I will address this as a fellow human who has repeated attachment patterns in the partners I choose in my own life but also as a psychotherapist who specializes in attachment, relationships and internal family systems.
If you find yourself stuck and wondering “how did this happen or how did this happen again” when your partner becomes distant and emotionally unavailable. Keep reading.
The relationship can even start out ideal with the other person available and interested in you and your life. Don’t make the mistake of jumping to the conclusion that you are broken or that you are making poor or irrational choices. This is a pattern and patterns are something to always approach with curiosity and not judgement.
Most often these patterns signal how your attachment system developed, starting in childhood, learning how to define love, safety, belonging and connection long before any adult relationship.
I will break down a few things to get curious about so that you can understand your attachment system better and your interna part of self (inner child) that did not receive the safety, care and attunement that was required for thriving.
This has to be explored with open curiosity and compassion for the little boy or girl who was resilient enough to adapt to the relationships and environment presented to them.
1) Your brain is wired to seek what is familiar not necessarily what is healthy
Our earliest relationships with caregivers become a blueprint for how we experience closeness and connection. If love was inconsistent, unpredictable, needed to be earned or was unavailable your nervous system would most likely have the blueprint associating uncertainty with intimacy.
As an adult then emotionally unavailable partners can feel compelling and familiar because they keep us on our toes guessing if love is consistent or available. This would strike a chord and match the blueprint previously experienced making it familiar and consequently what our attachment system has earned as relational norm. A really available partner when matched with a blueprint that is used to unpredictability can actually activate discomfort because our system is not ready for a whole new set of building plans for relationships.
2) Trauma changes what feels like chemistry
MANY people mistake ACTIVATION for ATTRACTION. Read that again…
Healthy relationships feel steady, predictable and emotionally available. This can feel “boring” to your system when your attachment framework has been built around unpredictability and/or chaos. The partner then who is emotionally distant or inconsistently available can activate intense feelings of longing, that need that was never met still desiring what it never received, these feelings are often mistaken for chemistry.
This is not weakness, this is learned conditioning. It is a sign of resilience and adaptability as a child.
3) Your protective parts are trying to help
As an IFS therapist this is a key component to compassionately understand patterns that keep coming up for us relationally. We start life as SELF and then invariably things happen (we don’t feel safe, parents are unavailable or the environment is chaotic as examples) and we develop protector parts to keep us safe.
These parts can, and often are, super high functioning:
You might notice parts that:
- Over function to earn love
- Minimize own needs to avoid conflict
- Chase reassurance when someone pulls away
- Stay hopeful that if you love someone enough, they will eventually choose you
These strategies are deeply protective and developed to help you through your childhood environment. In adulthood the same protectors can, unintentionally, keep you in relationships that reinforce old wounds.
4) Healing means changing what feels familiar
One of the key shifts that therapy can help with is learning that what is safe and healthy may not initially feel exciting – it may familiar.
As attachment wounds are addressed, held and given space to heal your nervous system begins to reorient towards new and different possibilities than the original blueprint.
Healing doesn’t simply change who you choose. It changes who feels like home.
THIS MATTERS
Understanding attachment and your parts can replace that deep shame narrative that, “there is something wrong with me” or “I am unlovable” and move towards “what happened that taught my nervous system that this is love.”
With understanding comes agency and choice and understanding. The parts of yourself that have never felt understood can finally feel seen you no longer feel lost and shameful repeating the same patterns and spiraling into self blame.
There is healing and new possibilities available for your nervous system and your life.