it’s afraid that if I say something straightforward, he’d reject me. The other part just really dislikes his niceness and tension it creates (I don’t know why).”
Dear Anna,
Whenever someone says “I don’t know why,” to me it speaks of a perfect place to do Focusing. You are sensing something in you that feels uneasy and tense from this guy’s niceness. Neither you nor I is going to be able to guess what is going on there. But there is a way to find out… and that is to sit down and do some Focusing. You don’t have to be in the situation. Just remember it. Your body remembers what it was like to have those doors opened for you.
You’ll get a fresh body sense of all that, and then let it take some time to develop and be more fully there. Describe it a little, just sensing and describing what it feels like. Sit with it, with interested curiosity. Sense its emotion. At that point, which will probably take about 15-20 minutes to get to, maybe more, you may begin to sense what else it is wanting you to know. What it is about that situation, with that kind of man, that brings this kind of uneasy and tense feeling.
My own take on it is that you are facing the most fundamental issue of being a social human: Can I be me and still be with you? Pretty much all of us came from childhoods where that wasn’t the case, we couldn’t be fully ourselves AND be accepted by those around us. Some part of us at least was unacceptable, and probably we decided to hide it or exile that part of us completely.
And maybe we even came to believe that it’s true: I can’t both be myself AND be in a relationship. That presents a dilemma. As soon as a real relationship looms close, my parts get in a panic. “Am I going to lose myself?” Sometimes the longing for closeness is so great that we throw our own selves to the wind. And sometimes we keep our own integrity and reject relationships.
Falling for Unavailable People — The Perfect Solution
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If you are still stuck with this unexamined belief — that you can’t both be yourself AND have a real connection with another person — getting really close to someone brings on panic. But we long for closeness. So what people often do — I know I have — is to be attracted to people who are “safe” somehow — far away, even in another world, or unavailable for some reason, or just not that interested in us.
We get to have those yummy feelings of love and attraction, and longing. Longing might be painful but it also makes us feel very alive. And at the same time we are safe from the challenges of real connection, where we might need to stand up for our own point of view while making room for the other.
Another thing about longing: It echoes back to childhood again, where we may have felt longing for more connection and tenderness than we received from our parents. The longing that is here now links back to that older longing, and gets much of its poignancy from there.
And a way through all this is with Focusing! Give yourself time to be with the parts that get scared of real connection and the parts that long for something far away and impossible… and be the calm Self who can really hear them. They can and will change to something more free and more in the present, able to balance integrity and connection.
